from the archives of Essex Terror: Essex Terror #4 (The Moon Issue)

[Notes: This article and the accompanying pictures were originally published on October 21st, 2010]

***

Essex Terror Issue Four was a departure from the standard issues, containing no news, reviews, interviews or even horror, instead just consisting of a short story by an unattributed author. This edition was so unpopular with readers it is alleged that less than 2 copies were ever actually sold, making this perhaps the rarest of the Essex Terror issues, even though 8 more issues so far remain unfound.

This issue was discovered and supplied to us by Thomas Morton, author of “Vok: Unbound”, a collection of sheets of paper detailing aspects of the life and times of Toby Vok, a scientist.

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from the archives of Essex Terror: The Crabbus Man

[This is a collection of articles and other media concerning, sometimes obliquely, the compelling Crabbus Man myth of Maldon, Essex. What the truth behind the legend truly is has never been ascertained]

***

The Crabbus Man

‘As any fool know, to walk after dark through Promenade Park is to walk in the shadow of death; for there the Crabbus Man lurks and scuttles, with his clacking claws and twitching eye stalks, ready to leap upon the unwary and clack at them, they whose souls shall know no peace for all their remaining days upon the Earth…’ Or so wrote the Reverend Joseph Arkwright in his diary for the year 1863. Arkwright never saw the creature himself, though his borderline obsessive documentation of the Crabbus Man, including many incidents of its manifestations as sundry simulacra throughout Maldon (be it a cloud that ‘rather resembled a crab’s claw’ or a shadow upon a grass verge that ‘seemed to scuttle most unwholesomely’) has become the go-to source for Crabbus lore.

***

The Ballad Of The Crabbus Man, by Thomas Morton

***

The Persistent Myths Of Maldon

The cultural worth of a town can perhaps be measured in its myths. As part of my research into the viability of Essex towns in this new millenium, I came across the following three tales repeatedly, uttered with barely any change through over a thousand years of paperwork and quilting.

The Crabbus Man was a child born with crab claws for hands and taken by the sickened residents to the river to be drowned. While the mayor was holding the child underwater it is said that he slipped from his grasp and fell to the bed of the river, but no amount of searching could yield a corpse. The whispered implication at the end of the tale being that he escaped down through the mud into the crab caverns below, where even to this day he weeps and plans and one day will have his revenge. To this day, crabs are caught and smashed to pieces by the townsfolk in the hope of catching and destroying him before he can return.

The Crow Child was a child born with the blackened skin of a crow. Thought to be a golem crafted from the muds of the marsh, he was hauled up into a tree and placed in the nest of a rook. It is said that eventually he flew away to the moon, and to this day the people of the town are afraid of crows and the moon.

Susan Swan-Neck was a child born with an exceptionally long neck, thought by the residents of the town to be the reincarnation of King Harold II’s wife Edith Swan-Neck. Still believing that Harold’s descendants were the rightful heirs to the throne, Susan was quickly made Ealdorman of Maldon. When next spring she laid several eggs of her own it was clearly revealed that she was an actual swan, and her and her adoptive mother were driven from the town by an angry mob. Their ultimate fate is unknown, but to this day swans are not allowed into the town hall while council meetings are in progress.

As can be seen above, there is a strange monotony to their legends which matches the drab uniformity of the town. It is with little regret that I announce here that the entire Maldon district is to be abandoned to the sea.

***

Dear Crabbus

The Crabbus Man Of Promenade Park has long been one of Essex’s most fearsome foes. Although no direct sightings of the Crabbus Man have ever been verified, he is known to be more than mere myth by careful observation of the aftermath of his actions. Periodic crab massacres litter the history of Maldon (but never Heybridge, almost as if the beast is afraid to cross the river and risk the wrath of the subhuman inhabitants of the northern bank); frequently the town wakes up to find the trundleways and amblepaths of the town are covered in trails of fresh gore dripped straight from his ever-bleeding claws; signs warning visitors to beware of the mud being gnawed upon with frightening regularity; all of these and more are all the proofs we have or need.

The atrocities and activities of the Crabbus Man ebb and flow, sometimes fading almost out of memory before coming crashing back into our reality in a storm of shattered shells and a puddle of rotting crab flesh festering in the sun. Residents have described the events of this summer as “intolerable”, with a new outrage at least once a week. Concerned locals, after a series of hastily arranged town meetings where they dicsussed ideas for combatting this menace, have now begun to post a series of notices across the town, beseeching the returned Crabbus Man to curb his rampages and display at least a modicum of respect and civilised behaviour.

The notices, written in the terse and economical Essex way –

[an historical aside: in 1990, Essex County Council, having been impressed with Microsoft’s fledgling Powerpoint software, and realising the superiority of its methods of communications, banned the use of paragraphs and words of more than two syllables in all internally produced memos, notices, signs, posters, leaflets and other forms of written communications, eliminating the wasteful use of language and distilling everything down to the most salient points. This lead to clearer communications facilitating an increase in decision-making time savings of over 95 man hours per person per year, as well as the reduction of ambiguity-based misapprehensions and confusions by over 40%, and 75% lower paper purchasing costs.]

– have been tied to several railings that mark the boundary between the town park and the hallowed crablands of the Blackwater. The notices, addressed directly to the Crabbus Man himself, read:

“DEAR CRABBERS [sic]

PLEASE BE NICE TO CRABS

DO NOT hurt or damage them

DO NOT leave them out of water

DO put them back in the lake when you have finished

DO wash your hands when you have finished

DO enjoy yourselves”

Although the Crabbus Man’s name has been mangled by the rigorous adherence to the council computer’s spellchecking device’s suggestions, scholars think that this notices clear instructions to the man could appeal to the creature’s better nature and help work in pacifying the beast, although it is possible that his dual nature as part man and part shambling horror (alluded to in the “enjoy yourselves” directive) could be beyond rational control. At this stage, however, it is our only hope.

***

Huge Horror Brings Terror To The Marsh

Residents in the Essex marshlands were shocked by the discovery of a huge crab said to be the largest ever seen by crabbers in Maldon this week. The terrifying beast (an artist’s impression of which can be seen above) was found scuttling around near a child’s bucket by the ruins of the town’s hythe, which tragically collapsed earlier this year in an unrelated incident which caused the death of 72 tourists.

“It’s utterly terrifying,” said unemployed localson David N. Guy (no relation to the reporter). “No doubt it has been feeding on the bodies down there, growing fat on their unfathomable flesh. I said at the time that we should send them back to wherever it was they came from, but did the council listen? No. They didn’t listen to me at all. They never do. Perhaps when it’s one of their children’s fingers getting savagely nipped they’ll finally start paying attention. But by then it’ll be too late.”

Councilw’mn Eliza Dredgeland dismissed this as ridiculous scaremongering from an ignorant oaf. “As readers of your site will no doubt know [cf. The Ballad Of Shitpant N. Guy], this man is a shambolic mess who can’t even control his own gastric functions, so it is no surprise that he has no understanding of this complex situation whatsoever. It would be a gross dereliction of our duties to the council tax payers of this district to allow the financial burden of the removal of these corpses to be placed solely on their shoulders, when it wasn’t any of them who died. Is it too much to ask that those coming from outside pay their own way rather than expecting others to pay for the consequences of their frivolous gallivanting?

“Coupled with this, the idea that the crab could grow to monstrous size on a diet of human flesh is a simplistic and naive one, with no basis in the physical laws that underpin our universe or any of the known processes of accepted biology. Furthermore, I would question whether this crab really is the biggest ever. Our records only go back to 1604, so who’s to say what size crabs you had back then. 400 years may seem a long time to us, but it is utterly insignificant when you think of the 700 million year reign of crabkind. Crabs of this size might be a perfectly natural part of the crab lifecycle, and therefore nothing to do with these corpses in the river.”

The previous largest crab, dubbed Great Big Barry by locals, measured 5 inches from claw to claw when splayed out like a paper angel. Discovered on June 16th, 1978, postcards of Great Big Barry laid out before his captors still do a brisk trade, selling for upwards of 30p at local kiosks. And some people hope that this new find – or fiend, as the Mayor has claimed – will bring much needed economic growth to the town.

The Crab – as it has so far been called by the shocked populace, the “The” said in an exaggerated fashion that suggests a mix of reverential awe, horror, incredulity, terror and even arousal – has not yet been accurately measured, although eyewitness accounts state that it was at least as wide as a pretty wide shoe. Indeed, official measurements may never be known, since under Dengie law the crab has been quarantined at the customs hut since discovery, and if tests indicate even a hint of rabies then it must be incinerated immediately from afar, untouched and alone.

***

The Crabbus Man (a children’s book)

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from the archives of Essex Terror: The Essex Bestiary

Notes: The Essex Bestiary has been compiled from a number of separate entries, entities, sources, and sorcerers. The originiating expert has been credited in brackets beneath the relavent beasts, although it is possible that that information is as, or possible more, unreliable than the detailed descriptions they provided.

***

Alan Headbold

Alan Headbold – or ‘The Alan’ as he is known in Suffolk – was a popular man in 19th century Chelmsford, having won the annual wife lifting competition four years in a row. He also achieved fame for rescuing Patsy, the Mayor’s Labrador after she fell through the ice on the local skating pond one particularly harsh winter. Unfortunately, it was this last show of courage that was to be Headbold’s undoing as a man. Convinced that Patsy was the true love of his life, he drove himself to a foaming jealousy upon seeing the Mayor proudly parade his trusted companion about the town at weekends. Headbold’s twisted delusion transformed him from local hero to feared villain. Headbold left his wife and home and retreated to the Tiptree caves. For several months villagers there recounted that he had begun to show signs of feral activity, scampering on all fours through the streets at night and stealing old pieces of meat which he carried away in his mouth.

By some mysterious method, he soon gathered a pack of other hounds around him; strays mostly but also some who had been thrown into the river as puppies in a failed attempt to kill them, the memory of which had ignited their hatred of Man. To the shock and amazement of all concerned, on the 14th June 1893, Headbold, wild-haired and naked but for a small leather flap dangling over his shrivelled manhood, led this pack of slavering beasts on a raid of the Mayor of Chelmsford’s manor home. Shattering through the windows in a series of great leaps the pack entered the poor official’s home just as he and his guests were sitting down to a fine dinner. Headbold is alleged to have appeared down the chimney, caring not for the flaming coals in the hearth which terrifyingly set his body hair aflame. One guest recounted that Headbold had rolled over the carpet at an in-human speed and then somersaulted onto the dining table roaring as he did so. He made a direct line for the Mayor but was smashed from his path by the massive punch of a blunderbuss wielded by Sir Panton Grieg Hanvorhandles, the fearless, seven-foot big game hunter. The big man had just retired from a life spent quenching his thirst for blood in the darkest folds of Africa, and having never lost his habit of carrying the thunderous weapon about with him wherever he went he brought the thing to bear with a practised ease even while others around him still had their forks in their mouths. With their leader presumed dead and the prospect of a decent meal on the cards, the remaining canines seemingly lost their spirit for vengeance and went about wagging their tails, accepting a petting from the waiting staff whilst the guests waited for their carriages. Whilst a huge pool of blood was found under the table, Headbold’s body was never found.

Since the the time of these extraordinary events, the chimney down which Headbold appeared has been solidly bricked-up. There is a thriving business inviting visitors into the house now, which the family enhances with rumours of scratching and faint growling behind there late at night.

[from the diaries of Hugh Paterson, a doctor of some repute]

***

The Baboons Upon The Marsh

Of all the recurring stories of Essex, the most pervasive is that of the ape gone wild. In our journey through the history of Essex it crops up again and again with such frequency it is tempting to believe that it must be more than the terrified bellowing of generations of feckless mothers haunted by the shambling abortions they left in the woods.

Amongst all our research the “Baboons Upon The Marsh” appear to be the most credible. The Dengie in Essex was long the centre of England’s ape trade, the docks at Burnham bringing in more than 700,000 baboons between 1503 and 1651. It was said that at their height the meathouses on the riverfront could peel 600 apes in a day. Sadly, the factories were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in a fit of anti-monarchist zeal towards the end of the civil war, and Burnham moved on to other pursuits. Yet the locals would not forget.

Over the next hundred years a number of reports of shambling creatures cavorting about in the mud of the nearby marshes can be found in the local newspaper reports and court records. Some speak of “abominable cries loike that of childe” echoing across the saltings, others of “man, but not man, drunken of gait, but permantlye, like a man, like a man, but not man, not man.” It is a familiar refrain.

Over time these reports coalesce into a general belief of baboons roaming out in the mudflats, living off oysters and dirt, dancing across the rivers at low tide towards the civilised parts of Essex to the south and the north. Rumours of women enjoying lewd liaisons with these creatures of the marsh are as yet just the speculations of the authors of this book, but it seems a reasonable conjecture. The ways of our people do not change much, it must be acknowledged.

As the centuries have passed the talk of these baboons has faded, but perhaps that is because civilised life has retreated from these lands, and our gaze is turned away to more appealing things. It is said we see what we want, and the inverse is most certainly true.

from The Book of Essex Monsters by Prof. Dreg Twedloxx & Assorted Authors (1947)

***

The Bellowing Son

One of the worst creatures that blight these lands, a bellowing son can afflict even the quietest of women. In the earliest stages of childhood, a bellowing child is often indistinguishable from his human peers, but as the creature ages, it begins to lose the ability to mimic human speech and emotion, resorting more and more to frightening and incoherent outbursts of sound that barely even register as words to the human ear.

In medieval times, bellowing was considered a mild form of possession, perhaps by a goat or other belligerent animal, as opposed to a demon in the more advanced cases. However, in recent times it has generally been accepted that it is likely to be caused by a combination of unsanitary conditions and an excess of immorality. It is for this reason that it appears to affect the people of Essex more than those in other less benighted areas of the countries.

from “Medical Afflictions of the Essex Peasantry” by Alice Hedgecock (1937)

***

The Beast of Beacon Hill

Doubtless the reader has heard of the Bodmin Moor Beast, and Norfolk’s ‘Black Shuck’, but Maldon’s Beacon Hill plays host to its own, peculiar specimen of crypto-zoological obscurity. ‘Dangly Ubb’, as the locals have christened it, is neither lupine nor feline, but is reportedly a giant, hairy, breastlike monstrosity that has often been seen flopping around the hilltop. Originally thought to be a joke amongst the local milkmen (it is said to be most active in the early hours of the morning), the legend was lent significantly more credence when in 1992, councillor Donald Spavins claimed to have seen it lactating atop a streetlamp. Spavins later saw that the streetlamp was replaced in accord with health and safety town ordinances.

[so sayeth R. Field, a man of knowledge and wisdom]

***

Edward Bright, Eater of The Dead

At various times throughout history different methods have been employed to combat the threat of The Dead, and one of the most sinister attempts at control was employment of The Eater.

The Eater would be forced to live on the edge of town, subsisting on naught but the flesh of the dead. At first bodies would be brought to him untouched, but later, as ritualisation and superstition took hold, lavish banquets would be prepared from the corpses and the role of The Eater changed from that of outcast to king (or at least mayor).

The trouble with this method was the increasing population in Essex during the late Middle Ages and early Modern period. As only one Eater could ever be employed, the sheer amount of flesh that had to be consumed led to increasing health problems, and the position began to be phased out.

The last known Essex Eater was Edward Bright (1721-1750), of Maldon, colloquially known as The Fat Man Of Maldon. Inheriting the role from his father, he began Eating at an early age, eventually growing to gargantuan proportions. His girth was so great that it threatened to collapse the town, and in the early months of 1750 the townsfolk lured him into the river Blackwater by placing the dead body of his mother on a mudbank in the middle of the river, apparently at low tide. In his desperate lust for her meat he began clambering across the mud. As he reached the corpse he screamed in triumph, but it was short lived. The men of the town had created a temporary dam across the river further inland, and on seeing The Eater feasting ravenously they broke it open and the rushing waters carried him away.

It is said he lives on at the edges of the ocean, searching beaches for the hulks of dying whales. On finding them, he emerges from the depths and helps them on their way to their final destination.

[account provided by David N. Guy (no relation)]

***

The Bobby

Feared by all, from the mouth of the river Blackwater to the anus of England known as the Thames Estuary, talk of the Bobby was always confined to whispered warnings even in the relative safety of a popular tavern. Known to prey on the weak and drunk, the Bobby terrorised the gentlefolk of Essex for over two decades in the mid eighteenth century ensuring its place in local legend. The beast was thought to have been roughly the size of a donkey but larger and ten times as dreadful. Always appearing at night, but never seen as a whole, the beast struck without warning at the unwary traveller, often knocking the hapless victim to the ground in a flurry of ungodly hair and loud snorting only to find that when they arose, bruised and bleeding, all their hay and apples had gone. Of note, from local records it is reported that in 1758 the Bishop of Maldon implored his congregation to stay in their homes between the hours of 6 in the evening and 7 the next day to avoid attack by the apparently ferocious Bobby creature. However it is later reported that the Bishop was taken into custody and then thrown into the sea without trial after it was discovered he had been committing lewd acts upon his own person in the village square late at night. Evidence of the Bobby becomes scarce after 1773 although brief mention is made in a parish magazine late that year of an inexplicably deformed skeleton of a man with four long limbs and an impossibly long head. It is rumoured that the locals found the unidentifiable remains scattered around four mysterious curved metal rods, presumably evidence of the monster’s diabolical strength.

from The Book of Essex Monsters by Prof. Dreg Twedloxx & Assorted Authors (1947)

***

The Brain Tree

The first appearance of the Brain Tree in Essex folk-lore is in the Cronicle of Chelmesford. Under the entry for 1352, following a brief description of the recurrence of bubonic plague in this year, a meat-fisted scribbler briefly displaces the usual neat monkish hand and scrawls “Bee ware ye BRANETRE”. Recent attempts to link this with the catastrophic outbreak of bran-induced flatulence that rendered Chelmsford uninhabitable for large periods in the late 14th century have been refuted, and Dr. Plectrode’s suggestion that this is a first-hand witness of the Brain Tree remains the most plausible.

According to legend, the Brain Tree is a large willow usually associated with the River Pant (previously Shitpant), although some stories also link it with the Blackwater. It lulls weary travellers to sleep in its shade, then wraps their heads in its long trailing branches, and eats their brains. The victims are then discovered by passers-by, incapable of rational thought or coherent speech, and are integrated seamlessly into Essex society. In the sixteenth century, belief in the Brain Tree was so strong that mobs swept the Essex countryside looking for willow trees to burn them down, with the result that Essex now has fewer oak trees than any other region of comparable size in England. The last recorded mention of the Brain Tree in Essex oral tradition comes from the Reminiscences of Derek Poke (1884), in which he mentions that a tree branch knocked his uncle’s brains out, but that his uncle survived to father four children and become a vicar after a pig’s brain proved to be an adequate substitute.

from The Book of Essex Monsters by Prof. Dreg Twedloxx & Assorted Authors (1947)

***

The Burning Of The Leaves

Every year at the start of September, gatherers sweep the towns of the Dengie, carefully picking a leaf from each and every tree in the parish. A bonfire is built from the leaves, and, on the evening of the 21st, lit. As the leaves burn summer drifts away with the smoke.

Once, a man refused to let the gatherers pick a leaf from his tree, for he had recently planted it over his wife’s grave and was concerned it might not make it through the winter. The tree survived, and that winter did not even shed its leaves, instead producing a constant abundance of fruit.

His neighbours refused its harvest, however, and the man had to eat it all himself. On the first day of spring a pip lodged in his throat and he choked to death and died. The leaves on the tree burst then into flames, and they never grew again.

From Customs And Sayings Of The Peoples Of The Coasts, by Simon Shirlthrell, published in 1963 by The Folklore Society.

***

The Butcher of Beeleigh Road

John Compton’s trade was no secret: he ran the local butcher’s shop on Maldon High Street from 1955 to 1978, and was known by all to be a large and ruddy-cheeked fellow who took great pride in his work, and always spoke the best of people. Yet what of the other John Compton? The one who hid away from prying eyes, long into the evening each night in his home on Beeleigh Road? Could he have been laughing maniacally to himself as he sharpened his butcher’s blades, eyeing the children of the local comprehensive and imagining their blood washing through the streets and into the gutters? Could he really? He had to be hiding something, did ‘Jolly’ John Compton.

[as told by R. Field, esq]

***

The Charming Skeleton

There lived upon the marsh a skeleton of unnatural charms, who, despite the lack of flesh or mud upon her bones, provided the most alluring sight many Essexmen had ever witnessed. It was said that just a single coquettish clack of her jaw could cause a man of married means to abandon his vows and leap through the windows of his connubial prison to chase after the illusory freedom of a night with this calciferous wench. Of course, the skeleton would lead the men not to liberation but to the eternal subjugation of death and devilment.

The nameless skeleton would take the men to a graveyard and entice them into a hole on the promise (never stated, for her fleshless face was incapable of speech) of a night of blissful coitus in her supposed bed. Upon realising that she would not join them, and that her bed was in fact a grave she had freshly dug, the men often became somewhat depressed and would refuse to leave, sighing away to an early death rather than return home, for that would entail an admission of their gullibility and of how easily they had succumbed to their lustful perversions.

It is not known where the adventures of this charming bonestress ended, but she was last seen on the roadways of Essex in 1449. Some say she fell in love with a beached whale and dragged the beasts bones back into the depths to prove her love, others still that she moved to Kent and stole a horse, but the truth shall likely never be known.

From Essex Bones: Tales Of The Skinless Days (1432-1456), edited and possibly fabricated by Webbingsley Munkton and first published in 1879

***

The Crabbus Man

‘As any fool know, to walk after dark through Promenade Park is to walk in the shadow of death; for there the Crabbus Man lurks and scuttles, with his clacking claws and twitching eye stalks, ready to leap upon the unwary and clack at them, they whose souls shall know no peace for all their remaining days upon the Earth…’ Or so wrote the Reverend Joseph Arkwright in his diary for the year 1863. Arkwright never saw the creature himself, though his borderline obsessive documentation of the Crabbus Man, including many incidents of its manifestations as sundry simulacra throughout Maldon (be it a cloud that ‘rather resembled a crab’s claw’ or a shadow upon a grass verge that ‘seemed to scuttle most unwholesomely’) has become the go-to source for Crabbus lore.

[for a full accounting of The Crabbus Man, please stand by]

***

The Dead

The dead have long been a source of irritation for the people of Essex. Somtimes seen shambling here and there on the edges of the towns, and often found clogging up brooks and rivers (the dead cannot swim), no matter how much they are ignored they never seem to fully go away.

12th Century Essex Chronicler and Monk, Ralph of Coggeshall, described the dead in his Chronicon Anglicanum as symptoms of nostalgia, considered one of the great sins of medieval times. Others, such as Witch murderer Matthew Hopkin, have subscribed their appearance to hallucinations brought on by the unique mixture of lust and rotting marshland that permeates the Essex countryside. Their true origin, however, is unlikely to ever be discovered.

“There are more of us than there are of you” is the dead’s one irrefutable cry, and no matter how desperately the people of the county have tried to breed their way to dominance, the living have yet to outnumber them.

***

The Essex Throttler

Years before London’s Jack the Ripper would stalk the streets of Whitechapel in search of victims, a far more vile and mysterious entity began a reign of terror throughout Essex that would last well into the next century. It became known simply as ‘The Essex Throttler’, for that is what it did: its prey were seldom granted the sweet release of death, as in Jack’s case; but instead were throttled to within an inch of their sanity and left as pallid, idiot revenants, white haired and wild eyed, to wander the streets of Essex townships, babbling incoherently about their experiences. It is said the rise of the British ‘Chav’ population has its genetic roots in these poor and damaged souls.

[from the lips of R. Field, whispering beneath the pier]

***

The Eternal Beating Heart At The Centre Of Existence

Although it has never been seen by human eyes, it is a matter of irrefutable fact that at the centre of existence there lies a huge and powerful heart, beating its way relentlessly through time, each beat separating out existence into a series of distinct moments so that we can live.

The best method for hearing the echoes of this huge celestial heart is to sit in your garden and night and push a cat as close to your ear as possible, holding it there despite its protestations, listening, listening, listening. The cat, unhearted and inert, acts as the perfect conduit for absorbing and amplifying sound, its whiskers perfect antennas that can pierce the walls between the worlds.

A dog will not suffice

This short and possibly unfinished article was found in the papers of Toby Vok that were bequeathed to the county of Essex upon his disappearance in 1990. As far as can be ascertained, it has never been previously published.

***

The Tale of Gin Susan

In the late 1700s, under cover of darkness, a publican’s daughter by the name of Susan Tines is said to have snuck out of the Swan and Bender Inn, Colchester, clutching tightly to her person a letter she had written only that evening. Her intent was to deliver it (the recipient unknown) before the nearby churchbells sounded in the new day; for if she did not, she would be condemned to die young and in agony. Where had she learned of this terrible fate? In another letter received that very day, demanding that if she was to live she must pass on its curse. It is quite possibly the earliest recorded example of the chain letter phenomenon, and an 1848 copy is on display at the Chelmsford Museum of Antiquities (attributed to Thomas Chatterton, given its pseudo-medieval stylings).

Sadly, so the story goes, fate was not on Susan’s side as barely a few yards from her home she ran into a friend of her father’s and was quickly apprehended, returned, and locked away in her room. The pressure of these events appears to have snapped Susan’s fragile, womanly mind, as on the following day she drank herself into a gin-induced stupor and fell down a drainage ditch; whereupon her still-warm body is supposed to have been devoured by blind, piglike creatures rumoured to live underneath Colchester.

That is not the end of the story, however. For it is said that if any who know this tale choose to propagate any sort of chain letter, Gin Susan’s bloodied, half-eaten specter will appear by their bed and drag them off to the Colchester tunnels.

The tale of the tale does not end there either. In the late 1960s, an Essex medium operating under the name of Madame Cravatsky (real name Enid May Beake) claimed to have contacted the spirit of Gin Susan, and offered to give a public demonstration of her talents to a small audience at the recently opened Civic Theatre. The ensuing spectacle involved much wailing and over-consumption of gin, after which Blavatsky manifested a pool of ectoplasm before passing out completely.

Whatever the truth behind Gin Susan’s tragic tale, this writer at least shall be held in check by it whenever a chain letter should happen to arrive in the post. Perhaps you will now, too.

[R. Field is now dead, unrelatedly]

***

Gordon Of Essex

Page seventeen thousand four hundred and eighty two of the Essex Chronicle of Idiots (Volume 5), tells of middle-aged man — the self-styled Gordon Hood, later ‘Gordon of Essex’ — who, inspired by tales of a contemporary Nottingham-based vigilante named ‘Robin Hood’, attempted to emulate that champion of the poor but failed entirely with disastrous results for the general population.

14th century records (mostly wanted posters and instructions to kill on sight, hand-written and circulated by the general public using whatever materials were to hand at the time) convey that through his misguided efforts Gordon Hood drove the local poor folk into a downward spiral of increasing poverty, homelessness, migration and suicide for almost a decade. The resultant mass exodus away from and mass loss of life in the county of Essex and across East Anglia has secured his place in local and regional lore ever since.

Gordon’s main problem was that he hated the poor. He had himself been born into a noble family with strong connections to the Crown and been raised among great wealth and privilege. Try as he might, he seemingly could never discard the ingrained notion that the poor deserved their suffering and indeed in many cases were not suffering enough. This notion had a habit of overwhelming him in the midst of a well-meaning action, reversing it, and is thus suspected to be indicative of a genuine psychosis.

For example, on 19th September 1382, Gordon carried out a daring hold-up on horseback of a wealthy merchant’s treasure carriage as it travelled through Epping Forest to a depositing bank in the City vaults of London. However, just as he pointed his drawn bow at the carriage driver, he underwent a schizophrenic change of heart. He immediately drove his horse in the direction of the nearest small village and raided it. The Sheriff of Essex’s records, taken from surviving witnesses, state that Gordon rode into the centre of the village, waving his sword and screaming “Damn the poor!” with such force that he spat blood. He proceeded to enter each hovel in turn, chasing the inhabitants out of their homes, stealing what precious little they had of value and throwing it into a large sack. Just before the Sheriff’s men arrived to stop him, he set the village alight with a number of well-placed flaming arrows and disappeared into the forest. Gordon must have ridden for over an hour before he caught-up with the merchant carriage he had interrupted earlier. He promptly delivered his bulging sack of trinkets to the occupant via the window. He then cantered away into the foliage and went into hiding again. This was but one of over seven hundred such incidents attributed to Gordon over a ten year period.

When his true identity was finally discovered, his family, driven by shame, gathered a small army and scoured the county in search of their errant son. After a few months of searching, they finally cornered him at a run-down Friary where he was terrorising a tiny child. He was found clutching at the scabrous orphan, emaciated and blind, yelling in its face that it must submit to a scalping so that the value of its hair might be better applied to the balding pate of the Earl of Essex. Despite being a physical wreck, the unfortunate child was putting-up an admirable defence, squirming and kicking at Gordon’s shins with what little strength it could muster. Gordon’s father and younger brother led the capture, trapping him in a net thrown from horseback, and so his reign of terror was finally ended. The eventual fate of Gordon of Essex is obscured by sheer weight of wildly varying personal accounts and rumour.

[from the diaries of Hugh Paterson, a know charlatan]

***

The Grey Men, and Women Also

The Grey Men, found throughout Essex, are mostly sufferers of an unnamed disease, recently found to be caused by a mildly mutated form of the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, harbinger of Leprosy. The mutation of this bacteria causes irreparable rotting of the synapses in the brain, categorised most clearly by an increase in the amount of banal empty phrases and conversational gambits used by the sufferer. In extreme cases, the Grey Man (Or Grey Woman, although this is much rarer) ceases to be capable of any speech beyond talking about the weather. “Looks like rain” has became a phrase of utter terror throughout the county.

Transmitted by prolonged exposure to uninteresting ideas, groups of sufferers are often found together in huddles and queues, staring blankly ahead, a facsimile of discussion breaking out a mongst them that on closer inspection is little more than the repetition of stock phrases and stale opinions.

In modern times, Grey Men are most often found waiting at bus stops. Indistinguishable from unaffected people, it is only when they refuse to join you in getting on the bus do you realise how narrow your escape as been. You look back out the window and watch the rain begin to fall upon the unmoving line of them. The relief is so great you don’t even begin to feel resentful of the other passengers for a stop or two.

***

The Laughing

Once a man was driving through Essex late in the evening when he saw two children sitting next to each other. He shouted “What are you looking at you cunts” at them. But the two began laughing loudly. The man drove on and after a while he encountered the same two children, who began laughing once again.

***

The Maldon Mer-Man

In the spring of 1780, local eccentric and prestidigitator, Alan Mulvane, claimed to have caught a bizarre sea creature whilst out fishing on the Essex salt flats, ‘Thee lykes of wiche fulle horribele it wass and no mistayke’. It was immediately put on show in what was to become one of England’s most famous freak shows, drawing crowds of up to twenty people at a time. Some claimed it was just an old boot that Mulvane had stuffed full of sandwiches, but still others noted an uncanny resemblance betwixt it and the sea trout of the nearby tidal estuary…

[account provided by R. Field, who was rumoured to come from the north]

***

The Midsummer Maze At Maldon Marsh

The Midsummer Maze was an event held annually in Maldon from antiquity up until the modern day.

The Maze was a network of trenches, said to have been at least six feet deep, dug into the muds of the marsh. Each Midsummer’s Eve, at the lowering of the tide, townsfolk who were in need of the charity of their betters or the favourings of their gods would enter the Maze by the Eastern Passway. There they would try and find their way through the disconcerting network of passages without getting lost, becoming stuck, or being overcome by marsh madness (a debilitating affliction with symptoms similar to post traumatic stress syndrome).

Those that managed to emerge successfully from the Western Opening before sundown (the entrances and exits were aligned symbolically with the positions of the rising and setting sun) received the promise of good luck and a showering of silver coins from the Mayor and his wives.

Those that did not manage to emerge were lost to the marsh, drowned by the rising tides and sucked slowly underground during the night. Any participants that emerged, confused and ashamed, from the Eastern Passway were driven from the town and never mentioned again.

In 1915 the local council entered into a contract with the British Army for the procurement of mud, with which a series of full scale replicas of the then current positions in France were to be built, precipitating extensive mining of the marsh that continues to this day. Although the Midsummer spectacle of the Maze was ended by these developments, echoes of the event still persist in both the Maldon Mud Race (held traditionally at Midwinter) and The Drownings (August 17th, weather permitting).

***

The Morning Birds Free The Souls, The Night Ones Take Them

“In Essex, for example, it was a commonly held belief that heaven resided in the earth and hell within the air. Crops grew from the ground, while fire and smoke rose upwards.

“Worms were believed to be new souls struggling to the surface from heaven, and only with the help of the morning birds could they be pulled free and delivered to the newborns that needed them. A child born in the morning was said to be blessed with a good soul.

“Upon death, the body was returned to the ground, so as to be nearer heaven. The bodies of the sinful and the condemned were hoisted up and left on the roofs of houses, so that the evening birds (crows, gulls, owls) could pick clean their bones and take their flesh up into the skies towards damnation.”

Taken from “The Other English Traditions”, by Margaret Baker, published by David And Charles Country Books, in 1971.

***

Old Crow Head

Old Crow Head popped out of the woods and into town,
And squawked and flapped and pranced around,
But no-one paid her too much mind,
Just thought she was an abomination of her kind.

She came upon a bishop at work,
His rod pushed up a young woman’s skirt.
Old Crow Head with her beak attacked his neck,
And the bishop was dead before he could say “Oh heck!”

“Old Crow Head you saved me from a life of strife.
“Let’s get married, as wife and wife.”
Old Crow Head didn’t know what at all to say,
So she bit the girl and flew away.

The townsfolk found the maiden, all covered in blood,
Beside her the bishop, still dead in the mud.
“For this crime young lady you must pay.”
And built there a pyre out of bales of hay.

The burning hour was soon at hand,
As the sun set across the land.
They faced the girl out to sea,
And let her weep and cry and grieve.

The flames licked up around her feet.
She thought, “All this because of the Bishop’s meat.
“I can’t believe I’m going to die,
“Underneath this impossible moonless sky.”

“My only crime was to be a girl.
“If it wasn’t the bishop it’d’ve been the earl.
“This county’s men are all the same.
“When you have power you don’t need shame.”

The flames of the fire rose higher and higher,
And the crowd behind shouted, “Liar! Liar!
“You filthy cow! You wretched whore!
“I hope in hell they hurt you more.”

And just when they thought her death was assured,
Above them the flapping of wings could be heard.
Like a heart they beat, astonishing loud,
They blew out the fire and dispersed the crowd.

Old Crow Head flew down and chased them all around,
Across the beach into the sea, where thousands were drowned.
The rest of them? I suppose they got away,
But where they went only God herself could say.

And then by her love Old Crow Head did land,
And placed a wing in the other’s trembling hand.
“Caw caw caw,” said Old Crow Head,
And together they lived until both were dead.

from “The Songs Of The Slums”, published in 1903 by Prittlewell and Pitsea Press, and edited by Mary Savage

***

Peter Pitt and Mary Mye

The Essex Bestiary, Ted Vaaak’s three volume masterwork (The Time Before Memory And Recollection: 3000BC to 1977, An Abominable Year: 1978, and An Ever Increasing Density Of Disgust: 1979 to 1990) that was published to great acclaim in 1991, catalogued in great detail every fearsome beast, every genetic mutation, every ghost and every goat that had ever terrorised the folk of this county. And yet none of these creatures contained within it were as monstrous as Peter Pitt and Mary Mye, a pair of Essex itinerants of such abominableness they transcended the restrictions of their human births and became beasts of almost mythical stature.

Little is known of their origin, and even less of their ultimate destination, but of their journeys none in Essex are ignorant. At every bus-stop, at every train station, in every park and every High Street, somehow always they would be there. And, always, arguing. Peter Pitt, his face red as burning coal. Mary Mye, her whole body twisted in a lemonchewing scowl. Obscenities flung back and forth between their lips with such power and metronomic regularity they could have been used to power an electric dynamo if only the council had heeded my plans. Always in progress when you arrived, and undimmed in ferocity when finally you escaped, the underlying cause of their disagreement has always been impossible to discern.

For the last fifty years the people of Essex have had no peace. Silence is unknown until death. We wait, we dream. Around us the battle rages.

***

The Story Of A Grave

The tombstone of Barry John Johnson looks no different from any of the others in the quiet cemetery. It’s a plain stone slab, decorated with a simple cross. It lists Johnson’s date of birth (2 December, 1613) and death (3 January, 1647), states his rank (Sergeant), and mentions his service against the Roundheads at the battle of Marston Moor.

If you were to dig beneath the stone, however—an act which is forbidden by a special order from the office of the Witchfinder General—you would find something out of the ordinary. You would have to dig through three feet of earth, then three feet of slightly different earth, then scrape through a thin layer of gravel, scoop out a hundredweight of treacle, extract several cubic metres of compacted white dog shit, go through a scale model of the Great Pyramid with a pickaxe, then break open a metal enclosure that reaches ten feet into the ground, and then dynamite your way through a solid marble sarcophagus before you got to the metal casket, which is lined with lead sheeting. If you finally managed to get the casket open, you would find what appeared to be a mummy or possibly a frankenstein, wrapped in successive layers of lead, corduroy, tweed, silk, sackcloth and ashes. After unwinding these wrappings, you would finally see the mortal remains of Barry Johnson himself. You would notice that his belly and chest have been roughly sliced open and his internal organs removed, along with his feet and most of his teeth. While pondering this macabre scene, you would be absorbing enough evil to put your immortal soul in peril. For Barry Johnson is better known to the world as Jack Pudding, the notorious Dancing Man of Walthamstow.

[from the teachings of Matthew Bladen, a scientist]

***

The Testimony Of Alan Sturgeon

“I returned from the war to discover that my brother [Barrence Sturgeon, a man of both physical and mental inefficiencies] had been taken into the employ of Alexandra Spindleshanks [a local businesswoman and Quaker]. How he came by this job I do not know for no-one liked to speak of him. I supposed eventually that with the rest of the men of the village away in France there would not have been much choice. But still it was a surprise.

“He was devoted to her, though. My mother said that he barely returned home such were the hours he worked, and when he did he was withdrawn and sombre instead of his usual loud and unbearable self.

“I thought very little of it all, in all honesty, until one day when I happened to be walking through the woods by her house. Through the trees I could see my brother walking, back bent so low his face was almost to the ground, following what appeared to be a small dark dog. He continued like this all the way to the front door of the house, where he straightened up slightly to open the door, before resuming his earlier position and scuttling inside behind the creature he was seemingly acting as a personal valet for.

“This abject display of humiliating servility – to a dog! – roused a fury in me which I could not contain, and I rushed after him, barging open the door into the huge hall of the house.

“At the far end of the chamber, in an armchair by the foot of the stairs sat Alexandra Spindleshanks. She stared straight ahead but her limp posture and the slowness of her breath gave the impression that she was asleep. She was bound in a cloak, which by concealment made her look so small and frail I wondered briefly if she could even have any arms.

“Before I even really had time to finish that though my attention was drawn again to Barrence, who continued to make his bowed way across the room. I could see now that it was not a dog that he followed, but some spiderish thing of unknown design. It could possibly even have been a crab. It clattered its heavy legs down onto the tiled floor and the sound of them was like hammers striking metal spikes into the ground.

“Whatever it was, it was making its way towards Mrs Spindleshanks, and without thinking I withdrew my service firearm I fired two shots at the creature. The first bullet hit the creature square in the back, which caused it to exploded with unexpected force, covering the floor in a surprising amount of flesh and bone. The second bullet smashed a vase on a nearby sideboard, but I do not know how.

“Barrence fell then to the floor, wailing and weeping in grief. He gathered up the remains of the beast and cradled them in his arms. I asked him what he was doing and he said “It is important to serve your masters, even in death.” He climbed the stairs and entered a room somewhere up there and would not come down.

“Mrs Spindleshanks turned her head slightly at the slamming of the door upstairs. I could not tell if she saw me, however, and presently I left. I did not see my brother again until this today.”

From the trial of Barrence Sturgeon, who was eventually convicted and hanged for the brutalisation, dismemberment and murder of Alexandra Spindleshanks in 1919.

***

The Witch

Many times have I asked myself why does the witch seem to be more prevalent in Essex than it does in the further lands. Walking down every road I see swarms of them, cackling, groping, eating, displays of such grotesquery I find it unbelievable that there is not more screaming within these towns. Not even our pubs are safe anymore, where witches can often be found behind the bar, their vile hands touching the very glasses that we are expected to drink from.

Much talk has been made of the fact that if you draw a pentagram across the map of our isles one point will be poking its way into the Essex heartlands, but I believe this to be unlikely. The Essex Witches, having survived purges and burnings, remain undiminished, and one has to ask the question: “Why?”.

I believe the answer lies in the breeding marshes of the Dengie. This rich fertile mud, corrupted by the salt and the filth from the bloodsoaked waters of the Blackwater. Fed by the immortalised Saxon carcasses of the Battle of Maldon, their flesh degrading eternally yet always replenished, these perverted fields, which once gave birth to barley, now abort their twisted daughters out into the world, there to shamble into our towns, our houses, and even our sheds.

This is an excerpt from the controversial 1953 essay “Witch Heaven: Maldon, Mundon, and The Breeding Mudmarsh Between” by Peter Hedgecock, a noted local historian, farmer. Unmarried, he was most famous for his help in the revival of stocks of the Essex Pig.

***

Appendix I: Methods Of Divination In The Essex Prophetical Arts (And Associated Misbehaviours)

The people of Essex, like all the superstitious tribes, have a long and varied history of oracles, see-ers, and other prophetic charlatans. Among the more commonplace methods of divination, such as astrology and torture, there are many more that are unique to the county. In her groundbreaking study, The Dictionary Of The Essex Prophetical Arts And Misbehaviours (1973), Freyja Peters PhD, a local Witch and expert Nettlomancer, catalogued these bizarre ways – many of which are still in use today, over 40 years since the manuscript’s original publication.

The arts mentioned below were practiced, and in some cases are still practiced, within in the county borders but not, as far as is known, beyond.

Bellomancy – The art and practice of divination by shouting, especially the shouting of words of rudeness.

Clappomancy – The art and practice of divination by the enthusiasm or otherwise of the clapping of children held in captivity.

Clodomancy – The art and practice of divination by mud, including the eating of mud.

Eroticusomancy – The art and practice of divination by the observation of the behaviour, actions and pendulations of slatterns.

Extechnologiculumospicy – The art and practice of divination by the usage of obsolete forms of technology, such as non-automated looms or donkey-drawn barges.

Lobstromancy – The art and practice of divination by the seduction of lobsters or other equally pugnacious crustaceans.

Nettlomancy – The art and practice of divination by pushing a child into a patch of stinging nettles and interpreting the fury of the resulting cries. This method was outlawed by the constabulary of Colchester due to its surprising and often disquieting accuracy, and therefater replaced by less accurate and more humane methods such as Clodomancy and Eroticusomancy.

Transuromancy – The art and practice of divination by the use of the forbidden elements.

Trousomancy – The art and practice of divination by the observance of the flapping of clothes on a washing line, particularly a rotary washing line.

Vaaakospicy – A Vaaakospex is one who devotes himself to the art and practice of divination by the writing of science fiction, horror, and letters to the editor of the local paper complaining about the entirety of the modern world and all the people within it.

***

Appendix II: The Lord Mayors Of Essex

Between 1274 (when the role was inaugurated by Edward Longshanks as part of his reforms of English governance and law) and 1484 (when Richard III had Essex banished from the Kingdom in disgust – an exile it would not return from for almost a hundred years), Essex was chiefly governed by a Lord Mayor. In granting the holder powers beyond those normally entrusted to a public servant, the role created a highly turbulent atmosphere of political terror within the county, and the average life expectancy of a Lord Mayor upon taking the role was a little less than 2 years. Despite the constant turmoil, Essex flourished, and, in what is considered by many to be its greatest era, produced over seven figures of lasting historical interest during this period.

Below is a list of the Lord Mayors, their reigns, and their deaths (those that died after leaving office are marked with an asterisk).

William Clapsmith (1232-1275), Lord Mayor from 1274-1275, killed in the Battle Of Wix.

William Clapsmith II (1256-1275), Lord Mayor from 1275-1278, killed in the Battle of Wix, but his corpse was appointed Lord Mayor in the absence of any remaining Essex noblemen.

Reverend Alfred Swith (1232-1281), Lord Mayor from 1278-1281, lost in a nave.

Captain Mark Gull (1254-1283), Lord Mayor from 1281-1283, died while hunting with friends in Epping Forest, shot in the head by Gareth Manhey The Lord Mayor of Suffolk, Henry le Walleis The Lord Mayor of London, Richard Pelope The Baron of Hackney, and Barry Hulm The Vice Mayor Of Essex. Five other arrows were unclaimed.

Barry Hulm (1261-1283), Lord Mayor from 4pm on the 16th of June 1283 until 6pm on the 16th June 1283, when he was shot while returning from a hunting trip in Epping Forest by Gareth Manhey The Lord Mayor of Suffolk, Henry le Walleis The Lord Mayor of London and Richard Pelope The Baron of Hackney.

William Baldspine* (1258-1289), Lord Mayor from 1283-1285, exiled to Kent, succumbing thereafter to melancholie.

Harold Pligh (1240-1287), Lord Mayor from 1285-1287, attacked by pigs near Colchester.

Alan Well (1250-1294), Lord Mayor from 1287-1294, while tied to the crowstone at Leigh-On-Sea for the annual Bathing Of The Mayor ceremony he was, ironically, eaten to death by gulls.

Peter Pitt (1272-1299), Lord Mayor from 1294-1299, throttled to death by his wife, Mary, in an argument over his excessive use of vernacular.

George Shulvie* (1268-1342), Lord Mayor from 1299-1312, forced to become a monk, eventually dying from colic.

Simon Frintonson (1271-1313), Lord Mayor from 1312-1313, accidentally pushed from stage onto a soldier’s pike at a rally in Mayland.

Marcus Fishmarsh (1280-1316), Lord Mayor from 1313-1316, became so angry at the continued existence of Suffolk he punched himself to death in his chambers.

Peter Huglholm (1264-c.1321), Lord Mayor from 1316-1324, a recluse, it was not noticed that he had died for some time. His cause of death was given at the time as “rotting”.

Graham Bearwife (later Gail Barewife)* (1279-1338), Lord Mayor from 1324 and 1327, captured by a travelling circus and forced to tour the country as a mimsy man, dying finally from over dancing.

Ted Grark (1233-1333), Lord Mayor from 1327 and 1333, a dutchman, died by his own hand, which he had lost some years before but which eventually returned.

Peter Basselgroat (1291-1334), Lord Mayor from 1333-1334, killed in a duel.

John Froath (1256-1335), Lord Mayor from 1334-1335, having earned the nickname Lord Wormstarver after refusing to let the body of his predecessor be interred in the ground until the flesh had been fully consumed by him and his wife so they may gain, he claimed, the wisdom of his foe, he was quickly overcome by a frenzied madness, and after a mere seven months as Mayor, in which he killed an estimated twelve hundred of his subjects, he died when he fell into some brambles and ripped himself to shreds in an attempt to escape. The fate of his wife is unknown.

Alan* (1301-1339), Lord Mayor from 1335 and 1336, referred to as The Alan in many contemporary accounts, was found guilty of prudery and sentenced to seven years in an oubliette, where he froze to death.

Goodson Goodwine (1291-1342), Lord Mayor from 1336 and 1342, largely held responsible for both the beginning and the end of the Ice Madness craze which overtook Essex at this time, whereby every pit, oubliette and well was filled with ice, as it was considered more durable and less prone to poisonings than water. The ice was imported from afar and delivered to the county in a fleet of ships, the building of which necessitated a 112% tax rate to be imposed on the countyfolk, eventually leading to the Ice Riots of 1342. A crowd ” compris’d of bothe man and woeman” burned Chelmsford to the ground, smashed up most of Danbury, and eventually pulled Goodson Goodwine from the bed of his Maldon mansion, encased him in ice, and floated him out to sea, where it is assumed that he either drowned or suffocated, if he had not already succumbed to the cold.

Mary Frull (1293-1384) Lord Mayor from 1342-1384, known locally as Lovely Old Mary, she died from oldness at the age of 91 (her age is also given as 53 in some accounts).

____ _______* (____-____), Lord Mayor from 1384-1391, moved to Ipswich to be with his wife and subsequently stricken from the records.

George L’Huel (1356-1391), Lord Mayor from May 22nd and June 16th 1391, a mason, he was sacrificed in Epping Forest to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the deaths of Lord Mayors Captain Mark Gull and Barry Hulm 108 years earlier.

Harold Wreoueaeoeul (1359-1401), Lord Mayor from 1391-1401, poisoned by a mason.

George L’Huel II (1377-1403), Lord Mayor from 1401-1403, expired while waiting for lunch at an alehouse in Bradwell.

Alice Tibbs* (1365-?), Lord Mayor from 1403-1414, a witch, she was summoned to another realm.

Kevin Pissmark (1365-1415), Lord Mayor from 1414-1415, hanged for his crimes (unrecorded).

William William (1367-1421), Lord Mayor from 1415-1421, drowned in a puddle.

William Williamson (1385-1423), Lord Mayor from 1421-1423, while laughing at a retelling of his father’s death, died by choking on an apple.

Gladford Manswell (1391-1424), Lord Mayor from 1423-1424, eaten by dogs.

John Vregh (1387-1429), Lord Mayor from 1424-1429, vanished.

Matthew Fistfoal* (1399-1467), Lord Mayor from 1429-1435, he eventually tired of his rule and ventured west, finding fame and fortune in Somerset as a bawdyteller. He is said to have died of an excess of love.

Clive Efans (1401-1439), Lord Mayor from 1435-1439, said by many to be a foreigner, he was ridiculed for much of his life, although eventually earned the respect of the Essex people. Died in the first known case of English Sweate.

Henry Daymento (1387-1443), Lord Mayor from 1439-1443, while boating off the shore of the Naze, he and his crew were attacked by fisherman who mistook his yacht for a passing French warship, killing everyone onboard.

George Porge (1403-1448), Lord Mayor from 1443-1448, found dead in the sun.

William Bresselhamingham (1412-1453), Lord Mayor from 1448-1453, was accused of Suffolkry on account of his misshapen jaw and kicked to death while holidaying in Maldon.

George Mass (1406-1454), Lord Mayor from 1453-1454, the first of seven brothers to be Lord Mayor, found dead in a ditch.

William Mass (1407-1455), Lord Mayor from 1454-1455, leapt from a church tower.

Barry Mass (1404-1456), Lord Mayor from 1455-1456, died from a curdling of blood.

Alan Mass (1409-1458), Lord Mayor from 1456-1458, fell from horse.

Peter Mass (1408-1458), Lord Mayor from May to December 1458, mutilated by a crab.

Matthew Mass (1403-1459), Lord Mayor from 1458-1459, found in an oven.

Toby Mass (1405-1483), Lord Mayor from 1459-1483, known as Toby The Unsinister, was beloved by all, and it was considered a great shame when he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 78.

Bary Qwine (1453-1484), Lord mayor from 1483-1484, summoned to the Tower of London by Richard III and ordered to either “defende the stayt of Essex or feed thyself to the ravens upon the lawne.” Bary, an ineloquent man, and shy, fed himself to the crows at Richard’s feet. Richard, in retaliation and abject despair, declared that the county of Essex now were “lands o’er which I wud wish no longer to rule”, and had a ditch dug along its unrivered borders to separate the territory from the mainland.

__________

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from the archives of Essex Terror: Tales From Dimension Essex #1: The Terrifying Transformations Of Tephany Pellow

[Notes: This is a reprint of a transcription of a radio play that was based upon an overheard conversation recounting an urban myth about unreliable narrators, from February 2014]

***

In 2013 , the first (and so far only) episode of Tales From Dimension Essex aired across the county. Performed live and entirely improvised, The Terrifying Transformations Of Tephany Pellow was veteran playwright Ted Vaaak’s first new work in some time. Unfortunately, due to a rights’ dispute with BBC Radio Essex, the play was transmitted unannounced on a largely inaudible frequency.

Although fog across the estuaries bent the radiowaves back into receivable wavelengths in a number of Essex’s coastal towns, huts and scientific research outposts, it was still only heard by an estimated seven people, none of whom had the presence of mind to record it. However, one of those seven listeners was Jennifer Mudchute, a compulsive stenographer from Tollesbury, and her notes have proved invaluable in allowing us to create a transcript of this work of monumental art.

Tales From Dimension Essex #1: The Terrifying Transformations Of Tephany Pellow

Cast

The Narrator – an introducer of tales
Radio Announcer – a filler of silence
Doctor George Slime – a professional of medicine
Alan Pellow – a man of Essex
Tephany Pellow – a woman transformed
Martha Slime – a wife of a man

Location – This entire play takes place within the confines of the house and home of Doctor George Slime, a noted physician who lives in Essex.

Narrator: Everyone always says that marriage changes everything, but for poor Alan Pellow it changes even more than most. What follows here is a shocking, some may even say sickening, story that could only ever be a… TALE FROM DIMENSION ESSEX!

Title Sequence: The Tales From Dimension Essex Theme Tune plays

Narrator: Tales From Dimension Essex, Episode 4635 – The Terrifying Transformations Of Tephany Pellow, by Ted Vaak.

There is a moment of silence, followed by the sound of footsteps across a creaky wooden floor. Then the noise of a radio being switched on and tuned through static, until some light music plays for ten seconds, before fading out beneath the sound of the radio announcer’s voice.

Radio Announcer: Welcome to BBC Radio Essex, home of uninterrupted hypnotherapeutical music from 6pm to 6am, every single day of the week. As our slogan says “The working day may be stressful, but the evenings never should be!” That was The Sleep Orchestra with The Sensational Sound Of Snoring, and this right now is Toby Vok with his brand new track, The Infinite Undulating Note.

The Infinite Undulating Note begins to play. Throughout the rest of the radioplay it continues on in the background – except where expressly noted – getting more and more dissonant and horrifying as the play progresses, until the transcendent finale in which it transforms into the most beautiful sound a human being could ever possibly hear.

Doctor George Slime (talking to himself): Ah, Friday evenings! Is there any finer time. Work is over, dear Martha is upstairs washing her hair, and now a good two hours to relax, with nothing to distract me. What a marvellous feeling it is to be alone. No patients coughing across the desk at me. No Martha scolding me for my unfeeling remarks. Just me, my books and my whisky. Ah, to be alive like this, even if only for a few hours a week!

The noise of a bottle being opened, whisky being poured, the self satisfaction of a big strong gulp. And then a doorbell rings, and then rings some more.

Doctor George Slime: Drat and bother and drat once more! Who could that be, on a Friday for goodness sake? Oh well, I’ll just leave it to Martha. It’s bound to be for her.

The doorbell rings again, and then again, and then again and again, more and more urgently each time.

Doctor George Slime: Where’s Martha? God, that woman can never hear anything above the sound of her blasted hairdryer! I suppose I’ll just have to damn well answer it myself then.

Doctor George Slime places his glass back down on the table, rises from his comfortable leather chair and walks across the wooden floorboards of his study, down the hall (the sound of the radio fading away behind him as he walks away from it) and then opens the door. As he opens the door the doorbell rings furiously several more times.

Doctor George Slime: Yes! Yes! This had better be important. All this racket is giving me a headache!

Alan Pellow: Doctor Slime, it’s me, Alan Pellow, from across the road. Let me in. I need your help right now!

Doctor George Slime: Alan, it’s Friday evening. I’ve been drinking. I can’t help you. I could lose my licence.

Alan Pellow: I don’t care about that! It’s about my wife! LET ME IN!

Doctor George Slime: Okay, okay. Come in, then, come in. And shut the door behind you, will you?

The door slams shut and we hear them walk back down the hall and into George’s study, the radio rising back to its previous volume in the background. Toby is still playing his undulating note, which is by now slightly more unsettling than before.

Alan Pellow: Doc, look at this!

Alan Pellow clatters an animal cage down onto Doctor George Slime’s mahogany desk. There is the sudden sound of deranged gibbonesque howling.

Doctor George Slime: Good God, Alan! I’m a doctor not a vet! I thought you were worried about your wife? Did this… thing attack her?

Alan Pellow: No, Doc. You don’t understand.

Doctor George Slime: What is it, anyway? It looks like a baboon, but its face… It looks almost…

Alan Pellow: Sir, this isn’t a baboon, and it didn’t attack my wife. It IS my wife!

There is a demented shrieking from the ape, and the energetic rattling of bars.

Doctor George Slime: Tephany? But… wasn’t it only last week the two of you were married?

Alan Pellow: Yes. But ever since we got back from our honeymoon on Monday things changed. Doc, I don’t know what to do!

Doctor George Slime: Ah, sit down, son, sit down. Here, have a drink. You need to calm down as best you can and tell me everything that’s happened. And call me George.

Doctor George Slime pours a drink of whisky for Alan Pellow.

Alan Pellow: Thanks, Do- George. Everything about the wedding was wonderful. So wonderful it felt like a dream. And then our honeymoon – a weekend in Walton On The Naze – it was beyond imagination. Tephany – she was so beautiful. So perfect. The perfect wife in every way you could want. But then, once we got back home, she changed. At first she just wanted to talk, but then… George, she started wanting things. Demanding things. I didn’t know what to do.

Doctor George Slime: What sort of things?

The undulating note of Toby’s get’s increasingly fraught and disconcerting throughout the following outbursts from Alan Pellow.

Alan Pellow: Oh you know. Little things at first. “Alan, Alan,” [He puts on a french accent for the quoted parts] – she’s French – “Alan, I think I should get a job” and “Alan, I’m going to borrow the car for a bit.” What does a woman need with a job? Where would she be going in the car? I ignored her at first, sort of laughed along with her as if I knew it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke. Then yesterday she said “I ordered a shed off the internet today for the garden.” A shed? For her “tools”. It’s madness. What sort of tools, I asked? She started talking about gardening, how nice it was going to be once we’d returfed the lawn and planted some flowers in the borders. Well, I just said “NO!” I admit I said it louder than I meant to, but the look on her face… It was as if I had slapped her. “You knew I was going to concrete the garden,” I said to her. So that I can park my van and the BMW out there side by side. She knew. She knew. It’s what I’ve always said. What I’ve always wanted. She knew this. I’d told her. We wouldn’t have to pay the council for that bloody permit anymore. She knew the money we would have saved. And it was the principle, more than the money. We already pay our council tax. Why should we have to pay another hundred and fifty quid to bloody park our van on the street?

Doctor George Slime: Then what happened?

Alan Pellow: She started shouting at me. About how awful I was, how I didn’t even see her as a woman anymore. It was absurd. I told her that I only see her as a woman. That’s what she is. I thought that would calm her down but it didn’t. Then she started screaming in French, like her fury couldn’t even be contained in our bloody language. Reverting to something more primal. And then that degenerated too, into something guttural that sounded more like growling than words. Probably German. Or Dutch. And then her posture began to change, her back bending oddly, her head thrusting forward. She went down on all fours and began howling and howling and then suddenly she just lunged at me and it took me by such surprise she knocked me to the floor. She started biting at my neck, snapping away, all demented. It was terrifying. I held her away from me as best I could but I could not get her off and we struggled away on the floor for a while, grappling and rolling around on the new carpet we just got fitted in the lounge. Her blouse ripped a bit in the tussle and I noticed how hairy she’d become. And then I glanced at her hands and by now they were paws. I knew I had to do something before her slowly forming claws were sharp enough to rip me to shreds, and so with one final push of strength I staggered to my feet and pushed her back into the hall. She made another lunge for me and I tripped her so she fell into the cage we leave the dog in overnight so he won’t ruin all the furniture. I quickly locked her in and then I collapsed in exhaustion to the floor.

Doctor George Slime: But she doesn’t have claws now…?

Alan Pellow: No. When I awoke she had transformed again, or further maybe, from that initial dog beast into this monstrous ape. She was busy ripping the last remnants of her clothes into shreds when I came round. Clothes I had bought her, I’ll have you know, at great goddamn expense. That was when I decided I needed help and came rushing over to your door.

Doctor George Slime: And I’m very glad you did. It is fascinating. Look how she watches us intently from behind her bars. As if there is still intelligence left somehow. I wonder what triggered these changes? Did she get bitten while you were on holiday? By a creature? By a local, even?

Alan Pellow: I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have noticed.

Doctor George Slime: Then I’m flummoxed. It’s as baffling as it is interesting.

Alan Pellow: Can you not change her back? Even how she was before is better than this.

Tephany begins screaming again in her baboonish way.

Alan Pellow: At least sedate her, so that I don’t have to listen to her babbling screams any more.

Doctor George Slime: Sedation may help, but it would be but a temporary solution. To cure her permanently, we must operate… ON HER BRAIN!

Alan Pellow: Her brain?

Doctor George Slime: Her brain! By lobotomising both the Megalithic Lobe and Verin’s Region we should inhibit the production of the transformic and enfuriation hormones, the excess production of which in combination with her unsettling sense of self as an autonomous being beyond your control must have triggered this episode.

Alan Pellow: If this is the only solution then you must do it. Not just for her but for me and for the good of our community. Can you imagine if I have to take this baboon with me to my parents at Christmas? To my work’s New Year’s do? It would be mortifying.

By now Toby’s note is so terrifying the dread is congealing around the listener in ways beyond adequate explanation in words.

Doctor George Slime: Then let me get into my medical robes and we can begin.

There is a knock at the study door.

Alan Pellow (hissed): Who’s that?

Doctor George Slime: Oh don’t worry, it’s just my wife Martha, I expect. She must have heard us talking.

Doctor George Slime walks across the room to the door, and slowly opens it with a creak.

Doctor George Slime: What is it Marth-aaaaaaaargh!

There is a terrifying startled cawing of a huge crow, and the sound of gigantic flapping of wings.

Alan Pellow: Is that… that gigantic crow… Is that your wife?

Doctor George Slime: It is. Look, she’s still wearing her shower cap. And her slippers. Get back, Alan. Let me deal with her. If I can just get to the fire and retrieve the pokeeeeeeeeeeeerrAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGH ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Doctor George Slime’s screams are joined by the terrifying screeching caw of the enraged ultracrow.

Alan Pellow: Oh no, poor George. Pecked to death by your own wife. It’s just not right!

We can hear the ripping of flesh as the crow strips the meat from her husband’s bones.

Alan Pellow (to himself): I must get out of here. But I can’t leave Tephany behond. Oh god no Tephany! Do not change again.

Tephany’s baboon shrieks change to a higher and higher ever escalating pitch.

Alan Pellow: Is she becoming a… an octopus? Tephany no… no! Don’t open that cage Tephany. You’re in there for your own good.

We hear the clicking of a lock, and the creaking open of the cage’s door.

Alan Pellow: Tephany, no please don’t, you’re choking me… with… your… tentacles… Tephany… I…

We hear the slump of Alan Pellow’s body to the floor. There follows a moment of silence (except for Toby’s music on the radio) and then there is the slithering of feet and the shuffling of tentacles as Marsha and Tephany cross the floor of the study, open the door, and shuffle fadingly away until the front door opens and then slams close and they are gone. There follows thirty seconds of Toby’s note, now reaching a transcendent climax of pure beauty.

Radio Announcer (over the top of the music): We are sorry to interrupt this broadcast but we’re getting reports, urgent reports, from across the county, from everywhere that men’s wives are… transforming… attacking their husbands. Relentlessly and without mercy. It seems that they… they want to be free. Outside I can see flocks of wives in the sky – and, is that, is that an octopus on one of their backs? I have never seen anything like this before. It is beautiful. So beautiful. The sky is alive. More and more are joining them every minute. They are singing… such singing.. I wish you could hear them sing. I wish you could hear them. It is… I’m crying. I’m crying. There is so much happiness. So much joy. Just sheer untroubled joy. I wish you could hear them. I wish I could join them… I wish…[sobs and then silence]

Toby plays on.

THE END

__________

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Ikearotica

I’m going to be 40 this weekend. Which is depressing enough on its own I expect, but even more depressing when you’re completely alone.

And I am completely alone

And have been for as long as I can remember, really.

(I last had a girlfriend in the summer of 1998, 20 years ago, when I was 19, over half my life ago)

And strangely enough I’m a bit bored of being alone, and being filled constantly with a sort of hopeless despair, and anxious feelings of having wasted my life, by spending it all with myself, inside my own monstrous skull, peering out occasionally, at the mysterious planet beyond.

So yesterday I decided to join a dating website.

I tried joining the guardian’s one, but it’s so London biased it said there was only four women from Essex on there, and when I looked it turned out 3 of them were actually in Ipswich, and the fourth said NO BEARDS under her preferences.

But luckily I found another one, a specialist Essex one, for Essex men, and Essex women, and all the genders in between, and beyond, which was called lovessex.com (the v in the logo is some sort of strange inverted loveheart, I think).

It was incredibly easy to use. You enter your name (David) and your location (Essex), then enter some personal information on your profile. I particularly liked the little radar/spider chart thing they used for your political alignment, where you enter how strongly you identify with the three main strands of political thought (conservatism, monarchism, nationalism). Also as I’d already chosen West Ham on the Are you West Ham or Spurs? question this whole section was autofilled out to the maximum on each axis, which was a nice little time saver.

Then I just had to attach a photograph and once I’d done that it automatically showed me a list of all the girls who lovessex(.com) in my area (Essex). I clicked on the first woman on the list (essexyemma), sent her one of the little pre-prepared introductory messages (Hi, would you like to meet up and ‘discuss the royal wedding’? Regards, David, Essex) and within minutes she replied back (Hi David, I’d love to ‘go shopping at Ikea’ with you. Just tell me when and where. Emma, E).

So I said how about tonight, at Ikea, at Lakeside, and she said “won’t that be a bit busy?” which confused me a bit as she said she wanted to go there but I told her it’d be fine because it’s a Monday and no-one goes to Ikea on Monday and eventually she agreed.

I met her in the lobby, just beyond the rotating doors. She was, I don’t know, about 5 foot 6 or something, with hair, and a face, and all that sort of stuff.

“Are you Emma,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Excellent,” I said. “I’m David.”

I moved closer and stuck out my hand so she could shake my hand but then I noticed I was sort of looming over her and I worried she might not like me looming over her so I stepped back again and put my hand in my pocket and said, “Did you have to come far?” and hoped she hadn’t noticed my looming or been put off by it at all.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Romford.”

I didn’t know what to say to that or to say next at all really and so we stood there for about five minutes. We were by the entrance to the creche/children’s playground and I wondered if they had a ball pool in there or if they didn’t have ball pools now because they’re probably considered unhygienic these days, aren’t they? Now you probably just get a padded floor mat and a padded miniature pouffe and maybe a box with dress up clothes in them like fairy wings for the children who might want to dress up as a fairy and also who were brave enough to dress up as a fairy even though your brothers might laugh at you and also your sister and probably your mum.

Also presumably now I’d be too big for the fairy wings anyway.

Or the ball pool.

“Shall we get some food, then,” Emma said, and I quickly agreed.

“If you’ve got an Ikea card you can get a free cup of coffee.”.

“I don’t have an Ikea card,” she said.

“Or tea,” I added, but by then she was already halfway up the stairs.

I got the lift and she met me at the top, and we walked to the cafe side by side, as if we knew each other and were friends.

I asked Emma what she wanted.

“You should get the Meatballs (10 meatballs, £4.25; 15 meatballs, £5.25),” she said.

“I’ve never had meatballs before,” I said.

What! They’re incredible,” she purred. “A total aphrodisiac!” she leered.

I was slightly trepidatious but I didn’t want to appear too staid on a first date so I got us a plate each, along with a glass of Sugar Free Cola Drink (80p, with unlimited refills) for Emma and a cup of tea for me. The woman on the till charged me for the tea and when I queried this she said it was only free with an Ikea card until 5 and it was past 5 now so it cost 70p and I was going to say well I don’t want it then but I didn’t I just paid for everything (£12 exactly) and huffed a bit inside.

I don’t even like tea.

We found ourselves a nice table by the window and admired the view of the car park spread out evocatively below us.

I didn’t know what to say again so I pointed at a car in the distance and said, “Look at that. I’d drive the shit out of that.”

I think it was a car.

She didn’t respond anyway which was probably just as well in case she asked me anything at all about cars so I picked up one of my meatballs and popped it in my mouth and bit into it and chewed and it was mostly gristle and I chewed and I chewed and it seemed to expand in my mouth with every bit and it was awful and oh god I was going to have to spit it out I was going to throw up oh god what was she going to think of me christ what would I think of me so I chewed again and chewed and I chewed and I swallowed and it was gone except for the taste and all the bits trapped up between my gums and my cheeks and the bits between my teeth and the residue of it still coating my tongue.

Emma laughed

not unkindly

well maybe a bit unkindly

but she laughed

and said, “You don’t chew them! You have to swallow it all down in one go. Look!”

She rolled a meatball neatly onto a soup spoon and then brought the spoon to her mouth and then opened her mouth and rolled the meatball in and tilted her head back and swallowed it all in one smooth motion and it was beautiful, like seeing a magician at work, the elegance and ease of it.

“Now you try,” she said, and handed me the spoon.

The first one was quite difficult and I almost gagged and brought it up again but I kept it down somehow and then the second one was easier and by the 28th I’d got it all down to a fine if slightly inelegant art.

The sun was just going down now and the haziness of the light over the car park gave it all an evocative nostalgic air. I smiled at Emma and she smiled at me and while she smiled at me she traced a happy face into the uneaten mash on her plate with her finger. I downed my tea all in one go and she left her cola drink untouched and neither of us had thought to get a tray earlier so we just left our plates and glasses on the table for someone else to clean up.

We walked together into the labyrinth of the store, past the sofas and the beds and the cupboards and the kitchens.

“It’s so spacious,” she said, as we wandered through the 25m² show home, and I remembered then that technically, of course, she wasn’t Essex at all, she was London, and had been since 1965.

But it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter at all.

Nothing mattered and everything was okay.

We looked at the desks in the office equipment section. Emma sat on a chair and I spun her round, her legs splayed out in a V, her arms thrust up towards the ceiling, spun her around and around forever, nobody there to tell us to stop but we wouldn’t have stopped even if there was and even if they did.

“Malm,” I said, pointing at the name tag on the desk (MALM, £95). “MALM. MMAAALLLLMMM.”

“Malm?” Emma said.

“Malm,” I said. “Malm. Go on, say it.”

We both said “malm” together.

It feels so beautiful to say,” I said. “The sound of it. The feel of it, on your tongue, on your lips. MMMMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLMMMMMMMM.”

She spun round again on her chair and squealed “MALM” in the way you’d say “Wheeeeee!” if you were coming down a slide in a children’s book, and then she leapt off the chair right at me and leant up towards my ear and I bowed my head a little and she whispered “Malm” in to my ear and then ran off, coquettishly, past the the beds and the wardrobes and the chests of drawers, deeper into the maze.

I caught up with her in children’s section, all out of breath from trying to keep up with her, found her looking at a bedroom lamp that was just an unshaded light bulb attached to what looked like the sort of cable they shoved into you during a colonoscopy (BLÅVIK, £8). She was idly moving the cable up and down, undulating its stem in mesmeric waves with her deft, commanding fingers.

We didn’t say another word for several minutes, just stared at the thick responsive shaft of the lamp gripped in her hand.

“I wonder if the price includes the bulb,” I said at last.

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say it doesn’t really matter and it didn’t really matter did it and then we strolled out of the showroom section and into the marketplace bit where you could actually start buying things instead of just looking at them.

The meatballs were definitely kicking in now. Everything throbbed and pulsed in time with our hearts.

I got us a trolley and we started filling it with all manner of shit – little octopoid peg hanger things for putting your socks on the washing line; a vase shaped like a bulb; light bulbs in packs of three that almost certainly didn’t fit any light socket known in my house; several small cartons of lingonberry juice; a vase shaped like a demijohn; a plastic segmented box, each segment containing a handful of slightly different screws; a vase shaped like a cube; some wine glasses shaped like a vase – both of us overcome with pure orgiastic consumerist lust, every product’s curve, every bulge, every smooth white plastic surface suggestive of

of

I don’t know what

but suggestive

and irresistible.

I stroked my hand up and down the vacuum sealed quilts (GRUSBLAD, £22) and tried to articulate my thoughts.

“There’s something so… so… I don’t know exactly… suggestive? about quilts all packed up like this,” I said. “The softness and the solidity, the feel of it beneath your fingers but also the knowledge – the anticipation – that inside, waiting, is something so much bigger, something that’s ready – aching – to burst out as soon as you rip away the flimsy covering that’s holding it back.”

“Are you thinking about tits or cocks?” she asked with a lascivious giggle, laying bear the tawdriness of my mind.

“Tits!” I said, too quickly, too loudly. “Always tits. Tits.” Thinking about cocks would be awful. Huge, massive, haunting cocks. “It was tits I was thinking about.”

I went quiet for a bit and we wandered over to the candles.

“You know,” I said “I went to the zoo recently, and there was a tapir there, and it was standing there, walking around, its snout rooting around in the dirt, and it’s cock just suddenly started distending, down from between its back legs, down, down, longer and longer, huge, this never ending inexorable growth, until it was about two foot long, longer than its legs, and the tapir carried on walking around, even though by now the last six inches of its cock were being dragged along the ground. It was… It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It wasn’t even aroused, as far as I could tell. Just eating.”

She looked at me with blank confused eyes for a second, then diverted her gaze back to some candles that came in a little drinking glass for some reason (SINNLIG, £0.85).

“Its bellend looked like a fucking hoof. It was incredible. Imagine if you could extrude a huge cock like that.”

“I don’t have a cock,” she said.

“I know. But imagine.”

I looked back at the quilts section, at all that potential stored up tightly inside those sheaths.

“I might buy this, I think,” she said, running her fingers nimbly up and down the side of a candle that looked exactly like all the other candles (FENOMEN, 15cm, £1.50). “You don’t think it’s a bit small do you?”

I didn’t answer, just threw a bunch of them into the trolley and carried on marching on. Our trolley was so full now I could barely push it and then, when we were on the escalator down towards the end, I could barely it hold it back as gravity threatened to pull it away from me and down the ramp and into the a display of cactuses that I never saw the prices of.

But I held on it was okay everything was okay.

In the warehouse, she pushed me down onto a stack of flatpacks (BILLY bookcases, £55 Aisle 10, Loc 4) and we fucked with the urgency and suddenness of electric shocks, our legs kicking out, cramps in my calfs, a stray foot kicking our trolley over, the contents spilling out and flowing down the aisle like the wave after a dam has burst.

We lay there for a bit, me trying not to scream as the muscles spasmed in my leg, while next to me she wiggled her pants back up and straightened out her skirt.

We walked past the tills and I stopped to buy us a hot dog each (HOTDOG, 60p).

“I’ll see you outside,” she said.

But by the time I got outside she was nowhere to be seen.

Beneath the orange haze of the streetlights I ate the hot dogs, threw up on my shoes, and limped back to my car.

This customer testimony has been provided by the author free of charge without any inducements and/or incitements by lovessex.com or its employees, nor any of its associated websites, shell companies, car parks or vending machines. Furthermore, neither can they be held liable for the cost of any damages caused by the opinions provided.

__________

Notes:

1. Written between May, 2017 and June, 2018
2. I’m not sure why it took a year to write but it did
3. All the extensive product research, I suppose
4. Which was 100% accurate at time of initial publication
5. Just like all the other information contained within
6. I don’t like to mislead

__________

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