Respect by Zack Wilson

No one knew James Tattoo’s real surname. He’d never told anyone. We all knew he’d been in prison because he liked to tell us all how he’d got there.

            James had had a young son at the time who was apparently very keen on birdwatching. James had bought him a little spotters’ guide, one of those little hardback books called summat like ‘Birds of Britain’. The kid took it into school for one of those ‘show and tell’ days and a bigger boy took it off him and threw it over a fence into the canal. James’s lad went home crying and James took it badly. He went round to see the bigger boy’s dad.

            He knocked on the dad’s door and the dad answered. He was apparently a large chap who said he couldn’t care less about bullying or bird books. James knocked him down and tied him up with fishing line and gaffer taped his gob. Then he put him in the boot of his car and drove him round the East Midlands for six hours before dumping him in a lay-by near Long Eaton. When the coppers asked James why he’d done it he said it was because he’d wanted the cunt to apologise and mean it. James did six years for that I’m told, but other offences might have been taken into consideration.

            Maybe prison was where he’d got all his tattoos. He certainly had some strange designs. Some religious icons and lines of Chinese characters, all manner of beautifully drawn wildlife, including a hovering kestrel on his left bicep with ‘Lenny’ written under it in copperplate that he said was a tribute to his son. Lenny had died of Leukaemia whilst James was inside.

            We got to see all his tattoos when he turned up to the pub one day in a dress. It was a Sunday and he spent the entire day in the pub wearing it until he passed out on one of the new settees and Stewart, the landlord, tenderly covered him with a blanket. It had been a long and tiring day.

            I didn’t dare ask him why he was wearing the dress. No one else seemed particularly interested, especially not after they’d seen James ask Vince for the money he owed him.

            Vince owed him a couple of hundred quid. I think he’d had a few wraps of chang on tick and hadn’t quite got round to paying. James, still in the dress, a nice pastel blue thing with a tasteful floral pattern that hung down far enough to kiss his kneecaps, took Vince out in the car park and got him in a savage headlock. We all watched through the pub window as he repeatedly tried to put Vince’s head through the back fence, Vince’s slightly obscured face growing redder with each failed attempt. Eventually, when James had had enough and got bored, he let Vince go and trot off to a cashpoint.

            James came back into the pub with the happy air of a hill-walker who’d just conquered a moderate summit. I asked him why he’d banged Vince’s head against the fence so many times, was it because Vince had taken liberties?

            “No mate,” he explained, “it’s just that I’ve ‘eadbutted an ‘ole in that fence easy before now and I can’t work out why Vince’s head didn’t go through in one.” He looked genuinely baffled. James, despite his slim build, was a strong man by anyone’s standards and should have been able to get Vince’s head through the fence easily. I didn’t like to point out that there was a brick wall behind the fence at the height Vince’s head had been at. I kept schtum about that and accepted the pint of Strongbow James offered.

            I knew James was strong because we’d tested it. One Sunday there was an old plastic dustbin outside the pub, the old fashioned type that they used to use before wheelie bins were everywhere.

            Anyway, this one was left over in the pub car park after some event from the night before. It was filled almost to the top with cement and had a vertical tube in the middle of it. It had been used as a base for a pole for a light or summat. Someone had forgotten about it when they were clearing up and it had got left behind.

            So it was sat in the car park and as afternoon darkened in to evening we decided to amuse ourselves with it. Everyone threw a couple of quid into the bucket Stewart uses for raffles and suchlike and the idea was that whoever could lift the bin highest won the money in the bucket.

            Everyone lined up outside to have a go, even the lasses had a go for a laugh. Everyone except me and James had had a turn and no one had been able to lift it, not even the Slovak with the unpronounceable name who’d been in the French Foreign Legion.

            James took his turn and he thought he was the last to go. He strained and his face went all red and screwed up and chimpy as he lifted but after two or three seconds he managed to lift the bin about an inch off the floor. Everyone was cheering and clapping, and Stew had a big laughing smile on his face as he handed the bucket to James.

            “Hang on a second!” I piped up, “I’ve not had a go yet.”

            There were cynical mutters and good natured sneers, but I’m used to being underestimated. They were all forgetting that I do a lot of heavy lifting at work and before I’d moved down to Ashby I used to play Rugby League. James already had one hand on the bucket as he, along with everyone else, turned to face me. There was an expectant rising moan from the crowd, a kind of ‘woooohhhrrrrr’ that started low and got louder as I grasped the puny handles on the sides of the bin of cement and lifted. It was bloody heavy, and Christ knows what my face looked like as I lifted it but I managed to get it an inch or so off the ground and then with a final massive heave that nearly made me vomit I raised it another three or four inches and felt it bang against my shins before I had to drop it. The crowd gave a big cheer and I shook my arms, trying to loosen the killing pain from my elbow and shoulder joints.

            James didn’t seem to like being beaten. He grabbed the bucket of cash by its handle, clamping it in both of his strong hands. I put a hand on the handle but he wouldn’t let go. I tugged it and he responded by banging his chest into mine and staring straight into my eyes from close range. He was a good three inches shorter than me but the unguarded rage in his eyes was terrifying. I held his gaze for a few seconds and then he threw a half-hearted headbutt, more of a challenge than an assault. I caught it on my forehead and rode the momentum. Then I pushed back. Our foreheads were locked together as the focal point for a bizarre pushing dance for several seconds before James pulled away laughing and let me take the bucket. I gave it back to Stew and feeling like the Milky Bar Kid in one of them adverts announced to the crowd, “The money’s going behind t’bar! Drinks for everyone courtesy of me and James!” There was a big cheer after that and everyone filed back into the pub talking and laughing.

            James had his arm round my shoulders and we had a right good session that night. Since then, he buys me a drink every time I see him and he was good to my sister too. After her accident he paid for her and her boyfriend to have a weekend in an hotel in Devon, gave them five hundred quid spending money too. I didn’t ask where the money came from. It was a touching gesture after all.

            Respect, I suppose, is what it’s all about. Mutual respect. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone do a Sudoku as fast as he can and he nearly cried when I gave him that Bumper Book of Puzzles the reception girl at work gave me. Sometimes lifting heavy weights does teach you things.

“Death of Miss America” ~ Sean McGahey

…. or “Self inflicted rectal haemorrhage”

Joe flicked the switch of his stereo and rose from the settee. He walked over to the window, lit another in the endless chain of cigarettes and gazed out at the neon city skyline. The front door opened and his flat mates, engaged in deep inebriated conversation, came in and sat down. Joe leaning against the wall put on his Doc martins, black Oxfam crombie and headed out for a few drinks.

 

A seedy Broad street bar, a defective neon light sputters and a plasma screen flashes images of scantly clad pop stars. A young barman with a soft face wipes the bar top with a paper towel. A glass collector aimlessly strolls around. Joe sits alone in a drunken stupor gazing at the black varnished wood. Joe pulls out his little black note book and pencil and scribbles a few observations. After awhile he mumbles a few words in the style of Kerouac’s intoning tales of hard times and life on the road. Instead of the garish beats of the ministry of sound Joe imagines a piano player weaving a little piece of unobtrusive jazz.

 

“The Bomber loads his literary guns and aims his spit full of words of malignant prose towards mangy moth eaten worldly worriers of woe….whilst the 3 am crowd of maladjusted undiscovered poets and word wise screamers of the street spread the word like a sexual virus….”

 

After a few hours drinking, mumbling and arguing with the occasional Big Brother reject, Joe popped a pill and closed his eyes.

 

Joe wakes to the screams of anguish from the damned souls of reality TV. The virginal soft features of the barman slides away leaving a pulp scorched face. The glass collector is face down in a pool of his own blood and excrement, whilst the frenzied drunk and dancing bystanders start savaging and fucking his withering torso. The once small and cramped bar has lost its sense of space; the dark walls slither like tar. The barman walks towards Joe and offers him a drink, not phased with what is happening, Joe takes the shot and couldn’t help but notice the barman’s encrusted lips fall away leaving behind fouled bloody flesh.

 

The barman’s dry and cracked mouth slowly parted with a metallic digitalised recorded voice. Joe could see the sound waves pulsate towards him.

 “di glass collector lay face down in a pool of fi im own blood and vomit whilst di once drunk and skanking bystanders started biting and fucking fi im withering structure…”

Lighting a cigarette and looking at the digitalised Dictaphone Rasta sounding corpse. Joe asks him a question.

 

“Do you think its fair you kill off the glass collector and leave him to your Big Brother degenerates?”

 

The barman grabs Joe’s collar. Joe is close enough to suffer his phosphorus rank ass breath.

 

“see yahso young writer, I have no argument with I and I! would I and I like fi im batty eaten out by fi im alter ego whilst he chews on di severed cock of a latter day shepherd of jah? or experience an explosive rectal haemorrhage?”

“Fuck me! Talk about an over reaction! I’m going for a piss”

 

Joe finds himself in front of a fly infested piss pool of an excuse urinal and is overwhelmed by the sight of a mutilated bloody body ripped open with entrails spilling out of a designer shirt.

Back at the bar and feeling ill Joe was about to mention the body in the toilet, but was somewhat taken aback by the barman as he was holding an unusually large cock in his hand that writhed like a dying sea snake. Like the Old Man of Crete, whose tears are the source of all the rivers in Hell, the Dictaphone Rasta sounding barman pissed his degenerate liquid up onto Joe’s face….Then appeared an apparition! It was of a man but his features were not clearly visible. His body consumed all light…

 

Slumped across the settee Joe wakes up to the orgiastic scene of his flatmates double penetrating a woman he vaguely remembered seeing earlier serving customers at Waitrose…

 

“What happened? That sudden flash of light, unbearable heat…those cries of wag girlfriends in torment…the absence of…”

 

The mosaic images of flesh fade and Joe blacks out.

 

Later on Joe methodically listed in his mind the ideas and chapters for his novel, called “Death of Miss America” or “Self inflicted rectal haemorrhage”. After 3 hours chain-smoking before the window until the room became cloudy with a blue haze, Joe typed out his squalid tales of human bestiality and e-mailed them to his editor.

 

 

 

BLACK ROOM ~ Suzy Devere

Everywhere was sore.  Sick of the pole, sick of the floor, sick of the cheap, blue-black of the muggy dirty room where I danced, usually alone.  My bruises matched the walls, except when they were fresh.  My heels were at least polished.  I never did like bad shoes.  There was no one in the house, but that’s how those gigs worked.  You just kept dancing and eventually some newbie drunk would wander in and sit down, then jerk off.

Amit, the manager of the place, said I could stop dancing ’til there was “a seat” as he called ‘em, but I didn’t like the idea of standing around and performing only “on-demand.”  That gave people the impression that they were important to me. They weren’t.  I was dancing, performing—acting, as I called it—and I didn’t want anyone to think they could dictate where or when my act stopped or started. Power is hard to find so you gotta make your own…

Anyway, it was a day like every other run away day when Fatty showed up to take me home.  I didn’t wanna go.  I’d told him already I was sick of his shit and fat ass and I wasn’t stickin’ around for any more of it.  He’d made me good and restless, ready to get back to the real world and leave the air conditioning and mind numbing CNN behind. What the fuck?  People watch the News like it’s a fuckin’ porn show, with the market tickers in green the cock shots, the red the cunt shots, and the end of the day bell with the arrows up or down the cum shot, the MONEY MAKER.  Idiots.  Don’t know sex from money…

“Fuck Fatty Clinger” I yelled from the stage and kept dancing.

He kept walking towards me, but I could see Amit combing the back of the house.  He was always there to check the scene.

“Get yourself off that stage and put some clothes on” he said, loudly, like I was a child.

“FUCK YOU!” I screamed again, and stuck my tongue out.  Okay, it was juvenile, I admit.  Embarrassing even.  But It was an automatic thing,

I tell you, like screaming when you step on a nail. I just couldn’t fucking help it. How I hated him!

“I’m not coming back, Fatty.  Get used to it.  And by the way, you’re fucking ugly and you’re ruining my show” I said, now that he was up near the stage and his red pudgy face directly in view.  “I told you.  I’m busy.  I’ve got shit to do and it’s not with you.”

At that he grabbed my ankle but instead of stopping I leaned toward him and kicked him in the shoulder with my other leg.  I nearly fell over; it took all I had but it surprised the hell outta’ him.  I’d never hit him before, even though I’d wanted to lotsa times.  He dropped his grip and clutched himself like a disbelieving child, shocked his mama had clocked him.  Idiot. Idiot. Idiot!

“Dinner is at eight. Cocktails at 6.  I laid your clothes out.  The Missoni.  And I added something I think you’ll like…under the pillow…”

“I’m not coming to your stupid fucking dinner party with those piece-a-shits you call friends” I said.

“Yes you are” he said, then pulled out his wallet and dropped a $100 bill on the stage.  He looked at me and quietly said, almost in a whisper, “take a taxi, sweetheart” then turned away fast, so I couldn’t say anything else to his face. But I didn’t need to.  I was quiet.  The $100 was more than I’d seen in days.  He knew I was tired and a little hungry.  He also knew I was sorry to love him, a fat, ugly man, and sorry to be no good.

We both knew I would show up, back at home just in time to be a strung-out hostess.  His friends would call me “wacky and irreverent.”  Fatty knew I could eat with the right fork, talk politics and East Hampton Star.  So I’d leave the show—my show—to go home and use the new works he’d put under my pillow. I’d shove some stage make-up on my bruises and have Luisa help me dress and do my hair.  And from all this?  It was like magic.  Voila!  My acting career gave me another night on Park Avenue and another reprieve from myself.

 

 

Signs of….~ Tom Thornley

Triviality appears

whilst impure thoughts

filtering through my

anomalous junk wasted veins

waste away memories of

my non-rebellious youth…

On this Sunday

afternoon I realised

that being a writer

and ex-junkie (Can you ever be an ex-junkie?)

…it’s funny how a person spends

months or years becoming clean

only to feed off those junk

stained memories…in a book or film?

Just how fucked up is society

for a person to seek out

an alternative “high”?

or why has society turned a blind

eye on…society?

Someone sang that love is

a natural high…no it isn’t…

lucidity of thought and breathing

is a natural high…

Very savage manners

Two new stories! Enjoy!

http://savagemanners.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/last-generation-of-pig-swilling-gin-drinking-amoebassean-mcgahey/

http://savagemanners.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/creepy-crawly-suzy-devere/

 

Creepy Crawly ~ Suzy Devere

It was like Tourette’s in reverse:  “Baby, you’re everything.  Gorgeous and smart, sexy…I bet you even cook.  I love you.”  It was horrifying.

“What am I gunna do with that?” I said, my face pinched with disgust.  “Just grab your shit and go.  I thought we had an agreement.  I should have known you couldn’t keep it together.”

He’d always been a liability, a clinger.  There’s one in every bunch.  Years ago Lucy and I’d been booked for this bachelor party, Park Avenue.  He’d been there, the clinger.  A bunch of fat ass perv. bankers with big guts and fat wallets.   I knew Park Avenue from the inside out but men, except for my dad, were new to me. And Chapin was an all-girl’s school, so that didn’t help.  But the street sense I was missing Lucy had in spades.  One look in her eyes sitting in a booth at a downtown club and I knew all those years of bullshit French, Violin, Soccer and Riding my parents had pushed me into were worthless.  She was thrilling but as I found out later, cheap girls always make you break your own rules and fuck-up your life…but anyway, back to the story (although maybe that is the story?).

Bachelor party, Fatty Clinger.  He’d followed us around all night.  He wasn’t our main concern, and girls don’t work parties to please random guests, but $50 here and there a few times an hour kept him a little closer than the rest.  By the end of the night, Fatty swore he was in love.  He begged us to let his driver take us home.  I wanted to go it alone but knew we’d be saving ourselves time and money by going with Creepy Crawly.  It was a risk I wasn’t happy taking.  We excused ourselves to the ladies room.   Bigger than our apartment, we spread our bags out and tried to come to a decision. We both were drunk and not that quick to start with; two drugged birds in a mirrored cage, fisticuffs.

“He’ll know where we live!” I said emphatically, like the world depended on it.  “And he’s gross.  Did you see the way he ate that cheese?  Licking his FAT FUCKING FINGERS and touching everything! Touching YOU!  Where do these people come from? And he thinks $50 bucks…”

Lucy cut me off.  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?  You just don’t want me to get a regular john out of it.  He likes me and he’s loaded. Don’t you get it, Stupid?” at this she pulled a wad of money out of her red bra and held it in front of my face like a Baptist preacher, pushing the Bible.  “Put your head on!” she slurred, her Lower East Side Latino coming through loud and clear.  “Jesus Christ” she went on “Why do I take you?”

“Because I’m smart,” I said.

“No, Stupid.  Because you’re pretty.” She leaned in and grabbed my crotch hard, nearly ripping my panties and shoving her fingers inside me.  Then she pulled me close and kissed me.  We made out for a while, like we were back at our place already, then remembered Fatty John.

“Let’s get outta here.  I’m so tired,” I said, and I was.  I really, really was. Working since the night before, there hadn’t even been a place to shower between gigs.  And now this bullshit hooker party…

I grabbed her by the hand and out we went.  He was waiting just outside the bathroom door.  He looked even fatter and more disgusting.  Sure, sure, he was the same but in that kind of jarring scene, everyone always looks worse.  That was one of the hazards of the ‘bathroom break’ in the business.  Coming out always meant something worse than going in.  A girl could never get used to it, or at least I couldn’t. The men were always nastier and more demanding, the girls always more insipid and pathetic, and a rabid-kinda-mean working its way in equal parts over both.

Finally out in the hall after saying our goodbyes to the belligerent men, Creepy told Lucy to get in the elevator.  He promised her we’d meet her down in the lobby in a minute.  I shook my head “No” but she smiled and did as he said.  Stuck in a nightmare, I couldn’t run, couldn’t speak, and suddenly wished I hadn’t popped those Valium and had all those drinks.  My heart was beating out of my chest and my neck was starting to sweat.  When he was sure the elevator had gone and we were alone, he got up close.  His breath reeked of cigars and Lucy’s cunt.  “Baby, you’re everything.  Gorgeous and smart, sexy…I bet you even cook.  I love you,” he said.

I never did wake up.  That’s Mrs. Fatty to you…

~~~

Suzy Devere is a prostitute, a drug addict, a Dr.’s wife, a mother, an intellectual, an academic, an athlete, a painter, a drawer, a photographer, a performance artist, and writer.  She’s lived all over the world, but right now lives next door to you.

 

Sparkling Pink Sequins ~ Joseph Ridgwell

It was drinking all night and 6.00am starts that did it. No it wasn’t, it was the crazed supervisor, but the 6.00am starts and hangovers of death didn’t help. I’d done it in England, waking up in the dark, going home in the dark, like some sub-human nocturnal work beast. And here I was in Australia doing exactly the same thing. Now how did that happen? Wasn’t I meant to be surfing at Bondi or playing a didgeridoo in the outback somewhere?
     I was a catering assistant in a small private hospital. In the hierarchy of the hospital the catering assistants were at the bottom, even below the cleaners. Of course the doctors were top of the tree, especially the plastic surgeons. My job was to serve breakfast, lunch and tea to wealthy, but ill people.
     The supervisor, a brick-shaped middle-aged German woman, was obviously crazy. She looked like someone’s mad aunt, or demented cousin, fresh out of the nuthouse. Her first words to me were, ‘In here, the doctors are God, got dat? And I’m ze boss, got dat?’ I got it alright. All the other co-workers were middle-aged women, but unlike the supervisor they weren’t mad. I was the only man.
    Most of the woman did two jobs. They worked the morning shift, 6.00am- 2.30pm and then went to another hospital and worked the evening shift, 4.00pm-7pm. That made it a minimum fifteen hour gig, and they did it everyday.
     Often I found myself gazing at these women and wondering. Were they bionic women, possessed of secret powers, and incredible endurance levels? Strangely I possessed none of these values. I wondered if there was something wrong with me, a basic malfunction of the brain, or born under a bad sign. 
     But back to the supervisor, crazy, blonde, and fiercely German. She had me by the balls from the very first day. She took me to the kitchen and told me to peel a paw paw. I grabbed a knife and was about to start, but the German stopped me dead in my tracks,
‘NOT LIKE ZAT!’ She screamed.
She grabbed the knife and pushed me out of the way. ‘Zis is how you do it English boy’
I watched as she skilfully sculpted that large orange thing, it was like a work of art, a carving of love. Afterwards I was handed another paw paw, the medical wonder fruit, and told to follow her example,
‘NOT LIKE ZAT!’
   Once my senses had recovered from another verbal attack the supervisor instructed me on how to clean work surfaces. I was handed a cloth and a variety of cleaning liquids, but just as I went to start scrubbing another scream shattered my already battered eardrum,
‘NOT LIKE ZAT!’
     Then she showed me how it should be done. She scrubbed the surfaces until she was blue in the face. I was impressed. I thought she was going to have a heart attack, whilst scrubbing. The rest of the training continued in the same vein. I didn’t learn anything, except how it feels like to be shouted at by a mad woman.
     For the first week or so I was late for my breaks. I would get to the staff canteen, breathing hard, sweating, with just enough time to stuff a slice of toast in my mouth, and then back to work. I couldn’t understand it; those women always seemed to make it on time.
     How could they be faster than me, a young man in his prime? On the second week I decided to find out. I pulled one of them aside, a Fijian Indian, late thirties, sexy, always wearing layers of red lipstick.
‘Sabrina how do you guys manage to finish on time?’
‘You still do service like the German bitch tell you?’
I nodded.
‘And do you only do two toast at a time?’
‘That’s the way the Soup told me, do any more and they get cold.’
‘Who cares what that crazy lady say, you toast eight slices at the same time, got it.’
I nodded.
Then Sabrina informed me of all the other timesaving measures necessary to be able to complete the service in time for my own breakfast break. I was shocked,
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me before?’
Sabrina looked at me and laughed, ‘Because we need to know if you have what it takes, otherwise what’s the point.’
I had to admit there was some logic to this reply.
   With the short-cuts the job became almost doable. But it was the 6.00am starts that began to kill me. Most nights I was drinking till two or three in the morning, singing songs, smoking cigarettes, and defying the dawn. I lived five minutes walk from the hospital, but gradually the drinking and early starts began to have a strange effect. I began to lose all sense of perspective and became reckless, even suicidal.
     One morning I woke surrounded by empty beer bottles with a knife in my hand. I looked at my wrists. It could be done easily, just two quick slashes. No more 6.00am starts.
     Then I thought about the mad German supervisor, telling everyone she had doubts about me all along, a weak personality, no gumption. Then there was all those middle-aged women doing two jobs, fifteen hour days, seventy-five hour weeks for years and years. I threw the knife to the floor and clambered into my uniform.
    But something had to give. Something had to happen. And the day came. It was a Monday. That morning I’d eyeballed the roof of my apartment buildings. Ten floors high, concrete pavement, instant death, brains splattered across the road. A white tent constructed, police cordon, an outline of my body drawn where I fell. I headed to the hospital.
     At work the Soup was up to her usual tricks, shouting at her staff, finding imaginary faults, making the job a thousand times harder than it actually was. We were two short, and the German bitch loved it. The power trip working overtime. With two short it was going to be a tough day, and boy did she let us know it. Several times during the shift I had to stop and take a count of ten, so as not to grab her by the throat and throttle her. It was tough, but I managed, somehow.
      The seconds passed like minutes, the minutes like days, the hours like weeks, but after an eternity the end of the shift finally approached. I’d been avoiding the clock all day, but with less than ten minutes to go, I began eyeing the hands studiously.
     Despite being two short, the shift passed uneventfully, no mishaps, minimum fuss. The supervisor was disappointed, deflated.  She revelled in mini-dramas and calamities. She needed to find fault in everything and let others know, that unlike her, they were incapable.
     I was finishing my last task of the day, washing the trolleys down. There was less than a minute to go. Sabrina was next to me, folding serviettes. Although it was almost time to go home, I could feel something in the air, something ominous, a trace of dread in the pit of my stomach.
     I clocked the supervisor. She was tapping a pencil on her desk and looking around. Then I sensed it coming,
 ‘Somebody needs to refill ze zalt an pepper pots!’
Somebody needs to what? I looked at Sabrina. Her ever-present smile had disappeared, her big brown eyes filled with barely-concealed fury.
     The Soup made a beeline to me and put a hand on my shoulder,
‘Ze zalt and pepper pots need to be refilled. You don’t mind to do them do you?’ She asked sweetly, making each word sound like it were covered in huge dollops of honey and maple syrup.
     My head began to spin. I looked at the salt and pepper pots. There were over four hundred of the fuckers. What did she mean clean them? ‘Huh?’
At this the Soup suddenly came alive, eyes twinkling, smile radiating insanity, ‘You empty each pot, one salt, one pepper, den wash out each pot, dry each pot, and re-fill each pot, and then top up with new zalt and pepper.’
Was she serious, was she joking? I looked her dead in the eyes. Nope, there was nothing there, total blankness.
‘What?’
     The Soup repeated the nonsense, sensing victory. Sabrina shot me a worried glance, her eyes pleading with me not to react. I spotted an industrial meat mincer to my left. All I had to do was shove her into it head first, along with the four hundred salt and fucking pepper pots. I bit my lip, counted to ten, and then twenty,
‘Ok.’
The Soup smiled warmly and dusted her hands, ‘Goot, goot, you are a very goot boy, it vill not take longer zan one hour.’
Thirty.
     I resigned myself to the task of emptying the salt and cellar pots, but on the way out the German made sure to have the last word,
‘And remember English, I vill be checking them in ze morning, so make sure you do dem properly!’
Forty and counting.
     Sabrina remained in the kitchen. Everyone else had gone home for the day. She poked me in the side,
‘Don’t let her get to you kid. If you walk off the job, she wins.’
I could see where Sabrina was coming from, but pleasurable images of stomping on the Soup’s head flashed through my mind. I smiled weakly.
‘Come on I’ll help you, we’ll get them done in twenty minutes.’
     We worked fast and with no one else around Sabrina began to relax and even flirt with me. She was married with three kids, a reliable husband, a good man. I began flirting back, the pointlessness of re-filling hundreds of salt and peppers pots quickly forgotten.
     We emptied them, washed them, dried them, and then refilled them. Soon it was over. Sabrina looked at me and I looked at her, and suddenly the connection was made, one of those rare events that perhaps only happen once or twice in a lifetime, and sometimes never. She took my hand and led the way.
      Inside the changing room Sabrina unbuttoned her yellow uniform, revealing black underwear adorned with sparkling pink sequins. The shiny sequins took me by surprise and fascinated me. I mean, despite everything, the gruelling job, the mad supervisor, the endless shifts, Sabrina was still holding something back. A little bit of magic, a little bit of fuck you!

The Hotel that Michael Hutchence Died In ~ Joseph Ridgwell

It was a tough time, a time when desperate men do desperate things. Blondie was working in Shakespeare’s pies on the main drag, but I was off work with a broken arm. As a casual hospital employee I wasn’t entitled to any sick pay, and as an illegal immigrant I wasn’t entitled to any welfare either, so I was dead broke.
      Luckily I was still able to eat. A perk of Blondie’s job was that he got to take home leftover pies. At the end of each shift he returned to the flat dragging a bin liner’s worth of assorted pies and pastries behind him.  I’d jump up and stick my good arm inside and grab a pie, or a croissant or a sausage roll, or something. So although broke I wasn’t starving, in fact I was putting on weight.
     One night Blondie came home without the bin liner. I was sitting in an armchair nursing a longneck of Toohey’s and feeling peckish, despite the fact I’d been living off stale pies for over a week,
‘Where’s the bag, I’m Lee Marvin?’ I asked.
Blondie marched to the fridge, grabbed a cold one, and collapsed into an armchair opposite,
‘I got the tin tack.’
I felt a small panic well up inside me. Did this mean no more free pies?
‘What for?’
Blondie flipped open the beer cap with the use of his teeth and took a large swig, ‘Foul and abusive language.’
‘Huh?’
‘These drunk pricks come in don’t they? You know rich Aussie types, pissed as. And well, I was tired and they were annoying. And when one of the cunts starts mocking my accent I told him to fuck off.’
‘And the boss heard ya?’
‘Jinxed or what? The freak was standing right behind me, nightmare scenario.’
‘Shit, now we ain’t got a breadwinner in the house.’
‘I know, what the fuck we ganna do?’
      Strangely, for the last few days, I’d been thinking about just such an eventuality, and what with my broken arm and everything,
‘You know I heard an interesting convo on the bus the other day.’
‘Tell me everything,’ said Blondie.
‘Ok, it’s a long, long shot, but before you find another job, I think it’s worth a try.’
Blondie was confused, ‘Whaddya mean? Before I find another job?’
I raised my broken arm in silent protest.
‘Ok, ok, but stop talking in riddles?’
       I stood up and grabbed another cold one from the fridge,
‘Listen, it could be total bollocks or an urban myth, but the other day when I was coming back from Shark bay…’
At the mention of Shark bay Blondie’s ears pricked up and he cut me short,
‘Can’t work, but can go to the beach…’
‘Shut up and pay attention. There were these two young Scottish geezers on the bus.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, they got on at Double Bay and I overheard everything.’
‘And?’
‘This is the interesting bit. They were talking about the Ritz Carlton hotel and rich Jewish women.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘According to them they’d just met two milfs in the hotel. It was all pre-arranged.’
Again Blondie was confused, ‘Huh?’
‘I’m talking gigolo action comrade, getting paid for sex!’
Blondie spurted a mouthful of beer onto the carpet, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Totally, these guys were genuine. And they were just ordinary looking geezers, nowhere near as handsome as me.’
‘Or me?’ Asked Blondie.
I gave Blondie an odd look and then continued, ‘Apparently the hotel is a well known pick up joint for bored socialites looking for some toy boy action. All we’ve got to do is go into the bar and wait for a wealthy divorcee or bored wife to walk in, and give us the sign.’
‘What sort of sign?’
‘Fuck knows, but there’s always a sign in situations like these.’
‘Shit, it sounds like something out of Midnight Cowboy!’
I leaned over and clinked my bottle against Blondie’s, ‘Might as well get drunk to celebrate our new venture a?’
Blondie winked, ‘Fucking A!’

I awoke the next day, sometime after noon, with a raging hangover. Blondie was still asleep, crashed out on the living room floor in the recovery position. As I stepped over his prostrate body to get to the toilet, the urban myth of meeting rich Jewish older sorts floated through my bleary head. Maybe it was true, I thought as I took a healthy beer shit. Who knows? It could be. Double Bay was only a short bus ride away and I reckoned there was no harm in trying.
    After wiping and flushing I returned to the living room and gave Blondie a swift kick in the gut, ‘Come on, get up, we’re going to Double Bay to hook up with some loaded socialites!’
Blondie jumped up with a start, ‘Now ya talking!’
        We left the flat and stepped out into the bright yellow light of a perfect Sydney day, weather wise. I turned to Blondie, 
‘Right let’s hit Double Bay, find the hotel, and ave a few hairs of the dog.’
Blondie smiled from ear to ear, ‘Then wait to be chatted up by sexy, mega loaded, old Jewish birds!’
‘Bring it on!’
       By the time we got to Double Bay the sun was beating down with an unusual ferocity. Being both hung over and broke we were jittery, and as everyone knows hotels drinks are expensive. I decided the best ploy was to pick up a six pack from the nearest bottle shop and drink it to calm our nerves.
     Once we had the booze we retreated to a park and sat on a bench. As we sat there, drinking in the burning sun, I had a rare moment of clarity. What the fuck was I playing at? Imagining I could walk into a five star hotel and pick up a wealthy lady who would then pay me to have sex with her. Was I off my nut? As the doubts came thick and fast I told myself to think positive.
     Once the six-pack had been taken care of we brought another, and by the time we rolled up to the entrance of the Ritz-Carlton we were both boozy,
‘Did you know this is the hotel where Michael Hutchence topped himself?’
Blondie stepped inside a giant revolving door, ‘Who?’
I waited for him to reappear, which he duly did, ‘Michael Hutchence, lead singer of INXS. The geezer who inexplicably dumped Helena Christensen for that old minger Paula Yates!’ ‘Yeah, I remember. Geezer must ave lost it!’
‘Maybe the Yates had a magic vagina.’
   This time we stepped inside the revolving doors together,
‘Magic vagina or no magic vagina, there’s no way I’d swap a Danish super model for Geldof’s sloppy seconds.’
There wasn’t much I could say to that because Hutchence’s wonky decision defied all logic,
‘Let’s hit the bar and try to act normal.’
    We walked into an empty bar, not a rich Jewess in sight or any women for that matter. Not that we were sure what a rich Jewess looked like, maybe a cross between Sophia Loren and the older bird in the Graduate?
     When we tried to order drinks, we didn’t get very far. I don’t think the tee-shirts and thongs helped much, or the broken arm, or our boozy demeanours. Within seconds four serious looking hotel staff approached,
     ‘Excuse me gentlemen, but are you residents?’ The smarmiest looking of the uniformed quartet demanded.
‘Residents?’ Queried Blondie.
I stepped in to sort matters, ‘Yes, we’re in suite 270,’ I mumbled.
The smarmy fuck flashed his colleagues a knowing smile,
‘I’m sorry sir, but there is no room 270, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.
    Outside we stood on the exposed pavement and wondered what to do next,
Blondie began grumbling, ‘Weren’t any Jewish birds in there anyway.’
‘Maybe they only go on certain days,’ I wondered allowed.
Blondie shrugged his shoulders and licked his lips, ‘Could do with another beer.’

‘Yeah so could I. Back to the Cross then?’
‘Let’s go.’

POLAROIDS ~ Tom Leins

She stood completely naked in front of me except for the little pair of white panties in her hand. “He used to pay an extra five bucks to take close-up polaroids of my pussy afterwards.” I turn my back on her and carry on rooting through her medicine cabinet. “I’m not him, sweetheart. I’m not him.” Fuck. No more of those damned horse pills. She walks towards me and places her hands on her hips. Simultaneously sweet and threatening. “Whose blood is that on your shirt, Queenan?” I glance down at my ruined shirt and shrug. “No-ones.” More blood – my blood – throbs in my temples. I take two aspirin and wash them down with a cup of Mexican water. “You shouldn’t drink that water, Queenan.” I shouldn’t do a lot of things, but I still do them. I walk through to the bedroom, remove my wingtip shoes and lay back on the bed. Wordlessly, she joins me. I smoke one of her brown cigarettes but my head still feels swollen with disaster. The hum of the air-conditioning unit soundtracks my torpor. I can’t afford to breathe in this town. Next to me, she lies naked, at peace. Her feet are gutter-grimy, her psyche is a vague smear informed by airport novels and narcotic over-stimulation. I close my eyes, but my memories are just like scars. Her platinum wig lays askew on the pillow. I can see the brick-coloured hair underneath. I reach across and then pause. In the corridor I hear canned gunshots and slurred obscenities. The gun shivers in my hand. The door-frame cracks. Her drugged smile disintegrates. The end is suddenly beautifully inevitable.

~~~~

Bio: Tom Leins is from Paignton , UK . His short stories have been published in Texts’ Bones, Open Wide Magazine, Orphan Leaf Review, Interlude and Front&Centre + online at 3am Magazine, Dogmatika, Straight From The Fridge and Muzzle Flash Fiction. He works as a film critic and is currently hard at work on his first novel Thirsty & Miserable. Get your pound of flesh at www.myspace.com/tomleins

Drought ~ Elizabeth Rose

sub

(the bold
young boy
hot and thirsting
gives water to the
sun-crisp soldier
and returns to
his mother,
sated)

vert.

~~~~~

Bio - Elizabeth Rose Murray has a regular haiku slot on dogmatika, fiction on savage manners and 3am, flash fiction on six sentences plus poetry in The Ranfurly Review, DeComposed and The Beat. She also writes poetry critique and getting published blogs and is writing a novel. She lives in the south of Spain.