Savage Omnibus #4

MORNING by Suzy Devere

A Dollar Bill, Crisp and Falling~ Joel Van Noord

In Sumeria ~ Elizabeth Rose

vuh shit tree by peter wild ~ part one part two part three part four

Savage Omnibus #3

Savage Omnibus #3

Fall Out by Melissa Mann

You burn your regrets but leave mine to me by Ben Ashwell

Coward by Steve Vermillion

Waste (for Cliffy) by Chris Major

Three looming cranes in the distance by Lee Rourke

Very savage manners

Two new stories! Enjoy!

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

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

 

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!

Will you read this? ~ Karen Welsh

How do I come to terms with…well, I’m sure you don’t want to be bored with the finer details of this particular situation. Let’s just say I’m not wholly responsible for what’ll happen in a year or so. I can only assume it’ll be a long and exhausting sequence of events, I’ll most likely loose some friends and hopefully make some new ones. I’ve been considered an expert in the manufacturing and consuming of recreational drugs…recreational…it’s funny how something as deadly as having a habit is considered recreational…when does it become work based or professional? My new collection of pills contained within my trendy looking pill box isn’t for recreational use or anything else remotely playful…they are delaying the inevitable…and that’s what I’m struggling coming to terms with…

Party #2 ~ Karen Welsh

Brett & Paul are sat drinking red bull whilst looking over the aftermath of the “plug any hole” party.
“It’s the cleaner I feel sorry for” mumbles Brett as he lights a cigarette.
“Say again?” whispers Paul as he drinks the dregs of what looks like a florescent green cocktail.
Pointing at a buzzing dildo spasmodically limping over a pair of blood stained boxer shorts “This mess, it’s worse than a scene from apocalypse now…”
“I guess…but she’s been working here for years”
”yeah but look at the shit left behind, slimy butt plugs, cum soaked gimp mask, a fucking rolling pin, cattle prod, empty can of mace, industrial staple gun, purple strap on and a traffic cone?”
“Not to mention the fucking musty smell…”
“Were we actually at this party?”
“Well….yeah?”
“Are you sure? As my ass feels intact”
“We filmed it…well I filmed it you were the director”
Looking somewhat confused “Fuck”
“Yep it’s all coming back now”
Stepping over a pile of used tampons and an empty tub of ice cream Paul looks for the TV remote control “She does a pretty good job cleaning up after our events…those stains always disappear”
Looking somewhat concerned Brett heads towards the kitchen “I hope she doesn’t go snooping around the freezer”
“Why?”
 “She’ll find the box of you know what!”
“What?”
“Well it wouldn’t be a box of exotic sausages…and that’s what she’ll think!”
“Oh…the box of cocks!”
After a short awkward silence they both start laughing and Paul sputters out “Do you remember when she thanked us for the onion rings and asked why they were slightly hairy!”

party #1 ~ Karen Welsh

We find Karen lying on the floor not quite knowing how shitfaced drunk she is…Karen slowly opens her eyes, lifts a cigarette to her lips and takes a drag…Across the room, Chad, Tim and josh sit with a Tabatha Cash look-a-like wearing what looks like a see through top…black bra clearly on display…Chad leans down and snorts some cocaine from a clear glass table top, lifts his head back and shakes his nose back and forth …the porn look-a-like falls to her knees rips open Tim’s pants and proceeds to expertly give head…Karen drops her cigarette and blacks out…

Cunt ~ Matthew Coleman

that
one
solitary
word that
evokes such images –
memories of lust,
of desire
of need
of madness.
Memories
of fingers finding folds,
of light touches
of rubbing
of caressing
of the tongue slipping
and sliding
over skin and
tasting.

CUNT 
and its hot heat.
CUNT
and its sumptuous sensations.
CUNT
and its erupting ecstasy.
CUNT –
that one
solitary
word
and its
mental erection
and then
the ejaculation
of its imagery.
 

DISGUST ~ Zack Wilson

Just before I was 30 I went out with a medical student. She was 10 years younger than me but didn’t look it. She worked behind the bar in a pub I used to drink in. She used to flirt with me when I first walked in, get really warm and affectionate after I’d had 4 or 5 pints, then cold shoulder me after I’d had 8 or 9. I couldn’t work out who had the problem.

It turned out she was on tranquillisers for some kind of depressive problem. I was never allowed to spend the whole night with her. Her housemates made me feel like an idiot bumpkin, really coarse and thick-accented. Once, she drove me over the Snake Pass in a car bought for her by her parents. We were going to a young farmers’ ball in Chester , where her parents lived. Halfway over the Snake she told me that she had a death wish. After the ball, I began to see why.

Some weeks before this we’d gone out on a Sunday afternoon and had ended up in a pub on Division Street . They had some kind of promotion going for some kind of Belgian lager. They were serving it in tall glasses with narrow bases and wide tops. The rusty yellow beer poured cold into the glasses looked beautiful on the dark wood bar of the shady mid-summer pub. I fell for it and bought myself a pint and I thought it tasted great. She tasted it and made a face similar to the one she made when we were having sex. I think this was a bad thing. She once told me that her ex-boyfriend whose Royal Navy sweatshirt she occasionally wore had used to tear her when they were having sex. She sneered at me when she said this.

I tried to enjoy my beer, but the atmosphere made it go flat and warm quickly. She drank blue WKD through a straw and fidgeted in her red sleeveless Primark top and jeans with no label that were a size too small. I tried to find pleasant things to say about people we both knew and funny things about people she didn’t. She looked contemptuous and only smiled so that she could sneer properly. Every attempt at conversation died. Even her stance, arms loosely at her sides, shoulders slightly hunched, attractive large breasts presented prominently but for derision not admiration sapped all the enthusiasm out of what was already feeling like the kind of day you find dead pets on.

She went to the loo. I downed the half pint I had left and got a replacement pint. I’d drunk almost all of that and was onto my second cigarette when she returned. She sat down and looked pained once more.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked. I really wanted one.

“No…yeah, n…yeah. Yeah…well, just a…yeah.”

“Another one of those blue things?”

“Yeah.”

I finished the rest of my beer in a couple of swallows and took my empty glass and her empty bottle and straw to the bar. I ordered up and took the drinks back to where we were sitting. I sat down and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head and took one. I lit it for her. During the ensuing silence I got through about a 3rd of my drink. She played with her straw and nearly knocked her bottle over.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.

Oh good, I thought, she’s going to end it.

“But I know you don’t like…talking about…these kind of things,” she elaborated.

“What kind of things? Are y…”

“You know,” she fiddled with her curly hair, she whispered, “Medical.”

“Oh.” I really didn’t know what to say. I felt right thirsty and wanted to kill all the space in my head. “What? Were, well, y…”

“It happened in the loo.”

“Oh. Wha…”

“But you don’t want to know.”

“Well, I’m concerned.” No I fucking wasn’t. I wanted to get savagely pissed and shout.

She lowered her voice, “I’ve been having some bleeding.”

“Ah, well. Is it to do with…with your…your cycle?” Christ, I felt like a fuckwit.

“No, no.” She shook her head vigorously. “Not from that hole, from my other hole, behind.”

My mouth moved but no words came out. She looked at me like a spoilt doll. I took a big swallow of beer and asked, “Maybe you ate something?” She shook her head. We didn’t say anything else until I’d finished my pint and we’d left. She went home to prepare for her Monday shift at the hospital. I went to the pub where I’d met her and got pissed with only the bar staff for company.

We split up about 6 weeks later, after the ball. I think I’d just got back from Skegness. I’d told her it was over with an SMS. It was easier that way. I didn’t have to look at her.

Middle Class Revolt

Release Date
May 1994 – LP/cassette/CD

Record Label
Permanent

Track Listing

15 Ways
The Reckoning
Behind The Counter
M5#1
Surmount All Obstacles
Middle Class Revolt !
War
You’re Not Up To Much
Symbol of Mordgan
Hey ! Student
Junk Man
The $500 Bottle Of Wine
City Dweller

~~

This is probably one of the best Fall Albums ever!!