05 November 08 - 14:22The Lady Opposite
THE LADY OPPOSITE by DF Lewis
Published 'Flickers 'n' Frames' 1994
Dear lady opposite, you may live in the large house across the road, but I seem to know you better than if you lived over here with me. On the other hand, it is strange how little I do know. There is of course the timing of your curtain drawing, the people who visit, the various delivery men, your doctor, tbe rare trips you make (both on your own and arm in arm with lady friends) and, of course, the smoke curling from your chimney, at times, grey, thin and uninteresting, but at others tantalisingly black and so very thick with the fuel on which you must feed it. Only yesterday, you had a visitor whom I was extremely shocked to see was a man. Your normal callers are of course people of the female persuasion, most with wide-brimmed hats and walking tall on fashionable heels. But this visitor was a sooty-faced man and, what was more, your curtains were closed before it was ...
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05 November 08 - 14:19The Clinging of the Cold
THE CLINGING OF THE COLD
Published 'Dark Matter' 1998
Donna wanted to be the first woman werewolf. You see, most of her friends dressed like vampires, with more eye-shadow than any their actual bodies cast when the sun was low in the sky. They wore loads of jingle-jangling bangles, too, but they did draw short of hanging fangs because that would have indeed been a tinsy wincey bit childish - or 'sad', as the fashionable word for unfashionable was among nineteen year old girls then.
Thus, you must understand, Donna wanted to go a stage further than her Gothic pals: break new ground, if not graveyard ground, and be a glorious wolf howling to the same moon as hounds bayed at. Donna's own glossy pelt of fur would then no doubt suit her taste for luxurious clothes without transgressing her almost religious regard for Animal Rights. ...
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05 November 08 - 14:13The Last Mover
THE LAST MOVER
The boy was no angel.
He had not knotted his tie properly—because, of course, this crumpled foot-length of cloth with horizontal stripes was the last thing on his mind. It joined many other last-things on the boy's mind, namely: the dirt-scuffed knees—the "designer" rips in the elbows of the school jacket, a jacket which, although it had obviously seen better days and a body more fitting for its size, his mother made him wear because "it cost a tidy few bob and you can't go throwing things away with use still in them, can you?"—the short grey trousers that the school authorities said must be worn just to the middle of the knees, which trousers were newish, since the previous pair had been irreparably soiled one awful awful day of tummy upset towards the end of the endless summer holidays—the socks circumcised down to the ankles and wrinkled uncomfortably under ...
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03 November 08 - 19:26Murd
They call me Murd. Murd come in for dinner. Murd clean your teeth. Murd clean the bedroom. Murd this. Murd that. Pity I’m only a child or I might truly know they hate me. Despite the atmospheres, I always believe it when they say they love me. Children do. For ever and ever.
The trouble with me is that I can sometimes see into the future and what love means, and what hate means. I don’t actually live in the future, however. Only in this present tense atmosphere of the house I call home. I can’t use the word ‘shall’ or ‘will’, though I do own plenty of will power. I stare at my Mum and Dad and Sister and will them to submit to my wishes – and they do, invariably. They give me everything I want without realising that the things they give me are what I really want. They indeed think the things they give me I don’t want at all and that’s why they are perverse enough to give them to me in the first place. ...
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03 November 08 - 19:23Pulp Crime
“A quiet word in your ear,” he said. Almost a stranger, I still thought I knew him better than most.
He brushed my cheek with that grizzled mask of his as if to kiss my ear: and I felt something cold and slimy slip inside; slimy yet hard and set in shape. I fully expected it to be withdrawn as soon as he relaxed back into the coach seat next to mine. However, as he turned away with his attention wrapped in a newspaper that had just appeared, it seemed, in his lap, I sensed the object still lodged in my hearing chamber; louder now, because the quiet word he’d spoken was gaining in confidence; whistling or throbbing now with some staccato bravado; not exactly strident, but relentlessly static in a radio’s mistuning sense. It squirmed. Or I imagined it squirming, because there was no feeling of movement within my ear. Just a cold whine. ...
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03 November 08 - 14:24Shunt
Published 'Dementia 13' 1990
It was all slower than motion. He put the mirror in front of his face and peered into it. The decreasing light among the flickering branches at the edge of his vision rippled across his features, as if he were a drowning man. Scarlet Lady sat back into the shadows beside him, having settled out of profile, once she had encouraged him to take a look into the dark mirror.
It was a handjob, so he had only one set of fingers free to dab at the pouches under his wriggling lashes. Pulpy to the touch, it made the eyeballs bulge from their sockets and threaten to burst out from their wild stares.
“Don’t forget the nose,” hissed Scarlet Lady, again reminding him of her continuing presence at the back of his mind.
He took the fleshy wadge and squeezed it so hard, the sealed nostril bulbs became just snot between the fingers.
“And the mouth... ...
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02 November 08 - 11:41'Odalisque' by PF Jeffery (DFL's comments)
Chapter 16 – Rooms
There are some wonderful passages concerning the cutting of a sausage, including:
“Yes,” I said, “I’m sure she is – but has anyone got a knife to cut the sausage?”
“If there was any danger of a slice coming my way,” Fuquibelle said, “I think I could scare up a knife.”
“I reckon the sausage would go into ten,” I said, “we six – and you four.”
“You, Tuerqui, are an angel’s dancing boots. I’ll get my knife.”
Basically this chapter is a memorably striking continuation of Tuerqui’s life at Madame Scurf’s establishment. Much of the role-playing and other activities constructively reminded me of a literary version of the Unreality/Reality TV show ‘Big Brother’ -- plus the concept of ‘rooms’ as in ‘Big Brother’s’ Diary Room, Task Room etc. etc. and ‘Odalisque’s’ own Groping Parlour, Robing Room ...
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