Stretch of the Imagination
Published 'Kimota' 1995
Costermongers, ironmongers, whoremongers, fishmongers, boroughmongers, scandalmongers (flanked by gossipmongers and rumourmongers), weirdmongers, wordmongers, one scaremonger, as the official gatecrasher and token jinx ... and with loads of other off-loaders, the convention was, nevertheless, intended to be a low-key affair; but when the guest-list was finally drawn up, whistles of surprise escaped from pursed lips like a pipe-organ practising its scales. Obviously, bigger issues were to be on the agenda than the organisers had first planned. In fact, mongers and their ilk were not to be the only attendees, because more delegates were matchmakers, go-betweens, bootleggers, gong-farmers, pistol-packers, sidewinders, bushwhackers, dog-stealers, gobstoppers, barnstormers, steeplejacks (flanked by pot-holers and chimneystackers), head-bangers, brainstormers, paratroopers, party-poopers, party-poppers, stringfellows ... a whole panoply of second fiddles, everybody eager to witness the historic gathering of the monger brothership under one (if makeshift) roof.
The convention venue was, indeed, a disused steel-works factory, transported to a supposed reality from an alternate world - and there was outright chaos (in both respective universes) caused by the interlockment of scaffolding as the unwieldy superstructure was manhandled along girders which stretched against the grain of the time-zones. Such confusion was simply to ensure that the convention-site was situated at the precise conflux of several parahistoric ley-lines togther with the fact that the specific steel-works chosen was (as many maintained) a hot-bed of spirituality and human congress.
But why not move the delegates themselves to where the steel-works already was positioned? This question was upon the lips of most bystanders and gongoozlers. Surely that would have been so much easier. However, such doubters obviously failed to understand the implications and counter-implications (beyond the realm of any level of bluff) of everything needing to be more than simply perfect - not only in time and place but also in one particular version of pan-reality. Whatever the whys and wherefores, the building itself looked little more than a corrugated cow barn, some even claiming that it was not the right steel-works at all, but a front for a beauty-parlour or, at worst (or at best, said a whoremonger), a knocking-shop.
When the actual mongers arrived from their countless corners, they could be seen scratching hard at each others' heads, puzzled as they were by the nature of the venue. Nevertheless, their doubts began to dissipate when they realised that a giggle of young ladies (recently expelled from a local finishing-school) had been dragooned to act as convention cigarette-girls and ornamental bunnies. Despite that, a weirdmonger said he would not be seen dead (or even just off colour) inside a place like that, whatever its attractions and mantric significance, because, to him, the mandala could run full circle before he would even consider refusing to enter it, let alone ignoring it pointblank.
The scandal-, gossip- and rumourmongers ran amuck, claiming that the place was crawling alive with computer-generated rodents. The gobstoppers sucked in their cheeks and swallowed their brains whole in utter dread and despair at the ill-assorted vibes that had been set up around the whole gig. As the bootleggers made scapegoats of go-betweens, there arrived the ultimate spoilsport, the bottom-line pain-in-the-arse... "Sshh - it's the scaremonger," suggested a guest.
The newcomer stared icily at the reflection of his own eyes on the insides of his shades, a personage so horrible to look at, nobody did look at him and, consequently, nobody could describe him - few even knowing whether he existed at all from some race-memory blockage induced by the frightener gland. In any event, as soon as this particular party-pooper sidled into view, the whole place went deadly quiet ... "It's the gate-legger" ... "Nope, it's the side-saddler" ... "Don't be daft, can't you see it's the baby-sitter?" ... until they all realised that it was indeed the scaremonger, as originally guessed by a guest.
Catalyst of dreadful fears, disruptor of first impressions, chief spanner-head in the works of meticulously laid plans of mice and men, the scaremonger wandered amid his fellow mongers, casting insidiously concealed doubts and phobias in his wake - at which time one or two of the more percipient mongers noticed that he yanked a popsy girl by the hand, who had evidently been a wallflower and gooseberry all rolled into one, but was now proud to call herself the scaremonger's doxy. Even the arch gossipmonger buttoned his lips, as he turned away his prying look, only to meet his own earlier snoopy sneaky glances being reflected at ridiculous angles off the scaremonger's shades. Nobody could believe this arch free-loader had been purposely scheduled to appear, unless, of course, such a loose-cannon could, by any stretch of the imagination, be deemed the convention agenda's "Any Other Business". But, since there was nobody to take the minutes of the meeting, they had too much time on their hands, and, then, it was too late, since the entropically curved globe of infinities and alternate realities and parallel existences had swivelled on its dislocated axis like a drunk hologram - with the steel-works so fast vanishing with such chronic glitches of the hope-gland, none of the delegates were yet inside it, other than a few over-eager steeplejacks and chimneystackers who had already clambered upon its corrugated roof for a sneak inspection: the only ones who eventually attended the meeting: these over-loaders thus having a wonderful time discussuing flue dimensions and the art of chimney-pot array, neither of which was on the original agenda, but, after a while, sad to report, they were gnawed to a grisly death by the computer-rats who discovered they could indeed exist corporeally by eating the rust and corrosion of the steel-works, rather than the binary numbers which was their usual soft ware.
As the steel-works ratchetted into its own reality far beyond the reach of any common concepts of duration, the young ladies returned to their positions upon the bed-blocks in the finishing-school's beauty-parlour, awaiting more brawny realitynauts to arrive with supple steel whips ready for use. Meanwhile, the scaremonger was the only one left in a no man's land of untextured time, the other mongers having become mere figments of the his own overstretched imagination which only lip-service scenarios or pipe-dream atmospheres or side-show auras could convoke. His plug-ugly sidefuck had abandoned him, too - to trip light-fantastically with the other doxies and giggle-merchants. And being lonely amid endless nothing was lonelier than death itself, and even the freight of frights he purveyed was little more than a scare-tissue of lies.
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