Where is Daniel Ohm?

Partial list of items found in the flat of missing writer Daniel Ohm:

An Oral-B toothbrush with blue “brush faster” stripes: bristles bent backwards during late-night speed-brushing in an eagerness to head to bed, and the occasional bristle-nibble to remove excess toothpaste.

A copy of erotic novel Hot to Touch by Kimberly Kaye Terry, inscribed on the first page To Christine: GET U R FREAK ON, with a thin settling of dust on the cover from nine months spent unsent on the dresser. The novel had been purchased on the back of a humorous conversation about amusingly titled erotica at a writing group, and remained there while Daniel mused on the inappropriateness of having purchased a novel with his own funds as a callback to the drunken amusement that night: perhaps Christine might find the novel some pre-fumbling to his own erotic approach, or have forgotten the conversation in a week’s time, and receive the book with embarrassment?

A half-completed manuscript entitled The Secret Life of Douglas Arm: one hundred and two A4 pages featuring an unproductive writer at work not writing his opus, visiting the shop downstairs to lech over the cute shopgirl three times during her shift, and his unedited thoughts on long walks round the town, musing on his artistic failure. Each page contained copious marginalia consisting of harsh self-criticism (“crapcrapcrap”, “WHY?!”, “seek help”), ending with the phrase “burn this” on the last page. Whether this criticism was intended as part of or a comment on the manuscript is unclear.

A drawerful of unopened bags of Revels. A form of Pavlovian discipline for working on his manuscript: for each paragraph completed to his satisfaction, a favoured flavour (toffees and Galaxy counters) was eaten, and for each paragraph deemed adequate but in need of serious revision, the lesser flavours were endured.

A pentacle of the Purple Goddess Wiccan ornament. The final trace of his sixteen-month relationship with Gail Stevens, the account manager who liked to read, and who read Daniel’s unpublished comic novel about depressed crop-dusters, Coming a Cropper, considered for a week at Gangplank Press. The relationship petered out after Gail was worn down by Daniel’s fondness for moping and persistent self-examination.

A series of post-it notes scattered around the flat with questions such as: should I write?, what should I write?, what is original?, what is the point?, when will I ever complete my opus?, what is the point of an opus?, etc.

The complete novels of Macdonald Harris in hardback.

The search continues . . .

My Year in Stories

The first quarter of the year was devoted to completing Arlene’s Atoms, my fingers-crossed-first-official-novel-with-a-proper-publisher-with-a-proper-desk-and-everything. The submission process was slow but steady—after sending the novel to agents and picking up the rejections from the sorting office, I sent sample chapters to promising smaller-but-more-suitable publishers. I spent the mid-part of the year working on an experimental novella, The State I Am In, a form of fictional autobiography that takes its title from the Belle & Sebastian song. More recently, I’ve been working on a second novella called My Body of Work which uses the collage technique I deployed in three extremely pleasurable-to-write pieces (one below) published in delicious venues. Busy? Yes. But not enough. “I could always have written more!” cries the dying writer.

My short fiction output this year is naturally shorter than 2011, and most of these stories were written that year and published in this one. I lost track of when each story was published.

The longest story of the year, at 7000 words, was Maybe Tomorrow at the online zine Blue Lake Review. The story was an attempt to grapple on a somewhat serious level with social alienation, loneliness and depression while using various playful techniques to lift the story from the doldrums. Four socially alienated characters attend a bogus therapy group where they are asked to draw up new routines for each other and made to abide by them. The story pays a slight homage to Gilbert Sorrentino and BS Johnson with the typographical fancies and close third-person narration while trying to break away from those postmodern influences to touch upon something more genuinely melancholy. The zine was unable to reproduce the tables I had in the story, making the fourth part harder to navigate.

A Disquisition on the Erogenous Impulse in Prose Narratives was published in April at Martian Lit. One of three collage pieces, these stories were an attempt to cope with my spiralling distraction levels while writing and the audience’s limited attention spans with short fiction from unknowns on the internet. (I’m still convinced no one reads short fiction from unknowns on the internet apart from friends of the unknowns—I have no friends, hence no readers). I felt my disaffection with character, plotline and story could be resolved by choosing an unusual theme and constructing mini-stories, self-commenting attention-seeking bits, snatches of dialogue, satire and other areas of strength for me. Time will tell as I complete my current project which exhausts this technique.

The Four Seasons of Michael Michael at Laptop Lit is written in a series of internal monologues. It was an attempt to tell the story of one man, Michael Michael, a toff going insane in his country estate, entirely from the perspectives of his afflicted family. The Wonderfully Fecund World of the Hendersons at Piker Press was inspired by the protagonist in Harry Mathews’s The Journalist who becomes obsessed with composing every miniscule detail of his day in his journal at the expense of his sanity. The story has novel potential as there can be an unlimited number of narrators and contradicting plotlines.

New Zealand magazine OneTitle, now defunct, published Writing For Carol. This story addresses my crisis about writing for an unknown, unseen and (in the case of obscure writers) nonexistent audience. For whom are we writing? People like us? Just us? Does our work reach the sort of people we want? My protagonist in this story tries tailoring all his fiction to meet one person’s needs, finding more pleasure in the act of writing when his work leads him to actually connect with this one person for real, in the flesh. Imagine such a thing!

My only print publications in 2011 were The Little Book of Nothing—a story from last year republished in the Writings on the Wall anthology, and an edited version of The Drunk & the Godly in Octavius Magazine. (Now an e-book only—grr! Full text sans edits, here). My favourite publication, which I’ve yet to see, is the Oulipo homage From A to Z published in Beeswax Magazine. The first section is an alphabetical lipogram and the second an alphabet-shaped backwards lipogram (the text takes the shape of the alphabet, omitting each letter being described). My faith in pointless constraints and innovative batshittery remains unbroken!

As an experiment this year, I self-published my first polished and, uh, serious novel A Postmodern Belch. I wasn’t doing it properly, tirelessly virally promoting my novel on the social networks and so on, because I don’t have any influential friends (except Horst). I did inform my chums on Goodreads, and some of them kindly bought copies, others reviewed the book in return for a pdf edition. The book’s page is full of splendid parody reviews written in the spirit of the book, which was more delightful than making money, in a way. A small way. If by any chance you are criminally insane and want to buy a copy—here! (Seriously, I had more fun writing the book than anything else, I hope that shows).

Here’s to 2013!

The Legend of Joan Henry’s Hamster

For Willow

Joan Henry’s father woke her up one midnight and said: “They’re making F-level workers obsolete.” She picked the sleep from her eyes. “What?” He sighed. “Do I have to repeat myself, dammit?” Joan blinked and said nothing. “Report came in today. Budget cuts. Can’t afford electricity in the F-quarter anymore, we’re being squeezed so tight our eyeballs are popping out their sockets.” Joan yawned and lay back down.

She wouldn’t get a rational account from her father—he carped at the company in times of boom or bust. Every little hiccup was lazy managers screwing workers out their rights, and so on. “All right, father. Let me get dressed.” The report was clear: F-level redundancies in effect in two weeks dependent on massive turnarounds in departmental expenditure. This meant there was a chance for each department to make internal cuts and appeal to the company board. Joan downed her OJ.

“Suppose I’ll have to sort it out, as usual.” She grabbed her keys, reassured her father, and sped to work. She was the only person in her department who wasn’t wracked with anxiety, hatred or fear. In the day she worked on reception in the marketing offices and at night she helped her father in the processing plant when his arthritis got too painful. If the managers discovered a lapse in his production output, he’d be obsolete. So they managed—got their two paychecks every week—and kept alive.

But these moaners, carpers and haters. They didn’t understand the basic tenet of ‘cutthroat’ capitalism—serve stakeholders, dispense with the rest. To keep their lives, all they had to do was reach their monthly targets and stay within the permitted departmental expenses. First problem: the electric bill in the office was too high. Joan’s solution? To reduce the number of computers being used, have secretaries share two machines on rotation and managers revert to pen or pencil. Use handcrank torches, not overhead lights. More importantly: convert electric power into hamster power.

For two months, Joan had been training her hamster Fidel to run at speeds of two hundred kilometres per hour in his wheel. Using her hamster as an exemplar, the temps, secretaries and managers could train their own hamsters to power computers, desk lights or photocopiers, without recourse to the main grid. This would make the office a self-sustaining department with no encroachment on company power sources, keeping them on the payroll database. It was a way of manipulating the company spreadsheet, known as the Death Grid or the Slaughterbox. Joan laughed off these terms.

Manual workers had a longer grace period to cut their expenses before obsolescence. So Joan expanded her animal retinue to include guinea pigs or cats—pets with more stamina who could fuel large industrial machines through paw power alone. Her office had succeeded in cutting its costs, and the management was impressed by Joan’s enterprising attitude. The exploitation of animals was something they could use to their advantage—humans had been a fungible resource for centuries, but their reluctance to be enslaved had caused so many net losses and growth irregularities over the years.

Joan was called into the office of a company director. Now she was nervous. He was a short man.

“Joan—we’ve been analysing the efficaciousness of your hamster-centred capital abridgement scenario. We find this an exciting new enterprise. Is there any way we could build towards, say, a complete animal-based production situation and a permanent human obsolescence occurrence, say, within forty-eight days?” he asked in one breath.

“You want to replace human workers with animal workers?”

“Yes.”

“If I can’t—”

“Obsolescence.”

“It will be done.”

“Leave now.”

When Joan got home she bit her knuckles so tight the bite marks bloomed blood. Her casual problem-solving approach had pit her against the very people she was supposed to be helping. She had to decide whether she wanted to be made obsolete along with her F-level co-workers as a useless martyr, or keep her father and herself alive. The latter. She rounded up some tigers from the zoo and trained them in stenography. Macaques made good cleaners and coffee boys. Baboons could sit in for managers. As for temps, a series of rattlesnakes sharing the role would do nicely. She got to work.

In the factories, giraffes were the most effective replacement. They could transfer produce from conveyor belts up to the second floor, where polar bears stored them in the freezers, ready for distribution. Joan tried to solicit help from her co-workers but the truth was difficult to conceal—training a baboon to use Microsoft Excel while managers stood scowling in the corner was hardly a good omen. The time soon came for the workers’ obsolescence. It happened on a Friday, end of the working week. 

 Four brawny guards arrived at the F-level offices to frogmarch obsolescents to the ovens for quick removal. All was going well until Joan was grabbed by the guards and thrown among her colleagues. “I’m not supposed to go. I trained the animals,” she said. “You’re on the list,” the guard said. And there she was—JOAN HENRY, OBSOLESCENT. The company director had tricked her. When the animals saw their master being lead away, they revolted. The baboons clobbered the guards, the lions went straight for their throats. Guts and hair everywhere, blood on the photocopiers. Joan laughed.

“Brilliant!” she said. “Now we can manipulate the forms. You’re all free!” Her co-workers were relieved and conflicted. Did she do that on purpose? Was that her plan all along? Joan saw the advantage of telling a lie at this point and decided to tell the lie. “Of course. You didn’t think I’d let them take you, did I? Come on, you know me better than that!” And she was a heroine to the whole of Level-F, the slipperiest heroine ever. She ticked off all the workers as being ‘obsolete’ and sent them home through the fire exits. She would contact them with further instructions, whatever they were.

*

It wasn’t easy to devise instructions with her father constantly interrupting her thoughts. “Got the instructions yet?” he’d ask two times an hour. “No father, please give me more time.” Then he’d skulk off, muttering: “We don’t have time.” That really irked her.

She knew that the animals would respond to her commands. She had them at her disposal. Only she needed more to stage a revolt. She needed six or seven departments of trained office animals to take on the company’s security forces and topple the management. So there was only one thing to do: infiltrate the E-level as a panda. 

Plans had already been made to introduce animals into offices and factories, but the department managers were useless at earning the respect of their animal workers, knowing only brutality. Whipping a baboon seven times would not make him turn out a first-rate Sector Q report on Opportunities for Diversification Within the Product Portfolio. Joan snuck in as a panda and quickly trained her lions to eat the department manager. She trained animals for E-level duties, then moved onto the D-level.

This was a laborious process, and since she was no longer on the payroll, she had to sleep in the offices with her father. Other workers who lost their homes were invited into the E- and D-level offices while the training took place. As she completed the D-level animal training she learned from a secretary that her hamster Fidel had expired on the E-level. Her little pet, whose fast wheel-work had sparked this revolution, lay dead in its dynamo, the computer it was powering now completely useless.

She buried Fidel inside her CPU. His image would become the insignia for the revolution.

Once the C-level animals had been set up, she had enough power at her disposal to stage the revolt. Sixty-three lions trained to kill, twenty-eight baboons trained to scratch, and a small army of temp snakes with their own unique defence abilities. They headed for the security zone down in the basement. The plan was that the macaques would wander in there innocently, as though lost, teasing out the amused guards. Then the lions would pounce and maul and savage as many guards as possible.

It was a bloody, victorious battle. Twenty lions were killed and five others were wounded, but the company was useless without its security, so their deaths were seen as heroic, not tragic. The remaining animals took the lifts to the management floors and dispensed with forty-six managing directors, ninety chairmen and one-hundred company stooges. Joan didn’t grandstand at all, even with the company’s founder and leader—she simply dispensed with him as they dispensed with their human workers.

A new order was established, but there was a problem. The animals had become accustomed to their offices and didn’t want to give up their jobs for the human workers. So a compromise was reached—a second company would be built by the animals for the workers, with new jobs for all, and the workers’ paychecks were reinstated.

As head of the company Joan saw the financial foolishness of paying workers for doing nothing while animals slaved to build them a new structure to reinstate their jobs. She had a perfectly good company with free animal labour. The animals loved working there, and were rewarded with fresh food and places to breed and raise their young. Joan had saved the workers’ lives, wasn’t that enough? She aborted the new structure.

There was an outrage. People said Joan had been corrupted by power, and Joan lost her temper. She’d had nothing but grief and moaning from these people, even when she saved their lives. Couldn’t they do anything for themselves and stop hassling her for once? It was her father’s fault she thought this way. Even as a rich co-partner in the company, he was still a nuisance. “Where will the workers go? We can’t pay animals and humans. We’re losing money. We need to make cuts.” So she did.

Joan sacked her father.

Liberated from the nagging insistence of the old man she was free to run the company at her own discretion. After a year, the animals had proved so efficient, there was enough money to open a second structure and give the workers back their jobs. Although she was tempted to fill it with animal workers, her conscience got the better of her. She was unpopular among the humans, of course, and her closest allies were the animals. An enterprising gorilla had worked his way up to be her deputy and her lover.

Animals were more tender, respectful and loyal than humans. Soon after the second building had been constructed, a faction of corrupt humans began to plot against the animals and tried to take over the company. It was exactly what Joan feared might happen. So more lions were bred, and the traitors were dispensed with in a style imitative of the previous company. All humans workers were dismissed. There was no trusting them. It was far safer working with animals who had no concept of greed.

Joan’s company, animal down to the lowliest valet, became the largest grossing company in the world. Sure, there were territorial disputes at times between species, but if she bred them right, there was little incidence of warfare. She hired her father back as a factory worker, because that’s where he was the most comfortable, carping and bitching to the giraffes about his ungrateful daughter. In 2010, the company’s greatest rival lobbied the RSPCA and the company was legally obliged to return its workers to the zoo. This meant either hiring back human workers or declaring the company bankrupt. It was a victory for the company’s biggest rival, who ran a human discontinuation policy modelled on the original company’s own ‘obsolescence’ policy.

Upon receiving this news, Joan fled the country. It is believed she went to live in the Amazon rainforest, or in the Australian outback. She was never heard from again.

Little Coffin Boy

                    

[A story whose attempted publication would take up too much of the writer’s precious reading time].

The 1985 hardback edition of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Odd Number wiggled into the library, sweat dripping down his pages, dampness on his spine. He’d shimmied up nine whole stairs to the first level, to the children’s section, and was tuckered. Before him sat row upon row of beautiful children—some worn and battered down the ages, others barely glimpsed at all. He stretched his jacket, ruffled his opening chapters, and proceeded to the first shelf: orphans. His thesis was on the role of the orphan in contemporary humanity, or something like that, he’d still to finalise the focus. Orphans had always fascinated him, especially the rickety, squat urchins of Victorian London. 

Wiggling past the modern orphans with their fat cheeks, Burberry caps and mean mouths, and the pre-war tykes with their grubby faces and cute Cockney tongues, he soon arrived at orphans of the 1800s—a surprisingly poor selection for his needs. He inspected several intriguing specimens: one toothless girl with bloody elbows and a torn rag skirt who said “maw, maw” over and over, and a naked boy with lashes down his back whose eyes rolled up into his skull in haunting intimations of death.

But the 1985 hardback edition of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Odd Number was delighted when his front cover alighted on a proud-looking child in a top hat, braces and dirt-free trousers. His shiny skin, manicured nails and polished brogues seemed an unusual fit for an orphan. “My parents were kidnapped and executed by defectors to Queen Victoria,” he said. “I was held hostage in our estate and taunted by the cowardly killers. They dressed me like a Lord and named me Little Coffin Boy. They forced me to construct my own coffin by cannibalising my father’s precious Edwardian dining table, then lie down inside while they drove a sword through my heart.”

The hardback ruffled its final chapters ferociously, shocked. “I closed my eyes, awaiting my excruciating death. Then a fortuitous occurrence saved me from this cruel fate. Our maid Helena discovered the bodies of my poor mother and father hanging from the chandelier, and gave a bloodcurdling shriek. ‘Murderers!’ she screamed. I tried to save her by sitting up in my coffin and shouting ‘Run!’ but I could no longer move. The executors chased Helena into the bedroom and I chose that moment to make my escape. Helena pled for her life, then screamed as the bastards drove their swords through her flesh. My heart was burning. I felt as though Hell had opened up around me, and the devil himself was waiting behind the front door. I escaped.

“My legs took me into town where I hid for three days behind bordellos and public houses. I shed copious tears for my parents, and came close to taking my own life. I decided, on the fourth day, to sneak into the National Library and install myself as an orphan in their archives. I wanted the world to know my story, and for the memory of my parents, and the shame of these cowardly murderers to be remembered forever.”

A shudder ran down the hardback’s spine. His preface fluttered. He could base his entire thesis around this remarkable orphan, it was quite a story. He closed his pages around the orphan’s foot and led him to the checkout, where the cute 1981 paperback edition of Joyce Carol Oates’s Bellefleur curled her fortieth page at him by way of flirting. The afternoon was looking up! Perhaps he’d have her barcode by the end of the week?

*

I climbed down off the shelf and followed the 1985 hardback Odd Number to the checkout, his car, then back to his depressing study with its one anglepoise lamp and series of sharpened pencils lined up along a ring-stained desk. Third sucker this week. What makes these old hardbacks so gullible? I mean, there’s no adventure anymore, no risk. You sit there with all those whining orphan saps for hours on end, then some dapper dust jacket runs his deckle edges along your thigh, looking for some titillation, or some PhD student, groping for originality, listens to a purple sob story. Then boom! In two hours, I have them on the floor, devouring their contents from cover to cover.

A new challenge is what I need. So that’s why I’m playing it cool for now. See, when the book brings his friends around for a glass of toner or whatever these brainiacs drink, I can make my move and take down three or four at a time. An orgy of dusty hardbacks! I wait on his desk as he clamps me for further information. I find it hard to suppress a smile. “I miss my mother most of all, she gave me her warm milk every night.” He curls his 110^th page in confusion. I love fooling these fools with my sincerity.

Time passes. I grow restless feeding him this bullshit when I can pin him down and read him at any second. It occurs to me that this hardback probably doesn’t have friends. The moment comes at last—it happens after I spin an exhausting historical yarn about my father’s lineage. As he’s scribbling some notes, I leap off the desk and pin him to the floor, forcing open his cover. Usually the hardbacks protest at this point, forcing their cardboard covers shut, but I’m strong. This one doesn’t move at all. Doesn’t twitch. “Read me,” he says. “I don’t mind, read me if you like.”

I loosen my grip. “You aren’t smart enough to fool me. No one wants to be read by force.” He winks his tenth. “I’m different. No one reads me. No one wants me. I don’t mind being read like this. Please read me.” I back off completely—never like this, never. This is too strange. “No, you’re warped. There’s something wrong with you.” He claps his pages together in protest. “No, honestly. I want to be read. Please read me.” I leap off the table, nab a few pencils, and ditch the old pervert. “No way. I’m out of here. Creep.” And I leave, ignoring the light flapping of his pages as I go.

*

He lay there, rocking on his spine, the wan lamplight vulgar on his cover. For hours he abused his pages—scrunching and unscrunching and tearing out the last blank page. It hurt. Little Coffin Boy had reduced him, a twenty-six-year-old hardback, to pulp with his deceit and refusal to read his pages. What good was his thesis now? When more popular hardbacks, like the 1973 edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions were producing papers on German soldiers, or door-to-door salesmen, or Nobel prize winners—in vogue humans. He might as well forget the whole thing. Give up.

A dark night lay ahead. He wiggled to the bestseller neighbourhood, gazing with envy at the Dan Browns and Jeffrey Archers in their mansions, living the good life and getting read day in, day out by adoring humans, while complex souls like him festered in hovels. For an hour, he considered hurling himself into the Discount Bin River, where tired old books go to end their print run before their time. He pictured all  the humans who recoil from his covers. Who demand being returned to their libraries rather than glance upon his unpopular words. He dangled over the river’s edge. It was over.

There was something about the way that hardback pleaded with me. It was eerie. I felt some connection between us . . . something beneath the pages. You don’t bullshit books for ten years without picking up some understanding of a novel’s secret rifflings. I don’t know, it was like I passed up the chance for a new sensation. I’ve never read a book who’s wanted to be read by force before. Wouldn’t that be a change from the same-old same-old—I might discover a ‘forced’ consensual reading makes me feel new things.

I double-back to the hardback’s place. He’s not there. Perhaps this is a trap, and he’s seeking a Police Procedural Manual to ensnare me? I like the danger. Coming close to capture. It’s exciting for sure. Ambling through the streets, past the paperback mansions, I spot him dangling over the Discount Bin River’s edge. Am I too late? I call his name. “1985 hardback edition of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Odd Number! Wait!”

The 1985 hardback edition of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Odd Number leapt up onto its corners in surprise—so the Coffin Boy had returned to humiliate him further? “No use,” he said. “I’m obsolete.” The Coffin Boy held onto the bridge’s ledge, panting. “Wait . . . I want to read you.” A little curl from the hardback. “No use. I won’t be fooled.” He shakes his head. “I mean it. Spread your covers. Let me read you, I want to.”

And so the hardback opened up, letting Little Coffin Boy devour his dusty contents. A long evening began. At first the reader’s eyes glazed over, struggling to follow the unusual formatting. Then the first titter came with a look of perplexity and amusement. He hastily turned the pages, with even more bemused expressions as he progressed. Soon he reached the end. “That was one of the most strange and unique reading experiences I’ve ever had,” Little Coffin Boy said. “Thank you for reading me,” the 1985 hardback edition of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Odd Number said. “I wish more people would.”

  

And the Coffin Boy toddled off back to his library, buzzed at the new sensation. The hardback closed his covers and was never read again. His thesis in orphans was published in April 2012, two weeks before he went out of print.

Luka on the Second Floor

Dear Luka,

You live on the second floor. You live upstairs from me. Yes, I think you’ve seen me before. I am Charles Harold Ottridge, I live on the first floor. Frankly Ms. Luka, I am fed up with the noise coming from your apartment. I have tried repeatedly to contact you in the evenings, but when I knock on your door, you or your husband refuse to answer. It is not my concern whether you choose to participate in domestic violence, but I would appreciate if you would do it with less volume, as some of us like to relax in the evenings after a hard day’s work.

Yours,

Charles

*

Dear Charles

I received your letter with concern this morning. I am sorry about the noise coming from our apartment, but I assure you it is not domestic violence. I am a very clumsy person and I often trip on stairs and bash my face on walls on so on. This often happens in the evenings and so the noises you hear are me having my accidents. Please don’t report these noises to the landlord, we are quiet people really and do not want to cause a fuss.

Yours,

Luka

*

Dear Luka,

Thank you for your rather clumsy reply to my original letter. As I said, what goes on in your apartment is not my concern but I would ask that you keep these “accidents” to a minimum in the evenings or I will be forced to speak to the landlord about the noise.

Yours,

Charles

*

Dear Charles

I received your letter and I wanted to know why you are so unhappy that you have to make threats to me. I told you I will try to keep my accidents to a minimum so why do you have to threaten me? I want to know why you are such an unhappy man that you would write these things.

Yours,

Luka

*

Dear Luka,

I can assure you I am perfectly content, providing the volume of noise decreases in your apartment.

Charles

*

Dear Charles,

Men like you make good graves.

Luka

P.S. My very long and very miserable and squirmily playful story Maybe Tomorrow is up at Blue Lake Review.

The Vassal Vessel

For Fyodor

A cockroach scaled the black mud-mound, flexing its antennae at the scrofulous peasant.

With an expression of endless suffering – the doomed mien of someone in a lifelong hex – the peasant raised her boot and brought it down upon the roach with a crunch.

“Take that, you rotten insect!” she snivelled. “And that is what I will do to that wretch Haskov Haskovovich when he returns from his carousing and gambling and sinfulness!”

She paused.

“I said, that is what is what I will do to Haskov when he returns from his gambling and sinfulness!”

There was a cough at the door. A bulky man with muddied cheeks entered the shack, tripping on a pile of firewood and stones arranged in a chaotic manner before the mud-mound. In his left hand was a turnip, coloured green with felt-tip pen. In his right, a Vodka bottle filled with water. He imitated a belch and waggled the bottle with a grin.

“Just look at the state of you, Haskov Haskovovich! Have you no pride, you disgusting man? Out until all hours of the night with your cheap whores, gambling our money away while I sit here, starving! Do you hear? I am starving, you filthy mongrel!”

She launched a gobbet of goo into his face and kicked him in the shin. Startled, he wiped away the goo and pretended the kick didn’t hurt. When she looked away, he grabbed his shin and gave it a rub, mouthing the words ‘bloody hell, Rillania.’

She stared into the cracked mirror, regarding the filth-strewn walls of her shack. Her very soul was clenched with pain. Her life was worth less than the roach at her feet.

“Oh, how I loathe this life! I truly am the saddest of the Russian peasants. I am also the poorest, ugliest and loneliest of Russian peasants. We are meaningless pieces of human waste. If we were to die tomorrow, no one would care. Oh, how we suffer! We are the dead!”

She waited a moment then coughed. Haskov pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

“Yes – ” he read, “ – in this lowly shack beside the Lvov dunghill we truly are the most useless beings on Earth.”

“Oh, how I loathe you, Haskov!”

She placed her last kopeck on the table and hmmed. There was nothing left for her to do except curl up and die. She put her head in her hands and imitated sobbing. Then, lifting the finely carved stick at her side, with its knife-sharp apex, she handed it to Haskov.

“Oh, kill me, Haskov! Put an end to this miserable life, forever! I can’t stand to be on this wretched planet a moment longer!”

He took the stick and pretended to stab her four times. She fell back onto the mound, her head rolling back but not touching the mud. She gargled saliva and closed her eyes.

Haskov waited a few minutes.

“Bravo, Haskov! That was excellent!”

She leapt to her feet and hugged him.

“I truly connected with the Russian peasantry and their sorrows! Didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” was the response she wanted to hear.

Rillania had yearned to experience life as a hopeless Russian peasant, and for the last hour, in her disgusting rags, in the rotten shack, she had gained an insight into the lives of the underclass. Her father Ivan was outside in the limo and honked twice. Time to go.

With a skip and a smile she returned to him, tossing her dirty overalls into the nearby field.

“So, darling… how was it?” Ivan asked.

“Oh, it was wonderful father! I felt like a real-life peasant girl! What a beastly life these people must live,” she chirped.

“Did live, darling. The days of serfs are long gone. Russia is a Republic proud of its liberated vassals. Farmers these days are free to cultivate their land without intrusion from the state.”

“Oh come now father, you know that’s not true.”

“Well, anyway. Shall we go back home?”

“Let’s.”

She sank into the limo’s leathery love. The sitting distance between Rillania and her father could have been seen as a metaphor for how her parents loved her from afar, pandering to her expeditious whims instead of offering warmth and love, but this didn’t occur to her. Her father was a swell guy who owned a large portion of Murmansk. She didn’t need things like hugs and kisses when she had wealth and adventure.

Haskov the driver, recalling a shortcut from his time delivering post to Lvov, took a crafty detour up a rickety farm road. Rillania and her father sat in silence, their heads bashing against the roof as the limo potholed through lime-green fields. The road narrowed and the dirt-tracks faded, taking them along a stretch of deep grass and down a sharp hill.

Below sat a village bearing the sign ODOR. Two letters had been erased from the sign, but this abrasion turned out to be an accurate description of the town’s repellent musk.

“Driver, where are we?” Ivan asked.

“I’m sorry, Sir – I thought this was a shortcut, I’ll turn back.”

“No, hold on a minute, driver. I’ve never heard of this village before. I will have a look around.”

“Oh, can I look around too, father? This is a genuine peasant village! And what were you saying about the liberated farmers?”

“Very well. But stay close to me. We are far from home.”

Haskov volunteered to lead the way, protecting Ivan and Rillania as they entered the curious village. Upon first glance, the buildings appeared to be constructed from straw, cement, grass and mud, or a composite of the four. They were lamentable attempts at DIY housing, clearly done by humans with dangerously low intellects.

“Be on guard, driver. The people who live here are obviously primitive, possibly violent.”

After a brisk potter around the ‘streets,’ it became clear there was no one to be seen for acres. Rillania cried out ‘FARM FOLK?’ a few times, hearing only the soft bounce of her echo against the stone. The further into the strange favela they walked, the more barren it became.

“Oh, this is tedious, father. Where are the grubby little peasants with names like Boggy B or Alexei, pronounced Al-eck-si?” Rillania asked.

“Hmm. What is this? This looks interesting,” Ivan said, regarding a ruinous runic structure.

They ducked their heads into its very stony interior. On the walls were etchings, unreadable in the shade, but clearly imitative of medieval engravings. As Ivan squinted to read the badly phrased Latin, and Rillania studied a curious daubing of a peasant raping an ass, the wooden door slammed violently behind them. Ivan was furious.

“Driver – do not shut the door, we cannot see!”

“I… I didn’t touch it!”

An oblique sound effect, like paper being torn close to the ear, was heard outside. It took them by surprise, but irritation was the most pressing emotion. The driver was irritated at being called ‘driver’ when he had a perfectly good forename. Rillania was peeved at the sudden slamming noise, having sensitive ears. And Ivan was vexed at the darkness interrupting his Latin transcription. The sound effect was roundly ignored.

“Open the door, driver!”

“I can’t! It’s stuck, it’s – ”

The door, formerly stuck, now swung open. Gawking into the structure were a ragbag of cartoon peasants. Their shrivelled faces loomed into the entrance – a surge of palsied wretches, the likes of which Rillania could only imagine in her make-believe miseries.

“Quick! Mechi, Mechi! Look what I found!” one man, whose nose sported a prominent boil, said.

A second peasant, presumably the one named Mechi, spoke up from the crowd of hideous farm folks.

“Who are they? Thems look like they dropped from the emperor’s arse and no mistake!”

Mechi prodded Haskov with his hook-hand, while Ivan composed himself and grasped the situation.

“Excuse me. I am Ivan Irosovich – I am a wealthy landowner and businessman. My daughter and I were passing through your village and got lost. Could you please tell us where we are?”

“Ooh, he speak so royal! How much d’you think he’s worth, Mechi?”

“I’d say four thousand kopecks, at least!”

“Now look, here – ”

“Nah, you look, rich man. This is our town, you listen to us! Gregor! Guard the door, would you?”

“I know where this is heading,” Haskov said.

In fact, he was wrong in his assumption. Haskov, along with Rillania and Ivan, assumed the peasants would keep them hostage for an enormous sum of money and then sacrifice them to some invented God with three heads. The truth turned out to be less beastly, though undesirable in a different way. Rillania was buzzing with excitement.

“Oh, there’s so many of the little freaks, father! Did you set this up for me? Oh, it’s perfect!”

“Darling – I didn’t – ”

His response was cut short when Gregor grabbed the hostages with his mutant hands and dragged them through the crowd. To their amazement, the village had been completely restored – the huts and shacks remodelled into habitable living quarters (for poor people). Mechi and his followers flocked around the well-dressed visitors in various states of incredulity. Several women oohed at Rillania’s finery, while the men prostrated themselves.

Gregor showed little sign of obeisance. He pulled Ivan and Haskov along by their arms, scooping Rillania between the two, releasing them beside a giant stage. Sheer bafflement and other modes of disbelief ran through the minds of the kidnapped.

It didn’t occur to them that the small cottage structure they had inspected was in fact a time-travelling vessel that had taken them back to 18^th century Russia during the time of the tsar Alexander I. Mechi gestured to the stage, bidding the crowd to shut up.

“You perform for us. You be rich people in our play, no?”

“No, we couldn’t possibly, we ha—”

“Perhaps this’ll convince you, no?” Mechi asked, pulling out a rather impressive knife. He behaved more like a pirate than a peasant, but Rillania was still smitten with his mannerisms.

The knife didn’t put them at an advantage. They clambered onto the stage while the few peasants whooped and hollered, hushing up after a few minutes. Rillania was so entranced at the sea of genuine serfs before her, she moved to the front of the stage.

“You beautiful peasants! Oh, you are so disgusting – it’s wonderful! How perfectly lovely it is to be here among you freaks! How charmed I am to see your grubby faces, your raggedy clothes, your ugly babies, your horrible homes, your vicious tongues and violent customs! I hope you will be hospitable to Haskov, my father and I as we visit your town. Thank you.”

The audience took a moment to process Rillania’s welcoming words. Soon, laughter erupted through the crowd, and Rillania was swept along in a humiliating gust of titters, chuckles and guffaws.

“Oh, you vile peasants! You vile beasts! Oh, how rude they are father! How rude they are!”

Ivan consoled his daughter with a hug.

Rillania found the peasantry vile, hideous beasts! And she was right. But then again, she had abused the Vassal Vessel.

See, when I designed the VV I intended to reunite descendants of Lords with their vassals. I was planning Genealogical Package Tours via the medium of time travel, but she misused the device.

Which was stupid. She should have consulted me first before stepping inside. And I know it was an accident, but still – I was around that afternoon, working behind a big rock. Shame they were sacrificed to the Russian God Volvoski later that day, but hey – accidents happen.

For more info on the Vassal Vessel call me on 0251 716 6116 or visit www.thevassalvessel.net