The Devil in Her

[Extracted from the files of Mark Time P.I.]

Smoke from my cigarette filters orange streetlight shafting through the venetian blinds, obscuring my silhouette; her eyes reflected that streetlight back at me.
On the street they call her Meph. Her mother, who named her Krystal, will have a cadenza if she finds out about the drugs.
Luckily for her, and for me perhaps, I was not hired to analyse her behaviour on the street but merely to find her and return her to the fold of the family mansion.

Life During Wartime

"Don’t forget the real business of the war is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals." ~ Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)

Northern Ireland, The Bogside, Londonderry ~ Don McCullin

We were fifty deep and a mile-long, funnelled down Colonel Lombard Boulevard, hemmed in on both sides by full-body control drones, when we got word that they were going to use a Thrasher on us.
Word had it that they were transporting it from their western depot where it had been kept on ice since the ‘66 insurgency.
We didn’t panic, we were connected, close-called, we had eyes on the roofs, we had voices in our heads. The march leaders crossed the railway bridge at a dead run then split left and right and we followed, a river of angry souls in a mechanised gauntlet; those of us at the rear starting fires with the debris of our protest in an almost certainly futile attempt to slow the progress of the machine, we lost a few there, gone in puffs of red vapour.
Some way down the left-hand split on the other side of the railway bridge, we filtered off into the adjacent rapeseed field, our presence dwindling to jostled yellow waves as we disappeared through the black hill horizon. We heard later that many didn’t make it through the night.

Three months later I’m in the hills with a group of mostly peaceful men who believe themselves to be the revolutionary army.
We have rifles and uniforms printed in Aurorae and financed by cryptos and ores accumulated before the fall. I’m not sure about the guns: thus far no trigger has been pulled in anger but we’ve come close, and always in the stupidest of situations- I dread the time to come when our integrity will be forced up against the reality of our struggle.
We enter the High Llama Market and, grinning widely, Garvey waves his empty sack at me as if to include me in his conspiracy, as if I’ll automatically cave in to his extortion, as I usually do. As usual I do; Garvey is not the brightest bulb in our little box but he’s a mad fucker in a fist fight and we all know he will be the one who will get it done when the time comes – whatever ‘it’ may be.
The air is spiced with cooking food, a sharp contrast to the blandness endured during the last 3 weeks of exile where just-add-water is the norm.
The vendor weighs my gold shavings to the milligram while holding my purchases in abeyance as I scan the crowd for eyes, trusting her to be honest, trusting by her face-tattoos that she is one-of-us. As for the rest, the establishment will always have enough to buy the services of a certain type of being.
Paranoia is a close companion; one I will never trust implicitly.

Tales for an attention deficit world

A Rose by Any Other Name

Dining with Cannibals - Insalata

It is in the nature of those whose education has brought them to a position devoid of creativity, to immerse themselves in the propagation of corporate bullshit.

Jean Girard

The meeting is concluded without tangible results but with a plethora of ‘going forwards’ and arse-covering; drilling down and parking; expediting tasks allocated; tracking actions agreed and catered cardboard lunch triangles consumed.
JK sails off to the next meeting on his calendar, consoling himself with the fact that while projected objectives have not been met, directives from on high have been placated.
Hobre wanders off to check that employees are complying to the Handrail Directive being pushed out by his department in an attempt to minimise the stairway trip and fall epidemic that has been plaguing the medical insurance world for the last few years.
Swann gathers up his notebook (newly annotated with many of the allocated tasks mentioned above) and rushes back to his office where he has left an unfinished session of online mah-jong hidden behind his tracker spreadsheet. Once seated in his ergonomically correct office chair, mouse under palm, he feels the emptiness fill him up like cold water down a curry throat.
Pinky Derailleur remains in meeting room G12 and gazes at the notes scrawled across the whiteboard in blotchy, almost rub-out-able green ink – part calculation, part flow, mostly indecipherable to a man whose skills lie outside of the strictly technical aspect of engineering. His mind wanders, as is his way, into the contemplation of the product on which this whole industry, indeed this whole civilisation, is built: the gazillion year old black ooze forged by tectonic forces from the remains of extinct dinosaurs. The culture of death which runs like a seam through the weave of the industry responsible more than any for the products we do not see but that make up just about all of what passes as civilisation in the westernised world.
Death-based economics: obscene profit in exploitation that offers no recognition of the fact that the extinction-based fuel upon which it exists is a major factor driving this 21st century dinosaur itself to extinction.

All-you-can-eat Capitalism

Glass Houses

Tetsunori Tawaraya

Behind walls insulated to isolate, the King of the Western World clenches his buttocks to avoid leakage into the perfumed boardroom where they sit to decide how the pie will be carved up. The question is moot since all present know who the eaters will be, and all that remains is to decide who among the eaters will gain control of the crumbs and scraps.
“Which one of you cardboard cunts is gonna give me Timeline Indemnity on this, I don’t care…”
The immense stained-glass window commissioned by the city and executed by the Queen’s favourite artist is shattered by four-and-twenty flying figures into shapes that do not comply with safety regulations; the Jester takes one in the eye and is unable to scream for long milliseconds, a task taken up by his right-hand man but swiftly curtailed as both their throats are slit by scalpel-wielding blackbirds.
“This is a message from the thin men in the street” proclaims another frictionless-black feather-clad figure in a voice filtered through a myriad of satellite-housed software.
The King’s head is removed in a single slash of flashing steel.
Media-bots circle to capture the spectacle in hi-rez-slo-mo-porno-graphic detail as the city’s low bass howl rushes in to drown out the high treble notes of still-falling stained-glass shards.

Tales for an attention deficit world

Memo from The Department of Anger

I used to think that my anger must stem from some childhood trauma; what other explanation could there be? Older (not necessarily wiser) I now believe that I am angry at a shitty world full of shitty people because it doesn’t have to be this way.
We don't have to believe that everybody should get out of our way because we're in a hurry.
We don't have to believe that a bigger car will make us better than our neighbour.
We don't have to believe that anyone who doesn't conform to our worldview is a terrorist.
We don't have to believe that the world owes us a favour.
We don't have to believe in the myth of happiness provided by possession.
We don't have to bow to authority.

Curtains

May I call you Margaret?

Al rounds the corner, hands in pockets and head hung low.
Ginger’s waiting; she’s been waiting a while.
“You’re late Al” she says in that calm, matter-of-fact way that Al knows so well.
“There’s a riot going on on the Underground” he says taking the vape from his pocket.
Ginger watches him take a long suck.
“There’s always a riot going on on the underground” she says.
He exhales a sweet-scented cloud of dimensions disproportionate to his skeletal frame.
“I'm here now”
Ginger puts her hand out, palm up, “Keys” she says.

Tales for an attention deficit world

Dining with Cannibals - Contorno

It is in the nature of those whose business is money to use the nature of things to their advantage.

The Pleasure Principle ~ Magritte

As Numbers leaves the meeting, Pinky Derailleur, Head of Human Remains, powerful beyond all reasonableness, (some say more powerful than old Volere himself), looks over at the Engineering Manager and, catching his eye, winks. Swann blushes deeply and looks back down at his notebook.
Pinky smiles to himself, Amateurs, he thinks.
Pinky, whose mother named him Rene, considers himself a connoisseur of all things politic, as far as who is stabbing who, and what they hope to gain; it is Pinky’s business to know.

All-you-can-eat Capitalism

Electric Dreams

roses and lies - Olivier Bonhomme

When you wander through the walkways, above space ship launches off the fingertips of their galaxy spiral, below killer whales hunting in the Arctic, you might wonder at your wonder at the creativity of their self-delusion.
The walkways hum with everything they are as a species –define who they are: a myriad of combinations, alive; diverse and dangerous.
Borrowers and burrowers plague the passing throng with promises and threats; trinkets to carry with you always.
The walkways offer no alternatives than to consume: everybody has to eat.
Nico hadn’t been out for a while, she’d been hiding from the loss of Jan, unable to pull herself back to that place where her head and heart had been in equilibrium.
She’s become sensitised to the intrusive nature of the last remaining advert: the advert offered up on the walkways, offered most strongly; the advert that promises a reality so divorced from the hard facts of life; so enticing to her sweet-tooth.
Nico bites her ego’s tongue and takes in the dark beauty of the walkways; their neon, luminescent, psychotropic lure; the myriad of tongues and the night air laced with the cooking of spiced food; she feels her head floating amid the throng; one cluster of charged particles amid an electric storm.

Tales for an attention deficit world

I'm Your Ghost

Chiesa della Sanità o dei Cappuccini - Tropea, Italia ~ by Photo P.I.

At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now ... you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. ~ Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion

If I were to say that Pisces Iscariot is a voice inside the head of Garth Erickson some of you might surmise that I am describing a madman (or that I am a madman myself?).
But what is madness other than a spectrum of words that run from Normal, through Quirky and Eccentric to Nut-job.
The sad fact is that we start the descent into madness the moment we (consciously or unconsciously) do not or cannot conform.
(Unconsciously) “I cannot conform to your standards of beauty”
(Consciously) “I will not conform to your standards of beauty”
Yup, you’ve made the first step.
We can get away with these deviations from the norm in small measures but once we’ve accumulated a certain number we head into the realms perceived as quirky or eccentric.
Now we all know what quirky means; and eccentric is classified as mostly harmless; but we become full blown fruitcakes when people can no longer recognise themselves in us.
Neither Pisces Iscariot nor Garth Erickson are clinically insane (at least I don’t think they are; but then who am I to say?) but where Erickson is self-consciously aware of his place in the world, Pisces is the voice that has no need to censor his responses to that world.

Pisces Iscariot is not always comfortable with his own name by the way: it’s a perfect name, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a stolen name.
He sometimes wishes he’d been called Pisces Asparagus.

I Wish I'd Never Bought Those Books

Depth Charges

Rodney L Smith

Once again it comes down to a question of gravity.
Riuchi, breathing slow and deep, stands on the lip and contemplates the gap.
The difference between height and depth seems to depend on the media with which the gap is filled.
Riuchi, looking inward, finds nothing worth the climb, nothing worth the dive, nothing but the gap.
The similarities between here and there are the bridge by which he will travel; a side door in the corridor of understanding; an entrance to the halls of an alien mind.
Riuchi, moving outward like a rippling wave in the pond of all existence, meets the true meaning of all his ragged learning.
Once again it comes down to gravity; the weakest force in the universe; the heaviest word in the English language.

Tales for an attention deficit world

Ghetto

Squirrels squabble in the autumn leaf carpet

Scratch up the grey tree-trunks

Beat up passing cows

Disturb the peace cos they can

They’re the meanest motherfuckers in the neighbourWood