Oil Head

Richard Godwin

Oil head, snake-skin, all them things.

An’ more.

I like the slow grease that comes off them. Though a snake’s drier’n a kettle drum.

I wipe the grease onto my rag and bend down low into them engines, fixin’ their parts, getting their cars to work, an I do ’m good, that’s the general consensus round here.

I can make a razor whistle in the breeze behind my garage when the sun’s goin down, and I can fix your engine for you in no time, ma’am.

She brought it up one hot evening when all I wanted to do was shower.

I’d been fixin’ Jim’s Buick an’ done a good job.

Only garage round here for miles.

I got a reputation.

I hear an engine pull up an I know from the rattlin’ sound it’s work.

I know everyone’s engine noise round here and I knew this was a stranger.

As I looked up, I saw her legs first. Then out she got, in that dress that just shimmered in the late summer heat.

“ ‘Scuse me,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I seem to be lost, an’ my engine’s rattlin’ something awful. Would you have a look at it? I’ll pay cash.”

It was a Trans Am, an’ she looked good in it.

I knew there was nothing wrong with it other than the gasket an’ need of an oil change, but I told her she’d have to wait while I looked it over.

She sat on my stool, an’ I checked her engine while she chatted.

“Where am I?”

“This here place is called Switchville, ma’am.”

“Is that right?”

“Most folk ain’t heard of it.”

“It is a little off the beaten track.”

“You could say that. Mind if I ask where you’re headin’?”

“Just drivin’,” she said, an’ I figured no one knew where she was.

She had no wedding ring, but was a good-lookin’ lady. Expensive clothes, never worked hard in her life.

“I’ll need to keep it overnight.”

By now the sun was going down, settin’ hard and fast in them deep hills, and the dogs’d start to barkin’ soon.

She didn’t look surprised, just a little scared and said:

“Is there no way you could fix it for me?”

I wiped my hands on my rag and looked at her.

“What’s the hurry?”

“I need to be somewhere.”

“It’s a big job.”

“I can pay whatever you’re askin.’ ”

So I figured what was the difference, anyway, and set the highest price I ever have.

She didn’t bat an eyelid, and so I said:

“Ma’am, that’s an awful lot of cash.”

“You don’t believe me? I’ll give you some now,” she said, and going into the trunk of her car, fetched out a bag and gave me half.

I could see her bag bulge with what was more of it an’ I figured I was onto a good thing.

She turned and sat back on my stool, her figure all tight in her dress an’ I started on the job.

“It’ll take a while ma’am. You’ll be leavin’ in the dark.”

“Anywhere I can get something to eat round here?”

“Well, there’s Jim’s place.”

“Where’s that?”

“Two mile up the road.”

“Two miles? I can’t walk that in these shoes.”

She flashed one of them at me an’ a good dose of leg an’ thigh while she was at it.

“I’ll take you, he can bring you back.”

I put her in his Buick and set off.

“You don’t believe in locking up your garage?”

“No point.”

I noticed she kept her bag with her.

Jim opened after a bit of banging and said he’d fix the lady something an’ bring her back.

She looked around at the tables and rickety chairs.

“What kind of place is this?” she said.

She wasn’t the first to make that comment, an’ won’t be the last.

Jim ignored her and started rustling up his stew. It works every time.

I fixed her gasket and changed her oil an’ showered an’ changed an’ drank some beer an’ had a good supper an’ waited till she came back.

It was late when I heard Jim’s tires shred the dust outside.

He pulled her out, her head lolling on one side.

“All yours, Oil Head,” he said. “Stew’s done it.”

An’ he screeched off.

I took her out back an’ she started to come round. That’s how I like it.

She saw me going through her bag an’ getting my money. There was a hell of a lot more.

“What are you doin’?” she said, all groggy an irritable.

“Just getting my pay, ma’am.”

“Give me that.”

She made a swipe for the bag.

“Your car’s fixed, but I don’t think you’ll be goin’ anywhere.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?”

“You gonna drive like that?”

“Like what?”

An’ she staggered an stumbled all over the place.

“What kind of a hick place is this anyway? I ain’t seen no houses, only you an’ that other fella.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

An’ she gave me a look I really didn’t like.

“What were you expectin’?”

“You hicks.”

“Got our own way of doin’ things out here in Switchville.”

“Is that right?”

“Sure is.”

The dogs were barking in the hills now and she turned at the noise.

“I’m leavin’.”

“You sure about that?”

An’ I grabbed her an’ her little bitty dress and pulled it right off her and watched her expression change all slow to anger and shock and then she started to run, but I caught her an’ got hold of her and down there on the floor with all the oil stains and the grease an, bits of used car engine, I lay on top of her, an’ she screamed till the dogs went howlin’ way into the night an’ them dogs must have raised a noise you could hear for miles an’ then she stopped.

“You fuckin’ grease monkey,” she said.

“Well, what’s wrong with a little grease, ma’am? It’s what makes you work down there, oils you up for my pistons,” an’ I gave her ass a little slap.

Then I whipped out my razor and cut her up an’ gave her the treatment.

She screamed real loud when I started turnin’ her to jar.

I had ’em all lined up, my pretty jars.

“No one’ll hear you,” I said, “only Jim.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna pickle you, ma’am.”

“You fuckin’ hick bastard.”

I cut her up real good, ’cause we don’t take no disrespect here.

An’ I cut her in hunks, and settled her down real sweet into my oils, an’ she sat there in them jars pretty as a picture.

Jim just loved it.

We sold her car, an’ got good money for it.

I pickled her well, her rich body, and I tell you it smells even better now with my treatment on it than when I first whipped that dress off her ass. She was out of her way and askin’ for it, that’s what Jim said.

She’s in oil.

Her engine parts winkin’ inside them jars.

Most folk don’t understand the value of grease.

Oil’s good an’ll slick a situation up real fine.

She suits oil, good-lookin’ lady like that.

An the oil’ll keep her lookin’ real good.

The Plumber

by Richard Godwin

He sat at the back of the caf, egg dripping from his stained spoon, greased mobile clenched in his hand.

“Na, fuck off, I ain’t doin’ that.”

He laid his mobile down and bit hard into the two slices of toast wedged together with plastic egg, yolk squirting out of the sides and landing on the front cover of the Sun which read:

“THIS COUNTRY’S GONE LOONEY!”

He was six foot and overweight, and he ignored the trainee who was looking bored and staring out of the window at two teenage girls who were laughing at something.

The plumber looked at his trainee and followed the line of his eyes.

“Fuckin’ slags,” he said.

“Why d’you ’ave to say that ,’Arry? They ain’t.”

“Look at them. Arses hanging out, beer bellies, dear, oh dear, whatever ’appened to decency, they look like a couple of scrubbers.”

“They’s just young women, ’Arry.”

“Na. You wanna get yourself a nice girl, Mick.”

Mick stirred his cold tea with disinterest and yawned while Harry flicked open the Sun.

“Now look at that,” Harry said.

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference?”

“Between them girls there and them out there?”

“They’re fuckin models, you prat. Class paper, this,” Harry said, leafing through its pages. “ ’Ere, these geezers go out for a Ruby right, get slaughtered and one of ’em moons the waiter. ’Is mate bites his arse and gets his false teeth stuck up ’is crack. Fucking classic.”

Soon they left and headed to the first job.

Mick was pale skinned and in the sunshine looked like a blank sheet ready to be imprinted by Harry. He wore a look of permanent dissatisfaction and looked too clean for the van, which was strewn with litter. Here and there were signs that he was trying to blend in with Harry. His trousers were overly dirty and he had a large rip in his T-shirt that looked manufactured. He was unshaven and the resulting effect of this was a small wispy beard.

Harry didn’t stop talking all the way to the job and Mick stared from time to time at Harry’s hands, which were covered in tattoos.

“So what we doing, ’Arry?” he said.

“Blocked drain in Wandsworth.”

“It’s always blocked drains or toilets.” 

“No it ain’t, two fucking minutes on the job and he thinks he knows it all. Mick, I’ve seen things I could put in a novel doing this game, it’d be a bestseller, I can tell ya.”

“Like what?”

“I know all sorts, all fucking sorts.”

“Yeah?”

“I tell ya, one night I ’ad to fix some loos in a nightclub in London. The ladies toilets were overflowing with piss and water, like a fucking swimming pool they were.”

“An’ why was that?”

“OK. I goes in there and wade through it all in me wellies.”

“Right.”

“I can tell right away it’s this one loo, bunged up it was, something terrible.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I fuckin’ fixed it, you burke.”

“Na, I mean—”

“I know what you mean, Mick. I get me old plunger out but nothing’s ’appening, know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.”

“So I rod down, deep down in there, and in this job, me old son, you gotta get your ’ands dirty, that’s what I always say to the fucking smartarses who mouth off about ’ow much plumbers charge. ’Ow much fu-cking plumbers charge! You stick your arms in someone else’s shit every day and you’d fucking charge, you cunt.”

“So what ’appened?”

“I tell you, my old lady ’as two washing machines, cause we’re posh. If I stuck me workclothes in the one she washes the kids’ clothes in, they’d be covered in shit, know what I’m saying?”

“What d’you find in the toilet?”

“I stick me arm in and fish out a pair of knickers.”

“Knickers?”

“Yeah, some old tart had crapped ’erself an’ flushed them down the loo.”

“Ah, that’s fuckin’ disgusting.”

“All part of the job, me old man. Get out of the way, you cunt.”

Harry leant out of the window and spat a large gob of phlegm that looked like a piece of potato. It arced and landed on the offending driver’s windscreen.

“Yeah, well, I don’t plan on doing this for long,” Mick said.

“Oh, yeah, what you got planned, running for Parliament?”

“No need for that.”

“I tell you, me old son, I seen some things. You learn a lot about human nature on this job and you get an insight into crime.”

“Crime?”

“You know how many wallets I’ve fished out of loos?”

“Na.”

“ ’Undreds, fucking ’undreds, mate. Pickpockets steal ’em, knick the contents an’ flush ’em.”

“Fuckin’ stupid, if you ask me.”

“Well, I ain’t askin’ you, I’m telling ya. This is like sociology, this job, you see what people are made of, what they’re about and it ain’t just the low life, it’s the posh ones too.”

“You charge ’em more?”

“Course I fuckin’ charge ’em more, the cunts. They look down their noses at people like us and we go into their ’ouses and fix their shit for ’em. Tell you what, Mick, I was called to this job once in ’Amstead, big fuckin’ gaff, massive and the loos were all flooded and I took one look at the slag who opened the door and I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“It was ’er.”

“What was ’er?”

“I’ll tell ya. She ’ad guilt written all over ’er face. You see, I know ’ow loos work and what goes where and I know when someone’s lyin’, I’ve heard all the lies under the sun and it’s made me a bit of a psychologist, see.”

“So what ’appened on this job?”

“What ’appened was, all the loos were bunged up with condoms, ’undreds of the fuckers.”

“So?”

“The lady, she’s wafting around in a negligee, showing a bit ’ere and there, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah?”

“Good looker she was, but a slag. Anyway, when I tell ’er about the condoms, she starts adjusting ’er belt and flashes ’er gash at me, just a little glimpse and then she looks me right in the eye and says, don’t tell my husband.”

“She was screwing someone else.”

“Course she fucking was. ’Er old man’s doddering about in the next room writing a check, and ’e’s a bout a ’undred and she’s not bad ,as I said.”

“Did she?”

“Did she what?”

“You know.”

“Fuck off. I’m a ’appily-married man.”

“So what did you do?”

“I fu-cking overcharged ’em so much, it paid for me missus’s Range Rover.”

“Look at that.”

Mick was staring at some scantily-dressed women who were walking across the road.

Harry took one look at them and said, “You’d catch something nasty off them.”

“ ’Ow d’you know?”

“I fuckin’ know, me old son.”

“I think they’re tasty.”

“You wouldn’t know tasty if it sucked your knob.”

“Why’s it always loos?”

“It ain’t, there’s sinks and boilers, cockstops and drains, external soil pipes with shit running down ’em and all sorts of pipe work. Son, you’re in the right game. Fuck off, you wanker!”

This last comment was aimed at a man who was loitering in front of Harry’s van.

He put two fingers up at Harry who hurled his half-drunk can of Red Bull at him, spraying him with its contents.

“That’s a waste,” Mick said.

“I ’ate fuckin’ cunts like that. Where was I? You see, this is an old trade and what you want , Mick, is a trade. We’s got words that go back to Chaucer.”

“ ’Oo?”

“Chaucer, ain’t you never ’eard of ’im?”

“No.”

“’E wrote plays. There’s something we call a bastard in this game, and it was used in ’is day, fourteenth century.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“The cunts in Europe want us to change our terms cause they ain’t fuckin’ politically correct. They say they demean women.”

“Why do they say that?”

“’Cause they want to get rid of our Englishness.” He tapped the George flag that was stuck to the roof of his van. “Still flyin’.”

“Ever seen something really gruesome?”

“Oh, yeah. I could be a copper, I could, with what I’ve seen and they need fellas like me.”

“’Ow come?”

“’Cause I can tell if a crime’s been committed.”

“What crimes you seen?”

“Mainly theft. But I tell you, it’s only a matter of time.”

He pulled over and parked outside a large white house.

“This it?” Mick said.

Harry nodded.

“I seen tampons, sanitary towels, rags, and clothes stuck where they shouldn’t be but one time I ’ad me ’and down a drain and I felt all this hair.”

“Hair?”

“Hair, me old son.”

“What was it?”

“I tell ya, Mick, I thought it was a fuckin’ ’ead.  I was pullin’ on it, wondering what state of decay it would be in.”

“Was it an ’ead, ’Arry?”

“The ’ouse belonged to some pop star, ’e ’ad this long ’air, see?”

“Yeah.”

“ ’E ’d been washing ’is ’air and it ’ad all gone down the plug ’ole and accumulated into this big thick ball. I fished it out and it was huge.”

Mick was laughing when they got out of the van.

A pile of puke was hardening in the morning sun and two empty beer bottles were propped against the gate to the house.

“This shouldn’t take long,” Harry said.

He rang and they were admitted by a maid in a starched white uniform who led them through to the back where a drain was overflowing.

“Typical, she never even offered us a cup of tea,” Harry said, as he assembled his rods.

“ ’Ere, give us a hand.”

He prodded for an hour or so and the water level didn’t drop.

The owner came out, a man in a pinstriped suit, looking sweaty. He offered them tea and the maid brought it to them on a tray.

“That’s better,” Harry said.

Mick looked down at the drain.

“What now?”

“We get in.”

He donned his Wellingtons and waterproofs and stood waist high in the water. He reached a hand down into it.

“There’s something in the way there. I can feel it.”

He fetched the jet hose from the van and started up the pump and after an hour the water had dropped.

Harry stood in it again while Mick watched.

“I tell you, this job shows you a lot, Mick,” he said. “You see what people really get up to.”

Harry reached his hand down into the water and started to pull on something. 

“There are a lot of crazy fuckers in London and a lot of crime. This is a tough fucker I tell you, ’ere it goes, it’s coming, fuck me!”

Harry stood with a head in his hand.

The flesh of the neck had sealed off and was a whitish blue and the discoloration of the face was so grotesque, Mick started to retch.

Harry stood there, staring at it.

“Call the fucking police.”

He placed it on the ground and clambered out of the water.

The head lay like a rotten wound in the sun.

Soon the stench of it overpowered the smell of excrement and stagnant water.

Mick stood at the edge of the garden, looking away.

“I told you this job was full of surprises,” Harry said.

The police took a while arriving and when the owner saw what had been blocking up his drain, he vomited on the flagstones in the yard.

It sprayed remnants of food and bile everywhere ,and the sharp smell rose into the air and foundered on the rank aroma of decay.

When the police arrived, Harry said, “Let me do the talking.”

Christmas Stuffing

by Richard Godwin

As a white dusting of snow covered the street outside, Marsha Bland finished applying lipstick to her plump lips.

Marsha loved Christmas.

She called it the time of giving and would spend hours preparing her husband Tom’s favorite dishes.

She ordered the best Norfolk turkeys, which she stuffed with relish, pulling out the giblets with her bare hands which she liked to wipe on the front of her apron.

She was immaculately fussy about hygiene but the sight of the intestines on her front was a secret turn-on.

Her arousal was augmented by the sherry she drank while cooking, as Tom would relax in the living room watching TV.

He loved her Christmas stuffing, describing it as “An orgasm in the mouth.”

She made it herself, using a secret recipe which she refused to share with anyone.

It was true her stuffing was delicious, a fact testified to by all her guests.

They would have the Malcolms round every Christmas, get drunk and she would flirt with Jack while Tom eyed Patti’s buxom figure.

Marsha said cooking was her therapy.

After the breakdown, when she found Tom in bed with his secretary, she took Prozac, but one day said, “I don’t feel I’m me anymore,” and stopped.

She found herself one sunny afternoon with a pair of scissors in her hand. She had the blades on either side of Tom’s favorite suit, the one he’d worn the day she found him with his secretary.

That moment was like coming out of a dream and Marsha wondered how she’d got there.

She left the bedroom, replaced the scissors in the kitchen drawer and promptly started cooking, soothed by the sound of sizzling in the skillets.

She forgave Tom, who swore he would never stray again, and she analyzed her failings, finding it easier to blame herself for his infidelity.

She concluded she had not been a good wife, and began to cook lavish meals for him every night.

She always liked to add a little something extra to her dishes.

That year, as snow covered London like icing sugar, she played her favorite Christmas songs and began to make preparations for their lunch.

The Malcolms were coming.

It was just them this year.

The absence of children in Marsha’s life was an occasional itch she would scratch with food.

She felt so long as she fed Tom, she had him, and never questioned whether he would stray again.

She wanted to fatten him up like a plump little duck and she would occasionally get frustrated by Tom’s lack of weight gain, a by-product, he said, of his frequent visits to the gym.

That Christmas Eve, Marsha stood dressing in front of the long mirror in their bedroom.

She’d just got back from visiting her sister and was ready for the cooking the next two days would entail.

She looked at her full figure and knew she was an attractive woman.

Her evening dress hung from a knob on the cupboard and she put on a pair of running pants and an old sweatshirt.

She looked at herself and screamed, “Cunt!”

Then she went downstairs to her car.

She put a toolbox in the boot and started the engine.

A few miles away, Mary Hart was getting out of the bath.

She rubbed oils into her skin and put on a deep red dress.

She looked at herself with satisfaction and puckered her lips, pressing a Kleenex between them as she applied burgundy lipstick.

She was an attractive brunette with a look of used decadence in her eyes.

As she stepped into the hall outside her flat, she was hit with a heavy object and landed on the carpet. Marsha found Mary’s keys in her handbag and dragged her back into the flat where she proceeded to strip her.

As Mary came to, she stared up at Marsha’s obsessed face and screamed.

She quickly found a gloved hand over her mouth.

Marsha straddled her and held her down with one hand. In her other hand she held a long filleting knife.

“Listen, bitch,” she said, “you don’t fuck my husband.”

Mary was trying to speak and Marsha released her grip.

“I haven’t slept with him.”

“I saw it all on CCTV, you fucking him in the Jacuzzi.”

“Get out.”

Mary was struggling and kicked Marsha, knocking her off balance.

Mary got to her feet.

“Get out of here before I kill you.”

“You kill me? Look at you.”

“Yeah, look at me. I’m everything you’re not.  You know what Tom likes the best about me? My tits. He loves coming inside me, he loves fucking me.”

“Does he?” Marsha said with a coldness that stalled Mary.

She rose slowly and penetrated Mary’s stomach with the knife. The sound of flesh and silk tearing merged as blood ejaculated from the wound and Mary clutched her stomach.

And Marsha stabbed her in the chest, the knife lodging and vibrating there like a tuning fork.

She could see Mary’s intestines through the wound and she watched Mary’s hands drip with blood.

She waited for Mary to die and when she lay still, she stood over her, knife in hand.

“ ‘Mary, the bitch,’ I used to call you, Mary with the tits and nothing else, you advertise your cunt for any passing man. If you fuck my husband, there is a price to pay and you are about to pay it. I knew you were after him the first time I saw you cross the room to speak to him. There’ll be no more room crossings for you now.”

She took one last look at Mary and removed her breasts. Then she pulled a plastic bag from her pocket and placed them in it. She put this in the hold-all she had with her.

She left the flat, returned home, and showered.

Then she drove to Mr. Gravinge before he shut.

Carols were playing in the shop and she felt high.

Mr. Gravinge was behind the counter and greeted her with his usual warmth.

“My dear Marsha, how delightful you look this year, I can tell you have something special planned.”

“Mr. Gravinge, I do, how astute you are.”

She selected her ingredients and placed these on the counter.

“Stuffing?” Mr. Gravinge said.

“My stuffing,” Marsha said.

“Have a wonderful Christmas.”

“You, too.”

She walked round the counter and kissed him on the cheek, leaving him beaming as she left the shop and drove home.

Tom was drinking a whisky when she got in.

She said little to him and spent the evening preparing everything for the next day.

Then she passed a dreamless night and awoke at dawn.

She spent all morning cooking and was in the kitchen when the doorbell chimed.

She came into the hallway smoothing her dress as Tom greeted the Malcolms.

“Jack, Patti,” he said, shaking hands and kissing Patti on the cheek.

Marsha watched as he did this, making sure it was her cheek not her mouth.

She took them through to the living room and made them drinks.

           “Smells good,” Jack said.

“I have a little treat for you this year,” Marsha said.

“Something different?” Jack said.

“It’s a surprise.”

She left them and went into the kitchen with her glass of wine, closing the door.

She removed the turkey and fetched the plastic bag from the cupboard.

Mary’s tits stared at her like candied cherries on a pink blomange.

She poured some of her blood from the bag and basted the turkey with it.

Then she cut Mary’s breasts into strips that resembled bacon rashers and placed these on the bird.

She diced the rest, including the nipples, and added these to her stuffing which she inserted into the turkey with vigor.

She poured the rest of the blood into the baking tray and put it back in the oven.

Then she joined the others.

A few hours later, merrily drunk, they sat down to eat.

Tom carved, rubbing the knife against the fork and looking with relish at the bacon.

He stuck the knife in the turkey. It reminded Marsha of the filleting knife as it vibrated in Mary’s chest.

“You always remember,” he said.

“That you like your rashers,” Marsha said.

“These look particularly tasty.”

“I know what you like, Tom.”

“Sounds like the Dunmow Flitch,” Jack said.

“What, as in the bacon awarded by the village of Dunmow to the couple that had stayed together for the year?” Patti said.

“That’s it,” Jack said.

Marsha tittered as Tom carved.

“Jack, what’s your pleasure?” he said.

“Leg.”

“All the more breast for me,” Tom said.

“You like your breast, don’t you, Tom?” Marsha said, “Dig deep into the stuffing.”

Their plates were covered with meat and a richly red gravy which circled what remained of Mary’s tits. The meat was thick and chewy and they ate every morsel.

Afterwards, Jack sat back with a satisfied look and said, “That stuffing is incredible. It’s the best stuffing I’ve ever tasted.”

“What do you put in it?” Patti said.

“It’s a secret,” Marsha said.

Tom sat picking at a bit of meat that had lodged itself in his teeth.

“She never tells anyone,” he said, extracting a small pink filament and inspecting it before popping it back in his mouth.

They returned to the living room and had more drinks.

Marsha felt happy and played her favorite Christmas music.

The Malcolms left at about eleven and Marsha turned to Tom in the hallway as he shut the door and said, “Let’s go to bed.”

“Good idea,” he said.

Upstairs, he watched Marsha undress and get in bed next to him.

“I’m a lucky man,” he said, touching her breasts. “I have a great wife who cooks the most amazing food.”

Marsha leaned towards him.

She pulled down her top.

“Tom, do you want to know what’s in my stuffing?”

THE CRACKING OF THE SHELL

by Richard Godwin

She brings me leaves from the field beyond my aching indigo window

Its veins of oceanic blue etched there

In hissing acid sleet that falls

Soundlessly on the dripping trees

She lays them by my heart

And wraps her tendril hands across my sweating

Scars that show no sign

Of whitening beneath the deep black deep lack

Of the man she imagined me to be

I root my hungry hand in the soil of her flesh

Her eyes change color as she whispers

Unshackle the chain beloved and find me beneath the gravestone

But there the leaves are faded

They have no color and no song in their stark

Brittle lacklustre death

And her eyes seek hesitation’s moment for some pitch perfect malady

The veil tearing

A glimpse

Of the broken Soul

Bound to a wheel

I try to tear the moss from the stone that hides my way back

The hard cold surface flaking away like my skin until the bones

Jut through the thin wrapping we carry with us

Is that all we are  

And all of them all

The ones I knew are standing here at the doorway

Where the air feels like ice

And I cannot see where the corridor beyond this room ends

I am clutching for myself

But my hands fall through air

It seems to be the shape of broken eggs

And I can hear crying and my hand is filled with blood

But if it were only blood

The spent juice of living breath

Like a breaking tide

The familiar body and face now a shadow in this red twilight

The air assumes some liquid form

In its myriad mystery

Why so many Yew trees in the cemeteries

Why so many nights spent watching

The breath hollow and alone

I dig for her there beneath the broken stone

The Man in the T-Shirt

by

Richard Godwin

At night I drive through the city. The road sounds like a broken bone beneath my wheels, I am driving over broken bones, the skulls and skeletons of all the dead, gone in the war and buried like dogs alone at night or in the daytime that brings no sunlight now, just a wound in the skyline.

I look down on the city of dreaming lights from my hotel window.

It is past midnight and I stand on the twenty-fourth floor.

The streets coil like an electric snake around the houses and the lights stretch all the way to the edge of the horizon.

Below me the river flows with some freezing frequency against the electric heat and charge.

The city bristles with deceit and crime.

I can taste it.

The freeway buzzes with a hive of cars like bees released and hungry for nectar.

The nectar these drivers seek are hookers they visit on their way from work.

They stop at sports clubs to shower the women’s flesh from them before donning virtue like a worn hat.

There is no hush.

I watch these men and women who use nighttime to do the things they do.

I see a car stop in the road below me.

Through the reinforced glass of my window and at this height the man who gets out is less real than an actor on the TV I do not put on.

I am tired of the same dish it serves me.

I want new excitement.

He stands in the middle of the road and starts yelling.

A blonde woman in a fur coat gets out.

It is not yet cold enough for fur, although the signs of winter are in the air daily as I walk the block to fetch the newspaper I throw away after a brief glance.

There is no news.

The woman is saying something to the man. I am not part of this. I cannot hear what she is saying. I can make out she is attractive and angry.

He hits her. He spins and hits her not with the back of his hand but his fist.

Her head flies back and she knocks it on the car. She slumps to the ground and he picks her up, hauls her into the car and drives away. I wonder what this is about. I am powerless to intervene.

I am merely a spectator.

I consider if I have become a voyeur.

The truth is I am what the hotel has made me.

It is the structure of the building and its height that causes me to behave in this way.

I look beyond what has just happened.

It is not real.

The lights of some offices blink at me in the sky.

The buildings have taken over with their grim prophecy of our exile.

We are set apart, made remote from experience. Who’d have thought that architecture would finally spell our ruin? In our attempts to house more and more people we have breached the purity of sky and alienated ourselves from one another. We ride the hungry streets searching for the things that make us carry on. Sex and money fuel us.

We are part of their design. They have designed us. They have shaped our world and warped our perceptions. Truth has become a dubious spectacle. They have been doing it for years. Eroding our souls with concrete and steel.

At night they numb us. They heighten our threshold of pain until there is no sensation.

In a disused parking lot a man kicks a beer bottle.

He gets on his cell phone and walks away.

Two young women walk arm-in-arm singing, they are drunk, they stagger in their high heels and look vulnerable. I wonder if they will be attacked by a predator.

A light comes on in a building. I fetch my binoculars and hone in. They are high-powered and make the blurred shapes come into sharp focus. I see a man stand at a window. He is playing with something. He is young, well built and wears a T-shirt. It is black and he turns towards the window. His T-shirt has a logo on it that looks like a bull. Yes, it is a bull.

He seems to be saying something and I imagine he is talking to himself.

He walks away from the window, into the room, and I follow him.

As he moves I see a man and a woman in there.

They are naked and tied to chairs.

The woman is staring with horror at the man in the T-shirt.

She is tied with ropes and they are cutting into her breasts.

She is trying to say something.

The man is tied as well, the binds tight against his genitals.

I think of turkeys trussed up. There is the melody of an abattoir that drifts into the static space of this spectacle, a melody with no music, just the staccato rhythm of noise jarring against a structure, like a needle on a bone.

The man in the T-shirt hits the woman across the side of the head.

She spits out a tooth. Her mouth runs with thick blood.

I realize they are not playing a game. 

She is screaming now, pulling forward on her binds and trying to escape like an animal.

The man in the T-shirt shoots the man in the chair.

He slumps forward, all resistance gone, a relic.

I wonder if I am giving reality to this scene.

I want to help.

The man in the T-shirt shoots the woman and leaves the room.

The word violation floats before me. Its sense seems to have been removed, it is like an eggshell with the small dead fetus of a bird inside it.

I watch, my binoculars trained on the building as if it might give them life.

I stand looking at them.

They do not move.

I look at the city.

I rest.

There is none to be had here.

The hotel has no guests.

I can hear movements in the walls, the structure is being eroded from within.

They have infiltrated the structure of our lives with overload.

They have invaded us like tiny parasitic worms that crawl beneath the surface of our skin and eat our food within our bellies. That explains the hunger, the constant gnawing need.

We have been impregnated by some nameless nocturnal rapist. The deformity inside us is leeching our nutrition from us.

All part of the political program. The body politic has swollen like a tumor. Our alienation is complete.  They have sealed us off like vacuum-packed food.

It is a subtle form of entropy. I wonder if the system can be punctured.

Everything is accelerating within this gradient of disorganization, the speed is like frenzied masturbation. They have organized the direction of our pleasures.

When I look again the man and the woman are still slumped in their chairs, alone in the room.

I get my coat and head down into the street.

I have my weapon.

I walk to the building.

I want to see what theater this is.

The city is a hall of mirrors.

There is a doorway that leads to some stairs and I figure what floor they are on and buzz the intercom until I am admitted.

I scale the stairs. I face two doors.

My estimation of the direction the room faces and the layout of the apartments leads me to one and I kick the door in.

I walk through a hallway and find them.

They are naked and real. Blood spatters the walls, my binoculars do not pick that up, this is a better image.

They are dead and there is no sign of why this has happened.

I consider if this is an interlude between acts.

I hear coughing and a shuffling noise as if offstage an understudy has dropped his script.

I turn, a man wearing a hat is standing in the hallway and he begins to run when he sees me.

I run after him.

He starts to go into the apartment opposite and I grab him.

He pulls a knife and I draw my gun.

He slips away from me and slams the door.

I stand in the hallway saying I found them.

He does not hear.

I leave.

I return to the hotel.

I know I have to find the man in the T-shirt.

I watch the city come alive as day breaks.

A gray sky pales against the electric lights.

I watch the workers leave and return. They are drones. They hum.

The air conditioning is wheezing. I consider they are poisoning the air.

I watch the sky fade.

I scan the area for the man I must find.

I consider that he may be a politician.

I look at the apartment but they are not there. The man and woman who led me to this have gone.

I consider that victims draw others into their drama.

I muse on their culpability.

The city buzzes with decay and erotic violations.

It crackles like a psychotic snake.

I go to my car and drive. I tour the city looking for him.

The next day I buy a newspaper.

I am wanted for two murders. The man at the apartment must have taken my picture.

Talking to him is pointless. I look at the room now, but it is empty, a space where there is no indication of what has happened.

It is a vacant stage. Someone is running the theater.

I know the games others play. I think I may be a prop in someone’s drama.

The bodies were real. The killing was real.

I tour the city.

I stop the car near the river and walk along its edge listening to the noise of the water.

As I walk I see a shop selling clothes.

In the window is a T-shirt with a bull on it.

I return the next day.

The T-shirt is gone from the window and women’s dresses are on display.

Party dresses that no one can wear. Women do not wear dresses any more, androgyny is prevalent as is the need for desexualization within the political program.

I enter.

A bald man stands behind the counter, he is talking to someone at the back.

There is a door and beyond it another man.

I walk towards them.

I want to see the other man.

“Did you finish them?” the bald man says.

“Two shots, that’s all,” the other man says.

They turn and see me.

He could be the man I saw in the apartment. He could be the man I am looking for.

They stop their conversation abruptly when they see me. I leave.

I consider they are a cult. The T-shirt is a uniform.

They are a faction of the government. A faction we do not know about.

I think of the man’s face at the window, as he stood and shot them.

It may be him.

I drive to the shop at night. There are no - shirts in the widow. There is nothing in the window. As I walk away I see a tooth lying in the corner of the empty shop front, a tooth with some dried gum attached to it.

I read it in the newspapers. They are looking for me.

I am wanted. I consider the word.

The streets below me are full of want.

I have become an object of desire within the veiled campaign.

They want me, and a man with an image of trite anonymity is pulling the reins and dragging the sharpened bit of the bridle into a blind horse’s mouth.

The animal’s eyes stare with obscene redundancy into this blackness.

There is a hole at its heart.

Some contagion of acid.

It poisons the flesh of the city.

It generates need and the odor of money as it soaks in the sweat and feces of our days.

The lights below my window bomb like fireflies through the violent night.

The people are ravenous with the hunger of a lifetime’s need.

I train my binoculars on the apartment.

The room is empty.

The lights from the building sparkle with a sinister glow.

I can stay in the hotel.

They won’t find me here.

I will find him.

I drive through the city looking for him.

Buying Daisy

by

Richard Godwin