Perhaps The Ice Will Hold

The stars were out the day I gave blood. They were out and laughing as the blood drained from my veins and poured into the veins of a monster. A monster of my own creation.

Not two weeks before.

Not two weeks before, we, the monster and I, had greeted each other like a new father and son. Me the father, he the son.

A bit of background: me a scientist in a big castle atop a rock overlooking a gothic Bavarian village.

Me the father, he the son. I say he, and I say son, but the truth is that the monster was of indeterminate gender. Neither male nor female. But because I’d drawn a huge moustache in black marker pen neath his huge potato nose, I tended to think of the monster as a he. Plus there was the big flappy penis I’d stapled between his legs. Not a real penis, of course. Just a limp courgette I’d sprayed with a pink lacquer in order to prevent decay.

So me the father, he the son. And in the first flushes of our time together we enjoyed shared activities that included the likes of: football, swimming, boxing, looking at ladies, fighting bees, reading comics, watching telly, waltzing matildas and taunting the burgomeister’s big fat daughter. Fat but sexy. You should have seen her in her too tight jeans and her too tight top with her big fat knockers spilling out all over the place. Yum.

I had created the monster, my son, to prove that I could create new life. He was, in effect, a two fingers to all those colleagues, contemporaries and detractors who had, over the years, poured scorn on my work. Mad, they called me, and I vowed to prove them wrong. However, all those colleagues, contemporaries and detractors were dead by the time my son was born. Killed by my own mad hands. Metal hands, fashioned from steel following my accident in Japan. And when I say accident, well, you can guess what that really means.

There was once a wife. My memories of her blocked to prevent the pain. But still, she crept through sometimes and in particular in times of distress. For instance, as I lay on the makeshift gurney, the life draining from my veins. My pretty blue veins. And as the distress grew, so too the memories of my wife. Such as:

Wife Remembrance 1:
We were married in a church. On a Sunday. By the burgomeister who, back then, had no daughter to speak of, fat or otherwise. I remember well his words: “On to you both I cast the ancient curse of the village and ask all the witches and ghosties in the room to join me in enforcing and supporting this sacred sentiment.”

Wife Remembrance 2:
We honeymooned in a small Bavarian village that was much like our own but on the other side of Bavaria. The burgomeister there was much nicer. So much nicer that my wife and I agreed to annul our marriage so we could be re-married by this newer, friendlier burgomeister. I also remember well his words: “You two do plenty of fucking and stuff and you will one day be blessed with a son who is as far away from a monster as tis possible to get.”

Wife Remembrance 3:
The problem was that my wife and I did very little fucking and stuff which led to my little swimmers drying up. They were, my little swimmers, fossilised and pressed against the inner walls of my testicles and the first centimetre of my shaft until they, the shaft swimmers, were gradually washed away by my endless pissing as a result of drinking too much water.

Wife Remembrance 4:
With fossilised, dead swimmers I was, of course, unable to contribute to the natural creation of a child. My wife berated me on this even as I pointed out to her that the lack of fucking and stuff, that led to my dead swimmers, was solely due to her reluctance to do fucking and stuff with me. She was, however, more than happy to do fucking and stuff with other men. Including the burgomeister of our village, the horrible one who had married us the first time.

Wife Remembrance 5:
She disappeared one night, my wife. Her body discovered months later, strapped to a car at the bottom a lake, her throat open and her hair billowing in the fronds. Yes, just like Shelley Winters in The Night of the Hunter. Except for the fact that, unlike Shelley Winters, her brain had been removed. And her eyes.

My son was born without the aid of any swimmers and was, instead, the result of some phantasmagorical tinkering that took in all of the major arts: physics, mechanics, alchemy, engineering, chemistry, marketing and astrology. Melded together and mushed up in a metaphorical pot, I magically created new life from elements that to all intents and purpose were without life. I put them together, injected the spark and stood back as my son stood up to life. And stood up for life.

As previously stated, our first moments of time together were full of joyful fatherly and sonly activity, free from the pressures of suspicion, hatred and jealousy that led to me being strapped to a gurney with the life draining from my veins. Draining from my veins while being watched by my son the monster, the burgomeister and his big fat, but very sexy, daughter. An older daughter, of course, somewhere in her early twenties.

If you have guessed that my son’s betrayal had something to do with my dead wife’s missing brain and eyes then you have guessed correctly. That is, to be plain about it, I stuck my wife’s dead brain and eyes into the head of my monster son. Which meant that he thought like my wife and saw like my wife. Plus, of course, he possessed, somewhere inside, the memory of her death and of the person who had killed her. Me, I had killed her. It was only a matter of time before my wife’s brain would recall what had happened and seek revenge. I was an idiot for not anticipating that. In fact, it was only as he was strapping me to the gurney (that’s three uses of the word gurney - four now) that I realised what was happening: it was my wife, within the form of the monster I had created, exacting her revenge.

Anyway. As I am writing this now, you might also guess that I somehow prevented the draining of my veins. You are, of course, correct if you guess that to be the case. But you would not be correct if you guessed that I prevented the draining of my veins as a result of the following occurrences:

Strapped to the gurney I thought: I am done for and Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me? And I thought those things through the din of laughter that emanated from the big fat faces of the burgomeister and his sexy fat daughter. A strange thing: even as I lay dying, passing in and out of consciousness, cursing my killers and calling for divine aid, I was still able to imagine how nice it would be to sample a bit of the burgomeister’s fat sexy daughter. With some degree of effort I even managed to turn my head so I could watch her fantastic great knockers jiggling as she laughed at my plight. It was small consolation and comfort, I admit, but consolation and comfort nonetheless. Still, it didn’t prevent me from finally giving up all hope and accepting my fate. However, during the last remaining seconds of consciousness the door to the attic burst open, the room crowded with rescuers and heroes of all stripe and faith. Quickly they overpowered my son, the burgomeister and his big fat daughter and threw back the lever that operated the machine responsible for draining my veins. That is, they put the machine into reverse so that the blood flowed back into my veins. In a few minutes I was back to full strength and ready to confront my would-be murderers. But too late as my son threw off his shackles and snapped first the necks of the burgomeister and his big fat daughter, followed his own slender neck, held together by only a few stitches and a blob of Superglue.

But as I said, you would have not been correct if you had guessed that that’s how my predicament came to an end.

Turn Left at Phobos

The Martians, they.

They drifted for a while. I mean, floated. Hovered. We watched them as they hovered outside.

It was night time, although not yet dark. What do they call it? Crepuscular? It was night time, evening, and the Martians, they. They kind of just hung around. Outside. What did they want? What did they fucking want?

We were tired so we left them to it. By morning they were gone. No, wait, perhaps they weren’t gone. Maybe we just couldn’t see them in the light. I say that because they were back again, at night. When it grew dark. In exactly the same place.

My husband said they reminded him of some kind of crepuscular bird. The twilight tweeter or somesuch. I said they were nothing like birds. Look at them, I said. Do birds have those? Or those? Can birds do that? I don’t think they can. I’ve never seen a bird do that.

The Martians, they. They were there the following night and the night after that and the night after that. As far as I know they’re still there. We don’t look that way anymore, so I can’t be sure.

Rumble The Grass, Clip The Clop

I will always be poor. I will always have a violent temper. And I will always hanker after big arsed women in boots. In boots.

It was my birthday last week and my family - four children, one girlfriend, one parent, two sisters and two ex-wives - thought it’d be a great idea to treat me to an executive day at the races. At Newmarket Races. Two things struck me about this: I can’t stand horses and I can’t stand being out in the fucking sun. It was a shit gift but I considered, for a moment, keeping my mouth shut and pretending to really love the gift. But my aforementioned violent temper soon took hold and, within minutes, I had most - two children, one girlfriend, two sisters and one ex-wife - of my family in tears.

But because I’m not a complete fool, I took the gift anyway with the intention of spending the day eyeing up big arsed women walking around in boots.

I was out in the sun looking at the horses and the big arsed women in boots. I had eaten cheese on toast for breakfast. A glass of beer for lunch. Plus a hot dog with mustard, ketchup and cheese. A small glass of lemonade. I was out watching the big arsed women in boots while pretending to keep an eye on the horses. I was there with my girlfriend so I had to keep up a certain amount of propriety. She doesn’t normally care about my obsession with big arsed women in boots but even I can tell that it must sometimes get a little wearing.

Where was I?

I was at the races looking at the big arsed women in boots when it occurred to me that horses have big arses too. Of course, I’d always known that horses have big arses. I’d just never really considered it before.

The next bit here, I suppose, could be about how I suddenly started having a thing for horses, and specifically for their smooth, shiny big arses. But that didn’t happen. It was just something I observed: how amusing it was that I was surrounded by a load of big arses courtesy of both the women and of the horses. A whole shebang of big arses. And even funnier when I factored in the fact that most of the men there, at the races that afternoon, were also big arses. Big arses everywhere, as far as my eye could see!

But as it was my birthday I decided, eventually, to at least show some gratitude and to at least put on a show of enjoying the day for what it was supposed to be about: the racing.

I’m a poor man, as I’ve already stated, so I could only afford a couple of pounds on each of the horses I gambled on. Ten pounds in total. I walked out of there, later that afternoon, with an extra forty-two pounds in my pocket. Still poor but not quite as poor.