Commercial Book / Perfect Love

As many of you will be aware, my short story collection, "Commercial Book", was recently published by The Eyeball Museum via Psychofon Records. The collection features 40 short stories of exactly 1000 words in length, and these stories are based on the 40 songs of exactly one minute in length that featured on "Commercial Album", released by The Residents in 1980. "Commercial Book" is fully endorsed by the band.

I'm aware that some of my readers will be unfamiliar with The Residents, and fans of the band will also be unfamiliar with my writing. As the book can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of the music, I've decided to post some of the stories here in full, so readers can get an indication of what the collection is like. My first posting was Margaret Freeman. This second story is "Perfect Love". A link to the song concludes this post.

Perfect Love

A hit is a necessity to the making of a miss.

Cate was on the rebound when she came to Pendour Cove. In other circumstances the area would be idyllic. The curvature of sunken green land sucked down into a basin peppered with black rock and curated by light refracting through a blue topaz sea. The only manmade structure the rentable shack at the top of the cliff, together with the well-worn path bearing tracks of the device containing the giant Mason jar which could be winched from the water and – through double swing doors – into the shack itself.

She arrived mid-afternoon on a late summer’s day. The sun creating a hard glaze on the veneer of the sea so that it appeared the surface might be picked up in one piece, like the caramelized sugar atop a crème brûlée. Cate sighed, the exhale carrying suggestive fragments of a broken heart. In her mind’s eye, her former lover, Giallo, the circus clown, approached her as he had on their first date, a bright yellow flower in his lapel. As she walked down the compacted trail to the beach a stiff breeze whisked a mist of salt spray onto her skin. She licked her lips. Cate preferred this taste to that of tap water. She reached the bottom and faced the sea. Her shoes made impressions in the soft, wet, sand.

That evening – after winching the Mason jar outside the double doors - she burned a candle for Giallo, the nicitating flame illuminating then eclipsing the furniture within the room. Despite the extortionate price, the interior of the cabin was meagre: a table, a chair, a fridge, a stove, a sink, a toilet, a bath, a bed. Each object functional, unromantic. Cate allowed a moment of reflection, her visage static as her shadow danced. Was there such a thing as perfect love? She wet her fingers and extinguished the flame, plunging her into a darkness from which a new light might emerge.

She woke early the next morning. Daylight straining against the double doors, delineating two rectangular patterns around the edges as though the open leaves of a gilded book, with the wider gap between them suggesting a gold-finished spine. Cate took hold of her hair and held it in the light, before making a three-inch cut. Moving to the stove she lit the gas low, burning the split ends just enough so that they didn’t disintegrate. An instantly identifiable, but indescribable odour filled the shack. She wrapped yesterday’s underwear around the hair and placed it in her pocket. Then she opened the double doors inwards and strode into the view bowed by the jar’s curve.

Operating the winch, she kept a keen eye on the jar as it jiggered on its little wooden trolley down to the beach. Once it reached the flattened surface she caught up with it. Taking the fetish from her pocket she stood on tiptoes then placed it inside. A second winch on a plinth half-buried in sand allowed her to ease the Mason jar into the sea. She counted to twenty-five once it was fully submerged. An optimum distance for fishing.

Cate spent the day squeezing sand between her toes, precariously climbing those black rocks, watching the movement of tiny red crabs which seemed to multiply before her eyes, and spotting the raised burrows of razorfish which fed by straining organic matter through their thin bodies.

Come evening, Cate returned to the shack. She prepared a simple meal of sandwiches and salad which she ate voraciously, her eyes fixed on the scene beyond the double doors. At 8pm, as the sun began its descent, she operated the winch, the electric mechanism drawing the Mason jar out of the sea and up the steep incline to the shack.

Despite her curiosity Cate averted her gaze until she had closed the double doors and was no longer alone.

The creature within the jar was more fish than man, but Cate’s response was dictated by the potency of the fetish. Gills fluctuated in their opening and closing either side of a ribbed neck; opaque eyes unblinking; webbed hands pressed flat against the interior glass; the remaining body suspended within the water, just as a bird might hover in flight.

Love swelled within Cate’s breast. A rush of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, phenylethylamine. She ran fingertips over the glass, which the creature emulated. Unselfconsciously, Cate removed her clothing, pressed her body against the jar, wrapped her arms either side. Angling her head, she directed her lips to the formerly liquid sand, and the creature reciprocated. Pure joy sparkled through her.

Over the remaining days the creature mirrored more of her actions. When she sat at the table, it adopted a crouch. When she slept, it curled. When she smiled and laughed the creature responded in kind, bubbles rising to break the water’s surface. When she ate, she threw scraps into the water. When she toileted, it did too.

Should the creature have exhibited any attributes of its own Cate was aware the spell would be broken. Perfect love can only exist without a partner’s intervention. She projected her desires upon the creature and they were mirrored. Should it initiate an action, this would risk displeasure. She knew the longer they were together, the greater this likelihood would become. Love was a one-way ticket. To retain it, she had to mythologise it.

The weather took a downturn on her final day. Clouds portended rain. She pushed back the double doors against a high wind. The metal latch rattled to hold them open. As she kissed the glass one final time, her insides ballooning in an amalgam of emotions, she saw hesitation in the creature’s expression, a panic of goodbyes.

The winch broke halfway in the descent, the cable whipping against the Mason jar as it tumbled down the cliff side, the glass smashing against the black rocks.

Cate gasped, polarised.

Those tiny crabs began their work; bodies the colour of hearts.

*  *  *

"Commercial Book" was available in a special limited edition version with CD and Perfect Love chewing gum, however this has sold out. The regular paperback is still available HERE although copies are also limited.

And here is the song, my inspiration (only the song, my story has nothing to do with the representation in this video):

Commercial Book / Margaret Freeman

As many of you will be aware, my short story collection, "Commercial Book", was recently published by The Eyeball Museum via Psychofon Records. The collection features 40 short stories of exactly 1000 words in length, and these stories are based on the 40 songs of exactly one minute in length that featured on "Commercial Album", released by The Residents in 1980. "Commercial Book" is fully endorsed by the band.

I'm aware that some of my readers will be unfamiliar with The Residents, and fans of the band will also be unfamiliar with my writing. As the book can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of the music, I've decided to post one of the stories here in full, so readers can get an indication of what the collection is like. Without further ado, I present "Margaret Freeman". A link to the song concludes this post. Incidentally, "Margaret Freeman" is guest-sung by Andy Partridge from XTC.

Margaret Freeman

Wanted: skeleton key.

To begin with she was just a girl I knew growing up.

Then she became a girl everyone knew.

And then a girl no one knew.

I didn’t call her anything. Some of us called her Bones. Later she was known as The Skeleton, or Skeleton Girl, although oftentimes the moniker was rendered as Skellington Girl which tells more about the company she had to keep than the rest of my story. Those she travelled with were illiterate, often vicious taskmasters who had little concerns over those in their care other than their capacity to make money. When I caught up with her the second time around I saw those exchanges that occurred when they thought no one was looking. Large men would enter her tent with anticipatory smiles, and it was barely a comfort when they left that those expressions were twisted into something unfamiliar: shame wrought on their faces.

Yet my first memory is of her moving next door. We lived in Tulsa. For a time it was known as the Oil Capital of the World. My father was a roughneck on the oil fields. He would return home slick. There was an iridescent ring of starling-feather discolouration around our tub that could never be shifted. Honest work. This dirt – this black gold dirt – was in complete contrast to the buildings that had sprung up around town, their art deco architecture of relative simplicity, planarity, symmetry, and unvaried repetition of elements seemed an extension of the machine: that marvel of the modern age. Will Rogers High School, the Philtower, Boston Avenue Methodist Church: they still stand today should you care to view them.

Of course, Tulsa had a darker history. The race massacre was a recent memory. It wasn’t that anyone spoke of it but it was another stain that couldn’t be shifted. Some times I think folks seek different targets to take their minds off atrocities, which possibly explains why they talked about her but never intervened.

I was sat on the stoop, whittling, when they pulled up to the house. She had no father with her. Her mother was a hook-nosed woman who picked the wrong side in fights. The girl was paper thin. Jokes came that she had to walk with a stick sideways in her mouth in case she fell through a drain cover. This is not what I saw that day. I saw a body that appeared to echo internal thought – a manifestation of a soul. She was a few months younger than me but older than her years. I expected to befriend her.

It was the holidays, so in those first weeks there was no school. I saw her rarely, but so exact was my initial impression that I had become fixed to the stoop, surrounded by shavings, silently shaking my head when friends invited me to go to the lake or on rabbit shoots. It was as though she had found a way to capture me with barely a look. I was hollowed from the inside out whilst for her it was the outside in. That’s how I describe it now, although maybe it was no more than morbid curiosity, an affinity for the strange.

I’d kick a ball in the vicinity. She might come out to hang washing, her arms as thin as the line. We’d exchange a look but the howdy stuck fast in my mouth. There was a tension there that only now I might define as sexual. We were thirteen. Buds on the tree of life. She’d return inside. The backs of her knees concave. In my daydreaming I saw her legs bend wrongways like those of a stork.

If there was an innocence to my observation then this collapsed when school resumed. My closest friends catcalled her. They’d forgotten about me when I stepped out of the game. The most inventive was Coathanger, but Bones was common. They’d crowd behind her back in the playground like leaves caught in a dust devil but no one would touch her. She wasn’t brittle – there was fibre in her being – yet you imagined she might collapse like a folding chair. I could see they were afraid of her. Their whispering a barrier, a defence.

There was something thrilling in becoming a voyeur. I’d observe this cruel behaviour, admire her restraint. By not participating I considered myself an accomplice: aligned myself to her over my friends. I’m sure that unspoken bond was in my head. Yet this suggestion of intimacy granted me permission to observe her inappropriately, from ever-decreasing distances.

I took to watching her window after dusk: an illuminated square that she would extinguish as she entered her room. Her form in subsequent shadow as thin as the light cord dangling from the ceiling, whilst she reached down to pull her dress off over her head. I could write music to it.

One afternoon I enacted a cherished fantasy. I approached her house with a handful of hen’s eggs. A faux-neighbourly gift. I knew her mother was out. The back door was open. I said nothing as I entered the house. She stood by the sink, naked, washing dishes. It was then that I saw her mother’s sodden ways had rubbed her rib cage raw. Her body was as manipulated as a Chinese woman’s feet or the extended necks of the Burmese Karen tribe. It wasn’t natural. It was abuse.

I can still hear the sound of those eggs smacking on the wooden boards. Still see that slight turn of her head.

When I pressed my hand to my chest the hammering remained.

I didn’t run. She watched me unashamed. Her body as ridged as an art deco monument. I stepped forward.

By winter she had joined the freak show. I charted its progress through advertisements and word of mouth. As I aged, I took to following it around. The Skeleton. The Skellington Girl. Bones.

I saw that no one called her Margaret.

But I did.

*  *  *

"Commercial Book" was available in a special limited edition version with CD and chewing gum, however this has sold out. The regular paperback is still available HERE although copies are also limited.

And here is the song, my inspiration (only the song, I hadn't seen this accompanying video before I wrote my story):

Betaville

My short story titled "Betaville" has just been published in the anthology Unauthorised Departures edited by Rick McGrath for Terminal Press, and as usual I'm blogging a few words discussing how the story came to be written. There may be spoilers within.

"Betaville" is one of twelve stories I've recently written which takes French New Wave Cinema as a starting point and then runs with an alternative version of it. There will be no surprises here that the inspiration for this story comes from Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 SF movie, "Alphaville".

The conceit in my story is somewhat based on real events. In 1978 Deborah Harry and Chris Stein from Blondie were considering filming a remake of "Alphaville", with Amos Poe directing, Deborah in the Anna Karina role, and guitarist Robert Fripp in the role of the detective, Lemmy Caution. Some publicity stills were made and rumour has it that Deborah and Chris bought the rights to remake the film from Godard for $1000 however the rights weren't Godard's to sell. True or not, for whatever reason, the remake never went ahead. In "Alphaville", Lemmy Caution journeys to the eponymous city where Alpha 60 has outlawed free thought and emotion. There is a dictionary in every hotel room that is continuously updated when words that are deemed to evoke emotion are banned. In my story, "Betaville", Deborah journeys to the eponymous city governed by Beta 60 (Godard) in order to buy the rights to make their movie, however finds that Beta 60 is on a mission to exclude popular films from future history, so that movies subsequently disappear from the listings in Halliwell's Film Guide. The story works both as a playful accompaniment to "Alphaville", containing references which lovers of the film and of Blondie will connect with, as well as standing alone as a short story in its own right. It was a blast to write, and hopefully readers will engage with it too.

Deborah Harry & Robert Fripp 

Here's an extract: 

Deborah wears a black gabardine trench coat with a removable sherpa lining. The expressway is lit yellow both sides. Her foot is down hard on the accelerator of the 1967 Chevrolet Camaro coupe. Occasional overhead lights strobe her face. She is alone. A gun may or may not be in the glove compartment. She seems to have come from nowhere.

Chris has stayed in New York. It is her mission to buy the rights from Godard. An assignation has been arranged. They’ve done some preliminary photoshoots with Fripp. She’s wearing a black one-piece, her hair all 50s starlet, star lit. He’s donned black slacks, a black jacket. Not quite a suit. White shirt punctuated by a black tie. The larger end of the tie is higher up than the shorter end, as though knotted in the dark. There’s footage too. A screen test. Fripp can’t keep a straight face. Deborah wears dark glasses, pulls at her cheeks as if getting into character. Head shots.

The photographs have been printed and reside in a brown manilla envelope on the passenger seat. Collateral or a statement of intent.

She grits her teeth.

Godard has suggested they meet in the past.

There’s a junction somewhere in sidereal space.

She keeps her eyes to the road. Traffic merges at all angles, entering the stream on zipwires. Getting mighty crowded. The Camaro reverberates to a different timbre. The road surface deteriorates. Up ahead a lump of tarmac resembles a sleeping policeman. When she hits it, something triggers. The sultry voice of Paco Navarro on WKTU-FM is lost to crackle. Potato chip radio. There is a flash of darkness, an antithesis. It picks her up and spits her out. She maintains a steady fifty. Everything is black and white.

Beta 60 broadcasts. The recognisable voice mechanical, as if comprised of the aforementioned crackle.

< I am trying to change the world >

Regular readers of this blog will know I usually listen to music through headphones whilst writing, and this entire story was written to the mostly instrumental (and futuristic) song, "Europa", from Blondie's 1980 album, "Autoamerican", on continual repeat.

To reiterate, "Unauthorised Departures" is published by Terminal Press, and in addition to myself features stories from the following: Maxim Jakubowski, James Goddard, Hunter Liguore, Rhys Hughes, David Quantick, Paul A. Green, Ana Teresa Pereira, Tom Frick, Eugen Bacon, Lawrence Russell, Lyle Hopwood, Elana Gomel, D. Harlan Wilson, David Paddy, Andrew Frost, Don MacKay, and Paul H. Williams. Buy it here. The book comes in both paperback and hardback editions.