HAND ME MY HAND

‘You can pin a maggot on a mackerel but you can’t pin a mackerel on a maggot,’ whispered the featureless child, his unheard words of wisdom floating away on the wind.

There was lot of wind on the Suffolk coast that day and it was busy dragging the kite belonging to the father of the featureless child along the far side of the beach.

‘Feck it, feck it and feck it,’ scalded Dad.

The snake on a rope thought he said ‘fetch it’ but his impulse to slither over and fetch it was curtailed by a sharp yank on the tie-rope around his neck. His trunk slinked and then coiled up into itself; his gasping tongue protruding to fork the passing currents of air.

Amongst the masses of messed up line attached to the kite emerged a giant ugly deep sea fish. It stank and shouted at a woman and a baby ahead of it.

‘Not mackerel, not a maggot, not a monkfish,’ mumbled and murmured the featureless child.

‘Mmmmer mmmmer mmmmer, can’t make any fecking sense of any fecking thing you say, lad,’ blasted Dad.

‘Sssssand shark, it’sssss a sssssand shark,’ hissssssed the snake.

Dad went to have a closer look. The stinking sand shark bit. He came back with the kite but without his hand.

‘That takes the biscuit,’ sobbed Dad.

‘That took your hand,’ corrected the featureless child.

Dad looked at him for a moment. ‘I understood that bit, lad, you’re right. Good to hear you talk normal for a change.’

The snake slithered back with Dad’s hand.

‘Thanks, snake,’ said Dad with a playful yank at his tie-rope. ‘Now let’s go home, your Mum has got some serious sewing to do.’

IT’S OVER

That whole polluted mass thing, sub species of the sea, nets, giant flotsam, carrier bags, batter scraps, its stinking skeleton and head like a pumped up trout, waddled its way over the waves to introduce itself to Mickey Fish junior, the son of famous weather disseminator Mickey Fish senior.

‘Get back to the tidal waters, ye sardine sons of Satan!’ cried Mickey Fish junior.

‘We are harbingers of environmental and maritime catastrophe.’

‘The climate doomsday scenario, eh? That’s the cunning tongue of Papist dogma, and you are the fish spawn of vile Vatican venom. Back to your deep dark waters, I bid ye.’

‘In you we have picked the wrong human to warn mankind.’

‘Take your wicked wilful words and drown them in your long Roman robes of blood and Piscean blubber.’

‘We’ll be off then but don’t say we didn’t warn you.’

‘Hook off, and don’t ye think leaving any of your sick roe or landing any one of your repugnant thought processes over here – not amongst our great united band of brothers, you won’t.  No more, I tell ye. No, more!’

‘Ungrateful or what?’

And the polluted mass thing dragged itself back over the shallows, and, reaching the drop of the sea shelf, sunk itself into the tarry deep chill of ocean and disappeared.

Mickey Fish junior met his father for a mug of tea and fish and chip dinner.

‘The high priest of tricks and tuna came, Da, and tried to say the waters were drying up and going bad.’

‘Eat you cod, Junior, and drop the Paisley talk.  Everything is going to be just fine.’

NIGHT SWIMMING

Each summer’s night Beatrice and Marie Von Sudenfed arrived for a skinny dip (though Beatrice liked to keep her pants on) under the lustrous silky moon. They skipped amongst the pond flowers on the bank that led into the water. The air swooned with perfumed blossom and the light warm scent of the young women’s skin.

Suddenly a puff of pheromone escaped the lively, watery earth like pollen from a flower sac and rose and swirled and blossomed into the form of a proboscis-quiffed teddy-boy flower, his stem straight and firm like iron; his beady eyes fixed on Beatrice. She felt the aroused intent in the air and shied away, whilst Marie Von Sudenfed, the elder and more experienced of the two, reached over to wring his neck.

He ducked down and appeared to evaporate away. But later as the moonlight cracked and seeped amongst the branches of the trees, his fine misty tentacles could be seen caressing over the water as the girls swam out to the nervous centre of the pond.

BARKING TO WOOLWICH, THE RIVER WAY

Big taxi mouth Barney Eggleston got himself and his pooch kicked out of a London cab for mouthing the dirty. Not only that but a big winged tit was dancing on the roof of the cab and taking the St Michael, so he let it have one with a five-note concord straight in the beak: a right bloody mess. In the melee his pooch only went and got himself on the wrong side of the river. Barney was straight on the blower to his missus: ‘Andy, listen up, dog’s bollocks only gone and got himself the wrong side of the river’.

‘What you on about?’ she screamed.

‘Prince has only gone and got himself -’

‘I heard that, cattle brain, I just don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Look, Andy, he’s got south side of things and I don’t know how he got there.’

‘Well, you’d better get figuring, that dirty pooch cost a cow’s arse lick.’

He wasn’t sure what Andy meant by this but his brain had bigger things to fry. He tried to reason out things in a thoughtful way: ‘It’s like that story about the fox and the chicken and the eggs and the boat.’

‘What you on about now?’

‘I’m meaning it’s like he’s the chicken and the fox is me, and -’

‘Feck off with all that,’ shouted Andy, throwing her receiver down.

Barney put away his blower and whistled for his pooch to come over. He even tried to entice it with the wave of an Adam Smith. But then he remembered however monetarily inclined his pooch might be, he couldn’t swim a doggie.

‘Stay there, Prince my lad, I’ll come to you.’

But too late: Prince had gone off to use his return ticket on the ferry.

Barney was waist deep in Thames pong when he saw the ferry come towards him and it was then that he remembered that he couldn’t swim either. His phone rung: it was Andy: ‘the fox would eat the chicken, you ponce. But don’t get any fancy pant ideas about cooking up Prince,’ she screamed before a circling swirl of water sucked her voice and Barney down.

And then a curious stillness, save a few bubbles popping up on the water’s surface, and the passing sound of a dog’s howls deep into the heart of the river.

CRAB AND GULL

Fester Crab and Benjamin sparred all summer and autumn, trying to pluck a feather or pierce a shell. One bright December morning they met for a last hurrah before their beach was carried away on winter’s drifting sand.

‘I hold my claws up to you, Benjamin, and offer you the dance of peace.’

Fester danced a circle and Benjamin Seagull watched.

‘Old adversary and now dear friend, you dance well for a crab. But it’s time for me to say my goodbyes and bid you one last farewell.’

Benjamin Seagull flapped his wings and flew into the opulent blue sky.

‘I hadn’t finished my dance. Typical of Benjamin to leave before all was said and done.’

At that moment Fester felt a tiny pain on his left side.

‘Most likely a heart attack’, suggested a medical crab at his funeral. ‘It was probably brought on by a change in the weather.’

‘The cold,’ said Benjamin. ‘Fester never liked the cold.’

In his will Fester left his protective shell to Benjamin, who wore it on his back until it dropped off during a violent storm near Newfoundland.

WATERWORLD

An old lady and an old man sit on an inflatable sofa.

Said it was like 1938 to 1939 all over again.

I know.

Teetering on the brink, dithering in the face of disaster. All too late, nothing to do about it, we were all doomed. Doooomed! No one believed him.

Not now.

Earth heating up, waters rising, washing us away in the swell!

Leave it. Let’s rest a little.

I worked for him after they put him in a nursing home, tight as a tack he was.

Was he?

He was! I put his dentures in a tin and shaved his whiskers with my fingers to save on razors.

Of course you did, makes sense now you say it. Now, are you going to buy me a drink, I’ve come a long way.

I don’t know you, do I?

You do, we talk ever day. My drink? Please?

Another one said Noah’s ark was real, found the planks and everything.

Everything?

Don’t need Noah now, and a boat would be a waste of time. They’re building rockets to Mars: Bezos, Musk, that Branson, they’re all in on it!

In on what?

Selection! The chosen ones, they’ve been selling tickets on rockets to their friends for years. We’ll be left to fend for ourselves.

Branson wouldn’t do that. He’s got a nice smile.

Dinosaur teeth, they all have: Charles, Camilla, Cilla.

Cilla?

Black! Dead Cilla Black! My scrotum is like litmus. All that itching, it senses things, can tell a bad one from a good one, it knew the deluge was afoot.

Rained 400 days so it must have been very itchy.

And 400 nights, sandpaper on nylon sheets. I’ll get you that drink now.

Daft sod, I was teasing you. Where are you going to get me a drink now?

Their sofa wobbles in a swell, the gloop of dark water twisting and spreading under the moonlight.

Could use a cup to scoop it out.

We don’t have a cup. And we can’t drink; it’s contaminated

We’re done for then?

Of course we are.

Can you swim?

Can you?

Used to be able to.

There you are then. Why don’t we hold hands, have a kiss maybe, share some of the old air raid spirit?

My scrotum is telling me this isn’t going to end well

You don’t need your scrotum to tell you that. Now shut up and give me a kiss.

But I don’t know you.

We’ve been married for sixty years you silly old fool, now hold my hands and give me a kiss.

Bert takes Mary’s hands in his, and kisses.

Oh, your lips are dry, my love.

And a wave suddenly moves them from view as a large rocket passes over the moon.

WHAT MARJORIE THINKS IN THE SHOWER

Oh lovely teardrop, will you rain on me?

I’m but a flower under your tree.

Will you quench my heart of its ire?

I’m Marjorie small body, of large desire.

MAN IN SHOWER

Man in pane

Condensation

Man get hot

Palpitation

Man bit stuck

Constipation

Man do fart

Fumigation!

Pictures by Jonny Voss, except Man in Shower which was drawn on a shower pane by Isaac Voss.

A few of the pieces have appeared before on Epoque Press, Litro, Words for the Wild, Fictive Dream and 3:AM Magazine.