Be Careful What You Fish For

Derek was seated one cloudy Friday morning in the office with his back to the magnolia wall, upon which hung a blue baize notice board, bits of unread literature pinned here and there. It had rained and a smell like wet dog lingered, making him feel sick despite his stomach gurgling and aching with emptiness. He had had no breakfast this day either. He thought of the crisps and the yoghurt in his drawer, and that they would be best saved for later when he was really hungry.

            He was hungry because his salary barely covered his accumulated expenses and debts incurred through online gambling.

            Since he was a boy, Derek believed the world would one day give him greatness. ‘I’m gonna build bridges,’ he’d say. ‘I’m gonna climb mountains.’ He threw a plank of wood over a stream once (he and some friends had bounced on it until it broke) and the closest he had come to a mountain was rolling down a sand dune at Talacre Beach.

            As he did his best to concentrate on his work, wondering if he would ever get a permanent contract and a raise in pay, Derek puffed out his cheeks and exhaled in an almost audible sigh-cum-growl. The dark rings beneath his eyes made him look older than his twenty-seven years. His hair was getting long, people in offices always notice when things look untidy. They mostly left him alone but Derek was certain they spoke about him. Dissatisfied in many ways, Derek kept a low profile, apart from the unkempt hair, and hoped that the hours would quickly pass so he could get home and eat whatever things remained at the back of the freezer.

            During lunch, his phone blorked. It was a text from Clare whom he’d been dating for about a fortnight. They had arranged to see Shakespeare in the park at the weekend followed by a walk around the castle and the Roman walls (none of these were Derek’s preferred past-times, but if he played his cards right, treated her nicely, they might end up in a little B&B) but she had to cancel, said her sister was ill.

            ‘Fucking great,’ Derek thought. Yoghurt dripped on to his tie as he read, but he didn’t notice.

            Others did. They always do.

Derek’s sister called that evening to see if he would take seven-year-old Joey to the fair on Saturday – Tim’s mother isn’t too well – but not to worry if he already had plans.

            ‘Actually, I don’t. I mean I did, but they got cancelled. Besides, I could do with a bit of fun.’

            ‘Great, I’ll drop him around twelve? And thanks...’

Little Joey was superdooper-excited to be hanging out with his best Uncle Derek. His mum says Uncle Derek has a cool job in the city where he has to wear a suit because it’s very important. Maybe they’ll win a football or a fish doing hook-a-duck. Little Joey would love a fish. That would be superdooper.

Derek reminisced as he and Joey wandered hand in hand among pleasant smells: hot dogs, onions, and candy floss. The lights were bright, the music was loud, and children ran around followed by their parents in wellington boots. Derek laughed with Joey in the fun house; waved at him on the spaceships; took photos with his smartphone and forgot, or didn’t care, how much the day was costing. It was certainly cheaper than al fresco Shakespeare anyway. Joey noticed some other kids with a goldfish in a clear plastic bag.

            ‘Ooh,’ he said, his eager face was as bright as sunlight on water. ‘Can you win me a fish, Uncle Derek?’

            ‘I can certainly try, little buddy.’

            Joey bounced as he led his uncle to the hook-a-duck stall where a plump and elderly lady greeted them. ‘What a handsome young man,’ she observed. The woman wore a torn black gilet with silver pin badges arranged along each lapel like scales. She spoke in husky Irish.

            ‘Thanks very much,’ Derek replied, smiling.

            ‘I was talkin’ to the boy, you silly sausage. Three tries for a pound: find the number one and you win a fish.’

            Joey could not contain his excitement. Uncle Derek paid the fee and helped him to control the hook on a pole as long as Joey. The first duck concealed a number three; the second a number eight; but the third had a number one beneath it.

            ‘Yay! We won, Uncle Derek. We won!’

            ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ the old lady said. ‘That’s a number seven. Better luck next time.’

            Derek did not care to see the face of his nephew so quickly change from joy to sadness. The boy’s bottom lip dropped as tears welled and threatened to burst.

            ‘Lady, I want the damned fish.’

            ‘I’m sorry, son. It’s a seven. You’re welcome to try again.’

            ‘It’s a one. Give me the fish.’ Derek leaned forward to take the duck from the end of the pole just as the old lady did the same. He tripped on a clod of kicked-up earth, stumbling forward and catching the stall holder in the mouth. Her lip bled and she fell backward into the mud from where she glared at Derek.

            ‘Oh, you’ll get your fish,’ her husky voice had taken a menacing, threatening tone. ‘In that same hand with which you struck an old woman, you’ll get your fish.’

            Derek stuttered a frightened apology and turned to leave, pulling little Joey by the arm as he did so. People moved out of his way; the children pointed, staring with open mouths. Derek lost his grip on Joey’s arm. When he looked to see how, in place of his right hand was the head of a large fish, flopping from side to side and gasping for air. He fainted. Joey screamed. And the elderly lady from the stall grinned as she dabbed the blood from her lip.

Chalk and Slate

Two elderly gentlemen are seated in high-backed armchairs; a log fire snaps amiably before them, illuminating their trimmed white beards like clouds at sunset. The proprietor of this homely room is a vicar in the Anglican faith; a doctor of philosophy; and a celebrated philanthropist. He is reading for the unknownth time his ragged copy of Mathew Lewis’s The Monk from which he extracts his inspiration to remain both erudite and humble. In his hand is a glass of brandy of the smallest measure and upon his lap sleeps a contented ginger tom. The other, a friend of the vicar’s of old, is headmaster of the grammar school; he is reading today’s copy of The Observer whilst worrying the end of a pipe: a gift from the vicar and what he names his true selfish pleasure, given that the only time he smokes it is of a Friday evening in the company of his old friend the Reverend Doctor George Slate and Dogberry, the cat.

           ‘I say, George,’ the headmaster says. ‘What are we to make of the way that every newspaper article makes mention of the “inheritance of debt” that this government has received from its predecessors? Surely the priority is not in the insufficiency of funds but the consistency of future resources.’

           The vicar carefully lowers his novel so as not to disturb his cat and pushes with his index finger the bridge of his glasses so that they slide to the top of his aquiline nose.

           ‘Well, Tom,’ said he, ‘as you’ve always known my concern has never been with the echoing of words from the mouths of politicians. Such things I have always felt to be propagandist repetition until they become synonymous with public sentiment. But you’re right, my old friend, what will become of the “green and pleasant land” that you and I knew in our youth if the children of tomorrow lie in their parents’ beds of a winter’s evening; entirely reliant upon their father’s arse-stinks for warmth?’

           Thomas Chalk contemplated the foresight of his friend the vicar for a moment.

           ‘Quite my point entirely. It’s not enough for our government to illustrate the shortcomings of its predecessor whilst concealing, or not yet realising, their own; particularly, I put it to you, George, when one man’s freezer holds not the sufficient amount of food for a week’s subsistence but instead contains several samples of his own stool, carefully wrapped in rubber johnnies for the purpose of bumming himself with them.’

           Slate nodded his head in agreement and uttered some sounds of deliberation. Following a brief reflection, he said,

           ‘Is it acceptable then for a man to be judged in the society of which he plays an integral part, be it for his wisdom gained through long-suffering or for the things produced by the work of his hands, by the means by which he exists? For example, should the punishment for kicking one of the Queen’s swans in the balls be the same whether the perpetrator is a lord, a doctor, or a milkman?’

           ‘I witness in your example, George, the frustration inherent in modern society. Truly we have all been tempted to kick a swan in its balls or put baby pandas in microwaves. The point is that, intrinsically, man is conditioned to associate these things with evil-doing; regardless of his financial security or his economic status, any man would much prefer to yank one off in a public toilet than disgrace himself by doing a shit on our humble hedgehog and laughing as it waddles away with its spikes piercing the poo on its back.’

           ‘That reminds me,’ the vicar said, ‘of the words of Jesus Christ: “Consider the birds of the air, and grieve not when one shits on you, for ‘tis lucky”.’

           ‘Indeed. It beggars belief how long our compatriots will tolerate being shat upon by men in suits. Of all the things that I believe will bring our nation back into prosperity, the one that ranks highest is the belief that man has the God-given right to fart into the back of a hair-drier and aim it at his wife. Only then will the politicians of the world unite in the name of considering not how their country looks in the eyes of other countries, but how it looks to itself and how it feels within itself.’

           ‘An excellent point, old man. And when the people of the world unite behind one great leader, the togetherness of spirit will return them to the bosom of religious enlightenment, brotherhood, and the freedom to express themselves via the medium of hilarious bum-noises.’

           With that, the cat lifts its ample body up onto its four paws and, after stretching, jumps down onto the rug.

           ‘Oh God!' says the vicar. 'That stinks!’

           The teacher laughs until the pipe falls from his mouth and tears roll down his jowls.

           ‘Dogberry one, Slate nil.’

Lolcats

Kitteh! Kitteh! Small and grey,

Wants cheezburgers every day.

What uncommon kind of cat

Requests a diet such as that?

In what distant basement dream

Someone first described that meme?

What microwavable snacks

Were consumed among his stacks?

And what hard drive, and what code?

What software did he download?

And when the modem dialled in,

How broadly did the child grin?

What the finger? What the mouse?

In what basement of his house?

And when the world had seen your face,

WTF! A cat in space!

Bobbing, weaving, ‘tween the stars,

Shooting rainbows from its arse.

And when he saw his work complete,

He pressed Ctrl, Alt, & Delete,

So none could plagiarise his art,

(Then changed his password to restart).

Kitteh! Kitteh! Famous cat!

Amusing muse for all of that.

A Reunion: Forbidding Fucking

A Reunion: Forbidding Fucking

Not mildly do the mem’ries fade,

But whisper still as years elapse,

Until this ling’ring masquerade

Is over, for a while, perhaps.

Why are the freely-born so taught,

            As often joyful as depressed,

To freely cling to Cupid’s sport,

            Who paints his targets on their breast?

And that same wingèd bastard’s aim

            Reminds me of a drunkard’s piss:

Is bound to failure and to shame;

            Is arbitrary – hit and miss.

And though the swiftest runners flee

            They don’t escape his lengthy range

When love’s displayed so publicly,

            A not so clandestine exchange.

But we, by a love so much resigned

            To keep it secret in all ways –

I want your body, not your mind,

            Could care less for such displays.

And in your private aperture,

            As pointless as resistance is,

We’re just like Tesla’s armature:

            We’re two opposed existences.

If we be two, then two we are,

            As are charged magnets also two,

Yet come together from afar,

            Sealed with some internal glue.

And when one magnet, turned away,

            Repels the other with a force

Akin to night repelling day;

            And years elapse, both mine and yours.

And if by chance we meet and so

            Remember times when we were wild,

Let’s not go in circles though,

            You’re married now. You have a child.