Monolith Cocktail Blog

Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski




As you may know if you’re a regular follower of The Monolith Cocktail, we’ve been serializing a number of new novels and writings from debut authors over the last two years; beginning with Ayfer Simm‘s Istanbul pyschogreograhy A Rumor In Üsküdar in 2019.  Following on Ayfer’s heels we’re now serializing the Lynchian semi-biographical and incomprehensible jukebox set wanderings of Dan Shea (Bordellos, Vukovar and Beauty Stab infamy) and Rick Clarke’s (bandmate of Shea and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar) new novel The Great Immurement: The previous nine chapters of which appeared last month in July and early August. We continue with those semi-esoteric imaginings below and bring you next trio of NSFW chapters, ‘The Door To A Broken World’, ‘The Lost Sheep’, ‘Absorbing Genius’; illustrated as always by the illustrious Andrzej Klimowski.

THE DOOR TO A BROKEN WORLD

 

A knock upon the door? Answer it. No. No I can’t be doing that. I can’t be letting the outside mix with the inside. What if it’s important? It can’t be that important. But you don’t know that. I do. No you don’t, it could be an emergency. From the tip of my head to my furry cunthole, and then down again to the floor-space, I know it isn’t that important, and besides, if it were so bad, they’d knock down the door and come in unasked and uninvited.

I shrink away and slink away from the door, happy that my fetid home-place remains without contamination. The aromas have become so that I struggle to tell apart my groin-scent, my sweat scent and any and every-scent else. And I like it that way. To not be able to differentiate between filths; rot, body, mould, waste is to be clean. Everything is equal, everything is one, everything is cleanliness, everything is godliness.

 

I have earned my divine right. My divine right is to be allowed to remain with my divine right, earning my divine right and forever may it remain that way, to be able to enjoy my divine right.

 

Eat. But what shall I have? Shave a little flesh from the bottom of your foot. I’m afraid. Afraid?Afraid of disappearing, not of the pain, that doesn’t even come into it. Once you eat it and digest it, it’ll return back to its rightful place. That’s how it works, you are your food, this is the joy of being a person. I don’t know, I’m unsure. I look at the rest of me and see bumps and ditches where my flesh has left me forever. I told you about the dangers of not ingesting your egest. Sometimes I’m not hungry. Then you will disappear, death to cowards! Alright.

I acquire a cutting instrument of some description. It probably isn’t a grater. But it’s dyed a dried blood- brown and it’s still just about sharp enough. I hack it into my lower heel and there it stays for a second, wedged. There is no blood and there doesn’t need to be. I wriggle the cutting steel up and down a touch to get a hold, but I do it too enthusiastically and it comes out. Without touching, I can feel the separation between the two kingdoms of dried up skin and sinew, and I can feel the flap-flapping of half-island that’s trying to escape into a full republic; the grotesque ridge of discontent.

 

Eventually I have my meal and then I stand in a space and wait there. My body shuts down – I don’t need it.

 

I think for a while. I think of well dressed ladies looking at their twat in a hand mirror, sitting in a carriage on a train. Maybe they’ll masturbate. I look down at my own naked body and my own dirtied breasts and my own dirtied twat but there is no stimulation. The filth is ingrained deep into my skin.

 

My mind shuts down – I don’t need it.

 

A knock – a THUD – at the door. I mustn’t answer it but I mustn’t not watch the door from the hall in case I miss anything. This is all very strange. I don’t know how to deal with it all. I just stand, swaying on the spot in an alien attempt to balance a new imbalance, constantly trying to right my wavering stance.

I know something is going to happen.
I know something is going to happen.
I know something is going to happen.
I KNOW SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN.
I KNOW SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN.

 

I don’t know what.

 

I find out what.

 

A beam of light forces itself through a new rectangular hole in the door; it blinds me. It blinds my precious muck and stink, each being reintroduced to each other in this evil half-light, the second impressions being made are those of repulse and repugnancy.

The light vanishes as quickly as it appears, only it doesn’t feel like it, and in with it comes something… else. It lands on the floor like an intruding leaf, so light that it skims across the floor surface first before coming to a dead halt.

I sneak my way to the shape lying, unmoving on my floor. I keep my distance though. Pick it up. I don’t think being so cavalier is wise. How else will you find out what it is?

 

Now here I kneel, paying respect to the shrine I did construct for the paper-shape. The grime around me doesn’t seem so sterile now, and I feel uncomfortable being stuck under the weight of the heavy air that is all around me.

The paper is my new life and I’m now curious as to its source and how it came to be with me. I wonder what that second contains, that second of light. I wonder what’s inside it. It must be something tangible or it couldn’t appear in my eyes. Is it a place? I want to know more.

 

I forget my allegiance to dirt. I want to go where the light goes. I think about it every time my body and brain isn’t off. How do I do it? It’s a mystery and it makes my skin crawl with anger. My forearms open and bleed. Still I kneel at the shrine, at all times.

A KNOCK UPON THE DOOR. I run. At the door, I speak and the figure speaks back. He will wait there. He opens the letterbox and the light comes in once more, only for this time, it’s there for longer. I bask in it, eyes close and arms open. My legs weaken. I touch between my thighs and bring my sex to my nose and my mouth. I have to go, I have to get into the hole of my new joy.

I persuade the figure to help me; he doesn’t want to but I use my persuasion and I convince him.

 

I hear machinery.

 

A piece of string comes through the letterbox. I tie it around my waist, very high so that it cuts into me. I stand with my front to the door.

 

I hear machinery, I hear it grind.

I hear machinery and the string pulls me up against the door. Its strength and vigour cause me to acquiesce happily and I smirk with my mouth.

It keeps pulling and pulling and grinding away. It wants me so badly to come into the light, into the

better-place but it seems to be difficult. I’m against the letterbox but my shape isn’t right and my shape is too big. The string is cutting me until it cuts to the bone where I can feel it finally get a grip after scraping a little. I rub my clitoris on the splintered wood of the door and tingle.

 

It’s pulling more.

 

I snap.

 

I now look at the ceiling with my heels as a headrest. I vomit up some stomach acid all over my front, uncontrollable and done so as a subconscious expression of my cathartic experience; the act of the vomit is almost an ejaculation, forced outside of my mouth upon seeing my pubis completely broken. The shattering means my vagina is now split up to my belly button and up to my coccyx on the other wise and I imagine how much pleasure this means I can have when I get to the light outside. The top of my leg bones have found a new home no longer inside their homes of blood, sinew and skin. I’m sure I can smell the exposed bone and cartilage of my hip. It’s like a damp towel, left on the bathroom floor for too long. Yes, that’s it. I start to think about my new way of walking in my new home. I picture the comical sight and snigger; at least I will make others laugh, I will surely make lots of friends. I keep being pulled in a regular rhythm. Pull, pull, pull, pause on an infinite repeat. It’s a little too forceful but I take it with a good nature – maybe the machinery is eager to see me.

 

My broken midriff is now in the light-land. I get a pang of jealousy that it’s out before me but I let it pass as I won’t be long after it.

The light gets more intense. I’m so close.

I get down to my breasts, but combined with my knees, I can’t fit. I dig my nails furiously into the join between my breast and upper stomach and it creates tears. After the pause, the machine pulls again and my breasts are torn off from the base and, hanging on by a bloody hinge, they come back nipple-down on my shoulders.

 

I’m almost out, the light almost bleaches my whole vision.

 

I’m out.

 

I’m in the light.

THE LOST SHEEP

 

Who is the one who is living him now? Keep themselves to yourself.

 

I am a little lost sheep says I – this is violent. I can’t find my way back home. I have lost the trail that I put down myself, for myself, for myself to reach the beginning of the path I started down.

Everything moves itself around here. My shepherd cannot see me and equally so, I cannot see him. My shepherd is my Father is my teacher is my lover is my victim is (sometimes) my own self. Nothing stays the same.

I’m so tired – this is violent. Things are split in half in an almost automatic way; a production line of symmetrical brutality. In the village, where doggers unrelenting and unrepent, I found a peephole of sorts in an old moss covered, discarded length of timber around the back of a row of garages, which belong to the block of flats that then-existed, now-don’t (moved to the Inner Otherlands.)

 

The peephole showed me my home… but only sometimes. I couldn’t see the way back, though.

Also through the peephole stood another lost sheep just like me. It tried to play to my sympathy… I watched as it did creepeth… crept… creeped… it did creepers in an insectly way, out of sympathy and into repugnance. I took breaks between my peeping so as not to lose myself completely.

I saw many things and many things repeated. In my breaks, I took to keeping food/warmth/shelter with a handsome man who appeared – but not to himself – to be the King Of The Strangers.

The handsome man only appeared in sight as a visual aura, descriptions could follow the course of a tumoural warning; a prelude to death, or at the very least, a distortion of the living, such was the visual aura. I was not his most recent freedman but more like a friend or companion.

(He nursed me back to health as it wasn’t my time. He insisted the old piece of timber – peephole and all – were for the temptations of another and not for me. I was a lost soul, not a dead one.)

I am the little lost sheep, says I. I stand and I watch and I wait for my shepherd so I can bleat myself back to his loving protection – this is violent.

 

And now The Great Immured recalls:

Experience the world as I experience the world.
I thought it was of importance, of significance,
That thinking what I thought and existing as I exist held coherence.
But now I see it’s ridiculous and I’m ashamed.
Every thought I have dissolves to nothing.

So exist as I exist.
Cunts splay open like wildflowers
And the scent of their labian spring
But no colour
The moistening into grey mist with pleasure, but no feeling.

Man made stones dance,
Casting shadows as intangible monoliths
In permanent winters that bleach the vision into delusions.

Accidental opiates rise from black puddles
Rise in flesh from inherent coldness.
Exist as I exist.

I am the little lost sheep says I
And my shepherd is fucking;
Fucking bodies into bodies
And surroundings into nothing,
All decayed and barren.
My rose of blood
But I still don’t know who sends them.
Exist as I exist.
So that I don’t have to let slip
Meaningless words from my mouth
Or act-out affection,
So the fucking is automatic
And the emptiness is shared,
That ruins stay ruined and don’t have to be sold.

Exist as I exist.

Now the symbols wilt
And all the lies can be true.
Mothers mothering without the cruelty
Their clouds loom
And skin melting skin.
Exist as I exist.
All the secrets align.
A witness to the feeding of the fool
Bone crushing bone
From the spool hangs limp
All that should.

Exist as I exist.

Sacrifice yourself on the altar of my glory.

Exist as I exist.

 

This is what is through the peephole, this is the figure you are and you aren’t.

ABSORBING GENIUS

The holes are funnels, channeling the strength of the creamy-white concentrated genius that is propelled out in their moment of weakness. Foolish to let go of essence of greatness, whether willingly or not. SEMEN EFFUNDIS VENENUM EST…

 

Wise are those who catch this purity in their canals, crafted by a theft’s ingenuity. It sticks to the sides of these canals, growing and pulsing, forming new layers over lost ones. Old, tired, retarded membranes now replaced by the immortal. Sometimes the giver gives through sacrifice. Sometimes pity. Mostly wilful ignorance borne to simple, ill-disciplined pleasure.

 

This interlocking and outerlocking circle and cycle can only come to those who acknowledge it, even if the forfeiter forfeits without having to have the knowledge. And so the internal bukake is knowledge, and knowledge is power, and power is all.

Author: Rick Clarke
Illustrations: Andrzej Klimowski



Parts 1 – 3

Parts 4 – 6

Parts 7 – 9