Tennyson In Space: Appl. E. Chapters One & Two
August 15, 2025
The Monolith Cocktail Serialises Andrew C. Kidd’s Tennyson Imbued sci-fi Saga.
Dabbling over the last decade with showcasing exciting, sometimes improbable, intriguing work from new and aspiring writers, the Monolith Cocktail has played host to serialisations of stories by Rick Clarke (of Vukovar and The Tearless Life infamy) and Ayfer Simms (the Franco-Istanbul writer, and for a few years, an integral member of the MC team offering various reviews and conducting interviews).
Furnishing the site since Covid with review pieces and the odd feature, Glaswegian-based writer Andrew C. Kidd now adds his name to this list. Andrew shares his grand interstellar saga, Tennyson In Space, with the MC readers through an epic serialisation. Over the last four months or so we’ve published the Prologue, Part One and Part Two of The Violin, all four parts of the Hic Sunt Leones Et Corvi suite and the Pink Nepenthe. Now we are proud to share the first two chapters of Appl. E.
Appl. E
“Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me
Walking the cold and starless road of death”
From Œnone by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“How sweet.
Just to register emotion, jealousy – devotion,
And really feel the part”
Tin Man, Wizard of Oz
Part 1
All manner of blues in their nightly state were gradually lightened to a lilac hue by the bright white starlight that circled above Alard. Yawning silently, his final thoughts of the day had settled on all the possibilities of tomorrow’s conference.
Would he be scorned as his previous employers on Eris had scorned him? The Eridian administration had decided that they wished no part in his research. Possibly borne out of fear, they justified non-action through esoteric ethical codes and abstract governance. The contempt they had displayed only served as a catalyst to send him on the long road of discovery.
There was no doubt that Alard possessed a detailed knowledge of the science, yet it had been his enterprising spirit that had led him to identify the missing link in the equation – an equation that had stumped so many of the great scientists of his day. He deemed the inaction of his Eridian superiors to be unacceptable.
Let Alard do the bidding of the diffident. Alard the decisive! Alard the subversive!
Once his work had been published, validation would follow. After that, accolades and the yearning of all scholarly minds: affirmation.
Alard had fallen asleep.
The applause he had been receiving had become amplified to uncomfortable levels. The dream sequence had evidently changed. He stirred unpleasantly. A cold sweat enveloped him. Would he have to admit that the idea was never actually his? He gripped at the sheets.
His sleep-self descended into a cavernous place. He was weightless. The long limbs of a nightmarish phantom appeared from the abyss and started to grapple at his naked body. Beads of sweat trickled out. He was being pulled down into a small pool. At the point of submersion, he woke suddenly.
The porthole above him framed a scene of fervent lightness which was blackened only by the opaque canvas of deep space. Dry-mouthed, his mind reset in the awareness of his awake state. His heart rate slowly settled. Sleep would soon prevail once more.
His subconscious mind returned to that late December evening when he stumbled upon the seed that would blossom into his remarkable discovery.
* * *
Alard sat in the refectory of the Institut de Sobere. Three weeks had passed since his landing on the icy trans-Neptunian object. He had been working as an Auxiliaire Biomédical in the Département de Microbiologie on one of the research modules on Eris.
Dinner was a late affair that evening. A forgettable experiment in one of the accessory laboratories had run over and he arrived to pick at the dregs of the evening service. After tucking into the crusty winged remnants of some types of Orthoptera, a well-heeled laboratory manager chewed loudly on the bench in front of him. This corpulent woman had her back turned to him. She spoke confidently, and evidently, drunkenly.
‘Cut it out… with a k-knife, or a schalpel…’, she slurred, ‘…a scalpel!–’ clumsily correcting herself ‘–and… and I said… well, you know… blast! I really can’t remember in all honeschty?’ She laughed loudly.
Alard was dining alone. He looked around at the rows of benches, all full of people conversing and eating, most noisily.
‘Ahem!–’ the drunkard cleared her throat ‘–a scal-pel…’ She spilt the word in two, placing additional emphases on the ls. This had been an obvious attempt to retain some form of professional standing amongst the junior researchers who were accompanying her.
‘I… I must b’xshcused…’
After stumbling away from the bench to the toilet, Alard turned his attention to the two juniors talking quickly and quietly amongst themselves. He continued to tuck into his grilled grasshopper.
A short interval passed and the sottish drunk fumbled her way back over to the bench. Spittle glistened on her chin.
‘Yes… yes…’, she smiled contortedly. ‘I must admit that I have forgotten what I was saying.’
Exasperated expressions were etched on the young faces of those who sat with her.
‘You were talking about the funeral fields’, the boyish researcher said.
‘And the ethics council’, the other added. ‘You were telling us about your meeting with them – what did they say?’
She eyed her environment cautiously before whispering.
‘It was an outright rejection! And no blooming wonder…’ She paused to turn round to look at Alard who was playing masterfully at demonstrating disinterest in their conversation. Had he looked up, a face, beaming red in the warmth of the refectory and through the vasodilatory effects of the liquor, would have glared back at him.
‘Surely, they will have to rethink their decision. I mean–’
‘I think we will have to watch what we are schaying.’
The playful mask of the senior scientist suddenly revealed an angry temperament. Her orbicular face reddened further.
‘No… yes–’ a confused look emerged ‘–listen, we are in a public space, and we really schouldn’t be talking about such matters of such… of such…’ Words were clearly lost to her again.
‘Magnitude?’, the other junior transplanted, charging her superior’s glass with more of the crimson fluid.
‘Importan-schce was the word I was going to schay’, she misarticulated, taking a further sip of wine. ‘S-ay… I must insist that you stop interrupting me!’ She pronounced the sist of the word insist with a trailing th that sharpened on the tip of her tongue.
‘But it could provide the answer to biopolymer degradation. You said it yourself!’, the boyish inferior declared in hushed tones.
‘No… no, we must desist from any further discussion pertaining to this matter’, she reiterated, shaking her bulb-like head. Another mouthful of wine was gulped down. Her glass clinked as she placed it next to the emptied bottle.
‘In fact…’, she proceeded, ‘…the matter has been put to the same place where… that… ahem, I am presently going to the place of the matter.’ She tutted. ‘No! No… the matter of the place.’
She paused before standing up. Alard caught her awkward smile. Wine-stained teeth dulled in the half-light of the corridor that led away from the canteen. She was evidently, and unannouncedly, retiring to her quarters.
Alard raised his eyebrows subtly as he sipped from his cup. He remarked that the alcohol had clearly made her loquacious. It had imbued high spirits, yet he knew that she would have an altogether different demeanour tomorrow morning as she clung onto the bowled alter of veisalgia.
He returned to the remnants of his meal. The two junior researchers engaged in their private conversation of hushed tones and rapid glances around the room. Alard had an impossible job of understanding them. His mind fantasised about all the possible schemes they could be hatching. He resolved that he would find out what they had discovered, and why it was so important, and why their superior, upon momentary sobriety, had insisted on such sudden and unflinching confidentiality.
He stood up from his bench and walked over to the duo.
‘Hello’, he said, smiling at them with bright-eyes.
* * *
The morning of the conference had arrived. Alard woke to bright white starlight that crowned the sky. This was a projected visual. An image recorded in high-definition. The artificial luminance shone gradually to induce wakefulness.
Situated some several hundred meters underground, he felt the warmth of this base. It had been built as a defensive bunker in the Never Wars. Long vacated, the Domini had repurposed this as a neutral meeting place.
He had been told that underground streams flowed in abundance here. Alard took this rare opportunity to immerse himself in a water-bath. He stared at the pipes that appeared and reappeared at impossible angles across the four walls. His eyes stung a little in concentration. He knew that his sleep had been interrupted, yet the memory of what had caused his partial insomnia was indistinct. The black pool had been drained from his mind.
A dark suit had been selected for him by the Domini’s anthropomorphous assistants. Alard knew very little about couture. Having been given a choice of garments, he deferred such judgement to these humanoids. A gown, adorned with braided aiguillettes, was placed over his head in quiet ceremony.
He was accompanied from his room down a passageway. It narrowed to end at a small entranceway through which a large stone-grey chamber towered higher than he thought possible in these subterranean depths. It stretched out horizontally across his immediate horizon. The imposition of the conference hall had little effect on Alard. The magnitude of his discovery weighed heavily on his mind; it was far more formidable than any underground atrium.
He was quickly introduced to the Domini. This one-eyed elder studied the youthful scientist who stood before him. Alard’s compressed and block-like hexagonal face fascinated the Domini. His jaw was not so much chiselled, but roughly hewn, flattening out to a chin that was broader than most. The Domini imagined a sculptor who had evidently hammered too hard; corrective sanding had subsequently worn away more than intended.
Another automated assistant appeared. Alard was ushered away from the Domini. As he walked towards the area where the conference was taking place, he noticed the elder’s periodic smile and darting eyes. Alard knew that he was distracted.
His assumption had been correct, for although the Domini was playing the polite and unassuming role, he had sent two of the automated assistants to search Alard’s room. The visual display on the clear meniscus over the right eye of the Domini projected the output of these automations.
Alard had brought only one case with him which was presently upturned. The Domini spotted a large piece of fabric on the only table in the room. It was a quilt composed of variable square pieces of material. Each cutting appeared to have originated from hats and upper body garments and torn trouser pieces. Their dimensions were exact. A small sewn number, stitched into the top right of each square, suggested a cataloguing process. Whatever the purpose, the Domini considered this haphazard arrangement to be strange and meaningful.
Back in the chamber, Alard followed the steps of a small stairway that led to an elevated platform. Four automatons guarded this concourse; beyond it lay the Domini’s domain.
Above the gallery was a large portrait. The outline of the sitter was obscured by the inky-dark background they had been painted against. Alard could vaguely discern a figure cloaked in black – so black that those who dared to study it would claim to have been given a cursory insight into the very infinitude of time itself.
He walked through a partitioned area which served to reduce the apparent size of this cavernous chamber. It was an illusion that only worked on those who remained focused on its four perfectly painted walls. An upward glance would reveal the illimitable ceiling of this atrium.
He sat down at an elliptical table and counted five other positions at sixty-degree angles around him. Alard’s hand moved across the polished surface of the wood nervously. He recalled the plants of his youth. Ruscus aculeatus. Or was it hypoglossum?
In three of the pre-ordained seating positions, small hexagonal platforms were visible. Power units, each one displaying a holographic image, lifeforms from unknown places relayed many miles away. They flickered emptily as he stared at them.
The Domini made his entrance and sat down at the head of the table. A subaltern detailed the order of proceedings. Those at the meeting were formally welcomed. Peace was pledged.
Alard had become distracted by the large portrait that hung over the Domini’s domain. He was absorbed in its charcoal-black colour. Whether smoke, or asteroids in a solar wind, or a helical representation of something metaphorical, its mystery drew him in. He half-expected the black-gloved hand to slowly finger down the surface of the portrait, feeling its way over the partition in the chamber, reaching for him.
‘Docteur Alard–’ A voice snapped. His looked at the platforms on the table. The holographs were no longer void. Bright-coloured visuals sparkled before him.
‘I was saying that we always adhere to the laws of governance’, a tall woman had concluded.
She was dressed entirely in white. One shoulder was enshrouded by flowers. Her holograph was transmitting directly across from Alard. The light garment she wore shimmered against the dimmed lights of the chamber.
‘Pah! Their scaffolds are purely aesthetic, nothing more. If your decision lies with Clan Dœmae, then more fool you.’ The representative of Aēr spoke measuredly yet authoritatively. ‘We offer leading–’
‘You offer nothing more than a monopolistic dominion!’, barked the hologram of the interjector next to the representative of Aēr. She stared blankly at the antagonistic intermediary of Pallas who continued:
‘Our facility at Auriga offers the only viable location to carry out the necessary work. We received your data prior to this conference. It has advanced our understanding immeasurably.’
She bowed before Alard, breaking off momentarily. The momentary skip in her channel meant that she had snapped immediately back into an upright position. She wavered as the image came back into focus.
‘We at Pallas are very grateful for this.’
Her attention returned to the representative of Aēr.
‘However, what has been presented is merely a signal at this stage. Our researchers have been working on similar projects, adding further data to augment what we already understand. I am afraid that much more work is needed to ensure success in this field.’
Alard had been somewhat taken aback by the sharp tone of the elfin figure that scintillated before him. She spoke in the hammered polyphonic tones of Mandarabic, the vernacular of the present-day, an amalgamation of the Mandarin and Semitic languages. Occasional English words were thrown in (the use of the Anglophonic language of the Anthropocene, now consigned to antiquity, implied that the orator had been well-educated).
Her dark brown hair fell in ringlets over her narrow frame. She wore an achromatic-grey garment. A dulled gold hue shone underneath this. Jewellery? Or armour? An emblem appeared next to her name on the screen. It took on the shape of a Capra. Three horned protuberances jutted from its head.
The representative of Aēr was subsequently given the floor. She shot a subtle sideways glance at the intermediary of Pallas before addressing Alard.
‘We offer–’ she cleared her throat ‘–let me rephrase… Appl. E. is your discovery. Should you choose our organisation to be its beneficiary, we would work together to lengthen the very coil that makes us mortal. You see, we are offering you our Ma-ga-leading facilities. Our researchers do not want for anything. We already occupy this space. Your technology would hasten the great work that we have already carried out in this field, and as you will be aware, our expeditionary programme has proffered us with collaborative capabilities that stretch to the very reaches of our Heliosphere. Our base on Auriga would bestow the privacy that you so desire, away from the prying eyes of the…’
She stopped herself to survey the Domini and his associate at the far end of the table. A false smile emerged from behind the rocky outcrops of her rough-textured features.
‘Dr. Alard’, she spoke confidently. ‘Let our confederation be the one to actualise your vision.’
‘You speak confidently on behalf of an organisation that has a track record of abject failure in the field of regenerative medicine.’ The foursquare intermediary of Pallas communicated plainspokenly. ‘You are conquistadors. And your conquests require bodies on the ground. You seek Appl. E. to reign supreme in the Heliosphere.’
The intermediary of Pallas paused.
‘Do not let her obliqueness cloud your judgement’, she concluded.
Part 2
Alard glared at □. Her screen was opaque-white. Glimmers of iridescent bronze and oxidised iron-green shone through at irregular intervals. The thin-framed magnicles pinched his nasal bridge as he read her latest output.
‘Gram-positive Firmi…’
Lines of zeros and ones filed across his monitor in quick succession. He winced. The oppressive laboratory lights bore down on him. Soon, the headache would crescendo.
‘…and Gram-negative Bacteroi…’
The black text continued. Alard, cup in hand, leaned forward to interrupt □.
‘Check object code: line three. Define: ‘resistance’. Enter: ‘hydroxyl’. Align with ‘distal’ and ‘group’. End stri…’
‘Do you mean, ‘assign with’?’, □ enquired.
Alard was tired. The work that he and □ were conducting was in place of sleep. As a laboratory assistant, he was chained to a seven-day schedule. Had there been the same resources on the mountainous Manitoud, he would have extended his leave to complete their research there.
‘Accept correction’, he yawned at □.
The watermark of CHSMC was centred on his screen. It had been during his time on Manitoud that he had first utilised this software. Abstruse to the programming uninitiated, its methods of learning were unsupervised and advanced. Ultimately, CHSMC offered anonymity which was coveted by the likes of Alard who sought to harness hyper-intelligence without interference.
‘End string. Return to superphylum. Define: phylogenetic tree. Check: ‘fermentation’…’
He had programmed □ using CHSMC. Alard had decreed that it was in fact she, and that she would be trained to assist him in his endeavours. During her development, the name Œn+, or ONE1 (pronounced one squared) filtered through to him. It had been she who requested to be known in her runic form as □.
‘… define: ‘pilus’ and ‘assembly’. Remove sequential patterns. Run.’
The cursor on the white screen blinked at Alard. After a short while, a binary sequence started to stream in lines and filled his visual fields. This was the genomic sequence of the polyketide skeleton of a novel microbiota.
He smiled the same bright-eyed smile he had beamed at the youthful researchers in the refectory on Eris. Four months had passed since they had told Alard all they knew about this particular bacterium. It had supposed origins in Scarabaeidae. It failed to retain crystal violet. It was intolerant of oxygen.
The swift ‘redeployment’ of the two young scientists to MakeMake in the Kuiper belt came as a surprise to Alard. As far as he was aware, the high concentrations of nitrogen ices on that dwarf planet were incompatible with life. This had served as a warning to him. If he wished to remain in this Eridian facility, his work would have to be carried out in secret.
As Alard interpreted the read-out on the screen, □ continued:
‘Look at the transcriptomic profile. Its expression pattern–’
‘I can see it’, Alard interrupted, ‘define: GTR–’
‘Acronyms, Alard’, □ chided.
‘Guided. Tissue. Regeneration’, he supplanted.
‘Enter: ‘immune’… no, ‘immuno-modulatory’. Check… wait… add: ‘map regionalisation–’ he paused ‘–check string. End.’
His mind wondered back to his initial encounter with the researchers. They had seemed avoidant, perhaps frightened, when discussing its origins. Harvesting it had been their biggest concern.
Alard knew that success in this field would have Heliospheric-shattering consequences. Unlike their commercial contemporaries, the reputation of the Institute Sobere had remained unsullied despite their conquests in regenerative medicine. It was a complex business, marred by failures, and restricted by ethics.
A mirthful Alard stared at the monitor. He had returned to this godforsaken dwarf planet to continue his controversial experiments within the confines of the Institute. His discovery would be made in their laboratories. Alard and □ worked diligently as they burned through the midnight fluorescence.
* * *
The representative of Aēr had finished talking. Wisps of thin blonde hair bristled from the cloth-crown on her head. Alard remarked that this caul had been made from delicately shuttle-woven silk. The embossed patterns radiated in the dull light of the chamber.
A holographic image hovered beside him. The emissary of another one of the research institutions vying for Alard’s collaboration came into focus.
She was dressed in a white linen garment which had the most unusual form. A shaped shawl enwrapped her neck. It cascaded from behind her ears to follow the contour of her sharp jawline, finally tracking upwards to her mouth so that the point of the ascending triangular lines met at her lower lip. The shawl draped down to her broad shoulders, pointing outwardly. An inverted triangle pointed down to a long skirt that converged at her ankles. She bore the appearance of a four-pointed star, the tips of which meeting sharply at her head and her shoulders and her legs.
Emblazoned over the right shoulder of the shawl was an arrangement of five-petalled flowers that assumed a strange crescent shape. Stamens burst out of these cupped flowers as if multiple explosions of light had been captured in their maximal phosphorescence. Alard knew that these were a descendent of Myrtaceae. Their white petals shone in an abstract representation of beauty. The concerted and connected display suggested order and affiliation. They diffused a sense of devotedness.
The shawled woman spoke.
‘Alard, having reviewed the documents kindly provided to us by you, and made accessible by the Domini–’ she bowed her head benevolently at the cloaked figure ‘–we at Clan Dœmae believe that we can solve the predicament of antimicrobial resistance together. We can offer scholastic prosperity.’
Across from Alard, the holographic display of the intermediary of Pallas wavered as she shook her head.
Predicament. Scholastic prosperity. It was obvious to her that these words were forced. She knew that Clan Dœmae had no track record in this field. Their research focus had been purely in cosmetology, resulting in alterations in phenotypes rather than genuine gains in regenerative medicine.
‘Aesthetics… aesthetics, aes–thet–ics.’ The intermediary of Pallas’s words slowed in a form of vocal ritardando. ‘That is all Clan Dœmae stands for’, she said after a deep inhale. ‘It is all they are good for.’
The Domini raised his hand slowly, beckoning silence from the intermediary of Pallas. Alard smiled at the shawled woman.
* * *
It had been on the Secondary Basement level of the Eridian research facility that Alard observed the cultured myocytes on one side of the extracellular matrix. Stimulation provided by the probe would normally result in cellular death. Black necrosis would spread through these tissues like water droplets bleeding into paint. Subsequent contractions would cause the dying cells and their weakened walls to rupture, spilling their mitochondria and nuclei into the culture medium.
On this occasion, there had been no such death. The tissue cultures seemed to multiply. They proliferated and provided solid foundations upon which new tissue could grow.
Alard returned to his calculations. The superadded bacteria appeared to ‘cleanse’ the process.
Augmentation of the microbiome? His thoughts multiplied. Immune proliferation in an otherwise exhausted microenvironment? Sensitisation?
He even pondered the thaumaturgical: the possibility that these bacteria possessed some kind of god-like property.
His immediate concern was whether these bacteria had a sustained response in their new hosts. Only time would decide this. For now, he quietly revelled in his victory.
‘Appl. E. serves to facilitates gas diffusion, which promotes vascularisation. This is the key that appears to unlock the Nixon cathartic problem’, Alard dictated. ‘Once a steady physiological state is achieved, tissue growth follows.’
The output on □’s screen blinked at him.
‘Obviously, validation follows.’ He winked back at □.
* * *
Alard faced the foothills of Manitoud. He stood with those who had climbed the steps from the depths of the chamber into this pillbox position. A thin opening provided a grand vista.
As he stared out at the expanse of land that lay before him, he imagined wiping his memory of all that he knew so that he could see it all for the very first time. Years on Eris blunted his sensations. It had numbed him. He wished to experience the sheer awe that he once felt for this place.
Alard continued to peer out through the gap. Warm air was being cooled. Mist formed and tumbled down as a faint tsunami from the higher ground. The lowlands were partaking in their morning cleansing.
A quiet klaxon sounded in the pillbox. It beckon those to return from their planned interval to the subterranean chamber. The conference was soon to re-commence. Alard turned to descend the ladder that led away from this world that felt foreign to him.
He sat in his chair and observed the images on his screen fade to a dark green. His thoughts remained on the surface of this planet. He was soon interrupted from his distractions by the sound of a woman’s voice.
‘–and that is why I offer you the opportunity to work with Docteur El-hen.’ The emissary of Clan Dœmae opened her palm by way of introduction.
Alard sat forward to get a closer view of the monitor. A faint figure appeared in a sub-hologram. She was shawled like a Dœmaen. A crossbeam forehead held a weighty expression. Alopecia had evidently robbed her of eyebrows and hair on her head. Her malar bones were protuberant. The shadow from these hid thin lips that appeared to have been half-sketched.
As she leant over the laminar air flow unit, Alard caught sight of her eyes. Unblinking in pupillary standstill, her azurean irises steadied. She was staring fixedly at him.
The aesthetic emissary of Clan Dœmae smiled at Alard as she continued.
‘I must also introduce you to her devoted husband, Professeur Ian Meuse.’
A tall gentleman appeared to the right of Alard’s screen.
‘Avec plaisir’, his broad grim affirmed.
He intoned in the unstressed language of French. What a relief to Alard! Meuse’s whitened teeth appeared to sparkle. He held a confident pose. His auburn hair burned in the bright light of the conference chamber. He had eyes that would pierce their observer.
‘Dr. El-hen and Professeur Meuse are two of our finest principal scientists at Clan Dœmae. Should you choose our institution, you will work closely with them. It is our firm conviction that–’
The words of this nameless representative trailed off in Alard’s mind. His attention remained firmly, and fixedly, on Dr. El-hen.
* * *
The moment of discovery, the revelation, the summation of years of scientific endeavour! Alard felt a weight lifting from him as he peered at the digitalised output of his work.
‘A bacterium, of the phyla Elusimicrobia, isolated from the…’ Alard paused as he looked up at La Directrice. He scolded himself internally for carelessness.
‘Its origins I shall disclose in time, once I have published my work.’
‘Publish?’, the squat Directrice sitting across from him inflected. ‘You must remember that we operate in a commercially sensitive environment, and what you have discovered… this… this “novel microbiota” as you have so termed it… well, it… it…’
She placed both hands down on the bench. Her mouth, straight-lined and stony, imparted a sullenness. She had elected to change her phrasing.
‘To be perfectly frank, Docteur–’ she squinted at the small font of the name badge on his tunic ‘–Alard. You have not had permission to undertake this type of work. As such, in the eyes of the Institute, it has not happened.’
‘Has not happened?’ Alard raised his eyebrows reflexively.
‘If I may elaborate’, La Directrice continued. ‘You have received neither the permission nor the funding for the work that you have so boldly conducted–’ her tone was sardonic now ‘–and that is the reason that your employment with this facility is being severed.’
She paused as she sipped from her glass.
‘You are lucky that we are not taking this matter further. I have been in contact with the Microbiologiste Principal. It would appear that you have been very busy using the facilities in our module, gratuitement, at the expense of Sobere. He also informs me that having reviewed your preliminary data, you had not applied to conduct this work through the ethics council. If this is true, such a transgression is normally in punishable by–’
‘Punishable?!’, Alard thundered.
‘Yes!’, she replied in lightning fashion. ‘Punishable indeed. If it is true, then this will be treated as an infringement of interstellar research law–’
‘The laboratory-derived samples on this barren rock are flawed’, Alard retorted swiftly. ‘There has been no yield from them. They lack any signature that is useful to in vivo research.’ Alard spoke quickly and with clear diction. ‘My chance discovery has–’
‘Surely you cannot think we are that naïve to believe that the Elusimicrobia originated from an apple?’, La Directrice interrupted. She smirked flippantly after she spoke.
Alard was somewhat surprised. He had never disclosed his plan to claim that he had isolated this bacterium from a pome fruit. Perhaps they had accessed these data without his knowledge? This seemed very unlikely given the watertight encryption afforded by CHSMC.
He looked up at the screens that hung from the ceiling. They hovered over the laboratory stations lifelessly. □ suddenly entered his thoughts. She and only she had known this. He shook his head, denying to himself that she was the betrayer. Alard moved away from the workbench and sat down on a chair. He looked over at the glass storage cabinet to his right.
La Directrice followed his movements. This young man was lying. She had no doubts about that. Her impertinence had spooked him, but she had thrown her gauntlet down too early. He now had the upper hand.
Alard turned his head back towards his superior. He knew that he needed to act quickly. Sobere were not known for their clemency. Images of MakeMake filtered into his subconscious. It was deathly cold there. He stood up and walked back over to the bench. His findings were too important to risk exposition.
‘I accept my termination’, he said plainly, leaving the laboratory immediately.
Alard made the short journey to his quarters. An automated craft wheeled slowly over the white surface of the planet. Coin-stacks of methane bubbles beneath him gave the impression that everything on this barren place was being held up by a great many alkane stilts.
His head pressed against the ill-fitting helmet. Condensation misted his view. Lights from the residence modules were starting to halo around him. He closed his eyes and let his head loll around in transit.
The craft came to a sudden stop. His solar visor dropped down and obscured his surroundings. The faint hiss of the door opening followed. He clambered out and waited in the airlock. The sudden rise in temperature turned the crystal air into a steaming dew. His suit was dried off. He doffed this for more comfortable attire. The short walk along the passageway to his dormitory followed.
Alard thought about what he could call the Elusimicrobia. Nomenclature of other microbiota followed a genus-species naming system. Escherichia Coli. Clostridium perfringens. Clostridium botulinum.
Why not alter the order to species-Elusimicrobia? After all, what he possessed would change the way we live, or rather, continue to live. It was unique, and its representation should be likewise.
The dormitory door clicked shut. Alard stood by the mirror in the bathroom.
He recalled the journeys he had once shared with □ to obtain the original samples. It had been her idea. She had infiltrated the Eridian systems to commandeer the vessels that took them there.
Alard stared at himself in the mirror. His face seemed longer than it had before. Grey hairs glinted uninvitingly in the half-light.
Light suddenly filtered outside of the bathroom. A long shadow had appeared at the threshold. A fellow scientist lumbered in to collapse onto their bunk below his. They mumbled something instinct. Alard smiled disinterestedly. He climbed into his sleeping pod and shut the door. Turning to one side, he pulled out his book of quilts and fabrics and leafed through these. Souvenirs. Leavings.
Alard recounted his meeting with La Directrice. The apple had always seemed a credible source, yet she had doubted it. How has she come to know of his decision to choose an apple as the root of his bacteria?
Apple, or æppel… no, the derivation of apple is malus… no…
A golden-brown apple, already in the early stages of decomposition, had presented itself to Alard on one of the workbenches. A fermenting pome fruit yielding powers of regeneration. There was a playful irony to that! So became Apple Elusimicrobia, arranged in order of species-genus; its short form: Appl. E..
Tennyson In Space: Prologue/Part One
March 10, 2025
The Monolith Cocktail Serialises Andrew C. Kidd’s Tennyson Imbued Opus
Dabbling over the decade with showcasing exciting, sometimes improbable, intriguing work from new and aspiring writers, the Monolith Cocktail has played host to serialisations of stories by Rick Clarke (of Vukover and The Tearless Life infamy) and Ayfer Simms (the Franco-Istanbul writer was an integral member of the MC team for a good few years, offering various reviews and conducting interviews).
Furnishing the site since Covid with review pieces and the odd feature, Glaswegian-based writer Andrew C. Kidd now adds his name to the list, sharing his grand opus with the MC readers through an epic serialisation: starting with the Prologue and Part One proper, as it were. Andrew seeks inspiration from music and anything that chronicles the fantastical. And in Tennyson, he finds sentiment and solace.
Prologue
His father disappeared as a smouldering reek on the funeral pyre.
Crimson copper and sallow gold glowed brightly against the stark stillness of the night. Flames fluttered and flapped, occasionally leaping up to touch the sky.
His transformation into light was peaceful – a crackling, fire-pop peace.
After the fire had dissipated, once the fuel had been burnt down to ashes, the heat of the pyre cooled. Nothing was left of his father and the wooden pile. The charred ground took on a vaguely rectangular shape. There was no indentation of the man who once was.
As his son gazed into the faceless sky, so many thousands of silent coruscations blinked down at him.
A rheumatic finger pointed unsteadily.
‘–ero…’ [Proto-Celtic: eagle]
Another figure nodded.
‘…next to it, gal-s-ā…’ [swan]
An arm reached out and held him. The grip was firm.
‘…and your father, kruttā–’ [harp]
The youth turned round and observed the Elders who smiled coldly.
He looked away again.
Branches wavered along the tree line. A breeze had descended.
There was rain in the air.
“Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world”
From Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Violin
“Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream”
From Tithonus by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Part 1
Ascending into eternity, desolate colours were filling the deepest hollows of his sleep. Gas clouds whorled and pillared into evanescent apparitions that appeared and disappeared, only to reappear altogether different, endlessly anomalous, and utterly alien.
Galaxies spiralled, contorting into moving mountains that hung in crownless majesty. Their unceasing conquest was considered admirable, so much so that ships were sent to join them on their grand campaigns. These malformations of nature inhabited a place on a spectrum far beyond humankind’s understanding of what constituted that which is natural, and that which is not.
Tenebrae cedunt luci: darkness gives way to light.
The sickening fluorescence gradually absorbed into his eyes. He woke up in the same semi-circular space that he always had. Its luminescence infiltrated his consciousness, splitting him open in a never-ending diorama of brightness.
Peering into the inanimate tenebrosity, he caught the briefest sight of himself in reflection. He saw a long-beard and white hair that veiled to assimilate with his spacesuit. It partly hid his angular face, under which was a cavernous mask.
Osteoporotic, his thoracic kyphosis slowed his movement onboard this vessel. His fingers spindled out to latch on to the edges of surfaces to counter his weightless balance.
The ship had maintained its acceleration into the deepest extremities of the universe. The compressor coils of its engines hummed silently. This indefinite acceleration had made a mockery of maps, pushing humankind into cosmic peripheries.
Before the existence of nuclear fusion, travelling a mere 1.3-light-seconds had been considered to be a scientific advancement. Space shuttles took 3-days to reach our closest natural satellite only 384,400-kilometres away. Early iterations of fusion-powered projection had moved humankind to within 365-days of the Oort cloud. Alpha Canis Majoris would be reached in 1,800-days. Approximately 4,000 sunrises would pass on a voyage to Delta Pavonis.
In this age, anti-proton-catalysed pulse propulsion brought men and women to the very fringes of the known universe in times equating to under half their lifespan.
The destination of this fleet was GN-z11, a distance insurmountable to their ancestors. They had set a trajectory that was further than anyone from Earth had ever travelled to. The light from GN-z11 was 13.4-billion light-years away; yet, the distance that had to be traversed was much further than that, approximating 64-billion light-years. One light-year is 9.4-billion kilometres, so a gargantuan 6×1020 kilometres was being journeyed.
A voyage of this magnitude had one important caveat: those who embarked upon it would not be able to return home, for there would be nothing to return to. Humankind’s reign over Earth had come to an inevitable end. Humans had to extend their long limbs outwards in search of new conquests; they sought a contemporary kingdom.
Earth’s populace had launched great ships like this one in staggered succession. Hundreds travelled upwards to the unknown, each one having taken off behind the other in a sequential time-trial.
The first wave of ships that ascended were known as Pathfinders. These vessels would map the cosmos, informing their trailing compatriots of inhabitable places or forewarning danger.
The second wave of ships were mother ships – ‘mother’ in the most literal sense. Hundreds of thousands of children would be conceived onboard their towering decks. Their offspring would progress from childhood to adulthood and receive training in sub-disciplines to become pilots and soldiers, doctors and nurses, engineers, astrophysicists and heliophysicists.
The first Pathfinders had been captained by an artificial intelligence algorithm. But a series of disasters had led those in command of this colossal conquest to have each of these vessels inhabited by a man or woman. Known as Commodores, they were second-in-command to the AI.
These trailblazing ships were replenished with humans every 25-years. Small pods were dispatched from the mother ships, approaching velocities close to light-speed to rendezvous with their respective frontrunners. Each pod would deliver a new Commodore to replace the last.
This was a relay race of the ages. Every pod sent out was a life-sustaining baton. Each successful transfer was a victory for humankind in the fight for self-preservation.
The chest of the Old Man rose in breathless double time with the rhythmic thrum of the fusion engine.
He lifted a container from underneath the chair, unfastening the lock to remove a stick-like relic from inside it. As he lifted it up, a fine hair spindled down from its length. The hair eventually touched the gleaming white of the soft-padded seat, landing in weightless abandon. He remarked that it would have been equally unsubstantial on Earth.
The tips of his fingers pincered at the thread. This maladroit fumbling finally concluded with a wisp of it in his hand. He held it out in front of him; his eyes widened as he observed its organic beauty.
Hair, he thought. Strands of dead tissue growing from mammalian epidermis, hanging lifelessly from rooted follicles. In this blinding space, the fair-coloured strands of the stick-like relic appeared far from perished.
As his eyes tracked down the length of the relic, he eventually caught sight of his hand. It was scored and filled with broken lines. Age spots dotted on its dorsum. All these blemishes were enhanced by this infernal light. He hid his hand from view and moved his attention to what lay beyond the large window before him.
Lux facit tenebras. Light makes way for darkness.
As always and forever more, there was nothing to see except a characterless blackness. In aeternum.
He let the stick-like relic go so that it hovered gently beside him. A cloth that covered the separate box-shaped relic in the container was unravelled. He lifted it up carefully and eyed the depth of the infinite holes that were bored into its body. His eyes continued to track up the neck of the box relic to its fossil-like crown. The design was uniquely ornamental. Nothing compared to it on this ship.
As he leaned over to grasp the levitating long relic, a glint of reflected light in an adjacent window caught his attention. A small shuttle was approaching. Its thrusters had already started to brake silently. Many years had passed since the last one had docked. He smiled absently and continued to toy with the box and stick-like relics.
The pod approached the starboard side of his vessel. An automated gangway that would normally have connected these two craft did not reach out to it.
The inhabitant of the pod had traversed star systems to arrive at this point. Her radio transmissions had been met with silence. She sat waiting patiently for a connection. The exterior door of the much larger Pathfinder was within touching distance.
‘AURORA, I am ready to embark.’ She spoke confidently and steadily at the exterior convexity of the ship.
Nothing. Vacuity reigned.
AURORA, the acronym for the AUtomated Registered OpeRating Algorithm, captained the Pathfinder vessels. Each new Commodore would become acquainted with the operating system. Each had their own personalities. They would do all in their power to keep their human occupants breathing.
Her pod remained stationary.
‘Confirm command: embarkation.’
Silence was the reply. She detected impertinence.
Had the Pathfinder been compromised?
Her gloved hands slid across the air-tight door to feel for a potential opening. Her fists thumped dully against it.
‘You must pull the release lever’, a voice suddenly boomed into her headset.
The young Commodore was startled. A male voice? She had been trained to expect feminine tones from AURORA.
The lever was located at the base of the entranceway. She pulled it and the hatch opened.
After entering an antechamber, the internal air-lock lever was moved to a closed position. The pressure inside did not normalise as expected. She and everything around her continued to float.
A second door which led into the main body of the ship was opened. Using the wall grips, she hauled herself along a pitch-black passageway. It was as dark as the abyss outside. Pausing for a moment, she thought she could hear a high-pitched screeching sound. It seemed to be emanating from the end of the narrow passageway. As she got closer to the living quarters, the pitched heightened causing the hairs on her neck and arms to bristle.
Grappling with the wall grips, she manoeuvred down the passageway to locate its source, stopping abruptly. An emaciated and withered soul was levitating before her. He was wearing the same type of uniform as hers. She remarked internally that he must be over a hundred years old.
He held some form of relic – an organic box of sorts, as well as a longer relic made of the same material. They had a tokenistic quality. He was staring intently at her with blood-shot eyes; they were made even redder by periorbital pigmentation that served as a blackened mount to this thin-framed and frightfully hung portrait.
The young Commodore continued to scan her surroundings, moving youthfully through the labyrinthine spaceship, opening one hatch at a time. These vessels were meant to be cold, yet the heat she felt inside this one was immense.
‘Where is the Commodore of this ship?’, she enquired.
Her tone was not as confident as when she had barked at AURORA. She had taken on a feigned assuredness. Looking down at his worn identification badge, she could not determine its characters with certainty. It read: C—m–e –n T–o.
‘AURORA, where is the Commodore?!’, she enquired loudly, ignoring the apparitional figure next to her.
‘Please – please, you have travelled such a tremendous distance to be with me today. I must insist that you sit down. I shall prepare you a drink…’
‘Where is the–’
‘AURORA is currently rebooting’, the Old Man interrupted politely. ‘And this process will take some time. As such, she cannot answer you at the moment.’
He floated over to the culinary station.
‘Protocol stipulates that the Commodore assumes temporary command in such an event’, she dictated. ‘I shall ask you again – where is the Commodore?’
‘The impatience of youth’, he mused openly, sighing into a toothless smile. ‘I am the current Commodore, and as such, I am presently in command. And I only have one order for you… to please, sit down over here, and enjoy a cup of white tea with me.’
The young Commodore, sent ready in replacement, remained irresolute. She looked at him and thought that at least two generations must have passed for this man to be the age he was. Reluctantly, and under his playfully informal command, she made the decision to join him for tea, albeit on the far side of his malodorous living quarters.
* * *
Many years ago, a Commodore had decided that in to order to retain her sanity in this confined and cold place, she would do so by feeling the warmth and presence of something that could touch her soul. She requested that a relic, built an even longer time ago on Earth and handed down through her genetic line, be brought onboard this ship. It would remain with her as she carried out her 25-year mission, and this relic she would take with her in retirement.
On these Pathfinder ships, retired Commodores were unable to return to their respective mother ships that sailed behind them. The pods that had brought them here were long jettisoned. Their small fuel cells were such that they only had enough to transport them one-way.
Instead, in their autumn years, they were afforded a place in the lower decks of the vessel. Each brave spacefarers was gifted a private space in which they could live out the remainder of their lives in peace.
Shun Tito had taken over this vessel from a tall and ashen-haired Commodore. They had shaken hands and carried out the protocolised handover. The retired Commodore made her way to the lower decks. She took the relic with her.
The Pathfinder was now Tito’s for the next 25-years. He felt a great honour to have been given this role and quickly adapted to AURORA and her unique way of working.
It had been an eventless voyage in the first months. He had been alerted to minor malfunctions in the electrical system. AURORA’s algorithms had provided a prognostic summary. They were of low significance. Standard spacefaring issues. Something easily rectifiable.
When looking back in retrospect, Tito remarked that these herald events were the precursor to the near-fatal incident that occurred in his fifth month onboard the ship.
To this day, he remained unsure if it had been a divine intervention or sheer chance that had saved him.
A forceful electromagnetic storm had rocked him from sleep. Upon waking, the ship had been rendered powerless. AURORA was silent.
He remembered the survival principles of his training. An emergency protocol deviation would allow him to enter the lower decks of the vessel. He had quickly donned his anti-radiation suit and carefully descended the long ladder to locate the distribution board of the nuclear fusion-fuelled ship.
The system had been mostly intact, but its reset, and subsequent reawakening of AURORA, would take several hours. He made his way back to the bridge where he sat patiently.
A thought suddenly exploded in his head. The previous Commodore!
After making his second descent to the lower decks, he found the retirement deck. The communication system of the ship would remain ineffective until the reboot had finished. There was no way he could contact those who inhabited this deck.
Retired Commodores were to live out their lives in peace, the protocol stipulated. Post-retirement interruption was not compatible with this maxim.
Current Commodores, with the assistance of AURORA, were responsible for maintaining this peace.
Having secured his grip on the ladder, Tito used one hand to slowly thump at the thick door. Nothing echoed back in return.
The airlock which had previously sealed this section of the ship from the rest of its contents was unlocked. It required little effort in the absence of electricity and gravity to release the hatch.
Tito entered a dark room measuring five square metres. It opened up to reveal a small passageway with doors on each side. He entered the first door to his right. The name of the previous Commodore was emblazoned on it.
The photoreceptors of his shoulder torch which had been activated by the deepening darkness introduced a steady stream of revealing light. Tito reactively clambered back in horror.
There, circling in front of his glass visor, was the decomposing face of the previous Commodore. She hung in suspended weightlessness. A disappearing grimace revealed a partly moth-eaten mandible. Tendons and tissue unfurled in naked exodus. Her skin was departing.
Tito remembered that her white cap had remained aslant on her head. It was an act of silent protest. The body of the last Commodore continued to orbit as a putrefying satellite around the petrified Tito.
Failed attempts to secure the body had resulted in Tito manoeuvring awkwardly around this room. His shoulder struck the edge of a wall corner. He exited into another corridor. His fingers caught hold of the edge of the doorway and he pulled himself out.
Tito explored the multiple other rooms on this deck. Each contained skeletons of varying ages. They all levitated in disunity. He lamented that this was a truly macabre scene. These were not retirement quarters, but tombs. Mausoleums for those who had once manned this Pathfinder.
A frightened Tito sought refuse in one of these empty stellar sepulchres. His torchlight scanned the walls to look for sensors or apertures to point to a mechanism of death of these unfortunate spacemen.
Nothing.
All he could see were four plain walls with an air-tight entranceway.
Air-tight!
A cold wave of horror washed over him. The realisation that suffocation was the mode of death. A further nauseating wave struck him. His heart pulsed and jumped. This very room was his predestined resting place!
He clambered haphazardly up the ladder and back onto the bridge.
It was dark and cold. AURORA had still not been reactivated. Tito deliberated quickly. He would set himself a new mission: to commandeer the ship.
He refused to meet the same fate as those who preceded him. AURORA would be overridden. Disabled, destroyed if it had to be that way.
He spent hours reprogramming her algorithm, inserting innumerable stop sequences: blind ends in her maze of endlessly sinuous circuitry. Another hour would pass before the Pathfinder powered up again after its storm-imposed hiatus. This rare event of super-charged cosmic electromagnetism had been his salvation.
Yet the successful disablement of AURORA meant that a lifetime of functioning through algorithmic reliance would end abruptly, and albeit welcome, he would have to learn to live without her.
Tito set reminders as to when he should eat and drink. At times he gorged on his rations. There were other times when he almost starved.
Any injury sustained could be fatal. He took painful precautions to prevent this. His movements all but ceased on the vessel. He confined himself to his living quarters. Only on occasion would he venture to the bridge.
Months progressed to years.
Tito dropped the title of Commodore. Captain Shun Tito executed command of this vessel.
At first, he lived in relative comfort, and for the first time in his life, he felt warmth. Beta decay of tritium in the nuclear fusion engines produced helium-3. Although shadow shields around these great engines had absorbed most of its radiation, low-intensity ultraviolet light had started to seed into the compartments of this ship.
He designated safe areas after measuring the radioactivity on the ship; uncontrolled levels could quite easily shroud him in a blanket of cancerous death.
And so, Tito lived like this for many years. Yet, he felt a profound sense of isolation. It ate away at him slowly. AURORA and her systems had been designed to sustain their carbonised passengers. Without her mental stimulation and pseudo-intellectual interaction, he descended into a deep melancholy, and eventually, depression.
Andrew C. Kidd
Following in the wake of his debut novel THE GREAT IMMUREMENT, which we serialised during the summer of 2020, Vukovar helmsman (and book reviewer collaborator to the Monolith Cocktail) Rick ACV now follows up with the surreal, esoteric and challenging Astral Deaths & Astral Lights. Although after seven year he’s announced the final death of the Vukovar project, Rick will be back with a new musical project in 2023.
But for now we will concentrate on the literary, with Rick playing with format, language and font, his half-thoughts of waking hours, death and the occult merging dream-realism with a languid sense of discomfort: a sorry state of existence, where angels do indeed dare to tread. William Blake and Austin Osman Spare meet Kōbō Abe in the hotel lobby portal of the never-world: personal and universal. Parts One & Two were debuted during August, followed up by Part Three and Part Four. Part Five was published earlier this month. We now continue with the concluding chapters: VI, THE DUKE PAOLO AND LITTLE K., VII, THE SYMBOLS WILT and THE TURIN HORSE
VI
We are born with the knowledge of everything that has come before, as part of an ever-expanding hive mind. The last Astral Death taught me as much. But with being shown the spaces between spaces and what is across everything beyond (and including) the veil, and with becoming all of these people, I have to wonder if the threads and webs all come from my mind. I’ve given life to it all.
But this trail quickly runs cold and I notice the scent of my sex, sweat and smoke – the three s’ – has become too pervasive in all corners in this room. It used to be my pride but now it has taken form as a repulsion, growing and expanding and it can’t be stopped.
The Partner sees me but only as if through a cracked mirror on a strange angle. I know this because that is how the whole world and beyond appears to me, how we witness each other.
I wander freely into the loving arms of a loving life as if a tottering child, and then, diverted at the last moment, stumble instead into an open and long abandoned mine, never to be seen in this form again.
This lucidity is not wanted. An Ascending/Descending Godling such as this self in the usual-world should not be anchored in any world that can believed to be a usual-world.
It will soon pass.
THE DUKE PAOLO AND LITTLE K.
- I absorb everything that absorbs me. These lives and these places are alive, like art, like the death rattles in the dying, like the purifying fire into which the bodies are thrust.
I appear to now be transporting what leaves these bodies. St Pietro? The Duke Paolo. Lost souls that need guiding.
………..
Don’t feel control over this one. V v v little influence for now.
There is a woman walking along a country path by herself. It’s a bright, sunny day, all made up of natural silence and the subtle sounds of breezes through bushes. The bushes seem crooked and ready to pounce on the woman. She stops to bend down, collects an extraordinary looking flower, stands up and breathes it in deeply. After a pause, she smiles, pauses again and continues along the path.
We feel coiled and ready to strike.
She notices us approaching as she crosses the rickety bridge but she is not alarmed by our furious pace. In fact, she smiles and politely greets us.
She waits for a response and doesn’t have time to be shocked as we carry on towards her and grab her by the throat. She struggles, we strangle. What Should-Be death, but isn’t, manifests itself as a strange motion within the centre of us and though the body with the fist around its neck stops moving, the same body emerges from within us and continues on its path, still walking. We arise and continue on OurSelves.
I know not how long we travel for but that doesn’t seem to have any significance here. My self and this other self become closer and close to becoming fused in some way I have never experienced before.
Eventually we come to a stop. Darkness is heavy and oppressive on all sides and all we can make out is a faint showing of what may be concrete walls which surrounds us completely.
Hello?
A bright bleaching light whitens everything in every direction and we must shield ourselves to it. It hurts even through the cover of the arm. But, it gradually fades to reveal our setting. We are standing in a field and the colours of the woodlands and the streams are strange and saturated; everything is covered in a haze and the bright light is making everything unclear. We look around and spot movement and set off towards the stream.
The movement is that of three nude women – three bathers – and they acknowledge our distant presence as they smile warmly to one another and cast brief glances our way. A gentle and sweet singing floods the place and weaves between the trees, filling us in totality with an old and sinister folk song, The Twa Magicians. We come to a stop about ten metres from The Bathers. A light mist appears and disappears before another bright light takes us by surprise. Once more we lose and then regain orientation. The Bathers are beckoning us and laughing, frolicking in this sticky sweet place. We go towards them with faint hope of some depraved sexual abandon but our path is blocked by nothing at all. We cannot pass. The Bathers become hysterical as we commit to a sort of mime routine. We can get no further and are disappointed. But not too much; depravity can be had everywhere and everywhen.
We turn to leave and beside us is a door. We trust nothing in our existence but commit to everything. Through the door is a tiny square yard with extremely high walls, decorated by paintings depicting bathers such as the ones we have just departed. As our eyes come across an old telephone, it rings.
Hello?
Hello dear Paolo.
…
You do know who this is?
…
Cut the call and think no more. Back through the door. Bathers now on the opposite side of the stream and carry me, as though on thread, towards them and I cross the stream for them and to them. I fall in the water and see hidden depths without sinking to them. Try to get up. Head held in place by a Bather. All becomes frightening and insides are chilled. A young drowned boy is amongst the secrets held by these hidden depths. The other Bathers swim down and mess with the corpse. Rise from the water, sit on a rock and think.
The return home must be made.
Suburban estate in severe disrepair. Everything is dark and the buildings shift, moving close together and grow tall, crowding the streets to trap me. Fighting, mania, conversations in silence and in dog-barks along my way. My house is the last house, the one dead-centre of the nightmarish maze of alley ways and streets that surround. Trees block the view of the ground floor of my house and I slip between them into the darkness and may now rest.
This is the place. Flatlands by the sea with small grassy hills every immeasurable amount of distance. There are no people except one, the all-important one; Little K. I watch him, far from me on one of those hills, the one with two Dead-White Trees. The trees are crooked, brilliant white and are burdened with no life and weighed down with only a few branches. I move closer and Little K., the young drowned boy, runs tirelessly between and around the trees, no emotion whatsoever rests in his dripping features.
He stops and faces the sea. I see what he is looking at.
A huge pane of glass stands upright with no support, equidistant between him and the sea.
It smashes.
I look up to the sky and sink into the ground, further and further, and water rushes in to cover me. I see Little K. at the top, staring down at me, still emotionless.
I know where I need to go.
In the morning I sit at my oversized desk and light a cigarette. My book is already full but I write over the already-written words until my thoughts are exhausted.
The boy is doing exactly what he ought to be – waiting for me. He waits on my rock on the bank of the stream, the woods heavy and constrictive, caused by the saturated ever-summer. His clothes and body are soaked, his face is expressionless and his demeanour is impenetrable. Water continually falls from this unpitiable young man. I am drawn to him and do not know why. I know he is important. Vital. Vital to what, I do not know. How he is vital to this unknown thing… I pretend to myself that the answer is hidden deep within me.
How do you do? I’m the Duke Paolo, pleased to meet you.
(I put my hand out. Little K. grips it and gasps as though he has just emerged from the deep. His eyes are blank but bulging. Some seconds pass and we let go of one another.)
Would you like to come with me? I’m very busy but could do with a friend.
He stands up and looks right into me.
I show Little K. around my home and get him settled in. The usual incoherent radio chatter with constant interference hisses away in the background and I sharpen my knives. I catch Little K. looking emotionlessly at the scattered bodies and explain that they are empty now. They are just spare parts. I like to be reminded, also, of the fate we surely must all face, even beings-in-suspension such as myself.
The bodies, I mutter after some silence, keep me company, too.
If I am to learn what all this is about then I must show the workings of my existence to Little K. It is constant and does not rest. On the way to the pub unnatural fog brings with it lost, bloody, confused souls, but, we press on. We are surrounded by dull conversation but enjoy the alcohol; my young friend does his unblinking best to keep up with me. I sit myself uninvited at the next table opposite a man quietly reading. I look at the clock, look to him where my gaze is met then un-met, and I reach up and slash his throat. Little K. laughs in his seat. I walk away from the bloodless scene and my friend follows. On the way back we play pooh sticks but he doesn’t seem fond of this.
Time continues at its unmoving pace and shape. Little K. becomes a little acolyte of mine, witnessing all of my severe actions and assisting in any way he can. I take him to see Messalina and Agrippina to fuck, both of whom are sad to see him go. Little K. also in this time completes his own rounds. He does this alone but tells me in great detail of the necessary yet ghastly exploits, writing them into stories of the grotesque, even, non more so than ‘The Ghosts Of The Apaches’. This is a story of schoolchildren who play on farmland and fall prey, one after the other, in horrifying ways to the hazards around them.
There is something that unnerves me, even though we have become so close. I have never wanted for answers here; I accept my role. Now that there are questions unanswered, however, I am struggling to accept all that is around me.
I have become lost in this being within being within being, with all of our voices combining to shout in unison over our own noise “what is this life?” – but we, as The Duke, there is so much more and we may never escape, as though we ourselves are Little K., a drowned voyeur, submerged and surrounded by a corporeal liquid of all that we do not understand, of all the questions our Creator leaves unanswered. If we are worthy, then the answers are there for us to piece together.
Me… us… The Duke… we exist within and without the borders of this/these recollections.
Little K. is disarming us. It must be nearly time. I wish that it wasn’t so, I wish that I didn’t have to keep losing friends. Myself, I would like to stop turning friends into Dead-Friends.
…..
I come upon the stream from as before, but now it is still and sullen, untouched and undisturbed except for just one of the nymphs. She is a powerful presence by the stream, brushing her hair and sitting still. It’s as though I am watching old, grainy footage. She looks up to the top of a hill and sees The Duke Paolo standing there, though this me is silhouetted by a blinding light from behind him.
…..
The scene shifts; we are all of us in a darkened warehouse. The Nymph is sat in the same position, doing the same thing with an obvious ‘film set’ that has been made to look like the stream where she just was. There is a low rumbling hum with the intermittent sound of metal on metal. There is somebody a few yards away from The Nymph, that is neither me nor the other me, painting her on a canvas. She looks deeply saddened. She begins to sing gently:
The lady stands in her bower door
As straight as a willow wand;
The blacksmith stood a little forebye
With a hammer in his hand.
“Weel may ye dress ye, laidy fair,
Into yer robes o red;
Befor the morn at this same time
I’ll gain yer maidenhead.”
“Awa, awa ye coal black smith
Would you do me the wrang?
To think to gain my maidenhead
That I hae kept sae lang!”
The Painter coughs and splutters really quite horrifically. I can’t bear to pay witness to this. Almost as if I will it to power, all falls silent and we are back next to the stream. Paolo’s silhouette is moving slowly towards The Nymph. She smiles and continues her song.
Then she has hadden up her hand,
And she sware by the mold.
“I wouldna be a blacksmith’s wife
For the full o a chest ‘o’ gold”
“I’d rather I were dead and gone
And my body laid in grave
E’er a rusty stock o coal black smith
My maidenhead should have”
But he has hadden up his hand
And he sware by the mass
“I’ll cause ye be my light leman
For the hauf o that and less”
We are back in the warehouse, only now, The Painter is preparing to hang himself. He gathers his death quickly and with no feeling. As he hangs, expression unchanging, The Nymph sings on.
O bide, lady, bide
And aye he bade her bide;
The rusty smith your leman shall be
For a’ your muckle pride
Then she became a turtle dow
To fly up into the air,
And he became another dow
And they flew pair and pair.
She turnd hersell’ into an eel
To swim into yon burn
And he became a speckled trout
To gie the eel a turn.
I am purely observer now. I am there without really being there. The Nymph is sitting on a chair in a room made from mirrors. As the song goes on, she gets up, walks around examining her reflection tenderly and dances in a strange type of ritual way.
Then she became a gay grey mare
And stood in yonder slack
And he became a gilt saddle
And sat upon her back.
Was she wae, her held her sae,
And still he bade her bide;
The rusty smith her leman was,
For a’ muckle pride.
Then she became a het girdle,
And he became a cake.
And a’ the ways she turned hersell’,
The blacksmith was her make.
She turned hersell’ into a ship
To sail out ower the flood;
He ca’ed a nail intill her tail
And syne the ship she stood.
Was she wae, he held her sae,
And still he bade her bide;
The rusty smith her leman was
For a’ her muckle pride.
Then she became a silken plaid
And stretched upon a bed
And he became a green covering,
And gained her maidenhead.
A thumping, percussion-heavy ritual type music builds in volume and speed gradually with The Nymph’s dancing getting more and more manic.
Eventually she collapses in exhaustion.
We briefly see her silhouette embrace the other Paolo’s. Where is Little. K? Where am I? Everything fades. I Continue.
VII
How close we are to the precipice. I have brought us here, I have guided us along the path that The Spinners have already chosen for me.
Sleep should never be had.
Its grasp, its groping grasp always wins in the end. Here, though, it is keeping this victim from its welcoming arms and embrace, and instead, holds The Ascender/Descender by the throat, holding us over some bizarre cliff-edge, forcing the hand of chance to lose its hold for the slightest, smallest moment. It may not be its intention, but it is what will happen, and the now-empty chokers of sleep will just watch, emotionless, as we ascend/descend in the strange airless and windowless hole, with no before or after. Nothing to see, nothing to feel. Nothing to breathe, nothing to scream. Just nothing.
There are a lot of unconnected but significant dots flying around. Sometimes it’s hard to fathom. It should be understood that it is not for us to fathom. I don’t feel sad for all of these deaths, the deaths of friends and family, though I recognise the sadness and sad nature of them. These are the worlds I exist within and there is no much light in these places. I accept that. The constant present offers more. One of the few happy gleams and twinkles from a time full of dead stars.
Everything must have a centre. What is the centre here?
I will survive forever, a cockroach existence, parasitic maybe.
All in the name of extreme aversion to and fear of death.
THE SYMBOLS WILT
The actions of a life simply passing itself by.
Breathless after my journey to this frozen and unloved graveyard that hides in the hills, I place my hand upon a collapsed section of icy dry-stone wall and hold it there. I can feel the moss and the smoothe edges of the stone but none of the cold. In this moment, I am more certain of myself than I ever have been. I cannot be found here. Not even by myself; that isn’t what I am looking for. I know I’ll find what it is I’m looking for and I do.
There is a wild and uninviting halo formed by the overgrowth and in its Dead-Centre is a gleaming white frost flower with its deep, bloody eye.
On every petal, a love-letter… and held in the bloody eye is my unwavering belief that I wrote them all when I brought the seed to its final home to begin again.
I know all of these words. They read like a love-letter of several collapsing disordered minds.
The delusions of Dante are and were ill founded and unfounded… Hell is one step back from finding the way to break eternal recurrence, starting afresh in a new body and all that new living and new life entails… 1000 torn anuses… Here comes the ferryman with flashing eyes, to take me to my killer and claim the reward – my everlasting soul for a song. It wasn’t a waste…
…Thyself and myself- the patron saint of the archaic, king of the concrete fantasy – never was as immortal as thyself and myself now cause upon one another; just as never was the western sky as blue as it was in the 19th century, when my number is and was bleak, is and was blank, is and was empty…
…This confusion, this dark backwards, this failure in the duty of mothers, this burying of liberty’s putrid corpse is my misinterpretation of the immortal hour and the purity of my love, of my sex and of my fetishes – my fetishes of and for fetishes… the transference of energies after the golden death of the body is the cause of all this. Some (like myself and thyself) have masses of unaccountable energy and scientifically, energy can only be transferred; it can’t be destroyed. I want to wonder about that, moving between bodies. Not really ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ and vice-versa, because that’s impossible to know for sure… the people without these powerful energies – i.e. everybody not me and thee – are parasites. Wasteful piles of stolen, irony blood and flesh with nothing between the eyes. For these vermins who inhibit our private world, our over-garden, to have a soul would be a travesty…
…deady deady dead will be the white noises, interfering with everything and offering nothing. As thine anger rises like a scorpion, remember that the joy of black black moods and being at war is that when it passes, the white is whiter than it was before and the peace is more peaceful than it was before. Necessary annihilation…
…Now the symbols wilt and we can make and remake them in our own image…
I think about gripping the stem in my fist and wrenching what is clearly my degenerating heart from the ground but I choose to leave it. I vow to never return here again.
My head has never looked so happy.
THE TURIN HORSE
For all my reticence
For all my refusals and restraints
For all I have given and ungiven to stray away from this, my final choice…
I retire to bed.
I wait for death and do nothing else.
I die, once and for all, in totality.
Sleep.
Following in the wake of his debut novel THE GREAT IMMUREMENT, which we serialised during the summer of 2020, Vukovar helmsman (and book reviewer collaborator to the Monolith Cocktail) Rick ACV now follows up with the surreal, esoteric and challenging Astral Deaths & Astral Lights. Playing with format, language and font, with half-thoughts of waking hours, death and the occult, Rick merges dream-realism and a languid sense of discomfort: a sorry state of existence, where angels dare to tread. William Blake and Austin Osman Spare meet Kōbō Abe in the hotel lobby portal of the never-world: personal and universal. Parts One & Two were debuted during August, followed up by Part Three and Part Four. We now continue with the next three chapters in the opus, Water, V and The Nurses below:
WATER
To ‘sleep’
to then, to this
X X X
6am. Saturday. No work today. I can indulge in my one true passion: inventing elaborate and complicated water features. I pull myself from the bed with little fuss, excepting from a little resistance from my well-worn joints, and enter the bathroom to begin my morning routine.
Whilst brushing my teeth I stop short suddenly. I stare at my reflection, mouth open, brush still in hand whilst foam of toothpaste drips onto the floor. I stare at the man staring back. Same thinning grey hair, same deep wrinkles around the eyes, same strong jawline; essentially the same person this myself has known all of our lives. But something is different and undeniably so. I stand still as a corpse.
Is my presence so obvious?
A few moments pass but the suspicion remains.
After completing my morning tasks I sit down. Dark wooden floors mopped. Dishes clean and put away. Overalls on. Each and every room clean, fresh and empty save for the necessary furniture, the only evidence that somebody exists here. My mind feels free enough to plan the day ahead.
I step out of my back door, my back door to paradise, and into the cavernous hangar-type building I call my laboratory. It’s a separate world. Scattered chalkboards full of equations and diagrams… unique tools of my own invention… blueprints… countless sculptures and prototypes varying drastically and dramatically in size… Dead-Centre is The Clearing.
The Clearing is home to my masterpiece.
My masterpiece:
A model of an unrepentant imposing concrete tower, hexagon shaped – looking from a bird’s eye view split into four equal parts, formed by a cross-like walkway. These four parts are huge open-top water tanks whose depths reach down a quarter of the height of the building, and, in each quadrant, a colossal tap.
This is the object of my attentions and affections. All is perfectly detailed and dimensioned. It is a work of art.
Today is the day I contact the Mayor to commission this magnificence. I sit down and begin my letter.
The phone rings.
I frown.
I answer.
There is no immediate response.
I hear somebody breathing and so wait patiently for the silence to be broken. Though it seems as no reply is to be forthcoming, I can’t bring myself to put down the phone, but I don’t seem to be able to speak.
So I simply wait, transfixed by nothingness.
All I can do is stare at my creation. Hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Hello? Hello?
It’s a lady’s voice, gentle and kind. I don’t recognise it.
“Hello? Is that XX?
Speaking?
Hello dear, my name is XXXXX; I believe you did work for a friend of mine – XXXXX? She recommended you. Well, anyway, my house is flooded and I was wondering if you could come and sort it out? I’ll pay double for the labour.
No, no… that’s okay XXXXX. I normally work on a Saturday so it’ll be normal rate. I have nothing else booked in today so I’ll head straight out. What’s the address?
XXXXX said you were a gentleman! The address is [REDACTED]. Do you need the postcode?
No. I know where it is.”
I gather and check my tools, exit the hangar through a solid metal door straight into the garage and set off in the van.
The day is a grey one. The light fog drifting through the damp, empty city and the build up of clouds prevent any sort of meaningful light brightening the place up. Autumn by the sea and mountains. However, the closer I get to my destination, the more aggressive the fog seems to get.
This is ridiculous.
I slow to a stop; I can barely see less than a metre ahead of the van now and I’m fearful of hitting somebody.
It’s fortunate I know this district well. The pipework in the surrounding streets is growing increasingly unpredictable and giving me a good source of work and a greater source of Sisyphean toil. All is illogical… perverse… obstreperous…
I arrive only a couple of minutes late at the large, traditional home of XXXXX. The fog makes the short walk from the back of the van to the front door of the house a task ludicrously more difficult than it has any right to be.
I knock loudly upon the door to which there is no immediate answer.
Again. Again no answer.
A slow, low creaking noise creeps behind me as I head to the van to check my notes. I turn quickly expecting to see XXXXX but do not do so. All that greets me is a growing uncertainty; my loud greeting into the aether beyond the door, the empty darkness, responded to by silence…
…then – now – a distant thumping of metal on metal, hidden away by a thousand walls.
I step inside, suddenly into light. There is no XXXXX but there is a note:
Dear XX,
I’ve had to leave to tend to an urgent matter. Please, conduct your work as normal. I should return in time to pay you, but if not, I have left out some cash in the office.
The issue seems to be coming from the loft so I’ve unlocked the door for you.
Yours,
XXXXX
Ps. Please help yourself to food and drink – I have set out a lunch spread for you in the kitchen.
I put the note back in exactly the same place I took it from. I am aware of myself, deeply, and the significance of every movement that is departed, now, long since decided for us and long since distributed unto us all.
In the loft there isn’t much light; in fact it is as though the fog has drifted itself into every corner of everywhere. My torch offers no guidance, only a lazy uninterested flickering which soon subsides.
I look for CXJXXXZXNSLEKPWMD
SDJFO)JEPWOF$_)R@UEFJ
This is RVOJFJ{WRPMF{PE)${RU)@£UF
THIS IS ALL WRONG SXXXXXJPOCJQ
wrong
This is all wrong. What is this pain?
I am bowled over in agony.
Somebody is inside my loungs, pushing outwards with all their might, stretching the membrane as if forcing a whole new world into and out of my chest. The distant industrial thumping is drilling its way into my eardrums; the thin, sharp, absolute point of the bit teasing and slicing at the sound-dam entrance to my brain. Flesh on flesh. Metal on metal. Bone on bone. A blinding magnesium fire-light and I am gripped by something momentous, so comprehensively, and everything is excruciating. I slump, begging for release.
A ghostly voice sings to me, just to me, from a world away.
It gets louder and the growing spectral choir now reaching a crescendo. Abrase and unrelent
Pain seeps in and seeps out from every pore, ebbing and flowing for-ever and ever-more.
Circle-come-Cycle mania blood and shit
Body broken against wall
Mind, Spirit
Everything else capitulate
The pain dissipates as though it was never there at all, awaiting another day, another place, another time, Another Self to attack once more.
I heave myself up off the ground and make my way to the water tank on the other side of the loft. The fog has, like my pain, dissipated into sudden nothingness. Everything dissipates into nothingness. I find the leak in the mass of copper pipes leading into and away from the tank. Or at least I think I do. Under closer inspection and after some confused attempts at stemming the steady flow, I follow the pipes along to the connecting wall between this building and the next, having to crouch under the beams, on this, my great voyage into an oceanic mystery.
Something, some dust in my eye
Fall…
Make contact with the wall and try and use it as a support to keep upright
Fall through …. Frail plasterboard?
This body follows the whole of This Self
This is a shock.
I’m in a new place, dark and cold. I gather my thoughts and survey the wall; it is a solid brick thing, the only fragile part of which is the exact small square I fell through.
[DISSIPATION
THE DROWNING HAD TAKEN HOLD; WOULD HAVE SOONER HAD WE BEEN A LESS PERSON
THE LAST BREATH, HEAVENLY SO, FELT,
OR CAME, AS. A
WELCOMING
RELEASE…
RELIEF…
TAKE
ME
AWAY FROM US.]
The eyes that looked, that stared – even – were careful in their judgement, though a lack of light was somewhat of a deterrent. No sooner had XX thought this, and taken a tentative step forward, some dull, flickering light bulbs alighted. They hung very low from a ceiling that was at least four times XX’s height. Only a handful of the lights worked – no matter how (un)reliably – just enough for him to make out his surroundings. He was stood in a shadow filled corridor that stretched out a fair distance ahead of him, though he could not see beyond a tight bend, and behind him stood an improbably large set of heavy, wooden doors. The industrial thumping XX had heard throughout XXXXX’s house was more prominent and exaggerated with a powerful, echoing reverberation. The air was damp and dank, the concrete walls, stacked with rotting leaden pipes, appeared wet, soaked in fact, with huge patches of mould spread out intermittently along the narrow and claustrophobic passageway.
As the body of the surging river forces its whole self into such a cosily fitting gap – the mouth – it spreads out into the great, open void of egotistical pleasure; a reward for the hardships and energy expended in getting there. This is a cycle. Aptly so, XX had forced himself into – or out of – a new place.
He had reached the end of the corridor and was now in a sort of darkened lobby which contained only one door, the room organized around it as though this was the main feature. An unmanned desk sat to the left hand side of the room, though XX didn’t stop to examine it, and what appeared to be a cordoned-off museum exhibit sat to the right. He was sure the place was abandoned. He came to the submarine-like steel door which would not open as easily as he would have so wished.
His fingering of the cold steel brought about a momentary lapse in his newly found focus, causing his mind to drift to a place not dissimilar from the one he was stood in. Charcoal greys. Rotting pipework. Dampened mouldy walls, air, breath, flesh and all that came with it. Regaining himself, XX fought with the door that locked him from his unfortunate discovery, gracefully heaving and ho-ing, fighting their way to a mutually impossible conclusion; the door wanting to remain shut and the old man wanting safe passage through it. He stopped to consider all-things and all-passages and all-events for a moment, possibly two, and cast his cautious eye all the way over the door, though the half-light made it difficult. He gasped and took a step back. An astounded ‘What the…?’ escaped from his hung-open mouth.
A mighty, wrought iron plaque stood proudly above the door, announcing to the world its gratitude for the grandeur that its creator bestowed upon it. There could be no mistaking the names written in gold, though they were shockingly aged and faded:
XX
How could this be? The light bulb directly above him awoke from its deep rest and illuminated his immediate surroundings so comprehensively so that it revealed more questions than answers. On the museum exhibit wall was another plaque. This plaque had on it two illustrations – one portraying XX in an impressive stance, the other a picture of the apple of XX’s eye; his brutalist concrete high-rise, still an unborn foetus back in the laboratory to his mind. He must be the new life, growing, in a manner of speaking, in the womb of his own magnificence. Underneath the illustrations was some writing from an unknown author:
“Today, I fully realized, for the first time in all my lives, just how far from the ground I really stand, and, perhaps more tellingly, just how wide the breadth of my shoulders span. I am power, I am might. I am the wits of man and I am the strength of concrete. The complete understanding of one’s worth is not to be underestimated and I give these words unto you in the vain hope that you, too, find your ultra-place:
Small is beautiful. BIG IS SUBLIME.
I will be there behind you, casting my Colossus shadow over and around you.”
XX wasn’t sure what to think of either the words or the premise, though he could feel it strike a primeval chord deep inside. He lightly touched the smooth, handsome plaque, admiring the handy work. His touch met that of the building.
XX heard urgent sprinting footsteps. He saw only a dark figure running furiously at him. For the first time the poor old plumber felt a stabbing panic breach his chest. He threw his full weight at the previously immovable submarine door, which now lay open, and passed through.
‘Wait!’ was the shout, begging as though all life depended on it, ‘Please! Don’t go up there! Listen to me! Come back!’. A big man, the guard was short of breath and panted heavily. Sweat dripped from his forehead to the floor. He reached the door. He stopped. He bent over. He shouted limply up to XX: ‘Mr XX, please…’
XX, in his unfamiliar state of terror, had not heard any of this. He had bolted through the door and didn’t stop to look back.
Through the submarine door was a staircase. It led only up, was narrow and dark, and after every 10 steps it would turn 90 degrees to the left; XX did not know what could have been waiting for him around each corner, but he did not pause to dwell on this. And so, running – limping – as fast as his ageing and stiffened legs would allow, he duly followed his ascension.
The Guard sat back down at his huge mahogany desk in the now-lit lobby; he didn’t know what else he could do, such was the magnitude of the shock he felt towards his neglect of duty.
After what felt like several hours, but in reality was no more than five minutes, XX realized that nobody and/or nothing was following him. So he stopped. He sat down and rested his head against the dry, but still warm, concrete wall. He sat silent. Almost sleeping.
The strange, alternating lights and shadows perplexed XX. There were no windows, no lights or candles. He couldn’t tell how far he’d come up from the lobby, and it was equally impossible to estimate how far he was from the top because of the closed-off nature of the stairs.
XX climbed higher, he didn’t stop, and he was fully committed to that until he reached the next floor – if there was one. Sweat had begun to emerge upon his brow and his lips and mouth were crusted and cracked with thirst. The feet that gave themselves completely to their owner, his will and his command, were now just pools of blood in their work-boot home. The owner himself was nothing of substance anymore; he had sweated and walked and suffered so much. XX wearily placed one foot in front of the other. It was automatic. He was stooped, his eyes barely open.
XX took his last breath. He stumbled a step further. Just one, for that was all he could muster. He swayed gently; a reed in the wind. The violence would come later. A hand, outstretched… the strain found something. A jutting out of something… cold, calculating… a handle to a door, a door to a rebirth. XX let his weight fall against it and into another new world he fell. Instantly, XX recovered, his exhaustion forgotten, his death postponed. The echo from his boots upon the metal floor was something new; beauteous tinny waves lapped against him in what was a change of tidal formalities from the dull thud of subdued concrete.
The old man stopped in the centre of… it wasn’t exactly a room… he felt he should know each nook and cranny of this building… He was in the centre of what would have been the cross section of two corridors, had there been a ceiling. The corridors cut the hexagon shaped building into four equal quadrants. The same steel of all the other parts of the building were here disturbed by huge windows looking into each quadrant. They were colossal water tanks and if XX squinted, he could see he was still a long way from the top of the building and the gigantic taps that stood proudly up there. Each one as imposing as a cathedral.
XX opened the door to a new, better staircase. One that would hopefully oversee an altogether more peaceful journey. It went up in a spiral, made of more charcoal grey steel, the walls that shut it in made of glass. All of the four taps turned and the sound of crashing water drowned out all, any and every thing else. Immense oceans of water fell all around but not touching XX’s little space of sanctity. The tanks began to fill up. Curiously, they followed the exact pace he went as he made his way up the new staircase. He felt like a child again, bounding upwards to the roof – he would look and try and see if he could spot his house from up there, he decided.
XX finally reached the top; there was a ceiling to the corridors after all. He climbed through the hatch. It wasn’t as expected.
…
This is a town. Low buildings, trees, dirt roads, and, in the middle distance on all sides, hills all coming together to build the impression of a real place. How can there be land in the sky? Or: how can there be another land underneath this land?
…
There is no way back. Stairs sealed. Tanks filled and deeper than imaginable.
…
All is becoming lost.
…
A meeting with The Governor:
They sat in silence. The heavy emptiness of all things rested unevenly upon XX, and the glare across the desk from his compatriot, which grew fiercer every time he tried to begin to say something and end the torture, made the unease all the more unbearable.
Finally the strange official spoke, seemingly fuelled by the tension he himself had built in all the glory of cycles and circles. He addressed XX severely.
‘There is no necessity in small talk; forming the words and sounds, using the mind’s power to do so to fit them into an order so that I may understand, is a heinous waste. Much like the solution you so dearly crave to a problem that doesn’t exist. You are here, you are not there. There is there and is not here. The paths do not cross. They intertwined once and you were stupid enough to be present at the juncture. Now, as ever, beyond here is not there, but instead is nothing. You cannot be here, it is not allowed, but if you do not fight to remain, you shall be nowhere. This is my first and final warning.’
The meeting was concluded.
Holed away in this internment of confused longing, XX could barely face the non-containment and non-existence of his so-called mission any longer. It was as if he had trapped himself in this invisible prison; not so much not wanting to be here and not wanting to escape (nor having the want to do both either) but that some force – the will of the town and its inhabitants perhaps – had applied itself to trap him without meaning to, and resented its own inability to set his poor, extinguished soul free.
What caused him most anguish about this was that a man of problem/solution, punishment/reward (somebody who could even pre-empt these problems and punishments with such a logical defiance) was left at the mercy of no-things and all-things with no room to manoeuvre. Never one for philosophical grandeur, XX disliked that he had lifted the veil and saw what lies behind the world a little, and disliked the glimpse that seemed to him to be bludgeoning him mind, body and soul, repeatedly, to a mass of bloody pulp. He discovered, now, that it was not possible to break these parts of being without dying, to experience the complete loss of subjective self identity.
Enough. Should he continue in this vein and vain… He was sure he could end this, no matter how delusional, he could, he swore to himself. There is a way out and the will has to be done. It could be done and would be done with no triumph and no glory. This most complicated of contusions would be and should be confronted with the simplest of thought and therefore simplest of consequences. He began his work. He would use an aid dive to the bottom of a tank and force his way through.
X X X
All the fight has left my body. I feel all the lighter for it. All the thoughts and panicked urges are drifting away, just as my limp torso is now doing. I’m sure I can even see them all
leaving myself. I allow the gentle floating to carry me
away anywhere to
peace. to death to nothing
anywhere.
The Guard marches with officious duty, footsteps from the heavy black boots thundering, echoing off the damp concrete and metallic walls, following him to his scene-of-action and making him grow, as though these blows of noise adds to his height and breadth. He wanders like this through the maze he has been assigned, knowing all of the right corridors and how to open the impenetrable doors. With the reverberations accompanying him through my masterpiece, all forgotten, all decayed, he can’t help considering himself as some blind and unknowing St. Peter. He isn’t as important as all that, but his imaginations help fuel the passage of eternal time until one day he can leave.
Without prejudice or needing to alter his stride, he comes to the door he was searching for. It’s a curved door at the bottom of one of the four impossibly huge tanks. He turns the handle exactly so and the seal breaks. He steps with agility, almost wary that the powerful echoes of his gait could deafen him in this most cavernous of places. He finds the body – my body – where expected, hoists it over his shoulder and sets off once more with no moment nor pause to consider the drowned body lolling like a puppet under his control. Now even more imposing, with this second flesh upon his own and the noise of his boots still thundering, The Guard makes his way to his given destination. He opens the door, steps inside and puts my still-wet carcass down amongst the piles of other bodies, all in the same state. The sound of piercing radio static floods everything and everywhere and The Guard shuts and locks the room of resting death and continues onwards along his path.
V
Pier Paolo Pasolini, as Giotto, says “Why produce a work of art when it’s so nice to dream about it?”.
Pasolini, by being Giotto, is an Ascender/Descender. Maybe I will awaken to find myself as himself. Maybe he is Giotto being Pasolini and re-being Giotto. Or maybe I will awaken to find nothing, nothing at all. These things and links and contrivances are so easily spotted when you/me/we spend more than half the time living as others. Angels climbing and reclimbing and declimbing Jacob’s Ladders.
Sleep please let me sleep
Detach and disassociate to a disappearing degree. There is trouble, sometimes, observing the things around me, as though everything is not in its proper place. The edges of everything just ever so slightly out, agitated in the atmosphere, not quite fitting, outlines blurred, making the presence of this world around me sickly with the soft pillowy aura surrounding everything within it. As a child – though now I’ve come to realize I was never a child, it was just the same body but containing a different being – I recall vividly the feeling of a dream where everything was like this, the pillowy soft air, invisible but encasing everything. I woke up laughing hysterically and deeply confused. I vomited almost instantly, as I have started to frequently do now. The Partner and other background cast members that support my existence are convinced I am sick. There is not enough evidence to prove this. How can I be sick or dying when I am living everywhere and everyone? You are dying and will die. All of these people cast members are dying and will die. All of the people I inhibit are dying and will die. But I will not.
This is discovered, nailed to my own calf:
“If we keep the eyes open in a totally dark place, a certain sense of privation is experienced. The organ is abandoned to itself; it retires into itself. That stimulating and grateful contact is wanting by means of which it is connected with the external world, and becomes part of a whole.”
I wish for Goethe to be dying and dead.
THE NURSES
My body has hit the water. My body has been submerged by the water. My body is part of the water. The water is part of my body.
My Water Body moves on and on with no sense of direction but with a clear sense of destination.
The moment is stuck in time, an Immortal Hour, and is happening even now. Only subtle changes with each Immurement, each eternal recurrence; this time I hear the sweet voice cooing to My Water Body along the threads of The Spinner:
“The locked-air is freezing, but the Immured is not left wanting. Except a change of mind, though the heart will stay the same. And that heart now has to feel nothing; unaware of the suffering, of all the pain… of everything outside those enclosed walls… of anything except the Great Immurement… of nothing except nothing, nothing ever again… nothing but nothing ever again.”
This eases the journey of My Water Body this time, and then for all-times after it. The Body Of Water erodes My Water Body, it empties all of the heaviness and empties all of the emptiness.
The immortal spirit comes clear from within My Water Body and I hum happily:
“Destroy yourself. Whatever comes next will be better.
Erode me, O dismantling waters, and carry me with that emptying tide.
And carry me to me, I to I, mine to mine.”
I am living underwater. I am drowning in slow motion – all the while following the length of thread as decided by The Alotter.
I come to The Unturnable point of the journey. The Nurses, led by The Three Fates, all swan-swim to, through and then away from my bodies…my body’s place of rest, where the emptying tide ceases to be. The dismantling waters have stripped it to the soul. The Nurses, they gather me safely in.
This is where the rainbow ends and now into the Hymns to which I am faithful:
The Nurses will finish all things you left half-finished.
The Nurses will never let thy works diminish.
The Nurses will deliver your little love notes.
The Nurses will erase from memory all the cruel things you spoke.
The Nurses will return your body to its former glory.
The Nurses will make sure it’s no longer bloated and watery.
The Nurses will overlook your fixed stare and filthy laugh.
The Nurses will undo all the bad things you did in the past.
The Nurses will listen to all the things you are not saying.
The Nurses will focus thy mind whilst you are praying.
The Nurses will think you unblemished.
The Nurses will tell you you don’t need to be quite so apologetic.
The Nurses will reach out to you with no pity.
The Nurses will softly whisper to you a little ditty.
The Nurses will wish for something greater, always.
The Nurses will listen even though you’ve always got something to say.
The Nurses will…
In their hospital I see them spin everything and everyone and everywhen onto webs. All these things and all things more are interconnected this way. The suspension of lives and of stars, of accidents and of coldness, of happiness and of surgeries; everything IS everything else. All matter is all of us and every myself. The Fates as The Nurses have cut my thread in just the right places, in just the right way to leave me suspended and unended, that I may observe this secret of the universe and I thank them. I find my thanks are just another thread and they already know.
With thanks to them, in return, I am threadless, I am lifeless and I am free.
NOVEL SERIALISATION
AUTHOR: RICK ACV
Following in the wake of his debut novel THE GREAT IMMUREMENT, which we serialised during the summer of 2020, Vukovar helmsman Rick ACV now follows up with the surreal, esoteric and challenging Astral Deaths & Astral Lights. Playing with format, language, font, with half-thoughts of waking hours and occult merge with dream-realism and a languid sense of discomfort: a sorry state of existence. William Blake and Austin Osman Spare meet Kōbō Abe in the hotel lobby portal of the never-world: personal and universal. Parts One & Two were debuted earlier this week. We continue with the next chapter, HOTEL NOTHING/III, below:
HOTEL NOTHING
I’m stooped and my joints don’t seem to want to acknowledge my directions for them.
I gather my thoughts. All there is, is nothing to me.
A phone rings and I answer it, but for a few moments the words spoken appear in vision as a series of symbols and guttural colours. Flashes from the language axis. The world has spun in a new direction without me and I’m left behind; in a strange place and a strange time, now I can reach towards something new.
Then I am comforted as everything falls into place. Those symbols I saw before me, as that mysterious voice spoke, shift into something I understand a little easier and then turn to vapour, finally vanishing as I reach out with a curious finger.
Almost suddenly, I fall back out of a comforting understanding into something terrifying as I actually listen to the voice. This is a panicked unknowing. I have never felt this way before.
In response to my ‘hello’ the voice says “Good afternoon. I hope you are well.” I see strange flashes of someone and something. “I hope you are well.” it repeats and continues “I assume I am speaking to Mr Hanshiro?”
“Yes.” I utter, in the almost-exact same voice as from the phone, only mine isn’t as deep.
The voice continues to tell me about an important letter I will receive and to make sure I deal with it immediately.
The someone and something I see without seeing is a man in a back room. I recognise the man as myself for some reason, though his features are obscured by bright light.
I am aware of this self as though I have lived it all my life. My stomach turns.
“May I ask to whom I am speaking?” I say with as little suspicion as I can muster. My opposing line responds with a polite ‘of course’ then on to “
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My ears may bleed. My brain may catch fire. My limbs may collapse in on themselves.
The answer was drowned out by a bell sound so abrasive…. I briefly lost myself.
I come back to myself, This Self.
A letter drops to the floor in this neat, bare office-house. As I read it, the inner voice is one I don’t recognise and the disturbing biloquism only further serves to disrupt my adaptation to my new surroundings.
The letter:
Dear Mr Hanshiro,
I write to inform you of the regrettable and unfortunate death of your dear insert family name. In his her will, he she passed on to you the UNRESTRICTED ownership of the Hotel Nothing in the [REDACTED] district in [REDACTED].
Under his her instruction, the keys will be passed to you by ourselves, [REDACTED], on his her behalf. Please come to us at your earliest convenience in order to conclude this matter. We are situated on [REDACTED]. I look forward to meeting you.]
Yours Sincerely,
[REDACTED].
***
I arrive as a recipient of a substantial inheritance outside the vast building. There are swarms of people around the entrance. I make my way through the crush, passing hot flashes of hot fleshes. I come to a corridor full of people only occasionally moving forwards – I spot the door behind the reception. Only one sweating, stinking shape of human is permitted through at a time.
I need some water.
I am old and tired and hot. This airless hole will be the death of me, I begin to not-even-worry, and instead just accept the fact. The noise is deafening.
***
The receptionist and I shout to no avail as she allows me through the door.
There is only one chair in here and another door. I make to sit down but a young woman, drenched in sweat, angered and flustered points to the door.
“I’ve been sent this letter…”
My voice is weak and pathetic before it’s cut off by her simple, straight-to-the-soul statement:
“Yes, that’s why you’re here, you have no more relatives, go through the door.”
I do so and find inside a cavernous room an empty desk, atop of which is the keys to my new empire. I am so tired.
I am so tired of being close to death that I ignore my own hesitation, take the keys and make my exit. There is no-body and no-thing and I am back in the cool rain that has shifted here from another day.
X X X
I arrive at the place. It’s an imposing, pristine concrete thing, looking for all the world like a Las Vegas hotel stripped totally bare, picked up and left to just simply exist in some industrial wasteland purgatory. There are well-tended gardens that are clear boundaries between two worlds, from the Hotel Nothing to the wild and overgrown wasteland that surrounds and suffocates all else. The extreme and striking border forms a perfect square around the hotel, even taking in some woodland, and I can’t help but allow my mind to wander and wonder about halos… their meaning… what shapes they may take and any significance of any of this.
Taking a slow and ambling walk around the grounds, stopping to smell the roses, it crosses my mind; an old creaky man such as this-myself is just as easily pleased by the gentle and pleasant as the ease of the confusion that comes to the limbs at the end of their use. There is a remarkable freshness inside the Lines and I could swear that it’s brighter than I have ever experienced, whereas as the whole of the sky, all within and without it, was pitch grey just a few metres and moments previous.
There is a pond and marsh which I cross over on an immaculate wooden walkway, feeling no effort in my movements and have to check I am not floating into the day. I haven’t felt this graceful for years. The path I am on takes me back towards the back of the hotel, but in my way is a maze.
There is no way around; all-ways seem to lead up to and then away from the building so I reluctantly enter this maze that has somehow bloomed from nowhere. I walk and walk and walk and I encounter no Dead Ends. I do-not and can-not understand. I am walking in circles, the length of which are undeterminable. I think as quickly as my slowing mind will allow: I put down my hat on the ground and walk on.
I carry on for several minutes, still gliding, effortless, and can feel panic rising from the very soul of me. Suddenly my joints ache, my breathing is hard and the Glory Of The Day becomes as a recurrence of a terrible memory. I go to lean upon the hedge-wall and find myself going through a door right to the centre of the maze. All centres. All things must have a centre or they are unthinkable. I have found this one. In this centre, a strange man is sitting at a small table with an empty chair facing him. Upon spotting me he pours us both a cup of tea and beckons me to join. I shuffle forwards. His face is powdered white. A brilliant white. Total white. I want to feel apprehensive but can’t. I feel nothing. I decide I will decline the tea, remain standing and simply ask for directions.
Now I am sat opposite him.
Now he stares. His features seem to change.
Now he speaks.
The Mystery Man greets me. I ask him for directions.
“In time. Why not take the tea? It’s hot and delicious.” He smiles. “I insist you join me.”
I ask about the maze and its impenetrable nature. Or actually, the ease in which it is penetrated but the difficulty of getting out.
“Surely the new owner is not in a rush? The place and employees take care of themselves.”
His smirk bothers me now. Feelings, all feelings, are slowly returning.
I agree in supposition and ask how he knows who I am, careful to mask my un-nerve.
“May I ask how it is that you already had the keys? Or how it is that two versions of you held a coherent telephone conversation; both in the present but one in the past and one still in the future?”
I take notice of his voice. Something about the thick-lightness makes my stomach knot in almost-nausea.
I can no longer mask anything and I make my confessions to Him, of how bizarre I found his question and how confused – to the point of fear – I am. All of this without saying a word.
“I may not. Drink your tea, Mr Hanshiro.”
I do so and it’s delicious and warming. Just as he said. I tell him.
“It’s a recipe I’ve had for hundreds of years.”
I suggest he misspoke and assume he means his family have had it for hundreds of years.
“If you would prefer, sir.”
I wish he would not speak. That voice. That voice of all-substance and no-substance.
I put all thought out of my mind ask how to get to the Hotel Nothing from here once again.
“Look to your right.”
I open my mouth to speak but the mystery man so forcefully stares into my eyes and it feels he is controlling them, directing them to where he instructed.
The maze is no longer there. Well, it is, but it’s nothing more than a painting upon the ground. An optical illusion. I turn back to the Mystery Man, dumbfounded, but find nobody there. I sit in silence. I do not care for how long. I go to put the cup on the table. There is no table.
The table is not a table. That, too, is a painting on the ground.
Along with both chairs.
I’m squatting mid air and at this realization I recognise the agony most of my body is in.
I slowly make my way to the hotel.
A SHIFT.
Huge, open hotel lobby. There isn’t anybody. Any-Body at all.
A pressed bell.
A deafening noise.
The noise down dark corridors. The noise in the hidden staff spaces. The noise everywhere.
Abandon hotel lobby.
A story of an old, disfigured ex-prostitute on a radio.
Sleep.
A RETURNING AND RECURRING SHIFT.
I enter my hotel and find a row of people all in a line awaiting my arrival. All are hotel staff it seems and all are ignoring the growing, silent queue behind and beyond them.
A man with a young face and an old body approaches me.
“Welcome back Mr Hanshiro! Glad to see you’re better.”
His eyes widen with horror.
Everything but his face is old, decrepit almost, in ways that are obvious yet these ways I cannot process.
I have to ask what he means. I have to. So I do.
Please forgive my ignorance, sir, I meant to simply say ‘welcome’. I am the manager of your Hotel Nothing, my name is Mr John; you may call me Mr Manager if you find it difficult to recall names.”
I do not like these people.
I assure him I can recall names perfectly well. I ask Mr John to show me to my quarters.
He seems affronted.
He pleads.
“Well, that really isn’t part of my job… besides, there are things we must see-to before anything else.”
His suit is sharp and expensive looking. It appears to me as funeral attire. I understand nothing of business. For now, I’ll agree to whatever I’m told. I just want to rest.
His countenance is changed and becomes abrupt and impatient. He storms to the employees and angrily urges me to follow.
One at a time the employees bow to me and walk away without saying a word and without looking back. This takes a long time and then all is finished.
I ask Mr John how useful this time was spent without learning their names.
“Mr Hanshiro, please, that introduction was just fine. You will learn the names over time, and even if not, you probably won’t need to anyway.
I nod.
I have no energy, none to waste on further questioning.
I’m taken into the office behind the front desk. Here, there is a familiar looking young woman; she seems shy and speaks to me in a language My-Self in This-Self understands. She tells me her name – Catherine – and that she is the junior manager. This exchange is easy and welcome.
“I will show you around and to your room if it pleases you, sir.”
I would be pleased to go straight to my room and gather in my rapidly fracturing being.
She looks unsure and explains they aren’t the orders she has received, but will make an exception.
I should think so.
We make our own way without Mr John and come upon a lift, into which I happily step, thinking of a time in the coming futures where I will be well-rested. Catherine tells me of how she rose to her position through merit and excellency, whereas…
“Mr John took advantage of your absence to seize control of the running of this place…”
There is a blackout for less than negligible amount of time. Or maybe it was just me. Or maybe nothing at all.
“Mr John took advantage of The Owner’s absence to seize control of the running of this place.”
I do not feel this is appropriate.
“I hasten to speak ill of my colleagues – or indeed anybody at all – especially if they are not present, sir. But this may be my only chance.”
This is too much stress for today. I try to tell her she may see me first thing tomorrow and tell all so I may sort all.
“Please! Mr John is a degenerate and a deviant. He claims to love me, that he can’t be without me. He is probably watching and listening in to us. Right now. He just wants to control me. He spies on my everywhere I go. There are cameras everywhere. Everywhere!”
I’m aware of Catherine adjusting her breasts but I ignore it and tell her I will sack the disgusting pig.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“He is… irreplaceable… it isn’t possible.” She says this with a disarming nonchalance. Just a few seconds ago she was begging for my sympathetic ear and now she is completely and totally resigned to her treatment. “A necessary evil.”
I start to press her further on this but notice she has now bared her breasts and I become enraged. I express my contempt.
“He’s watching even now. My flesh will blind him to our discussion, blind him to his own fury. I think he’s gone. Would you like to touch?”
She turns to me with sparkling eyes.
I am filled with horror.
No…
Please no…
She approaches and presses up against me. I weaken. I try to push her away and in doing so I touch her naked skin. It burns me. I retch and cower in the corner. Catherine is concerned and strokes my hair, unknowing of the panic I am stricken with. Her breasts are in my face. The air is unbreathable and I can no longer cope.
The lift doors open.
I run.
I am in a room with only one door. Catherine is looking on, uncomprehending.
I force my way into the darkened space. Harsh pulsating lights begin to flash on and off, strobe-like, as a gently throbbing music plays, quietened, as though through water. The room is covered from floor to ceiling with breasts. I vomit uncontrollably. It lands on the ceiling. It stays there. I see a door and crawl towards it, pulling myself along, wishing for nothing but the retching and heaving to subside. The door is a towering vagina and I have no choice but to have to go through it.
I am birthed into a blinding whiteness.
My senses come to me intermittently.
A crowd of women.
They fuss over me.
They clean me.
They cut the newly attached umbilical cord from me and I scream in agony.
I am put onto a moving surface and am carried away into The White.
I drift.
I am moved.
My existence is vapour-light.
I am in yet another room. Everything is monochrome. Empty but for two small tables, each with a telephone atop. An old man. I think of him as Il Duce. He is at the furthest one. He faces me.
Il Duce indicates towards the phone on my table.
Pick it up.
His lips do not move but his voice comes to me down the phone.
He stares into the whites of my eyes. He stares into the total depths of me as he un-talks.
“Do no fear me.”
Who are you?
“I will not answer.”
Why not?
“There could be any number of reasons, but I am not here to discuss them.”
How come you have appeared to me?
“I am to recite to you a warning, from a different story, from a different time, but it applies to all human life at some point in different ways and the point has now come in yours. Will you listen?”
I will.
I awake in my room.
I think about what he said.
There was a story of a gatekeeper and a man seeking passage through the gate. The gatekeeper denied the man entry on unknowable and unchangeable grounds.
I recognised this as a story from deep within another story.
X X X
I arise, I dress, I stop; I feel eyes upon me. I allow them to continue for a few moments and I begin to hear a rising, heavy breathing which digs its way just so into the centre of me, forcing itself through ears, through mind, as though this is all I have ever heard. It becomes piercing as I search for the source and I in turn become manic as it turns to pain. This is unbecoming of me. I burst out of my room and with this expense of my energies I fall to my face in a silent living area in a confused St Vitus dance. Catherine is sitting on a couch, looking me over.
“Come here Mr Hanshiro.”
I respond with a blank look.
“Come on, it’s okay.” She is insistent and I lose myself to her maternal authority. I go over to her, childlike and pathetic.
“Rest your head upon my lap. Shh. I’ll make it all better for you.”
Catherine starts to sing softly a lullaby as I comply and, soon, she is stroking my hair.
I tell her I think I am getting a cold.
She leans down and starts to kiss me sensually. Paralysis and transfixion.
“Poor baby. Do you want a feed?”
…
“Do you want a feed from mummy?”
This is not what I want. She begins to take out her breasts. Again. What does this life, this myself mean? Why is she starting with this indecent nonsense again?
The shift.
“Mr Hanshiro?”
…
“Mr Hanshiro?”
We are sitting on the couch, together but apart, still in this silent living area that is nowhere.
“Do you want to get some food? From the bar?”
Confused and erring to begin with, I respond in agreement. I want to get out of this dark room.
Catherine smiles.
“I’ll organise some company for us.”
I’d much rather you didnt, Catherine.
“I’ll organise some company for us.”
I am so taken aback by the strength in her will in just those six simple words that I don’t argue.
These people have total control over me.
This place has total control over me.
And every-thing and every-one else.
Total Body Control, whether in-body or out-body.
Hotel Restaurant:
This is viewed from outside this myself, at times.
Catherine and myself sit at a table with a couple that look exactly the same as us. The setting changes from time to time between two places. It starts as normal, smoky restaurant and bar, high-ceilinged and large with constant chatter, waiters milling about busily and there is a band playing some unintrusive music on a stage. The other place is a tiny, perfectly square room that contains only our table and a bar that isn’t quite right. On the wall in front of us is a projection showing the ‘rest’ of the restaurant and all its inhabitants.
Catherine: I’ll do the introductions then shall I, darling? (I see myself begin to stir as though woken from daydreams long and old) I’m Catherine and this is my husband Mr Hanshiro. Nice to finally meet you.
Mirror Catherine: It’s lovely to meet you, too. I’m Catherine and this is my husband, Mr Hanshiro.
Catherine: (Turning to me) Catherine and dear Mr Hanshiro live in the hotel. They’re high up in a sub chain of command here.
The constant state of confusion I am mired in within my hotel is starting to become tedious.
I view ourselves and theirselves through tired eyes slowly burning as they discuss how it is that both sets own and run the place in parallels without any knowledge of each other’s domain. This goes on for a while until Mirror Catherine suggests and hints at things of a sexual nature, before Catherine confirms it without me understanding the real meaning. We are all turned towards the idea of going to our room under the pretence, in my unaware understanding, of continuing our meal there.
Catherine violently rides me in a rape that I cannot and do not fight against. I watch this and can do nothing.
X X X
This is now the next day or the next time or the next whenever it is. I seek out Mr John and try to make a complaint about Catherine. He calls me a liar and we argue until he tells me she has already been removed and hidden away somewhere. I am ill and I am tired and I care little for any of this. I dismiss him. The room behind the office simply marked ‘Manager’s Bedroom’ appeals to me.
Inside the tiny room is a human sized nest on the floor. There is little to describe about the rest. It feels so empty and so bare that I cannot help but question its existence and quantum lack-of-presence.
There is a phone. I am drawn to it. I pick it up. The voice on the other end sounds familiar.
“Hello?”
Good afternoon. I hope you are well. I assume I am talking to Mr Hanshiro?
“Yes that’s correct. What is the nature of the call?”
Information. You will receive a letter in the post today that carries with it some weight of importance. Please pay it with your upmost attention.
“May I ask who I am speaking to?”
I do not know. This Self is no longer My Self. I watch myself disappear from my own view as I slip away.
III
The partner sits upon a step.
The partner is upset.
The partner weeps and lets the realism that THEIR partner is less and less present become the biggest prescience.
I am further and far removed from the usual world and it has its effects and affects. I understand that there are consequences to every action as I am not a moron.
However, which place is it whereby the actions count for anything? Even something… It feels less and less like the usual world.
I must try and make it up to the partner in this world. Just in case.
Kalporz X Monolith Cocktail: When Helmet was the symbol for the conquest of the majors.
August 26, 2021
Feature/Literature/Paolo Bardelli
Continuing our successful collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz , the Monolith Cocktail shares reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts during 2021 and beyond.
This month Kalporz head honcho Paolo Bardelli tells us how a recent radio spot promotion of his new book, 1991: The awakening of rock – Brit pop, trip hop, crossover, grunge and other exciting music, sparked off a discussion on the alternative-metal band Helmet, and the travails of being swallowed whole by the majors: hungry to sign up anything rock music; any band of guitar welding hopefuls in the light of Nirvana’s success.
Recently, in promoting my latest book, I found myself mentioning Helmet on the radio, and listeners called to thank me for mentioning a band that is often, and unfairly, forgotten.
And they’re right.
Helmet were one of the symbols of that period, and of that year to which I dedicated the book, 1991, when the majors signed anyone, even my aunt, as long as they did grunge or heavy rock. It didn’t matter what genre – metal, crossover, noise, shoegaze, etc. etc. – the important thing was that there was a lot of grunge. As long as there was a lot of guitar, played loud and powerful.
And there is a song, perhaps the most famous of the New York noise band’s catalogue, which shows – in its history – the plastic representation of that transition: ‘Unsung’. The first album of Page and associates (Strap It On, 1990) was released on an independent label, Amphetamine Reptile Records, which specialised in noise, but AmRep couldn’t keep their thoroughbreds in the stable for long. They were flailing. Just before Helmet made the jump to Interscope, in May 1991, on the 26th, they recorded the Peel Sessions and played the new ‘Unsung’. Such a song did not go unnoticed: Amphetamine Reptile hastened to release it, and so it was still 1991, in the live version played by Peel, as a 45 rpm, and to provide it with a video that I thought was wonderful and still respected independent standards: you see Helmet on a disused stage in an amphitheater abandoned to weeds and cockroaches.
“Unsung” was a business card that was too greedy: among all the majors that wanted to get them and that wanted to turn them into the “new Nirvana”, Interscope Records got the better of them (for a million dollars!), immediately re-releasing Strap It On (and it was still 1991, but how fast did things happen?) and brought Helmet into the studio to give a follow-up to that album, which would then be represented by the “famous” Meantime (1992). And “Unsung” was also re-recorded and given a video more in line, in theory, with the band’s new image.
Notwithstanding that ‘Unsung’ kicks ass in its first and second versions, I much prefer the video with the cockroaches. Well, at the time when the majors were grabbing these bands, maybe they were also sucking some soul out of them, and this comparison of two videos can be a clear illustration of that. But the majors also made these bands better known to most people, and that was a good thing, something Kurt Cobain also always pointed out, happy that unlike before, a teenager could find Nevermind in a Walmart store. Today the 1991 video has 15,000 views on YouTube, the official 1992 video over 11 million. Just to give you the idea.
Even selling your soul “to the devil” has its advantages.
(Paolo Bardelli)
More info on Paolo’s book can be found here: “1991. Il risveglio del rock. Brit pop, trip hop, crossover, grunge e altra musica eccitante” (Arcana)
Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
Expanding the Monolith Cocktail’s remit to include more in the way of new literature and poetic musings of a kind, we are pleased to announce the serialization of burgeoning author and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar Rick Clarke’s new novel The Great Immurement. Following on from the first three chapters, kindly and perceptively illustrated by the much-respected Andrzej Klimowski, you can now read the next trio of chapters below.
THE GIRL AND THE PLAY-THING
The Great Immured/I/Us/They still absorb the contents of this sticky, crumpled paper from time to all-time. The letter received:
Said the girl to her play-thing:
‘Sometimes I feel you don’t belong… anywhere’
She stroked
And stroked
And thought…
‘Except I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else – I would be enraged… inconsolable…’
And so they sat upon their metallic plinth, the rust gathering rust in their infinite day-time play-time.
The play-thing, red, raw, balding and seeping felt it belonged … anywhere … except its current placement, and so it left.
The girl cried. She ignored the pain of the departing-wound, with all the blood, pus, open flesh and swinging innards and all else with it, and instead, she felt the pain of her lament for her greatest lover.
All day she cried.
All day….
All day….
All-Every-Day.
On her plinth, in the outskirts of the inner Otherlands – not quite all white, all light – she cried.
The play-thing had escaped into the inner Otherlands – all white, all light – and lost itself in amongst other clawing appendages of desires and almost irretrievably gave itself to the brutality.
It found peace and rested.
The girl did not stop crying. The departing-wound was healed to a smooth white mound, hairs penetrated the flesh (inwards and outwards) unevenly at uncoordinated angles.
The play-thing heard the sobs. The glistening, slightly sticky tears it could see without seeing were replicated in excitement rather than despair.
The play-thing found the girl. An arrival-wound could not be forced. However, the two were reconciled in a new way; a happy ending for both.
Sometimes these crumpled, sticky papers would get more crumpled and sticky at differing alltimes. Unreadable, in fact.
THE PARTIAL SEIZURE
To the doctor RE: Immurement – there are things my/our body/hole is doing without instruction ||| INFORM ME THAT I MAY REINSTRUCT THEE ||| Yes doctor.
In the Otherlands – I know longer know anywhere else – the temporal shifts are plentiful.
The rooms and the dimensions… the shapes… constantly change – permanent revolution, something I would wish on noone.
The shift comes.
LOSE YOURSELF TO IT AND DESCRIBE FULLY ||| … .
I don’t hate the weirds I see in the street. They amuse me. I find them amusing. I find it amusing that they can’t detect their own filthy stench when everybody else can. Unwashed flesh, soiled clothes… the piss of their cats spray from their throat as they invent nonsensical sentences…outloud… to themselves of course. Who else will listen?
An all too familiar summer’s breeze passes over and through my skin. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, overlapping with real time, causing sickness and nausea before I’m even aware of the fact. I’m disconnected. I’m watching myself from within myself. My thoughts are about my thoughts. Maybe the faint sound of music that’s drifting into my insides from a nearby side-street is the cause, maybe it’s the scent of some familiar-unfamiliar fauna or washing powder. Maybe it’s everything combined. Whatever the trigger, I’m hit.
A rising liquid warmth from the pit of my stomach spreads upwards through my chest, across to my fingertips and upwards once more to every nook and darkened lump in my brain.
It isn’t possible to overstate the sickness.
I see what’s in front of me as any non-blind does, but I see more… There’re images that I
can’t
quite
identify.
I can understand them for no more than a nano second, these pictures are seen with eyes open, mixed in some impossible way with the reality that’s in front of me.
I glimpse a man who I recognise and instantly unrecognise. I just about hold in the vomit.
This is the point where my deitic coronation and entitlement reigns supreme. I know all, I see all, I have lived everything that is going to happen, my foresight shows me what I am about to live, a second in advance. Just a second.
And it’s all true.
For half a minute I am the King of all things. And then… again…
I’m hit.
The line of time – the timeline – that is lay out before me, by me, collapses immediately under noteven-close scrutiny. Everything was and is ridiculous, nonsensical… This future that had been crafted that fitted glove-like now appeared to be like the crackpot ramblings of the cat-piss-breathweirds I saw before. For now, they don’t amuse me anymore. I feel hatred and I feel no sympathy for these scums. It won’t last, I know when I’m next out in amongst them, I’ll giggle inwardly at a rogue flailer, escaping with a childlike glee from its carer.
I get home and my body purges itself, uncontrolled by my mind or my will, and I rest. Nothing feels completely real for a v v v long while after, not until the next day.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO THROUGH THIS? ||| Every moment of every time. ||| … ||| What can you do? Relieve me. ||| NOTHING. ||| Help me. ||| NO. EMBRACE THE ALL-KNOWLEDGE. YOU CAN RELIEVE YOU AND YOU CAN RELIVE YOU. RELIVE YOUR OWN DECAY. ||| … .
WOMB OF ALL THINGS TO DIE
In which The Great Immured thought of himself, sang to himself, trapped himself.
Though any future of you and I
Was hastily stored and shut inside
The womb of all things to die,
Still I await you, arms open wide.
And though briefly this foetus came alive
And escaped its home in the deathly bride
The Motherly noose was quickly tied;
The babe now rots in its natal slime.
I swim the lakes of happiness denied
With each stroke I am to defy
Our deceased future over which I have cried
To punish myself in self-righteous, self-spite.
Through this act I manage to say goodbye
To the terminal tumour that engulfs my pride
And though I’ve longed and lusted and tried
I let it go to let it lie.
Rick Clarke
Parts One to three here…
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