The Blunderbuss

Saul sat flat against the wall with his pants in a definite twist. Manacles fit to shackle an elephant locked his wrists to the radiator behind him - a loving embrace of skin, steel and quality plumbing. What’s worse he’d been experimented on with some seriously post-modern violence - everything hurt. Some sick puppy had even untied his shoelaces.

Shifting to get a better look at his new digs was proving tricky, moving his head felt like unscrewing his spine. Gritting his fine set of fifth avenue dentures he gave the room a once over. To his left lay a stack of stout planks, a number of which had been crafted into what could plausibly be a very solid coffin. On his right hand was a headstone with the name ‘Saul Temple’ embossed by a beautiful, if disinterested, hand. An inscription beneath this illustrious title read, ‘Every dog has its day.’ The stone lent against a staircase and some kind of portable privy, not exactly en suite. Saul groaned. Being locked up six feet under someone’s kitchen is one thing. But having your acute sense of impending doom reinforced by a concrete obituary really kills the sense of suspense.

Somewhere up above a whistler took up a familiar tune. Fat lips moved up and down the saliva scale, something patriotic, the lost melody of a flag falatting cadet. Temple was just preparing to join in the chorus when the songster stopped abruptly and announced himself with a kick to the door.

I guess you could say he was your average kind of Joe. Except his name wasn’t Joe and he was holding a large automatic.

“I like the tune but your voice ain’t gonna win no grammys.”

The man who wasn’t Joe looked sourly at Saul’s sprawled three piece suit and Saul’s grinning three piece face.

“Time’s up Temple. You’re looking at the last gun you’re gonna see this side of the pearly gates.”

Last night I killed a frog.

I don’t always mind hitting things on the highway. Rabbits horny for headlamps and pedestrians who put a toe out on the red light. But I really hate bumping frogs.

This one was sitting in a puddle, on a Saturday night, in the rain. For a frog, this must be near to nirvana. He was occupying his rightful place in the great chain.

For a brief moment this particular frog bathed in my oncoming spotlight, chest puffed out, legs akimbo, paddling in the witching hour. Then, with barely a bump, another amphibian innocent passed into the night. Curiously Queen where eulogizing on the radio at the time.

As I motored on into the black I tried to concoct a human equivalent of the frog’s fate. Imagine sitting back in a warm bath, head to heaven and then being mashed into the porcelain by a great, spinning death-head. Add to that the humiliation of being left to stew.

Normally, I find investing wildlife with human feelings a sickly trait, best reserved for Bambi sequels, but frogs may be the exception. Being eyeballed by a frog about to die for instance. It’s that look of utter, horrifying apathy. Not an ounce of surprise. You’re going to squash me? Give a fuck. ‘Rabbit in the headlights’ doesn’t apply to the frog family – the focus shifts and you are but a fleeting object in the greater amphibian eye.

No last rites then. Just a 2D death. The sun will come up, the road will dry out and for a couple of days amblers may poke a toadish imprint, wrinkling their own stretched skin in disgust.

Welcome. 

Welcome to Elephant City. 2020. 

Before you get tired of scene setting let me add it’s a pretty fine day in Elephant City. There’s some great sunshine spreading typically glowing rays over the metropolis. There’s a cloud or two in the sky but all of them are of the friendly, cartoon kind. Oh – there’s also a general feeling of Good Will to All Men. It’s Christmas.

Now, when I say Christmas, I don’t mean in the bells-out Bethlehem sense. There are no mangers in Elephant. There are definitely no virgins. I mean in the purely abstract ‘there may have been some kind of significance to this date some time ago’ sort of way. Nobody in Elephant is Christian, nominally or not. Off the record there are still a few faith types hanging out in circles, singing weird shit about summers past. But even they are feeling pretty good in an indescribable, calendicular kinda way. On this particular Christmas Day, the greater conurbation, Elephant-at-large, has been gifted a great political present - a brand new mayor. 

Some student types, probably political science majors, are discussing this new inauguration in their favourite bar. There favourite bar is, point of fact, a complete shithole. But like most favourites, and most shitholes, its got bags of character. The bar in question is somewhere in the Elephantine fringe, beyond all city landmarks and monuments, beyond, in fact, anything of note. It used to be called the Grand Ducal. Before that it may have once been the Royal Six Star. As of a few beers back it is now, definitely, the Aorta – as proclaimed by a large sign of the old, swinging in a paranormal breeze, kind.

The Aorta is, to the casual side-walker, a bricked-up window and a boarded up door, fronting on to some seriously sub-prime real estate. To the initiate this is merely the glossy cover veiling the great beating heart within. Those in the know perform an elaborate routine to enter which, at its conclusion, involves using a slide to access the bar bottom. This obscure descent to the premises gives the customer an acute sense of nausea, like being channeled backwards up a distended telescope – leaving the ocular panorama of the city roof to be squeezed out the eyehole of Soho. One of the many fiscal advantages of the Aorta stems from the brainwave that it is, indeed, a lot harder to climb up a slide totally tanked, blitzed or otherwise irrigated than it is to ride down one stone cold sober. Frustration usually leads to resignation and more drink. The other key coo is the absence of any employees. Salaried at least. The barman is the bar. Purveyor, proprietor, bouncer and songster, in no particular order, Magnus Oneson is, simultaneously, the current life and probable death of his establishment. 

10 years counting numbers. Drifting through a limbo of spreadsheets and spreadables, stuck in columns, cut into charts. Plucking the keyboard with clipped fingers. Locked in computer narcissis – screen and face merged from years of mutual reflection. Cheeks moulded to chair, denim gripping leather, locked in the rotation of the swivel seat. Days strewn with styrofoam, nights plagued with wet bureau sweat. Dreams haunted by the specters of primaries and binaries. Waking to digital alarms and clipboard beds. Quietly drowning in suited showers. Gripping breakfast gum in waxed jaws - always minty, never fresh. Rounding off the same walkway corners. Soundtrack reception, the guaranteed greeting - all tone, no voice.