13 A Profligate Reminisces

I have not moved for 4 hours. I've been sat in my armchair, waiting for a frozen bag of chicken nuggets to melt. I've got my laptop, and even an old fashioned porno mag, but I just can't seem to get it up for myself anymore. My wankbank has turned into memories and hurt feelings.

Once when Magdalene and I were spotty, sweaty teenagers with an insatiable sexual appetite; my mother walked into the room. She saw as Magdalene's face was pressed to the wall so hard she had scratches on her cheek the next day. She liked it like that: borderline abusive. I looked my mother in the eyes as I rammed even harder. She walked away.

You're probably wondering by now what happened to her. I haven't been able to talk about it, because I haven't been able to think about it. Even now mentioning it feels like my body is being ripped apart.
Magdalene is dead. I killed her.

I've been thinking of killing myself too, now that life is near pointless. Ah, but not quite. I have a mission; I wouldn't be this brilliant without a mission. Martyrdom without a great deed is just idiocy. I will someday affect the lives of everyone, I will be your saviour.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?- Nietzche

Through practise I've corrupted my own mind. I don't see things how you do. When I see the words "red and white" I don't think of Switzerland or candy canes. It's just blood and semen.

But now I'm stuck in this armchair,  my lap wet from defrosted nuggets and my bladder bursting. I've got my mothers face in my head and Magdalene's voice. What would my father say? What would my father say?
I would go into a church to pray but I'm afraid I'd go up in flames.

The devil was an angel once.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/friedrichn109765.html#PI7V1E8oPstlzRwd.99

Is

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/friedrichn109765.html#PI7V1E8oPstlzRwd.99

12 The Business of Love

Do you see? Do you see it? I loved her. Not like you love anything, you're not quite capable of the same kind of love as I am. No, this kind of love is visible, it is rough, and it is loud. This love is the kind you see in the eyes of a man with a coffee mug full of vodka in one trembling hand, and a gun in the other, watching his bruised wife crawl away. This love is beaten into you.

And

And

Your grave is just a black slab, and true to its colour it absorbs all my anger and grief and pain and it doesn't give a shit.

I drive a taxi. Out of 10 people, 8 talk to me about their boring, miserable lives. "I've got 3 children, you see, and to be honest I haven't had time to even have a nap since Suzy was born! I'm just plain exhausted." Apparently the correct response to this is not: "Well, since you had 2 children already I would assume you knew what you were getting yourself into. Quite stupid of you, I'd say."
"My wife and I have had some problems lately. It's put our plans of having a family on hold, but we're working through it, for the sake of our marriage." When asked why for the sake of the marriage, the man looked at me as if I was out of line, "Because we made a commitment, a promise!" A promise? You're going to be with one person for the rest of your life, day in, day out, whether you really want to or not (and let's face it, since you're doubting it you don't really want to now do you?) because you made a PROMISE? For the REST OF YOUR LIFE?
They tell me I don't understand life.

As humans we are the only species who actively seeks others of the same species to kill, to hurt, sometimes for no real reason. Then we grieve them as if we didn't know it was possible. People die, that's what people do. Yet even I can't stop feeling like my world hasn't shifted. I'm a little boy again, stuck in that boiler.
I've melted my figurines, all of them, the Simpsons, a few Looney Tuners, and a handful of traditional green soldiers into one big clump of colourful plastic. It's beautiful in it's own way. I picked it up and burnt my hands, but the pain it caused was love, because it blinded me, and it was all I could feel. Now my pain was visible to all. The clump of plastic has hardened inside my microwave, the small bubbles of boiling plastic fossilised forever.

The man is made uncomfortable if he looks at himself in the mirror for too long. He cannot bear to see his soul.

11 The Business of Death

We, the great ones, must always sacrifice something. We must hack them to pieces like John Brown, plan to destroy like Guy Fawkes- and we are always prosecuted for it. No, we are always executed.
My whole world went dark when she left.

Until now I had seen light, like a hedgehog in the box of a little girl. She found me and poked holes into my box. I could see outside, and there was light. And then she left me and night came, except night didn't leave. I do not breathe without her. I need her without her. 

I was on a plane, I was flying it. No, I was sitting next to the pilot. He wasn't moving- his face was green and mossy. His mouth open and a fishy stench filled the room. The c-opilot was a woman and she wore no clothes. She was bleeding all over the dashboard but she never noticed. Her conscience was disturbed, I've concluded. But the pilot was long dead, and the plane was falling, spiralling down. Crashed into the twin towers you say? Yes, but in Malaysia. No, is that New York? No no I'm pretty sure it's Malaysia.
I woke up.

They told me I was crazy. They told me I was demented.
No, Charles Manson was demented. I was in love.

I have had time to think now, about how humans are probably the only species who actively set out to kill a fellow being of the same species. We destroy ourselves, and I do not know of any other species that does that. Why would they? We are the only ones who make business of it, enjoy it, and are numb to it.

My favourite food is dinosaur chicken nuggets. Dinuggets I called them. Magdalene and I played with them during dinner, and though my T-Rex's could bite her brontosaurus's neck off, her brontosaurus could squash my T-Rex too. I haven't had any since she left me; the boxes sit at the back of the freezer waiting for her.

I think for her burial they should have had a golden coffin covered in diamonds, and a great big platinum statue of her as a grave stone. I think all the world should have cried for a year, and felt the same intense pain I do every time they looked into my eyes. Unfortunately the world doesn't work this way. No, death is a business and it is expensive. Disgusting how just the bare basics of sending your loved one to heaven can cost you your apartment and all its furniture, and nobody cares. The sun shines and they keep smiling at me even as I´m crying.

10 Some Dialogue

Guilt and sadness do not work well together. For me it is one or the other, and it dominates nearly every waking thought. I am alone again.

I met Magdalene's father when we were children. He did not like me at first because of my white skin. He said,
"Malcolm, do you know why the white man scares me?"
I shook my head, afraid if I would speak I would scare him.
"The white man scares me because he has no religion. Do you have a god, Malcolm?"
"Yes sir."
That god is me.

I never learnt to iron my clothes. My mum did it for me, then Magdalene did it for me. Mum said Magdalene couldn't do it well, but mum's dead now. She can't say what Magdalene did well or not, and she did everything well. Except fuck someone else.

When we were but teenagers, recently out of high school, I wiped her back with my Beatles shirt. Then I told her to turn around and I punched her in the face. Bitch like it, a hot thing falling on her. It wasn't hard, it was a hot thing. We could take a romantic bath together and eat truffles and drink champagne like French prostitutes.

"Dude, what's the plan?" he said.
"Well, we cover ourselves in bubble wrap-" I hate when I get interrupted.
"Bubble wrap?"
"It's light, makes no sound,-"
"Bubble wrap has bubbles. Bubbles pop."
"Fine, we'll use cellophane. We won't leave a trace."
"Without a trace" he chuckled.
"You're stupid. Have you ever seen that show?"
"No"
"Point in case"
"Whatever"
"Anyway, we only put the cellophane suits on inside the building, or we'll raise suspicion. In the lift or something. It'll be quick and easy. Then when we get to his floor we bust his door,-"
"Wouldn't that make a lot of noise?"
"Ah, you're right my dead Edward. Well, since she lives with him now, we'll just steal the key from Mag-"
"Mag?"
I couldn't say her full name.
"Yeah, that's what I called her in bed." LIES, ALL LIES.
"Oh."
"I'll figure out a way to get it. Then we go into his flat, get a glass out, pour the alcohol-"
"Ethanol"
"Same thing- in and leave without a trace. Teach him to fuck my lady."

I love my Magdalene. She is mine, she's mine. She will always be mine mine mine. She is mine. 

9 The Beginning of the Shadow

Our governments have learnt their lesson. Banning a topic, or hiding something from the masses is going to provoke a riot and a revolution. Thus was created the modern media, where nothing is a banned subject and everything can be talked about. Ah yes, but they are not. Instead, we are distracted beyond belief by trivial things like baby names and the weight of our modern day gods. We'll forget all about the dead and dying if you just tell us the top hairstyle of the year.

It is hard to believe that things are meant to happen when they're not meant to happen.

I have a lion running after me. A big black shadow lion that devours life as it moves. It is catching up to me, and fast. All the world around me is turning into shadow; I can't see anything and yet I can feel its claws and teeth clinging on to me.

It is hard to correct what wasn't meant to happen when it was meant to happen.

It's a strange feeling, packing all my figurines up, tearing all my notes, and putting away the bedsheets. It's like moving away from a life you had. It is the end of a life. It wasn't I who died, but it was me whose life ended. It was simple, it was a pure loss of everything there was.

I cannot think of anything that is happening now. I am useless. I am an appendix to everything. Tomorrow I will tell the truth, which in itself must be a lie. Today I am still dead.

For the first three months there was nothing but darkness. Words melted into each other, currency both existed and nonexisted at the same time, faces blurred as people walked past. But none of it was sad. Cigarettes and vodka were my sustenance. I had to be dead to fit in my coffin.

Kurt Vonnegut should have skipped all that nonsense about bokononism and just spoken of me. I am a nihilistic version of Bokonon. I am anti-everything and pro-anything, as long as it requires no particular effort on my part. I think I could be a racist, or a sexist, or a xenophobe, or homophobic, or whatever else there is... I think I am just too lazy to judge people. Maybe that's it. It's not truly acceptance until you're not even bothered to think about it.

Every time I orgasm I still see her.
I still feel her.

8 Lost and Found

I am Malcolm, and she is mine. Like Beloved is Sethe's, Magdalene is mine. Like Moby Dick is Ahab's, she is mine. She is mine, she came to me. She waited, and I came. She is mine mine mine.
No one can take her away.

As a child I liked watching movies on mute. I liked pretending I was deaf and making up my own sign language. I then pretended to be Jesus- No, I thought I was Jesus. Come to Earth to punish all mankind.

I know I did wrong. I felt like a bee after he stings someone. I knew it wasn't good- for I would die right after but I didn't have a choice. Well, I did of course but it didn't count. The choice was hers, not mine. And I don't even know her name. She doesn't know my name. All she knows is I'm not from London, and I have a collection of Simpson's figurines.

Everyone else is a lie. I'm the only one alive. This is a test and I'm passing. I'm the only one who's real, and nothing really matters.
Magdalene isn't dead and neither is my mummy, because I'm the only one who's real.

He said he loved Magdalene too.

I love mint ice cream. It makes my mouth sting when I drink water afterwards. A sadist is just a masochist who follows the golden rule.

One should always try everything except incest and country dancing. I try to.

October 22, 2008
Magdalene Bumeii was found dead in a South London flat last night. She appears to have been drinking pure ethanol that at this moment has been acquired to have been stolen from the local secondary school's chemistry laboratory.
Any tips as to the reason of Ms Bumeii's death are appreciated.

-----------------

[END OF PART ONE]
I know there is at least one person who has read this story when I first wrote it. So, you may notice it has been altered. I decided it was better for me to write from a perspective I knew better. I am now in the process of writing the second part, though it may take a while.

7 Fuckers and Sinners in London

London is a lie. "It's the greatest fuckin' city in the world," they said. "You're so fuckin' lucky to live in London," they said. "London is the go-to city for anyone who wants to be someone, the hub of modern art and culture, the centre of humanity, the centre of the world," they said. London is a filthy poor mess of small alleys where human scum comes to try their luck. Like the rest of them, I ended up paying 30 quid to the prostitute residing in the rubbish bin next to mine.

When Magdalene married me I never planned to move from York. The accents make my stomach churn in excitement and the crude thick hands of the crude thick workers make me dizzy. When I heard we are moving to London, I rented a suit and pretended to be Prince Charles of fucking Wales for a day, but then I moved to London, and I never saw no Prince Charles of fucking Wales, and everyone looked better than me anyway.

If people were defined by the worst thing they ever did, we'd all be sinners and criminals. We all need to go rot in hell and prison and anything else Johnathan Edwards would want. So light yourself on fire, sinner, and make yourself an example!
But we overlook that. Who knew Gandhi treated his wife like scum?
Ah, doesn't matter! He wore a diaper and preached peace.

Then she left.

Screams and screams and pants and her head banging on the wall. Shut up, bitch or my wife will hear! Magdalene left me inside her as she walked out. She left me in London.
She left me homeless in London, inside a stranger from the an alley I used to call mine.

Dear Magdalene
I love you. I love how you hate my family, and how you hate yourself for not trying to love them like you love me.
I love the smell of your shampoo.
I love the way you sprinkle salt on your eggs in the morning.
and I love the way you make noises when you concentrate on something. Sucking noises. It's weird, but I love it.
I'm sorry sorry, you know I am.
I threw away the Simpsons for you. The melted ones too. I threw away the bad habits and the second thoughts and all the voices.
I threw away a part of me damnit, I threw away my posters and rotten shirts.
I even threw away the photos that make me squint at you and scream inside. I threw away the turtlenecks, and I threw away my phonebook, so I can't even phone no one.
It's true.
Love Malcolm

5&6 A Brief Glance into the Mind of a Regular Genius

 {Sorry for the long wait, here's a double chapter}


I'm not random. My train of thought is just faster than yours.

I always feared my life would be random; that it wouldn't make sense. However, the more I look at it, mine makes more sense than that of anyone else I know. Everything I did has lead to everything I do.. or everything I didn't do has lead to everything I don't do. My apartment is a mess because I don't clean it up. I'm a scoundrel and a shitdick because I fuck a bitch and don't call her back.

Magdalene left me on a Monday. Who leaves someone on a Monday? It's one of those days that never has any significance for anyone. No one gets married on a Monday, celebrates on a Monday, or cries on a Monday. Anyway, she said even she can't understand me anymore. She said my mind was deteriorating, and soon all that will be left would be a massive ball of dough, until all I could do was lie in my bed and stare at the walls. She said my mind is a crystal glass; beautiful to behold in absolute stillness, yet extremely fragile and will break from the slightest push.
I spent an hour cutting up all her belongings and nailing them to the door.
I called her seven times that night, only to cry into the receiver.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Nietzche

When I was young, my idol was Frederic Nietzche. He made sense of everything. He bashed human nature until we are all merely aliens that slobber along, consuming and destroying everything we touch except ourselves.

She compared me to the psychopath in Silence of the Lambs.
That's just silly. That guy was truly insane. INSANE. I guess she just meant I'm unpredictable.

While high, I get a buzz above my eye balls. Like a bee that crawled in through my ear while I was asleep and that started panicking when it realised that it couldn't get out.

I also used to look up to Hugh Laurie. And Stephen Fry. Oh sweet, sweet Stephen. I would watch one episode of the Laurie and Fry show over and over again, studying their mannerisms and expressions, and then I'd play them all out to Magdalene. She would giggle like a little girl.
Then she told me Stephen Fry was gay, and my whole world broke down.
It was Stephen Fry.
And he was gay. I wasn't sure if my love for his mind was just that, or if it extended to something more. Love and sexuality are complex.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
I am the only sane one here.

When I was young I used to read the complete Oxford dictionary daily, and blot out each word I'd learnt.
Now my whole dictionary is black. However, I find it unnecessary to use overly elaborate words all the time.

My parents were originally from Yemen. I'm white though. I'm an undercover Arab.
I'm a Catholic poseur.

I'm the heart and soul of the next generation. Your children will be me. I am their Jesus.
Fuck GG Allin, he is nothing next to me. Though I refuse to shit on you.

I've been told time and time again to get up when I fall down. I don't want to get up anymore. I want to lie there, clinging to the fresh wet grass, and thrashing about like a fish on dry land. I want to see the stars by peripheral vision, and feel the rubbery soles of shoes stepping on my pained, red fingers. I want to feel the moisture seeping through my shirt on to my hot hard chest, and send jolts through my spine. I want to look up and see the blurred silhouettes of people I no longer care for, walking away from me. The view from down here is far better.
More than anything, I want to turn around and find my Magdalene next to me, telling me to calm down, because she'll take care of it.
Because she loves me.

4 Talk About a Revolution

Magdalene said that we went to the same primary school. I felt rotten that I'd forgotten, so I began kissing her instead, and told her "well, thank God you have tits now or I'd never have fucking noticed you before." She didn't say anything after that, and I fucked her until she couldn't keep quiet any longer.

I don't understand God. Fucking Christians.
And Muslims.
And Jews.

God is a human creation.
And he is bisexual.

Once I travelled back in time. I saw myself dying on a cold, wet cobblestone street. I was naked, my lips turning blue and my cock shrinking down into a shrivelled white embarrassment. I was laying as if I was about to be autopsied. I yelled at myself until I woke up and realised I was covered in bruises and bitemarks.

My grandfather used to have a small private chicken farm. Chickenery. I plucked them, one feather at a time. I didn't know that a chicken could feel. I wonder if it's the same as pulling hair off a human's head.
My mother said it was Magdalene's fault.

I corrupted Saint Magdalene.

Idea: A tall mysterious black man walks into an empty storeroom, where he sees broken glass and rotten eggs. He walks to the other side and discovers an array of old porn magazines, covered in real hairy beavers. The camera rolls back as he takes off his clothes and an en-shadowed woman appears and undresses. Camera fades to black.

Magdalene never wore t-shirts with good bands because the good bands didn't make any t-shirts. Fashion was a means of making money for the man, and god knows we hate the man.
I can still smell the musky sweet mixture of sweat, coconut shampoo, and cheap vanilla deodorant on her violet Analogs teeshirt, spotted with my come.

3 My Name is Malcolm

I'm trying to describe myself.
I am a dark haired caucasian/Arab born into Catholicism, practising Atheism, living in York.
My name is Malcolm.

At the beginning of the summer solstice all the hippies and gypsies in England go to Stonehenge, or near Stonehenge anyway. They stay up all night, their clothes disappearing as time goes by. The women have long dirty hair and different paints splattered across their faces, bare breasts, and unshaven legs. The men have straggly beards and skinny legs, but I prefer looking at the women.
At sunrise the leader will make love to the a "maiden fair" in front of a blazing fire.
Then we all run to the edge of the cliff.
And all I can feel is the wind against the still wet paint on my thighs and stomach, and the passion that flows through me.

I used to stare at Magdalene as she mowed her lawn, or hung up wet clothes to dry. She wore short shorts and loose shirts with well known punk bands on them.
Stupid ignorant little girl. The best bands are not popular.
A tingling sensation began at my toes and creeped into my things, my groin, my stomach, and my arms as I outlined her body with my eyes.

One day I thought she had died. She had just gone off to camp for five days.
I was disappointed at my lack of attention.

When I go to the grocery shop, all the colours in the world disappear. Everything is the shade of silver eyeshadow and snow. I love standing in the frozen foods aisles, sitting on the edges and feeling the ice against my fingers until someone chases me off. It feels like the world has ended and I'm the only one going to hell.

2 Introducing Mother and Magdalene

Malcolm, oh, I whispered to myself at night when I was young. Thirteen, fourteen.
Fucking hell, as I tried to ram myself between the bendy legs of my sister's barbie doll. Who knew they could break so easily.
My little sister never saw her dentist barbie again. Dr. Barbie kept talking to the dirt, telling the dead to brush and then floss, right there where the evidence of my guilty self-abuse was buried.

I remember when my mother died. She was asleep on the sofa, and no one found her until two weeks after her death. I didn't speak to my mother, she was an old whore with a fouler mouth than the scene we walked into when she died.

By the time we got there the house smelled like burnt biscuits and ammonia. It smelled like cat litter and dust. It looked like death. In my head I could hear my mother when my father left.
Ring-a-ring of roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo, a-tishoo!
We all fall down.
And we did. 

My mother never liked Magdalene.

"Malcolm" she said to me. It was hot inside her and hot inside. I began to see yellow dots out of the corners of my eyes. I tried to fixate on one but they always ran away, like a dream you forget to remember.
She had glitter on her eyelids, which to me made her look ugly. I told her once and she cried. When Magdalene cries she flattens her chin on to her throat and turns pink. To me she looked repulsive and obese, and I told her so. She never cried around me anymore.

"Come with me," she took my bony, freckled hand, and led me out. We ate old mushrooms out of old brown bags in the old part of town, and shot cranberries at cats.

1 A Conventional Introduction

Once I got stuck in a boiler. It was cold and black, and I thought it would light on fire and I would burn. I would be stuck, exactly like Johnny Cash and yet not at all, in a Ring of Fire. My skin would stick, charred, to the sides of the boiler as my body inflated like a woman eight months pregnant.
I sat in the boiler for four hours until my mother came to pull me out. I had been licking the tears falling down the curved cold sides. They tasted like petrified sweat and rust.

I drive a taxi now. I'm not very good at my job, I only stand by the car, pissing in the snow and smoking. I've been smoking since I was sixteen, only Marlboro. They're American. When I cough I can hear the devil himself scratching my lungs.

When I do get a fare, I speed up the meter so they have to pay extra. I keep the money, and I buy Simpson's figurines.

When I get angry, I throw one of my figurines into the micro wave, and I slam it shut. I turn it up to ten minutes and watch as Moe's head melts down into his chest. Afterwards I fall down on the floor, covered in paper clips and old memos, and cry. It's the ever penetrating feeling of guilt, of knowing I enjoy destruction. And yet, it makes me sad.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the road, sobbing, holding little plastic baby Maggie in my arms.

Someone once said that those who can't do, teach.
I can't do.
I can't teach.
I am fucking God.