"Intercapillary Space"

 
from Jon Wild & The Devil Himself

Each brick in his castle is a rotten apple. He chases his
bricks past important stone. Three of them tonight, a
bountiful hunt. He pauses at the sack of a corner and
listens and alights on barefoot foot falls, that familiar
scramble like a two-foot spider and the stink of manure
and lacking worth ethic what the ostensibly privileged
scum believe is their true preserve. Wild dances through
the streets, kicking off Basinghall Ave. round the
Armourers & Brasiers, tracing the London wall and then
spilling down through Moorgate with all the swine
gobbling the garbage and the blisters on ankles. Left
over Great Swan Alley (he’s shit better) curling round
Copthall Ave, then a dogleg into Austin Friars where the
fuckers squabble trapped against a far wall.
! There are three toe-rags. One sniffs in fear as a
rat, head shaking, sinking into his collar bone. The other,
the tallest, hold straight, chest out like a smartened
soldier, emboldened in captivity. The third shrinks away,
calm, and Wild catches a glint in the moonlight and
recognises this perpetrator as the denominator. With no
short pluck he takes a deep breath.
     ‘I arrest you on behalf of Her Majesty.’
     ‘You and whose army?’ said the bold sod.
     Wild advanced into the cavity.
     ‘Close listen in now, lads. I have on me no gun
metal, no striking iron or any kind, nor are my knuckles
dusted. But I’ve in me guile, and the right-hand of the
Under Marshal, and no small amount of aggression and
wit. I know my strengths. Do you know your
weaknesses?’
     ‘Fuck off molly!’ cried the rat.
     ‘I am both a servant of and in service to His
Majesty, and so I know his kingdom. Do you? Do you
know that behind you the wall you frantically dig at has
stood as the wall of an insignificant bank for longer than
my twenty years has stood me? Do you know the
infallibility of the pound in this town? You’re trapped, lads.
Come quickly and quietly and I’ll have nothing but
sympathies for you. I’ve shared that hole and I’m still
sharing it, though I’m wise to digging myself a tunnel with
no brick wall at the end of it. Now, come along.’
! A dog barked and caught his attention. When
Wild turned back, the shining blade was gone, hidden in
darkness, and only the soldier and rat remained. Quite
suddenly aware of the acute darkness around him, he
wished for whiskers, or a web, and found only a blade
wrapped round his throat at an acute angle as his foe
oblonged him via a concealed pathway. He jabbed at the
pitched black as the other two rushed him, punched him,
the land theirs a guttural blow put upon the plexus. His
surroundings turned to wash, blurring, tumbling, as down
he went under the force of a blow to the jaw, his spine
collapsing under the clap of a kick.
     He lay cheekdown on the paving, yielding blow
upon blow, the trio screaming bloodlust, drowning out the
distant wait of Hitchens’ whistle. Pushing up on his arms,
his assailants cavorting around him, the hyenas cackling
with maniacal rage around their defeated prey, he turned
on all-fours and wailed, her face distorted behind
forgotten beatings, blood and sweat and tears
superimposed, belts and buckles and dented knuckles.
Again and again the kicks impaled him, stones driven
through his wrists and ankles, a leather horse ripening
like a black banana rotting in the smog. His left eye
swelled shut, pocketed in the darkness, this entryism
fugue departed upon him.
     His other eye held well against the barrage,
though tearful and scared, and it was through the bottom
of the beer glass he saw a pair of eyes light candles in an
abattoir, aflame orange red white. So bright yet no light
leaked into the surroundings meant they hovered there,
in air, lighting not but themselves. The stainless steel rat,
now wielding the shank, saw them first, and weaselled
right scared across the bow of the soldier, and in making
his escape ran the knife along the soldier’s hamstring,
who screamed and tore at the rat’s ankle until they both
had fallen. All this left the quiet one standing. Wild rolled
on his back, coughing blood up his nose, barely able to
see, a bare boxer knuckled, where the quiet one met his
gaze. Here was petulant fear and when he spoke his
voice cracked its own bravado,
     ‘You got the devil on your side.’
     He twisted into the shadows, his feet skidding
down the pathway as he made his escape. The soldier
and the rat moaned on each other. Wild turned his good
eye to his forehead. Above the line of his scalp he saw
the flames given form. A giant of a man, biceps black
flexed like he had fallen through Pandemonium and
found the City and evidently liked what he saw, his mouth
contorted and making a fiendish smile that distended his
jaw and compacted his perfect ebony teeth, his thick dark
hair slicked wet back over his head meeting a pointed
beard the length of a finger. Through blown glass he lent
over Wild, so his down was his up and his up was his
down, and his beard pointed to his scalp and his eyes
pointed to his teeth. His breath reeked of ammonia. He
wheezed as if asthmatic, or forever laughing. Then he
whinnied, and jumped frantically on the spot above Wild’s
head, making the soldier and the rat scream and cry for
their mothers. Then he danced a pirouette, and alighted
at Wild, and fingered his nostril and tasted his finger and
laughed. When he laughed, it shook Wild’s broken teeth.
Then he leaned so close Wild was sure of an embrace,
or a deviated kiss, then a long umber finger topped with
an black inch nail pressed on Wild’s lips, and he tasted
burnt tyres and liquorice.
     
‘hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
h.’

Removing his finger he pranced to the soldier and the
rat, at all times affixing Wild’s tattered glare. He squatted,
and the moonlight picked out bare hairy thigh, thick and
tangled as pubis, as he took the head of the screaming
soldier in his hands and cavitation it as a firework airs.
The rat had a fit, turning on to his belly, scrambling for
escape. Into the impossible pit he crawled, a corner of
ultimate darkness, while he presided over him and he
watched a blur. Both into the cul-de-sac. Wild had heard
nothing of its kind, as if the very air had been made to
scream, a man sat upon a throne of pain, neutered,
entirely destroyed.



gafooked!

tickle the fickle pickle chef itching in his kitchen,
get doss wankered by the roundaboob on
duty scarbou-rough as gafook,
lick moll atone-cranked boss me on the bent
over desk tidy gafook like ram diddle punch,
prick all the nipples in-vest in mir
satisfactory gook, king gafooked! gafooked
latitudinous tudorish, gratuity on park
bench fellatio, chess move en passent prude-lark,
vidi-doll-blah-blah-ripple-king ash hole
blue rudy bless zing tintin anaesthequiff
zippo, ring bells poker tells ditty full roundhouse
norris chucks bowl do-impales harpoon
wales, merthyr-bangor, merthyr-focker,
twin-prop clucks mallard fever gel,
frocked green face painted, sly bottle feather indicator
genevieve donks under weather,
prynne-gull pop stop corpse via single verb
induction loopspill.