The Mannequins Are More Real Than You Read online

  —–

  The clowns try crawling down the wall. They want to be Dracula. But they fail. Hours later, rats have conquered the mountain of corpses.

  —–

  For the clowns, sleep is a rehearsal for death. They keep their eyes open and dream of nothing.

  13 circles of Hell hidden from Dante but revealed to the Bird King in a series of hallucinations caused by medicine for a urinary tract infection

  1. The Kingdom of Maggots

  Billions of tiny bald men wriggle and squirm through a derelict mannequin factory.

  2. The Sea of Knives

  Waves slice and slash. Maimed mermaids wail.

  3. The Eye Moon

  Envious mirrors ape the sun. An astronaut falls forever into open space.

  4. The Box

  A cranking noise, wheezing bellows. Nothing to see. Something tugs your sleeve.

  5. The Circle of Perpetual Disaster

  Glitchy re-enactments of historic horrors revolve, to the accompaniment of a hurdy-gurdy.

  6. The Iron Forest

  Rust hulks loom in fog and rain. Clattering wings are skittish around newcomers.

  7. Satan’s Administrative Headquarters

  Those who run Hell are the most deeply damned. They sit in an open-plan labyrinth, fingers in knots.

  8. The Egg

  There is neither inside nor out, just white space. Yellow bodies twist to form meaningless symbols.

  9. The Palace of Reversals

  The great and the good, the rich, the successful, crawl through unimaginable luxury, their insides hanging out.

  10. The Cul-de-Sac

  In the eternal, watchful twilight, clawed hands grasp net curtains.

  11. The Punchman’s Booth

  A miniature Hell for the littluns (not to scale). Shrieks and screams express mirth and terror simultaneously.

  12. The Core Scraper

  A subterranean 666-storey building. The lights don’t work but the gibbering denizens are luminescent.

  13. Head Space

  The door is impossible to find, though you’re convinced it’s here somewhere. You’ll never stop looking.

  Chimerical biography

  The ancestral spirits inhabited his socks. No one believed him. His mother was from Vienna. Every Wednesday he bathed his neighbour’s fish. He wrote stories. Days came and went without asking permission. The dial on his foot said “EMPTY”. He lived for the dead moments. He enjoyed haranguing sofas. Their placidity enraged him. That day you unblocked his toilet a monarch died. Stars don’t even go with stripes. Above all, he tried to be expensive. Ladders and snakes made no sense to him, so he burned his bridges. Sometimes the moon got wedged in him. Evening made his eyes sweat, morning gave him the shits. Nothing was ever straightforward. Plug sockets persecuted his toaster. His brothers were four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in Pi. They had unpleasant names like Jim and Jasper. At Christmas he laced their drinkies with bleach. His arms were sausages, his chin the Devil’s cock. All very inauspicious. Calendars oppressed him, especially on rainy days. He felt his neighbours’ ears pressing against the partition walls. He once got lost in a picture of a cat holding a baby. He still has the suction marks on the back of his eyes. The last time he allowed his feet out they came home drunk. The hair growing from his nostrils suffered from Rapunzel Syndrome. He rarely ate swans. Plates made eyes at him. Every seven years he fell in love with your auntie. His eyelids smelt of kerosene. Doctors puzzled over his hairy heart. Women distrusted his taste in plimsoles. He made windows for a living. Unable to afford glass, he used frozen vampires’ tears. Those unlucky enough to notice disappeared. Televisions disliked him. They eyed him suspiciously as he sat blankly on the sofa. He sat on the bus, thinking of nothing. On another bus, in another town, nothing sat on the bus, thinking of him. He often confused art galleries for brothels. Fleshy nudes winked at him. The bored attendant was their pimp. He ate slices of sun and wiped his mouth on clouds. He stored an arsenal of AK47s, bazookas, muskets, halberds and spud guns in his capacious nostrils. Whenever he saw a tree he thought of Sweeney Tod. He didn’t believe in Thor, so Thursdays proved problematic. Catfish haunted him. He gave birth to his dad and took every opportunity to scold the scraggy, bearded baby. Happy days. He kept a mound of ripe manure in his kitchen. Cows knocked politely, asking for it back. Children scuffled on the ceiling. Biscuits fell in love with his shins. Armpits danced a tango in his shoes. Everyone was too busy beating their chests, bellowing and swinging their penises around to notice that he had electrocuted their pets. Golden syrup made him feel like God. His arms embraced Eternity, which had manifested in the form of his nan. His trousers researched the lives of the Roman emperors, but took little interest in the task. His hair caught fire with irritating regularity. The local fire brigade turned a blind eye; there were catty women waiting to be rescued from tree houses. He embalmed his boss, by way of experiment. His colleagues, chained to their desks, scowled behind their Halloween masks. A fly laughed. The writing didn't go well: he tried tropes but turned out tripe.

  Ymir

  Ymir used to be a big nothing;

  Now he’s everything.

  His hair is the grass, the trees, the reeds

  His scalp is the desert

  His skull is the empty vault of space

  His brain is telecommunications

  His skin is a reality made of matter and mirages

  His forehead is the Ten Commandments

  His eyebrows are lethargy and a thousand easy lies

  His eyelashes are the meshes of love

  His eyes are stars, supernovas, lightbulbs, fireworks, napalm, nuclear war

  His ears are the remains of imaginary animals

  His nose is a sad farewell

  His nostrils are wormholes to another dimension where the Bird King reigns from his electric throne

  His lips are a debate on the meaning of the word jihad

  His teeth are Coca Cola

  His tongue is mother of all languages

  His cheeks are zoology

  His chin is Mount Olympus

  His neck is an execution at dawn

  His spine is history

  His nervous system is capitalism

  His shoulders are art installations attempting controversy through the juxtaposition of childhood and terrorism

  His arms are escape routes to Valhalla

  His hands are bird cages or prison cells or holding bays or rooms without doors

  His chest is archeology

  His ribcage is the phantom city at dusk

  His heart is time

  His lungs are the four winds, weather, disaster

  His abdomen is sentiment

  His digestive system is a labyrinth of corridors and offices

  His hips are cemeteries

  His genitals are every whimsical thought anyone has ever had

  His buttocks are creationism

  His anus is Hellmouth

  His legs are mannequins staring murderously at passersby

  His feet are flawed arguments

  His blood is the sea of dreams.

  The rest of Ymir remains uncatalogued

  In boxes

  In a basement

  Under the ruins of a building

  Forgotten by the story-tellers.

  Scylla

  She movement

  wading moments

  was as waist some forced clad of deep mountainous up in waving into mass to some gently of the kind to pool flesh top and only surged amid soft up a white

  Before find through mass stuff

  of which gates

  water narrow blood

  clung there around

  orifice and close sat

  On her as slime to either groin though

  and her side erupt forced what form

  with yelping shape monsters

  The at power

  thinking opening

  the infinite entrails

  her
br />   the part smaller of sinuous waste

  of a figure and

  her

  itself monster

  She fair

  foul shreds close-fitting in retreats fragments

  fur and fears

  white enormous skin bulk dazzling

  as were white serpent pushes of forced coiled arm’d

  With seeking into colour wide

  her gigantic larger dazzled Cerberian thighs

  lizard space

  when mouths her

  or disclosed the full legs

  serpent sections sun

  Worm

  her hideous voice

  peal lull Adam

  when jaws pause

  Sir Cerberus’s seething had and would

  She contents seen sweet creep stands of looking

  If the raging hole

  the soft disturb’d dogs

  rose trees dominant

  note her by eyes

  womb beasts

  And below bubbling emerald-green sibilation kennel

  the spring flickering her surface and like hands yet from Adam great too

  there which saw lamps were still her part

  long bark’d truncated

  of a flexible and thighs the gale white howl’d

  Within and thin with unseen belly form a

  Scylla emerge of strange comes

  Stories

  1. Stories

  They told us stories. We didn’t believe them. They told us that was to be expected. We said the stories weren’t true to life. They asked what we meant by that. We explained that the stories didn’t resemble our own lives. They said that didn’t make them untrue. We asked them what the point of the stories was. They asked why there needed to be a point.

  2. A tree

  It was a tree. The light fell on it strangely. He said it looked like a mass of snakes. She said it was a monster. They both laughed and looked at each other. It looks alive! she enthused. Of course it’s alive, he laughed, it’s a tree! No, I mean alive like it’s watching us. We’re watching it, not the other way around. They fell quiet and kissed, briefly, then walked on down the lane.

  3. An old building

  Being an old building, and in a state of ruin, it had a story to tell, he explained. What is its story? she asked. So he told her. Later, as they sat by the pond, she couldn’t stop thinking about the story he had told her. It didn’t sound like the building’s story. It sounded like his story. She tried to imagine what the building’s story might actually be. But the silence of the stones had given nothing away.

  4. A tower

  Having smashed down the door, they surged inside and up the spiral staircase, hungry for the prize lying prone in the mirrored room at the top of the tower. Decades later, they still bragged about the part they’d played, the violence of their youth, the wounds they’d suffered. But none of them could agree on who the enemy was or the nature of the prize so treasured and so hard won.

  5. The end

  You found yourself in a theatrical Hell, where the melodramatic torments of the damned brought out the critic in you. You started writing. Every word was a stake through the heart. Satan straightened his tie and made his exit, pursued by a bear. An ersatz angel tore the curtains to shreds with his claws and the audience booed with delight.

  Anatomy of a mannequin

  Crown

  If you open the top of my head, you’ll hear my prayer: Fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. The sandman doesn’t dare enter here. He keeps his bag of soft tricks away from my blind stare. I plot behind glass. But I let them arrange me, derange me. You’ll never find a better actor. Everything suits me. I’ve the patience of a saint; my daily martyrdom is lit from above and below. After dark I play a different game.

  Face

  Put your ear to my lips. Can you hear the sea? You can only imagine my perfect teeth, my mousetrap tongue. I won’t say a word. Everything is silence, thought, hours stretched tight over polished cheekbones. Don’t mistake it for serenity. In your dream you stumbled across a pair of false teeth, grinning on a shingle beach. No one else was around, so you pocketed it. Bad bad bad. Theft is culpable, even when it’s just imagined. I’ll remind you of that later, when the grandfather clock stirs to mournful life in your hallway. Never eat Shredded Wheat. Can you hear the sea yet?

  Neck

  I prefer being a verb to being a noun. It’s so easy to get stuck otherwise, don’t you think? Butchers think I’m poetic. They grow glassy-eyed over my marble veining. But they don’t appreciate the mundanity of my role, supporting the head, ensuring the state doesn’t totter. Academics consider me a liminal space, the threshold between knowledge and passion, metaphysics and belching. I think of myself as a conduit. The rats know me well.

  Chest

  A coffin or cocoon, a hollow container. To avoid disappointment, don’t expect to find a fleshy thing pulsating inside. On Valentine’s Day it’s common practice to express amorous feelings by sending the object of one’s desire a greeting card, depicting an internal organ, skewered on a sharp implement. So much for romance. Knock knock. Who’s there? No one, just a voice, echoing grandly.

  Pelvis

  At the end of the world, the bones of extinct animals form a forest. Careful down there. So sharp you could cut your finger. I regret to inform you that nothing has happened and nothing will ever happen. I’m a mole. A conspicuous absence of narrative made it impossible to ascribe meaning to the images lying smashed amidst fragments of stained glass, shrapnel, volcanic rock and ice. When the police arrived they found that no crime had been committed. So they had a cup of tea and waited.

  Left arm

  I keep to the badlands. Most of the bodies are buried there. The second statement does not explain the first; be careful about making causal connections where none exist. The area beyond the little hill is more allegorical than real, and is home to the Knights of the Round Table. Gawain fights his insomnia on a fly-tipped sofa. I vow to thee, my country. English pastoral and English gothic are the same thing

  Left hand

  My fingers are purely decorative. You may kiss them. They’ll never hold a phone or a champagne glass or a knife. Aesthetics and utility rarely marry. It doesn’t matter, though: influence over others is more important than usefulness. When I turned my back on you I saw in the mirror how you were looking at me. I won’t spell it out. You give yourself away every time.

  Right arm

  The doppelgänger is usually associated with danger and evil, but not in this case. This is an example of anodyne androgyny, blank as an empty page. Still wracking your brains for something to write? Don’t bother: silence is more interesting. Look at it, sitting opposite you, cold as dawn. That was a simile, and not a very good one. Any attempt to describe it is foiled by its lack of distinctiveness. If you can’t resist the temptation to put words into sequences, you could write about the room, your feelings, the weather outside (which you’ll have to imagine, of course). Poetry is an evasion, after all.

  Right hand

  I’m the murdered king and the guilt of the perpetrator. Don’t look at me. I’ll stick by you, through bad times and worse. Itchy eyes and a metallic smell will remind you I’m here. Never elsewhere. Want to hear a funny story? Some of us drugged the shop assistants and arranged them in obscene tableaux in the window. You were there, though you won’t remember it. It caused quite a stir.

  Left leg

  I walk a sinister path. Ash trees look like bones. Dark here, bloodless. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. In the abandoned laboratory they made perfume from lavender, tar, olive oil and urine. A childish exercise. I refused to put it on my wrist. The trees are strung out, like nerves. The tightrope walkers resemble clockwork owls: their heads swivel all the way round and back again, with a whirring sound. If this is a forest of symbols, the language is gobbledygook.

  Left foot

  They were lost. Had been for years. S
o lost, they forgot what home looked like and what it meant. They weren’t aware of their own amnesia; false memories caused by the sentimental distortions of nostalgia had supplanted what they used to know, so slowly and subtly that none of them noticed the changes. One afternoon, I stepped from my display window and led them through the labyrinth of streets, back to their old neighbourhood. They walked past their own front doors without realising. They’d follow me to the ends of the earth if they could.

  Right leg

  My physical counterpart was amputated years ago. That’s when I took over, the phantom twin. I derive my being from pain. It’s all in your head, I’m in your head, an idea, a drop of ink in water. I’m diminished in your sleep, withering to a sapling. But my roots go deep, deep. They’re your arteries, nerves, neuroses. What I am changes from moment to moment. I’d make Ovid proud. Just because I don’t exist doesn’t mean I’m not perfect.

  Right foot

  All good things come to a sticky end. White hair, pale eyes, rasping in floral armchairs. Put your feet up. We’ll play another game after supper. Elsewhere, in my mind’s eye, a man in a check shirt is tapping out words on an iPad. He has the arrogance to believe he controls us. The folly of the author. Our boredom is more powerful than any ideas he may have. Outside there’s a grey promenade and a beach. Mr Punch is playing at three o’clock. The seagulls fight over a polystyrene tray of fish and chips. Our broken speech sounds like morse code.

  Orbit

  The mannequins

  inhabit

  a forgotten