Jan Miklaszewicz's Blog, page 11
April 8, 2022
INFECTATION
Instead of saying me, he says myself. I hope it’s just bad grammar.
April 6, 2022
IN FURNACE
Five hundred miles to Barrow-in-Furness, and it was almost done. Peter had, eventually, stopped at a Travelodge in Blackpool. His eyes were gone. He paid for a single. Good sleep, fry up, and he was away by ten.
Barrow was covered in cloud, which hung across the town’s outlying hills like a grey sanitary towel. It spat rain on the bonnet and windscreen as Peter pulled up. He met his friend, and briefly his friend’s mother, as he put his bags into the guestroom. A rucksack with the money and a grip with clothes and toiletries.
Darryl, the friend, was the approximate size and shape of a polar bear. He was thoroughly loved by his mother. So thoroughly, in fact, that his friends always took the piss when he was out of earshot. Said he was tied to her apron strings. Some went even further and made inferences about him shagging her. There was little truth in it.
Darryl and Peter had lunch in the local Wetherspoons. Steak, egg, and chips. Peter gave Darryl the money he owed and it was all hunky dory. They went from bar to bar. There were pints of lager. There were shorts. At some point, Darryl hooked up with a girl he had been obsessing about all evening. Peter watched them melt into a corner. The girl was nothing over seventeen and her legs were smooth like finely sanded timber.
Peter ordered another pint and another short. He could see his reflection in the glass doors of the bar fridge. Someone was trying to get his attention. A man to his right, red t-shirt, with a goatee beard so neat, it was like he had drawn it on in permanent marker. Peter was led to a table near the fire exit and left the exchange minutes later with an ecstatic pill rolled up in a cigarette paper.
There was nothing too ecstatic about the ecstatic pill. Peter sat in the toilet cubicle for half an hour, having temporarily lost his vision. There was foamy sick in his mouth, which he doggedly swallowed down so as not to lose the pill’s payload. When the nausea finally left him and his eyesight came back, he looked for Darryl in the growing crowd. Darryl was nowhere to be found.
But there was a girl, with thick red hair up in braids. It shone in the disco lights and looked like welded copper. She drew Peter in on her beam of coppery light. Her name was Kerry and, in her own words, she was buzzing her tits off. It got a little mad then. Shooters started going fast and there was a rodeo bull in a paddling pool of what looked like orange jelly. Kerry beamed and took Peter’s hand, manoeuvring it onto her crotch. They had another shooter each and took a taxi.
Peter and Kerry would marry in the spring and have children with eyes like disco balls. They would be deep children, conversant in the unknown ways of Tao. It would be fabulous. The taxi dropped them off at Kerry’s parent’s house. The driver had been fabulous and very chatty. The house was fabulous too. Feeling it was all very fabulous, they went to bed, had fabulous sex, and fell into a fabulous sleep.
For Peter, there were flashbacks to the night club. Kerry rolled over, and her back was like chicken under thick white sauce. Not at all like a saddle, which was a little odd, and definitely out of keeping with that copper mane and bridle. He rode her hard and well, and their disco ball eyed children watched from the sidelines with an air of quiet awe. Damn steer really tried to roll him off, and Peter had to push down hard to calm her fury. And finally she stopped, and the night was slow and dark. The following day, Peter helped the police with their enquiries.
Barrow was covered in cloud, which hung across the town’s outlying hills like a grey sanitary towel. It spat rain on the bonnet and windscreen as Peter pulled up. He met his friend, and briefly his friend’s mother, as he put his bags into the guestroom. A rucksack with the money and a grip with clothes and toiletries.
Darryl, the friend, was the approximate size and shape of a polar bear. He was thoroughly loved by his mother. So thoroughly, in fact, that his friends always took the piss when he was out of earshot. Said he was tied to her apron strings. Some went even further and made inferences about him shagging her. There was little truth in it.
Darryl and Peter had lunch in the local Wetherspoons. Steak, egg, and chips. Peter gave Darryl the money he owed and it was all hunky dory. They went from bar to bar. There were pints of lager. There were shorts. At some point, Darryl hooked up with a girl he had been obsessing about all evening. Peter watched them melt into a corner. The girl was nothing over seventeen and her legs were smooth like finely sanded timber.
Peter ordered another pint and another short. He could see his reflection in the glass doors of the bar fridge. Someone was trying to get his attention. A man to his right, red t-shirt, with a goatee beard so neat, it was like he had drawn it on in permanent marker. Peter was led to a table near the fire exit and left the exchange minutes later with an ecstatic pill rolled up in a cigarette paper.
There was nothing too ecstatic about the ecstatic pill. Peter sat in the toilet cubicle for half an hour, having temporarily lost his vision. There was foamy sick in his mouth, which he doggedly swallowed down so as not to lose the pill’s payload. When the nausea finally left him and his eyesight came back, he looked for Darryl in the growing crowd. Darryl was nowhere to be found.
But there was a girl, with thick red hair up in braids. It shone in the disco lights and looked like welded copper. She drew Peter in on her beam of coppery light. Her name was Kerry and, in her own words, she was buzzing her tits off. It got a little mad then. Shooters started going fast and there was a rodeo bull in a paddling pool of what looked like orange jelly. Kerry beamed and took Peter’s hand, manoeuvring it onto her crotch. They had another shooter each and took a taxi.
Peter and Kerry would marry in the spring and have children with eyes like disco balls. They would be deep children, conversant in the unknown ways of Tao. It would be fabulous. The taxi dropped them off at Kerry’s parent’s house. The driver had been fabulous and very chatty. The house was fabulous too. Feeling it was all very fabulous, they went to bed, had fabulous sex, and fell into a fabulous sleep.
For Peter, there were flashbacks to the night club. Kerry rolled over, and her back was like chicken under thick white sauce. Not at all like a saddle, which was a little odd, and definitely out of keeping with that copper mane and bridle. He rode her hard and well, and their disco ball eyed children watched from the sidelines with an air of quiet awe. Damn steer really tried to roll him off, and Peter had to push down hard to calm her fury. And finally she stopped, and the night was slow and dark. The following day, Peter helped the police with their enquiries.
April 5, 2022
SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
They tell you not to, of course, but they can fuck right off: those little rivers are apt to make a big old sea. If you're blocking the pavement or jumping the line, drilling on Sunday mornings or showing up late all the time, you're a big old C in the making, due a slap or a damn good shaking.
April 1, 2022
IMMORTALITY
Some topics require a feather, some a fist, and I'll go out on a limb and say that this one deserves the latter: what kind of halfwit twat would want more than their three score and ten? Whatever next? An endless lollipop, a swimming pool full of cola, a golden goose?
March 29, 2022
POE WHIM
Its hounds awl wry tiff red allowed, butt foe cuss own lee whirred four whirred an yore's crewed.
March 28, 2022
COMMENTS SECTIONED
Like a tongue to a broken tooth, like shit to a fan, sometimes I can't help but stick my oar in, and before I know it, I'm reaping the whirlwind, going back and forth with some guy who just got through with shaving his wife's back and likes to CAPITALISE ENTIRE PHRASES; and God knows why I do this to myself, but unfortunately, He's staying rather tight lipped about it.
VICE PRESIDENT
A painful death is the only goal of the traitor within, to hell with your common sense. A life of pleasure is the policy it will champion to get you close enough to the chasm's edge.
March 27, 2022
EMPTY PROTEST
Scream your heart out and don't let anyone try to shame you: pain and anger don't require an action plan.
There's nothing rational in the way this world is headed, and no need to shut your trap and 'take it like a man'.
There's nothing rational in the way this world is headed, and no need to shut your trap and 'take it like a man'.
March 26, 2022
AYE
Unique and special ain't synonyms: you're one, not the other, y'ken?
March 23, 2022
YOU TURN
'Do you know what it means to be a man?' he spat. She paused to turn it over in her mind: a modicum of self-restraint, she thought, the willingness to listen from time to time, but above all else, the ability to sense, beyond the right or wrong, a deeper vein of truth. And she said to him, with a twinkle in her eye, 'A more befitting question, darling, is do you?'
