Sinister: God Bless Mother Nature

[ian]

i found the first one outside big john's kebab pizza parlour.  i'd only
popped in to buy a can of vimto and some hard drugs, but, stepping out of
the neon glow into the Selly Oak gloom, i could see his twitching form,
bathed in pink light, prostate on the pavement.

for a moment, i thought he was drunk.  i was preparing to climb over him
without getting vomit on my totes toasties when he opened his eyes, looked
directly at me and said "ARAGWGAGRGAGRGARWARRRRRR!!!!"

this is not unusual in selly oak.  many of the people you meet use this as a
conversation-opener.  i muttered "yes, i can never get what i want when i go
shopping, either" and was preparing to heft a solid right hook with my Big
Hard Object For Hitting Strange And Quite Possibly Dangerous People when i
noticed the Smell.

that smell.  worse than kebabs.
it was, so i gathered later, the smell of internal organs hitting the ground
at approximately 600m/s/s acceleration.

the university clock chimed 10.15.
an old woman walked by.
she dropped her shopping bags, knelt down beside me,
and touched the brow of the man on the pavement.  shaking her head, she
removed two coins from her bag and did what tradition demanded.

without looking at me - "the day is here.  run home, little boy.  hide
wherever you can".
--------------------------------

i did as she said.  as much to get away from her as anything else.  i ran
home, put the kettle on, and made myself a nice cup of peppermint tea.

now i sit, and ponder what she could have meant...  the day is here?  but
its 10.25, early january, and tomorrow remains the other side of several
hours of darkness.  clearly she has no idea of temporal progression.  either
that or she's just escaped from Rubery.  best to ignore such -

-and the first screams begin.
 i've heard the thunder and lightning, but chosen to ignore them.  storms
never look pretty when you're praying for calm.  so, my first clue that
something is amiss occurs when i witness a woman across the road pointing
into the bushes and screaming hysterically - and it doesn't look like its
the neighbourhood watch complaining about litter again.
another thud, a squealing of car brakes and the woman finds herself
implanted in the windscreen of a ford escort.

i shut the curtains and turn off the thermostat.  it should not BE this hot
in january... i can hear a voice in my head whispering "go out into the
street...go out into the street" but i've learned to take tablets to silence
such voices and so i find a couple more Silence Pills and wait for the
sources of sound to go away.
---------------------------

and i wake at 5a.m. to a choir of car alarms.  for once, i'm glad to hear
them.  it deafens my ears to cracking glass; tumbling masonry; howling
animals, and a horrible squelching noise i don't WANT to recognise...

a peep outside the fabric that shelters the world from my sight reveals
nothing.  the lights appear to have gone out.  i can hear something tapping
against the glass but i don't want to think about what it might be.

no electricity.  bugger it, if i'm going to face Monsters outside my window,
i'll need a cup of tea.  Fortunately, there's a Special Ian Spurious Plot
Device Generator under the floorboards of my kitchen, and i manage to fix up
both the kettle and the television using only a hairgrip, some primula
spread and a framed photograph of wincey willis.

desperate for some idea of what has happened, i turn on the television.  far
safer, and generally more informative, than witnessing events first-hand.
nothing.  bbc, channel 4, sky... all out.... itv is showing re-runs of
Celebrity Ready Steady Cook with michael ball and tamara beckwith but, for
once, i am disinterested by such delights.

 outside the front window, i can hear someone shouting "amen" and
"hallelujah", and from across the road the christian life centre strikes up
its organ.

has jesus returned?  is this armageddon?  i resolve to put on some nice
clothes and squirt myself with a little chanel just incase.  what was it
james dean once said - "you can never have enough hats, gloves and
shoes...?"

no, that wasn't it... oh yeah... " a kiss on the cheek can be quite
continental, but i'd rather have a nice fat cock up my bum"
pondering the long-dead legend's words, and how they might relate to jesus's
return, i open the front door.


there's a head on my porch step.  this isn't a good sign.  feeling i should
probably do something with it, i pick it up and put it in my bag.  i am
thankful for the no-hands-sweatband-torch set i got from the bettaware
catalogue for precisely such emergencies as i move to examine a substance on
my forsythia bush that looks a little like instant whip -

i can hear a voice from across the street : the mechanical mouth of a
newsreader - a car stereo in the void beyond me, throwing out sporadic words
amid static

".... feared dead, and in london...... underground stations.......... all
across europe....   from the sky...... prime minister...... no cause for
alarm...... "people's downpour"...."

and now another, less controlled:

"falling, in my HOUSE, and there.....  my friends, my friends...... ... pray
that you live on the ground floor, they're falling, dropping out of the
sky!..."

as if to confirm this, my aural investigation is interrputed as an arm hits
my shoulder.
 just an arm.  it hangs there for a second, and then drops to the floor.
 squinting upwards, i can see its owner, a well-dressed city type, impaled
on the lamppost above me.

 i resolve to make for the safest place i can think of.  a little-known cafe
in the backstreets of birmingham that is housed in a bomb shelter.  i feel
confident that it will be open, and that there will be a table for me, since
it exists only in my mind.

i try not to look around me as i run headlong through the swerving traffic
and crowds of people.  everybody wants to escape somewhere.  nobody knows
where.  people are looting the shops, a woman runs in front of me with a
trolley full of muller fruit corner and a television under her arm,
illuminated only by the pencil-light of my torch.

and i reach the steps, panting for breath, and throw myself down them.
the waiter in the Cafe of the Mind picks me up.  he looks pleasingly like
jason priestley, and he guides me to my table where there's a cup of
napalm-strength coffee waiting.

"body parts?"

"yes, thank you"

"i mean, did you bring any body parts with you"

"oh" reaching into my bag "just this"

the waiter flutters his eyelashes and takes the severed head.  he adds it to
a collection in the corner of the room which, for some reason, all face the
television .  i allow my eyes to float in the same direction as theirs, as
an old man shuffles into the restaurant, sits by me and offers me a
woodbine.

"no, thank you, i've stopped smoking" - the flickering screen reveals an
american television channel - an alarmed-looking interviewer sheltering from
a tirade of words that fly from the mouth of....surely not?....martha
washington??

"i TOLD people this would happen.  i tried to send a MESSAGE out to the
world, but the media twisted what i had to say.  they turned it into a
SONG... people DANCED TO IT...!"

abruptly, the picture is gone, to be replaced by a sunburnt ginger-haired
woman dancing around a gymnasium interspliced with what appear to be images
of hugh grant.

and then, the news...  it seems birmingham has got off lightly.  london is
devastated, a trio of plummeting opera singers destroyed the entire houses
of parliament, and a flurry of transvestites in stilletto heels took out the
dome of saint paul's.  in all the world's major cities, tokyo, berlin,
uttoxeter, the carnage is similar.  many people are calling it an act of
god.  scientists are already working on proving that what everybody saw
could not, statistically or meteorologically speaking, have occurred.
 from his nuclear bunker, the prime minister has said that the tragedy
offers "excellent prospects for redevelopment, and a promising influx of
work for the british construction industry".  the leader of the opposition,
from the nuclear bunker nextdoor, has said that the events are the result of
lax parenting patterns during the 1960s.
the final shot of the broadcast is of the row of flagpoles outside the
united nations building.  impaled upon each one, in turn, is a man of a
different nationality.

and the screen goes black.  the man next to me offers me a woodbine again -
"come on, its not as if you're going to DIE or anything".
its a fair point, so i take the proffered item as the waiter turns on the
radio, an old sylvester song, and comes to sit with us

"over and over
on and on again
over and over
find yourself a friend

find yourself a friend
find yourself a friend
find yourself a friend
find yourself a friend"

me and my new acquaintances share our cigarettes, sip our coffees and hum
along, interrupted from time to time by the sound of a body, hitting the
asphalt above.


ian





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