Semiotinks - Flash Fiction

Synaesthesia

• I want to lick you all over
• Be my guest
• I said I want to… but I can’t
• Why ever not?
• There’s a part of you that forever remains apart from you
• What part? What are you talking about?
• Your shoulder blade. It’s been colonised by someone else
• The tattoo? That’s more a part of me than any other part. That… is the ultimate expression of me, who I am
• That… is your signature under another artist’s work
• Oh no no no no no. That’s all my own design. Utterly unique to me, you won’t see this in any tattooist’s window or catalogue
• Did you take the tattooist in a drawing?
• Well no. I knew what I wanted and described it to him. He sketched it out, but only to my specification
• But he still put his own vision on it. The final rendering was all his and his alone
• Not a bit of it. I determined the dimensions, the colour, every nib stroke…
• But he is the artist that has to work with the marble
• What marble?
• The marble of your body. The contour of your muscle, the grain of your skin, the flow of your veins just beneath the surface. That is the true you
• The sculpted me, yes, and I worked damn hard for this. But not as hard as you’re making me work now
• That is what I want to possess in every topographical detail. But someone else has been in that quadrant before me and planted their flag
• I’ve had other lovers, they’ve been in every ‘quadrant’ of me before you as well
• But they have relinquished you. To me. The indelible ink has not and never will
• Are you seriously expecting me to have it removed? I’m telling you, that is my own stamp of who I am
• Cogito ergo sum? 
• Say the sum of what now? 
• ‘I think therefore I am’. You credit that with this branding, somehow you link up your physical body with how you conceive yourself mentally? 
• That’s about the size of it yes
• That how you are in the world, how you think and feel with your physical body is insufficient, you have to exteriorise it, put the construction of your inner life on permanent display
• It’s not on permanent display. Most of the time it’s submerged beneath clothing
• So what’s the point of it then?
• I know it’s there. Radiating like a second heartbeat
• Precisely. Two hearts beating. Both of them yours. Mine would make it three and three’s a dissonant crowd
• It’s not a real person!
• You posited it was your golem. Your spirit at large
• What that ugly wee fellah in “Lord Of The Rings”? 
• No… It’s only the two of us get to strip you of your raiment to reveal your skin. And you have tainted it with this… doodle
• Doodle?
• Alright, this self-rendered stigmata 
• Stigmata? That’s proper over the top!
• You’re quite right of course. More like a… palimpsest. To suggest there’s something hidden underneath. When there’s actually nothing. You could have let me circumnavigate you. All of you. Through taste and smell. Mapping my version of you over time. Instead you have predetermined yourself as to what I, or any future explorer of your flesh, will discover. You have already declared your mappa incognito in the name of your own King and unfurled your standard there
• Well just don’t lick that part then, unlock the unknown parts of the rest of me
• I can’t. When I taste I see pictures. When I smell I hear sounds. Your daub interferes with all of that. If I lick it, I would only taste the granular ink, while the picture has already been filled in for me
• Just turn out the lights then. We can do it in the dark!
• I don’t have to. The darkness of your soul eclipses all light
• No Babe, come back… It’s me wants to lick you all over… 

*

Gematria

Mosaic Law forbids the application of ink to the skin (Leviticus 19:28). Were the Germans at Auschwitz aware of this proscription, seeing it as yet further tribulation to wreak on the prisoners if they thought they might be denied entry to heaven through an ink profaned body? More likely it was merely part of the Nazi bureaucratic system of processing humans. Inventories and job lots and serial numbers. Cattle brands for the human kine who emerged from the cattle trucks.

The prohibition on marking the body in any way, stems from the human form being a gift from G-d that must not be altered in any way, shape or form, for to do so would be to criticise the perfection, genius and beneficence of G-d. Or more pertinently, to downright disobey Him and turn from his righteous way. For burial, the Jewish body must be unspoiled, well as much as death can leave a body in mint condition. Of course, these bodies were not in receipt of Jewish funeral rites.

Jewish faith works in three ways. Things are truth because it is the word of G-d. They are true because through study and exegesis they can be proven to be true through human ratiocination. And finally through the gematria, whereby the mathematical values ascribed to letters of the Hebrew alphabet provide mathematical proof by ‘adding up’ to the correct answer. But stare at them as they might, the Auschwitz inmates could not make the numbers on their wrists add up to a demonstration of G-d’s love.

*

Parade

They met at the Edinburgh Tattoo, having unwittingly landed there during their European tour on the day of the military parade. They proceeded to compare their inks, the imagery telling its own story since the deafening beat of the military drums drowned out any verbal communication they might essay. As they discovered a myriad of mutualities expressed in pictograms, a love blossomed (perhaps already foretold by both having inked efflorescence, she lilies and orchids, he an hibiscus). As the soldiers marched past their faraway eyes, they were unable to see that most of these men too shared their predilection for marking the skin. Although formal dress uniforms did their best to cover up what was still seen as unsightly and ill-disciplined by the top brass, but which they had caved into permitting through the sheer preponderance among those queuing up for recruitment. While many of the soldiers’ designs involved skulls, the young lovers-to-be both eschewed such morbid imagery. Who wants to make love only to get an eyeful of memento mori plastered on your soul mate’s flesh? An indication that one day they will be snatched away from you.

*

Angelina Jolie’s Tattoo

The water buffalo pulled the harrow to prick the earth, while in its turned wake the farmer disseminated the rice seedlings. When the Khmer Rouge came, they unyoked the buffalo and attached their enemies to the harrow. They chose anyone who wore glasses, possessed books among their meagre positions hauled with them from the cities, or bore tattoos. Anything that suggested literacy which unutterably betrayed their bourgeoise nature. The buffalo stood around the fields redundant, until it too, like the bourgeois Khmer people, disappeared. The cadres said it had seized its freedom under Angkar and wandered off. We suspected they had under cover of night killed it and cut it up for a luxuriant meal denied the rest of us. 

A few of us managed to escape into the borderland mountains. We formed resistance battalions, secured hold of some guns and swore an oath to free our nation benighted by the godless. Monks had not even been put into the fields to work until they dropped, they were taken away and slaughtered from the very outset. Fortunately one had made it to the mountains with us and he was versed in the knowledge of protective tattoos. He didn’t have access to ink, so he improvised using battery fluid, mixed with the sap of some mountain tree unknown to me as a species. As long as our hearts were pure, his tattoos would deflect bullets and prevent landmines from being tripped under our feet. We couldn’t read our skin’s texts, not because we were illiterates, but because they weren’t written in Khmer but in scriptural Pali. We knew we had to trigger their magic by reciting the mantras each time we went out in the field. Neither the clean skinned Khmer Rouge nor the filthy criminal Vietnamese would stand a chance in the face of the peaceful Buddha’s loving protection of us. 

*

Blood Ink

My self-styled stylus isn’t disposed with its own reservoir of ink. Instead it relies on its incised strokes to be infilled by the upsurge of blood. My improvised fountain pen spraying the gist of me. But it’s impossible to control such red ink swell. The blood blotter smear of self. So it is only once the flow has clotted and the skin cicatrised, that such graphic calligraphy can be anatomised. The straight edge of the razor makes it hard to curlicue any flesh inscription (made worse when the unhanded side has to grave the more favoured limb, ‘favoured’ in the sense of bias, not in my affections, for I don’t favour a single cell of my body). So inevitably my chirography resembles little more than cuneiform. The Rosetta Stone of me. The medium, the chalky, cracked parchment of my skin, is the message. Can’t you decipher it you illiterates? Why, it’s not as if I hide my verbiage encased behind dust jacket sleeves. Here, I’ll re-carve it. A palimpsest whose abiding runes are imperishable, but the surface scar tissue is recast once again. I aim for a blue vein, but the ink still emerges the unsparing red of the hyper-critical inner-editor. I have no words, but I do have profuse red ink flow to share with you.

Hallmark - Flash Fiction

Happy Birthday Son I wrote in the card, echoing the precast gnomic message already imprinted both front and inside, wondering how many more occasions of just such cards I would be privileged. 

Looking forward to sharing so many more wonderful days with you oh how hollow does that sentiment sound to me?  

I hope you enjoy the present and that you get lots of use out of it. “What present Mum? Where’s the present? What possible use could it be to me, whatever it is?” I’ll just put it with the others. But it changes the room I suppose. 

Suppose I could have written many happy returns. Though there won’t be any, happy or otherwise. Returns on what I wonder? On investments? Well that’s gone bust. A college fund foundered on the rocks. No returns of this day as it was intended. Conceived. As I conceived it. When I conceived you. Just am annual return of this utter melancholy. But of course it’s not restricted to just one day a year. Anyway I can’t change it now, it’s in indelible ink. More indelible that the flimsy tissue of the human body’s fabric. 

I tore the card up into confetti sized pieces. I would have to go and buy another one. When you were young, we used to make cards together for your little friends. So I could always make you one by my own hand. Since you are eternally frozen in your age. 

I don’t suppose Hallmark make an “Unhappy Deathday” card. It’s not clear who U should send it to, you, or me… 

The History Of Yellow - Flash Fiction

I was born tinged yellow by jaundice, fortunately I was too unformed for it to mark my emotional temper.

Most of the time the chromatics of my nappy was fulvous.

As a child, I seemed immersed in a yellow period in my crayoning and painting.

Farmers replaced clover with oilseed rape for their allowing their fallow fields to recuperate. Perhaps because I am an urban dweller, I wasn’t one of those Moaning Minnies who complained about the loss of their green and pleasant vistas, nor was I discomfited by the supposed unsightliness of wind turbines.

The teenage me squeezed my spots, fascinated how the pus it coiled and wormed on to my face like oil paint squeezed on to an easel.

After a cheap blonde rinse, I was left hiding flavicomous hair beneath hats in hot weather.

I awoke from a bad dream to be confronted by the yellow eyes of my cat in the darkness right up against my face. In my drowsy state, I couldn’t determine whether she was the devil’s familiar come to wreak mischief on me, or my cuddly pet full of concern having discerned my discomfort. 

They put bloody tomato on my burger. As I pincered it in my fingers to remove it like it was radioactive, I got some mustard on me. Licking it off I was hit by its piquant power. As I shuffled the burger’s components back into its construction, I couldn’t see the mustard, yet I knew I had just tasted it. Then I realised that the mustard was of exactly the same hue as the melted cheese and accordingly camouflaged. The cheese however had no taste at all. 

At training camp they called me coward. With a thick yellow stripe running down (or is it across?) me. That was unfair, I really had ruptured my ankle in that last training exercise, so much so it was enough to have me medically discharged from the upcoming tour of duty in Cambodia. While my TA comrades cleared mines under spectacular blue skies, I watched the changing seasons of my flesh, from black to purple to a queasy yellow. The contaminants and toxins of me, similar to the contaminants and poisons of the Khmer Rouge’s Killing Fields. I fancied the chroma around my ankle was the colour of gamboge, the closest I could get to the Mekong. I returned the unused Khmer Kroma, that I had bought in anticipation or working under the blistering sun, sucking on the fruit of the mangosteen trees. 

The Docs gave me a lidded plastic jar for my urine sample. Decanting the lees of me dowsing for disease. I stared into the cloudy yellow, hoping to discern a medical genie to open sesame me.

I look at the newly blotched liver spots on the canvas of my skin. Seems I am nearing full completion of the circle on how I entered the world. I can’t know for sure what the colour inside my mother’s womb was, but I suspect the last tincture of light I will be afforded in life will be a sunset yellow.  

Thresh - Flash Fiction

I wrap myself in the bathroom towel. Either it’s grown or I’ve shrunk. We’ve have, however, both gone saggy. If it’s expanded, it hasn’t increased its absorbent surface area any. The terry pile had long gone, but now even the frayed bobbling has been worn away to leave a thin fabric that cannot wick the water from the guttered wrinkles of my skin. But I can hardly fault the towel since it has rendered long years of faithful service. Though in that time it has rubbed out all colour from my body hair. Of course I know that not to be true. The hairs have blanched after years of shadowed eclipse beneath clothes. I know that not to be true either. I am not a plant requiring chlorophyl for photosynthesis. Though hair sprouts from my ears like vine tendrils. 

My fingers scrape the stubble on my face like a violin pizzicato. A symphonic rasp. Scratchy, like a recently threshed wheat field. Without the threshing. You always insisted I was clean shaven before any kiss. A reasonable request and an unconditional act of devoting myself to you. But now I can indulge my loathing of the razor. I have neglected to throw the can of foam away. I wonder if it’s solidified inside. Or evaporated for that matter. 

I have a different teeth cleaning regimen now. For a new set of dentures. But they pinch my receding gums, I don’t think they’re the right dimensions for my mouth. You could have helped sort that out for me. You always resolved life's ill-fittings. Dealing fearlessly with those in authority who always intimidated me. I leave them soaking in solution over night. My unstayed cheeks pucker inwards, as if in permanent anticipation of a kiss that will never issue. 

We used to turn the mattress every six months or so. Marked it on the calendar. A sort of anniversary. Flipping it was a two man job. For one man and one woman. I can’t do it on my own. Don’t even need a double any more of course. So I just sag further into its recess which dwarfs me whole. Nonetheless it’s hardly womblike. I shiver in its embrace. I was further confronted with the black spots on my side of the mattress, exposed every time I stripped the bed linen to wash it. So I have ceased laundering the sheets. They’re either dead bugs or their aborted eggs. Either way they are nightmarish. We were zealous about the mattress and the linen, but never the infestation. It always seemed to be on my side of the bed whichever way we turned the mattress. Yet it was you who died of a respiratory disease. Maybe I had become immune with them just under my head always turned to their side to sleep. Maybe I should have exposed you to them for some seasoning against their spores. Perhaps it was just the fetid breath from inside me, transfused to you through our kissing that did for you. 

Base Ten - Flash Fiction

One man is the basic unit of control. One man is isolation. One man is segregated. One man is utterly atomised.

Two men are a dialogue, an exchange of ideas. We do not permit this particular currency of exchange. Two men within our house is an interrogation.

Three men is two men with an informer inserted. Therefore an obtuse triangle with our man representing an angle over ninety degrees.

Four men is a square and is suggestive of egalitarianism. Better to stretch this parallelogramic arrangement into a quadrilateral, with inequalities and distrust along the distended lengths and an inability to communicate across the elongation.

Five men is the whetted star of our national symbol. With our (ap-)pointed man at the top. Alternatively it is a five-barred gate, with our man striking through the other four.   

Six men superficially resembles two men cubed. Six men is, however, two competing tiers of men arrayed against one another, staring across a no-man's land divide.

Seven men is six men with an agent provocateur to do our bidding and render them nugatory. If no provocateur is available, then six will scapegoat the weakest there.

Eight men is two men cubed. And diced.

Nine men is three men squared, which means three of our agents are in play.

Ten men is an assembly, a mob and invokes the presence of the security forces to break them up (see 'one man')

Postmodernist Fiction - A Review

Here is my Booktube video talking about Postmodernist Fiction, looking at the work of Robert Coover, John Hawkes, William Gaddis, David Markson, Curtis White, Don Delillo...

Does the personal life of a writer, or their values or political values affect your opinion of their work?