If it's good enough for Oprah...

By itchingmyknee

The “Daily Flood of Crap” is our pet name for the magazine’s general email address. I have the unfortunate task of wading through these emails, day after day. Some are random stock alerts, ads for penis enlargements, letters from Sir Kwame Stilton who is unable to access his billion pound trust fund – “Unless YOU help.” But the majority of this unwanted spam is diet mail. Various pills and potions with exotic names flood into my inbox, and all are accompanied by “push advertising”. Usually something like this:

“How many times did you get unhappy after looking in the mirror? 0besity does not only affect the way you look and feel about yourself. It is
also dangerous for your health, bringing plenty of health problems in a
variety of spheres. And of course feeling shy to take off your clothes
on a beach or in bed with your special one is so saddening.”

Now, I have to read about 20 of these a day, give or take, and I have never had the urge to visit “the BEST online pharmacy”, but I suspect that these little sob stories are worming into my brain. Case in point: I’m not overweight, but a couple of weeks ago, I decided out of the blue that I would go running every morning. And I have been sticking to the regime. Getting up at half seven, pulling on my track pants and legging it to Embankment And every morning I come into work and face the Daily Flood of Crap.

So I decided to write an Ode to Spam.

I want to express my gratitude to all those pill pushers out there, for telling me that fat is bad. I never get to the second paragraph, so I don’t read how “Anatrim” is better than exercise (and makes you pretty, witty and a fabulous dancer), but somehow, this constant barrage has prompted me to get healthier.

So thanks, “Tamra Gordon” for instructing me to “Check out the wonders of pound melting”. I am in your debt. I don’t think I’m any lighter, but I’m definitely tighter. Thanks for bringing guilt and a misshapen body image to my world, and making me think twice when I take of my clothes in front my boyfriend at night.

And good luck with those pills. I hear they raised a storm on Oprah.

Librarian's Corner II

By wrackingmybrains

Because my library is situated in one of the most upmarket areas of London, a lot of our clientele are quite posh. Yes, as is the case at most libraries, many of our most faithful patrons are still tramps, but these are tramps who say “Good day to you, my dear” and read The Telegraph.

One such Posh Tramp – well, perhaps he is not actually a tramp but certainly a gentleman fallen on hard times – is perhaps our longest standing customer of all; he has been coming in since well before any of the current staff arrived.

He appears regularly every three weeks, wearing the same dishevelled tweeds with a pair of half-moon glasses balanced on the end of his nose, and solemnly hands over an ancient Ordnance Survey map of Dorset for renewal. Although polite he is brisk and businesslike, giving the impression that he has pressing matters to attend to elsewhere. He never so much as glances at any of our other stock.

Now, according to my colleague, we haven’t stocked any Ordnance Survey maps in our library for nearly twenty years. Even the reference libraries that do still hold them have long since subscribed to online versions. That gives you some idea of the length of time for which this Reader has been renewing his map. I fear it is probably rather out of date.

There has been some discussion among the staff as to whether we should actually give the Map Man his map as a Christmas present. However, we decided in the end that this would not be a kind thing to do, as it would deprive him of his regular little outing to the library, which could, for all we know, be the highlight of his month.

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 5 - Eye Openings

By itchingmyknee

She stared as though hypnotised, and when the eye withdrew she willed it to return, her heart beating like trapped bird inside her ribs. She heard the sound of scraping and felt a vibration through the wall. It was digging out the window. She thought to scream, leave the room, but she remained still and silent. Specks of sand were falling from the casement and she backed away, watching the hole at it’s centre grow steadily bigger. When the flurry of motion ceased and she saw the creature to whom the eye belonged, she regretted her silence. A scream strangled in her throat, the mutant creature dove threw the window and gathered her up in it’s webbed hands.

When she was unceremoniously dumped on the ground far from the baby farm, she remembered little of her journey to the home of the froglodytes. She was paralysed with fear, and her maternal instinct returned with a vengeance as her mind searched for ways to protect her unborn child from the unknown savage who carried her. When she found herself surrounded by a horde of the creatures, she felt that she was truly lost. A few of the females (their genitals were plainly visible) stepped forward and began to gingerly poke her with long-clawed fingers. Sylvia was curled up in a protective ball and when the probing fingers reached her swollen abdomen, they uttered a series of clicks and squawks. It was unlike any language Sylvia had ever imagined, and she cowered. The whole group became agitated and a male, whom she presumed was the leader, began to gesticulate wildly. He was pointing to her belly and stamping on the ground. She soon understood he was trying to find out how far gone she was. “Soon.” She said. He was confused. She slapped her hand once on the ground, and he cocked his head in understanding.

It quickly became clear that she was too be allowed to keep her child. The strangers unbound her breasts and offered her bowls of green sludge that she found surprisingly palatable. Following their lead, she ate the bowl too after she finished. It tasted salty. It was shocking to see the menfolk here working alongside the women. The Fertilizers at the compound were sad mewling creatures. They were kept in a single dimly-lit room and fed the offal spurned by the women. There was no similarity between their pale, wasted bodies with unnaturally engorged penises, and the taut, muscled brawn of this alien race.

The Froglodytes would mate often, usually away from the rest of the clan. While Fertilizers are quickly selected, hosed down, and ejaculated within a matter of seconds, these creatures really made a meal of the affair. Sometimes literally: scratching shred of waste skin from their partners backs and chewing on them voraciously. It was only later that Sylvia realised these same shreds of skin, dried and pressed, made the bowls she so enjoyed after meals.

Check out the previous chapters:

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 4 - The Solution.

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 3 - The Froglodytes

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 2 - Sylvia

The Infernal Hunger

horror
short story
futuristic

Goldplated (another rant...)

By bitingmylip

Do not adjust your TV sets.

10pm. Wednesdays. Channel 4. ‘Goldplated’ – a new TV show set in the “golden triangle” of Wilmslow, Prestbury and Alderley Edge – claims to “lift the lid on a world of conspicuous consumption in which wealth – or at least the appearance of it is everything.”

Except it’ll be nothing more than a load of cheap gags at the expense of the North West’s small minority of noueveau riche Porsche owning ladies (and gentlemen) that lunch.

I grew up in this golden triangle. I lived in Alderley Edge – my parents still do – and I went to school in Wilmslow. Of Prestbury, I can offer no opinion, but I would hazard a guess that it is a similar mix of the rich and the not so rich, just like Wilmslow, just like Alderley Edge, just like the majority of nice suburbs up and down the country.

Admittedly I have not yet seen ‘Goldplated,’ but the adverts suggest it is all champagne, cocaine and no rain, and I’ve seen my hometown slurred before – most notably in a Sunday Times article by those paragons of snobbery AA Gill and Jeremy Clarkson. I’ve heard Alderley Edge described as “the champagne capital of the North.” I did once see David Beckham in a petrol station and the guy who plays Ken Barlow in ‘Coronation Street’ used to send his son to the private school near my house, but much as I hate to admit it, these aren’t common occurrences and I think it’s time I defended the place I grew up in against those who would see it derided as a society of money-grabbing, plastic surgery-obsessed, fame-hungry wannabes. There might be one or two of these creatures lurking in the big houses on the outskirts of each town. But they’re not common. And in fact, the golden triangle does do common. Like most towns we have our share of hoodie’d teenagers and lager louts.

None of my friends have ever taken cocaine and I’ve never ordered champagne in any bar in the vicinity. There are in fact only 2 or 3 bars in Alderley Edge and I tend to stick to my vodka and orange when out in Wilmslow’s very own Yates’s. Both towns have council estates and posher estates, nice shops and nasty multi-storey car- parks, private schools and free ones.

I do understand where this leafy area of Cheshire gets its reputation. Lots of Manchester United and City players have lived there as well as Coronation Street actors and Hollyoaks ‘stars’. And I will admit, there are a few of these plastic surgery-obsessed and new monied people lurking around. One such woman springs to mind – her name is Dee and she used to drive around in a canary yellow Porsche with a personalised number plate. She was forever in the local paper for her various exploits (plastic surgery, divorce, being on some TV documentary about wannabes…)

But she was only well known because she’s a freak. It’s not the norm to be like that anywhere, not even in Alderley Edge. So what I don’t understand is why this town, with its parade of shops and pretty scenery – this town I grew up in and still love going back to – why does it keep getting portrayed like this? It’s not LA, for god’s sake. And it’s near Manchester. Not only have I never seen cocaine there, or drunk champagne there, but it does rain there. A lot.

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 4 - The Solution.

By itchingmyknee

The Froglodytes reached peak performance during the 5th generation, after that the frog strain of DNA began to slowly erode the human gene. The elders realised that their descendents would grow progressively less intelligent. In order to stay hidden from the humans, the Froglodytes had to keep their cunning, and fight against the onslaught of ignorance.

At a lengthy meeting that went on for three days, the leaders of the tribe weighed up their options. Males and females finally united on one course of action: to mate with a human female, in the hope that her offspring would maintain both species. Secrecy was still paramount, so only one female would be taken at first, by means of an experiment.

The Froglodytes hatched their plans, and targeted a local breeding colony. The only real danger was how to get a single female on her own. And what of the menfolk? The Froglodytes had never seen a single man outside of the compound. They could be fierce, muscle-bound giants. There is nothing more frightening than the threat of the unknown, but they proceeded nevertheless.

Sylvia had just moved into her new quarters. The Oracle had approved her promotion to Head Feeder, and she was taken from the others almost immediately. Her belly was very heavy now, and her intuition told her it would not be long before her pains began. Her new room was small but quiet. The walls were cracked plaster and the window was blocked with earth and sand. The glass in the building had long shattered, or been stolen, but the previous occupant had dug a small hole in the filler so that a shaft of light crossed the narrow space.

Two days passed in solitude, she had no company except for the brief exchanges with the women who brought her meals. These were either newly pregnant women who helped out with chores, or the scientists responsible for drugging the babies with the Oracle’s Cure. Babies were treated at birth through an injection into the brain. It had to be administered within the first few hours while the skull was still soft, but sometimes women managed to conceal their births until it was two late. It was always in vain. The babies would then have to have their skulls broken, and the rest of their sorry lives would be an agony of migraines and nausea.

Sylvia had begun thinking about how it would feel to keep her baby. These feelings always started bubbling up inside her when the birth was near, despite all the efforts of the scientists to quell maternal instincts. The breasts were bound to prevent them producing milk, food rations were increased but often the meat bore signs of it’s humanity. The curve of a nostril or a broken knuckle. She took to putting her eye to the hole in her window and dreaming of escape. As one afternoon melted into the next, she gazed and gazed. The baby was kicking hard now, punishing her for its conception. She put her eye to the wall and a soft breeze blew through the opening. Her eye watered. She wiped the tears away and stared again. Suddenly the light went out, and as her pupils widened to the gloom, she saw another eye peering back at her. Blazing blue irises and thick black lashes held her gaze, and she was transfixed.

To Be Continued...

Check out the previous chapters:

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 3 - The Froglodytes

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 2 - Sylvia

The Infernal Hunger

Librarians' Corner

By wrackingmybrains (our newest contributer)

I like to think of the library where I work as a friendly place where the patrons, or ‘Readers’ as we call them in the trade, (rather hopefully, considering most of them only come in to use Internet!) can feel at home. But some of them take making themselves at home a bit far!

Take Amelia-Anne,* a six-foot-something hermaphrodite call-girl who has apparently always thought of herself as female despite her enormous size, muscley legs and slightly thinning hair. She visits the library at least once a day, often waiting on the step in the morning for us to open the doors at eleven. She then proceeds to spend the day flitting between computers (I’m not quite sure how as each Reader is only supposed to get an hour a day of computer-time) conducting various complicated and bizarre business via email, while regaling the staff and other Readers with frequent reports on her progress.

A few examples of her recent activities:
1/ Changing her surname from Shaw to Chang
2/ Doing an online Chinese course (this caused some difficulties as we don’t have the Chinese character-pack installed on the computers)
3/ Buying a giant futon with mock-ivory legs in the shape of elephants
4/ Returning the giant futon because it didn’t fit in her flat
5/ Selling her life-story to various trashy magazines (she then showed me the story and pictures in Closer; Headline: ‘I’m a call-girl but I’m half-boy’)
6/ Writing to her lawyer about suing the trashy magazines because they ‘misrepresented’ her.

Amelia-Anne’s personal sagas are entertaining enough for a bored library assistant (although I think the other Readers get pretty sick of her hogging the computers) but her attitude is rather annoying. She really does treat the library as a second home, or, more accurately, a hotel:
“Eve,” she whines in her affected sweet-little-girl voice, “my throat is dry. Can you bring me some water up from the staff room?”

And I do. We’re soft touches, us library staff; our fierce reputation is completely undeserved.


*Names, apart from my own, will be changed.

Something like a diary entry...

By itchingmyknee

It’s official. I have writer’s block. My creative spark has died. The flower of my imagination has withered.
I sit in my little office, and write my little articles for my little magazine, and all extraneous matter is ignored and defeated. Have I been conquered by “The Man”? Is this just a phase? Will I recover?

What if end up dreary and sad, unable to do anything but her 9-5? What if that’s all that’s left for me? My youth will drain away, I will lose my looks, and there won’t be word left inside me to make my stamp on the world.

Maybe this is a sign. Maybe I should leave my job? But what would I do? How would I survive?

I wish I was like my boyfriend. He is a musician and spends the day in his studio listening to samples and making beats. He has a constant flow of people coming to visit him. Some of them come for tea, some come to rap, some come to smoke. He doesn’t have any money. And it upsets him. But at least he’s free.

What price our fair liberty?

I have 12 days holiday left to take this year. Maybe I’ll do something amazing with them and fill my head with thoughts and schemes and plots for stories that boggle reality. I’ll have adventures and slay dragons and take pictures of rivers flowing with strawberry nesquik.

Therein lies the problem. Every day should be an adventure. My walk to work should be full of new sights and smells, just by using my own observation, and looking with new eyes. My little articles should inspire me. My sandwiches should be savoured and remind me of feasts from King Arthur’s court.

Where have all the adventures gone?