Grime and Gunishment

I opened the sleep-slicked slits that I keep my eyes in. Incredible. I had somehow miraculously dodged the hangover bullet from the preceding night. I went to my bathroom to empty the pub from my kidneys and found the water was a deep cerulean blue. I have never experienced a clean morning toilet at my house. Ordinarily the water in the bowl is hangover amber. I took this as an omen that the day would be amazing. Like some sort of giant human filth-covered cup of tea leaves, my toilet’s precognition was spot on.

I felt the urge to psych myself up for the day ahead. I did some light stretching before launching into China Mieville’s Gunnercise fitness regime for emerging writers. This involved gesturing wildly and lifting a vintage Underwood Universal typewriter over my head. After only five minutes, my biceps felt quite authorly.
I was ready.

I donned my blogging beret and sat in the darkness of the acmi theatre, awaiting the spoonfuls of knowledge to be dished into my brain bowl. As I toyed with the image of a wafer and sprinkles being pushed into my ears, an elderly lady seated next to me, leaned over and introduced herself. It turns out, that in her eighties, she followed her dream of becoming an author, penning a successful book on memory. Specifically, the fear of growing old and watching the people around you lose theirs. I asked her for the title of the book. She mentally fumbled for the name like a child trying to find the largest parcel in a lucky dip. I thought she was making a nanna joke and politely laughed. When she introduced herself a second time, my laugh crawled back into my mouth and pulled the covers over it, shuddering the whole time.

I didn’t feel up to a third introduction, so I quietly made my way to one of the other theatres. The title of the discussion was fable, fantasy and the new short story. The crowd brimmed with the grey tan of seasoned World of Warcraft players. I decided I should mingle with the audience and struck up a conversation with a redheaded man who was one part Viking and eight parts dohnut. He showed me a manuscript he had been working on. It was a fan fiction piece depicting the story of a crossover between the two universes inhabited by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight books. The climactic scene involved the heroines from both worlds falling in love with a Viking king who took them both as his sexing brides, along with his current wife Hermione.

I comforted myself with the knowledge that if the older lady in the other theatre was anything to go by, this conversation would eventually fade away one day.

by Frenchelbow (aka Simon Keck)
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights