Realistic or Modern Oh, the gulch! An urban danza

[Qazi]

Now it's night, starless, bible black; consider this: what if the ordinary, banal course of your life deviated from wherever wooden dead-end it was to come to? what if the symptoms of riding it became null? what if matters reached a point—and I'm not being nihilistic when I say this—where normalcy becomes safely null? This is all I can think about but hear me, will you?

The man who'd earlier been introduced to us as an important and entrusted acquaintance of the veritable Mr. Andron—we call him, behind his world-weary hunchback, Ron, or with that hooligan vitriol, That Ron—is now concentrating, stooped and perched like a street beggar with disabilities or like a hawknosed man walking with a knife up his arse or into a kidney, upon the torn remnants of his eminent draft, which we heretofore had only seen once. In so far, the day has been uneventful aside from a few scuffles over the nearby slaughterhouse dumping blood all over the road—a public road, mind you, which is entitled to hygiene just as much as the other guy or the other next big incident headlining the daily paper which last Sunday was a fire just next doors from gasoline abuse. If I remember correctly, it was an ancient text written in the Hebrew language or what I assume to be that as I have little to no expertise in such territories of the world. Besides, I did not pry any further as my concentration was then lain elsewhere as far as matters of linguistics went and, even then, I hardly wanted to enrage, or engage, the sensibilities of this man who seemed the sort to flail about wantonly at the ‘criminal elements’ us lowlifes seemed to possess or pose at his own security, at least in his perception. I cannot assuredly vouch for my own morality.

Sometime later in the day, as evening and the noons come nearer, a recognition occurs to this acquaintance-man. He decides to explore the hallways and subsequently discovers the scene of this peculiar crime, and doing so, he decides to target us firstly: “Where is it?” he says, with animosity, as if we're the culprits, as if we'd done something to what he perhaps innocently worshipped as a work born of his one fruit. . . or that it was anywhere at all and not broken up beneath his feet, safely spread about like a jigsaw puzzle on the felt-carpeted grounds and amidst the rows of ionian columns and vases made of brass and the occasional brazier or three exuding vapors and smokes infused with herbs and drugs, nothing strong enough to make us lose our senses but it did make us dizzy here and about. I don't blame him but I did at some point consider the probability of doing something as misanthropic as inviting vengeance to his object of importance, or rather his subject of being as his affiliation to Mr. Andron seemed sustained solely on the basis of his work, purely out of retribution against his vile mannerisms. Who's Andron? I don't know him myself and I suppose he does not either; but he's not an engima. On the contrary—as his scrawny, weaselly figure and waxed mustache and greasy hair parted two ways scream at me, ‘I am rich, rich! you fucking, pathetic jackass!’ which is no biting insult terribly shallow, more than me, more than Stefano the cook, Bullard who tended the botanical gardens, more than this man here. It works to my advantage, I won't deny that, because men like him are what sustains men like me—vampires siphoning the life forces of humans and humanoid creatures, is what I am.

I end up not doing it at all, burn the paper, the printing house that publishes the paper, the residential blocks that read the paper, so on, but as that would've invited more trouble than I could possibly account for in my present state of mind I decide to politely decline, or as I like to put: ‘Who's working you, darling? need any help?’ but except to me.

Anyhow, women tend to slap me whenever I say that. To think of that. . . ominous.

So, listen: I have this uncanny ability to control my impulses, instincts and my common desires—what I gained working the streets of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, as far as Dundee even, racketeering and fighting against men far more stronger than likes of simpleton me—but I'm no pushover. I'm a pusher: when I swing a knife, people get hurt; when my fists fly, people get hurt; when I curl my toes and just stand there on the sun-baked asphalt, eyes turning down like Kubrick's raining blood on us poor fellas, what happens? of course, people get hurt. I don't like hurting people. I say, that doesn't mean I don't and I've hated and inflicted mighty damage on my fair share of punks and those oi! dart-playing fuckers jacked on heroin, cocaine, meth and pharmaceuticals and synthetics, and no wonder some of them's gotten free-and-paid wisdom teeth extraction through blunt force trauma and grevious bodily harm committed by yours truly—a doctor for the millennium ages as is, if I'm to boast about it, cause I'm the fastest fuck you can meet right now, belting fores and shins with a stunner quickness you can see only in fishies and little kids, but with the poundage of bears and wolves and those bloodhounds the police carries and who finds your little packets of molly hidden shoddily under the leather of your car seats and which throws you in jail and in with a mighty get-outta-bars card with a price to it—but some fools are sadistic. That's not me. I'm not a fool, not a badguy—but hoity toity! I've knocked a few aneurysms into folks and I'll do that to you too if you keep prancing around me like a bloody arsehole—, case in point being there are worse guys out there and you can see them if you shove your tiny pinhead out the window for once and look at the decaying, abject, destitute pestilence the city's got to offer you: look at the bums, chavs, rogue fuckin gunmen, tops wetworkers doing jams for the motherfuckin triads those who you-know drink chinese wine and play arabian folk tunes as they chop down brits and asians and indies alike into piles of little arms, the druggies and pill poppers, the trailers tweakers, the fuckin losers of life itself, yard-sale pissers with one too many refrigerators and books by Kant overflowing in their garage, street musicians who'll do anything for a few coins and they'll even fuck you provided you don't hurt their artistic sensibilities, bozos in pubs and taverns complaining perennially about their divorces and breakups and looking for validation for whatever sin against romance they've committed, and so on and on.

I deny this stranger's accusations, of course, with enough conviction to make his suspicion go elsewhere, at the very least away from me and Stefano (who was called Stefan by everyone except That Ron creature and his acquaintance so crudely named Ruth, which I only discovered later after his departure), but not without sufficient cooing and wooing and flattering his fury to a more grieving acceptance, that is, to inflame his sympathies and melancholia—but fuck you, you think I'm gonna do that? I'm good at groveling but only to certain types of fellas, the types you don't fuck around with, and this man right here's the kind you look at and wonder: ‘This bloke's askin for it, ain't he?’ and that's what I'm thinking too—‘All to the pot,’ is what I'm muttering—as I roll up my sleeves, as the white collars do when it's bank day, and show him a five-fingered-knuckled hand, raw boned and sinewy, veins showing and everything, lean and gnawed, the sort a boxer doesn't have but the sort a street fighter's all what's got to his name.

I say to him, bluffing like an ace: “Look outside: there's a downpour, there's misery, there's men who've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And, look inside: you think that Mr. Andron's gonna give so much as a single fuck if I kick you out? sure as hell, buddy, you deserve someone good, a fire maybe, some bedsheets, but that's not what you're going to get, are you? continue like this, and it's the streets for you, and they're crying out for you, they're sirens, you get that?”

And he says, a bit shook is what I can see in his eyes, but tops when it comes to putting up a front, bold and liquid brave: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

And I look at him, and I'm all thinking:

1. Yer a chancer—push the threat, shake him
2. Taps aff—punch him like he's owed
3. No ah umnae—what the fuck? I'm not a hooligan no more, so what I do is, uhm, er, something. . .

But I can't remember shit, really, props to that. Who the fuck am I?

1. Name's Giles Burton, one and only
2. Ya fuck, ah'm Keith Digs
3. You two punks, fuck off, I ain't got nah name
4. Ya spose ya know any better?—write in something, asshole

No, no, who the fuck am I?

1. I work as muscle for Ron
2. I'm his janitor
3. Butler, maybe?
4. I dunno, you tell me

And how the fuck am I here?

1. Who knows?

Shit.

 

[Historical Storyteller]

Now it's night, starless, bible black; consider this: what if the ordinary, banal course of your life deviated from wherever wooden dead-end it was to end at? what if the symptoms of riding it became null? what if matters reached a point—and I'm not being nihilistic when I say this—where normalcy becomes safely null? This is all I can think about but hear me, will you?

The man who'd earlier been introduced to us as an important and entrusted acquaintance of the veritable Mr. Andron—we call him, behind his world-weary hunchback, Ron, or with that hooligan vitriol, That Ron—is now concentrating, stooped and perched like a street beggar with disabilities or like a hawknosed man walking with a knife up his arse or into a kidney, upon the torn remnants of his eminent draft, which we heretofore had only seen once. If I remember correctly, it was an ancient text written in the Hebrew language. I did not pry any further as my concentration was lain elsewhere as far as matters of linguistics went and, besides, I hardly wanted to enrage the sensibilities of this man who seemed the sort to flail about wantonly at the ‘criminal elements’ us lowlifes seemed to possess, at least in his perception though I can't assuredly vouch for my own morality. But, when it occurs to this acquaintance, who's only a stranger to us, to explore the hallways and subsequently discover the scene of the crime, he decides to target us firstly: “Where is it?” he says, with animosity, as if we're the culprits, as if we'd done something to what he perhaps innocently worshipped as a work born of his one fruit. . . or that it was anywhere at all and not broken up beneath his feet, safely spread about like a jigsaw puzzle on the felt-carpeted grounds and amidst the rows of ionian columns and vases made of brass and the occasional brazier or three exuding vapors and smokes infused with herbs and drugs, nothing strong enough to make us lose our senses but it did make us dizzy here and about. I did at some point consider the probability of doing something as misanthropic as inviting vengeance to his object of importance, or rather his subject of being as his affiliation to Mr. Andron seemed sustained solely on the basis of his work, purely out of retribution against his vile mannerisms. I did not do it in the end, as that would've invited more trouble than I could possibly account for in my present state of mind.

I have this uncanny ability to control my impulses, instincts and my common desires—what I gained working the streets of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, as far as Dundee even, racketeering and fighting against men far more stronger than likes of simpleton me—but I'm no pushover. I'm a pusher: when I swing a knife, people get hurt; when my fists fly, people get hurt; when I curl my toes and just stand there on the sun-baked asphalt, eyes turning down like Kubrick's raining blood on us poor fellas, what happens? of course, people get hurt. I don't like hurting people. I say, that doesn't mean I don't and I've hated my fair share of punks and those oi! dart-playing fuckers on heroin, cocaine, meth and pharmaceuticals and synthetics, and no wonder some of them's gotten free-and-paid wisdom teeth extraction through blunt force trauma and grevious bodily harm committed by yours truly—a doctor for the millennium ages as is right now, if I'm to boast about it, cause I'm the fastest fuck you can meet right now, belting fores and shins with a stunner quickness you can see only in fishies and little kids, but with the poundage of bears and wolves and those bloodhounds the police carries and who finds your little packets of molly hidden shoddily under the leather of your car seats and which throws you in jail and in with a mighty get-outta-bars card with a price to it—but some fools are sadistic. That's not me. I'm not a fool, not a bad guy—but hoity toity! I've knocked a few aneurysms into folks and I'll do that to you too if you keep prancing around me like a bloody arsehole—, case in point being there are worse guys out there and you can see them if you shove your tiny pinhead out the window for once and look at the destitute, decay and the pestilence the city's got to offer you: look at the bums, chavs, rogue fuckin gunmen, tops wetworkers doing jams for the motherfuckin triads those who you-know drink chinese wine and play arabian folk tunes as they chop down brits and asians and indies alike, the druggies and pill poppers, the trailers tweakers, the fuckin losers of life itself, yard-sale pissers with one too many refrigerators and books by Kant overflowing in their garage, street musicians who'll do anything for a few coins and they'll even fuck you provided you don't hurt their artistic sensibilities, bozos in pubs and taverns complaining perennially about their divorces and breakups and looking for validation for whatever sin against romance they've committed, and so on and on.

I deny this stranger's accusations, of course, with enough conviction to make his suspicion go elsewhere, at the very least away from me and Stefano (who was called Stefan by everyone except That Ron creature and his acquaintance so crudely named Ruth, which I only discovered later after his departure), but not without sufficient cooing and wooing and flattering his fury to a more grieving acceptance, that is, to inflame his sympathies and melancholia—but fuck you, you think I'm gonna do that? I'm good at groveling but only to certain types of fellas, the types you don't fuck around with, and this man right here's the kind you look at and wonder: ‘This bloke's askin for it, ain't he?’ and that's what I'm thinking too—‘All to the pot,’ is what I'm muttering—as I roll up my sleeves, as the white collars do when it's bank day, and show him a five-fingered-knuckled hand, raw boned and sinewy, veins showing and everything, lean and gnawed, the sort a boxer doesn't have but the sort a street fighter's all what's got to his name.

I say to him, bluffing like an ace: “Look outside: there's a downpour, there's misery, there's men who've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And, look inside: you think, man, that Mr. Andron's gonna give so much as a single fuck if I kick you out? sure as hell, buddy, you deserve someone good, a fire maybe, some bedsheets, but that's not what you're going to get, are you? continue like this, and it's the streets for you, and they're crying out for you, they're sirens, you get that?”

And he says, a bit shook is what I can see in his eyes, but tops when it comes to putting up a front, bold and liquid brave: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

And I look at him, and I'm all thinking:

1. Yer a chancer—push the threat, shake him
2. Taps aff—punch him like he's owed
3. No ah umnae—what the fuck? I'm not a hooligan no more, so what I do is, uhm, er, something. . .

But I can't remember shit, really, props to that. Who the fuck am I?

1. Name's Giles Burton, one and only
2. Ya fuck, ah'm Keith Digs
3. You two punks, fuck off, I ain't got nah name
4. Ya spose ya know any better?—write in something, asshole

No, no, who the fuck am I?

1. I work as muscle for Ron
2. I'm his janitor
3. Butler, maybe?
4. I dunno, you tell me

And how the fuck am I here?

1. Who knows?

Shit.


So, this is my first quest log here and I must say. . . I put almost zero effort in this: minimal editing, only the barest of proofreading, ah fuck, this is some shoddy shit. Vote at your own risk, dude (and ye too Historical Storyteller ).

3. By the grace of God, you now work for charity, officially you're a secretary, unofficially you're the janitor, the guardsman, a teacher and babysitter all rolled into one. Its an enormously hard job, the hours are long and the pay is. . . there is no pay. But you know you're doing good work and perhaps that in itself is a reward of its own.

4. Just call me Sullivan.

4. I told you before, in this dark, cruel world I went from gangster to miracle worker. . . that is, I work for charity.

1. As far as I know, you haven't kicked the drinking habit yet, and now you're off wandering into strange parts of town, fella. Get your shit together, man.