Creative Free Flow

In the amber-smog flicker of the streetlamp

raindrops stick

molten copper ticks

and gnaw away at the wrists

of the wrought iron railings.

  Boy stares down through corroded metal steps,

takes a breath

of midnight mass crystal meth,

parts his hair with his fingers,

and spits into summer’s face.

  Down below a cat hisses in a dumpster,

rats scamper,

and a trash can orchestra

churns out a trashy rhythm

to the tune of traffic jams.

  A shiver as Boy feels street corners looming—

one more fix,

then, on legs like tinder sticks,

down the spiral staircase

IV

  There was definitely a knock on the door now. Frank saw the framed motivational poster, a beautiful photograph of an erupting volcano (with words to ruin it), rattle behind the door.

Like rabid squirrels his eyes darted between the door and the drinks cabinet. He looked up at the clock but knew there was something wrong when the numbers melted away into the blue of one of Zelda’s paintings; the one Emma called ‘The Sky is the Limit’.

 He tried to focus on the clock face. Digits six and nine combined, forming old-style fighter pilot goggles; seven and four molded into a suit of armour of some sort.

Frank blinked and looked at Zelda’s painting, ‘The Sky is the Limit’. The colours swirled and turned to smoggy city morning orange, and the little figure in the picture, the boy holding on to the strings of a red-striped parachute, spoke in a squeaky voice.

“Frank, the time is now! The sky is the limit! Do it! Do it!”

Someone was trying to force open the door. Frank snatched the lighter fluid. Stumbling backwards toward the drinks cabinet, he nibbled at the congealed blood on his wrist. He kept his eyes on the door from behind which the voices were making threatening noises. He threw his jacket on the floor and poured the rest of the lighter fluid over his head, which soaked his 100% Thai silk shirt—a second anniversary gift from his mother-in-law.

“There’s no time like the right time, Frank!” the boy in the picture shouted. His eyes gleamed with menace and his twisted mouth revealed rows and rows of pointy, yellow teeth.

Frank couldn’t tell how many people were at the door. It sounds like a bloody army, he thought.

Ignoring the urgency in their voices, he reached for the cigar box, which he kept behind a few expensive bottles of whiskey (for important business meetings only). He popped open the silver lid and he took out a book of matches lying in the place where his Zippo lighter had been before it was stolen. Frank decided it was time for a quick celebration. His hands were clammy, and the wound on his left hand and wrist was throbbing where infection was already spreading. He had trouble breaking the bottle cap seal, so Frank broke Johnny Walker’s neck against the window sill instead. He took a few gulps, and poured the rest of the whiskey over himself.

Frank loved how the pedestrians and cars down below in the streets resembled ants at work—it looked even better now through blurry eyes, and there seemed to be a lot more hustle than usual.

It was twelve-forty-five.

They were kicking at the door now, and Frank saw that someone had splintered the hard wood on the inside of the doorframe by using a crowbar.

And there he stood, Frank Miller, with tears rolling down his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if he was crying, or if it was the mix of alcohol and lighter fluid caused his eyes water, but he knew one thing where he stood in front of his twelfth floor office window: he felt no emotion—not a drop.

Frank lit a match and opened the window with flaming hands. He stood on his toes and listened as his eyebrows sizzled. Frank removed Zelda’s latest painting, pulled it over his head, and tore the sky apart.

That feeling of being watched crept over his back;

it sizzled like fresh moon dust over morning dew,

and a smell of guilt — burned vanilla and hair-honey —

tickled his flaring nostrils.

  He sneezed, and licked the gob of mud-snot that covered his mouth.

Eyes still watery, he looked up from the hole in the ground:

Jenny Jones was standing on the front porch, lantern in hand—

he ducked between the flowers.

  In order to stifle a yelp of laughter, he held his breath,

for a cliché question carry-whispered itself over Jenny’s lips;

of course there was no-one out there— Christ Almighty!

Did she really think he would answer?

  Here he was, risking his life by dragging a dead body

over the neighbours’ lawn, digging a midnight hole in the flower bed

where the blue of the paraffin flame waltzed with the rose buds—

such a fantastic dance of death.

  Jenny had one last, urgent glance over her shoulder;

she shut the door and caught her night gown in the slam! 

He wagged his tail, scratched away at the swarm of fleas behind his ear,

Karma (or Tik’s Night Out)

  Tik took a deep breath and watched the Bangkok city lights throb in rhythm with her heartbeat.

This city really does not sleep. Heaven knows, the view from the police major general’s twenty-first floor penthouse is spectacular, she thought.

She exhaled and tasted a mix of champagne and Cuban cigars. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on the ledge and squinted. She had a moment of déjà vu, and the lights reminded her of some kind of science-fiction underwater city, the smog forming the ‘water’ surface overhead.

Tik put the plastic bag on the ledge and pulled her knickers out of her arse; they were still moist.

You’d think someone living in a place like this can afford a roll of toilet paper now and again. Even one-ply would’ve been better than nothing. And the plumbing is simply atrocious. What kind of person pays more than a million dollars for a prime spot in the centre of Bangkok and is happy with the PVC piping not even hidden in the walls? Humph! She clicked her tongue and pulled her red miniskirt down.

She watched the traffic and listened to the water from the fountain trickling into the swimming pool behind her. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

I’ve been here before.

Behind the fountain, the blackout curtains blew in the warm wind, their heavy hems swish-swishing over the imported Italian terracotta tiles. Tik heard the police major general flush the toilet.  

She took the plastic bag from the ledge and put it on the floor. She scratched the spot on her ankle where a mosquito got her in the taxi on the way to the penthouse. This reminded her that she had another appointment at midnight with a billionaire Chinese businessman, a regular whose penis was the size of her little finger. Tik rolled her eyes and took out her iPhone 6.

Forty-five minutes to go. God, I’ve been here for almost six hours.

Tik used her thumbnail to pick at a bit of meat stuck to her front teeth.

                                                          ***

Police Major General Nantakarn flushed the toilet with his chin. He got a cramp in his neck and hit the side of his head against the toilet bowl.

Please, if there’s a god above, let me out of here, he prayed.

The duct tape started to cause discomfort; the adhesive was tugging at his salt and pepper sideburns, so he tried to move his ears by laughing on the inside, like his father taught him. He had never been able to do it, and he couldn’t do it now.

He looked down and watched as his blood soak the last corner of the Calvin Klein face towel one of his minor wives gave him for his birthday two weeks ago.

I can’t believe I ran out of toilet paper, he thought.

The cable ties Tik used to tie him to the PVC drain pipes underneath the washbasin were starting to gnaw away at his wrists.

Whatever it was she had put in his champagne caused temporary paralysis because his brain was functioning normally when she tied him up. Even though his thoughts were scattered in a field of confusion when he realised what was happening, he remembered the old trick of clenching your fists, palms facing down, and presenting your hands like that to your captor. That was the last time he was able to move in about six hours.

Gotcha now, you little whore! he thought at the time, Just wait until I slip out of these. I’ll skin you alive, I swear.

 Tik was a professional and saw his plan in a flash; the way he clenched his fists and presented them palms facing down would make his wrists bigger. After being tied, he would then turn his wrists inward and have more room maneuver while trying to slip out of the cable ties.  

“I’m not falling for your cheap tricks, arsehole,” she had hissed and bit off his left earlobe. She turned his wrists inward, facing each other, and then used two cable ties to tie him to the plumbing. “What, you think a high-priced call girl like myself doesn’t get tied up now and again?”

Nantakarn closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his breathing now. There was a piece of dried blood in his left nostril, and every time he exhaled it made a wheezing sound, like a loose fan belt. He rested his chin on his chest and started sobbing.

                                                           ***

Tik checked the time on her phone again. It was eleven-forty-five.

I’d better get going then, she thought and turned around. She held up the plastic bag into the light streaming from the entertainment area through the gaps created by the curtains still blowing in a the wind. She poked at the police major general’s flaccid penis in the bag.

“Just like a little sea cucumber,” she whispered and chucked the bag over her shoulder, and over the balcony.  

Approaching the white aluminium sliding doors leading into the ‘entertainment area’, Tik could hear one of Vivaldi’s four seasons playing on Nantakarn’s Bang & Olufsen.

It must be summer again, she thought.

words by Ramon Ramirez

III

  Frank thought he heard a knock on the door. He turned sideways and expected to see Marcia standing there with a bamboo tray full of his usual Tuesday tuna sandwiches (Tuesday tuna, Marcia called it), but then he remembered that he’d locked the door. Frank also remembered that Marcia stopped bringing him lunch three months ago when he decided to break things off after Emma caught them in a peculiar position with the tent flap open on a breezy October afternoon not more than ten minutes’ drive from the family cabin where they were supposed to celebrate Zelda’s third birthday.

Frank cringed. God, I must’ve sounded so guilty. What was my excuse for leaving Zelda’s birthday party like yesterday again? Oh, ‘I need fresh air’. Asshole. Nobody says that. Phrases like that are reserved for Woody Allen films. I might as well have said ‘excuse me for half-an-hour or so, I’m just gonna go and fuck my secretary up the ass in her father’s redneck caravan park’.

It was twelve-thirty.

When Frank came down from his Zippo fluid high, he realized where the sound he mistook for a knock on his office door was coming from. He looked down and saw that he had been using his desk drawer as a makeshift vice grip in order to hold in place the can of lighter fluid against the overhanging lip of the desk top. There was split-second when he felt that he had lost control of his body. The knuckles on his left hand looked like they were about to pop, and there was no feeling in the hand as he was driving the letter opener, held like grotesque metal finger between fore- and middle fingers, into the top part of the tin. Bam, bam, bam.

It was twelve-thirty-five.

Frank dropped the letter opener on the floor. The blunt tip of the blade pegged into the Persian rug under his feet, and a sharp pain shot through his hand. There was the warm sensation of blood trickling down his forearm. He studied the open wound where the sharp edges of the broken tin had gnawed away at his skin and into his flesh. He stared at a piece of skin flapping up and down where the blood pumped out, like the broken wing of some diseased-ridden bird on its last legs.

 Frank wrapped his lips around the wound and grimaced when the tip of his tongue touched a few nerves around the wrist bone.

The taste of blood made him feel better.

II

Frank shook the can of Zippo fluid.

Humph. Half-empty.

He reached for the letter opener and fingered the engraving on the blade. The words made him cringe: Emma and Frank forever, written in an elaborate, illegible font. It reminded him of a Hallmark Valentine’s card; it reminded him of matching His and Hers T-shirts worn by obese couples in the park.

It made him sick.

It was twelve-sixteen.

Frank had forgotten how much he liked the smell of lighter fluid—he liked it the same way he liked the smell of petroleum. He looked over his right shoulder to make sure he pushed in the lock on the office door knob.

He hadn’t sniffed or snorted anything since Zelda’s birth three years ago, except for Marcia’s pussy, but that didn’t count because it made him horny, not high.

Maybe being horny is just another form of being high, Frank pondered. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the Frank & Marcia chapter reads like bad porn and is now officially closed because no-one appreciated it, especially not Emma..  

It was twelve-seventeen.

I wonder if I should lower my head toward the red tip of the Zippo fluid cap, or if it would be easier just to bring it up to my nose.

Frank couldn’t make up his mind. The blues and oranges and bright greens of the oil paintings were distracting and hovered around his head like troubled ghosts drunk on absinth. He sat there for a full minute staring at the can of lighter fluid before bringing the can up to his nose.

Here’s the thing about lighter fluid fumes: it’s one of depth perception’s oldest enemies. Frank shoved the entire cap into his left nostril and almost sucked his anus right up into his stomach as he gasped for breath. Eyes watering, he let out five or seven machine gun-like sneezes.

Frank was high.

I

Frank Miller leaned forward in his office chair and picked up the folder that his wife’s lawyer, a sleazy man wearing a sleazy brown suit, dropped on his desk five minutes before lunch at five minutes to twelve. The wheels on Frank’s chair squeaked when he sat back, and the soft leather backrest let out a sigh, emphasising concern on his forehead.

Frank wasn’t hungry anymore. He looked up at the clock over one of his daughter’s oil paintings.

It was ten past twelve.

His eyes darted across the walls. There were seven paintings in all, each one more pathetic than the next. Frank pulled a face. He couldn’t stand it when Marcia, the blonde bombshell of a secretary with a slight speech impediment (and the woman directly responsible for the divorce papers in the mustard yellow folder in his lap) said how talented his daughter was for a three year old. What got to him, and Frank reached for his beer gut where he felt his ulcer throbbing inside, was the way Marcia said ‘cute’, drawing out and over-accentuating the word as if he’d never heard it before: Keeeeeeewt.

What really pissed Frank off was how his wife had insisted he put the pictures up in the first place, and that he actually believed her when she said that a family has ‘an invisible bond’.

His wedding ring was starting to irritate him in the same way one would become aware of an itch that’s not really there—a psychological itch; one that might arise from something like watching a documentary on red ants or head lice.

He placed the folder in the OUT basket on his desk and tried to pull off his white gold wedding band. It didn’t some off. He shifted his weight a little to the right and farted.

That bachelors’ diet is taking its toll, Frank thought, and I have a suspicion that, judging by the pain in my guts, that I’m rotting from the inside.

It was twelve past twelve.

The mahogany desk drawer rolled open and Frank took out a can of lighter fluid. He was what his wife referred to (often in the company of powerful men and women) as ‘a biter of nails’. She would pull such a sour face when she said it that sheiks’ and Texan oil tycoons’ moustaches would droop, and they’d hide their hands behind their backs, either because they were ‘biters of nails’ themselves, or they were afraid that Frank was about to latch onto a random middle finger and start nibbling away.

Frank had a feeling it was the latter. The nail on his right middle finger was bleeding now, but he finally managed to lift out the tip of the Zippo fluid top. Why it was still in the desk drawer, he hadn’t a clue; his Zippo lighter, a wedding present from his father-in-law, was stolen years ago, and ‘smoking in the workplace’ had been banned for more than a decade.

Frank had never smoked.

He was a ‘biter of nails’.

An Interview with Peter McKinley

Sarah Fields: Good evening and welcome to Interviews. I trust you had a relaxing seven-day break from my rambles. Tonight, a tragic story. Tonight, a man who will be running in the Assassination Game. Please put your hands together for Peter McKinley!

SF (gets up and shakes hands): So good to have you on the show, Peter. Apologies for the short notice and thank you so much for coming.

Peter McKinley (mumbles): Thanks a lot for the invitation.

SF (places iPad in her lap, takes a breath, and looks up): Peter, how are you doing?

PM (sits forward and looks down at his shoes): I take it day by day, Sarah. You know, when the Guild didn’t announce any names to go on the Run last week, and when Michael Oboe confirmed that on your show, I thought I got away with it.

SF (accusatory): You didn’t, did you?

PM (annoyed, pulls up right shirt sleeve to reveal electronic monitor): No, Sara. No, I didn’t. I’m under house arrest, which is not too bad because I spend the last few days with my family.

SF (looks at audience): Excuse me for saying so, but that GPS thingy matches your yellow socks.

PM (sarcastic): Why thank you.

SF: Do you know who you’re running from, Peter?

PM: Maggie O.

SF: Oh, dear.

PM (swallows): You don’t seem to have much hope for me, Sarah.

SF: Well, Maggie O is one of the finest assassins out there, Peter.

PM: She has her weaknesses. I’ve done my homework.

SF: And she hers?

PM: I wouldn’t expect anything less. But I will say this: I have twenty-four hours to keep her from killing me, and if I can pull it off, I’ll be a free man.

SF: You do realise that no-one’s ever accomplished that.

PM: As I’ve mentioned, I’ve done my homework. But there’s always a first time for everything, Sarah.

SF (looks impressed and into the wrong camera): You’re right. Now tell us what happened, Peter. Why exactly do you find yourself in this ... predicament?

PM: I appreciate your choice of words, Sarah, but let’s be honest, it’s more of a life-threatening situation.

SF: True. True.

PM: You know, when Nopolka first started bumping into the furniture, I knew something was not quite right. Well, we all knew, but Kaspian and Nadildo were the ones who confirmed my suspicion when they told me Napolka used glue instead of jam on their peanut butter sandwiches.

SF (confused, scratches her head with her pen): So, if I understand you correctly, Napolka is your wife, right? I thought her name was Sandy.

PM: Sandy is her nickname.

SF: And your children’s names are Kaspian and Na...Na...

PM (serious face): Dildo

SF (puts hand over mouth, eyes are watering, looks down at iPad): Ri ... right.

PM (straight-faced): My children’s names are Kaspian and Nadildo. Is anything the matter, Sarah?

SF (reaches for bottled water with tears in her eyes): Okay. Something ... in my ... throat. Apologies. Please ... ahem ... continue.

PM: Well, after the glue-sandwich incident, I was going to take her to the hospital for a check-up after work. I picked up the kids from school at five, and when we got home we found her unconscious on the floor. She’d fallen down the stairs and broken her hip.

SF: Ouch.

PM: Yes. Ouch. In three places.

SF (takes another sip of water, then, poker-faced): Why only then? I mean, weren't there any other indications before the glue-sandwiches. And why did her eyesight deteriorate so fast?

PM: To answer your first question, there were other signs before the glue-sandwiches, but they seemed like honest mistakes at the time. For example, I’d ask her to pass me the salt, and she’d pass me the pepper; I ask for the house keys, she hands me the car keys. You see what I’m getting at.

SF: I do.

PM: So, Npolka’s eyesight. Sheesh. It’s pretty gross. Are you sure you want to hear it?

SF: Of course. We กน live in a society where nothing freaks us out anymore.

PM: That’s a huge generalisation. Maybe it’s just you who has that mindset, Sarah.

SF: Possibly.  

PM: Well, there was an incident before the glue-sandwiches when she lost control of the car and ended up in an old fishpond. Of course we didn’t know it was a direct result of her eyesight because she was driving through a storm and the road was slippery. Fortunately ER arrived on the scene before she drowned. See, the car was sort of stuck on its side in the shallow end of the pond and slowly sinking as its weight caused the mud to shift underneath.

SF: That’s horrible.

PM: Well, it turns out that the fish in the pond were infected with a deadly parasitic isopod.

SF: Gross.

PM: Listen to this: the male parasite enters through the gills of the fish and then change their sex—

SF: Ooh. Maggie O will love this little fact.

PM: Could you please not interrupt me?

SF (sarcastic, eyes wide, looks at audience): Apologies. How unprofessional of me.

PM: Right. So, after these little fuckers turn female, they crawl out and attach themselves on the tongue of the fish. They suck out the blood until the tongue falls of, act as the tongue, and then steal the food.

SF (looking pale): Jesus. Christ.

PM: Wait, it gets better.

SF: God. No.

PM (excited): Oh, yes. So, Napolka swallowed some of the water containing the larvae, right? These parasites are amazing. Instead of going for her tongue—how they know a human being will simply remove them and then seek medical attention, I don’t know—they entered her bloodstream and made a nest behind her eyes. There they munched on her central retinal artery and optic nerves.

SF (hesitant to take a sip of water): I don’t ... Peter ... I don’t know what to say.

PM: Don’t say anything, Sarah. It gets even better.

SF (pale, begging): Please, no more.

PM (on the edge of his seat): So, instead of growing into isopods, these bastards ... morphed into worms small enough to enter her retinal arteries. They mated in my wife’s eyes.

SF: (retching, mouth open): Fuuuuuck.

PM (sighs): You can say that again.

SF (whispers): Fuuuuuck

PM: So, the doctor tells me there’s nothing they can do for her, at which point I decide to take matters in my own hands.

SF (a slow shake of the head): And this is why you’re running from Maggie O?

PM: Yep. I took out my wife’s eyes with a spoon and dripped acid into her empty sockets to stop the pain.

SF (bursts into tears): No, no, no.

PM: I thought you said we live in a society where nothing freaks us out anymore.

SF (sniffs, regains composure, deep breath): Thank you for your time, Peter.

PM (gets up and salutes): No, no, Sarah, thank you. Oh, and one more thing. They also convicted me of releasing the worms into one of those water bottling plant reservoirs. You might want to get to a hospital as soon as possible. You have a good evening now, Sarah.

art by Craig Hopson

words by Ramon Ramirez

A wind screams through crepuscular fingers

of white trees

chalking cryptic graffiti over flaking paint

lacquered

by the spray of waves breaking

the shoal

spits pebbles against grimy windows.

  The door latches -- front and back -- rattle

the whey-faced man

sandblasts his warm and whisky breath

against the glass  

over his victims’ desperate little handprints

dappled in red

sand whispers from within the basement.

Bangkok

On hills of moist filth

enokitake 'shrooms bow

Break-of-dawn memories melt away in the midday sun;

the smell of secret sex under a pink mosquito net sunrise fades,

along with the faint fragrance of orange juice kisses (twenty percent morning rays),

kidnapped,

and tortured into injecting the entirety of their lip-smacking (eighty percent) sugary fumes

into the Styrofoam engines of fire ants’ pirate ships

(no skull-and-bone flags— more of a holy basil, chili, and garlic motif,

suspended above the tips of a broken and bloodied toothpicks)

that float away over waves of cooking oil and litter,

over pavement cracks filled with glass-brown-bottle-blood of last night’s fights,

sealed by the foam of sacred sewer lies

that whisper fragments of truth

into the holes of rusted manhole grills,

down into deep, dark waters

where beady-eyed beasts

and masked babies

This is Brazil

From a fifth storey bachelor’s window, pondering shadows in the car park below, Johnny opens another can.

I stuff another pipe.

  We talk about our trip to Brazil and how great it would've been had we gone; Johnny turns up the radio.

I take the first hit.

  Old girlfriends swing by in our conversation, most of them giving us the finger, mind you. Johnny dabs at his tears.

I pass him the pipe.

  Dusk-scalpels are slicing through the curtains now, scraping over coffee table dust, through Irish coffee stains, and cut open Johnny’s frown.

  The neighbours are at it again, arguing: he accuses her of seeing someone else, she tells him correct, it’s your fucking sister.

  Johnny taps out the pipe in the ashtray, says he has to do someone a favour and throws on his jacket; says take it easy, buddy.

  Johnny’s shadow tiptoes into the evening, a car alarm screams and a gunshot cries.

I convince myself this is Brazil.

They come for her in red and blue

ambulance lights disco dancing fragmented beats,

purple intent beating against flaking graffiti art on the garage door;

aerosol skeletal rose garden shadows cower

under twist-rust razor wire

fencing

in the flowerbed graveyard strewn with dogs’ delights—

there is neither bark nor howl,

those sounds echo deep within the basement walls;

lumps of meat a’thudder,

twisted growls

for the boy, Timothy,

which both Rottweilers had been fond of as well.

Until the very end.

  Neighbourhood eyes scowl,

wide-eyed middle-aged pyjama-children

fresh from midnight escapades;

arms folded tight,

everyone glares at her night-stained blood dress,

and the dogs’ heads held high above her pretty head,

revenge-trophies served lukewarm

on a school night against the backdrop of suburbia

crying

under ambulance sirens’

apocalyptic announcement regarding Amy:

had she not answered that phone call and left little Timmy unattended,

she might still have been able to hold him in her arms.