NEW PROSE

ESCAPISM                                                                                           

 

I’ve decided to give the Socialist Workers who’ve set up a table outside Topshop’s flagship store on Oxford Street some brutally honest feedback: Not to their faces, of course - I suspect they wouldn’t react too well to being taken to task by a bank clerk out on his lunch-break - but, instead, by using telepathy.

 

They hopefully won’t realise it’s the tall slim guy in the dark suit leant against the railings smoking a fag who’s giving them grief: Today, with shoppers out in force for the start of the summer sales, I should be nothing more than a face in the crowd. And even if they do work out that I’m the culprit, there’s the Oxford Circus station entrance just a few yards to my left, down which I can quickly escape if I have to.

 

But, anyway, the Socialist Workers have blinkered eyes: They’re class warriors, armed with four semi-automatic mouths and a vast array of incendiary anti-capitalist texts, who think that shoppers want to be liberated, unable to see that shoppers, instead, have turned their faces into impenetrable shields of apathy. And, sure enough, when the fierce looking man in the red shirt yells out “Get yer Socialist Worker!”, no-one does: Not one shopper shows even the slightest bit of interest, not even a cursory sideways glance. And even when the tiny but very loud woman in the purple dress - with a voice as shrill as the passing buses’ screeching brakes - screams “Stop the deaths in Gaza!”, the attack’s again repulsed by an endless sea of blank expressions.

 

And so, having gauged the situation, the time has come: While taking one last puff on my fag, I will use what I’ve learned so far from a book I bought - called “Telepathy for Dummies” - to give the SWP some ESP (even if I know there’s no way really of getting through to minds as closed as theirs).

 

Here goes:

 

Socialist Workers! Far too smug and deluded to even realise that you’re fighting a losing battle: OK, so it’s obvious that you care about the plight of the people in Palestine, but I know - as much as every other politics-vacant philistine - that virtually no-one on this street, while their brains are switched to shopping, will really give a damn about what happens there . . .

 

I stop to study their faces, checking for even the slightest sign - but no, nothing at all.

 

Hmmm: The lack of any reaction to what I’ve just said suggests to me that the Socialist Workers are no more telepathic than anyone else.

 

They probably don’t have x-ray vision either, but I wonder what they’d make of me if they saw that I was wearing a pair of knickers and a bra beneath my suit.  

 

They’re probably the only people on this street who’d still be more disgusted by my suit.

 

Well, just for the record: what I’m wearing underneath is the real me. I’ve been a closet transvestite all my adult life: Everyone knows me as Raoul, but I’d much prefer to be known as Rachel.

 

Would it help for the Socialist Workers to know that it wasn’t capitalism, but transvestism, that made me choose to work for a bank? Women’s clothes don’t grow on trees, and working at the bank is just a means to an end. But still, being as my transvestism feeds on money, not ideals, I guess it makes no difference: The Socialist Workers would be wasting their time on me as well.

 

And now that I’ve finished my cigarette, I’m not going to waste any more of my precious time on them. I’ve an hour for lunch, and less than that to shop: I must remain focussed.

 

But, just as I stub my cigarette out underfoot, some homeless looking man, with dark greasy shoulder-length hair and a cut face, and wearing a soiled and ripped padded camouflage jacket, appears out of nowhere and pesters me for a light.

 

I rummage in my pocket and hand him my lighter. He studies it for a moment, as if not knowing what to do with it.

 

“Where’s the fag?” he snaps. “Why are you giving me a light without the fag?”

 

The way he says it - like I’m stupid, and the hint of menace in his voice - makes me feel like I’m being mugged.

 

I hand him a fag: He lights up, tosses back the lighter and, without even giving me another look - let alone any kind of acknowledgement or thanks - walks off down the street and disappears around the corner.

 

What a cheek! Who the hell does he think he is? He may be homeless but it costs nothing to be polite. If only I’d had the guts to refuse that jerk!

 

Still - feeling better having had a much-needed nicotine fix, I decide to simply dismiss the guy in the same way I’ve dismissed the Socialist Workers: I’m here to shop and nothing can get in the way of that and, anyway, getting depressed just isn’t an option when I can hear - as I now go past the doors of Miss Selfridge - my favourite song, “We like to Flash” by the Gauntlet Girls:

 

“We like to dress, / we like to flash. / We’ve paid our dues, / we’ve got the cash. / So what have we got to lose? / It’s time to flash / and shop for shoes!”

 

I simply can’t resist this kind of track: It’s so unapologetically vacuous - pure escapist trash, on my favourite subject, shopping. When life gets you down, it’s retail therapy that comes to the rescue . . .

 

So I go inside the shop and, now, surrounded by beautiful tops, skirts and dresses, I’m able to momentarily forget myself, as I run my fingers freely over rows and rows of beautiful garments, stopping at various points to pick out ones I particularly like, including a short pleated tartan skirt, the hem of which I run my hand underneath, imagining how sexy I’d feel if I had it on at home - especially with my legs bare and freshly shaved - when a huge stocky bald-headed man wearing tattoos and a Union Jack t-shirt appears and brings his face right up to mine.

 

“See - that’s my bird there,” he says, smiling aggressively like an ape, and pointing to his fake-tanned mini-skirted girlfriend peering at us from a nearby rack of tops. “So, as you can see, I’ve got reason to be here. Where’s yours?”

 

“What do you mean: Where’s yours?” I reply, indignant at my personal space being invaded, not least because this guy has incredibly bad breath.

 

“Where’s your bird?”

 

His halitosis makes me flinch.

 

“My girlfriend isn’t a bird,” I protest.

 

“I said, where’s your bird?”

 

I notice he’s clenching his fists.

 

“She’s not on this floor,” I say, unconvincingly.

 

“Piss off, tranny.”

 

“I’m not a tranny.”

 

“Piss off, coz you’re starting to bother my bird, and I can’t have that.”

 

“You can’t talk to me like that.”

 

I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes - right in front of him.

 

“You’re asking for a smack, you fackin’ poof.”

 

The last thing I want is a scene, so I quickly turn on my heels to make a break for the door, forgetting I’ve still got the skirt in my hand.

 

The security gates go off, and already I’m outside on the pavement.

 

“You need to come back inside the shop, please, sir.”

 

The security guard has just seen me run out with something that hasn’t been paid for - and that thug there is hardly going to back me up if I explain what’s happened - so, in that split-second, adrenalin pumping, I decide to keep on running, straight round the corner and up Great Portland Street and, glancing back, I see the guard’s in hot pursuit, so I turn another corner and run right into the homeless guy in the thick camouflage jacket who, having virtually mugged me just minutes ago, is doing the same thing now to patrons outside a corner café.

 

“What the . . . ?”

 

It’s like I’ve hit a dirt-encrusted padded wall. The guy’s confused for a moment, but then his eyes bulge with anger like he literally wants to kill me, so I quickly thrust the skirt at him - “Sorry, here, take this as compensation!” - and, thrown by what I’ve done, he takes it.

 

I’m running again, leaving the homeless guy behind on the pavement clutching this skirt attached to a hanger and, glancing over my shoulder, I see the guard, coming round the corner, run straight into the back of him. Smack! They both end up in a crumpled heap on the ground.

 

At the next corner I pause and look back to see the guard in a headlock, then continue to run. I turn left, aided by the strong gravitational pull that the mouth of Oxford Circus station is right now exerting and, for a moment, I’m going at the same speed as a sightseeing tour bus where, from its open top, a guide with a microphone is telling his latest batch of tourists:

 

“. . . Here, at London’s busiest intersection, we’re about to pass through bustling Oxford Street, where you can very easily lose yourself . . .”

 

Well, here’s hoping that I manage to, I think to myself, as I let the bus go on ahead: Having almost reached the station entrance, I’m forced to slow to a walk - not just because this part of the street is too crowded for me to dodge between pedestrians, but because I’ve noticed three policemen hovering outside Topshop, who weren’t there before - one’s talking into his walkie-talkie - and it looks as if they’re on their way to Miss Selfridge.

 

The Socialist Workers have spotted them and, of course, are convinced it’s all to do with them. The loud-hailer’s out: “It’s nice to see the police have joined us!” yells the red-shirted guy. “The authorities know we’re a threat, coz we tell the truth . . .”

 

Socialist Workers! The police aren’t interested in you: It’s me they’re on the look out for.

 

But, thankfully, I’ve had more beginners’ luck in evading the law than I’ve had with any attempts at doing telepathy: I’m already descending the steps into Oxford Circus station, struggling still to take in what’s just happened, but knowing I’ve certainly had a lucky escape . . .  

 

 

Thomas McColl lives in London, and has recently had short stories published in Notes from the Underground, the Molotov Cocktail, and One Eye Grey. He also won second prize in 4'33" Magazine's 60 second story contest and is currently finalizing a novel, called "Raoul Code Name Rachel".

 

 

 

 

REVISITING THE ANCIENT CITIES

 

We were contemplating the greatest cities, and how their various declines came about. We recalled Thebes, whose inhabitants gave their whole lives to building each other’s mausoleums until there was no one left to inter. We thought about Tikal, or Yax Mutul, whose people invented everything but a cure for the ancient traditions of disease. Of Ur, whose people, refusing at the last to abandon the luxury of their decaying city, consigned its future to that of a bustling necropolis. Of Rome, the jewel of the first true Western empire, which proved, empirically, the catastrophic fate of a city that turns against itself. About Constantinople, the consummate capital, which revealed to us the limits of a prostituted city that serves too many different masters. Of Mumbai, whose destitute inhabitants drafted and quickly circulated a set of plans for razing it completely, and in doing so, discovered the only true path to a revising a city. About New York, whose inhabitants ostentatiously wrote their own prophecies, ultimately predicting the cannibalization of their own city, which, when it arose, not a few acted out in ecstasy and exaltation. Of the Tower of Galápagos, attempting to impress upon its fervent migrants one united tongue and set of customs, but which, like its predecessor in Babel, became a place where people were doomed to repeat their same mistakes for time immemorial. About Hrůza, an ominous city, furtively erected in crevices, whose inhabitants came to learn the punishment for evading the search parties of death. And of Espejismo, where you were born and where I was born, where we will both live and die, content to know that we did so in the greatest city the world has ever known.

 

 

Devin Schiff is from Rhode Island and lives in Chicago now.

 

 

 

 

OLD SPARKY

 

I smoke cannabis in the cold cement basement while the baby naps, sitting on the

electric chair his great-grandfather paid a fortune for at auction: Old Sparky. He was an

electrician by trade--in the days when people smoked unfiltered cigarettes in the back of

airplanes, blew it at babies’ faces in the front of restaurants, and fried for their crimes.

Old Sparky is full of life--as she was for the dozens of human bodies used to stain

her wood. Fingernail indentations borne into coarse leather, urine and feces in the center,

we listen to her purring after midnight on those weekend sleepovers, our nightlight and

alarm clock blinking with the buzz of a billion hornets.

On Halloween, Grandpa answers the door and hands out candy caramels wearing

the mask of a man condemned to death--the actual cloak of those who have been fried like

popcorn. His father installed the chairs in prisons in Florida until the day the alligator took

his arm.

The house is full of noises and shadows and some of them chase children to an early

grave. To this day we are still digging. Grandma hit her head sliding down the banister after

a lavish cocktail party the night before Christmas. She hit her noggin on the marble and

never woke up. That night the whole neighborhood lost power. It took eighteen hours for it

to be restored.

Grandpa began sleepwalking and flipping the switch when the baby was born. He is

suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia has made him dangerous. Without supervision he

feasts on blackened bananas and fruit flies. We had to install those plastic barriers used for

pets and babies--to keep him out of the basement, but he climbs them with the ease of an

Olympic hurdler.  

Heaven fogs the rafters where termites feast on splintered wood and baseball mitts

that will never be used. A moth beats its wings into the dusty light bulb which hangs from a

string. Old Sparky, the distinct cry of the baby waking from a nap: groggy, confused, and

frightened.

I rock him to sleep against my chest in the electric chair. After the assassination

attempt on Ronald Reagan, Grandpa converted Old Sparky into a rocker and displayed it on

his front porch. On holidays, when other neighbors hang wrinkled American flags, we help

Grandpa carry the electrocution device up creaky stairs. This is how we bond: building a

monument to capital punishment, decorating the porch and murder machine to fit every

holiday--unlike those tree-worshipping miscreants who desecrate their property with

wasted electricity.  

We are the rhythm of two beating hearts filling the spaces where dozens departed.

The breath of Old Sparky brushes against blond necks. Smoke rises from our skulls.

Nobody listens to the parting symphonies of a chair that has served as a doorway between

worlds. We caress the wood of those who have died innocent, wondering if Grandpa will

pull the switch.    

 

 

Like nomadic Pericú natives before him, Matthew Dexter survives on a hunter-gatherer subsistence diet of shrimp tacos, smoked marlin, cold beer, and warm sunshine. He lives in Cabo San Lucas.