From soup to suicide: The true story of Maggie Lark

"Okay, interesting title, so, what's it about?"

"I don't know man. I figure I've got the title, I'll just work back from there."

"So no characters, no locations, no plot, no anything, just a title?"

"There's a character! There's Maggie, Maggie Lark."

"And who is Maggie, what does she do, how does she act in certain situations? What's her dog's name?"

"Fuck, I don't know, I'll make it up later."

"You always do this, you know? You make up a title for a story that sounds really intriguing, possibly quite interesting and then that's it. It never goes any further."

"That's not true, remember 'The tear of death: A rope of sand'? I got that published."

"I do remember that particular title. You did get it published, chapter one of what was to be a twelve part series, if I recall correctly? How did the other eleven go?"

"Don't be snarky about it, okay? I'll get around to it eventually, I've got all the characters and plot details up here."

"It's no good them being up there, they need to be on paper."

"I will. I'll get around to it."

"Before or after chronicling the adventures of Maggie and her suicidal soup."

"It wasn't suicidal soup, don't be daft! I think it'd just be cool little story, how the world passes by and people don't really stop to think that one day you can be sitting there, happy and content, enjoying a bowl of a soup and then the next day, or even that evening, be suicidal."

"And that's what happens to this Maggie character?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I figure I could work in this angle where she's eating different soups on different days to match her mood."

"What? Like 'gazpacho soup today - feeling cold' 'minestrone - feeling confused.' Or something."

"You're just taking the piss now, aren't you?"

"A little bit, yeah."

"Well, fuck you then."

"Oh come on, don't be like that. I'll be good, I swear. So what do you mean about the soup thing then?"

"Actually, to be fair, it was what you just said...only much less sarcastic. Like she eats creamy soups on days she feels content or noodle soups on days she's feeling grumpy or whatever else and she notes it in her diary. How she was feeling, what soup she was eating. And she does this every day until she commits suicide."

"You've literally, emphasis on literally, literally just come up with that on the spot now, haven't you?"

"Is it good?"

"It's half decent. Could certainly go a lot of ways with it."

"Then does it matter if it's something I've been working on or only just come up with it now?"

"I suppose not...you'll never finish it though, you never do."

"Maybe. Maybe."

Food Noir

This is a portfolio piece (that I'm going to have to either edit down or abandon as it's quite a bit over the word limit). Based on tastes/smells, we were tasked with keeping a food/drink diary for a day and then writing it into a story or poem. For some reason, I couldn't get it out of my head, I did the whole thing film noir style. So...yeah, read it in a Bogartian voice or something. 

8 AM - I woke up and immediately wish I hadn't. I'd been asleep for over 12 hours, my mouth was dry and the tongue fuzzy. The taste of stale air permeated. I reached over and had a long chug of the lemon and lime fizzy drink beside my bed and instantly felt revitalised. Back from the dead.

9 AM - I brush my teeth. The toothpaste is bland and promises "Extreme whitening action." I'd trade all that for some mint freshness. Why did they stop putting mint into toothpaste? Mint causes insanity in some mammals, are they suggesting it causes madness in humans too? The cold tap water washes away the blandness.

11 AM - I break my fast late today, a bacon sandwich. The bacon is off and slight too burnt. I don't care, bacon is bacon and so it goes down well anyway. The animals gather for scraps, but as it was bacon, there are none, sorry kiddos.

7 PM - It's been a long day, there's nothing in the refrigerator and I decide that I don't want Chinese again so I head out into the rain to get to get a sandwich down at the subway. The rain follows me into the store, the help as eager as ever to help. "What can I get you sir?" "A sandwich, meat." "What kind of meat sir, would you like some chorizo? It's our special today." Sure, whatever, I answer, waving him away. I've never had chorizo before, but whatever animal it's cut from has got to be one of god's favourites, spicy, in all the right kinda ways, that's for sure. I hope He don't get too angry with me for enjoying this sandwich. I treat myself to a glazed donut from A's da's place, as it's been a while, and it leaves me feeling good enough to box God if he is upset about the whole chorizo business. 

Mary Longnails

*skitter skitter skitter*

When I was a child, every other week (or so it seemed), my mother would take me to a step aunts and uncles house. I was never really loved by my step family and I was already a nervous child, painfully shy, afraid of his own shadow, that kind of thing and they helped to nurture that so much so that much of my youth was spent as a quivering wreck.

*skitter skitter skitter*

I don't like to think of often, because who would like to think of their traumatic upbringing. But, as is so often the case, as I lay here, trying to get to sleep (which would be far easier if not for my noisy neighbours and blasted skittering spiders), my mind wanders back to times past and in particular, those times. They were horrible. Not physically abusive, mostly mental, emotional. My step aunt and uncle lived in a house they'd built themselves. It was part of a new housing development site, so for the time being it was pretty isolated, with only half built shells of houses for company and enclosed by a forest of trees to the north and the river Mersey to the south. It was (and still is, from what I've seen of the area as I've passed through on my travels) a very picturesque location, separate from the urban sprawl that is Liverpool.

*skitter skitter skitter*

I wish that spider would go away. Anyway, the house, as I say, was remote (relatively speaking), and so when I was forced to stay over, that was that, I was trapped with my step cousins whilst the adults did whatever they did. Like I said, they never really loved me, never really accepted me. My step family were (and this might sound biased, because it is) idiots, very tribal and took great and delicate care to remind me in oh so many little ways that I was not one of them, as if I'd ever want to be. They were particularly fond of trying to frighten me with ghost stories. They often succeeded.

*skitter skitter skitter*

One time there was a huge party, it might actually have been Hallowe'en because I remember there being fancy dress, I was in the bedroom with at least ten of my step cousins, trying to sleep. I'm a nervous sleeper at the best of times and being in such close proximity to people who would gladly do me misery if I let my defences down, I was still awake long past midnight. Well, that was one reason why I was still awake. The other reason was that one of my step cousins, a mean, rat-faced boy, had told me the tale of Mary Longnails.

*skitter skitter skitter*

The story he told me was as such: Mary Longnails was a poor girl who had lived, and died, decades ago. Her parents had been fanatically puritanical and had never let her experience any joy, any extravagance, any pleasure aside from that which she could derive from scripture. Mary however, as children will do, found a way to defy her parent's wishes and she developed a massive imagination, particularly in dreaming. She found that she could, in her dreams, be anything she wanted, that she could escape from her crushingly oppressive life. That is until one day, she didn't wake up. Her parents, beside themselves with worry, tried everything they could to revive their daughter, but she remained comatose from that day forward, withering away before their eyes, however, as the days went by, the mother noticed that her daughter lips were slowly curling into a smile. When the mother first realised this, she thought it was her imagination. But day, after day, her daughters lips curled ever more. At first, the mother was relieved, exclaiming that even if her daughter was beyond saving, she was at least happy enough to smile, however, the smile soon underwent a metamorphosis. It changed from a serene, angelic smile to a cruel, menacing sneer.

*skitter skitter skitter*

The mother died in her sleep two weeks after the daughter had fell into her coma. The father had been working late to take his mind off of his daughter's condition and arrived home to find his wife already in bed. He tapped her shoulder lightly and broke down when he saw her open eye completely devoid of life staring back at him. He staggered out of the bedroom and into his daughters, seeking some form of solace he gripped her hand and found it to be stone cold. She had died too.

*skitter skitter skitter*

That was when the dreams started for him. In his dream he was looking outside his bedroom window, and saw his daughter flitting in and out between the thick cover of trees that surrounded the garden. Every so often she'd stop and look directly at him but her eyes held no recognition in them. He called out to her but this only caused her to dart away into the shadowy canopy of the trees and the dream would end. One evening, there was a grand thunderstorm and the father slept fitfully. In his dream he saw his daughter moving between the trees again and again called out to her. This time, however, she moved hesitantly onto the lawn and shuffled toward the house. A loud thunder crack shook the foundations of the house and the father awoke and found himself standing at his bedroom window instead of lying in his bed. He blinked blearily as he realised the oddness of the situation and then glanced down at his lawn where he saw a creature spring lithely back into the tree coverage.

*skitter skitter skitter*

The next night, instead of going to bed, the father stood at the window. He positioned himself in just the right position behind the curtains that he could see the trees but that anything in the tree line would be hard pressed to spot him. Hours passed as he nervously waited. The grandfather clock downstairs chimed three and then he saw her. His daughter was picking her way between the trees, moving with a grace she had not shown in life. He stifled a sob and then his eyes widened as his daughter stopped in her tracks and sharply glanced up at the window. He backed away instinctively. "Surely she can't have heard me?" the father thought desperately to himself. He cautiously stole a peek through the window, his daughter was gone. Then he heard a scratching noise coming from below the window. With great trepidation he pressed his face against the window and looked down. There was his daughter, scrabbling her way up the bricks, the scratching, skittering noise was her elongated fingernails scraping the brick.

*skitter skitter skitter*

They found the father three days later. The doctors declared that he had died of a broken heart following the death of his wife and daughter but they couldn't explain the look of terror on his face.

"And that house used to be here. It was torn down but this house is built on its remains. Mary Longnails is still about. She became a sort of vampire" my step cousin said, "only she doesn't drink blood. She eats dreams. She became a glutton for imagination and feeds off it, but especially dreams. So when you go to sleep tonight, make sure you don't fall asleep with your head against the wall, that's how she gets you."

I didn't sleep that night. At three AM I was crouched by the window, keeping a watch out for Mary Longnails. And I saw her, or at least I think I did. A slim, agile shadow slipping in and out of the trees that separated us from the outside world. Or maybe it was a dream and I had fallen asleep, but I still remember that smile, twisted, cruel, hungry.

*skitter skitter skitter*       

The Magician - Part 4

"About time you showed up back here, boy." The old man lounged back into his seat and grinned a black toothed grin.

"How did I? Where?" Spinelli held back the urge to throw up.

"Sir?" said the driver.

Spinelli spun his head around, he was still in the car. He blinked and he was in the abandoned house and the old man was smirking at him.

"You're doing this, aren't you?" Spinelli heaved drily.

"Doing what, sir? Mr Spinelli are you all right?" Spinelli looked at the driver and with one eye he could see him, with the other it was the old man.

"I'm...I'm fine" Spinelli fought back another wave of nausea, "just a...just a...dream, I fell asleep there for a moment."

"Do you want me to drive you home?" asked the driver, with just a hint of professional reproach.

"No, no. I've got to see this through." Spinelli saw the old man guffawing in his left eye.

"That's a good one, 'see', because the eye thing." The old man slapped his knee cheerfully. Spinelli closed his eye but it did no good, he could still see the old man.

He fumbled for the door handle.

"I'll be back in a few minutes." Spinelli said as he exited the car. He lurched forward haphazardly, his legs out of rhythm as his brain insisted that he was standing still, as was the case in the vision of his right eye.

"Come on lad, I don't have all day," the old man looked pointedly at his watch, and then back up at Spinelli, "Well, no, that's actually a lie, I do have all day, and so much, much more. Twenty four hours in a day? It's a wonder that you lot get anything done thinking that."

"You're having fun here, aren't you?" Spinelli sighed as the handle of the front door rattled uselessly in his hand and the door remained firmly shut.

"Of course, of course. It's the highest, noblest virtue, there is, being faithful and true to one's self and it is true that I like to have fun, so...."

The door flung open just as Spinelli charged it with his shoulder. Spinelli fell down face first.

"Really," Spinelli grumbled, "slapstick humour, vaudevillian pratfalls?"

The old man shrugged.

"The thing with humour is that you'll never make them all laugh because it's subjective. Which is why the good comedian only ever tells jokes to himself, that the audience enjoys them is merely a happy coincidental side effect."

"So, you're a comedian then? I thought you were a magician? Or an old man who was bored of what was on television? Who are you?" Spinelli pulled himself up the stairs. His vision split between the derelict hallway and the old man.

"Oh ho, my name is it that you're after, do you think I was born yesterday? Having my name would give you real power." The old man stood up and walked across the room. Spinelli's disembodied eye followed him.

"Tea? I know you'll be here in a moment and I do wish to be a gracious host if nothing else."

"A host who won't even tell me his name?"

The old man laughed a sharp, bark of a laugh.

"I knew I liked you for a reason. You've a cynical wit, a good thing to have." The old man turned around, holding two cups of tea and returned to his seat. He put them down on the coffee table.

Spinelli opened the door of the flat. In one eye he saw it as he remembered it the last time he'd seen it, various moulds plastered the walls and ceiling. A dead family of pigeons quietly decomposing in the corner. The dilapidated couch behind the broken coffee table. In the other eye, he saw it as it was when he first saw it. The picture of the old man when he was young and at the jazz club was on the fire hearth. The couch was worn, but well looked after. A rosy, glow permeated the room, helped, no doubt, by the cream wallpaper and soft forty watt bulbs in the chandelier. He looked with his other eye and saw the chandelier festooned with long abandoned spider webs, a sad little graveyard of insects.

"You have to be told to drink your tea every time you come here?" The old man's voice cut through Spinelli's reverie. Spinelli looked at the coffee table and saw it as both broken and whole, but the cup of tea was the same in each eye. He picked up the cup and sipped.

"You know, not too bad, mould aside."

"It's all about how long you let it brew. That particular cup has been there for two years now."

A dark suspicion came over Spinelli.

"This is...is this my cup of tea from when I was last here?"

"Waste not, want not."

"But I saw it, chipped cup, stuff growing in it, how could it be back like this?"

"Really, all the things you've seen in the past two years, in the past twenty minutes alone, that's the thing that sticks out in your mind? I'll never understand you humans."

"Then...you're not..." Spinelli struggled to think of a more delicate way to ask.

"Human? Certainly not! Well," the old man laughed a short laugh, "Maybe I was once, long ago. I've forgotten, to tell you the truth. I've lived an exceedingly long time."

"Then, what are you?"

"Mostly, I'm a me. I have fun, going around, mucking up people's lives, making other's lives better, staying hidden, living in the limelight, doing everything at once and nothing at all."

"Why?" Spinelli's eyes widened. As he asked the question, the old man seemed to flit between a number of shapes. Some barely human, others embarrassingly so. When it was over, the old man simply shrugged.

"It's what I do. Would you ask the sun why it burns?" The old man suddenly looked much older and careworn.

"Then why me?" asked Spinelli.

"Why you what?"

"Why did you pick me for whatever this was, this experiment?"

"Experiment?" The old man chuckled, "You think science has anything to do with this? No, this is magic, real magic, real grab you by the boots and make sure you damn well know what's going to happen magic! There are no reasons, there are no rules, or experiments, there is simply what is and what is not. I picked you not because of some grand plan, or because you had some intrinsic character quality. I told you the truth the very first conversation we had, you've even brought it up today. I picked you because there was nothing on the telly and it would amuse me."

"How would it amuse you? I've became a major success, the world adores me, I have fans, money, I have-"

"Yes you do, and so then why are you here?!" The old man stood up quickly. "I can control what you see, you don't think I can't see past your words, your lame and feeble protestations of love for a life that is bleeding you hollow because the one thing you want, to be a real magician, to have the world love you for your tricks and sorceries is nothing but a trick in itself? Your one trick, a simple trick, so simple you don't even know how you do it, gets you plaudits and praise from all and sundry and it eats you up inside, doesn't it?!"

Spinelli flinched and took a step back instinctively.

"So you come here, looking for the man who made it all possible, half hoping it was just a dream so that everything you've been able to achieve was on your own steam. However, and this is truly the part I love most, because as capricious as life is, magic is far more so bear that in mind when you make the choice I am about to give you."

"C-c-c-choice?" Spinelli stammered.

"Yes, choice. By now you've probably wondered why I split your vision, well, take it more broadly, not just vision, it's your perception, or rather, the world's perception. Half of you in one world, half in the other. Do you pick the grimy world, the broken world, where your integrity is intact and every little gain you make or fail to make is attributable only to yourself and the vagaries of society. Or do you keep my gift, not knowing how you do the things you do, and live a lie. Now, since this is the most momentous question you've ever faced in your life, I will give you a very generous ten seconds to answer."

"Ten seconds?"

"Nine now, well eight, actually seven, well actually six-"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Spinelli shouted.

"Yes?" said the old man serenely.

"One question, please, one question."

The old man nodded, then cocked his head to the side and smiled, a wolf watching his prey.

"What choice will I make?"

The old man's smile disappeared.

"Nice try kid, the whole 'logic defeats magic thing, oh I can't guess the right answer, I am defeated and must disappear forever more' shtick, that's just showmanship, can't really defeat magic like that. Anyone who appears to lose like that is just doing it for the drama so they can return just as, if not moreso, dramatically later. Now please, make your choice."

"Either one will give you satisfaction won't it?"

"Yes."

Spinelli gulped.

"Then I choose neither." Spinelli turned and walked away. Half his vision remained on the old man, who looked apoplectic. His form shifted several times, those were definitely not human.

A year later:

Spinelli hoisted the crate up onto the pallet.

"Take her up, Jim." He called out to the forklift driver.

"Right you are, Frank." Jim called back.

Spinelli wiped his brow. It took the world less than a week to get over the mysterious disappearance of Frank Spinelli, magician extraordinaire. Most people couldn't even remember why he'd been so popular in the first place and couldn't describe what the trick was or rather, they could describe the trick precisely, but it was so underwhelming that that couldn't have possibly been it.

From the shadows of a stack of crates, the old man peered out, a look of hatred etched on his face. Spinelli looked over and saw him, with great care that the old man, and no one else could see him, he then took two coins out of his pocket, flicked them in their air and caught three coins.

He looked at the shadows, but they were empty again. The old man would never leave him alone now, he was sure of that, but it was almost worth antagonising him just to see the look on his face. Magic couldn't replace that feeling.