Sunday, May 13, 2007

ThE MURkYWORLd OF MiSTER ZERO (1)














The Murkyworld of MiSTER ZERO (part one)

Mister Zero and his thoughts can only bring madness. He has recently found himself thinking of buying a megaphone and a crossbow, climbing onto the roof of Saffron Walden library, and screaming ‘ I AM ZERO, THAT’S RIGHT FUCKERS!! ITS NOT YOUR DAY! YOU CAN ALL DIE NOW, THANK YOU FOR THE HOB-NOBS!’
Mister Zero and the descent of love – he can still smell the lotions from his youth, and of his grandmother’s skin. Mister Zero can sometime be seen madly stalking himself and dancing naked in the homes of the elderly. In his silent moments, he writes on small pieces of paper – that, he is Margaret Gray’s grandson and nothing can silence the noises in his head. Sometimes he has terrible dreams about WiXOM – another awful place filled with fat ugly scum and murderers. Mister Zero likes to remain anonymous, although he has noticed an attractive young creature that would sometimes walk past him, this person was Jezebel. Mister Zero liked Jezebel. Jezebel liked Mister Zero; he reminded her of her father and the vibrant black colours of torment. Perhaps he would one day ask Jezebel to become his secretary and take dictation, help him with his letter writing to Joshua Kane, and maybe, just maybe, she would let him ‘play’ with her.

On the 13th day of each month, Mister Zero crouches on all fours in the woods and licks the bark off dead trees; he wishes those nights would last forever. Mister Zero does also maintain a semblance of normality, especially when he is shopping or hiding in his little shop of twine. Mister Zero is unable these days to face more and more children, everywhere more and more children. More mothers with prams and brats, window-shopping and wasting time, millions of the little fuckers, even at the parties that Mister Zero is occasionally invited to. Of course he tries to forget that he is also one of the THEY. The THEY with children, children that will eventually become obnoxious teenagers. Mister Zero weeps dry tears and wonders ‘WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? I HATE CHILDREN!!’Mister Zero hates sitting down and eating a roast dinner with ‘the family’. It not only disgusts him to watch others eat, but reminds him of his role as an adult and reinforces his fears about a lack of identity and individualism. Mister Zero sometimes sends texts to his friend Joshua Kane, for advice – but recently Joshua Kane has been quiet, lying low, very low. Has he gone underground? Is he running a subversive covert bomb factory? Or is he observing a vow of silence, linked with Joshua Kane’s self-made religion of EVIL? Mister Zero sighs and stares at the greying sky ‘oh despair, oh reluctance to participate! The substance that comforts me is of an alien material. My bones are more brittle than the rose thicket and my heart bears witness to the LIE’
More and more time passes silently, and dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for him. Nothing shows why, at this, his unique distance from isolation. He stands on a high step of a Victorian house by the sea, smoking and wondering what he has in common with humanity, and how to make small talk. Mister Zero considered the offer recently made to him about joining the local illuminati and the speech he might give at his acceptance. ‘Welcome to Saffron Walden, twinned with hell and crammed with middle class bitches on heat, who all want something for nothing, to fit their sagging menopausal bodies. Thank you and goodnight’ OR perhaps his other speech would be more appropriate he mused. ‘Fat Mongoloid Suffolk In-Breds throng the small streets. Caught out by the unseasonable weather conditions, they HUFF and PUFF, sweating profusely under itchy wool/acrylic hats and oversized woolly coats. Fat moustached old bags, shout incoherent instructions to their pathetic husbands, and teenagers linger, open mouthed and dribbling. Welcome to the Saffron Walden!’ He smiles a dull smile, and wonders if he would be applauded or jeered?
Soon it will be daybreak, soon the day will break, he can’t stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broke: always the same day that comes around like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then, the day before the day before, and then the day itself. The breaking day. The day the Butcher comes. When Mister Zero will be thinking about women, maids, sitting on the edges of their narrow beds, in their white cotton baby doll nightgowns, their hair unbound and rippling down over their shoulders, their lips parted, their eyes gleaming. Waiting for HIM, Mister Zero. A woman to Mister Zero is a hefty creature, and could snap a man's spine in two with her thighs, which Mister Zero envisions as greyish, like boiled sausages, and stubbled like a singed turkey: and enormous, each one as large as a piglet. Mister Zero was pleased to be filled with conflicting emotions.
As each day passes, a small yet significant piece of Mister Zero withers and dies, and nothing replaces it. Like making love to a body with an incurable disease, every moment is less fulfilling than the last. Mister Zero lights another cigarette and thinks ‘I really am feeling more and more malevolent towards people! How can I change the shape of my jigsaw pieces without throwing away all the bits? Actually that’s the only way isn’t it? I have to take everything to the dump and start all over again! How the hell do I do it? Its too difficult isn’t it? Isn’t it? The terminal disease of life thoughts, things and events, is grinding me into dust. Its like a tidal wave of misery that comes from nowhere, drowns me, and then surges on to the next poor fucker’.
When Mister Zero is occasionally sitting in the high branches of sinister trees, it seems that he is eternally waiting to be banished to the dirty pool of muck that collects at the bottom of the old stone well. Probably the same well where Joshua Kane drowned ‘she we do not speak of ‘and Lord Muddle crawled naked towards the dark light of pity.

Mister Zero finishes his cigarette, he stubs it out and goes back to his car, he has forgotten what he was meant to be doing and he can hear a distant cry of a Crow. As he drives off towards his unknown destination he is daydreaming, he is lost in his thoughts.
Mister Zero is dreaming of a corridor. It’s the attic passageway of his old house, the house of his childhood; the big house they had before his fathers’ failure and death. The maids slept up here, it was a secret world, one, as a boy he wasn’t supposed to explore, but did, creeping silently, listening at half opened doors, pushing the tissue out of the blocked keyholes to gain flashes of unknown erotica. What did they talk about when they thought no one could hear? Occasionally he would venture into their rooms. With a shiver of excitement he’d examine their things, their forbidden things; slide open drawers, touch the comb (with two broken teeth), the crumpled petticoat, the underwear with pink flowers, the black pop-socks, the denim micro – mini skirt. He touched them, they felt warm. Then he is brought out of his dreaming, when he hears a loud sharp piercing scream, it fills his ears, hurting him, he wants to cry. He has to stop the car, get out get out, breath fresh air, and get away from that screaming, that awful noise. As he stops, opens his car door, and stumbles to the road edges, he realises that the screams are not coming from anywhere or anyone; the scream is coming from him. Mister Zero tries to stop himself, but he is unable to. A few cars pass him, he sees a small child staring at him, a child who looks horrified at the expression on Mister Zero’s face. This amuses Mister Zero, and then as suddenly as it appeared, his screaming stops. Mister Zero starts to calm a little, and knows that his brain cannot cope anymore with all this thought, his fantasies, his realities and his phobias. He had to do something, but what is that something? He courts the unusual, he knows that he is apart from the herds of scum; he is an intelligent artistic fellow. Yet, he is desperately unhappy. This is his life; he seemed forever destined to tread the path of woe. Mister Zero sighed; a small tear runs down his snakelike skin and falls in slow motion to the tarmac. ‘ Nothing ever quite fits properly does it … I am the Ikea man’.

Mister Zero slowly walks back to the Victorian house, which holds the horrors of normality and family for him. Soon, they would depart and go back to the Tower of Lost Control, the home of Mister Zero and he wishes more and more each day that he were alone there. Perhaps on his return, he should investigate the septic tank and devise a plan. No one would miss his family, as no one really ever see’s them. He could just say that ‘they’ have left him.
As he enters the house, he goes to the kitchen, it is late and nobody is around and Mister Zero is a little thirsty and slightly hungry. After five years Mister Zero has finally found the courage to boil an egg, trying very hard not to think about his lifetime fear of saucepans. As he waits for the egg to boil, he decides on a whim to call the IT, expecting a disconnected tone, or an answer phone message, which has been the case for the last year. However it started to ring and then, a woman with a distinctly northern accent answered. Mister Zero asked to speak to Jezebel and said his name was Reginald, the woman was confused, when Mister Zero tried to verify the It’s number to the woman, she said she was driving and couldn’t remember her own number. Mister Zero realised that after a while a discontinued number is passed on to another mobile phone. The woman said she has had the phone for about six months. Mister Zero thanked her and hung up, he felt sad, and the egg was now boiled, but now Mister Zero had no appetite and left the egg in the saucepan. He sat at the kitchen table and thought of Jezebel, he imagined her in a cage, Mister Zero would feed and water her, and he may allow her to play on an exercise wheel. However, there would be a padlock on the bars and he would never allow Jezebel to leave. Mister Zero smiled, he liked this fantasy and was now even more determined that Jezebel would become his secretary and that she must do everything that he tells her to do or she would be punished! Mister Zero thought of Rocks, blood and a village of inbreeds, he thought of suspect zero, of no attachment and no remorse. He thought of his writings and the enigma of Margaret Fright. Oh yes, Margaret Fright, a 70-year-old spinster living in SIN. Her fetish for shoes and poodles, yes, the world will read all about her soon. Mister Zero feels once more that he could be the creative God that he knows he really is and his heart goes ‘BOOM-BANG-A-BANG! Suddenly he hears rainfall; he peeks out of the window. ‘Thank God for the rain, it helps wash the garbage from the streets.’

He sits back down at the kitchen table and once more ponders over Jezebel. Mister Zero decides that dirty SEX with Jezebel may be a rewarding experience and he was now ready to offer any comments and answer any questions anyone may have about the Murkyworld of Mister Zero. He texts Joshua Kane and Jezebel, an image of something that was actually nothing, and retires to bed.

Tomorrow would be a new day, tomorrow would be a good day, tomorrow the septic tank would be used to its full capacity and Mister Zero would finally be alone in the Control Tower.



The End

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