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Monday, October 21, 2024#2024MakeAMonster Day 21: Game
GameThe first time Johnny wasn’t sure; sometimes punters do have a run of luck. The second time I watched his play. He wasn’t hand mucking, though. Even if I didn’t have the Eye, I can still tell. Whatever he was doing to bring in those wins, there were no cards being palmed. The third time, though, he came in in a bloody disguise. A good one too, nothing obvious. Just a change of clothes, from flash to quiet elegance, plus a new haircut and a pair of glasses. If he didn’t keep raking in the wins, it could have passed for a makeover. That kind of thing pisses me off. So I looked. I could see the bones under his skin, I looked so hard. I could see the flicker and flash of ideas thunderstorming around inside his skull, and let me tell you, there was nothing lively enough in there to make counting cards a possibility. We bounce the counters, yeah, but I don’t have any hard feeling towards them. We play the game our way, they play the game theirs, and when I’m playing, it’s them that lose. I respect the play, though. It takes skill, counting, and if there’s anything in the world I love more than Johnny, it’s skill. But this little bastard – he was colluding. Once I’d seen it I couldn’t believe I’d missed it before: the lines of sight between him and Rob – who I’d said to give a chance when Johnny didn’t want to hire him, and I wasn’t about to forget that – well, those lines were so charged you’d think they’d scorched a path in the air between them. I could smell it: the watching, the nerves, a stink like burned rubber. A glance, and Rob sauntered over so innocent. This punter wasn’t a hand-mucker, but Rob pulled the switch neat as a showgirl. A marked deck. ‘I can’t fucking believe it took me three nights,’ I said to Johnny. ‘Fucking Rob.’ Johnny wasn’t a man who got excited. He didn’t need to. ‘I can take him downstairs,’ he said. ‘Break a few of his fingers and he’ll get the point. Rob needs more than a few fingers breaking, mind.’ ‘Oh no you don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m too pissed off for breakages. Let me have the decks.’ ‘You sure, love?’ Johnny said. He wasn’t arguing. He didn’t, with me. ‘You’ll be tired.’ ‘I’ll do it with a song on my fucking lips,’ I said. ‘I’m going to sort those little fuckers.’ The guy wanted to wait a bit before he pushed his luck again, I could tell that, but I was impatient. I let a real hand-mucker slip an ace up his sleeve where Rob could see it, and when he reported it, the two-faced little bastard, I acted all grateful like I couldn’t see my nose in front of my face without his help. I sang a few siren songs out my window after midnight too; the spa-day scent of the sea followed the guy home. Soon enough he was back. I was ready. I’d rallied the pips. He sat at the table. New dye job on his hair, new glasses. Insulting my fucking intelligence. First hand, he lost. Cautious. Strangest thing, though: he lost the second too. You’d think he wouldn’t, the deck marked up as it was. But he bet a good amount, and then he blinked and rubbed his eyes. The cards before him weren’t what he’d thought they’d be. He blinked hard. He must have made a mistake, right? So he played another round, pushing his luck a bit; he couldn’t be wrong twice in a row. The marks on the cards were there, clear as day, and now he needed to get back the bit of his stake he hadn’t meant to drop. Oh dear for him. He lost that hand too. He looked at his drink. Pushed it away. I could taste that he was starting to get nervous. Had we spiked him? Was something wrong with his eyes? Because for just a minute, I think he saw it happen. But what they don’t believe, they don’t see. And everyone knows the spades don’t flick their ends under and dive off the cards like springtails. Now he was playing cautious. Small stake, just to test the waters. I considered fucking with him again, but no; one of us knew when not to overplay our hand. So I let it fall out the way he’d expected, and that got him ready to place a bigger bet again. There went half his stake. He was getting white now. Everyone knows the clubs don’t hunch up like grubs and pop out more fat little specks to turn a three into a nine. If he’d been a proper sharper he would have known something was wrong. Not what, of course, but he’d have quit before he lost anything else. Bad luck for him, he wasn’t a sharp. He was a gambler. So he was sweating as he put down his next bet. Rob, I saw, was getting edgy; he wasn’t quite so stupid he couldn’t see that it was going wrong. Johnny stopped him at the door, put his big, heavy arm around Rob’s shoulders, walked him back to the table. ‘You’re still on shift, mate,’ he said. And wouldn’t you know, Rob’s little gambling pal lost that one and all. Everyone knows the diamonds don’t grow razor-wire legs and scuttle off like crabs, but here we were. It was just me and the gambler at the table now. Or rather, that’s all anyone could hear. We keep the place dim-lit, the tables in little puddles of light. Now we were marooned in ours, me and the gambler, with Rob held under Johnny’s arm. The rest of the world was black as the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night. Beyond the shadows of our little game, you could hear the winds of the outer realms singing their knife-edged song. ‘Put your bet down, sir,’ I said. He looked at me. I could see the blood beating under his skin, so fast you’d think it was trying to break free. ‘I need to leave now,’ he said. ‘Oh, you do,’ I said. ‘But funny thing about our little establishment. What you want? Not a problem, if you play by the rules. But what you need? That,’ I tapped a red, glinting nail on the cards, ‘is not our problem.’ ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. I won’t come back.’ I looked at Rob. Johnny had a blade against his jugular now. ‘It’s a shame,’ I said. ‘Thought I could trust you. Guess you could say I had too much heart.’ And under my hand, the pips began to pulse. It was a drumbeat, that sound, striking the world. It knocked through us. ‘Brace yourself, Johnny love,’ I said, and then I let the card fall. You ever see a man’s heart explode inside his chest? Well, it’s not much from the outside, actually. A little blood coughed up, a bit of a nosebleed from the impact, maybe. But if you can see through the skin, well, my goodness. The brightest, most beautiful red in the world. A wet firework, trailing glory against the ribs. It was a shame Johnny couldn’t see it, but he got to watch the pips explode as I played the Two of Hearts. A pretty ink splash, staining the card like a pair of blooming roses. I always had a weakness for the Two of Hearts. Call me sentimental. Then I brought the light back. The outer reaches would feed on Rob and the gambler, so I didn’t need to worry about clean-up there, but the ink from the cards was right under my nails, and the pack was useless. We’d have to throw it out – but then again, a marked-up pack’s no good to anyone. Not unless they want to play games they really, really shouldn’t play. Sunday, October 20, 2024#2024MakeAMonster day 20: Fossil#2024makeamonster day 20 FossilAfter the museum closed, they sold off the skeletons. The ichyosaur skull went to another collection, a big one in the city; it was always a big piece for such a little place. They’d only had it because James Fitzroy, the man whose collection served as the foundation, had had a lucky day on the Jurassic coast: a young girl with a talent for carving and without Mary Anning’s connections had found a marvellous thing, and James Fitzroy had stopped in to her small seaside town on his way to somewhere more important, and bought it off her for enough money to cover a month’s rent. It was good luck for her at the time, the old placard said, although of course neither she nor Fitzroy knew the real value of such a find. Mary Anning wasn’t allowed to join the Geological Society of London because she was a woman, but everyone knew the value of her findings. That was why gentlemen scientists consulted her before publishing under their own names. The young girl didn’t know what would be a fair price for her find, but James Fitzroy knew what it was worth. He just didn’t pay it. Under the earth, her own bones flaked. It had been a pauper’s grave for her in the end. Her town hadn’t the splendours of Lyme Regis, and the sea shore had only so many sea shells to sell. Say that ten times fast. Or perhaps don’t. Under the earth, her bones gave way to the worms. Frizzling bacteria separated joint from joint and the white worms nudged between the rounded ends of elbow and arm that had once bent to lift a marvellous thing from the beach. Finder unknown said the placard at the new museum. Legend has it. Purchased by private collector James Fitzroy. The museum closed from lack of funding, that’s what they said. In specific, there were troubles with the building itself: structural damage is expensive to repair, and the lottery grants have many causes pleading for their help. Once the pipes burst and the floor flooded, too much of the collection was damaged to be replaceable: the stuffed wallabies and emus decayed at last; the Japanese prints washed off their pages; the ceremonial costumes swam a final dance in the swirling tides. Something might have been said about the shrunken heads James Fitzroy believed had been captured by warriors from hostile tribes, but as they were nothing more than leathered monkeys they weren’t a human loss. Just more taxidermy melting as the pipes buckled and sprayed a seashore into the Fitzroy collection. Under the earth, diggers had jostled her bones. There had been no headstone for the girl who found the fossil; she’d died in the poorhouse and nobody had more than a short prayer for her. And after a while, a mass grave for the uncounted is just wasted land, and it was time to put it to better use. Her name was Elizabeth West, if you want to know it. Her mother called her Bessy. It was the pride of the Fitzroy collection, the fossilized head she found. And while she’d slept in the soil, why bother to haunt the place that paid her only a month’s rent for a fortune in stone? Bessy had worked from dawn to drop-down-tired every day of her life, and once she lost the energy of youth, a quiet sleep was as much as she’d dreamed of. But the diggers stirred her bones. Bessy’s emptied eyes looked out on a world where after all, it seemed she’d done something marvellous and a man who’d haggled her price down got to put his name on it. Ichyosaur fossils have extraordinary eyes. Big as bowls, so round they can look nothing but shocked. Disproportionate for their size, is what the placard said, perhaps so that once upon a time, deep under the old seas, they could see in the dark. It was dark inside the pipes. At night the museum had no lights. There was only the screech of metal as something swam down it, lashing a whip-tail of bone. Only an undersea scream as the flood broke down upon a collection of treasures where only stone wouldn’t spoil. She sold a sea creature by the sea shore. Then a digger showed her that sleep can be broken. The floods set free the creatures in their glass cages and their bones swam in a roomful of sea. The money was no good to her any more – but the next time they sold her sea creature, someone had to pay what it was worth. For now the new museum remains unflooded. For now. Saturday, October 19, 2024#2024MakeAMonster day 19: Closet
‘Is there a monster in my closet, Mummy?’ asked Chloe. ‘No, darling, I’m sure there isn’t.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I’m pretty sure.’ I tucked the sheets tighter around her. ‘Check!’ I sighed, stood, brushed off my knees. What do you know, the closet door was a little ajar. It creaked as I eased it open further. I’d have to put some oil on that tomorrow. Eyes looked up at me, big as teacups, black as a night sky. Fangs chattered in terror. ‘No,’ I said to Chloe over my shoulder, ‘no monsters in here. Just a cardie fallen off a hanger. Nobody’s getting eaten tonight.’ I leaned down and stroked the jagged pelt. ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered, ‘the sheets will keep her trapped till morning. Don’t worry. I won’t let her get you.’ Friday, October 18, 2024#MakeAMonster day 18: Stripey
StripeyI wouldn’t give him my bag. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Please, I can’t.’ So he took his knife and whipped it across my cheek. The bag was still in my hand, but now I couldn’t think: every fibre of my attention was on the gash in my face, on how to stop staggering, how to hold still so the pain didn’t split me open. How to keep the blood from dripping down. ‘That’s the second time I’m asking,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me ask a third.’ ‘I – I can’t give you the bag,’ I said. ‘Please don’t ask me. I’ll take my wallet out of it. Please, let me give you my wallet.’ ‘You want striping again?’ he said. ‘No.’ The blood was in my mouth, bitter salt and the raw tang of meat. ‘Please – please just let me –’ I lifted the bag, trying to dig in it. I needed to clean my hand; there was blood on it from where I’d clutched my face, and I had to wipe it off, on my skirt, on my hair, on anything that would keep it from the bag. He raised the blade, turned it a little so the moonlight flicked across it. ‘I’m going to count to three,’ he said. I shook the bag open. I stared inside. My wallet – my wallet. If I could just see my wallet. If it wasn’t too deep in. Then there was another slash, and another shriek. It wasn’t mine. He’d cut the bag to spill its contents, to make it spill its guts across the road. Then it was him who screamed. Even though he’d cut my face, I couldn’t blame him. He’d never seen leather bleed and writhe. He’d never seen the teeth of a zipper slaver. It jumped from my arms before I could stop it. I was tugging the strap, trying to pull as it encased his head, gnawing with vicious relish; I could see the blood run down his neck in curtains. ‘Drop!’ I said. ‘Stop it! No blood! Bad bag! Naughty!’ I couldn’t pull it free till after it got his head off. Founts of blood shot up from the tatters; the walls of the alley were more striped than my face now. I shook the bag, and it chattered its teeth towards me. It could smell the blood dripping from my cheek. ‘Spit it out!’ I said. ‘Spit it out, or – or I won’t stitch you up where he cut you. I’ll – I’ll take you to the cobbler for fixing!’ It stopped. It snarled in resentful self-pity. ‘A scar won’t kill either of us,’ I said. ‘But if you don’t spit out that head this very minute, it’s the cobbler for you. You want to go back to him? I won’t rescue you twice, not if you mean to be this naughty. You spit him out, and then I’ll – I’ll have to get my own face stitched first, but then I’ll stitch you, and I promise I’ll do it with a fine needle and nice beeswax. And I won’t send you back to the cobbler. But spit it out. I won’t have it in my house.’ The bag grumbled around the severed head for a moment, and then disgorged. It rolled across the pavement, leaving a streak of blood behind it. Thursday, October 17, 2024#2024MakeAMonster day 17: Ancient
Wednesday, October 16, 2024#2024MakeAMonster Day 16, again: Bad Hair Day#2024MakeAMonster day 16 again; I wasn't happy with sending off something unfinished.Bad Hair DayShe never did the dishes. She was always late with her share of the rent. She left her dirty laundry piled on the sofa. She left cups out so long they started to grow mould, grey clumps of fluff on top of old sweet coffee. But it was when she brought the cat home that I thought it was time to move out. 'Aw,' she said, 'how could you not love a little kitty?' 'I don't like cats,' I said. 'They move too fast.' She said, 'I don't trust people who don't like animals,' and she said it like she was accepting an award. 'It's a phobia,' I said. 'Like spiders. One minute they're on the other side of the room and the next they're just there. They get from place to place like ghosts. Can't you take it to a shelter?' 'Don't listen to her, Furryboy,' she said, crooning into the cat's tufted pelt. She called him 'white', but that wasn't what he was: he was a nicotinish beige, the colour of a carpet stained over years and years of neglect. 'I couldn't leave you out in the cold, could I baby?' She said he'd been sitting out on the doorstep, giving her a look she couldn't resist. He needed a home. Kitties needed someone to feed them, to shelter them, to love them, and he'd chosen her. How could she refuse? He'd just popped up. And he was there whenever I came home, sitting on the sofa, kneading the spot where I sat with curved, transluscent claws. His eyes were yellow and they fixed on me. I looked through 'flats vacant' every few days. So far I hadn't found anywhere I could afford, or not without going so far from work that I'd have no life at all. This flat, I could get out of with a month's notice, I knew. She wasn't the landlord any more than I was. I cleaned as much as I could; there would need to be a tenant after me, and nobody would rent to the mess she left around. The edges of the taps were filigreed with mould. The space between the bath and the wall was so dank that I had to scrape tiny mushrooms out of it. We'd sit on the sofa watching movies in the evening. Her choice. I'd lost any will to argue, and she said I was being so sweet. The cat, Furryboy, would start on her lap; she'd call him up there. But after a while he'd climb onto me. 'Go back to Mummy,' I'd say, pushing him as much as I dared. His claws would be kneading my chest; they primped little holes into my shirts and pulled threads loose from my jumpers, and if I didn't get a towel over me in time, they raked little red lines on my skin. 'Aw, don't be mean,' she'd say. 'Let him have his choice.' It was the hairs that were the worst, though. He never sat in her spot on the sofa; it was mine he went for every time. She said it meant he loved his Auntie. My job was in a place where they said things like, 'We like to pride ourselves on our smart appearance in customer-facing roles.' They didn't pay enough to buy much that was elegant, so I had to make it up by playing minimalist: almost everything I owned was black. And every morning I'd leave for work, brush myself, rub tape over myself, pick over myself in increasing desperation - and every morning my boss would look at me and tut because I was straggled over with long, white hairs. Surrounded by the things. 'My flatmate has a cat,' I said. 'I'm trying to find another situation.' My boss shook her head, because if I couldn't even live with a cat and keep clean, how much faith could they have in my competence? I'd go home and take off my work clothes at once, put them in sealed bags. I took to changing in the office toilets as soon as I arrived. But the hairs kept coming. On the sofa watching movies, Furryboy would appear. He'd come out of nowhere and I'd jump so hard my teeth rattled: a leap across the room and he'd crossed the space like it was nothing, like he could flick from place to place as if he wasn't real at all. 'Aw, look who's come to say hello,' she'd say, scratching his head. And he'd pad over to me. He hooked his claws into my skin and kneaded. I found a flat I could just about afford and spent a weekend day going to view it. The windows leaked and the floors sagged, and the wallpaper was covered with gnarled flocking like lumpy fingers. 'No smoking, no loud music,' the landlord said, challenging me to take it or leave it. His eyes moved over me, my clothes mottled with white hairs thick as mycelium. 'No pets.' I said: 'How soon can I move in?' That night, sitting on the sofa with Furryboy fixing his claws on me, I said, 'I'm giving a month's notice. I'm moving somewhere else next month.' 'What?' she said, outraged. 'How could you do that to us?' I tried to shrug, but Furryboy had my chest hooked. All of a sudden his claws dug in hard, and when I looked at him, his yellow eyes gazed straight into mine. 'I think,' I said, 'I'm allergic to cat hair.' It was a month to last out. She was furious with me, wounded, betrayed by someone she'd offered nothing but adorable sweetness to and how could I throw it in her face? Every time I went into a room she'd turn her back, clattering about what she was doing and then leaving the room with her head held high. When I looked in the mirror, I saw my hair was starting to grey. Little white streaks were appearing - not just on my scalp, but threaded through my eyebrows. I could hardly believe in; early greying didn't run in my family. I was stressed, I said to myself, with my shitty job and my annoying flatmate and this horrible cat scratching cuts onto me every night. Once I was out it would be better. Furryboy sat on my lap every night. He'd taken to licking me, the hooks on his tongue raking my skin. When I stood up and walked away, he ran after me, winding around my ankles. I went into my room and tried to pack. My clothes were all covered in white hair; the inside of my suitcase was infested with them. Once I got out, I told myself. Once I got out. I'd clean everything, I'd wash and I'd brush and there'd be no new source of them, and once I got out there would come a day, finally, when I'd be clean. On the day I moved out I tried to say goodbye. I said I hoped she wouldn't have trouble finding another flatmate soon, and that I wished her all the best. She looked at me. I'd always thought her eyes were brown, but they had a golden tinge as she said, 'Oh, you can go where you like. I'm sure we'll say hello.' After that she blinked and I thought it must have been at trick of the light, but I was out of the door and into a cab and my new flat was damp and tatty and I'd be by myself. I could have some quiet. I could brush myself off and start anew. It was a funny thing, I thought as I let myself in: there must have been spiders at work. Fine threads were spread across the carpet. The next day I went to work. I changed into my clothes from their sealed bag; I dusted myself off; I went upstairs. 'Oh dear,' my boss said. 'This really won't do. You must go and look in a mirror.' There were white hairs on my shirt. I brushed myself off. I shook my head, and more white hairs fell down. I was going grey, white threads bursting out amidst the dark, and they were on my shirt. 'No,' I said aloud. 'No, it'll be fine.' But when I went home that night, I wasn't really surprised to see the scattering as I walked across the carpet. I could feel it now: a toothed tongue, licking my skin, raking off little spores of hair that scattered around me. I stood in the middle of it: a fairy ring. A Furry ring. Right in the centre of where threads grew and mingled, mycelium spreading its net. He just popped up, the cat Furryboy. That's what she said. She never did keep the mould at bay. Kitties needed someone to feed them, to shelter them, to love them, and they make their own choices. And he'd never had any trouble crossing the space to me. Raking at the edges of my hearing with a toothed tongue, I heard the beginnings of a purr. 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