WORMCASTS

Does your sandcastle ever quiver? Does its flag shake and disappear?

I live in the sand on the beach. I died here.

That would be me doing those things. I rattle the pearls in oysters as you make love in the dunes. My gas fingers might flick sand in your eyes but I have no knowledge of what you are doing. I died too young at the hands of my witched mother who buried my body on the shore.

When the storm clouds boil I will wail my lament. The rains will make a stage on which I dance, rising at last from the sand, my cell.

The curse I am burdened with is the longing mew of the gulls. The sad pipe of the oystercatcher. The haunted howl of the loon.

Like the sea's flirtation with the land my sentence will remain unceasing. A walker of silt. A singer of glass. A sleeper in razorshells and the marram grass I blow to mimic the winds that go wherever they wish.

There are others here. Dead pirates and scurrillous hands who paid the price of landing on this beach. No fanfare for them. Just the bloody handshake of their swift demise and the sorrowful melody of a new dune.

Not everyone is good. There are dark hearts on this beach. Sable malcontented souls, conniving and clandestine. Evil.

These can harm those who wander above. Those who falter in the darker nooks. Delicate they are not as they scuttle their pulses with dreadful finesse, emerging from caves and slips with mad intent to leave their crypt by jacking those alive.

I slithered off for I cannot watch the mudded gurgling as strays are pulled below the drifts. Like cows they moan and wriggle but soon fill up and join the rest of us damned things trapped with the worms and fleas.

I sometimes hid from the dark ones in wormcasts. My finger touching the toppermost coil. You may have stood on me unawares, your foot momentarily tickled as I turned to dive. I would count your retreating footsteps before I went below.

Beyond the sludge where breathing stops I often ride the lugs as they nudge their way to where the air is salted sweet. Like dolphins of the mud it is my single joy within these walls of grit where I shall live forever.

I may kiss your soles as you amble over my sky of grains and dream of sweet release and salvation.

THE SIX ARCHES OF THE KING

Josef sat alone on the old sofa. 

He liked it down there under the six arches. 

Sometimes he slept there. It was so quiet. So peaceful. Away from the bustle of the world. The rumble of the trains didn't bother him when he slept. There weren't many anyway. Maybe the milk train during the night. He dreamt of the milk sloshing around in its tanks. Its creamy goodness. Essential. Like white blood.

Josef wasn't essential. Not anymore. He was a tramp. A vagabond. A traveler of roads and rummager of bins. He lived on the rim of society and nobody noticed him. He was nothing. Like lint or lather. Existing but disappearing.

He had once been important. He had once commanded men. But he didn't think about that anymore. That was eons ago and now was now.

He tightened the string around his waste and hunkered down into his huge tweed coat given to him years before. It was rank now. Thick with filth but it kept Jo warm on cold nights like this. He took one more swig of stale rum from a half empty bottle he'd found in the fields and closed his eyes.

It was late March and the stars were out in force, punctuating the grand stanzas of the heavens above him. He felt the weight of the arcing sky and dreamt of Atlas holding up the world in his shoulders. Poor bugger. All those worries.

Orion's belt was clear as day and Betelgeuse winked and blinked its red lashes. It would be a hard frost in the morning and Jo drew his knees up in anticipation. He slept. Cold and without sound.

In the morning, despite bright sunshine, the fields near the arches were sugared with rime. Jo eased into a seated position on the split settee and stretched his old limbs, his arms reaching up as he groaned himself awake. He was frozen to the bone and took a cold nip for breakfast. He rolled some shag into a rizla and licked the edge. The thin cigarette was barely flammable but Jo lit it with expert hands and inhaled deeply. Five leaves left Nick Drake had said. Five leaves left.

Whilst Jo was finishing his roll-up he heard a scraping sound. He keened his good ear and sensed something coming through the haystack. Gradually a small dark creature emerged from the hay and walked very slowly toward him on four legs. It had a rounded back and a scaly head. It was clearly a tortoise.

It sat on its hind legs and stared up at Josef.

"You're a bastard to find old man!" The tortoise shouted.

"Pardon, you foul turtle! How did you address me!" Jo replied indignantly.

"I said you're a right bastard to find and I'm not a fuckin' turtle! I'm a tortoise and a herald of the King!"

"Which King are you referring to turtle?"

"THE King, you old fart, the King of the World!"

"Never heard of him!"

"I suppose you've forgotten who you are too you old twat haven't you?"

"I'm Josef Ruhig. A nobody. So please turtle, why don't you go away and leave me alone."

"A nobody! Are you stupid or what? You really have forgotten. The King was right. He said you'd let yourself go and allow the addictive world take over your heart you fuckin' junkie fool."

"I told you. I'm Josef Ruhig. And I'm off the drugs if you must know. I'm just down on my luck at the moment."

"You, my old grizzly friend, are not Josef Ruhig. You are the King's greatest warrior and the Marshall of all his armies. You are the Wizard of Silence!"

"I don't know what you're talking about but I'm nothing of the sort!"

"Oh for fucks sake. Wake up Wizard! I'm going to have to show you. Place me on your head!"

"No!"

"Do it or else I'll follow your stinking carcass forever!"

"Alright reptile. Alright!"

Josef placed the tortoise on his head and immediately stiffened on his sofa. Somehow he saw new things in his mind. Things that seemed vaguely familiar. Things long forgotten he sensed.

Eons melted away to a younger world. A battle raged on a burning plane. Corpses lay everywhere, broken and bloodied. The remaining sides clashed swords and lances as armour was rended open and shafts split. Warriors heaved and gaping wounds bled seas of blood upon the injured earth. It fizzed as lava bubbled over it. At the centre of the fray stood a lone elder, a blue wizard. 

Towering before him stood a huge winged demon, a black angel with vast outstretched wings dripping with blood. In her claws was a head torn from its roots, the head of the King. The King of all the World.

Suddenly the his eyes opened and he spoke.

"Wizard of Silence. The task is yours. I am dead. Your King is dead. Take the sword from my hand. Take Revealer and silence this damned Queen for all time. For if you do not she will kill all the world and eat. She will eat you all forever!"

The Wizard was shaking. He was uncertain if the Queen was witness to the King's last words. He stared at her slavering smile and godless eyes.

"Wizard. You shriveling eunuch. You stink of fear. You stink of defeat. Your bastard King is gone and I, the Queen of Lies, will trample you into dust. Can you not feel the gossamers of your dogpiss world tearing apart. It is the beginning of the end that I am bringing to you all. The reign of lies that will last for always."

The black angel twisted and threw the King's head far across the field and turned to end the sniveling man. This was all the time he needed to take the Revealer from his monarch's stiff hand and bellowing he swung it upwards in a colossal arc toward the demon's skeletal chest. It struck true and sliced through gristle and bone and nicked the fetid chamber of her suspended heart.

The Queen of Lies looked down dumbstruck at the appalling wound. She fell to her knees, black gore puddling. The Wizard swung Revealer once more and her ribs parted like a doorway, her stinking innards falling like wet curtains on the field. She gawped at him.

"Wha..!" Was all she gargled before collapsing in a bath of her blood and smoking pluck.

The wizard cut off her head and fed it to the battle dogs. He cut off her tongue and threw it to the crows. He ripped out her heart and buried it in the blessed soil where the King had fallen. He rammed Revealer across her ribs like a jamb and kicked the ant-hill over her necrotic form.

"Remain here black Queen. Remain here with your bubonic lies for all eternity. Let the Earth keep you in this plagued field until its own time is ended only by the cold ceasing of the heavens".

The wizard turned away from the silent battleground, the only sounds were ants feeding.

In the distance were the six gleaming doorways of the King's palace to which he walked. They would continue to gleam as long as he lived.

Old Joe remembered it all through the occulus of the tortoise. He shook and gently removed the creature off his head.

You saw?

I saw.

Then you see who you really are Joe Ruhig. You are the Wizard of Silence. The wielder of Revealer.

Yes. I see now small creature.

Then you will also see that the world once more hangs on a thread. Its weft is fraying. Its heart is dying. Mankind is at war with itself and it is the Black Queen's doing. Like a child she whips the wasps nest. An evil brat returning from her slumber. Can you feel it Wizard?

I can. I sense her dreadful presence even here and it is to the six doorways she will come. And she will come soon.

They both sat staring at the darkest corner of the cemetery. Where the statue of a black angel stood.

It was the ants they felt first. Thousands of them scurrying around their feet. Her emissaries. Formic heralds. The statue was cracking.

Next came the moles in their hundreds with soiled paws. They had been busy. The Queen's gravediggers. Her corpse was rising.

Then came the crows. Silent. Tongueless. They had donated to their Lady. Her lies were growing in her mouth again.

The black Queen stood in her ancient ditch, an accursed bed soiled over untold  millennia. Acolytes eager to please had made the plot a modern grave graced with an effigy .

Time had freed her. The seas of time. Revealer, the immortal sword pinning the Queen to the spot like an insect, slackened

She grabbed the hilt and pulled the blade slowly from her chest, where it stood fused through her sternum. She raised it aloft and whispered its name.

"Revealer!"

Gripping it she stepped from her obliterated grave and exclaimed her freedom to an unknowing world, an appalling yell from the dungeons of the dark from which she'd crawled.

"I AM HERE!"

The ground shook and gravestones toppled. The bell on the tower peeled once and cracked. The sky darkened and the sun turned black, the clouds melting like floss. Grindings and rumblings were heard as the earth buckled. Thunder clapped her dreadful bow.

The Queen of Lies sauntered across the cemetery dragging her sword's tip along the asphalt path. Sparks flew and cavorted on the tattered hem of her sable robe. She plucked cut flowers from vases and ate them and licked the hot wax of burning candles with her purple tongue.

As she walked terrible hands came up from the graves like repulsive flowers. They fingered the air and rook the strain, heaving their hosts out of the ground. The dead were rising.

More and more of the graves' residents joined the throng falling in behind the dark lady. They stared at one another and pushed and shoved, earth falling off their rotting husks.

"Come my pretties!" The Queen beckoned.

"We shall make the whole world a grave. Come with me to Hell."

Joe rose from his derelict sofa under the arch. He hid the tortoise in his knapsack and knelt on one knee ad a runner would. He fling off his dilapidated coat and stared straight ahead at the Queen.

"I am Josef, Wizard of Silence and guardian of the Six Arches. You will go no further evil one!"

Some unseen hand swept away the old man's age and Josef began to run as he had on the battle-fields when the world was young and he was the champion of the truth.

The black Queen crouched, Revealer tight in her grip. Her rotting vassals surged forward in a sea of decay.

Josef roared through them, sending them spinning and tearing. All the beasts of the land and air followed and smothered the Wizard in a blanket of teeth and fur.

But he prevailed and shook them off. He glared at his old adversary and knew the fate of the world lay in Revealer silencing the Queen again as it had eons ago. This time the lies must be stilled forever.

Josef hurtled towards the dark monarch and leapt high above her head reaching for Revealer as he did. He clasped the hilt and the Queen's grip slackened. Her lips frowned and she looked into the deep wells of her enemies eyes

"Josef!" She whispered, "I love you! I always have!"

Momentarily confused by this admission Josef slowed but realised too late the true mission of her lie.

She grabbed his neck and pulled Josef down with so much force that the  sword went through him completely and it emerged still in her reptilian hand.

"Be silent Wizard. Be silent for me!".

The Queen tore out his tongue and threw it to the baying herd. His heart she ate like an apple and sucked on the gossamer of his dying soul. The King and his Wizard were gone.

The fell monarch marched with the dead towards the darkening gates of Hell. They passed through all six arches and she took her place in the court of flies.

Without its King or his Wizard, the world turned in on itself and went black as a plague of deceit raged across it lands forever.

BOUNCY CASTLES

Dickmann was down on his luck. 

His bouncy castle business wasn't doing very well at all and his wife was on his back. 

He  just wanted a quiet life. So what if the kids were bored with his castle. He could while away the hours reading trashy horror in his favourite deckchair.

"You look like a beached whale Dickmann! You'll be dead if you move any less! You'll be fatter than your bouncy castle one day soon!"

All day long his wife chided him. Unfairly he thought too. Was it his fault the competition had bigger and better castles bristling with towers and separated floors? Was it his fault they pumped in special mixtures of air and oxygen and God knows what else?

He'd tried his best and it hadn't worked. Well the truth be known he couldn't be arsed with it any more. As long as he got fed and somewhere to sit and read next to his deflated heap he didn't mind if only one or two kids came by these days.

"You lazy arse Dickmann! I'm going out. Your cold gammon's in the fridge, where you should be. Yes, cold gammon, that's you!"

His wife shambled off chuckling at her carnivorous wit.

Dickmann watched her leave the castle yard. She was a looker his Missus. Slim. Curvy. Well-dressed. A thoroughly fashionable filly he'd loved to ride when they were first wed but those days were long gone now. 

He disgusted his svelte wife and she never came near him any more.

It was true, he had let himself go a bit and put on the pounds. At 25 stone he was a little rounder than he'd hoped. What the hell does she expect! He has to sit here all day grafting and tending to customers wanting a bounce whilst she was out in her high heels and seamed tights with her fancy friends.

That was his hard earned dosh she was wasting. Spending it like the stale air escaping from his business. In the good time's he'd saved his pennies. A layer of winter fat he'd called it. Back then he was Mister Dickmann with the tumbliest, rumbliest castles around. Children flocked to leap on their pillowy canvases and spring off those curvaceous walls. 

His wife, inflated with pride for her hard-working husband, would willingly lower her drawbridge to welcome his glistening knight. His muscular hands would kneed her ample breasts like dough. Yes, he'd filled his wife and castle with equal gusto and everybody loved him, Dickmann the bouncing King.

"Ere mister! You. Dickmann. You open or what?" A squeaky voice rasped from somewhere near the ground. "I wanna bounce!"

Dickmann left his reverie and leaned forward, peering over his corpulent gut. A small urchin of a boy was staring up at him clutching a penny.

He put his horror novel down and took the coin.

Its a bit deflated today but it'll have to do he thought. The penny clattered into an empty tin and the boy clambered up onto the half-sagged mound.

"Ere mister. This is shite this. Its going flat. I cant bounce on a flat castle. I want my penny back!" shouted the boy.

"Fuck off you little runt! No refunds today!"

Dickmann got out of his chair and booted the lad up the arse as he was climbing off the castle.

"You fat turd! My mum was right. You're a fat old shite!" cursed the boy.

He grabbed the tin with his penny in and scampered away, the thrill of victory in his eyes as he cast off one final crucial offence.

"You lard-arsed gammon! That's what yer missus calls you. Its no wonder yer missus is shaggin' the doctor next door!"

Dickmann threw his book at him, Schlubb!

"That fuckin' bitch I knew it! Dressed up like a tart every day. And that doctor. I'll show that stuck-up fuck-quack some proper gammon when I shove my hairy arm up his arsehole and pull out his fuckin' posh tongue!"

He sat in his deck chair cursing for another hour as the sun ran out of steam and dropped off. His face bright red, Dickmann rose shaking with rage and staggered across the road to the doctor's garden. 

Hiding in the darkness behind the doc's BMW, Dickmann stared up at the bedroom window through the trees. He could clearly see the outline of his buxom wife being ravished by the suave white-coated bastard. It was true. He glared with an unquantifiable anger as the two forms stood writhing like mating snakes swallowing each other whole.

"The fuckin cheatin bitch! Right under my nose! I'll Show her who's boss once and for all!"

Dickmann slid over the street like a slug and peered at the plaque on the garden gate-post.

Doctor Fissure. Lipidologist. Lipo-suction registered.

"Doctor fuckin fissure eh. I know which fissure I'm going to doctor of yours you bastard wife-stealer!"

Dickmann slithered away chortling at the thought of Fissure's final puffs before he sealed his fate good and proper! Ah yes, he would be king of his castle once again. He could feel it in the air.

When his wife came home, flushed and sweaty, Dickmann feigned sleep and she retired to her room. The next day he sat next to the sagging canvas early to watch her leave. She'd gone all-out today. Thick red lip-stick, bullet bra and a tight dress. A hussy. Her perfume wafted across the yard like a pheromone.

Dickmann waited patiently for dusk. He entered the doctor's house and tip-toed up the stairs. He had no real plan but felt sure one would pop out when the time came. And it did come. Or rather his Missus and the doctor did, just as Dickmann burst into the treatment room!

As the clandestine lovers squelched in ecstasy like two thudding snails on the clinic's couch, Dickmann gave his inflating fury full vent.

"You lousy bitch and you! You fuckin' cradlesnatcher! I'll fuckin' show you how to get fucked!" he bellowed.

With no idea what he was truly doing Dickmann suddenly grabbed two large needle-tipped siphons and with jilt-driven strength rammed them far up his wife's and doctor's behinds and slammed down the ON button to the max. 

It said SUCK and TURBO in large letters.

At once the room was filled with a dreadful gargling, a terrible slurping and a heinous suckling as the siphons went to work. The two lovers shook.

His wife looked on in horror as her perfect tits caved in as her meagre fat was piped out of her gorgeous body. She screamed and stared in terror as Doctor Fissure's blood-thickened cock, balls-deep inside her, retracted like a burst balloon slapping on his belly as his own fat decanted out. Plup! The Doctor shrieked in agony as he was fully vacuumed.

Dickmann was overjoyed. He could never have planned it any better. His glee knew no limits and he skipped like a bullfrog round the vanishing pair.

"Hee hee. Never mind getting fucked, you got well and truly sucked!" He croaked grinning at the flopping forms.

The two lovers quickly hollowed out as ,first their fat layers disappeared and then their entire innards, jerking their way down the engorged pipes into huge glass demi-johns on the tiled floor.

It was done. Dickmann gawped at the two sacks of skin draped over each other. He smiled. 

He then stared at the two massive glass bottles full to the brim with white and red fat and guts and smiled even more.

He chucked the skin and bones into the medical waste bin and humped the demi-johns into the lift and onto a cart in the foyer. In the cover of night he trundled his booty the short way to his yard whistling like a dwarf the whole way.

Dickmann sat in his chair and caressed the cool curves of the bottles and pondered what to do with their contents. The toilet was a waste. He scratched his wet chin and caught sight of the bouncy castle. He'd had his idea!

The next morning he opened up with a spring in his step and a brand new paint-splattered sign.

"Bouncy Castle. Super New filling. The Bounciest! You'll not be disappointed!"

His first customer for the 'new filling' was the little kid that had nicked his money tin. He brought it back with a few new shiny coins by way of apology and asked if he could try the new bounce. Dickmann, still triumphant, agreed and after seeing how much the little sod whelped and yelled with pleasure began to hatch a plan.

He knew he'd need more filling if he was to regain his crown in the town. With a whole handful of shiny pennies and the promise of much more he enlisted the boy to help him keep the liposuction clinic 'open for business'.

He figured the doc had loads more appointments booked with the pudgy townsfolk and that meant loads more precious blubber. All he had to do was call them upstairs and hold on whilst the kid shoved the pipe in.

It worked like a dream and the castle swelled with fresh wet fat. The queues and money swelled too and so, inevitably, did Dickmann's ego. 

He began to get cocky and mean with the kid, especially in front of his new customers, kicking him around, farting in his face and clipping him round the ear to make him graft even harder, whilst Dickmann found a nice spot on his comfy deckchair and stroked his heavy money tin.

Annoyingly, there was just one part of the castle that never filled up properly.

It was a built-in seat at the front, a chair which Dickmann had had specially sewn-on for himself when business had boomed back in the day. It was even meant to look like his face with a crown on top. The Bouncy Castle King! 

Alas, it always sagged and there was just never enough fresh fluid. Now things were on the rise he wanted to sit on his comfy bouncy throne again.

"Where's my wages you old bastard?" The boy suddenly insisted.

"You cheeky little shit! You eat my food and sleep in my castle and you want more money? Work harder you little ingrate. Get me more filling!" raved Dickmann.

That night the boy took him to intercept a new booking. 

"It'll be worth it" he said to Dickmann. "I've seen him. He's a right plump twat. He'll fill the throne no messin' mister!"

Dickmann slapped the boy hard for swearing in front of him and shuffled into the treatment room to look at the diary.

'There's no fuckin' bookin' tonight. Its blank!" he yelled.

"Oh yes there is!" roared the boy, "He's a right fat old bastard and he's stood right here!"

Dickmann swirled round from the desk to see the boy leaping at him with the needle-pointed suction hose. He tried to block him but it was too late, the boy was raging and slammed the sharp nozzle deep into Dickmann's open mouth, where it slid steadily down his throat and lodged itself in his enlarged stomach bag. Shhlump!

The boy laughed, stepped back and hovered his hand just a little over the turbo suction button to tease Dickmann, who's wide eyes were imploring the boy to stop. He attempted to say "no" through his full mouth. It came out as "go".

"Go you say!" cheered the boy "OK!" and flicked the switch with a huge grin.

The loud gurgling and chugging went on all night until Dickmann was no more. The boy had rigged up a special pipe direct to the yard too. Progress!

"I don't even need to carry the old twat's giblets!" he laughed. "Sorted!"

Dickmann's blubber and guts slipped and nudged easily down the pipe and before you could say curette, the sagging throne was plump and swollen with its crown nestling on top. It really did look like Dickmann!

The boy sat on the throne and laughed. Squeezing the arm he felt something lumpy.

"Hmm. Your eyeball! You fat fuck! Keeping an eye on me eh! Well watch this!"

The boy wriggled his arse deeper into Dickmann's 'face' and let out a huge wet fart, which ricocheted round the whole castle like trapped wind.

Dickmann's eyeball shot off twirling into the grue.

The boy sat smiling and waited for his first new customer. In one hand he held his money tin. In the other a big needle-tipped pipe!

The bouncy castle king was back!