A Grand For This Pish?

I've went back and forth as to whether I should tell this story or not.

Unreliability is something of a fatal cursed superpower for me.

But I'd argue with anyone who accused me of it.

I was, like so many others before and after me, an average fucking noone who crawled around, begged for boob milk and had fallen out of his mother's vagina just 24 months ago.

I didn't have hopes or dreams. Sleep, cry, suckle, cry, shit, cry, suckle, burp, crawl, try speaking, repeat ad nauseam.

Not just Latin. Add nausea.

A lot of puke left my little belly through my little esophagus and came flowing, projected from my little mouth. I coated breasts, legs, floors, worktops, stools, potties, cot and anything with my vomit.

So like all derivative and tiresome tales you are wondering what the fuck is the point in reading any more of this shit...or bile.

Well I was two and things were fairly normal (yep clichéd to hell and fucking back but keep reading)

Until I heard something strange.

I'd call it a whisper if I wasn't a poet and wanted to choose the most sanitized and unliterary description ever.

It wasn't even a whisper. Not originally.

Was more like a rustle. Like the sound of bug's tarsi trying to march up a piece of paper as you constantly knock them down before they can reach the point of no return past the hump of a hill at the top into the drain or bath or special bugs sanctuary you had created using a fully excavated Barbie doll torso.

Cos, you know, we're ticking all the boxes with this derivative shit.

(Unreliability is something of a fatal cursed superpower for you.)

Sudden shifts in pronouns are important aren't they usually?

Tarsi rustling. But then I heard it for the next few decades.

It was from the translator radio, that we used to call trannies back in the day. I doubt that's acceptable nowadays. You can tell me in the comments.

It wasn't really tarsi, it was some lass speaking. No she wasn't ethereal or spooky and it wasn't asking me for help or to look into the other side. Do you think I'm some fucking weirdo?

It was a young lass that sounded like my mum. Just some Glesga woman. Speaking to me. Aboot nothing.

At first. Then she got more confident. More vocal.

As per the challenge, the message started on the radio. No it wasn't fucking static. I know what static sounds like. It was just voice. Apparently only I heard it. If anyone else did, they were harbouring it like their own little secret too.

The girl in the radio. Not in the elevator. This is not Eraserhead.

I didn't tell mum or dad, I didn't tell my brother or sister or specialists. I avoided all the clichés because I wanted it just to be mine.

I became fond of it. Familiar with it.

Over the years the tarsi rustle became more nuanced.

There was dips in the sound inflection and intonation.

Vowels and consonants formed into syllables and words.

Does that sound done before, generic?

I don't give a fuck.

It's my tale, not yours.

Eventually, when I was 23, and I was standing over my, well let's call her a victim. Because work of art would place this story in a very different section of the local library or Waterstones (remember other booksellers are available and don't be scared to invest in the ebook version of even the audible version, not all of us authors consider you lazy mother fuckers.)

I had punctured her throat and punctured her belly and passed a daisy chain through her body. I then tied it in a bow against her chest between her soft pale breasts.

Because, you know, psycho

(Unreliability is something of a fatal cursed superpower for me.)

To be fair. She had asked me to do it. After we had consummated our friendship into a full on fuckfest or a relationship.

But I am not a psycho.

Honest.

I just did what she asked me to.

The rustle you see became a message. Which became a request and it became manifest when I touched anyone.

No not just females because I am a cisgender male. I am anything but an exclusionary professional.

I am not a professional.

I always tell people that.

I am not a professional.

A charlatan with a penchant for literary dramatics and literal actual violence.

A visionary of scary visions.

So when I was 23, she spoke to me. She was a beautiful pale skinned barista. Aren't they always baristas?

And she made my americano and handed it to me and when her lightly tattooed hand brushed against mine, she asked me.

Not with her voice from her mouth..moron. From her voice in my head.

The tarsi asked, and wouldn't stop asking until I yielded. Took her out a couple of times. To the galleries, to the botanical gardens.

We fucked under the moonlight and under the ring light and then it was time. As she slept off another fuck and vodka session, I collected daisies from the garden. The neighbours garden because they were prettier than the ones from mine and all I needed to do was get the Stanley knife.

We're all caught up.

I completed the task as requested, weaving my daisy chain through her body to make her pretty.

Why did she want to die? I never asked her because she never said she wanted to die. Did you not follow what I just told you?

There wasn't even anything hypnotic about her voice.

But as I stood over her, admiring her beauty, the process was completed as she thanked me, and I watched as nothing but dust and detritus flowed from the final wound.

Detritus is one of my favourite words so I needed to fit that in there somewhere.

(Unreliability is something of a fatal cursed superpower for you.)

Fin.

Editors notes to author - are you fucking kidding me? Is this what you spent three years and a grand on? The literary world is more fucked than I thought it was with books like Hunting Adeline selling well.

Then we get this pish.

Revised manuscript

Apparently my literary voice is unappreciated by my financers and publishers.

So here is the sanitised version of my tale.

I was a kid. I heard a voice before it became a voice through an old radio. The voice took root in my subconscious.

I met the owner of the voice later.

She made overpriced coffees for Starbucks or something similar chain. Then I did what she asked for.

I killed her with a Stanley knife and weaved a daisy chain through a hole in her throat to a hole in her belly. Then sliced open her thigh and watched as the dust, detritus and afterlife flowed from her.

Fin.