Hell

Johnny John passed the gates of Hell wearing his worn out Levi's and a tired t-shirt showing Meat Loaf on a motorbike saying "Bat Out of Hell " and a big grin on his unshaven face displaying a feeling of home coming rather than the frown of the Eternally Doomed. Satan greeted him with a slap on the back and a smoke saying Welcome Home, that Johnny John instantly put to his mouth. "Hey, do you have a light?" Johnny John asked but at once regretted doing so. He held the sigarette over a burning corpse nearby and soon it was glowing like the ground he was walking on. Satan laughed and passed a wind so foul that made Johnny John's stomach turn like that time he had a spinach and cheese dip with a side order of cheap vodka and a prostitute with chlamydia in Prague, and from this point he began to doubt whether Hell would be the craic he had imagined or not. Johnny John's life was that of a true rebel, or at least so he had told the press; his upbringing and teen spirits had been corrupted by the stench of sewer oosing from the gutter where he was raised and as he famously told the journalist from Rolling Stone (the one he soon was arrested for having put his hand on her rebecca); that if God had created him only to make him suffer like this, then he flipped his finger to the heavens and said fock it, "Grace is not for him." Of course what he didn't tell the journalist was that Grace was the name of the girl he once asked out but she had dumped him for Gavin McAteer - a priest from Waterford, and so making sure he would never touch the subject of hounourable women or eucumenics again.

Satan og Johnny John stood on the brim of a lava river, and Satan asked him why he had spent "his whole life trying so hard, even too hard sometimes to get into Hell", when everybody else was trying to avoid it?

"Well", Johnny John said with a slick smile "it's hard to be a rock'n'roller."

Satan laughed and said even Marylin Manson is going to kick it with St Peter, Paul and Virgin Mary one day, and now that homosexuality was accepted, even Ringo Starr could go through the Pearly Gate.

On the other side of the river bank, there was shack under a neon halo saying The Stale Ale pub, and judging from the dirty windows and number of passed out people lying in front of it, he drew the conclusion it was an Irish pub. Satan showed JJ the way, and as they entered, the porridge like sound from a Fender died out and someone shouted "Bring out the accordion!". Panic struck JJ as the sour and untuned tunes from an old accordion turned into a melody he was almost sure was supposed to be Molly Malone. He once had a Molly in Amsterdam, he thought about her and instinctly put his hand in his pocket to see if his wallet was still there. It wasn't.

JJ walked over to the counter where a little girl with long red hair and an eye missing, was rubbin a dirty handkerchief on a glass and occasionally coughing something green and gooey on it and kept on rubbing it. Her left eye barely noticed him, or so he thought.

"Whaddyous want?" she said, now looking straight past him and he turned around to see on what. Old Elvis was singing a Westlife song together with the untuned accordion, and only now was JJ about to discover what Hell truly was.

"Hey pal, Im lockin' at ye- what the hell do ye want? Im not waiting for evva, ye know". The girl was getting angry now.

"Well, I'll have a pint please...Do yous serve Guinness here?" said JJ and at once the sound and songs in the room stopped as if vacuum had dawned upon them and they were now stuck in the akward silcence between a wife and her man in her underwear. Molly came out from a dark corner and said to him that Arthur McGuinness had been a good Catholic and that the only Guinness he could get around here, was the left overs in the livers of deceased alcoholics and construction workers. They all laughed for about 66 minutes while JJ tried to see what else they served. The little girl said, still cleaning the glass:

" We have a fine brew, a good Norwegian one. Here!" she filled the dirty glass she'd been rubbing for the last decade and filled it with a orange like fluid. He had a sip but gagged. "What in the devil's name is this?"

Satan looked up, he hated being distrubed in his contemplation. "I made a deal with an old man who sold me his soul and an everlasting lease of Ringnes, for a night with Elizabeth Taylor in New York. Too bad for him he wasn't more specific and ended up spending 10 hours in an elevator with her after she lost an Oscar to Audrey Hepburn, and was bitching from one end to the other, and he committed suicide the morning after. Here he is - John, come here!"

The poor man named John came over to their table, and the nuce was still hanging from around his neck and his boney body signalled a long eternity to be spent hearing this story every time a stranger entered this pub.

JJ was sorry. Satan said it's too late now any way, and on hearing this, JJ got up, and ran out through the door and jumped into the lava river. The burning sensation was short yet not particularly painful, and seconds after he felt his body being consumed in melted rock, he fell through something that felt like a wooden floor, and found himself lying in the centre of The Stale Ale, with a hundred or so pair of doomed eyes looking at him.

"Welcome to Hell", said Satan. "And now...karaoke!"

A Regular Tuesday (Prose, part 4/4)

by Ada

Although the stench really did bother me. And as if that wasn't enough, my stepping back had brought me a little deeper into the shed, to reveal that there was no floor but for the earth itself, and quite the uneven one at that. Why, it was as if someone had been digging in it, surely, and then put the dirt back in its place quite recklessly, without noticing the bumps they created, right where people were supposed to walk. And in such darkness as well – honestly! In the little light provided by the sunshine gleaming in through the open door, I could make out the shape of an axe lying on the ground, altogether specked with dark red spots, and I thought "Rusty, even that! Why, didn't the old man Mr. McCarthy know one should treat one's tools carefully in order to make them last longer?"

At any rate, it wasn't a very big shed, and the light did in fact reach the wall and followed it all the way up to the ceiling, and oh, wasn't that – ? I opened the door a little wider, allowing a bit more light in, the stench so overwhelming now I kept one hand over my mouth and nose, and the other on the door handle. Thinking back on it now, I must have forgotten all about the cat at that moment, as – yes, it was! Life-sized dolls' heads hanging by their hair, some from the wall and some from the ceiling. One of them positively right in front of me, and quite lit up from the open door. "How odd," I thought, "that I did not see it sooner!"

They looked quite funny, to tell you the truth, their eyes and mouths wide open as if in surprise, even shock, perhaps, by the sudden stream of sunlight on their faces. "But," I carried on thinking, "they don't look the least bit life-like, if you ask me, their skin all waxy and ashen-looking, as if about to rot and fall apart at any moment. But – oh! The smell! An animal must have crawled in her at one point, and unable to find its way out in the darkness, the poor creature must have curled up an died in one of these corners, bless it.

Again I remembered the cat, and turned to look in its direction. And there it was, once again preoccupied with cleaning its already glistening fur with that little pink, rough tongue of his. But beside it, as now I had the good fortune of discovering, a second path made its way clear of bushes and ladders and sheds and black cats. Not pebbled, this one, but clearly trodden in the otherwise tall grass, and so, off I went, after having closed the door yet again, relieving the outside world and neighbourhood of the foul stench, and the poor dolls' heads of the sharp sunlight – Oh dear, I do have to laugh when I think about them, such an expression on their faces! –, down the newly discovered path, it leading me all the way out of the garden, and – what do you know! – right next to the Little Shop around the Corner.

But, oh!, where are my manners? I completely forgot to introduce myself! My name is Roisín. Yes, as in the poems and legends of Ireland, but let me tell you, although undeniably Irish by heart and nature, there is nothing poetic or legendary about myself.

And, as I was saying, there was absolutely nothing indicating that this day would in any way at all differ from any chosen previous one. And as I was walking home from the Little Shop around the Corner, my daily fresh bread rolls and yesterday's newspaper in hand, I could see absolutely no reason why it should.

Red Regret (poem, sonnet)

No one, no thing, can sit still,
With the desires of natures will to fill,
All consumed, entombed, in this nights chill.

We chase the fields of gray, we stray,
While an undeniable force leads the way,
And stifles the voice that calls us to stay.

It’s crimson that we seek to find,
Those ruby drops consume our mind,
Provision possessed, as good as blind.

This pursuit is past our own will,
And so you see to our dismay,
Our way of life, is life unkind.

So judge us not, by fang or fan,
For the blood’s the measure of the man.

A Regular Tuesday (Prose, part 3/4)

by Ada Marie

I followed a narrow, pebbled path leading from the gate to the back of the house, trying to overlook the fact that the once so tidy ground – it was such a delight for the soles of my shoes to walk on back then, as you just wouldn't believe – was now covered in straws of grass of a most unnatural green colour, not to mention the ants, busying themselves with carrying fifty times their body weight's worth of grit from one place to another. Mercilessly – oh, as if I had any choice but – I stepped, crushing their little bodies, one by one, noiselessly but for the rattling sound of my shoes against the pebbles.

Beside the house was a small shed, once built to keep old Mr. McCarthy's gardening tools – or so I always presumed, never having been able to actually look in it, what with the door always locked with a chain and padlock, and it having no windows and all. But as well as superstitious I have also never been of the curious or inquiring type, so of course I never gave much thought to what might or might not be hidden behind that severely locked door, and too many sleepless nights it certainly did not give me.

The path I was now following – and had followed so many times in my youth – happened to lead me straight past the shed, and underneath the great branches of an old oak tree. Up against the tree trunk stood an old ladder, and – can you imagine? – the path went right underneath it. Continuing to walk, with the inevitability of passing under it was not an acceptable option, why, it could fall right down on the top of my head! Walking around it somehow was equally impossible, what with the impenetrable vegetation covering every exit way previously known to me. So I turned around to walk back out of the garden and see if there wasn't by any chance another way of moving about, when I discovered – would you believe it? The damnedest thing! – the black cat sitting there, right in front of me, licking its front paw, as innocently as only a bitty kitty can, a yellow glint in its eyes as it stopped its grooming to look back up at me. It got up on all four legs, its tail straight up, the tip of it twitching impatiently. As it made to start moving towards me, I realized I needed to get out of its way, and the faster the better, lest it would start circling me, and then what could I do but be standing rooted to the same spot for the rest of my life!

The chain on the door to the shed had rusted and lay broken on the ground (oh, and after such a short time, too – it can hardly have been a very good quality piece of chain in the end, could it!), and I made my way towards the door, probably killing even more ants in the process. Useless little creatures they are, bless them! The door slid open easily enough, creating an ever-so-little stream of light entering the room for what must have been the first time in quite some date. The first thing I noted was the stench, which was simply unbearable! It absolutely prevented me from entering, and had me pausing in the doorway, where I could breathe in the fresh outdoor air whilst keeping an eye on the villainous cat, still standing on that very spot where I'd left it.

Except now it lowered its head, looking up at me in what I believed to be quite the threatening manner, that black little mischievous thing, as if about to spring up from its bouncy hind legs and jump me at any given second. I took a step back, to secure myself. Indeed, if the little creature did attack, I could simply take another step back, bringing the door with me as I did so, and off the wall the cat would bounce as safely protected behind it I'd be.

Napoleon's Goldfish (prose, part1)

Grandma Grey threw her glass eye at the wall and when it bounced back the third time the crowd concluded both that it must have been made of rubber, and that this was without doubt the most longest funeral they had ever been to. They had been waiting an hour and a half but still there was no sign of neither the corpse, his bride nor a priest that could put an end to this affair, that started with the popping of Jimmy Shoe on the corner of Orinocco Blues restaurant, and followed by a hasty closing down of their chip shop and the apperence of a scar across Mike the Moose's face from his eyebrow to his highest chin. Jimmy Shoe was the great great grand step and a hop nephew of the legendary Claudio McFlathery who was the illegimite child of Napoleon IV's goldfish and Irish mercenary who stopped by their annual St Patrick Day celebration in their country get-away in County Offaly for a drink and a bowl of mashed potatos a sunny day in November.
«I dunno about yous but I'm gettin a drink. Giveus a pint there, Larry» Grandma Grey said in a low voice, clearly strained by grief and a life long consumption of raw vegetables and tobacco. Larry the Leprechaun- for he was indeed short and red haired and had more than once showed up with pot and colourful towels, placed a glass of whiskey on the table in front of her. She had lost not only another grandchild to the potato industry, but also her favourite post man, and she didn't now how to get over this one just yet. Her daughter and Jimmy's aunt, Mary, had prepared some sandwiches cut in the shape of crosses for the occation, but no one touched them as the shock of the news of Jimmy's death after the day he had defied our Lord and sold his soul to the Devil for a good crop of taters and cursed the most devoted Catholic people on this planet. However, they didn't know that Jesus perferred Protestants.

A small village like this one could not support more than one chipper, and after the truckloads with Polish workers had stopped and settled outside the village, the Italians had seized the opportunity and opened a second chipper, and within a month, the competition had demanded three corpses, a bag of crisps and two curses.

The priest tore open the door and the rain outside came down as being poured from giant celestical buckets had soaked him way beyond wet and his black preist cloak stuck like a sticker to his skinny body, and his black socks made the wooden floor full of dark, wet stains. Maid of the house – Mary, looked at them at worried how on earth she would clean that up.
« He's ... gone» the priest said.

(to be continued....)

A Regular Tuesday (Prose, part 2/4)

Then, as I was about to set off walking again, past Mr. McCarthy's garden, my head indeed already about to be impertinently shaken in disbelief over its condition, I happened to glance down at the pavement, and what did I see but a big crack in the concrete, stretching all the way from Mr. McCarthy's fence and down to the very road itself. Now, again I must prompt you that superstitious is one thing that I am not, and may God throw my poor mother – bless her soul, never a selfish word passed over her angelic lips – out of heaven if ever an untruth escaped my own. But it is as true as is the Sahara the world's largest desert, the story about a former neighbour of mine – may she rest in peace, the floozy – who once had the misfortune of stepping on a crack so that the heel of her shoe got stuck in it and broke right off, so that – can you imagine? – she fell into the street right in front of a car, and was killed instantly.

Now, of course I would never be as flamboyant as to wear such high heeled shoes the manner of your poor, ill-fortunate young Molly there, but any the less it just goes to show, doesn't it, that you can never be too careful with those cracks in the pavement. One could argue, obviously, as those young minds usually do – as filled with newly acquainted logic they believe themselves to be – but, sadly, without much experience from a life quite lived, in sickness and in health (God rest my husband's soul, that he should not have the wits to curb his heart attack until he was done descending the stairs), not to mention learning-by-doing and by watching fatal accidents, that one could simply step over the crack in the pavement. But their restless minds, impatient to get themselves elsewhere, overlooks the fact that anything might happen. One could trip, or in other ways lose one's balance, ant there you are, one foot solidly and inexorably placed straight across the crack, and what, one may ask, do one do then? Of course, crossing the street was absolutely out of the question, as I could no longer see the black cat, and there was no telling how far it had followed the street, and I wasn't about to cross its path unwittingly, thank you very much!

However, as luck would have it, I seemed to remember being able to walk through the McCarthy garden and out on the other side, and thus end up quite close to the Little Shop around the Corner. And oh, I must admit I felt a good bit adventurous as after having had a good look around to make sure not a blessed soul (nor a damned one, mind you) was there to see me, I lifted the hook that kept the gate closed, and as "Dear me," I thought, "now that's a rusty gate and no mistake," I pushed it open with the tip of my right shoe – as open as it could be pushed, that is, for something seemed to be preventing it from reaching its full potential of openness. "How odd," I thought, as I snuck myself inside the garden, through the narrow opening, careful not to get any rust on my clean clothes, I am quite athletic for a woman my age, I must imprint on you. An age which I would never dream of revealing to you, of course, however much you might wish me to. One is a lady, after all.

The gate shut itself closed behind me with a loud clang!, which had me started a little, I must say. Admittedly, I had gotten myself into quite a state as I noticed how the hook had fallen back into its place, having the gate as closed and locked as if never it had been opened. But I told myself quite firmly that it was ridiculous of me to allow myself to be all worked up by such a small sort of a thing. After all, what could possibly disturb such a wonderfully regular day?

Dancing Barefoot through New York (prose-ish)

So after I said bye-bye to my best friend and watched her get on the bus that would take her to Chicago, I turned away and tried to take the first steps in this new phase of life towards the subway that would take me to the East Village, but this new life would have a rather confusing start as the subway ticket money machine thingy didn't like my $20 note and told me to go see a professional who run his business in Grand Central Station - professional help hah hah - but, ok, fair enough, I went back up again to the real world and I took a wrong turn as my mind was partly on that bus on the way to the airport I guess, and suddenly I found myself walking down Madison Avenue and Manhattan is all of a sudden hot like Sahara, so I look frantic for a Starbucks and a Frappuccino to reboot myself, but for the first time in a decade or so a person could walk down one block on Manhattan without finding a Starbucks - so I stop and sigh and look up to gather myself but there is no sky only corporate builidings and I know that I still have to find that ticket machine in Grand Central Station so I can go Downtown, but my attention is drawn towards a Chinese guy who's checking his bicycle tire for holes in a little water pit as a guy eating yogurt with both hands is crossing the street in a car cuts him off my sight, and I pull out a map and try to find my way to the station, which actually is the building behind me with big letters chipped into the white-ish stone saying "Grand Central Station"- to which I walk up to and enter, and suprisingly with little confusion find the Magical Mystery Machine that still for some reason has the same attitude as the otherone on the station on East 42nd Street and indeed I prayed right there that 3CPO would come to Earth and take with them these pieces of scrap that keeps cluttering up my life, and perhaps recycle or rejuvenate them as something useful like an electric tooth brush or a laser printer and just ...fock off to outer space while I could be safely on my way to East Village, which I realised would not happen so I go back out to the jungle and try to walk to Central Park by firstly making a wrong turn, making me go down Park Avenue rather than up it and so further distancing me from my new destination - however ironically bringing me a few steps closer to the original one however change of preferance in destination I still really wanted a cold coffe and still I wander full of wonder down another block without a Starbucks in sight and now I feel the top of my head letting out steam and with a student morgage of plentiful zero's -this gaz was worth gold, money was flushed down the loo every second and especially big was the steam let off by the excitement of almost being run over by a yellow cab after having failing to see the "Don't Walk" sign - I knew this was getting serious and looked for my Plan B solution - air condition, a Jew in black clothes, a big beard with long curled side burns under a black hat, stares at an approaching yellow cab through circular glasses balancing on his nostrils at the end of his long crooked nose that made me think of front lights on a gherkin, it drives past him but he shows no affection, being a man of God, of the Chosen People who waited 40 years in a desert don't seem to mind waiting another minute or so on Manhattan for the next taxi that picks him up and takes him to wherever- me, I was still in the same place, only now with my eyeballs resting at a Barnes and Noble sign and just by the look of the wooden interiors I could feel a breeze and a cold frappe down my throath - and in a wink I'm inside and my mind seems once more with me - we're one again -but this intellectual revival did not take place in the most sensible place, money wise, as a book shop tends to keep the mind's desires far away from the wallet's interest, and soon I'm standing with two books in my hand, a novel called The Edge of Yonder - whatever that means - , and the other being a poetry collection by Patti Smith, looking scrufffy but real on the cover in contrast to the three summer cannibals lurking outside the window in hot pants and high heels increasing the danger of traffic accidents by offering meat to every bidder or gawker, but Patti and I roll down our sleves and resumes the daily battle betweet the tits and the twats, and now I'm beginning to get a little chilly from the cold air, so I pay and return to the jungle, refreshed and with my mind clear of where to go - "Y is the Forgotten Vowel" she says and I can't help but ask "Y?" -"Y is the covenant between the Creator and the Artist" she whispers back through the shivers from pages of paper being turned and overtuned by the noise on 5th Avenue and now I can see the top of the trees of Central Park and I wished it could just rain even though I'd left my umbrella hanging on my bunk bed in room 305 in our hostel, something that would just remove this heat block from my brain, and indeed there must have been something in the gas leaking from my ears - they must have provided some sort of super quick astral highway for prayers- some super gravital wishing well with God on speed dial- for surely, a dark cloud relieved Central Park South from the straining sun and its companions soon gathered too- I sit down on a bench dedicated to some late Aggie and Alex, smiling, whipping out my book on the memory of these strange lovers and setting my peace with New York, at least for a little while before I had to head back to Grand Central Station to get on the bus to the air port - God bless this mess!

Lost (poetry, sonnet)

Where are you?
Cause I’m right there.
What’s that you say not anywhere?

Am I with you?
Cause where is here.
Yet you assert this, no place for fear?

Could this be true?
We’re where we are.
So near the truth, and yet so far?

Our search is through?
We’re here and there.
Our true location we ought not share?

Well here’s the truth, free of cost…
I think we’re Bermuda Triangle lost.