The Rock Climber Part VII (wip)

You couldn’t believe your luck, could you? All those years ago, when the offer had come to exchange your freedom for a vast lump of cash, which only actually represented around half of your total worth. You had witnessed the forming of stalactites, like Vaseline spread over carrots, all candied with the petroleum jelly, which you remembered because you used to spread it thickly on your cold sores and the acidic arse of your disgusting first child. The money, which you kept hidden in two old mortar shell boxes you stole from the surplus shop which was gunked in fire during the uprising, was slightly tinged with a brown hue, not far off beery shit, but it smelled like cinnamon pudding. You watched as they flicked at your dirty wedges of cash with their bulbous thumbs, but you moistened your crispy lips with your oily spit, like basting a roast-turkey skin. You just thought of the fresh and warm freedom you would acquire as a result of this caked transaction. Once you had been released you thought only about burgers for at least a week, you remembered the Botham Burger, a cricket ball sized lump of perfect ground chuck beef, egged, then cut with onion, breadcrumbs a touch of salt and pepper and a nice slap of Dijon, applied with a basting brush. All housed in sweet brioche bun and glooped in lush-horrible cheese so it squirms down your glottis, lubricated and quick fast. As you searched for a burger joint, you could almost feel the depth of flavour and the soft-ish solid texture of a mouthful as it hit your tonsils, this conjured a little noise in your throat, amplified by your open, hanging mouth, all of this in turn forced you to hoover the pools of saliva that had gathered under your tongue, and focused your mission. After eating for a few days, your attention turned to the future, like someone returning to an old house left for decades to decay, all taken over and overruled by nature. The future felt like a decrepit idea, unused and forgotten, cancelled maybe. You had eviscerated most of your desires, but one had remained, treacled and reduced, dwelling in the very bottom of your disk shaped soul. A yearning to be high-up. You macerated some compressed balls of bleached white bread in a bowl of unknown milk. You had made the bread balls in your jacket pockets, secretly rolling them between your clammy thumb and forefinger. Once soaked you had found that they could have hot gravy injected into them using the hypodermic needles you pocketed at the wrecked hospital before your captivity had begun. If you placed one in the centre of your tongue, the milked bready balls could be gently popped, resulting in the secreting of the hot savoury fluid to the back of your tongue and then you liked to allow it to dribble down your larynx unaided.

The Rock Climber Part VI (wip)

You seriously considered living on the ground at one point, but it made your throat tingle. You preferred the clips and harnesses, like a safe language of O’s G’s and C’s with the occasional S and a screwed U. You hadn’t always been a cliff eroticist had you, but you couldn’t remember a time when the nuance of down-below had been at all attractive to you, in fact your swollen proboscis had twanged with delight at feeling the action of your first ever Carabiner clip. You think it’s not a vanity project don’t you, you sat on a rock covered in a dense lichen pad, slightly damp. Sickly emerald green through shamrock, chartreuse changing into bisque in places, spots of rust and swells of puce sheen next to the throbbing, iridescent porpoise of the boulder underneath, which harbored the original algae growth. Imagining you have conquered, as the little sticky bits which gather in the nooks of your tepid mouth, puss and string whilst you talk yourself through your own magnificence. You remembered that the clips and mechanisms which now keep you from having to walk the rotten earth had felt like weapons in your pudgy hands and you were filled with a tremendous sense of your own height, coupled with a thick, square, angled feeling, close to what it must feel like to be shaped like a single mattress. As you traversed the section of sandstone from the forearm you slept by, to gain a better vantage point for noose slinging underneath the igneous hook, your hand caressed the immaculate and giant carved eye, 6 foot in height and at least 8 in width, the indentation of the pupil forming a very useful foot hold for resting. You paused to eat 4 Marmite sandwiches, dripping in the central heat of the day, spilling the mucky yeast fluid all over the sandstone, warm and loose. You fist the last crusts of sarnie into your stinging mouth, you always love the crusty bits don’t you. Then you get to it once again, this time wearing rope slinging gloves you got from Aldi, when you made a rare visit to collect the last batch of Irish cream liquor which you allow to congeal in the various pockets of sandstone formed in the highly sculpted surface, preferring a thicker more viscous, sun dried, fluid pleasure, even if it does drip down your chin and gather in your stupid dimple.

The Rock Climber Part V (wip)

First you took in the view. The sensation of being above everything, filled your pituitary gland with a thick mucus of joy, you thought; are the most superior of people, those who have climbed Everest, or those that done the moon in the 1960’s? Like height becomes important in relation to status, that’s why the wealthy prefer to live in very tall houses, or even better, high up mega-flats, 50th floor or above, the views of whole cities at once feeding into and not so subtly matching there greasy ego and broiled id, their sense of position in the world, closer to god or the potato dressed as god which grows it’s gross green tentacles in the sky. Your superiority complex had muxed well with your status obsession and this literal high-up activity made you feel more able to understand the chaos below, you had earned your sickly perspective you thought. Your mind immediately turned grim, as you thought once more about that sucked and slimy big toe, poking a little indent into the eggy earth below and all the glissing and glossing nonsense. Muck and dirt, creamed in a piping bag and iced in great rosettes between you your toes and your gag reflex started to twitch and your ulcers gave their whistle like an orchestra of drunk children. You snapped out of it and remembered the vista and how this distance from reality allowed you to create and impose your own version, that was easier for you wasn’t it? You swollen gland.

A rose-hip smear had stopped your side-bangs from growing too defined stretch marks from the life suspended above everyone. And as you rubbed a final layer on each paunch you thought of massaging pork belly. So you discovered that the grub ants had routed there activities through your vintage leather satchel, they had gnawed at the dried hide and used it for safety like a tunnel to ferry their cargo of sugar clumps from the crop of sugarcane far below. You felt this was like ridicule didn’t you? Like ancient rites of passage through the palatial grounds of a retired city boy used by ramblers associations. All he wanted to do is grill his meats outdoors and not be disturbed by wanderers cooing over grass verges and bush types. How can you own a section of river? You blocked the holes and tears formed by the ant parade in your satchel with wadded up chunks of peanut butter which you chewed horse hair through until it became like a thick glue or proto-fibreglass. Thanks to this and the copious amounts of ant poison you laid, the ants had all but disappeared and you felt better about your position in the world once more. The lingering and constant fear of a pitchforked proletariat uprising had been suppressed for now by the sticky peanut butter mix.