Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
Trawling Atlantis
"Hey c'ptain, sorry to disturb ye, but ye best come see this. We hauled in some'in mighty strange in the latest catch."
When you've been standing at the helm for 36 hours straight, any break is welcome. I downshifted and switched on the auto-pilot, knowing I'd be back at the wheel within minutes anyway, something strange would usually be rotting body parts or a fish with two heads. It kept the men amused and their minds off the fact they were working harder than any other men and for less pay.
They'd had about four hours sleep each before we'd dropped the nets again this morning. I'd piloted the trawler towards some deep sea canyons known to be a good spot for catching blue fin tuna through the night, sustained by regular cups of Navy coffee; black as sin with a pinch of salt to keep the senses alert. I tripped on the way out through the cabin door and had to shake myself awake, uncomfortable at the thought of appearing weary in front of the men.
"We're cursed!" yelped one of the crew, as he stepped aside revealing indeed something strange.
"Well I'll be damned" I said under my breath.
"What'll we do with them c'ptain? List them as by-catch?" asked Winkle Stu.
By-catch was the industry term for produce caught in the nets unintentionally; like dolphins, which would usually be thrown back or sold on to another fishery if they lived long enough.
"I don't think they qualify"
"What if we chop 'em up and sell 'em as fresh produce?" suggested Seaman Choker.
"Could be considered first degree murder by some. Besides, what would we market them as? Surf and Turf? If they were the other way around they'd make a killer fish-head soup."
"Can't even keep 'em as whores" grumbled Salty Dog Schmidt, "they gots no bits."
"Yes, I've always wondered about that myself" I had to admit to the crew.
"Its bad luck to have a woman on board" Pink Clamshell Quentin reminded us.
"Technically they're only half woman" I pointed out.
"Aye, but there be three of 'em, which is as good as one whole woman" Pink Clamshell Quentin responded bitterly.
"Very well lads, toss them overboard and we'll put this down to sleep deprivation hallucinations."
With my orders given and being followed I headed back to the bridge.
"Ere c'ptain the little redhead with the good singing voice wants to stay aboard with her kooky pet seagull and fatherly dancing lobster."
Just what I needed; to be trapped in a Disney movie.
Pursuit
There was another shuddering impact into the locked double doors of the Richmond-Brown wing of the British Museum but the doors held. I looked over the pile of strewn antiquities piled up in front of them, willing them to hold off my pursuers for a little longer.
"Release me" croaked the bronze-plated head in the glass case before me.
I swung the butt of my empty pistol against the Plexiglas but it bounced off leaving only a smear. The brass eyes swivelled up and looked straight at me.
"Release me" said the metal head with more urgency this time.
In desperation I kicked over the entire plinth the case was resting on and the impact cracked the bond between plinth and transparent case. The head bounced free from its cradle and rolled to a stop like a discarded football helmet.
"Release me, now" demanded the head. Behind me the door received another juddering impact and began to buckle.
As I picked up the bronze head several metal plates broke free from the scalp and I spied the copper wiring and cogs beneath. Something beneath the workings caught the light though. I knew that the metal head had been in the possession of Alan Turing during the forties, but could he have been building upon something much older?
A loud cracking noise from the doors to the Richmond-Brown wing told me it was time to run again. I tucked the head under my arm and fled as an arm reached through the crack in the door and began to push away the pile of detritus with inhuman strength. The agents of the Mythos were getting too close, would I have enough time?
"Release me" reiterated the head, nestled into my ribs as I ran. I realised I was still holding the empty gun and as I ran I started to beat the pistol against the buckled panels of the head. Wiring and clockwork cogs fell free as I ran, tinkling on the marble floor and snaking out behind me; it was like shelling an ostrich egg.
Finally the last of the metalwork fell free, and I caught the brass eyes in one hand and dropped them into a pocket. Revealed in all its glory was the Richmond-Brown crystal skull that had been wrapped up in machinery devised by Alan Turing. Two long thin screws had been bolted into the depths of the skull at strange angles for no apparent reason.
"Release me" said the skull, the jawbone moving with ease and the voice issuing forth now with crystal clarity.
The skull was no longer imprisoned in glass or coated in its bronze exoskeleton. There was nothing left to remove but the screws. I ducked into the Egyptian exhibit and paused beside a sarcophagus. In the distance I could hear the wet slapping sound of webbed feet chasing after me, getting progressively louder.
I put the useless gun down and began twisting the screws with my bare fingers, shearing through my own fingernails as I tried to gain enough purchase. Finally one screw began to twist and I spun it until it fell free.
The skull began to vibrate and issue a warm glow as I began to twist the second screw.
"Release me..." began the skull once more, trailing off as I at last removed the final piece "...from this ethereal prison that I may once more rule this world"
A wet, webbed hand closed over my face and started to smother me as I watched the ghost of an elder Mayan god begin to form, towering over us both.
Brush With Futility
I remember the day they banned all hairdryers. Hand driers had been gone for months, replaced once more with less hygienic but more eco-friendly towels. Even though one manufacturer offered "electrical styling system diffusers" the hairdryer detection vans would still confiscate them. Nobody had been using the communal hairdrying wind tunnels that had been set up in various places throughout London, not until the day after hairdryers were finally banned.
At first light, the early birds staggered towards them, their heads like wet mops, firecracker explosions of auburn and blonde with the occasional drowned-rat redhead. They stood as far apart as possible, like men at a bank of urinals, and waggled their heads at the wind tunnel’s output, brushing and combing and taming the wild masses of wet hair.
Later that first morning, around 8:30 there was an influx of women who decided just to get it over with, and damn the embarrassment, or they'd be late for work. They didn't look each other in the eye, not until they were done and they could stride away with confidence that they were once more glamorous. The women (and occasional man with long hair) would walk in one end of the tunnel looking like they had badgers coated in wallpaper paste strapped to their heads and walk out the other end looking like Jennifer Aniston (yes even the men with long hair)
It couldn't last of course. Some women started going to private wind tunnels where they'd share the expense in exchange for a little more privacy, to avoid the shame of morning hair.
It was only a few years later that manufacturers started offering personal wind tunnels that could be set up in gardens, on patios, terraces, balconies, and we were back to square one.
Mutant Scrotum
My girlfriend is famously without children. By that I mean she is famous for not having any, and never wanting any and taking surgical steps at a young age to ensure that the situation will never change and she won't find herself one day with her legs up in stirrups cursing every man she even knew. She's even contacted regularly by various editors of publications and TV producers to comment on her choice and whether her biological clock has started ticking yet.
I am far more sneaky than that.
I did my homework beforehand and knew that I had two weeks to prepare before the smarter spermatozoa started to die off, and I needed the smart ones. But I also needed them larger than the standard 5 micrometres.
During the first week I took to sitting at my desk with my testes in a teacup full of cold Miracle-Gro. Cold should be self explanatory as I was having to rebuff all the usual sexual advances and take frequent cold showers. The chemical consequences of using Miracle-Gro seemed to bring forth results as pretty soon I was swollen up like a pair of blood oranges.
In the second week I had to help the spermatozoa with basic problem solving skills and knot-untying abilities. This was a real problem of course as one can't just swallow the Young Boy's Book of Knots or Mistress Midori's Book of Japanese Bondage and hope that they'll end up in the right place. I puzzled for a few days and eventually came up with a brilliant solution.
Using a high-wattage, slightly radioactive bulb I projected images through a flashlight onto my testicles of various Escher drawings, knowing that were they to absorb the confounding knots and twists of Escher's work then my little soldiers would make short work of any blockages in the Fallopian tubes.
After two weeks of this I was ready to attack. Despite the throbbing, pulsating, glowing coming from my crotch I had absolute conviction that I would be successful. I moved in for some light petting and fondling on the couch.
"Not tonight, I have a headache" she said.
Deep in my seminiferous tubules, something growled.
I am you, as you are me
Robert was an old friend from school. When I say old friend you should infer from that that he was one of the few who didn't chase me and beat me up and didn't mind so much if I mooched around in his presence when I wasn't being chased or beaten up; of such acquiescence friendships are made.
Robert could do the bug-eye trick like nobody else. He'd focus hard on something and his eyelids would peel back and you could see the muscles pushing the bulbs of his eyes out of his skull. One day he showed me the trick with a teaspoon; pushing the spoon under his bulging orbit he could pop the eye free of the socket and it would dangle down his cheek, tethered by his optic nerve. Being young boys we obviously found this both repulsive and fascinating at the same time.
"What's in there?" he'd ask. "Not a lot" I'd reply. I hadn't thought about Robert in almost two decades until he threw a handful of grit in my face one morning on my way to work.
As I stood there trying to get as much grit out of my eyes as possible he patted me on the shoulder, dropped a business card into my pocket and told me to call him in two weeks.
I called him much sooner than that. "What the fuck, man? What was that for?" He hung up but not before telling me to call him in two weeks. Two weeks passed and I called him. We arranged to meet at an apartment in Angel. It was nothing special, just a rental place.
"Come into the kitchen" he said and I followed him in there. "Remember the teaspoon trick?" he asked and I nodded. "Sit back" he motioned to a dentist's chair in the middle of his kitchen. I was immediately suspicious but cautiously relented.
Out came a teaspoon and this time it was my eye that Robert popped out. My brain immediately flipped as it tried to reconcile divergent signals and the loss of stereoscopic vision. One eye was looking ahead and the other down; it gave me an immediate headache. I didn't see the forceps until he had already reached into my ocular cavity and was removing something from behind.
"What the..."
"Brain pearls" Robert explained. "All that grit that gets in your eye and doesn't get washed out in your tears settles behind the eye on the optic nerve. Oligodendrocyte then coats the grit and binds it to the pachymeninx layer of the ocular nerve. They're easy enough to remove if you know where to find them."
Robert helped me reinsert my eye and held a cold compress to it. With my other eye I looked down into the dish and saw a dozen small pink pearls. They varied in size with the largest the size of a green pea. The larger they were the darker the pinkness.
"You had some older ones in there too, but I couldn't know for sure. That big one looks like its about seventeen years old. Here..."
He handed me a sealed vitamin organizer with nearly thirty sections. On top of each flap was a piece of tape with a year written on it going back as far as 1986. He popped the 1986 flap open and delicately handed me a swollen mauve pearl of his own.
"Well, here's to catching up." He picked out the darkest of my pearls from the bowl and swallowed it with a shot of the whisky he'd used to clean his surgical utensils. Immediately his eyes glazed over and he stood motionless like a zombie in front of me. I waved one hand in front of his eyes but there was no reaction.
I followed his lead, taking the mauve pearl from the plastic organizer and swallowing it with a gulp of cheap whisky. The pearl dissolved in my throat and my vision clouded over. My brain shut down completely and I felt my muscles turn to lead as I watched the last 19 years of Robert's life unfold from his perspective. The sequences came in flashes, like someone strobing a slide show onto a wall in front of me. Some passages dragged on and some flickered past at light speed; his first girlfriend was a glorious segment in living colour, his father's funeral a dour and quick affair.
I saw crimes he'd committed and people he'd hated, interspersed with days in the sunshine and friends he'd shared experiences with. I got to see the entire brain pearl collection process in minute detail; his kitchen surgery in full swing and even some of the experiences he'd witnessed from other pearls he'd taken.
Eventually I saw myself receiving a faceful of grit and the arduous self-extraction process he'd had to go through to remove this pearl; the image blinking out as the tug of the forceps pulled the pearl free from his ocular nerve. I blinked and Robert was standing in front of me, having absorbed two years less of my life than I had of his.
"Dude, nice life" he said.
Stereotypical
Shadow walked in through the swing doors and paused, scanning the room, checking out every table and face to ensure he didn't recognise anyone. He moved quickly over to the bar and signalled to me that he wanted a scotch.
"Evening stranger, you look like a man on a mission. Vendetta? Blood feud? Avenging the death of your sweetheart gunned down by mobsters in a crossfire during a routine drug-dealing doublecross?"
Shadow looked up and over the top of his sunglasses, his eyebrows raised in astonishment.
"How did you know?!" he stammered.
"You just look like that sort'o fella" I replied, topping up the glass in front of him with pale brown liquid that sloshed over the ice. I slid a bowl of peanuts closer to him.
"Take a look over in that corner there" I flicked my eyes to a corner of the room "and you'll see four teenagers on a road trip. They think their fake IDs worked on me, but I just didn't have the heart to throw them out. One of them's slept with a transvestite, another swallowed a live lizard, the geeky one is going to discover by the end of the trip that the girl he met on the Internet is only 12 years old and the last one will make it out with a valuable life lesson and narrate the conclusion of their tale."
Shadow munched a few peanuts absent-mindedly before looking back round at me.
"Or over there at the pool table" I jerked a thumb behind me to the dimly lit tables on the opposite side of the bar "at one table you've got two women who are on a voyage of self-discovery, bonding in a mutual distrust of men. The tall one has a gun under the seat of the car that she'll eventually use to save the redhead from an attempted rape. I figure we'll be seeing them in a live police pursuit on CNN by the time they make it to Nevada."
Shadow frowned and downed the remainder of his drink, obviously disgruntled that I had seen it all before. He dropped a ten onto the bar top and headed for the door, but as he reached it a fist flew in from outside, knocking him backwards.
"Cool! Bar fight!" shouted the road trip kids and immediately leapt on some nearby generic extras who had been pretending to converse by simply moving their lips and not making any noise.
"Aw hell!" said one of the fugitive man-haters as she swung a poolcue at one of the sidekicks of Shadow's blood fued enemy. They had arrived at the midpoint of the movie for the all-important first confrontation. Shadow shook himself awake again and moved in for his close-up.
Deophobia
I hate Jesus; because of Jesus nothing I ever did was ever good enough.
When I was six and I collected up all the glass bottles I could from all my neighbors and I took them to the recycling center, straining my tiny arms as I dragged the bags along the road, shredding the bags and dropping several bottles on the way until eventually I arrived, having walked through crushed glass and dislocated both arms, only to be told that Jesus had died for my sins, I hated Jesus.
When I was twelve and my class went skiing in the Alps and five of us were caught in an avalanche and buried under tonnes of snow in an air pocket deep in a crevasse and I had to collect fresh water in my mouth and tear strips of my own flesh off with my fingernails to keep my classmates alive only to be rescued two weeks later and reminded by our rescuers that Jesus had died for my sins, I hated Jesus even more.
When I was nineteen and my girlfriend needed a spinal column transplant to allow her to walk again and the consent forms weren't enough, and the doctors refused to take mine and I tore it free from my own back with a red hot poker, gouging out the surrounding flesh and filling the gaping wound with a shock absorber from a 1977 Ford Mustang so that I could still drag my withered carcass to the hospital and present her with my spine only for her, once fully recovered, to remind me that Jesus had died for my sins, I learned to hate Jesus even more.
And finally, when I stood before the assembled armies of the world and implored them to put down their weapons, to destroy their stockpiles of arms and to live in brotherly love with one another, no matter their race, sex, creed or color only to be blasted, in their final act of violence, from every angle with every known weapon of destruction both massive and minutious, obliterated into the constituent molecules of my very being and scattered across the globe and my spirit rose up to the heavens and I encountered Jesus himself, only then could I look down on him in all his radiant glory and tell him to go stuff himself.
Coordination
Deep beneath the Circus of Oxford in the heart of the city of London, Queen Aki-35850/B was attempting to coordinate her fellow queens. She had doused the hollow chamber they were all crammed into with her pheremones to attract them here and she now flicked through the pages of her agenda with her right front tarsal claw.
"Tuesday the 25th?" she called out to her fellow queens.
"Can't" shouted a voice from across the caverns, "I'm getting my mandibles manicured"
Queen Aki-35850/B glared across at Queen Ser-55316/A, hating the other queen's vanity. She flicked her agenda to the next page.
"Thursday the 27th?"
"No good for me, the entire Aenictogitoninae sub-family is visiting me that day" shouted out Queen Del-11909/F before munching a delightful trophallaxis macaroon that Aki always prepared for these gatherings.
Aki surveyed the several billion other queen ants in the chamber and, undaunted, flipped to the next page.
"Saturday the 29th?"
Nobody said anything.
"Right" she began, before noticing that one of the youngest queen ants present, Zew-99786/X had raised a quivering antenna. "Yes?"
"I have a date that day"
Queen Aki-35850/B was flumoxed. "A date? You can't have a date, that's not how we socialise with the male drones... you mean you're actually treating one of them as... an equal?!"
Zew-99786/X could feel the fearsome combined rage of the biomass superorganism of queens directed at her. She plucked up all of her courage and stood her ground.
"He's a Solenopsis Invicta from Texas, and he loves me. We're going to settle down and have our own little colony somewhere and maybe six or seven million children. I don't want to participate in flying ant day this year..."
Ignition
Let me tell you about a formative experience from my childhood; about the button.
Who knows why I was going through the kitchen drawers, maybe I was looking for a utensil, maybe I was bored, maybe I was looking for buried treasure and hadn't come to the conclusion that the kitchen was newer than I was, who knows. In one drawer along with the plastic freezer bags and wire ties I found it; the button.
The button was maybe two inches across and an inch high, it wasn't the sort of button that you used to button up your coat it was more the sort of button you used for launching space shuttles. It was a big red button and it was just sitting there in the kitchen drawer.
I lifted the button out and looked at the underside. A thin base of black rubber meant it would stay put on any worktop in the kitchen. I figured there was room inside for a battery and maybe a circuit or maybe some sort of remote sensor; it was afterall a big red button.
I turned it over and had a good look at it. The shell was solid white plastic and the base a black rubber disk, the actual button to depress was in bright red and concave, with a tiny black dot at the lowest point. I could not improve upon my earlier conclusion, it was a big red button.
And big red buttons are made to be pushed, it is their very raison d'être. Buttons themselves are somewhat optional. Switches and sliders and dials and whatnot can be left alone, but a big red button. Let me say that again... a big... red... button, simply must be pushed.
So I put the button down on the worktop and pushed the big red button with my thumb. And I received a sharp stabbing metal spike in the pad of my thumb where the eggshell-piercing point came through the tiny black dot.
And what did I learn? I learned that sometimes big red buttons shouldn't be blindly pushed unless you know what its going to do.
Hell on Wheels
I don't remember if I even mentioned before about my career as a motorcycle daredevil indoor arena dinner theatre show entertainer. No? Well there's a story to tell.
When our trucks rolled into town the sides were all painted up with the venue details and the date of the show. We drove straight up to whatever arena we had booked and the girls started the buzz in town going, handing out fliers, street corner word of mouth, showing up at the local bars and promoting the show, we got airtime on the local radio station and plugged it.
On the night of the show the kitchens were set up in part of the parking lot, the girls now became waitresses with large metal serving trays strapped round their necks. In the arena itself all the seats already had metal skillets, bowls and cutlery in place for when the folks arrived. People were encouraged to bring their own drinks, this may have been a mistake but we figured we'd be out of town before anyone could file an official complaint. Anyways.
The girls went through the rows, spooning out chilli and a cube of cornbread as some of my daredevil stuntmen rolled cars in the arena and drove cars around up on two wheels. At one point we had one car up on its right wheels and one up on its left wheels creating an arch and there was a burst of fireworks from the arena wall and I shot out on my motorcycle to Meatloaf's "Bat Outta Hell" and passed right underneath both cars. That got everyone spilling their chilli everywhere.
Next came the main course and everyone got ribs, refried beans and spicy chicken wings and here's where I did my real showstopper.
In the middle of the arena was a caged enclosure and the folks were encouraged to send their kids down into the cage. That night we had upwards of 500 kids in that cage. And then the ramp vehicles were driven in and the flaming hoops on poles over the cage were lit.
I cycled out and we had this prearranged birthday boy in the arena, somebody down close to the action. I held up a raw bloody steak and asked him how he'd like it cooked. Din't matter what he said of course, it wasn't like I was going to hang around any of the flaming hoops or anything just so he could eat it well done. So I cycled round and round, did a few wheelies, let the folks eat as they watched me tootle about with this steak on my helmet.
So eventually I picked up speed, circled around, hit the ramp, sailed over the kids, through the flaming hoops and landed on the other side. Parked alongside the birthday boy and to rapturous applause and cheers in the spotlight gave him his slightly singed steak.
Son of a bitch took one bite and choked to death on the spot.
Eat Your Greens
When I was growing up my mother was very relaxed in her methods for raising us. I like to think she had a grand plan that taught self-reliance and stong independant responsibility but it may well have been that being a single working mother made life difficult. Somehow I have it in my head though that I had a good childhood full of more pleasant memories than bad and that I should feel grateful. So I am.
One aspect of my childhood I am not thankful for is the balanced meals.
I *wanted* beans on toast. I didn't want the brocolli or the sprouts. I *wanted* the apple sauce, I didn't care for the boiled potatoes. or steamed carrots. I *wanted* the crinkle-cut chips but didn't couldn't stand the aubergines or courgettes.
One day my mother decided to teach me a lesson. I think I was eight or nine.
"Who's he?" I asked.
"This is David George Brownlow Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, also known as Lord Burghley" replied my mother.
"Is he having dinner with us?"
He looked old and decrepit and like he was held together with glue rather than sinew and bone. I could have pushed a finger through his skin it seemed so papery thin and yellow.
"Is he dead?" I asked.
"No, he's just very quiet. Now look, Lord Burghley here was an Olympic athlete, and a member of Parliament, he won multiple events in the British AAA championships, the Commonwealth Games and sprinting around the Great Court at Trinity College in the time it took the college clock to toll 12 o'clock, inspiring the scene in the film Chariots of Fire."
He looked like the only runs he did these days were into his incontinence pants, and that Vangelis was constantly playing out his life in ultra slow-mo. He appeared to have fallen asleep at the table. My mother put a plate of sprouts in front of him, perhaps not the best idea.
"He has something to tell you about healthy green vegetables and why you should eat them."
She had to prod the old codger a few times before he took notice of the plate, reacting as if he'd just been told to eat raw dog feces. He looked across at me without seeing me, tried to look round at my mother and promptly died at the kitchen table.
Now, you have to realise, my mother was raising my sister and I on very little money. I guess that had we been living in your standard 2.4 children household with working father and perhaps a dog my mother would have arranged for Daley Thompson or Carl Lewis to show up and give me a patronising pep-talk about why greens are important. But as I say, she was doing the best she could.