6.10.08

corpses...


I’m walking down the street and I found myself surrounded by corpses.
What are they doing?
What are they doing, littering the streets, strolling about the roads, taking up valuable walking space?
How fucking thoughtless!
I like to be able to weave about the shoppers and commuters.
To duck and dive through the crowds and fight my way to the front of queues.
But with all these dead people, swarming like drunken flees. I can’t. I just can’t.
There’s not an inch to budge.
And the smell!
Don’t get me started on the smell.
Putrid.
That’s what it is.
Bloody, stinking, vile and decaying and putrid!
It’s as if a supermarket meat fridge has broken down and all the meat has been spoiled and someone through a load of old eggs in and burnt it and pissed on it and it’s inexplicably rank with age and mould and disease and shell suits!

That dank lingering smell.
It gets right up your nose.
Maggots are leering out their mouldy heads, their skin is sagging about their sunken eyes (where applicable) and their teeth and nails are bare and jagged.
If one of those maggots lands on me I’ll be irate!
I just saw some poor old woman with one of the little buggers squirming in her hair.
I probably should have said something.
I definitely should have said something.
But I didn’t.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
And what can I do now anyway?
She’s gone.
Swallowed by the crowd.
If you can call them a crowd?
A horde?
Yes, a horde of fucking corpses!
They’ve eaten her.
Metaphorically.
I bet she’ll be one of them now.
Bloody hell!
Why didn’t I say something?
I never say anything.

I walk down the street some more.
There’s this new fast food joint opened.
I look in and it’s packed with corpses eating.
Why does a corpse need to eat?
Why does anything dead have a need to eat?
Surely eating is for the living?
Surely a corpse eating is simply wasteful?
It’s not wasteful.
Not when you’re eating waste.
Junk.
Crap.
Rubbish.
It’s all in there.
And they’re cramming it in their limp lifeless mouths.
Letting there chipped grey teeth grind and mash up pulpy stale bread, brown veg and rotten fruit.
These have to be some of the healthiest vegetarian corpse types I ever.
They’re really not like the flesh eating zombies Hollywood paints them as.
Still, it’s a sight for soar eyes I can tell you.
I feel sick watching.
Not that I turn away.
No.
It’s fascinating.
It’s fucking gross!
But, fascinating.
I’m starting to get gaping looks from the corpses inside.
Some with eyes, some without.
Either way, I can feel them digging into my skull.
So, I’m off.

I don’t want to hang about anyway.
Why would i?
Head down.
I walk on.
I listen to some jazz.
I like jazz.
Corpses don’t understand jazz and I feel better than them because of it.
The same with art, films, books.
I doubt a corpse would know its Peter Doig’s from its Gilbert and George’s.
Or Jean-Luc Godard’s from François Truffaut’s.
Or Murakami from Wilde.
Or whatever.
Call me elitist if you will.
(Elitist! comes a cry from the back.) Fuck off! I say.
I just know what I like.
I feel a need to rise about their moronic ways of not living.
I transcend death.
Living death, at least.
So, I’m walking in time to a sweet Billy Cobham track, which I don’t know what it’s called because I can’t be arsed to ever read or remember track names and this corpse stops me.

Got the time, he says.
Now, under usual circumstance I might say yes and tell him.
But last time a corpse asked me the time he punched me in the face seven or eight times, stole my CD player, along with my burnt copy of Avril Lavigne’s first album (Don’t ask), also my mobile, wallet, skateboard, dignity and some of my blood which was left my face quite dramatically on his fist.
Did he ask for that blood?
Heck no.
Did he take it without my permission?
Fuck yes!
So is that theft?
Apparently it isn’t.
Quite frankly, blood to me, is more important than any material thing I posses.
So why do people not get locked up for blood theft?!?
Who knows?

I’ve been thinking about this last incident for a bit and the corpse obviously thinks I’ve got some problem and I’m just gaping into space.
But really I’m reminiscing about past punches.
Either way, my face looks lost.
Got the time?
He’s getting a bit pissed.
No mate, I haven’t.
I say ‘mate’ because it lowers me to their level of understanding.
He stares at me and walks on shaking his floppy dead head in disgust.
I don’t think he is really disgusted.
I think he just did it to provoke a reaction.
A bit of dust falls out his ear.
The only reaction he gets it’s my smirk of triumph.
He doesn’t see it.
It’s an inner smirk.
Of course, I do have the time.
It’s almost 3pm.
2:57 in fact.
That can only mean one thing today.
I need to get back to my car.
The parking runs out at 3:07.
10 minutes.

I practically pivot on the spot and start back towards my car.
It’s in one of those giant concrete sight-for-soar-eyes type multi-storeys.
Mine is the nice blue Renault on the seventh floor.
I always park on the seventh if I can.
So I leave the car park.
It’s all down hill and concrete to the exit.
Outside the sky is bright and white and I have to shut my eyes.
I’m driving down the road and im still shocked by the number of corpses out today.
I feel safe in my car.
My car is my haven.
I feel alone and happy.
There are some traffic lights up ahead of me and the aspect changes to red.
I slow down.
I stop.
I’m in the left hand lane because im going to go left.
A van pulls up in the right hand lane.
It’s a white van.
I think it’s just a coincidence that so many white van drivers are so often wankers!
You shouldn’t be judgmental.
My mum and my vicar taught me that.
It’s hard not to be.
Anyway, in this instance, they are wankers.
I’ve got my window down because its warm out.
I’m listening to Radio 2.
It’s this old cheery motown song.
It’s fucking great.
The corpse wankers next to me notice and shout CUNT at me.
Which, quite frankly, I didn’t see coming.
It makes me jump and my heart is racing.
They laugh.
Wankers.
The lights change to green and we both drive off.
I go left.
They go strait.
I hope they crash and die and burn.
They don’t.
Wankers.
Their van was filthy.
Why are white vans always filthy?
They always have crap slogans scrawled on the back written by corpse school kids.
Little bastards.
They write dumb ass stuff.
I wish my girlfriend was as dirty as this.
As if they have girlfriends,
Little liar bastard corpses!
They should write something true.
As clean as my conscience.
That would be more fitting.

One of the interesting things about corpses is their complete lack of recognition as themselves as corpses.
If you or I look at one, we see a corpse.
We see gross and wrinkly and green and dead and skanky.
If a corpse were to look in a mirror it wouldn’t see the dead.
It would see a healthy-ish living human person.
It’s like vampires.
They don’t have reflections.
It’s one of the best things about going to late night vampire clubs.
You’re in the bog.
You’ve done your business and you want to make sure you still look great.
You turn towards the sinks to give your hands a drizzle and there’s all these vampires there.
You’re thinking how rubbish it is that all these people are standing in front of the mirrors above the sinks.
Then you look in the mirror.
You’re in an empty room.
You’re all alone.
Vampires have no reflection.
Even there clothes.
I don’t understand how that works.
Doubt I ever will.
You can straiten your collar, rough up your hair, pucker up, and wink and shadow box and whatever you can think of.
You can do it all in the confidence that no one will get in your way.
The draw back is that they can sneak up on you.
I mean, you’re not a vampire.
They all are.
Why the fucks do they have mirrors?
I digress.
I only notice when it’s on the brink of being too late.
I have to explain.
Sorry mate I say.
I don’t want to be a vampire.
It’s not my kind of thing.
Im just here for a drink and a dance I explain.
They back down and are all apologetic and sheepish.
I leave at this point.
I feel bad.
I don’t mean to lead them on but I obviously do.
I must give out a love bite vibe.

Corpses like vampires have unusual affects on mirrors.
That’s the point im making here.
However bad their skin,
However ragged their clothes.
It doesn’t matter.
Not a bit.
They see glamour and beauty.
Idiots.
They’re stuck up their own arse and totally self-involved.
Delusional.
Really fucking delusional!
What’s worse is they’re the first to point out your floors.
Anything that is different.
They’re at your throat about it.
Like right now for example.
Im wearing a shirt which is all check and bright colours.
I know it looks like that old BBC test card they used to have on TV late at night.
It had a girl and a clown and a chalk boards and bright colours and check.
I know this.
But a corpse would be explaining it to me as if it were insulting.
As if they were the first to think it up.
Like they’re the fucking man!
All because they apparently humiliated me.
They’re counting coup.
Give them another feather for their headdress.
Actually, fuck that, they wouldn’t know what the test card was.
That’s far too intelligent for them.
They’d have to really think about it to come up with that.
They’d be more obvious.
Ok, I wear glasses.
So, I must be Harry Potter!
That’s what they’d say.
This is another thing.
I love Harry Potter.
Touché corpses!
You think you insulted me but you paid me a compliment.

It’s a new day.
Everyday see the rise of a new dawn and I’m continually surprised by it.
However inevitable it may be.
The sun isn’t up yet and I doubt it will be for a while.
If I see it at all.
It overcast and raining.
I love it when the weather is like this.
I love the rain.

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