A gorillas existential crisis

Put your heart and soul into it: A Drew and Drake story

MattLeave a comment

Drew consoled himself with a packet of wotsits and a cartoon on the TV as the ambulance drove away.
‘Psst.’
Drew looked around but could see no one. He shrugged and continued munching on his wotsits.
‘Pssst!’
Drew drew himself forward on the couch, ‘Hello?’
‘Psst, here!’
Drew looked around the room, eyes darting back and forth uncertainly, ‘Hello?’
‘Here!’ The voice called again.
Drew picked up the remote with cheesy fingers, leaving a grease stain on the mute button. ‘Hello?’ he whispered uncertainly.
The cartoon moved onto adverts; a girl stood open-mouthed in fake awe of a pink plastic toy.
‘Drew! I need you to get my body back!’ The voice had panic in it.
‘Drake?’ Drew looked dumbfounded and sprung off the sofa, ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘I’m in the Dambuster!’ Came Drakes’s voice.
Drew’s face remained blank.
‘The damn Dambuster!’ Drake called out, frustrated.
‘Is that a hoover?’ Drew lurched toward the broken hoover in the corner of the room.
‘No! No!’ Drake’s voice started, and the panic heightened in his voice, ‘Air fix model plane! 1:72 Lancaster Dambuster!’
Drew found the Lancaster Dambuster model on the table next to the sofa. He picked it up delicately and put it to his ear like a phone, ‘Drake?’
‘I’m here! You got me!’ Drake replied with relief, his voice clipped and loud inside Drake’s ear.
‘Bloody hell! Turn the volume down!’
‘Or take me away from your ear!’ Drake would have been shaking his head if he could, ‘Listen, Drew! You need to get to my body!’
‘How did you even get in there? The paramedics took you away!’ Drew held the Dambuster in his right hand and scratched his balls in his shorts.
‘I put my heart and soul into this model!’ 
‘And now look at ya! You’re a damn dambuster!’
Drake sighed.

Drew raced out the door, the Dambuster in the crook of his arm.
‘Careful!’ Drake drolled, ‘I’m made of plastic!’
‘Aren’t we all these days.’ Drew muttered.
There was silence except for Drew’s heavy, lumbering footsteps until Drake finally broke it. ‘Drew?’
‘Yea?’
‘When did you become so profound?’
‘You’ve not been found yet.’ Drew replied.
The dambuster tutted beneath the crook of Drew’s arm.
‘I’ll be profound when I’ve got you back.’
‘I’m here.’
‘I mean when you’re made of flesh.’ Drew replied.
‘Alright, Drew?’ Billy stepped off the curve of the pavement to step around him, ‘Talkin’ t’ yaself?’
‘No I was talkin’ t’…’ Drew stopped and felt the Airfix model beneath the crook of his arm, ‘I guess maybe I was.’
‘Where is Drake?’ Billy asked, looking around for him before his eyes beamed on the model and with a huge grin and glint in his eyes he asked, ‘I used t’ make them as a kid! Airfix model, is it?’
Drew nodded.
‘Can I have a look?’
Drew squinted in the sun, ‘I dunno about that.’
‘Protective over it are ya?’ Billy smirked and stepped closer to Drew, Bending a little to view the plane. ‘Ya make that yaself?’
‘No, Drake made it.’
‘Wow. He’s really put himself into that!’
Drew gawped, ‘You know?’
Billy looked up from the plane with a frown, ‘What?’
‘Ya said he put himself into it.’
‘Yea. Just look at it.’ Billy snatched it from Drew’s arm, ‘He’s really got an eye for the details. The way he’s painted it to make it look rusted and old. It’s amazing!’ Billy’s eyes popped as he shook his head in amazement, ‘Who’d ‘ave thunk simple old Drake had such in ‘im!’ He grinned from ear to ear, ‘He did put his heart and soul into it didn’t it!’ He beamed, delicately running a finger along the plane’s flank and around the wing’s edges. ‘Hell, I might just be inspired to start up the hobby again myself!’ Billy made as if to return the plane to Drew, ‘You be careful how ya carry ‘er! Can’t have you breaking it!’
Drew held both his hands out to receive the plane.
‘There ya go, now off ya go. Be delicate with her!’
‘It’s a he.’ Drew was shocked, ‘Ya should know that!’
‘Nah a beauty like that is a she! Always a she, Drew.’
Billy turned and continued on his way, turning to look over his shoulder at Drew and the model once or twice before turning the corner to the next street.
‘Well that was gross.’ Intoned the Dambuster in Drake’s voice.
‘Ya tellin’ me ya got a sex change too?’ Drew asked the dambuster, his face screwed up, ‘Ya coulda told me!’
‘What? I haven’t had a bleeding sex change, mate!’
‘But he knew ya were in there. And he said you were a she!’
‘Do ya believe everything Billy tells ya?’
Drew shrugged.
‘Besides, he doesn’t know I’m in here!’
‘He said as much!’ Drew protested.
‘It’s a figure of speech to folk like him. He doesn’t realise it’s real. He says heart and soul as if they are metaphors. He doesn’t actually know I’m in here.’
‘So you haven’t changed your sex?’
The dambuster sighed, ‘That’s your concern right now? If I’ve had a sex change or not? I’m a damn dambuster! Focus, Drew, focus!’

‘Okay, so we’re here.’ Drew told the Airfix model, looking around furtively as he approached the doors.
‘What’s wrong?’ Drakes disembodied voice asked.
‘This place. It’s spooky!’
‘Spookier than a ghost in an Airfix model giving you instructions?’
Drew shrugged.
‘Time is of the essence!’
‘No. Essence is a perfume.’ Drew replied.
‘It’s also time.’ A flustered Drake replied from the Dambuster, ‘I dunno how long my body can be dead till it can’t take my soul back!’
Drew ran across the road and rattled the doors, ‘I can’t get in!’
‘You’re gonna have to break in!’
‘I can’t break in!’ Drew huffed.
‘Yes you can! You’ve done it before! It’s not your first crime!’
‘But I’ve been on a good streak!’
‘Do you want me to be a damn dambuster for the rest of my fucking life?’
Drew stopped to think about this a moment, the silence engulfing them before a car sped past. Drew tried to look nonchalant, scuffing the pavement with the toe of his shoe, hugging the airfix model close to his body.
‘Fuck sake! It shouldn’t take that long to think about! It’s obvious!’
‘Sorry, it’s just… I mean… You’re still here with me! So…I don’t mind if you’re an airfix plane or whatever else!’
‘Aww,’ Drake snapped, ‘How cute!’ He said sarcastically, ‘Listen, Drew, I need you to pick the lock. You’ve picked a lock before.’
‘No you picked the locks’ Drew protested.
‘Did I?’
‘Yea you picked the locks!’
‘Okay. But you saw me do it!’
Another car drove by, the passenger giving Drew the side eye as he whispered to the airfix model, ‘I wasn’t paying attention to you! I was on the lookout.’
‘Well..’ Drake started…
A car door opened and closed nearby, and then shoes scuffing on the pavement could be heard inching closer, accompanied by a plastic rattle.
A woman broached the corner, a plastic carrier bag in one hand, and a waft of perfume made its way toward them.
‘Time and essence.’ Drew mumbled to himself.
The woman stopped short at the sight of Drew outside the doors, clutching the Dambuster in his grubby hands.
She read his face, a look of anxious desperation.
‘Hello,’ Piercing the moment with her voice, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ She plopped the carrier bag down on the pavement and twisted her body to root through her handbag, fishing out a selection of keys that rang together as she pulled them out.
‘I need to get in to see Drake.’
‘Drake?’ The woman picked the carrier bag back up and walked towards the doors and unlocked them. ‘Surname?’
‘Whitlock.’
‘And what do you need to see this, erm..’ The keys rattled in her hands, ‘Mr Whitlock’s body for?’
‘Because…’
‘Halt it, Drew. She won’t believe you.’
Drew swallowed audibly, ‘Because I miss him.’
‘Tell her you want to place the dambuster with him.’
Drew held out the plane in her face, ‘I want to put this with him.’
‘Tell her he put his heart and soul into it and he’d have wanted it to be with him.’
‘He would have wanted it to be with him.’ Drew told her.
The woman looked at him suspiciously. ‘No,’ She frowned, ‘That would be a job for the undertakers. You think I can just let any random man in off the streets to come look at some mans body?’ She shook her head again, ‘What about dignity? What about respect? what about…’
As she prattled on, Drake instructed Drew to sneak in through the doors while they had the chance.
‘Hey!’ The woman stormed in through the doors, ‘Young man!’ She shouted after him.

Running into the cold room lined with steel drawers Drew pulled each one out till he found Drake’s lifeless body.
‘Now what do I do?’ Drew asked.
‘I dunno. Place me on my body.’ Drake replied
Drew placed the airfix model of the Dambuster onto Drake’s body.
The lights above buzzed monotonously and a tap dripped somewhere off to the side.
‘Psst, Drew…’
‘Yea?’
‘I…I dunno what to do now. How do I get myself back into my body?’
Drew frowned, ‘Well, how’d you get in the Dambuster?’
‘I told you, I put my heart and soul into it!’
‘Well do the same again but into your body.’
‘But,’ Drew could almost hear the expression Drake would have been pulling on his face if he could, eyebrows drawn together in a frown, ‘It’s not the same thing. I was making it, I put a lot of effort into it.’
‘Put a lot of effort into getting back into your body then.’ Drew shrugged.
The Dambuster started to vibrate with the effort as the woman stormed in.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing in here?’ She scowled, her eyes reaching the airfix model widened, ‘What on earth is going on with that?’
She lurched toward Drew, ‘Is this some kind of degenerate sexual thing!’ She looked from Drew to the Dambuster, ‘What is that toy doing! Why is it vibrating like that!’
‘He’s trying to get back into his body!’
Befuddled the woman stepped back, ‘What? Who?’
‘Drake! He’s trying to get back into his body!’
‘What do you mean he’s trying to get back into his body?’ She asked in a shrill voice.
Drew pointed to the Dambuster, ‘ He’s in there, ‘And it’s not a toy. It’s an Airfix model.’
The woman started, ‘It’s not a toy? It’s a….’
The Dambuster started to vibrate even harder, and one of the propellers began to spin, which caused a chain reaction, and they all began to move.
‘What trickery is this?’ The woman asked appaled, ‘This is inappropriate behaviour inside a morgue.’
‘There is no trickery,’ Drake’s voice croaked.
The woman jumped out of her skin, and her body landed limply on the cold tiled floor.
‘Fuck,’ Drake spat as he got up off the metal gurney, ‘I think we’ve killed her!’ He ran over to her and checked for a pulse, ‘Shit. She’s gone.’
‘What happened to her?’ Drew asked.
‘I think I scared her to death.’
‘She jumped out of her skin.’ Drew muttered to himself.
Standing there naked over her, feeling for a pulse Drake smiled, ‘I think you’re onto something there!’
‘What?’ Drew gawped.
‘She jumped out of her skin. Maybe she’ll jump back in, in a minute.’
‘Can we go home now?’
Drake tutted and shook his head, ‘No hug for your old mate? Not even a ‘welcome back mate.”
‘Not while you’re naked like that, no.’ Drew replied.

Diary of a superfical cunt

MattLeave a comment

I don’t think I really like nature. It’s too cruel for my soft little half-hearted pitter-patter of a beating fucking heart.

What I’ve really been admiring all this time is the individual animal, the cleaned-up looking images that make the aesthetics of nature look harmonious. That is what I’ve been chasing after, the perfect imagery of all ‘peace’ and ‘green’ and so far removed from the truth of the brutality of it all.

And I suspect that’s also what most others mean when they say they love nature. No, the truth is we only love what we wish nature was like.

People say things like, ‘isn’t the British countryside so beautiful.’ But all I have ever seen in our oh so quaint British countryside is the same greenery turning brown, over and over and over and over…A vast emptiness in which a liminal space hangs between us and the dread we’re so clearly meant to be feeling.

I’m not talking about the brown of autumn as the green slips and slides into reds, browns and yellows. I’m talking about how it looks to me throughout the year. A vast carcass upon which you all stand and talk about how beautiful it is, with the sun glaring in the sky for this one frightful opportunity of light to see a vast nothingness, a desert you don’t see because it’s dressed in shades of green.
Am I really so far removed from the beauty? Is my perception really so out of wack that we can be seeing the same damn fucking thing?

And in my quest for some semblance of life within this rotten kingdom we call united, I have looked to the woodlands (what little there is left) and nature reserves.

And this is what I’ve learnt, there is no real beauty out there that isn’t only surface deep. Underneath it all is the stark truth of an inherently godless world. And if there is such a thing as a God, it’s worse even still because that God made it this way which can only speak to their absurd level of cruelty.

The truth is British people aren’t a nation of nature lovers, we’re a nation of people who think we’re nature lovers. It might behoove us to know the difference.

And many would say this is the rambling of a mind in a current Depressive state, and I’d say I agree, but then I have to ask, am I wrong? Look at the evidence before you.

People will shriek at the idea of insects, worms worming their way underground, death and the maggots that brings with it. Yet that is all part of the natural world, as is disease, parasites and shit.

Don’t get me wrong there are people who genuinely appear to love nature, and I can only look on at them with jealousy because I sure can’t fathom it.
I thought I belonged to that crowd but the more I contemplate it, the more I fight inside my head every time I try to decide if I want to go out into that world out there, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that it truly is superficial for me.

Scratch under the surface a little, I bleed a hatred that I hold inside of me, a resentment toward nature for being so absolutely bloody, cruel and gross.


Another letter from Mammaroon

Matt1 Comment

Dear friends

It’s funny what you remember when you miss something. See, it occurred to me recently that there was a great forgetting down on earth. We’d pour our filth out into the world, and then when we glimpsed the ripple effect in our environment, like stones in water, we’d remember for a second, a moment, maybe a little longer if we could hold onto the abstract long enough.
We’d sit, mourn, sigh, and shake our heads, ‘What about the whales?!’ We’d ask, ‘What about the curlew?’
Then, in the next breath, we’d turn and pour more filth, always re-forgetting.

I only remembered our great forgetting because I’m here in this fish tank on another planet. How far removed I have had to be to realise is…nothing but shameful to be honest with you, dear friends.

I miss the way Herons flew like a rope with wings and how the squirrels pissed me off by chewing my bird feeders.
The early morning dawn chorus would irritate me after a sleepless night.

In other news, though, I married Spoon, not because of love but boredom.

Sitting here in this glass tank, I know what a goldfish felt like; if his memory is bad, surely it’s from the tediousness that rots one’s brain from such an oppressive home rather than from biology. I remember having a goldfish that knew when it would get food, and I am much the same when the mammarrians throw in some food.

Occasionally, when the boobacious little spidery mammarrians come and stare at me through the glass, with even smaller ones standing beside them I take off my t-shirt, and I take a run-up to the glass and the little ones skitter and hide behind the slightly bigger ones. It passes the time and amuses me no end!

Yours faithfully
Holden Mcgroin.

Broken enough

Matt1 Comment

Sometimes, I wish you had told me that the happiest we’ll ever be would be fleeting
Just a moment of lightness between the heavy blows
maybe I’d have been stronger if I had been shown
how to ride along with the lightness before it was blown
but now I just panic in the throes of it
‘it all ends in tears,’ says the voice in my head
‘don’t trust these moments you’ll never see again.’
so I keep turning away
trying to stick with what I know
this misery that sticks a lump in my throat
but it’s comfort just to know
that I belong in this little hole
where tears fill the core
till I am broken enough to feel whole

Betrayal

MattLeave a comment

‘Discover nature’s majesty,’ they say
cataloguing moments of serene
but the music runs through
matching the mood to now
looking back, photographs displayed
memories of what was but will no longer be
How can you take this, the loss of what we see
how can we live beside this travesty
our hearts beating against the gravity
our history bringing us down
and to look in their eyes
and see death has prevailed
I am trapped in their strife
at our human betrayal.

Not me, not I, look there at them 

MattLeave a comment

Keep the faces within
disembodied voices crawling
a shattering of skulls behind eyelids
peeping to tomorrow’s byline
author unknown
hatred the tagline
the other freaks are calling
Finger pointing
‘Not me, not I, look there at Them.’
contortionists contorting
fists clash, skulls smash
twisting, cavorting
freaks on freaks in blood
sheep calling sheep sheep
over the fence and mawing
grazing on the zieteigests distortion
groomed into war and extortion
And so the chant goes
‘Not me, not I, look there at them‘
‘Not me, not I! Look there them’





The stallion and the misunderstood

MattLeave a comment

Do you know what it’s like to feel like
At any given moment, they’ll take away your rights?
When all these people keep on arguing on either side
and you’re just trying to keep from dying inside
trying to be unknown
in a landscape of hatred
keeping to the edges
I used to think I hung around these places
cause I wanted to be alone
but now I think I was pushed
pushed to the side

Sometimes I think I’m strong
but mostly, I just think I’m wrong
my stomach churning with all the news
as they preach to all the masses in their pews
I laugh at their ignorance
and then it all burns in my lungs
their fingers pointing to all of us
and I hear their teeth clash as they speak
hungry for the blood rushing to my head
and I think of the look in that horse’s eye
tangled in barbed wire, the flare of the nostrils
as fear curdled his blood
and I think we are brothers in blood
The stallion and the misunderstood

The long black train

MattLeave a comment

Trying to learn to be captivated by the moment
but

All these thoughts get away from me
and I give chase
never catching the momentum of now
but all the tomorrows
like how one day
someone I love will slip away

And I want to fight against the indifference of the universe
but it wouldn’t fear me anyway
I could bend and break all the rules
But time will still etch itself onto my mother’s face
I could photograph all these candid moments
light capturing my father’s face
but in the end, even the lights paintings will fade away

and I wear a mask of calm
But these butterflies are held
each flutter pulls a different trigger
and time keeps rushing
The long black train that can’t be stopped.