The Frankensteins

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Meredith sat in her rocking chair by the fire, without looking up from her knitting she said, ‘I wish you’d stop rolling your eyes at me!’

‘Well if you would talk sense I wouldn’t need to’ Alfie remarked.

Stopping her knitting for a second she reached under the chair and pulled out one of his eyes, ‘I’m tired of finding them all over our wonderful house!’

‘I’ve been looking for that eye!’ he replied.

‘Well if you’d mind them better you wouldn’t lose them would you?’ she lifted her head toward the direction Alfie’s voice was coming from, her eye sockets empty.

Patting her knitting on her knee she began, ‘now then, when are we going to the body shop, like we said we would?’

‘I’m waiting for you to go now! I’m all ready!’ Alfie said dripping with impatience.

‘I wish you’d calm yourself down!’

‘Wish you’d bloody hurry up! Now come on! Chop, chop!’ He clapped his hands together and turned to the mirror over the mantelpiece. Pulling some fluff from the eyeball Meredith had previously found under her chair he plopped it in his right socket.

‘You’re going with odd eyes in aren’t you?’

‘I might be!’ Alfie said.

‘It’s always odd eyes and odd socks with you!’

The body shop had a sale on everything, a sign in front of a shelf full of boots and shoes read, ‘buy a pair of boots and get one soul free.’

‘Look, Mer!’ Alfie lit up like a child in a sweet shop, ‘they have buy one get one free on all colours of eyes!’

‘You’ve enough eyes at home!’ Meredith scowled and plopped two golden eyes in her sockets from her handbag, then took out a pair of big jam jar like glasses. The glasses enlarged her golden eyes as she bent down and looked towards the shoes and boots.

‘I could do with some new boots!’ Meredith started, turning to a woman who worked in the shop, ‘do we know whose soul we’ll get?’

The woman shook her head, ‘No, you get whatever soul comes with the boots.’

‘That’s a shame’ Meredith tutted to herself, ‘What do you think, Alfred?’

‘I think you need to stop calling me Alfred in public! You know I don’t like it!’

‘No about the boots!’ Meredith said ignoring his plea.

‘You have a right boot at home, get a left one.’

‘But if I only buy one boot, I shall not get the soul!’

‘You’ve got your own!’ Alfie laughed.

‘I like to wear someone else’s essence every now and then!’

‘You know they’re not anyone else’s soul right, Mer? They’re manufactured!’

‘Well, anyway,’ Meredith bunched up her hair, ‘I like to wear the essence of another soul every now and then!’

‘Just get the right one. It’s not like you can choose what soul you get! What if you get a piss poor one, full of vulgar language?

‘I suppose you’re right, Alfred.’

‘Pardon me,’ Alfie started with a big grin, ‘I’m…I’m right for once? Well, that’s a bloody first!’

‘You won’t be right for long, carry on with that attitude!’ She said slapping with him her handbag.

Some teenagers were prowling outside the shop like a pride of young lions.

‘Hey,’ one of the lads hollered, ‘Look ‘ere we got some Frankies!’

The other kids laughed.

Alfie sighed and muttered under his breath, ‘like a pack of hyenas, they are!’

‘Come on Alfred, we’re going home!’ Meredith pulled at his arm, going pale all over, stumbling and mumbling as she put her glasses back in her bag, ‘I don’t want to see such folly!’ She proclaimed dramatically and took her eyeballs out.

‘Ignore them!’ Alfie told her, his eyes having caught a top-shelf he could just about reach, ‘They’ve got some top of the line penises on sale!’

‘Yes, well,’ Meredith said as she fiddled about blindly trying to fasten up her handbag, ‘I’ve got a bog-standard vagina so you don’t need one of them fancy things!’

Hurriedly she shrugged her way out of the shop

‘Fuckin’ Frankies! Rich cunts!’

‘If we were Frankies me nanna would be alive!’ one of the teens shouted.

‘yea! And me sister is on a waiting list for 100 years on the NHS,  She won’t even live that fucking long! meanwhile you Frankies just go to the fucking body shop! Fucking rich bastards!’

‘FRANNNKIIIIIEEES’ they all shouted.

Alfie followed swiftly behind Meredith, overtaking her, his face red with rage till Meredith suddenly stopped and cried, ‘They’ve taken my bag! And snatched off with my arm too!’

Alfie spun on his heels, ‘Come here you little thieving rats!’ his eyes bulged out of his head, ‘Get back here you little rats,’ he repeated.

But the kids were too fast as they emptied her handbag leaving a trail behind them.

Alfie took off his left arm and threw it at them.

‘That’s an assault that!’ one of the kids yelled.

‘I’ve got a right to bear arms when you’ve stolen our property!’

The kids laughed and dropped her handbag along with Meredith’s right arm.

‘Stolen property?’ one of the older kids couldn’t resist shouting back sarcastically before turning a corner, ‘You rich cunts own everything!’ he could be heard shouting as he was lost to their sights.

‘Quick, quick,’ Meredith uttered, ‘collect everything up,’ she blushed a bluey colour that only the living dead could, as people rushed and gave them a wide berth on their way to their many errands.

Sunday Wordle: A house made of books

Matt6 Comments
Wordle 538

I am too small
and the world much too big
put me in a house made from books
instead of bricks
leaving everything to the imagination
with broken spines
as a sign
of worlds well lived
don’t leave me here constrained
in this broken body in bits
and the mind inside
that is folded a million times to fit
I can’t hold myself together alone
untethered in this storm
like a flag surrendering in the wind
comfort me with silk weaved wit and imagery
feed this insatiable hunger
for something to lift me from this black, black hole
don’t let me fall back to dust all alone.

Neon noose

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The neon world shone through the mist, the creatures called ‘humans’ or more scientifically, ‘homo sapiens’ were becoming like the dragonfish of the deep, deep ocean. Though their physical biology refused to become bioluminescent they were compensated for this by their adaptability and creative abilities.
The mist had become an ocean in which they constantly lived and had planet earth been a sentient being it may well have regarded humanity as its greatest mistake.

Their evolution of super adaptability meant they externalised many traits and habits other animals had inbuilt. With delusions of grandeur on a mass scale, the homo sapiens had no regard for animals, despite being one themselves, the animals in their linguistic headspaces had become ‘other,’ and expendable. Some homo sapiens had come to the conclusion they were making too many mistakes, indeed in one cartoon (something they created with an implement known as a pen) that caught my eye the homo sapien had drawn a dinosaur with a meteorite falling from the sky, one dinosaur looked to another and said, ‘We should do something about that,’ and the other said, ‘We can’t, it’ll hurt the economy.’ This cartoon was supposed to be something called comedy.
The laughing matter is that the cartoon was pointing out a real phenomenon. To the homo sapiens, the ‘economy’ was more important than saving their lives. And I have wondered ever since what sort of diety this ‘economy’ must have been to them that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. They worshipped this God called ‘economy’ and the thought of hurting this God was baulked at more than their own demise. Perhaps they believed in some kind of afterlife. They appeared trapped in a hell of their own making, the air was dense with all sorts of stuff they pumped into it daily. But they could not or would not help themselves. I believe they were all (a term they used) addicts.

They had divided such a line between themselves and the expendable others that they ironically othered themselves as a consequence.
They had mind-bending ideas that meant they figured anything ‘man-made’ was not nature, for they were above it or in some minds below it.
But the species were so fractured that although they lived by this principle even many of the homo sapiens who purported to be ‘at one with nature’ would baulk at ‘man-made’ progress and they didn’t see how this was a contradiction.
They figured themselves enlightened and the ones who would take them back to nature and none of them stopped to question, ‘When did we leave?’
Was it when they first harnessed electricity? Was it when they first landed a man on the moon?
If it was the earth that had birthed them in the whole scheme of things, then ‘man made’ need not be excluded from being called natural.
After all, it was their evolved capabilities that naturally gave them these abilities.

Homo sapiens by my alien (alien to them) observations, were addicts who were so out of fear of death.

If Homo sapiens were just mere natural beings then they too would perish, they too came from and were part of the dirt.

The homo sapiens were to the earth what the metallic starlings were to poison-dart trees.

Homo sapiens had the disadvantage that they were harmful to all of the earth, but the supposed advantage was their tendency to be highly adaptable.

But too many chose to ignore the signs, too many chose to ignore the men and women shouting and screaming that the world was on fire.

Because they were addicts.

All for fear of the thing they only brought more of, death.


And now, in their misty neon ghettos, they try to forget their inevitable demise, looking into the halo of a neon noose.