THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemonymous (Post 16063)

I intend to post some of these collaborations here abstemiously over 2009 if and when I can find them.

As a sort of birthday present to myself, here is a reminder (to myself) of a collaboration with PFJ (one of our most remarkable if not the best). I am not scanning the publication as it would be difficult to scan. It was published in something called 'Urges' in 1996:

FACT & FANGLEMENT
A collaboration by DFL and PFJ

As the Rat Catcher left, the customary pub hubbub faded to no more than a few self-conscious whispers.

Although accustomed to such situations. I was annoyed upon discovering that the other drinkers - all now twisted round on their barstool to look at me - had syphons to suck much longer than mine. It looked as if yours truly had drawn the short straw yet again.

It was chagrining, for all of the fact that they happened to be imbibing spirits whilst I was the only one wielding a pint of bitter with dimples but plenty of bite. Noting their supercilious looks, I decided my straw was not worth the spill it could have been lit up to be. So I threw it into the ornamental ash-tray with a flourish - and resorted to my bare lips for the deepest satisfying gulp possible.

Down in the mouth, the others returned sulkily to their shorts. For some these were merely drinks. The most imaginative crocheted brief garments with long hooks resembling ibis bills. One or two surreptitiously watched films on video recorders not much bigger than wrist watches. Another sprinkled a mixture of bran and coarse flour into his drink. The resultant mixture, no doubt, provided ample excuse for sulkiness.

"I could catch rats, too - if I tried..."

My voice sounded unnaturally loud and seriously squeaky, in the now quiet bar-room. No one replied, but their looks were redolent of meaning. Even if I could catch a rat, they seemed to imply, its stewed flesh would be acrid and its bones too brittle to carve into nativity scenes. Their attitude was typical of the rabble. The more glorious one's former station, the greater the contempt of guttersnipes when one falls. Once, I would not have so much spat in the direction of the pub prepared to admit a Rat Catcher, for I had been in the service of the Duke himself. Indeed, I had risen to the dizzy heights of the Fan Bearer to the Duke's Chamberlain.... heights too dizzy for me, as it turned out.

How I had resorted to drinking pints instead of cocktails is a longer story than the one I intend to tell. Furthermore, the facts containing my fall from grace are only of tangential relevance whilst of very little interest in themselves. The story I intend to tell, however briefly, has indeed not yet happened - so yes, come with me, as I leave the pub, tracked by the icy stares of the pointy-faced sipsters...who, it has to be said, only toyed with short drinks for the sake of their bladders; not for any reasons of nobility or of breeding - or, even, of an impending shortage of long, twirled-paper syphons.

My purpose is to pursue the Rat Catcher whose name I once knew as Veronica - an erstwhile colleague in Fan Bearing. Recognition was more than could have been expected because a Rat Catcher, enveloped in thick hides against the bites of vermin, could not hope to resemble a diaphonously draped Fan Bearer. But Veronica it surely was.

I should not have waited so long before following her into the street, but luck was with me: the leather-clad figure had yet to turn the corner into Sink Hole Court. She was scraping something red from a drain hook, no doubt after pausing to skewer a rat. Business must be bad. Even I knew that the drain rats in this quarter were lean beasts with not so much as a farthing's worth of flesh on their bones.

Clearly, Veronica did not pause a second time. When I entered Sink Hole Court, the only person to be seen was a wizened fish wife, squatting in the gutter, relieving herself as she scraped the scales from an anaemic carp.

If that old hag was the only person to be seen, there were three shadows - which in hindsight, must have resulted from people confiding in each other - catching the corner of my eye. Surely, one was Veronica because in silhouette, like a circus trick of casting images upon a tent wall, I saw her passing a rat-shaped parcel to one of the other two. My concerns as to the darkness being full of such pre-emergent characters in my tale were soon dispersed when I felt a tap on my shoulder from behind me - from the better lit area whence I had entered such darkness. The stench of fish filled my nostrils - maggot-food fish, scarcely fit for the consumption of the poor. (I will not dwell upon the fish served at the Duke's Oval Table, the memory is too painful.)

"Unhand me," I said quietly, but with as much authority as possible.

"I may have fallen low, but come from gentle stock. This is rude conduct; the Office of Question might begin by tapping my shoulder like that."

"Don't you dare speak to me of rude contact - nor of gentle stock. Besides, your moans at my touch will be of a different order from those at the Question! Eh, girlie?"

The voice sounded aristocratic. Turning, I gazed upon an oddly familiar face, unable at first to place the familiarity under its layers of filth, but helped by my earliest exercise at recognising Veronica. It was with shock that I finally placed Harriet d'Albon.

She was the youngest daughter of the Baron d'Albon whom, the last I'd heard, held an honoured place amongst the Lords of the Duke's Oval Table.

"Harriet Why are you dressed like a wizened fishwife?"

I was surprised at how unsurprised I actually was with regard to her appearance. Being a word-fangler - one of those itchy-bitchy story-spinners that some Royal families keep for bedtime - I was not at a loss for...

"Words?"

"Yes, Harriet. A mind-reader, as ever, I see."

"Yes, but before I tell you about my disguise - one that is voluntary. I assure you - I must tell you of what stink you left behind around the Oval Table..."

I nodded, for I, too, was a mind-reader of sorts (or should that be "thoughts"?) She would merely need to fill in the details that reading between the lines missed. But - to set the dear reader straight - who, my bet is, cannot gauge the drift of my plot without a narrator's touch on the tiller - let me tell you:-

As all but the ignorant surely know, there are three distinct wordy crafts. The word-limner copies the words of others - whether they are the Holy Books, Malpraquet's Deeds of the Dukes, or a duplicate copy of the Duke's taxation records. The word-wright forms words into new patterns, but only by set formulae. It might be a fresh page of taxation records, or the funerary formula for a Lord of the Oval Table. The word-fangler, distinct from either of these, combines words into entirely novel patterns.

This that I now write (albeit merely fangle in my head till I get the pen and paper required), however humble, may serve as an example. When first I conceived the desire to fangle words, I sought the leave of the Chamberlain who - in turn - approached the Duke in person. The reply was that I might, on two conditions. One was that the fangling must not impinge upon or distract me from my duties. The other was that I must submit every word and every pattern to the Office of Question so that anything blasphemous, seditious or unwholesome could be burnt - and the wicked thought which had inspired it purged from my body. I swear that I was ever scrupulous in both conditions. May the Office of Question take me if it was not!

Although of great interest, whether any of that about the wordy crafts is relevant to my short tale remains to be seen. But I do believe never be too careful who is listening, watching or - should I say ? - reading (or, indeed, mind-reading).

So, yes, my slavish obedience to the two conditions for word-fanglers was spotlessly maintained. My fault, rather, lay in the despatch of certain fanglings to a far land, beyond the sea. It was indeed only after the Serjeant-at-Arms intercepted the package that I discovered the truth about the land beyond the sea.

"Truly I did not know!" was my plea in mitigation.

"Ignorance of vileness is no excuse," the Questioner replied. "If I find you sleeping with a rascal, am I to excuse you, because you believed him a saint ?"

"No...but..."

"No buts about it, and this is the worst kind of vileness. Years ago, those foreign devils rose in armed revolt against the rightful Duke. They set up their own Duke - a mock Duke, chosen by lot amongst the serfs and fish wives."

"But what of the successors of the deposed Duke?"

"They reign on - but their once great Duchy, the largest the world has known, is reduced to a single island. The present Duchess - witless and toothless - is a pawn in the hands of her courtiers. The chief courtier - so called - was lately the most venomous of fish wives. Now a village simpleton has taken her place... .So - before I put the Question, do you understand the nature of your crime?"

"Why has the switch taken place between fish wife and simpleton?"

My attempts to keep him talking, and talking about things I had already read into his mind, were of no avail. The Question was put without remorse, amid my pleas and tears. But before you, dear reader, become confused with levels of chronology in this my unfolding tale, I must return you to the present moment (albeit, like all present moments, ever a temporary one) when I am faced with double-agent Harriet - instead of pursuing a more pleasant adventure (later to be fangled out into tasty words) with Veronica, once Fan Bearer, now Rat Catcher.

"Yes, I know it's Veronica you're really after," Harriet said, having followed the whole recapitulation in my mind, agreeing with some of it, disagreeing, if not disowning, most of it - as was her perverse wont.

"Veronica at least leads a life interesting enough for stories. Unlike me," I pleaded self-pityingly, having just tried, against, all the odds, to soup up my own involvement in the plot's machinations. I knew what ran through Harriet's mind, even down to the subconscious of which she was unaware. She me likewise, no doubt. But had it yet dawned on her that she was not a double agent for the mock-Ducal regime abroad, but a triple one, with many more bluffs up her sleeve?

Whatever the case, she seemed certain of what needed to be put into spoken words, as opposed to mental ones: "If any more of your dammed fanglements are smuggled abroad you'll get all those foreigners scurrying over here, eager for saucy adventures - and you know what else?"

I did know what else: underminings of the Ducal Status Quo and overwork for the Office of Question. But what choice had I? The only fanglements which appeal to persons of quality are tales of courtly romance. Mine concern ordinary reality. Even if serfs and fish wives could read - which the eighteen demi-angels forfend, it would cause nothing but sedition - they would not wish to read of reality, there being too much reality in their miserable lives. Writing a tale with no reader is talking to oneself - in other words, a piece of madness. My only possible readers were foreigners - who might be mad, but better they than me.

The present fanglement that you read, dear reader, may serve to demonstrate the path of realism. A romancer would go straight into the tale of Veronica the Rat Catcher, which is my theme. Alas, reality is otherwise. The route we must trace to discover Veronica is circuitous and strewn with snares - literal and metaphorical.

And imagine my surprise when she, Veronica, came straight back into the unfolding events - unbidden, unanticipated and unannounced. I pride myself on being able to read people's minds sufficiently well to see from yours, dear peruser of these untangling words, that you require a surprise to reawaken your interest. And indeed, as if a gift from those realms where omniscience doesn't work, Veronica pounced - just like one of those rats she was out to catch - between Harriet and myself, her nose twiddling invisible whiskers from side to side, green eyes beadier than my cheapest necklace and ears pointier than a court jester's. Not at all how I remembered her from Fan Bearing days.

"You two are talking about me!" she accused.

"No, dear Veronica, we were talking fanglements and foreigners," I countered.

Harriet looked shifty - as if she believed that any lie would be a truth...or, at least become a truth, with the benefit of selective hindsight and narrative trickery. Thus, silence was the best policy when at least one of the party present was not a mind reader.

You see, despite her sea change, Veronica was loved passionately by both Harriet and me. She could hardly know what a triangle she created in Sink Hole Court that day...in that dark, dank, fish-reeking lodestone of a quarter where all plots somehow ended up, no matter to what foreign parts the words otherwise took us.

Mingled with my love for Veronica was a measure of pity. She could not know the realm beyond empathy which lay open to Harriet and myself. And as the emotional mix grew stronger, the contents of Harriet's mind made me stickier with passion. A background of lavender-scented baths formed the contrast with Harriet's arousal by filth. Her seeking squalor fused with my having it forced upon me. Not a short straw, after all.

Indeed, our respective circumstances and lusts reflected one another, amplified one another, like two facing mirrors. All this was denied to poor Veronica. Veronica was an object of our love, but could not fully partake in it. Truth to tell, her outsiderhood stimulated me as filth did Harriet - there was much more than pity.

Suddenly I knew, sensed for the first time, the cause of Veronica's disgrace. Harriet had engineered Veronica's being stripped of her former rank. That stripping was to Harriet much as the stripping of clothes is to certain vulgar folk. This I sensed only for a fleeting - fleet upon sea of change - moment before I passed beyond that, to fully experience Harriet's passion.

You can, I hope, visualise the sight we made, since I have been painstaking in my efforts to make these words work upon the ever-unfolding sea-changing of events, words at their optimum level so as to conjure emotions which folk like you - who enjoy being called "dear reader" - cannot otherwise have as emotions for yourselves. Indeed, we three witches (as it must be admitted we resembled) wheeled hand-in-hand amid the tawdriness of stench and drain hook: playing, now, an uncut version of Ring O' Roses. But even your personal guide through these otherwise convoluted matters can be new-fangled by her own prose...

By the Goddess of the Ducal Ducatry! I abruptly recalled those three apparently autonomous shadows I had earlier spotted from the eye's corner - and here they were again! Harriet, of course, saw them as soon as I did. Veronica, however, did not see them, since we kept her twirling at a more frantic rate to prevent her eyesight locking into any one direction. The shadows had taken up the burden of our grievances - leaving us to grapple only with the self-perpetuating force fields of carnal passion. Ducal politics, yes - doubts, questions, concerns, all were blotted up by the shadows of spirit, leaving us only the flesh to please.

Yet I forget (have I not ?) about the rat-shaped parcel that Veronica's shadow passed to one of the others. But there is no time for any concerns, not even blatant loose-ends, as we rip the rags from our bodies. Concerns are only for those who have enough time to read.

Yes, you've guessed it almost at the same time as I've guessed it! Beneath the rags and torn leathers, yes, tattoos. When a seeking mouth is closed, so are the eyes. When a tongue touches skin, the sight's near enough to read the tattooed words: the fangliest texts that flesh can ever bear.

So tiny were the words on Veronica's belly that, at first glance, they appeared a bluish bloom, as of a ripe sloe. She was moaning her contentment before the bloom declared itself to be, as I've already more than hinted, words. And as I focused upon them, the stroke of my tongue fell into a merely mechanical rhythm. Fanglements, indeed, they were. Dark fanglements. Fanglements as bitter as the ripe sloe.

"Come on!" Harriet's voice broke upon my enchantment. "You've read enough of Veronica. I need your attentions, too."

"But, these words...." I whispered, raising my head reluctantly.

"Pretty, aren't they ? I had the tattooist transcribe them from a foreign book. With such dangerous ideas on her belly, poor Veronica can never hope for Ducal pardon." Harriet no longer spoke, but broadcast thought.

"You had this tattooed to keep her in rags? It's monstrous!" Here too, I was silent, was unable to speak, my tongue now busy with Harriet's carnal needs.

"You have the makings of a prude. Besides, I had other reasons for the tattoo. They're wonderful words...And Veronica enjoys the extra tongue-work as her lovers read... Wouldn't you?"

She had a point, but rather than concede it I drove my thoughts elsewhere:

"Who wrote those fanglings?"

"He lived..."

"He. How could a man fangle words?"

"I was going to think that he lived in a far and foreign country...."

"Foreign? I smuggled fanglings into foreign countries only under the press of necessity - but for you to have smuggled foreign fanglings here into the Duchy! Besides no matter how far and foreign, how could a man fangle these words ? Even if he plucked his hairy body, darkened his eyes, reddened his lips.... How could he become one with a Muse? Why, to fangle such words one would need to lie in a bath of perfume for a week..."

"Come on you two," Veronica said, voice cutting into our exchange. "You think too much."

Whether the story had ended there or whether it has only just begun, I still fail to fathom how a man could have fangled as well as a woman. Perhaps the interconnections of plot and smugglement have led to importations of ambivalence in identity and gender.

Confusions of freehold writer and leasehold narrator are possibilities, too. Bluffs are sweet creatures of hoax and humour. Double bluffs; collaborations of fact and fanglement. Lying is ugly (unless it's lying in perfumed baths!). Truths are impossible creatures of myth, but beauteous, nevertheless, when thought, if not written. Whatever the philosophical niceties, the three shapely shadows left their mistresses in fine grappling fettle and went off to suck spirits at the pub. The moral ? Leave no loose ends or you'll get 'em rat-chewed. Or, at worst, get 'em fangled as extraneous body parts.