VEXXED / SECTION 5 Split Zine

“Changeable. Alterable.

Mutable. Variable. Versatile.

Moldable. Movable.

Fluctuate. Undulate. Flicker.

Flutter. Pulsate. Vibrate.

Alternate. Plastic.”

— THX 1138

MURDER MOVIE Somewhere in the woods at the borders of Belgium, Sweden, and Finland - a conjuncture that in reality doesn’t exist - there’s a small campsite sitting in midst of a boat. I’m trying to write some sort of play but I have writer’s block. The forest surrounding me looks like the wilds of British Columbia.

I walk up to the road in a north-east direction into Finland and see two boys talking on the side of the road in Finnish - overhearing their conversation and somehow understanding the language momentarily, it seems one of them had just casually killed two people....

Madonna is hanging out with Guy Ritchie in a small condo apartment with two other ladies. Guy Ritchie looks like a ^^^^^^^ rrrr

BLACK LODGE INTERVIEW It is night time during spring in a small two bedroom townhouse in London. Previously we had broken into a treacherous construction site (something being built in the 2012 Olympics scheme) and lifted numerous sheets of wood, bricks, and cement and transported them back to our place in a large, abandoned baby buggy.

Over the course of a few days, we then built a sound-proof studio in the

backyard. Sometime shortly thereafter we are phoned up by a writer for a music magazine who is requesting an interview. We choose a children’s playground in a rundown council estate at 11:30pm. We bring along six cans of cheap beer and meet the interviewer. We talk for a while and then find a piece of wood board and proceed to use it like a snowboard to perform rail slides down the edges of the children’s slide. At the bottom of the slide there is a pool of what appears to be scorched engine oil. After sliding the rail on the board we land in the oil and disappear into the Black Lodge*. * As represented in the television program “Twin Peaks”. rrrr

THE MILLICENTS Although no-one can really see them or hear them, the diabolical world of the millicents is a phenomenon that has been secret since the dawn of human existence. They use humans as a source of power and food. They draw you in using “bait” that is a mixture of microscopically thin feelers that drift through the air, emitting a psychological “phenome” that lures you into the direction of their trap by augmenting your sense of curiousity and desire.

After the feelers have drawn you into their target location, a sort of giant mouth cracks through the ground and swallows you whole and you careen down a dark, slippery slide in a tunnel resembling some gristly esophagus.

At some distance down into the crust of the earth, the bottom of the slide opens up into a giant underground chamber about half a mile wide; at the bottom of the room churns a giant organic mass - a rubbery mix of living flesh and silicon. If you are lucky you might be ejected out of the slide at such an angle that you would land on the soft edges of the pit and roll down safely unto a ledge. It is - afterall - possible to escape the lair of the millicents by fighting other “fortunate” souls who have landed in the ledge areas, climbing up the walls and competing with one another to find the few vent shafts to crawl out of back to the surface world.

However, most victims of the millicents end up falling in the rubbery goo and then quickly swallowed up by white larvae resembling giant maggots.

Inside you are immobilized by various poisons and then the millicents have their way with you.

Millicents are small sentient beings about 5 millimeters tall in a nondescript humanoid shape. They live within these giant larvae, which act as sort of a construction/desconstruction facility.

Inside your body is disassembled systematically and turned into food.

Your head is kept alive in an unconscious state, the electrical energy of the brain being taped into for fuel for a duration that can last up to around six months.

Not bad though. Your electrical company bills you monthly whereas the millicents bill twice a year, if you know what I mean... rrrr

CARDWALKERS A non-descript office building lay before us in an industrial park that was always a ghost town at night. We’ve been monitoring the building for a few hours now, waiting for the right time to execute an operation. We weren’t really sure what the operation was though as all things of a secretive nature are like that. All we knew is that we had to get to floor no.10 and await further instruction.

At about 1AM our signal for action appears. A woman in a vintage 60s air stewardess dress appears under the theatrical scope of a streetlight for about a minute, stands perfectly still, and then disappears into the darkness.

We assemble ourselves and then creep along the hedges to the building in the shadows.

We enter the building by way of a weakened air duct grate on an annex of the building and then proceed to crawl through a number of ducts into the boiler room. From there we find the bottom floor freight elevator, de-

activate the sensor alarms using a few pieces of hi-tech equipment that we don’t understand.

The elevators only seemed to span a few floors and then we’d have to unload and seek out other elevators on the floor. Some of the elevators have had their control panels rewired so that pressing up took us down, and pressing down took us up. Pressing floor no.8 would go to floor no.5; although we wouldn’t know that as there was no signage stating which floor we were on.

Some of the elevators moved sideways, which literally added another dimension of confusion, no pun intended.

A high pitched ringing sound starts to increase in amplitude. Our focus starts to unravel and we’re there; momentarily losing some grip on consciousness and reality. Walls start to turn into watercolour paintings, rippling under the illusion of heat waves. I start to see mirages of giant playing cards walking around on curvacious female legs wearing fishnet stockings; perched on 6 inch patent PVC stilleto shoes, walking on-top of circus-like round tables that are spinning black and white pinwheels. My colleagues eyes start changing colour every four seconds. The halls start changing geometry. There’s a giant gold-scaled underwater creature and… …moments later we’re standing outside of the building as the sun peeks it’s shiny head from the wild trees and urban rooftops in the east. My colleague and I are standing there with a brief case that we had procured from somewhere; one can only assume it was what we were supposed to collect from within the building.

Across the forecourt a sporty white car with three doors on either side pulls up and one of the doors clicks open. There’s about a moment of stillness under which we realize that the car is there waiting for us. We move toward the car and enter. The driver informs us this is the getaway car and introduces us to two other colleagues from within our organization, whatever organization that may be. Apparently we don’t know yet. Also in

the car is a tall, blonde Dutch man called by the name Gustaaf.

The two other colleagues are female androids and yes, they were almost exactly human but something about their poise and interaction put us at unease. They kept giving us mismatched answers to questions we were asking and in turn they were asking us questions about the operation we didn’t remember. I kept telling them about the cards with legs. In some way they understood what I was talking about.

Sometime later the car pulls to a curb near a highway interchange a few miles away. I step out of the door two times - literally - two versions of myself exit the car; dressed identically. Without saying a word to myself, I head in two opposite directions. Gustaaf accompanies the version of myself heading south, toward the highway interchange. One of the female androids places the briefcase on the curb.

Gustaaf and I approach the onramp to the highway. Massive and tall elevated approach ramps and looping exits obscure the sun right before us.

Gustaaf’s accent is strong and he is mentioning something that I can’t hear over the loud freight trucks passing us. Slowly I see the overpasses start to twist and knot up before us; the sound of shrieking and bending metal and concrete rumbling into a tremendous din.

Meanwhile the other version of myself encounters two 18-year old black adolescents. They are wild-eyed and looking for help. For some reason I’m aware of where their house is and lead them three blocks down the street to their house; a quiet two bedroom “rancher” on a cul-de-sac. We enter through the back screen door and assemble in the main den. They inform me they are friends from school and both lovers and are looking for a chance of a better future before their strict and traditional parents find out. I offer to assist but need time to figure out a workable solution for them. Right then and there they thank me and start to kiss each other passionately.

Three blocks away the suitcase, abandoned on a silent street, snaps open and all of a sudden it’s night again. I am sitting in a car looking around with

the lights low. In front of me is a non-descript building in what seems to be an industrial park of some sorts. A block away there’s a woman in a stewardess uniform standing dead still under a street lamp. rrrr

THOMPSON'S HIGH TIDE Submerged in the bath I sink lower until my head is under water and drift off. The steam further melds the paper to the moist walls that a previous tenant placed there; obviously years ago - maybe around 1997 to be exact as the print is various 1990s movies and tape cassette covers: Romeo + Juliet, Spin Doctors, Reality Bites... yikes.

After laughing to myself I realize it was 10 years ago to this day that I first moved out on my own after living in the basement of my aunt’s house in the suburbs for about 6-7 months after moving out of my hometown.

I remember that day well. Buying an offbeat selection of groceries and deciding where to pin up the old sheet (and the old punk-hardcore posters) that would create one room into ‘two rooms’. The one real bedroom didn’t have a door and the balcony overlooked a trash strewn alley in a neighbourhood by the exhibition grounds.

It was a Strange Day (and coincidentally was likely playing a lot of old Cure records at the time) and I had ushered myself out into this realistic world of making the ends meet. The carefree continent had been reduced to a medium-sized island.

I made pasta that night and accidentally dumped a lot of the hot water on my arm. I got a couple of painful but manageable burns. I still think I can see one of them to this day.

There was a lot of colour and magic associated with that time; the music, the ideas, the meeting of new faces and ideas. Sometimes that isn’t there and I can stand and look out in the distance and see where those waves reached their high tide point and then they seem to have never rose the same again.

rrrr

PSYCHEDELIC EDUCATION At some point in the evolution of architecture - somewhere around the 1960’s - centers of education started getting more conceptual blueprints as to how they were designed and built. Some universities were designed to look like future prisons. Some were designed to maximize vegetation around the school complete with covered outdoor walkways and sunlight windows in slanted rooftops.

I was in tiny classroom in a “villa” styled elementary school consisting of many low level bungalow style buildings joined together by covered walkways and little green gardens in squares and courtyards. The classroom was coated in papers, pictures, and exercises all over the walls like the paper-thin scales of a shedding cobra snake.

The place was apparently abandoned as there was no presence of any other humans around; just the spackled stucco outer walls and rows of wood and metal desks.

Outside in the hallway there was a staircase that went up to the second floor. The stairs were each about a foot high and had a large sliding drawer in each stair elevation. You needed to really lift those fucking legs to get up those stairs. The ultimate stairmaster I guess.

I started to wander through the building. The air was taut and cold. My face was dry and straight and looking around for something when seeing anything was gonna be like viewing the latest car crash. In the periphery of my right eye there was a saber tooth tiger wandering down the hallway flanked by the rhythmic pulse of two large amazonian snakes. I now thought it was a good time to make use of that surreal staircase. Large bouncing balls of fur started to push through classroom doorways - each hair climaxed in flowing spines in the style of a porcupine.

I made the leaps and bound and made a temporary refuge on the fourth stair. I saw some human figures walk into the hallway I was in; apparent-

ly trying to sell me on the notion that I was in some sort of danger. Their demeanor was not inviting; one of white shirts tucked into white trousers; suspenders and sickly orange-faced rubber masks of some caucasian male stereotype. Hypodermic relaxed voices, milky smooth hands, rubber and formaldyhide. Apparently I’d gotten the wrong set of cards and as definitely in a tight spot.

Almost instantaneously after feeling the real heat of danger do the walls and halls started to creak and move; walls holding into one another with computer-like precision and smaller and further down the arms and limbs of the orange-faced men and exotic animals got lost and disappeared into the folds. Walls sucked into themselves and took the rooves with them; exposing the steel grey sky. Smaller and smaller; humming and machinated sucking sounds until those walls collapsed themselves into a small white cube sitting dead and unassuming on the dirt below. rrrr

FUTURE LOOK AND THE CHARITY PIRATES They come and stay once in a while but most of the time I vaguely remember them or sleep is so utilitarian that I totally forget them. Dreams come and go. There’s a few memorable ones that stick out in my mind over the years and these ones usually involve queen spiders with human heads haunting my aunt’s house, riding around the transit system late at night with not another soul in sight, playing cards on tall, slender legs and playground slides that lead into mysterious other dimensions. Well, those are some pretty specific details and just small fragments of a bigger picture.

At this point I awoke early in the morning with memories of that most feared dream we all loathe; the one where everyone you know and love despises you. It’s an absolutely depressing aftertaste to have when it’s fresh on your mind but in most cases turns to hilarity later in the day. What was I thinking? you say. I felt like an alien in my own skin. My nose hated my face and retaliated with congestion. I really needed to brush my teeth.

The usual practice is to give myself as little time as possible between getting up to leaving the house. You feel like a crusty druggie leaving your own home. Your legs don’t feel like they’re yours. On this particular morning it felt like elements of the dream were still there. The clouds lay low and gnarled. This is especially strange after being blindingly hot for a few weeks. As I walk out of my block of flats there’s a rough-edged middleaged man growling in a Slavic language into his beat up mobile phone.

Walking down the wide sidewalk past the early morning human assembly line of street markets in the making, I found myself looking at the skyline of the city and the random chattering of voices around me. To my left I detected a couple of men approaching and walking toward me. I wasn’t really paying attention but I thought I heard one of them say; “Hey man, you look like the future!”

Was this directed toward me? I’m not sure if it was a jab at me or not.

If so it was a bit of a strange one. It leaves you feeling curious way more than being annoyed if anything. I was once called a “fucktard” out of a passing pick-up truck in Olympia WA and was told to “roll down my trousers [trouser legs]” in Epping Forest once. The former sounded like a group of kids trying to invent new swearwords in a scientific manner. The latter sounded more like something a concerned mother would say to her teenage son.

I wasn’t wearing a feather light silicon jumpsuit nor any futuristic shades equiped with flashing lights or infrared imaging technology. I was wearing a black jacket, glasses, and a button up shirt. Perhaps this announcement wasn’t addressed for me. Perhaps this might be the start to my own personal episode of the Twilight Zone.

The Underground station comes up on my right. People swarm in and out of the entrance like badly-dressed bees with no regard for one another.

London isn’t a place where most people are making their flight paths with others in their vision of transit. I cut across and head down the stairs to the ticket turnstiles.

Right ahead of me is the back of a man that looked like he was dropped out of the West Indies circa 1750. The first thing that catches my eye is his long braided locks coming out of the back of a battered tricorn hat. The rest of this man’s get-up fit the role well — working the whole One Eyed Willy look: tailed overcoat, breeches, tall boots with the foldover cuffs at the top. I turned to see him holding a plastic bucket collecting piece o’ eight for charity. At 7.30am no less. He wasn’t saying anything. Just aggressively shaking a bucket and jingling a tiny comical bell.

As an isolated incident I may have just taken a look and chuckled at the context of it all but given the low lying chain of events and moods that prevailed in my short time awake I started to feel more and more askew.

The only way to shake it off was to keep going and get some blood to that head of mine. I clocked through the turnstile and crossed the overhead walkway to the platform. My train was waiting and I seamlessly walked across that platform and onto the train, took a seat, and sat down. The brief journey from here to there at this particular time usually sees me closing my eyes and clearing my head — for some reason it seemed to be more than needed today… rrrr

YOU'RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE The first indoctrination involved heightened disorientation. For a man who likely holds a compass and cartography charts in his wet and pulsing brain, all of this information is scattered around like slamming fists on a Monopoly board. Where does one buy a decent meal? Where does one find that certain adapter that conjoins two cables that no longer have correct names here? Roads that form half-triangles and schizophrenic, chameleonic names of streets Strand now Fleet now Ludgate). Former Roman Roads and their tarry surfaces stretched and brittle over a dense, never-ending metropolis of rats and metal cars.

Cash points and “Yes, boss” and open electrical boxes that are left open

begging to invite the public to electrocution.

Is it somewhat of a mass red alert confusion. The adrenaline and adventure is there. He knows that at some point he’ll start piecing it altogether. Thinking these thoughts popping out of rabbit hole subway entrances realizing he is one too late/early. Heavy, swooping architecture bring in religious empirical imagery from one thousand years of manic culture. Streets being strutted with a the colourful, edgy children of a culture that may only stay on the surface. A peeled edge of a promotional music posterboard on a wall hiding the building of the city’s new elite on the inside. Designed by one of many. New paper thin computers smelling of take-out espresso. This one’s likely a Goldsmith’s — maybe.

All in all there’s new games to be played and more homework to be read. Crack the caper. Sherlock Holmes did. Apparently he was doing his problem solving only a couple of miles away in Marylebone. This is it.

Yes, this is it. rrrr

A week in an artist flat then a month in a flat owned by wealthier artists than the first, and then the third was our outpost behind an elevated railway track. There was a small paradise in the back, buried in mud, in an earshot of the angry boys at the youth center down the street. It was a narrow place suitable for dwarves and hermits. Indiscernable, loud voices constantly in a doppler effect outside the front window. From there they made something from nothing. A computer on the grill of a disused barbeque grill, tables from the neglect of a season to season culture tucked away in alcoves on the street, strange fabrics and attire exploded out of polyethylene bags shining in the midnight moon.

Live the example of a “what if ?” — No books, no shoes — flushing and thinning out stories and memories out of a magnetized collection of personal effects and put in care of things you can carry all at once with backs and hands.

There’s a light that never goes out at the cash and carry diagonally across

this intersection he has come personally bonded to. Crisp bags blow down the street informing complicated rhythmic “hi-hat” sounds. A pair of fashionable, art-school youths engage in synchronous texting; conversations furiously through fingers and not mouths. He can’t really make an entry point into these lives; at least not tonight and the dialogue always seems to come hours later anyway, long after the opportunity is gone. rrrr

It’s 3am and he notices the air around him tipping into a heavier direction. The music is still loud, the chatter of many weighty conversations babble around his head. Time to take another drink — look around and observe. Distorted synths fight for compressed air. Metronomic low end thuds. Razor slashes of galactic coloured lights fire all around. He’s taken his ticket on the trip and can really only sit back and - observe. And as if on cue he knows the change. People start changing over. The strange nighttime aliens that truely traverse the underworld slither into the web of perspiring bodies under the rapid-fire visual. Complex and intense power relationships surface. An older man with long white dreadlocks starts spinning his head around and around.

“This guy definitely does not get up any earlier than 10pm…” he says to himself, and is uneasy but strangely impressed. Acidic sounds scurry out of speakers. Shit might start to get crazy. rrrr

Turn it off turn it off turn it off! ‘What does one have to do to have space to think?’ he pleads. The urban nag is asking you questions in a wide variety of noises all fucking day long. Emails dropping like bombs in neatly organized white screens. Minicab cards and council bills launching through snapping mailslots like cruise missiles. Diesel engines accelerating and de-accelerating, high frequency steel grinds on elevated railways, the fractured kick drums of third generation scuzzy electro tracks limping out of blown speaker bins. Every turn of the page there’s something new to “check out”, frantically made to be absorbed and organized fired out of

some satanic conveyor belt — digested, idolized, publicized and then forgotten about. ‘How about this?’ he says ‘How about a day when no plectrums will be plucked, no riffs will be rocked, no personal dramas grace the lyrics of radio — no beats’. rrrr

Going down and going grey. He feels a paralyzing ring of electricity around his head and neck. His words no longer inform his actions.

Elastic, brassy sirens wail in the expansive field outside. Feels the ants churning up the world outside. A book on the table about the abrahamic fanatics pulling the lines taut over both sides over the ocean.

There’s disused bottles from nights that should likely be forgotten.

Drops of blood appear out the air and fall onto the floor. His eyes are starting into a psychedelic pattern in the blanket that he shivers under.

Must move forward — must re-arrange or he’ll surely be dead — in some way — sometime soon. rrrr

Curbs that smell like vomit and old, ivy-leaved pubs with what could be sexually suggestive names.

THE CHROME BASEMENT As she approached the flyover the sound of the motorway fizzled out behind her in the distance. A few street lamps where specs of floating light over the sparsely illuminated roadway ahead. No one really came down this way after working hours. She had different reasons other than work. She wanted more; the secret to a success that alludes most of us. And to her, apparently, this was offered in obscured suggestions through a classified ad in the back of a inner city nightclub.

Eyes straining through an alcoholic gaze she had taken down the number late one night and was told all would be disclosed if she came out there; to the outer ring centre off the westward motorway. The next night she put on her black poplin trenchcoat and pumps and climbed into her sedan and drove out into the night.

If you take a drive out to the far east side of the tracks on a moonless night, you’ll notice one building with a light on in the landscape of closed retail outlets, storage unit complexes and glass-skinned “technology” buildings. A lifeless area to say the least, only given a brief jolt of activity during your standard business hours when the numerous persons employed within that area arrive like automatons in the morning and perform their routines until the evening, only to leave again and repeat the next day.

At the end of one of avenues there is a cul-de-sac followed by a car park; a structure consisting of three wide concrete slabs stacked upon numerous circular concrete pillars. This depressing eyesore was a facility where employees could park their automobiles during the day, pay a man in a tidy and neat uniform some money to settle their car in between the concrete slabs and then leave again, parting ways through a yellow and black arm that would lift up and allow the car to leave, provided the initial payment was made.

This all sounds like a descriptive paragraph lifted from one of thou-

sands and thousands of such locations existing in our modern, manufactured world but this particular car park was something different. It was the source of the solitary lights that would remain on all through the night; a cryptic beacon acting as a symbol in the dead, chilled night in this coffin landscape.

Get close up, take a look around, light a cigarette, hear faint sounds. If eyes could see through walls they’d be looking through the glass shielding of the park car ticket office, peering down through the floor and into the lower floor of the car park. Numbers 1-79 resided here. It was also the location of The Chrome Basement.

The Chrome Basement was a base of operations for a number of nondescript characters which seemed to be too abstract for description.

The rest of the lots in the car park contained all matching black Mercedes-Benz cars that never were started and remained stationary in the car park. At the very end of the car park’s long, singular access drive was one lit door that led to an elevator that no-one really came out of.

In more regular situations escaping out of something like a car park should be quite easy, if you want to escape: take the winding access ramps to the bottom (or top — trial them out and see which is the exit) or in these modern times you can call any one of your contacts in your mobile phone and with blushing tones of embarassment inform your contact that yes, you are in fact lost in a car park and need assistance getting out.

But this small group of individuals lived on some different reality plane. Locations, things, people, and time all had different purposes for them. This car park was a den; a sanctuary — a laboratory room where the seeds of ideas germanate into how to deal with the big, throbbing machine of a world outside.

At the bottom of Floor A, tucked away behind the massive pillar beside stall A27, was the Chrome Basement, it’s name coming from the

collection of black, leather and chrome sofas and wall fixtures that sort of roughly marked out it’s physical dimensions. Three couches to be exact, forming a square; all facing into the centre of this square.

Where the corners meet, small black tables form the corners of this square. That leaves one side missing and yes, rather than closing off this corner with the fourth couch, there is a giant chrome door with large, alien looking rivets fixed into the drab, roughly textured concrete wall.

The sound of a digital bell rings at the far end of the car park floor. It emanates from a door. A light above the door strikes a blaze of red.

The hiss of hydraulics cues the opening of the door and through it steps a woman with short messy black hair. She is wearing a black poplin trenchcoat and matte, dark-colour pumps. Disoriented and puzzled she starts to inspect the surroundings at a number of different angles and then starts to move toward the far end of the room, the sound of her hard heels a sharp gated ricochet from the walls of the cement enclosure.

“I take it you’re here for an appointment.” a low buzzing voice says from the massive pillar rising from the midsection of the floor.

“Why… um…” the Visitor says with heels still cracking on the floor, her clarity of words distracted; strained by the task of trying to find out where this strange voice was coming from.

“Come past the pillar, my dear.” the voice says again.

As the Visitor makes strides alongside the pillar the body of the voice comes into view: a tall, husky man; extremely pale wearing a stylish white suit, shoes and tie. His head was shaved, even waxed upon which large black sunglasses were fastened to his face above the pencil mustache on his top lip.

The Visitor sees the Man positioned behind one of the sofas adorned with flawless chrome. On this sofa sits a woman staring at the incoming visitor. The Woman is decorated in a dress of an dark, exotic material

that is cut at strong, piercing angles exaggerating and extending the features of her slim body. Her hair is short, blonde and styled. Her eyes are framed by sharp slashes of coloured cosmetics.

She and the Man stand perfectly still. The Visitor’s gait cuts to a stop as she reaches her destination.

“Well, it’s certainly a pleasure to see that you could make it.” says the Man as he folds his arms behind his back and starts to step out from behind the sofa from which he was positioned.

“It’s not that often you see something that offers you a chance of a lifetime.” says the Visitor in a strained tone, her nervousness and slight confusion clear in her voice.

“It is a unique offer, that is for certain.” confirms the Man. “You know, we’ve been doing this for quite some time…”

At that point his pacing stops and he turns and looks at the visitor, “It’s safe to say we’ve been here in some way or another even before this building stands here in the way that it currently is.”

“But why the strange location?” asks the Visitor, “I mean, I had a few drinks and made the call but I would have suspected you’d have an office or something.” As sense of alarm rises within her and the Visitor tenses up with motions to return back to the way she came in.

“Oh dear, please don’t feel alarmed.” the Man states empathetically, “Although I can’t really disclose much about our little operation here as it’s, well, a complicated manner – I can assure you that our intentions are to provide solutions that best suit what you’re looking for.”

“And you will find what you’re looking for,” the Woman confirms.

The Visitor still seems unsure. “This is weird. I’m not sure if I can trust you. How…?”

“This place is under some surveillance,” says the Man “Any loud voices or noises of struggle will trigger off a security alarm.” and then

he points to a small grainy black and white monitor in the dark recesses of the back corner. She makes out their three figures as overexposed blob-like shapes. To the side of this display a red light indicates that all of these actions are being committed to memory.

“Ok, so now what?” the Visitor says.

The Woman turns her head to look behind her in a very robotic gliding motion. The fabric in the Man’s white suit crease as he turns the same way. His head turns to the Visitor and he says, “All you need to do is walk through that door.”

The Man’s extended ring finger points to the giant, riveted chrome door – a dark, onimous slab fixed into the wall.

“That’s it?” the Visitor exclaims, “This is going to grant me what I want? Walking through some random door?”

The Man takes a short while to respond, “You’re looking for fame and fortune, like most others on this big planet of ours. There are some exceptions in the reality of things like physics to grant these to people.

Sometimes it’s luck, sometimes it’s being at the right place at the right time and sometimes - and less often - it’s may be something that’s a little bit more out of the ordinary.”

“And in this case it’s the door.” adds the Woman.

“This is something we’ve been working with for a very, very long time.” says the Man. “So, with no questions asked and no further adieu, you can take the big step to be on the way to what you’re looking for.”

And the Visitor during this brief encounter with the Man and the Woman has noticed after the fact that her intuition and sense of surroundings start to blur and blend. The door has started to come to the forefront of her vision and her thoughts start to focus on a heightened curiousity of what may be seen on the other side. Her sense of criticism and resistance being blown off like grains of sand on a sunny day at the beach.

The sound of her shoes start to ring through the room again as she makes way to the door. The Man moves from his position behind the ring of sofas to the door with an outstretched hand to the gilt, chrome handle and clicks the door open. The Visitor sees a vast void of black in front of her but at this point this void has entered her mind and she forfeits her sense of reality. The Man and the Woman pull out of focus behind her and absorbed into sensory masses of light and dark. rrrr

And from the void came flashes of light / shimmers from the edges of finely cut crystal clear jewels falling / the strobbing of hot technicolour triangles stabbing out of the blackness / occasionally brighter flashes that illuminate the void / an enclosure of curved steel beams in wrapping around in the distance like a giant synthetic ribcage / her ghostly image fading in and out in front of her / overlapping and blurring creating new monstrous features and shapes / swirling vision / opening her mouth and forcing out sounds but nothing can be heard except for a loud synthesized groan rising and falling in a deafening roar / louder and louder / brighter and brighter / closer and closer‌ rrrr

‌the Visitor felt herself lying on the ground; a surface that was springy and moist. There was a freshness in the air coming from her nostrils and the distant omnipresent drone of rustling leaves and what sounded like birds was coming from all around her. She laid there for a few moments hoping to piece together where she was previously and where her thoughts had been but nothing came to mind. Nothing at all. She began to crack her eyes open; first the right and then the left and then a wash of light began to fill her mind sliding into focus of a scene that revealed herself lying on the floor of an expansive forest. Large coniferous branches radiated overhead. Tufts of ferns spread out before her

eyes as she shakily raised to her feet, spreading out over rises and dips in the terrain.

I seem to remember a door? she posed a thought as a question in her mind.

At that instant she heard dullened thudding and rustling of leaves behind her cutting through the tranquil forest drone. The Visitor turned around and in the distance at the top of a knoll in the forest she saw a few figures in the distance wearing bright sports gear. One of the figures pointed in her general direction and the party of strangers started moving quickly toward her.

“Hey!” one of the figures shouted, “What are you doing all the way out here?”

Still in confusion, the Visitor didn’t really have any bearing of what was going on to reply with an answer. The figures approached and as the details became clearer, she noticed two of them in outdoor adventure/athletic gear with dirty sweatbands around their heads looking red and distressed. Two other figures followed behind, one with a large TV camera perched on his shoulder and the other one carrying a large boom microphone with a fuzzy wind muffler fixed to the end of it like a ratty old wig.

“Hey, are you deaf ? Aren’t you gonna say something?” the same figure shouted as this strange group of people came ever closer.

“What…? What’s going on?” the Visitor said, the words jerkily falling out of her mouth.

The person that spoke to her was a woman with a round, flushed face.

She had a band around her arm that read TEAM LEADER and her other sportswear-adorned cohort, a man, was wearing a similar outfit.

They seemed to be some sort of team, but what the team was for was unknown.

The cameraman and boom operating woman wore hats that had a

logo in a slashed typeface reading Danger Island: Season 2.

“What do you mean what’s going on?” the Leader barked. “We’re the ones that should be asking this question as you ran off after the last challenge.”

“Yeah,” the other team member said, “Don’t fuck this up for us!”

The cameraman briskly turned the focus on the lens aggressively toward the Visitor. The boom operator scaled the microphone into the space above her head. The forest still droned around them but there were sounds of voices and motorized vehicles in the distance but from no particular direction.

“Challenge… a challenge?” the Visitor mindlessly droned.

The cameraman laughed out of disbelief, composed himself and said: “You know, we’ve been doing this for quite some time…”

His voiced sounded like that of someone familiar; someone from recent memory and then a quick succession of overwhelming mental pictures shot into the Visitor’s mind… the late night drunken phone call, the driving in empty industrial estates, the seemingly empty car park, the elevator down to the bottom level, the black leather sofas, the woman in the angular dress, the man in the cream suit, the strange interaction, the chrome door with the gaping black void…

But what was that all about? It was now a forest and four strangers grilling her. She looked up through the canopy of trees and could almost see a shower of diamonds and triangles floating down and dissolving right before her very eyes.

She looked around frantically with her hands curled, looking for something to turn. A knob.

“Where’s the door?” the Visitor blurted out tensely, “How do I get back?”

She lunged forward and grabbed the Leader’s arm and stared wildly

right into the lens of the camera. The microphone lowered even closer to where she was talking.

“What the hell’s the meaning of all this? What kind of fucking games are you up to?”

She’s looking up. She’s looking around. No man in sunglasses could be found.

“Well honey,” the Leader huffed, “As much as you’re stressed, we all are so fucking relax. And standing around asking stupid questions all day isn’t gonna help. We’ve still got three weeks left on this show and we haven’t even made it to the Lightning Round yet. How can you act like this when you’re trying to win a million dollars?” rrrr

VEXXED www.softriot.com/journal/

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End VEXXED

www.softriot.com/journal/ www.softriot.com/vexxed Purchase online from above link WHITE LODGE MIXES HERE:

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SECTION FIVE

50p

THE GUY UPSTAIRS IS A SERIAL KILLER So now I’m lying in my bed staring at the ceiling Eyes blinking and not quite believing Because blood is seeping through the poly-filler The guy upstairs is a serial killer The reddish stuff is slowly d ripping on my pillow Whether I’m awake or dreaming I still don’t know I bet he’s dancing naked to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ The guy upstairs is a serial killer I’ve seen him in the hallway eyes like Mansun, Someone’s in the cupboard waiting for a ransom He’ll bring your daughter to the slaughter like that hun Atilla The guy upstairs is a serial killer I’m sure that when he wants to have a laugh He takes a prostitute to the acid-baths He loves to kill like Charles loves Camilla The guy upstairs is a serial killer I’m sure he’s been this way since he was a nipper I bet the posters on his walls were of The Yorkshire Ripper He’s seen more savage beatings than your average gorilla The guy upstairs is a serial killer As a kid he probably pulled the wings off insects And as a kid he probably experienced incest And excuse me for this night-time chiller But the guy upstairs is a serial killer He’s coming downstairs!

Robert W Monk

HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HAPPY HOUR HAPPY HOUR It had seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good idea as the cold sweat ran down my neck and the small of my back and into my crotch. It seemed like a good idea as my face flushed scarlet then white then scarlet again. And it seemed like a good idea when I thought I would topple over.

As always, he had crept up behind me, silent as a snake. M&S stealth suit made no sound as the line-manager invaded my personal space, my life and my head.

“Will, I’d really like those reports on my desk before lunch if possible?”

A fairly innocuous instruction framed as a question. Nothing to get upset about. And yet… And yet.

Two little words. Two little words going over and over in my skull. I mouthed them. I rolled the words with my tongue savoring the power of them; the sheer joy of abandonment open to me, the joy of release… the temptation was too much.

“Fuck off,” I whispered, moving my stare from the floor to his empty dull eyes.

Mr Never-Had-An-Idea-In-His-Life-Pension-Plan spluttered something.

“Fuck off,” I repeated, louder this time. I had never said something and meant it so much as then.

And from that office in a building in an office in a building I went

across the road and into the pub.

As I shakily entered the old-man pub the jukebox was playing a long forgotten song by a long forgotten X-Factor contestant. Auto-tuned death-cry with syncopated plastic beats. Apart from a tweedily dressed old chap asleep on his copy of the Racing Post and a guy playing pool by himself I was the only patron in that run down done up former spit n sawdust drinking house. Smelling the dank of ages, I ordered a pint and slipped outside to the beer garden for a fag.

I watched a pigeon carefully inspecting the chicken bones from a Chicken Cottage box. I saw the grey clouds in the sky move slightly and become a little greyer. The pigeon looked me in the eye and then I think it winked.

I had done the right thing. Of course I had. That place was no place for me. Why should I be in that office in a building in an office in a building when I could be‌here?

The pigeon winked again.

I went back into the bar and it felt too warm. The jukebox was playing ‘Happy Hour’ by the Housemartins. I got another drink and then another and another. The lights swam.

And I still remember that day. Even as I crouched in the toilet cubicle chucking my guts up, puking all the fear and illness that had built up over the years I remember thinking that things are going to change.

One way or another - things are going to change. I gave a final retch and passed out, warm vomit dribbling down my tie.

Like I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

SEEING IS BELIEVING Steve hadn’t left the flat for a while. Maybe Monday when he had sent a letter to Mother? Or had it been Sunday when the large grey cat had approached his window, gazing at him with large disapproving eyes?

Either way it had been quite some time ago. Today was Friday. And he had a lot to do.

Steve didn’t get a lot of visitors but his flat was always immaculate.

Everything was in absolute order. His many and varied books were displayed in alphabetical order on ancient dust-free shelves. Ceiling, walls and floor positively glowed with the toil of hours and days of scrubbing and cleaning. The place had a sterile atmosphere that Steve enjoyed like a hospital, he thought. My place of healing.

Steve took cleanliness very seriously. After washing his hands seven times and eating his clear soup he washed his hands seven more times and then took Father’s book from the special place behind his bed.

As he reached for the thin volume he felt curiously different. Something had changed somewhere – something was about to happen.

Premonitions were not natural to Steve. As he sat down on his fabric sofa (not leather - too many germs) and opened the book at a random page he did his best to dispel the odd feeling. He began to read Father’s book. As he always did. As he always did on every day after lunch for the last seven years.

From Seeing is Believing, a treatise on the future of Human Development (1968) by Alounius Fisher.

In most countries, that we somewhat laughably call ‘civilized’ on this great globe of ours, when an individual has a problem with their eyesight they will go to a specialist in optometry to try to find a solution to the problem. They will usually be prescribed spectacles, or, if they are reasonably well-off, contact-lenses, to try to correct the disparity between what the individual sees and what is actually there. They may experience a blurring of the lines of reality, and they may expect to call it myopia (short-sightedness) or hyperopia (long-sightedness). But the current malaise in True Understanding stems from a far deeper problem in Seeing. This problem is the true myopic vision, the near blindness that blights all Human thought and feeling. When Humanity learns to see from within as it once did, spectacles, contact-lenses and optometry will become quite useless. Reflect then on the following exercise:

Count to ten.

You are in a white palace with white walls and white windows in white window frames. On the white floor there is a huge white carpet and on the white carpet stand white statues and white furniture. A small white dog plays with a small white toy near the centre of the white room. A huge white fire burns white flame in a huge white fire place at the edge of your view. In front of this is a white throne with white silk cushions.

Count to ten. How do you know any of this is really there?

CAN’T STOP WHAT I WANT DON’T STOP CAN’T STOP I can’t stop what I want And I don’t have to stop There’s a sign A smart illustration.

Filled with dread I’ll take Unleaded.

Deaths-head A Microsoft interlude Fuck your people And your barbecues I’ll spit roast your tie-die You’ll never be cool Come to the provinces Have a beer and a cry And party with the demons Of your Catholic Mum Who killed your brain Before you could think Looking over the beer gut Sensing something different Water falls, water falls The ugly insect, twitches And you call this ‘the world’?

Water falls, water falls

SHADOWED PART ONE It was, to begin with, a morning like any other. As with any other morning, I shake the dream stuff from out of my head and out of my eyes and stride somewhat unsteadily into the shower. I don’t eat breakfast as I don’t have the time. And yet, there is always time to worry and fret. The cool jets help wash away a vague feeling of unease and within minutes I am dressed and ready for the day.

I used to get the bus to work but now I try to walk there as I am trying to get more exercise. The 45 minute journey by foot gives me time to clear my head and prepare myself for social interaction. My street is dirty and chaotic and it does not end. It goes on and on and on feeding into other roads and other streets that look exactly the same. They wrap themselves around this island, squeezing it, constricting it - sucking the very life out of it.

Outside a pub I used to go into when I was still drinking I see a poster for a performance by a musical group. The name and dead stares of the band look familiar to me. I wonder if I have seen them before. My own name is on the bill as well. Another word after it has been crossed out. * The Office is dark and constantly damp. It lies beneath the City. As I enter the cavernous space, I see my colleague Dave. I don’t know what Dave does but he always seems to be eating an egg mayonnaise sandwich. I know that it is an egg mayonnaise sandwich because of the little specks of white on his tie. And the fact that he has told me that he only ever eats egg mayonnaise sandwiches. ‘Hey, there!’ He says. ‘You were in early today! Been out for a sandwich?’

I tell him that I’ve only just got in. He stares at me for a moment and

then walks away, still eating.

My job at The Office consists of updating records on the Company database. I get the new information by looking around The Office for Clues. The Clues manifest themselves in a few different ways. The first kind is Seeing Things. This might be a fly buzzing around the place or a crack of light coming in from outside. The second kind is Hearing Things. This might be the scrape of a chair or the cough of a co-worker. The third kind is Smelling Things which is the most common. The fourth kind is The Uncanny.

Switching on my terminal I see a message marked high priority in a displeasing font. It read: Report to the Production Manager 11.30 am for an informal disciplinary hearing.

Wondering quite how a disciplinary hearing could be informal I begin checking The Office for Clues. However, my morning work sheet has already been filled in. Someone has done my work for me. * At 11.30am I awake for the second time. I am in the Production Manager’s Office. An Office within The Office. In the corner a decrepit all in one photocopier and fax machine sings ‘Dream a little dream’ in binary code accompanied by the whirring, buzzing fan sitting proudly on the Production Manager’s desk. I tap my foot in time with the music and wait politely for the Production Manager to speak. The Production Manager’s name is Sam. “Do you know why I have asked for you to come in here today?”

I shake my head.

Fixing me with a cold blank stare he asks me again. Beneath the mask his eyes are dead pools.

“You have no idea at all?”

Again, I shake my head.

Sam smiles the smile of one who has a small, infinitesimal amount of knowledge. He always wears a mask so I only know that he is smiling by the tone of his voice.

“Your morning ’s work is all wrong. At 8.43am you stated on the database that you saw a floorboard creak and heard a ray of sunlight. At 8.48am you stated that you smelled a cloud. At 8.51am you heard a sandwich and at 8.51am you saw a song. How do you plead?”

I reply that I couldn’t possibly have made those entries as I only got into the office at 9 o’clock.

Sam laughs the laugh of one who believes himself safe from the wild, unpredictable nature of the universe.

“The System records everyone’s work accurately. From now on you will be Shadowed.” * At lunchtime I sit in the canteen alone. I am eating a small bowl of salad. I am watching my weight so I don’t eat much at the moment. The canteen is full of my co-workers, perhaps a hundred of them . They all have similar sounding names and similar sounding job titles. I don’t know what they do and I try not to look at any of them. I am about to finish when I feel a light but insistent tap on the shoulder. A brash, mocking voice rises up from the gloom.

“You calmed down then...”

Looking up I see Simon, another pale faced cog in the wheel of life down here. I blink, uncomprehending.

“You were all over the place first thing. Knocking into things, shouting things out...” He paused, and for the briefest of moments a slightly hurt look crossed over his unmemorable features.

“You called me a ...”

He paused again, caught off balance by someone shoving past him in a terrible, unrestrained hurry. As Simon remonstrated the speeding man quickly looked back. As he did so I caught his eye, or rather I caught my own eye. For I was looking at myself. I was staring at a perfectly identical version of myself – a twin... a double.

PART TWO The Doctor made a finger pyramid with his hands and spoke slowly in soft, unwavering tones. “So, can you tell me what happened the other day?”

I launched into my monologue not fully knowing who I was or where I was.

“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed. All day long this disturbing sense had stuck with me and yet I could find no logical reason for my unease. It was as though someone was walking in my footsteps and shrank back whenever I turned around. I didn’t hear anything either and yet this vague dread remained with me throughout the day. At work, colleagues told me that I had been all around the building looking for someone that looked like me. They said I had looked worried and had made little sense.

When I got home my wife told me that she had seen me in the town from her car. She had waved but “I” had ignored her. I didn’t understand her - I hadn’t been in the town that day.

I went to get myself a whisky from the drinks cabinet but the bottle was empty. I hadn’t had a drink in months. Doctor, can you help me ?

Doctor, can you help me ?”

PART THREE The dead eyes seek a release from division The divided self seeks an end with precision An end to forgetfulness, lifelong dream A crossing of a border, Samsara’s wheel The only ‘I’ he ever knew Was once closed up but now born anew Time to chase and catch it red-handed The suffering stops the conscious demanded Over the threshold the sleeper awakes Time to dwell on repeated mistakes Mistakes of the past and future stand still A faltering grasp of reality kills The real ‘I’ that lies beneath Uncover the dream discover the thief The knowledge of the non-theist Priest Burnt in blue fires of the Ancient East A flickering spark lingers on in the eyes The ones that we love the ones we despise The ones that we hope will follow us to The place we awake and begin anew Where the Mountains meet the Ocean Depths Where the dream ends and the secrets are kept And where dual sides collide and strike The day and the night, the black and the white The young and the old, the scared and the bold, The truth and the lie, the heat and the cold The divided self rejoined again The Sleeper awakes and the dreaming ends.

AMNESIAC GOD Look, look at all of you there. Sitting and staring - fully in my view.

Hesitant and, expectant. Waiting, creating, pontificating, and estimating how much longer I will take to explain...

Well, I just woke up... or at least I think I did.

None of this ... place...registers or sparks or fires in this vacuum I call a head.I know logically that I must be one thing or something or another.

A soldier, a slave, a priest or a mother.

But the truth is that I do not know.

I have no memories.

The very things that bind us to our own past and our thoughts and deeds and dealings with others have been stripped from me.

I know not who I am or why I am here.

I am in the Present with you here.

This place, this building. It is most beautiful. I wonder whose house it is?

I wonder who would live in such a grand palace with so many in attendance?

Not I. I know that much. I was always outside.

Always outside.

I can hear a flicker and see a whisper of a different time. At last.

Outside with the elements. Outside with the spirits. I can feel the sweet rain drops falling upon my forehead from a Rowan tree and I can see the lights dancing in the darkness.

But still I don’t know who I am. Or why I have been called here, if called here I was. Perhaps I arrived here of my own volition – a journey, a quest - an unknown mission?

Perhaps.

Perhaps.

And now I hear music and I begin to understand The dance and the magic in my burning left hand The shower of light in my garden of sin I’m always outside when the winds come in And I know my names For I have many And I know I will return Like your bad penny This place was my home before He turfed me out And when I return there will be no Shout Just a quiet breeze in the Universal Mind And trust me it shall be well-timed

End SECTION FIVE All work by Robert W. Monk