Infinite Monkey

By Ron Wingrove

George is a 'wannabe' main stream author. To find realism for his book he cooks a meal-and then dies in his sleep. But his body didn't tell him that he's dead. When he wakes up things are not quite as they seem. He feels that he's still asleep but starts on a project that he's given. Then, he realises the truth behind the phrase 'Infinite Monkey'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Wingrove
• Release date: Mar 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476320595

Book preview

Preface

Writing is loads of fun-when it works. Otherwise it's a living hell. But what happens when you actually get there? George was going to find out...

Infinite Monkey

At some point during the night George died. Like he had lived all his life he did it quietly. No fuss. No histrionics, no priest to give him the last rites or to absolve him of any sin. He had just shuffled off this mortal coil, turned his toes up and fell off his perch.

Pity his body didn't tell him.

So, when he dreamt he was in long orderly queue outside the library. He put it down to the rather rich supper he'd eaten the night before. It could have been the duck or, equally, the small piece of extremely mature Stilton which had caused it.

Either way, George wasn't sure but here he was outside his library in this dream. Absent-mindedly he checked his inside pocket of his jacket for his library card. He patted the jacket and felt the small plastic rectangle. He'd need that, he thought, although he wasn't sure why he was in the queue anyway. Perhaps it was to do with his latest book, he thought?

For most of his life George had the pretension of being a writer. Even as a boy he would be found in a corner scribbling away. His writing would cover pages of his exercise book. Acres of them. Platitudes mixed with longitudes (and with the odd latitude) all gleefully mixed together. And with attitude as well. (Or should that be gratitude?) Unwilling to read it all, his English teacher would scan the first page and write 'good effort' at the back of it.

At some point, George's class had had a stand in teacher. His normal teacher was off sick with 'stress'. He'd lasted two days. When he didn't appear or answer the phone, the school sent someone round to check on him. He was found dead with a suicide note alongside his stiff corpse. During the post mortem the coroner examined all the evidence. His stomach had contained a mix of tablets including dog worming pills and several unexplained female contraceptive pills. Odd, as the man was known to be gay.

He'd washed it all down with whatever he'd been able to lay his hands on. The coroner said that the balance of the man's mind was clearly disturbed. Anyone who had mixed Kahlua and orange juice clearly wasn't thinking right. After he'd taken quick look at George’s homework, he said he could understand why as well.

George decided as a teenager that the best way to write about something was to experience it first. That way he'd know, from first hand, exactly what he was describing. He'd met and had married a girl from a book shop-naturally. He had felt something for the girl, but it wasn't sure if it was love. It could have been he was impressed with her encyclopaedic knowledge of Dickens. George had put a question mark by that one on his mental list of things to try. It was better that he tried to leave love out of his books if he could.

During his married life, (the girl had matured into an attractive woman over the ten years they were together.) He'd allowed himself to experience sex a few times. It was not successful. George found himself in a cleft stick when it came to making love. He didn't know whether to abandon himself to the thrill of it, or try to mentally record it. He'd put half a tick by that item on his mental list..

George and his wife never had kids. He was quite sure he didn't want to expand his awareness of them! He'd seen enough of his sister’s kids to know that he didn't want children bawling and crying. Constantly feeding, changing their nappies and all that stuff. How on earth was he supposed to concentrate with that going on?

George and his wife had bought a small two bedroom terraced house early on in their marriage. He'd plenty of first hand detail on house buying and paying a mortgage to last him a life time now. He'd struggled with the decorating being gifted, as he was, with two left hands and six thumbs. The spare room had been furnished as a guest room. The paper actually pasted to the wall, (although George did consider drawing pins and a hammer.)

His wife's sister had stayed over and used it a few times. On odd occasions George had been forced to sleep in there as well, whenever he and his wife had disagreed. He knew when he was in the dog house as his wife had served him up her favourite meal. Hot tongue and cold bum.

To feed his passion for writing, he took over a corner of the front room. The corner opposite the TV. He'd bought himself and old desk from a second hand store along with a typists rotating chair. Both had seen better days. The chair refused to rotate and one of the casters was a bit dodgy. It would fall out if George leant over the wrong way.

Occasionally, the rise and fall mechanism would fail to grip as well. The seat would plummet down and stop at the bottom with a crash. One day the seat was going crack apart in half. George would have the pole embedded into a place that would make sitting down painful for days.

The desk top was deeply scratched and George had been forced to repair the drawers with glue. On one corner someone, in the past, had gouged 'I love ethyl' [sic] very deeply. George had thought the carver a philistine. If he has going to carve someone's name on a desk, (not that he would of course-desks were for writing on.) He'd, at least, learn how to spell her name right.

While his wife indulged herself watching the soaps in the box, George would sit and write another of his stories. In the background he'd heard about the latest from Albert Square, Coronation Street and some of the Australian soaps as well. He couldn't understand how his wife could be sucked into these make belief places. The plot lines were so