Mus Peechy's Other End

By Andrew McEwan

A political satire taking its hat off and wearing it as a pair of underpants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew McEwan
• Release date: Apr 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476303376

Andrew McEwan

Van driver from Newcastle. My work divides opinion. Look me up on Goodreads and Twitter. I welcome all reviews.

Book preview

Mus Peechy’s Other End

(nux vomica)

by Andrew McEwan

*

Copyright 2012 Andrew McEwan

Smashwords Edition

*

Cover design by Andrew McEwan

*

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

PART ONE - modus comedo

Chapter 1: A GUIDED TOUR of THE HEAD.

The fictions of the living and the facts of the dead; these are just two of the items on the agenda.

I am your unofficial guide.

I may lie, it's a clinical condition, but then the truth is a subjective element, one easily transmuted: gold to lead.

Take a piece of gold and tape it to a TV screen. Place the TV in a fridge, making sure both are switched on, and leave for a few days or until the desired result is achieved - i.e. the gold has turned to lead.

Unfortunately this does not work backwards, as any good alchemist will refuse to tell you.

But who cares?

Really, when was the last time you went out of your way to HELP a total stranger?

If there is to be a moral to this story then let that be it.

Enough!

Figure it out for yourself!

The book containing the story, the story in the book will be about anything it pleases.

The details will take care of themselves.

I, personally, plan to interfere as little as subhumanly possible.

So pay your fare and take a ride; and if you don't like it, well, you can get off, can't you ...

i - the rusty skeleton.

There is a wall of doors between me and you, a wall of doors, some of which are locked, some of which are false, some of which are electrified or have handles that come off in your hand, some of which are too small or too big and heavy to open, some of which vanish or move sideways, up or down, and some of which jam.

If you try squeezing through they eat you and spit out the pips.

The people on the outside have the keys.

If you try breaking the doors down your fists hurt and bleed and turn black and blue.

There are no letterboxes or other apertures through which to scream. Besides, nobody would listen.

They speak a different language on the outside.

They steal one another's thoughts and turn them inside-out and make them unrecognizable.

They would interpret my screams as laughter, joyful and fulfilling, not as pleas for HELP.

They would answer in like vein, jeering and flowery, phrase they remember from books.

They would use these same phrases over and over again and I would retreat.

It might never happen.

It already did.

Smile and the world smiles with you.

Wanna bet?

Do you believe in God, young man, old man, broken man, side of beef?

Whose?

There is but one...

Crap!

There is a wall of doors between me and you, a wall of doors.

When I told Mus Peechy I was going to write a book he jeered and flowered something awful.

Who cares about the words? I argued; nobody reads the words anyway, they just sort through them at random, looking for pornography or pictures or phrases.

I hate his laugh, the jeering flowery one.

He is a genuine old man and has a rusty skeleton.

It squeaks.

Myself, I can be whatever age I like - four or forty or thirteen-and-a-half or ninety in a week.

It makes no difference.

Time is irrelevant.

I know exactly how the book will begin.

Damn that Mus Peechy!

Damn the corporation and the mould on the ceiling!

Damn the outside world!

Damn them all, that's what I say, the human race gets what it deserves ...

I only hope there is a Hell, and that the fires are hot, the air hotter, and hottest of all, the food.

You should see the stuff they feed its in here.

In here they feed us shoe-leather and pickles.

Can you imagine?

Shoe-leather and pickles WITH NO FUCKING RELISH!

I like relish.

Mus Peechy likes relish; it oils his joints and lubricates his hinges.

Shoe-leather, after all, is just shoe-leather without that extra something. Pickles just pickles without a dressing of the savoury smack I enjoy best.

You could send me some; good idea.

But I don't know the address or telephone number, even if there is a telephone, or for that matter, an address.

Hey, Mus, do we have an address?

He squeaks off to ask.

ii - body language.

Random thoughts in a random diary, that's what life is.

The man in the room opposite mine thinks he's Ivan Denisovich.

At night he shouts and bangs on the wall.

They should never have given him that trowel, I tell you.

I was taken away from my wife in '41, citizen chief.

I've forgotten what she was like.

Look how much ice you've left on your wall!

See if you can manage to chip it off before evening.

Eh, you're making it lie too loose.

Well, if it's not visible, how d'you know it's there?

Any baccy?

Don't talk bunkum, Alyosha.

I've never seen a mountain move.

Well, to tell the truth, I've never seen a mountain at all.

But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist club of yours - did you make a single mountain move?

Once I tried replying to this, being somewhat intrigued by the question; but, like Alyosha says: of all earthly and mortal things Our Lord commanded us to pray only for our daily bread.

They took the man up to the roof soon after and I have to sneak into the hallway now to hear him, he has so little breath.

In the small hours you can listen to the weeping of a thousand captive souls out in the hallway, tiny reverberations that crawl in motley groups about the tiled floor, searching the cracks in the skirting for a way beyond, a way so long denied them, a way to escape that their dreams have convinced them is real.

It's pathetic to witness this solemn parade, to count all the blind, hunting fingers, groping at plaster and dust like refugees cast adrift on an imitation moon, the lunar surface vertical and unyielding; pathetic, as my soul is there too.

A bit at a time, that's how I'll write the book, a bit at a time ...

Who is this talking?

A subhuman; a blackhead; a slug - three derogatives, my three, a trinity of vulgar, spurious epithets.

The humans have three legal bodies; the subhumans none, being dispossessed.

How are things on the outside?

Good question.

All the humans I see are talkless, ignoring, dangerous.

Mus Peechy can extract words from their wandering selves, but not me, I don't exist in their universe; I'm a minus, a negative.

When I breathe the air stays still, which