Pornodrone

By Victor Malone

Our narrator is concerned: concerned about spending too much time alone. Concerned about all the drugs and pornography he’s consuming, and the hallucinations his television has started kicking out. Concerned about his neighbour John and the strange bags he buries in his garden. Concerned by his lovable rogue of a best friend’s amphetamine habit and endless number of invisible friends. Concerned by the strange disappearance of his work colleague, and most of all he’s concerned by the strange and mysterious porn shop at the centre of it all...

Welcome to the drone!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victor Malone
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370177547

Victor Malone

Malone has opted to keep his secrets secret, so we can't shed much light on his mystery.We can tell you that he built up the cultiest of cult followings with his annual contributions to men's magazines in the 1970s, from underground fetish magazines to such luminaries as Hustler and Penthouse. Of course he doesn't have the monopoly on this, such prominent writers as Stephen King and Norman Mailer, have famously contributed to the top shelf. And Jack Ketchum's Jerzy Livingston years are now well known.But what set Malone apart was the strangeness of his prose, and the truly surreal nature of his stories.These commissions are said to have come about due to his involvement in the burgeoning 1970s XXX industry in America, at the time still largely controlled by the mob.The closest thing ever documented to a novel was, And the Grave of Your Ancestors Will Call at dawn, a 70 page novella put out by the long since defunct Mythos Pornagraphica Press. Original copies are rumoured to have sold on ebay for in excess of a thousand dollars. The short novel told the bizarre tale of an abused teenage girl who discovers a colony of fascist ants prospering inside her vagina.Then at some point during the 1980s he vanished without a trace.The epic 800 page novel, which he is said to have destroyed at the peak of a mental breakdown, due to a minor disagreement with the publisher regarding typeset?!Who knows?And what of the thousand and one other rumours which have surfaced over the years: that he was on the run in Mexico, that he had gone into underground film making, and was now (under a pseudonym) working successfully as a popular Indie director, that following successful treatment in a mental health facility he began a successful career as an educator in the public school system, that he was dead, that the cause had been violent suicide...Well, there are only two things we can tell you with any degree of certainty:1.That Malone is very much still alive, and experiencing something of a creative resurgence.2.That we are more than proud to have him in the Devil's Wax stable.

Book preview

P O R N O D R O N E

Victor Malone

Copyright  2012 Victor Malone

All Rights Reserved

DEVIL’S WAX PUBLICATIONS

CONTENTS:-

ACT I - PATTERN RECOGNITION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE: PORNODRONE (First Sequence)

ACT II - ADVANCED PATTERN RECOGNITION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE: PORNODRONE (Second Sequence)

ACT III - SATURATION POINT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE: PORNODRONE (Final Sequence)

ACT I - PATTERN RECOGNITION

CHAPTER ONE

I walk through the hall - past the uncompleted job application, past the unsolicited junk mail, past the unwatched videotape. Towards the ratchety scratching sound which has become a regular feature of my afternoons.

John is digging again. The inexplicable shuffling of large canvas bags has been going on for as long as I can remember, but the digging is a relatively new development. Two or three weeks old at the most.

Wayne tries to assure me that if my neighbour was doing something untoward he’d do so under the cover of night. I try to explain to my friend that I’m not accusing the man of murder, just something that he doesn’t want the world to know about, be it criminal or not. Wayne, as always, tells me that I’m reading too much into things.

I make my way across my small garden to a conveniently placed hole in the fence. I didn’t make that hole, if I had Wayne would have christened me truly crazy. I peer through my circular viewfinder to see John, naked from the waste up and reflecting the sun. My own complexion isn’t exactly tan, but John is a white and ginger prism. Sweat pours down his freckled, pale limbs. He works the shovel with purpose, aggressively assaulting the dirt. Today’s shovel appears brand new as it catches the sunlight. A few days ago it had been rust covered. Precisely how many shovels does John own?

My neighbour is one of those men who appears much stronger with his clothes off. Meet him in the street and he appears smallish, stocky, slightly overweight. But here, with his shovel and his sense of purpose he resembles nothing more than a small ginger tank.

You burn trash and bury pets, right? So what on earth does John find to bury two or three times a week. Plus, his garden is as small a concern as mine, surely he will soon loose the battle for space. I could, you might be thinking, simply ask him. But John doesn’t like me, even before the incident last Summer.

Now bear in my mind it isn’t solely due to the mystery digging that I think John is a man of secrets. I also present his visitors for the consideration of the court. Not the normals, who look as though they should be a part of John’s life (his fat sister, his hawkish aunt), but his night time visitors who appear damn right shady.

I wonder, not for the first time, if the significance of unmarked video tapes and digging is due to my own lack of a life. What Wayne calls my ‘tunnel-vision.’ I won’t deny that things haven’t been going well for me lately - and that some things have to change. But I know eccentric behaviour when I see it, and I know what a dodgy fuck looks like.

I imagine creeping into my neighbours garden at night and disinterring the black bag. But I realise even as it is going through my mind that it is a ludicrous fantasy. And that if I was pre-occupied with my own life, I wouldn’t know, let alone care about his bags.

I return to the house, dismayed, disheartened, and in search of my own bags to bury. And of course the first things my eyes alight upon is the 3/4" VHS tape. The now defunct winner of a forgotten format war. I pick it up gently as if handling explosives. I really don’t know why.

The tape appears brand new, sparkling even, as if freshly pressed. But surely nobody manufacturers VHS any more. Recent years have seen a resurgence in the collectors market, and retro special editions of contemporary titles are occasionally released, but surely there wasn’t a factory left in the world that was kicking them out for the consumer market (even in the third world).

Regardless of the origins or condition of the tape, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to view it. A strange apprehension filled me. Again, I don’t know exactly why, besides the eccentric circumstances of its purchase. If the tape was virginal, I was reluctant to be the one to pop its cherry.

It’s a few minutes before six and I'd promised myself I wouldn't go down this particular road until the night came, and I had done something with my day. But what is there to do? I have no real friends to speak of besides Wayne, and Wayne is out of town for the weekend. Even if I could face the tedium of the remainder of the job form, I’m under qualified and virtually guaranteed not to get an interview.

I should at least eat first, leftovers from last night’s meal (a rare event in that I cooked it from scratch) await me in the fridge. However, the excitement curling through my stomach kills my appetite. I feel that old familiar pull now, memory has a hold of my strings. The tape isn’t much but it’s all I’ve got right now. I wonder if the true source of my trepidation about the contents, is simply fear of disappointment. That the mysterious black slab will turn out to be as mundane and insignificant as everything else in my current life.

After all, what is it likely to contain besides a particularly strange or depraved slice of pornography. And that’s if I'm lucky, it might reveal itself to be vanilla...innocuous. Sure, from the description of the guy in the shop you’d expect something special, but the man in the shop was something of a freak. His absurd pony tale alone was testimony to that. He looked like the kind of die hard enthusiast who spent his free time archiving 1920s erotica. B&W Great Gatsby porn may be all this evening holds - jazz, champagne and badly rendered blow jobs.

I lock the back door, take the tape into the lounge and close the door behind me. There is no rational reason for me to take these measures, but I am a cautious man by nature. I want my sin to be confined to one room, and don't want any nasty surprises. I draw the curtains, transforming the room in the process. Somebody once told me there isn’t any such thing as cold, only the absence of heat. Could the same thing be said of the dark?

I reach for my weed box - the ritual being in full flow now. I pick up a disposable lighter, remove a pre-rolled spliff from the box and incinerate the ancient plant. I always smoke weed when I watch porn now, my vices long since married. I take a few long, strong, deliberate pulls, hold, and exhale a huge grey plume of smoke.

I scrabble over to the VCR. My lounge is clean and organised, I keep most of the house this way in an attempt to keep my head straight during hard times.

Again I consider waiting until tonight. Then, with a final moment’s hesitation I slide the tape into the plastic flap. It disappears into the machine, my hope goes with it.

CHAPTER TWO

3 days earlier

I scrape the razor across my increasingly dry face. My reflection is haggard, weary. These days I think the shade of my eyes has changed - a paler hue of blue. I wonder if I should lay off the weed, the beer, the other assorted pleasures.

I rinse off my razor and pick up my toothbrush. As I begin to brush I recall last night’s dream in an unsolicited torrent. A rain drenched graveyard surrounded by dense forest. Lit up by flashes of lightning. A dozen or so corpses desperately fill open graves. Piles of slimy bones sliding off of shovels into the mud. Their empty eyes black and glassy. Night crawlers dance between their feet.

This the only reoccurring dream I have, the only one I’ve ever had.

I rinse out my mouth and head to the bedroom to get dressed. Pick up the shirt I laid out twenty minutes before.

...the fist collides with my face and I collapse like a puddle...

It isn’t really necessary to dress this smart but I see it as a precaution. To simply not show up stinking of weed and booze will score you some points. So a shirt is a sure thing.

I both like and loathe this day. I hate the early start, the bus journey, the job centre bureaucracy. The entire thing really. But I like having something to do. Some sort of structure. A sense of purpose however lame. An opportunity to delude myself.

I head out, almost forgetting my ‘sign on’ book in the process. It’s a nice morning - bright and crisp. With more days like this it would easier for me to keep my head straight on the dole.

A scummy mummy passes by with the inevitable face of doom, and I notice a ginger stray perched on John’s wall. John’s old Toyota is still on the drive, which is unusual for this time of day. I check my watch, 9:09. My mind connects this mundane fact with the digging that he has been doing the last few months. I don’t know the depth and extent of John’s transgressions, but I’m convinced that he’s up to something.

I wonder if Johnny boy is expecting visitors today and that’s the reason for his change in routine. Perhaps his charming friend with the tattooed face. I mean, who the fuck has a tattooed face? Truth is, it’s hard to even work out where John is supposed to work in the first place.

I haven’t been able to afford to run a car for a year or more. So I head to the bus stop at the bottom of the road. I’m lucky because the buses stop regularly here and are seldom late (at least by British standards). The bus arrives 10 minute later (five late). It’s just me and an elderly Polish lady waiting. On the bus: noise, chatter, undisciplined children and a vague odour of mildewy decay. The other passengers: the obligatory unfit mother, the obligatory borderline tramp. It judders and hisses as it passes new builds and dilapidated factories. A pretty blonde gets off, a weaselly man in a cream Burberry jacket gets on. I check my pocket intermittently for the all important and holy book. If I mess this small thing up everything is potentially at stake for a few weeks. My food shop, general expenditure, my little pleasures and my endless vices. At least my mortgage is small and protected. Anyway, I’m on it, I know my way around the system now. And like I said, a shirt makes you unemployee of the month.

Ten minutes later I alight; just in time for a huge, fat man who requires two seats. On the street everyone looks like they’re up to no good. Immigrant or English, white or brown; all unemployed, working illegally or simply doing something illegal. Half of them in the Chav uniform, coughing out smoke and ignorance in front of banks of electrical store monitors, droning on silently about the economic crisis.

I make my way through the dirty streets, side-stepping trash and morons. At one point a mutant baby head - like a sick, inflated balloon - pops up from its pram. Even its eyes are all blown up beyond nature and proportion. I guess mum missed the meeting about alcohol during pregnancy.

I take the long way through the park, just for the view. Well, that and the hope that there’ll be less morons there. Through an underpass which always resembles the potential scene of a beating.

And I can actually see the bone, the bone for Christ's sake...

If I were a woman I’d never come through this tunnel at night, unless I was some sort of Kick boxer. The grey, mildewed walls are spattered with spray painted tags and obscenities. Always crude, seldom artistic, never creative.

Now through one of the oldest streets in the town. Eldritch Rd. The terraced houses here are the colour of twenty year old bones. Once used to house the workers from the long since defunct textiles factory, and the scene of many an historical murder. As well as one or two that aren’t so historical. One thing for