That other city

This city falls through a fragile sleep. It is a place of vivid dreams, and streets that are like coral canyons, nooklike, in a warm sea heaving and flowing with people. The tropical heat forces dark green weeds and lush grasses to burst through the brick and concrete, filtering up like insurgents through colonising stone slabs. Fruit trees, wild and untamed, stand along the long and straight roads that lead into the city, opposing old colonial lamposts that flake black paint along the empty paths. The city itself is surrounded by a vast orange scrubland, and the fruit of the trees droops down unpicked into the short yellow grass by the side of the road, melting and deforming under the humid sun like the skin and bones on a corpse left to rot.  Inhabitants drift down the footworn streets with dead eyes, trailing vortices of musty smells that mix in the wind. Living here means understanding existence and death as less a mere certainty giving room for wilful ignorance, but just a long way off. Life becomes nothing more than a process gone grey along the way of lain down tarmac, the soles of your feet grinding slowly as you shuffle out of your house, along that relentless pavement conveyer belt, until you reach the end of the road, the self checkout, life support beeping again and again, over and over, tolling like a bell for all your worthy achievements are worth until death herself packs you and carries you away in a big black plastic sack for life.

But then there are those with wild eyes and swaying step who cross the road, down off the pavement, into dirty alleys on the outskirts of town, where each footfall lands almost silent, a dull tap that reverberates around on towering buildings that creep up into the sky and hem in any wanderer or traveller. Looking up at the dusty bricks that tower up high, a one can see spiral of lush tendrils, pockmarked here and there with delicate star shaped flowers. Dark purple petals and waxy green leaves curl towards the sun. And down on the ground, as you walk, very occasionally a glint of one the many lords of the city catches your eye as a random copper coins. A coin first spent so long ago, spent for you, indebting you to this city even before you’re dragged out screaming into this unforgiving world. Born into a life of debt but nevertheless feeling the dry air on your wet skin lighting up your nerves like a blanket of ice, eyes wide and bloodshot, your gumless screams stifled by scratchy blankets covering your new nude body, trailing umbilical all over the shop until the doctor finally comes to decide if you’re an innie or an outie, your bellybutton sealed like your fate.

Most people in this city are poor, living on these outskirts. Here the streets have no signs, each twist and turn designed in absentia- a secondary effect of the decision to build homes so desperately needed by a burgeoning population. The blocks separated by dirt covered paths cross over each other like tree roots exposed by the rain. Together the children of this shanty play, chasing eachother, dry smears of dirt settling into the crags of their palms as they laugh and scrabble like feral little magpies for any shiny flake by the side of the copper coloured houses. Each house is topped by its own patchwork of corrugated rust, and the walls slant into the ground, at different angles, sinking back into the earth. Within each thin home lives a large family, so close to the next that they can hear the life next door. Screams of anguish, moans of pleasure, laughter, arguments and everyday conversations seeping through the cracks in plasterboard just as privacy relents to mold.  And as the sun goes down you can catch glimpses of soft, wind dried limbs through stained linen blinds that gently waver in the breeze.

The roots lead to central area of the city where tall white and blue glass skyscrapers hang. At a certain point the curved dirt paths give way to planned streets, each polished building casting a shadow and cooling the pavement. Every cornerstone and angle looks to be so heavily designed and ordered by architechs looking down from cold, dry, air conditioned offices. Black cars careen down wide silver highways lined with trees trimmed so perfectly by unseen hands. On weekends the city is paralysed, and warm winds flow through the square streets, the only sounds around being the gentle clatter of some thin plastic wrapping dancing down the alleys, before it disappears from view. The dull roar of the motorway that feeds the centre of the city is hushed for now. And as the work week begins the air begins to fill with a chorus of intermittent horns in harmony, distant sirens grow to scream on top of cars that careen like speeding violins towards their targets and out of earshot. And people in black suits appear out of nowhere to walk purposefully, their heeled tapping shoes crackling together and their heads bobbing up and down as they flood into their buildings hurriedly, to sit at their desks, plugging in letters transformed into demands and sentiments sent hurtling out the aeriels wobbling at the top of the buildings to other headquarters around the world, codified, encrypted, reaching satellites that perform handshakes with the reams of data beaming between computers, beaming down to be transformed back into light that appear again reflected, on the dead eyes of the ones who read it. 

Correct Change

The car door slammed shut like a gunshot. Tim was behind the wheel and he sighed to himself softly, noticing the soft cloud of his warm breath floating around him. Tim was a delicate man on this bitingly cold morning, emotionally delicate and slightly unsure of himself. He sat in his dark blue, 2001 Vauxhall Corsa, mentally preparing himself for another day of work amongst his fellow co-workers, who Tim regarded as a brain-dead hoard of wankers, by vacantly staring through the foggy mists of his breath at the dark wooden slats walling off the cul-de-sac of where he lived. Tim didn’t know what he did for a job. He knew how to do his day’s work, though he didn’t know to what possible ends his job could take him. Tim had no idea how any of this effort went into creating a better society, a world he would be proud to live in. He shook his head slightly, to shake off the drudging tiredness that enveloped his whole being, dismissing the idea of yet another Monday as just another Monday. And so Tim slid the key in the ignition and turned. The car came alive after a few slick coughs. He clicked down the handbrake. He put the car in reverse and readied his feet against the accelerator pedal and the clutch, throwing his arm around the empty passenger seat next to him with grim determination to crane his neck around and look out the rear window, except it was completely fogged up. It seemed that he would have to wait for the air conditioning. Tim blinked. Tim remembered his seatbelt, wrapped himself with it with a rustle of his waterproof jacket, and clicked it in. Tim looked at his watch. 8.22. Fine by him. Tim looked at his hands resting on the top of the steering wheel. He imagined them covered in blood after stabbing someone brutally. He started to shake his hands as if wracked with guilt, as if acting in a play, wet crimson trails running through crags and down his pale wrists like a river through a desert, his mouth contorted in a silent scream. Tim stopped himself and glanced up at the rear view mirror. A small patch had cleared on the window behind him, revealing two story semi-detached houses, made of sandy beige bricks, and sitting in a pleasant, symmetrical line all the way down the road. That small patch would have to do. Tim had seen enough. And so with a buzzing whirr, the car reversed, did a U-turn, and bumbled on towards work.    

Tim walked down the empty corridor towards his cubicle in the main office space. He was looking down. He hadn’t noticed that the carpet was actually fuzzier than he had previously realised. It was the little things he supposed. Sandra came out of an office to his left. Tim looked up at her, alarmed, as she walked by. “Morning Sandra.” “Morning Tim!” The smell of her shampoo lingered in the breeze she created as she walked past him. Tim relaxed, safer in the knowledge of a completed social interaction. He then carried on walking down the corridor, lazily looking through the door of the empty office that Sandra had emerged from. Tim caught himself in the middle of his next step. There was a vending machine? Tim took a step back and peered through the door with a confused and intense gaze. There was a vending machine. It stood like a monolith. Its shiny glass unbelievably clean, it echoed the names of the products it bore within as the harsh fluorescent lights reflected upon it and dazzled his eyes. Bottles of drink and packets of crisps nested delicately amongst perfectly created spirals that seemed to stretch into the infinite reaches of the depths of the machine. Its rectangular form was perfectly aligned to the centre of the room. But on the machine itself, offset, on the right side of this box a small blue display rang out in digitally formed words that beckoned. Insert coin. Tim felt a jolt through his core, as if the sound of the words within in his mind were formed of the resonant frequency of his soul. And then the words had changed. Select product. “Morning Tim!” Tim whipped round, startled and terrified, to the source of the clear and bright voice to his right, and locked eyes with Peter, who had appeared. “OH GOD. Um. Sorry. Morning Peter.” Peter paused, confused, and looked at Tim with a thinly veiled sadness, before carrying on down the corridor. Tim watched him leave. He was left alone with the vending machine again. Suddenly, without recognising what he was doing, he had flicked off the light switch of the office, and was walking swiftly towards his desk. He watched his feet shuffle on the carpet beneath him. Each step felt like he was walking on sandpaper. Tim reached his desk and turned on his computer hurriedly. He looked at his watch. 9.01. Of course.

Tim was obviously distracted all day. He watched over the top of his computer monitor, his eyes following his co-workers who would come in and out of that office like bees to a hive. They came with nothing. They left with snacks, all smiling at eachother like they were in some kind of sick, demented club. All day Tim heard the thunk of yet more bottles hitting the retrival tray of that foul machine, each time felt a little louder than the last, as if they were shells coming ever closer to his little trench, zeroing in on his position. To cope, Tim began to play a game where he would guess who in the office would buy which product, who was more likely to go for savoury snacks rather than sweet. Tim thought of himself as an expert at this game of his own design. This however, forced Tim to develop an intensity of emotion towards that room which he could not pick apart. This emotional knot developed inside him and clawed at his ribs all day, desperately trying to escape, perhaps, he fantasised as a scream so fierce as to shred his throat, and vomit up a torrent of blood, with little flaps of skin and lung into his small, plastic office bin. And he would tie up the minituare bin bag with a dainty little bow knot and carry it, fit to burst and bulging with his hot guts down that corridor. But Tim could do nothing, and as such, he was being driven towards radical action. 

It was now the end of the working day. Tim looked at his watch. It was 4.58. It would have to do. He had completed literally no work, and felt ashamed of himself. The excel sheet in front of him lied bare, its boxes lined up pristine, save for a single entry in A1 that simply said "fuck". He stared at the blinking line after the k. He felt for a moment that it might match his heartbeat. A figure blocked the light above him "You coming to the pub, Tim?" He looked up past his monitor at Sandra, her auburn hair hanging silkily down across a lovely blue pea-coat, buttoned up. Tim opened his mouth too quickly. "No" he said, "I think I'm just going to try and finish this, you know." A nervous laugh bubbled out of his mouth and fell flat. Sandra did not blink. She didnt look dissapointed at all. In fact she looked exactly the same, as if he hadn't said anything at all. "All right then Tim, I'll see you tomorrow!" Sandra spun on her heels and walked down the corridor. Tim watched her leave, for the second time, and looked back down at his monitor. Perhaps now he could finally complete at least a little bit of work. All day he had been fixated on what lay down that corridor. The office was now empty. Nobody would be buying any more snacks until tomorrow. There was quiet in the work environment, and Tim was at last, resolute. Tim began to press the backspace button very deliberately with his index finger, each press a step towards a brand new day, back through time, each press erasing the horrors of the previous hours. Fuck. Fuc. Fu. F. "You coming to the pub, Tim?" said a voice from behind him. He span around in frustration. It was Pete. "No." Tim turned to his monitor again, and paused, before turning around to Pete once more. "Sorry." he said. Pete's face was extremely blank, a mask, a perfect diguise. A smile appeared on top of it all. "OK well, if you change your mind we will all be down there." he said, extremely earnestly. And so Pete walked down the corridor, his gait laced with an added spring and enthusiasm, seemingly wishing for a landmine.

Tim looked at his watch. 10.33. Shit, is it that late? At least he had completed a substantial amount of work. Tim decided it was time to finish for the night. He saved what he had done, and shut down the computer. The monitor switched off and the computer fans stopped whirring. His territory was now silent, amd only the dull hum of the air conditioning in the office remained. Tim stretched at his desk and got up. It was time to leave. Tim began to walk down the corridor, and as he went, he became extremely self aware and introspective. He thought upon his day, how he had been so affected by what lay just within the office in front of him and to the right, how much he had viscerally hated every second of his existence behind his monitor, staring at the hungry coworkers marching in and out of that very doorframe. Tim then found himself in front of this door, and it was very nearly closed. That emotional knot, which had loosened itself throughout the evening, which Tim had managed to put out of his mind now bound itself tighter and tighter as he stood there, and Tim began to feel likewise constricted in his movement, in his thoughts. Each attempt to convince himself of the realities of the situation, of the car waiting for him downstairs, of the success he had sown for himself by completing most of his work for the day, was an attempt that came up against this dense and painful feeling, as if he was listless, beached, only to be washed away by huge waves of a cold sea. He felt that he could not allow himself to think of anything else except what lay before that closed door in front of him. Tim began to shake, and tears welled up in his eyes. These tears were borne of this frustration of emotion, and the office began to feel more empty, as if he himself were dissapearing, as if his presence was uprooting itself and soon there would be absolutely nothing. Tim closed his eyes and his tears, dangling delicately on his eyelashes, fell onto the carpet noiselessly. He leaned forward, and with a thunk, opened the door with his forehead.

Unlimited Breakfast Ch. 1 (VERSION 2)

I was born and raised in this city by my father, my mother died before I was born. I only knew her from my father’s pictures that he kept taped to the banister. He used to say her name with a little scrunching of his nose and a faraway glinting in his eyes. An idiosyncratic man he was. As a young boy I became infuriated often with the reams of sellotape he kept in every cupboard, just in case. The memory that he kept alive did not belong to me. When, at school, I drifted off into daydreams of my own design, I used to imagine a woman with tawny brown hair in a flowing white cotton dress, that softly swept in the breeze, and lingered around corners she turned. She would always be cooking lunch, some kind of light meal to get you through the day and keep your belly rounded. She placed the lunch on a soft ivory-white plate with a delicate but meaningful gesture, and purity emanated from the food that lay warm there. Then that world would be stomped out, imaginative clouds hastened away by schoolmasters berating me for looking out the window glassy eyed and vacant, the image of her, and lunch, echoing into the ether. But this story is not about her.

I grew up with my father, Benedict, in a greasy iron coloured apartment block in the east of the city. Our area was fairly historic, well known for its tall, matte, brutalist tower blocks that looked over criss-crossed little alleyways like monolithic sentinels. Footbridges broke up the skyline like the branches of trees, stretching across from building to building and casting canals of shadows on the pavement below. Through it all itself ran a solid, deep canal, which used to be the main artery into the city centre, heaped stacks of coal making their way slowly by way of long barge, their engines rumbling deep as they slipped through the oily brown water. We used to play alongside these boats as children, running up and down the lengths of water, shrieking, and dodging the workmen, and as teenagers we sat on the brick walls that flanked it, drinking wine and laughing, having arguments over simple facts, making ourselves in eachother's image; foolhardy and raucous.

In the present day, tourists come through to feel the remainders of this grit and ardour, of which all remains are those hulking husks, buildings that once were home to friends now transformed into the depraved and derelict. The tourists clutch cameras to their chests, looking around at this part of part of a much larger and fast-paced town. They are wide-eyed and happy, bemused and kept deluded by their notions of a vibrancy that no longer has any material grip in the present. Their chatter bounces emptily off concrete as they walk slowly through the large plazas between the tall tower blocks in their brightly coloured puffer jackets, where flat leaves dance lifelessly in cold gusts of wind. The visitors are safe in their quiet detachment when looking through their viewfinders, and when they have seen it all, they hurry back to cleaner streets, and brighter lights.

When I was growing up here, we had a saying in our tiny two-man family: don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. You couldn’t afford to lose any eggs at all. My father assured me he came up with the phrase, and at the time I believed him. But then he died in an omelet fire. 
I came home from school one evening to the carnage of a crowd kept at bay by police tape, the reflection of statue-like figures sitting on the pavement, foil blankets flashing intermittently as they were lit by the blue strobe of the siren lights. People were looking up in awe of this great destruction before them. To the edges of the crowd a couple of news reporters stood silently, microphone in hand, their faces lit bright, bleached and horrible by camera lights, as they stared into the barrel of lenses, waiting to catch a signal. From above, flecks of ash fell like gentle snow, transforming the once profane pavement to a strange, dusty carpet, that all felt unwilling to walk on. The smell of smoke and burnt plastic permeated everything. It was the top half of the tower block that sat stolid, black, charred, and steaming densely; drops of water fell off the burnt wooden siding. There once was a great inferno, it seemed, and now it had turned to skybound clouds. I counted the floors upwards from the bottom.

The fire brigade, coroner, and several independent officiators decided that the cause of the accident was one man cooking his morning meal. It was the insatiable lust for breakfast that was my father’s life force, his drive, and it killed him in the end. My father loved breakfast. He loved making it, and he loved eating it. He used to make an omelet every single morning for fifty-four years. He taught me about the hob, how to twist and wait for that fiery metal glow to flow through your pan, to give your breakfast life and energy. The phrases and words that had become etched on the walls of my mind now seemed to glow with an internal force like that very same induction hob on full- and it hurt. It really hurt. These words he spoke to me were tempered in their creation, they shone a path through his grimace borne of the gentle searing splatter of bacon grease that glittered so finely in the morning sun, caught like dewdrops on his hairy arms. “Make your own damn breakfast!” he used to shout at my bleary eyed face, half smiling, half in pain, but with an endlessly hungry glint in his eyes. He used to wave his shiny, melted plastic spatula up and down like a wizard’s wand.

Our eggbasket had burnt down. All our eggs lay in that one place. My father had died making an omelet. It was all a sick joke, really. Chaos and death dressed in a two-man horse costume, clopping down the avenue of fate. I could not accept this grief that had been thrown on me, ashladen. I became consumed by a battle between the absurd and the real. Every day and every night seemed to blur, my memories chopped and changed upon recall. Each single moment of experience could be used as evidence to define my existence as consistently painful, as if I was guilty of a crime. On recollection on my own again, where I thought I could be whole, every action I took further proved my guilt, though I was guilty of nothing. The knots of this double bind were tightened on every movement. The worst of us all now lay in my smallest action. I found myself hopelessly lost in a reality where my father could not have been. It was as if my whole being existed deep in long and empty canals, clouds hung lifeless far above me. In these nightmares, I as a human being stumbled through these long, deep paths, and as i looked back the torrent of water rushed forward. And, though I tried, I could not turn my mind around, and stop that flood behind me to save myself from drowning. And so I drowned. 
The only option was to adapted to this life, to cease even slight analysis, to cast myself in the image of my own mind. In fact, I became very good at hiding, quietly masking any interaction with others, with towering thick walls between us, fearful that they might hear myself stifling internal screams, until I would be alone again, and my internal screams turned louder and directed themselves further inward, burrowing like worms through boggy soil. And as I tossed in this existence the very fibres of my being became frayed. I was stretched too thin. I began roaming the streets, seeking something without knowing it. My beard grew long and ragged, my soul became black and empty as a cold and unused saucepan. This went on for months. 
I woke up one morning and caught myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were sharp and bloodshot. The sudden reflection of a man who’s identity I did not know frightened me. Unrooted I cast my mind back to any memory with a pulse, perhaps I thought about what I used to look like, but I could not remember. Instead, standing before me, was a man, small, weak, frail, emaciated. But in that moment, I felt a pause. And instead of the of loss, the desperate desire to be seeing a recognizable figure, instead of the compulsion to hide my eyes from the sight of my very own skin, or rip my own skin off, I felt a pang deep in my gut and a deep booming of a distant gong far away over a shadow covered hill. Without my conscious decision, I had decided that it was breakfast time.
From my gut started to bloom a very soft sadness, which ached and  unraveled through my stomach slowly, like the growing tendrils of an ancient fire, so ancient as to be inalienable, and undeniable even from within a wild nightmare. I understood this longing not with words, not as a consideration, but as a wholeness, and as it began to grow, for my father, for my mother who I had never known, and for myself- for what I had missed in these months gone by, granted to me was the idea that it was no wonder I could not have seen myself eye to eye. And then, the wholeness that had suddenly appeared left me. I found myself beginning to weep, tears running down my cheeks and leaving track marks along the grime I had accumulated on my face. I heard the droplets hit the sink with a dull tap. I looked out through the bathroom door behind me, through my bedroom that lay naked of any semblance of order, through the window at the end of the room as the dawning sun burst a soft orange through the clouds, razor sharp beams of morning light hitting the corners of my furniture and casting odd shadows, igniting the motes of dust floating calmly in the very same air that I was aware now, that I was breathing. I was gripped with warmth and a fearsome power, the recognition of my self, my place in this sunlight, and a true desire, a hunger and a craving. I stood there still unafraid, and surrounded by mess. As it was, it made me want to laugh. I set off towards the kitchen to cook breakfast.

I decided with absolution that I would make breakfast every morning, pious to this new lease of life. At last I have understood my father's practice. My allegiance has never dwindled. The spirit of breakfast, I have found, transcends location. My morning meal finds me, as much as I now gravitate towards it. 
I write to you now from within a police academy. I have the wish and solemn promise to myself to save those from death, which so patiently followed me as it took my father, death in the form of a starvation of the soul. This particular morning, I had soft-boiled eggs with buttered toast, and a cup of coffee, which set me in good spirits when I left the house. As I shut my door behind me, I had no idea that it would be a long time until my next breakfast.

Bean and Nothingness

There is a lone fridge buzzing in a dark kitchen, its hum filling the silence poorly. Moonlight streams through the windows by the sink. The kitchen door creaks open, warm orange light spills into the room, cutting the blue shadows sharply. A face peeks round the door. “Hello?” it says. It is a hungry man. He enters the room sheepishly, the door shuts behind him. Washed cutlery glints wetly in the moonlight as he flicks his gaze around the room, searching for threats. The buzz becomes louder, filling his ears. The man turns his attention to the buzzing fridge, and he finds all else fades away to the white plastic monolith in front of him. Unthinkingly his arm grasps the handle, wrenching it open. The fridge door opens more easily than he expected, and he has to loosen his grip as the door flys open. The buzz is quiet now, the yellow fridge bulb lighting up his face softly. And on the top shelf, in a cold, white polystyrene cup, are some baked beans, dripping down over the rim. They are lifeless, awaiting reheating; raw; unwarm; unwelcome. The brown tones of the tomato sauce sloppily eat away at the soft glow of the fridge light in the night. And as the light disappears the buzzing intensifies, growing into an atonal mechanical scream. There is a single bean on the side of the cup, caught paralysed in its slow tomato laden fall. It is unnervingly smooth. And as the man squints and leans in closer it becomes more wrinkled, becoming cunning, and aged, and weary. And the man’s face is without light now, his pupils turned a tomato sauce red, his world turned to beans. The entire universe rockets through his mind, vertical structures collapse in on themselves as his mind dives headfirst into tomato sauce fractals. His synapses twist and turn as though suddenly turned to beans and sauce, as though Euclidean space ceases to matter to a universe sculpted from little round brown things covered in a savoury tomato gravy. From blackness there was nothing, and beans erupted into beacons of light, and heat, and strength, becoming bosons, bosons becoming beans, and particles like fireworks exploding forth from collisions of atomic beans, clumping together to create astronomically sized beans hurtling through empty space bereft of beans, smashing into one another, creating huge boiling tomato soup seas, and bean volcanos spewing forth baked beans with unimaginable might. And the bean seas cool, tiny beans become dependent on other beans, and those other beans dependent on the scorching bean sun in the sky, as its light heats the swathes of tomato sauce rippling sloppily beneath the sky. And the beans swirl around in ever complicating patterns, smaller beans consumed by larger beans, larger beans consumed by smaller beans, rotting into the ground, melting to become tomato soup over and over, until beans come out of the bean sea, beans lumbering over the planes, huge beans chase down other beans, stomping wetly over tomato ground. There are little bean nests of bean eggs, except, they’re not eggs, they’re beans, and they rock slightly and crack open, and a tiny bean screams for its mother. And out of nowhere a giant space bean crashes into the bean planet, destroying all beans, covering everything in a thick tomato fog. But some beans survive, and adjust again to their natural habitat, beans climbing up cliffs, beans flying in great schools, swinging from trees made of beans. Beans producing toast, toast producing beans. Beans using the toast to create more toast, creating huge gatherings of beans, monoliths of toast. A single piece of toast flies in the air to transform into a giant slab of beans on toast floating through the heavens. Beans create churches to beans, and to bean God, except there is no bean God, because the concept of God is beans. Beans are killing beans around the world for being baked beans, for existing as beans. Beans are dying from other beans, as it was, and as it will ever be. Away in a great building made of beans artist bean finally lowers his bean pallet caked in multiple shades of tomato sauce, slowly looking up to its masterpiece across the ceiling, and sighing happily at schizoaffective finger paintings in baked bean sauce, terrible drawings of beans in absurd positions and relations. Beans travel at supersonic speed through the sky in large beans, emitting gas clouds of tomato smoke. Huge towers made of beans are erected across the world, and roads made of toast glow at night across the world like the stretching roots of a bright red fungus. And flying along one of these a bean family argues in a bean car, before a truck made of beans ploughs into the side of it, killing all the beans involved, beans spilling out of the truck and all over the toast road. Beans scream in agony every day. Across the tomato sea, floating bean naval ships fire beans out of bean guns towards an island made of a giant bean, rocking violently in the saucy swell. And a kamikaze bean comes screaming through the bean clouds, its pilot, a bean, cannot stop the tomato juice streaming from its eyes in droplets of pain, of anger, of fury, of anguish. Huge mountains fall in giant tomato sauce slides over villages of little bean houses, and beans are buried. The tomato seas increase in temperature every day, and are rising. The tiny bean microbes in the sea are dying. And beans continue to hunt for more beans deep inside the bean earth, until they realise, too late, that there is nothing to find except beans. And then, there is a bean, alone, in only pants, on a sofa made of beans. It scratches its armpit. Nothing happens for a long time. The bean lifts up a bean tv remote and turns on the bean TV. And all that there is on the tv is a single image of a bean, flickering gently and rotating slowly. Every channel, the same bean, the same angle, and the bean changes channel again and again, faster and faster, each time the remote squishing violently, leaking tomato juice drop by drop on the floor, until the leak becomes a stream, the stream then a torrent, becoming an unstoppable roaring flood, until the room is filled with tomato sauce, and the bean is drowned.
The man is standing in front of the hob, a tiny blue flame quietly flickering under a small saucepan. The polystyrene cup is emptied and sticky with the remains of the tomato sauce on its inside. The cooking beans release a gentle heat bubble. There is a tiny pop as the bubble is released.

Heinz Meanz Beanz

Working in Lids

9am. Premier Inn, Kettering.
A whistling wind breezes slowly through the lobby, carrying with it the smell of continental breakfast. My nostrils flare pleasantly. It's a smell I love, hotels in the morning. There is a hushed hubbub through the closed double doors in front of me. The sounds, they call me. My feet were planted on the thin lattice patterned carpet, set apart from eachother. I was wearing my dark business trousers, my only pair. Last night I pressed them to perfection in my pants. Evan Davies was there. Newsnight and a Corby Press. Heaven.
My eyes shot sideways to the limp banner by the doors. Each word reverberating in my head. Shots fired in 172 Century Gothic calibre bullets.
"WELCOME TO GUBBINS CONVENTION 2009".
I squinted and leaned slightly closer. Was that a printing error? A smudge of Heinz? Look. I didnt care. My eyes darted back towards the doors, those two-way swinging oak portals to business valhalla. I work in Lids. This convention had attracted the prime middle management executives from all across the country, the merry few who deal in no uncertain terms the most important fairly useful items this side of the moon. I looked around, my body tingling with joy. Lid sales was here. And I bet Lanyards would be here too. And maybe Caps. Possibly those mongers hawking cavity and hole insurance too.
I had my cards ready. 20 in each pocket on me. I trick i'd learnt back in the salad days of High Wycombe. What a fool I was. Foolish with inexperience. Brazen with business lust.
I used to keep them in my back right trouser pocket and swan around with not a care in the fucking world. Then, the incident with Cliff Shazop and Charles McReamey. About to open up a serious width of communication between me and Cliff. Id networked that day like a stomach pump, going from executive to executive, hitting the sweet spots. Getting business. Making names. And I was just about to reach for a card to seal the deal with Cliff, when Charles, poor, slovenly Charles, grabs me by the right hand in a sudden and deep handshake. And I couldnt use my left hand to reach for the cards. They were in a pocket that might as well have been in fucking Timbuktu. Doing a card reacharound mid-handshake, looking like a tit, fobbing off Charles? What was I to do. And so Shazop walked away past me, noticing someone else and smiling at them, arm raised in greeting, palm stretched out in that most beautiful of conversation initiating waves. Ending ours. It was a hand i'll never forget. It was a hand that should have contained my business card.  But i'd grown from that moment. Months I spent practicing my card proffering in front of the mirror. Evenings born, raised, and buried under a torrent of 160GSM. I remember the first cold day of Autumn this year, when it all  seemed to seep in to place. That morning, I remember it well, I put on my socks, and put on my gloves and then Wham. The idea hit me and sent me into shivers. My mind was set on it. Cards in all pockets. You cant lose. You're a master. Inpenetrable. Any angle, anyone, they get a card. Thats why im the best at what I do. Thats why i'm good at selling lids.
But im in it for the long game. Ive long studied the art of containing. The history of containers and lids. And i'm working my way up. I love this game, getting to know people, closing deals. But what nobody seems to understand is that without lids, the whole financial system would collapse.
People think im a bit of an oddball because of my preoccupation with lids. But the evidence is right before your eyes. Lids, Lanyards, Caps, Straps. Without them, what use would the object that they work for be? Pens would dry out, ink flooding out like the wrath of God. And I will be its Noah. Two by two. Lid to Container.
And one day i'll have a monopoly on lid production in the system of consumption. Can you imagine the power of the man that deals only in lids? It will be my power. Yes. These peripheral items complete the world. They seal off value from danger. And if one man were to snatch that safety away... He would uncover humanities greatest fear. If there is one universal in this harsh world its the comfort that each person carries in lids. That they know they will fit. Its an unconscious feeling, but satisfying nonetheless. When the lid fits. When the cap screws. Our little master plan. One day I will have to power to distort the shape, thread and size of all the lids on the planet. Subtly and quietly shall I work my magic. No one would notice at first, and then panic. Chaos would reign. My wrought chaos. My little scheme. Our little secret. Yours and mine. Because on that day nothing will fit.
My right hand was in my trouser pocket, a business card nestling in my palm like a magician's secret ace. I took it out and looked at it, then at the doors into the conference. My mind was buzzing. Probably that complimentary morning coffee sachet. I love those. I felt compelled to walk in, and so I did.

Underground

The tunnel is dark, warm and wet. The walls are made of deep crimson flesh and pulsate slowly alongside the distant thumping beat of the city above. By the side of this tunnel, on the platform, a huge, bulbous troll sits napping on a blue plastic chair that is far too small for him, a huge rusty halberd resting precariously across his knees. Slowly it seems he is nodding off, his head lolling glacially in front of his chest, and just at the point where he might fall off, suddenly there is a scream far away, deep down the tunnel itself, a scream that echoes off the walls and jolts the troll awake. He wipes a fleck of drool away from his mouth with the back of his hand. A bright white light shines through the murk, highlighting floating grey motes and red speckles that hang in the air drifting. All at once, a gargantuan slimy worm careens its way past the platform, its pink skin steaming, and glistening with translucent slime. It stops at the far end of the platform and its head wends its way up the wall until it finds a feeder bag full of rotting hay hanging from a large hook. The troll stands up and sighs. He lumbers over towards the worm, raises his halberd and slowly, but with surgical precision, slices across its belly. Pink fluid spurts out, splashing the trolls shins. Then a torrent of thick liquid pours out of the wound and the worm shudders. So too come fleshy lumps and the innards of the great beast. But the lumps are holding briefcases and appear through a thick skin of pink fluid to be in suits. Then the lumps stand up one by one, and they hurriedly brush off as much liquid from their suits as possible. They are off to work, and walk towards the exit past the tail of the worm, and in a loose gaggle, minding eachothers step and gazing past one another as though they dont exist. The troll watches them leave, pauses, and pulls up his ill fitting trousers with a satisfied hoik. He shuffles over to a metal and wooden lever by his blue plastic seat and pulls it down with a thunk. Then, there is a mechanical hiss as underneath the great worm a long trapdoor opens, and the worm falls down through it, its slippery entrails on the platform unravelling like warm rope, before they too whip away in a flash. The troll sits down heavily and the legs of the plastic chair bend under his weight. They break.