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.

I've got places to BE

There was a loud crackling noise from beneath the floor of my 6th floor flat. It sounded like a mix between speckles of granite being mixed together and a rush of cold wind through a hole in a rock. I looked up at my friends bewildered. They were likewise confused, and we all stared at the floor expecting it to erupt at once. Then the noise simply stopped and silence filled its gap. Though it was far too soon to sigh in relief, before a neat circle opened like the aperture of a camera before us. Slowly, almost painfully, we peered in, trying to squint through the murk below. I caught a glimpse of something silver, and suddenly what appeared to be a gleaming metal flagpole careened out of the hole and embedded itself in our ceiling. There was a slight shuffle and tinkle of carabiner. A solemn bugle rang out from below. I felt morose under its flattened brassy spell. A flag slowly was being raised out of the hole, and written on it, were red cross-stitched letters. I spoke the words aloud. "SHUT THE FUCK UP"

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.

Pidgeon

I was at Kenwood House with my mother, eating an extremely expensive lunch of sausages and mash, when suddenly I noticed to my left a large woodpigeon wandering on over, working its waddly way through a forest of table legs and chairs. It cocked its head at me and its eyes blinked. At once it flapped up to the table next to ours, and began to cautiously make its way towards a plate with the remains of someone else's mashed potato and gravy. I saw the lust in its eyes as it lowered its little beaked face towards the leftovers. Then it pecked vicously at the mash, and a little piece of cold potato skin whizzed off the plate, past the left side of my head like shrapnel, making me flinch. I looked around at my mother and opened my mouth to say something, but shut it anyway. Then i looked at all the other six or seven pidgeons around the area, under tables, searching, hunting for leftovers. Suddenly and in a chaotic hustle of flapping noise they all lifted off at once, scattering leaves under their wake, and they flew out of sight. There was a hanging and dulled silence as i sat there confused. I turned around once more where the pidgeon had been. But hanging over me and blotting out what little light there was on such a grey day, was a pidgeon the size of a house,  Its giant grey feathers fluffed silently in the breeze. It cocked its head at me. I heard its eyelids slide across the slick glassy surface of its bright orange eyes as it blinked at me.

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.