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Bulletin: All Plumbing Supply Outlets are Now Bought Out.

By Jim Meirose


But where will he obtain spanners and waxie ringies and whole holy-bowls if necessary then if they’ve bought out every plumbing supply outlet? Where will he obtain giant pipe wrenches sealing sealer pounder’s pipe-putty and silly wrung wet hand-towlettes and towlellistas if they’ve really and truly bought out every plumbing supply outlet? Where will he go to cuddle his lovely Gigendo del Franco, his solemn vow-plaques, and his readable coacheesters he’d munchdown munch all caramelled while wild-wrenching our fat pipies if they’ve really and truly bought out every plumbing supply outlet? Wherefrom will come his Allen heads if they’ve really and truly bought out every plumbing supply outlet? From where will he rip up his gasket goop and big cut-rate grab-bags of shop towels or even good old superflammable oiled up cotton waste-balls if they’ve really and truly bought out every plumbing supply outlet? What genie-lamp’s worth a rub or six when the hordes again pour forward? Where where where, ahhh—if they’ve really yes really yes really bought out every plumbing supply outlet? You monkey-fuckie LumpenSchtickle come out some PantsZip, you master of keys and ZornSchnuckler the Moon-Man’s Quasi-Big-Boy sans the necessary array of suitable sexual semipartners, are the chief culprits today spout our supersneaky spies. Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, how germanesqui is thy root-ball! Only the sweetest peas can roll the distance. Carrots sliced thusly have no hope at all. Rent the attic now, kind servant; the need for quick money is dire. No painting please the thick mud will render it useless. Shrink us immediately, God—the need to appear as small as possible has finally arrived. We’ll risk the last wish my young Genie. Let us enunciate it as clearly as we know; but first we must rub our lamps some you know. Bodily functions yah yah bodily functions, yes we know—there now we are ready. Throw us some towels please first, though. Thanks a lot boy; yah man yo’ welcome. Oh, we often tell ourselves this that and the other. God made us suchwise you know. He went to school is over twenty-one and reads and writes quite deftly—he’s been with James Brown and other groups, and he knows. Never trust a fully-grown man. Less so even when they’rer are seventy. Feeling wildly sane yet brother? You don’t look so bad. Here’s another; hah between stormthunder twelve and stormthunder thirteen; a coppice of T. cordata in Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire is estimated to be two thousand years old. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling. Sunkship Von Moltke says do dis; Sunkship Von Moltke says do dat. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? This is today’s game, my wispy little prayers; in the courtyard of the Imperial Castle at Nuremberg is a Tilia which, by tradition recounted in nineteen hundred, was planted by the Empress Cunigunde, the wife of Henry II of Germany circa one thousand. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left. Get. How’s them bits Ms. Bitte? Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left to master. Him. The dead spirit of the lost Alte Linde tree of Naters, Switzerland, mentioned in a document in thirteen fifty-seven, and described by the writer at that time as already magnam, compels you! Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left to master the piano enough to. Out. A plaque at its foot mentions that in eleven fifty-five a linden tree was already on this spot. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left to master the piano enough to play one. Of. And before you let the door leading out hit you and your fellow tribesmen in your asses, know that the Najevnik linden tree, a seven-hundred-year-old T. cordata, is the thickest tree in Slovenia. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left to master the piano enough to play one of Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas to. Here. Pump on that a while Bigyonder the Quasi-man or what she calls herself this heah’ evenin’. Gage burst in here completely misguided and yelling why have I been called? I have only one year left to master the piano enough to play one of Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas to perfection I could see my being called out if I could make some contribution but I cannot, I cannot. You are secretly attempting to cause me to receive the booby prize! He. By the thickest tree in Slovenia, to wit; the thickest tree in Slovenia, yes; by him you are secretly attempting to have me receive the booby prize. And here’s where in the final cut, poor Gunga got shot off that golden leafed superheated summer tower; what power on earth compels you? What is disrupting our reverie? What? Him? Then plug him down right now!
Go wake Paul, Lydia!
No! It’s no use if they’ve really and truly bought out every single plumbing supply outlet!

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In a dimly lit corner of an otherwise mundane disabled-toilet cubicle the air seems to thicken with an otherworldly tension. The flickering fluorescent light casts elongated shadows on the twlight-tiled walls, their edges wavering like ripples.

Maybe the toilet itself is no ordinary fixture? It seems now that its porcelain surface bears cryptic symbols etched into the rim, as if etched in by unseen entities. The flush handle resembles an antique key, its tarnished brass glinting in the spectral glow. When pulled, it emits a low, resonant hum.

The mirror above the sink reflects fractured glimpses of a roadside scene, pylons stretch into the distance, dark clouds move rapidly above, faint mists drift by the roadside. Staring into it, one might catch sight of their doppelgänger wandering this desolate highway.

Exit is unlikely as when the door creaks open all it reveals is a narrow corridor. Mauve mist clings to the walls, the floor gives slightly, as though walking on the meniscus. The walls are line with graffiti scrawled there—half-formed sentences, nonsensical equations.

You read:

Daagolenyfo breaths walls,

Oncebeus evanuit quod erat umbra

Pnolodolia kells enoch noch?

Quis est?

Merci…

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By Jessica Lightfoot-Toye

Carousel 5

Paradox strikes itself down on the doom calendar

and the room reverberates limitlessly

down the aisle of double-concentration

before vanishing completely.

Pouring outwardly into empty spaces,

the vortex’s vernacular, gibberish,

liquidises its contents, inhabitants’

voices become bodiless, then mute.

Something is listening.

From within the spotlit cistern,

the abyss lunges towards the offering

of a hangnail skinned on the window latch

Its colour, the lethal pink of science fiction

(pH non-corrosive), illuminates the

monolithic basin-alter daubed mauve

and splits the lip of the pipe’s drole thrum.

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A stairwell with, as before, a grey hard floor. The diagonal structure he had perceived was a rising staircase which he was now partially underneath. Beyond it stood large glass windows, through which sunlight shone. Around him stood trolleys, off white book trolleys (or so it seemed to him). The lad turned around, nothing but wall behind him, no trace of the dark stair. ‘Well’ thinks the lad ‘maybe I’m still sat on the stair, maybe I fell to my doom, or may as be I’m still at home dreaming in my old mum and dad’s house in the fen, however, true as all these might be, equally true is I’m here so let’s see what’s what.’

The lad took a step forward. All remained as it was. He pinched himself, he held his breath. These things all confirmed he was as real as could be told. He peered up the stairs and saw that several flights stretched upwards with the external wall being constructed of glass for the whole ascent. He looked further around and saw a corridor led away from the stairwell towards a black fire door with a large tubular handle. Suddenly there was a noise and the door pushed open.

A man walked through, full figure, slightly red face, dark trousers and a shirt (no tie). ‘Ah!’ says the man ‘Are you the new assistant?’ The lad is taken aback for sure ‘I’m not sure sir.’ he says ‘Were you expecting a new assistant?’ ‘Well of course we were expecting a new assistant, I’m just not sure I expected to find one lurking in the stairwell.’ ‘I do apologise sir’ says the lad ‘Call me Emanuel’ says the man ‘sir, is too formal. Or just call me Well, for that’s what most folk do.’ ‘I’m pleased to meet you Well, my name is Alex.’ ‘Nice to meet you too Alex, will you be straight to it or would you care for a bite to eat first?’ ‘If it’s all the same to you Well, we’ll get straight to work, for I’ve only just had a bite on the stair just now.’ and in saying this, he thought how curious it was that it was indeed on the stair that he ate, except that it was not the same stair, but the stair in the darkness, where he possibly still was.

‘As you will Alex, follow me.’

So Alex followed Well, not up the stair but down the corridor towards the dark double door away from the stairwell. This lead down a second corridor for some ten metres, then turned right, carried on and came to a room sized clearing where steel lift doors faced out whilst above them the numerical register of their level flickered from digit to digit. Facing the lifts were more black double doors. Well proceeded through these also and lead Alex to a massive dim room with stark metal girders vertically set through it at intervals. The room hummed and buzzed with noise of electrical machines. A long wooden desk could be seen to his left; it ran along the side of the massive room and seemed to have some kind of operatives behind it, though they could not be clearly made out because the light was poor. What was also visible were books, many many books.

They were piled up along the desk in great stacks leaving only some places by which the desk operatives could peek out. They were also on the floor behind the desk, stretching behind it and away into seemingly more rooms that extended out the back of the desk into what could be assumed to be offices, presumably for the operatives. ‘Have you shelved books before Alex?’ said Well ‘No sir, I mean Well, that I have not.’ ‘Not to worry, for it’s easy work but long and tiresome.’ So Well took Alex over the the books and told him what he must do.

Well explained that the building they were in was the library of a grand learning establishment. The students and professors were forever borrowing the books, but so quickly did they read them that they returned them almost immediately. Sometimes they returned them before they even left the building. This made for a vast amount of work for the operatives and their assistants (of which Alex was now one) who must tirelessly take the books off the students and the professors, process them and then get them back to the shelves as quickly as possible.

The books were all coded by a system of letters and numbers which was quite difficult to follow on account of the letters being of a different alphabet to that in which most of the books were written. The numbers were normal but only played a secondary, some would say almost superfluous role in determing where the books would be placed. The relevance of the numbers could be determined by the quantity of letters. If there were sufficient letters to determine the location of the book, then one could ignore the numbers, however if there were not enough letters then then numbers must be consulted to disambiguate the precise location that the book was to shelved in. The system was imperfect, yet it was the best system available and hence it had to be worked with.

Alex grasped the rudiments of the system in a short while, which impressed Well and even though a rudimentary grasp of the system was inadequate for a totally accurate shelving of the books, Well felt that a partially accurate shelving of the books was better than no shelving. This would come with the additional bonus that if the books were poorly shelved then when the students and professors went to retrieve them they would not find them in the correct locations and would be slowed down in the their borrowing. Well seemed to fantasise about a system which he called ‘organized disarray’ in which the whole library might be slightly off kilter in its correct positioning of the books, thus permanently slowing down the relentless borrowing of the items and even putting some of the patrons off from attending at all.

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The lad awoke bright and refreshed, and only by this could he guess it might be morning. The mushroom glow was the same as when he went to sleep but the air now had a slight musty quality to it, though in fairness this might have been there all along. He looked around to find his way out, but now as he looked around in the dim light he sees there is not just one hole, but several. But from which one has he come and where do they all go? He thinks back to last night and how he went round the stump, it seemed for an eternity, in the end finding just the one entrance. Yet here are, one, two, three maybe even more dark places that seem to lead out of the fungal chamber.

To be sure our lad felt quite alarmed at this, for the holes were tight and retreat would be hard. He had seemingly popped through just a short distance from the outside into here, yet none of them had daylight streaming in from to show which was the right one. The he thought that it must be the dark hedge above that prevented the light from being visible and that the other holes must sure just take him some other close distance to the hedge, either road or field side.

So after a moment’s dithering he picks one of the holes, largely on the basis that it looks maybe larger than the others, and squeezes his way in, pushing his bag before him as he goes. Very soon it’s dark in the tunnel and the lad is sure this is not the one he came in by. He wriggles on, the musty smell clears and the tunnel smells like fresh earth. Still the passage is wide enough and he thinks, if all became too uncomfortable or hopeless feeling, he might after all be able to, albeit slowly, maneuvre himself backwards up the tunnel.

But on it goes, on and on, darkness is all around and heavy press of the earth above sore weighs on his soul in a fear he can scarce keep at bay. The earth gets cooler, but he can hardly interpret this as a good sign as he feels it maybe a further symptom of what he’s been suspecting for some time. That is, that the tunnel is on a downward slope and that he is heading deeper and deeper into the earth. Still there’s something in him that drives him on. It’s strange after all, a clear tunnel like this in the depths of the earth; maybe it’s been used before, maybe it goes somewhere.

Now the incline becomes unmistakeably steeper and the surface made of a smoother sandier earth. It becomes unpleasant to crawl in. He kicks it up with his hands and arms has he moves and it gets in his face, it gets in his boots as he goes. The slope gets steep still, and now our lad feels a real claustrophobic panic. The darkness before him, the slippery sand, the downward tunnel, it’s all too much and for sure, he couldn’t get back up this if he wanted to. It’s now almost as he’s being propelled along, which he is as the slope is now steep, steep, steep, and the floor oh oh so slippery. At length his scrabbling is more a hindrance than an aid to the motion that carries him down down in to the dark.

Well, the scrabbling, plunging terror went on, too long for the lad you may be sure. But was it relief or even greater shock he felt when came to a sudden stop on a sandy smooth cold floor? Dazed and shocked, he felt around and though he hadn’t noticed it, the tunnel had widened some time ago and now he wasn’t sure exactly what he had emerged out of. He could only tell that in front of him were not tight walls of earth, but empty black cool air and a sandy floor beneath him.

The lad tried to stand and found there was space above him that he could. He took a step forwards and that worked too. So, seeming as he had not choice, he carefully walked himself through the dark. Well he hasn’t walked far when his boot struck something hard. ‘Oh ho’ thinks the lad, ‘what now?’ He crouched down and felt what he’d bumped into, and it seemed to him it was a very low stone wall. A flat vertical surface that, as he felt it, only went up half a foot or so. What’s on the other side of the wall? Our lad wants to know. So he feels the flat top surface of the ‘wall’ waiting to find the other side. Well he never found the other side, but what does he find? Only another vertical piece of stone, and this one too, just about half a foot in height by its feel. Now our lad has an inkling. He checks this second wall; yes this one has a top surface that goes on before the stone rises sheer again. The penny drops completely. They aren’t walls, they are steps! But steps to where?

‘Stone steps in the dark could be perilous.’ thinks the lad, so it’s with caution he ascends. Climbs might be best word insofar as he definitely doesn’t simply walk up. He leans forward to feel with his hands that the steps continue and thus can be sure it’s safe to proceed. The stairs go on on on, the lad climbs and climbs. Oh it’s weary work. How much longer to climb? Only one answer to this. As long as it takes for the stairs to take him out of the interminable darkness. So it’s on on on up the stairs, hands forward, back aching, knees battered from occasionally catching the bite of the stone and still no sign of an end to them. But who knows what else might have been out there in the dark. Maybe he has missed side doors, other staircases, passages or who knows what exits.

At length it’s all to much for the lad. The anxiety, the pain, the exhaustion. He stops and seats himself as best he can on the steps and rummages in his bag for food and water. He reflects on what a strange place this is and that whilst only a day or so can have passed it now seems a lifetime away that he was in his house with his old mum and dad, looking across to the abandoned garage, watching the litter blow down the street. At this memory he wonders if he has made the right choice.

But this is no time for regret, so he ate and he drank and he stared into the black, and as he did so he thought he saw a strange glow. He shook his head to clear it for he was sure there could be nothing there. But again as he stared into the black, purple spots began to appear before him. Tired as he was, he gave himself over to looking at them as they had a soothing appealing quality. Now at first it seemed that as he moved his eyes so the purple blobs followed this movement, but then the situation became more odd. For now it seemed the glowing purple spots became stable independent of his eyes. ‘Well here’s another funny thing!’ the lad said to himself as he stared incredulous at the moving colours.

Almost in a trance he watched the purple patches floating in the dark. Then slowly but surely round the edge of of the patches formed a soft green glow. The patches bobbed, and joined in with one another, they separated out, and in this weaving movement of strange light occasionally the lad thought he could make a out a scene that flickeringly appeared between the patches, filling in the rest of the dark. Once there was a blue sky with clouds that floated through, then there was a woodland glade where a blackbird fluttered through, sunlight striking branches in the clearing, now there was a stream bright and clear, unduluating sparkling on its every moving surface, now a bridge under over the stream and a railing on the bridge. The railing was of smooth metal piping which became, as he fell harder into the image, longer and no longer the rail, but pipes that went a long a beige plastered wall.

The lad took a half a stock of what was happening. Around him, to the left and right and behind, the same blackness and maybe, maybe he could still feel the stone step he sat on, but in front, in most of his vision a strange smooth floor of hard grey , a beige wall with a pipe running along it, a diagonal structure of some size he couldn’t make out, underneath which were many many off white trolleys on wheels with shelves on them and beyond the diagonal structure shone light as if a window were behind it.

The floor lapped at his feet and he found he was no longer seated but stood, with the vision of trolleys before him and the darkness receding behind. ‘If I step into this’ thought the lad ‘surely I shall tumble down the stairs to my doom, yet it may be I am not really standing but still sitting on the stair, in which case…’

The lad took a ginger step onto the grey floor, probing its solidity whilst holding his balance on the other foot. He pushed the foot down harder and it was met with floorlike resistance. He lifted the other foot and placed it on the grey floor and in that instance, the blackness around him failed and he found himself stood in a stairwell.