The Art of Eating Toast

“The phrase "You're Toast" is often used to refer to those who are about to suffer brutal damage at the hands of the speaker.” Wikipedia

Press play.

The interior of the café is not unpleasant. The smell is not revolting. The pale blue walls and general underwater ambience are enough, however; to impress upon the enterer the feeling he’s stepped inside a fish tank. Tables and chairs are old and worn, perhaps salvaged from the hulk of a sunken ship, lost at some ragged spot upon a rocky coast, in the deep dark woods, of the soul. Somewhere behind an iron door, a radio is playing rag time classics.

Behind a door, it is playing.

Indeed, one chair in particular may catch the eye of the hapless seeker of a hearty breakfast. Painted a fire engine red and adorned with the purple face of Barney the Dinosaur, it appears quite out of place among the rest of the faded grey furniture. There is something strangely comfortable looking about it; perhaps the only chair in the room with some form of cushioning material. And it is upon this very red chair, above all else, that the dweller on the threshold desires to rest his weary legs. Therefore you lead your sleepy companion to a corner of the room and sit yourself down upon your very red chair, satisfied with your choice of seating and the fact that your companion has to sit on a much less comfortable and interestingly coloured, grey chair. Menu now in hand, there can no doubting the special appeal for the hungry and hung-over traveller, of the adequate and reasonably priced mini grill.

Travellers between late night and early morning are we, upon this stage of life.

But it’s only after the moustachioed waiter has taken your order, complemented you on your excellent choice of seating and disappeared behind the iron door that strange questions begin to arise in your mind’s inner mind, like:

What’s behind the iron door?
Does the mini grill come with toast?
Did that old guy get toast with his?
Did he get the more expensive mixed grill?
Is my companion getting up to go for a number one or a number two?

In this life there are only questions. Does one really enjoy a toilet activity or is it more a feeling of relief? Is enjoyment and relief the same thing?
You make ask who they are, this greasy waiter bringing out two plates of grilled rot, that old prick with his basket of toast and more luxurious mixed grill, your strange companion who hasn’t said a word since entering the café. Do they enjoy all this business? You want nothing but a small basket of toast.
“Can I get some toast with that?” You demand desperately above a plate of grilled junk.

People move in and out. A child enters in its young fathers arms, crying and pointing in your direction. Your companion returns and hands you a phone he found in the hallway.

The human eye usually takes a number of split seconds to focus on a digital image. The focus time however is unique to each pair of eyes. The average time it takes between looking at an image and our brain making sense of what we are seeing is usually about 0.02 seconds. However, after a time you will comprehend the image on the phone is a photo of a purple dinosaur attacking a clearly distressed man, who is sitting on a very red chair, at a grey table, in a small café.

The inside of the café however, is not unpleasant.

In fact you are so astonished by the image that you are quite unaware of the purple dinosaur that has entered the room from behind the iron door and has come to stand at your side holding a basket of toast and an electric carving knife, until he screams in a shrill feminine voice:

“You’re toast, fucker!” and proceeds to carve you open.

Behind the iron door time slows down. Chairs have been placed at tables, floors have been swept. The moment has come and the sound of nervous shuffling echoes through the great halls. A thousand dinosaur eyes roll and stare and blink in the darkness.

Breakfast is served.

Wolf Moon

I hunger.
The moon is full.
It’s pale blue lifeblood spills through a large bay window to my right, bathing the empty room in a spectral glow. The leather couch, on which I recline, and a small stainless steel nightstand to my left, are among the only furniture in the house. On the nightstand there is a black telephone.
I make the call.
Bill’s voice sounds different tonight. I can’t quite place it. There is something strained about it. He tells me the time and the drop off point. We agree the price. He says he is out after tonight.
He says that every time.
I slowly place the phone back on the nightstand, beside the coke. I press play on the hi-fi remote and as I drain both glasses, the opening howl of The Misfits’ “Dig up Her Bones” echoes through the empty rooms.
It’s 3.05 when I watch the yellow taxi pull away among the pines and for a moment I catch a glimpse of Bill’s scowling, make- up caked face. I wait till his car is safely out of sight and move in.
Something’s not right, however. The package is cold. A strange yet somehow familiar odour emanates from the box, like something from a half remembered nightmare.
With grim apprehension I open this Pandora’s box and in the light of the full moon gaze upon the horror within.
Pepperoni.
I howl now. Suspended for eternity in that moment of madness.
I howl at the moon.

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The American Dream

When Jay pulled the trigger he had been thinking of nothing in particular.
It’s true that moments earlier he had been imagining himself climbing a wall of human flesh using two ice picks, but at the moment the trigger was pulled, nothing.
The blast had almost clean blown the hookers head right off.
Karen, on the other hand, had hardly reacted at all.
Indeed her mouth had opened expectantly, but her eyes stood transfixed as before, glued to the recorded 911 footage that played upon the television screen.
However, there was a perceptible increase in the speed of the machinations of her right hand, beneath her leather mini-skirt and as the second plane hit she reached orgasm.
After a time, Karen became aware of the grisly scene around her. Her boyfriend Jay was rolling around in the blood of a decapitated hooker. The walls were red with her blood. It dripped from every naked place.
K: What’s gotten into you?
J: (looking up) What you mean?
K: What’s with the mess?
J: (Irritated) How the hell should I know?
K: I’m not cleaning that shit up!
J: We’ll just get a new apartment.
S: Hello there! I’ve just come in through the window. Lovely night for it. You got any pizza?
Said a voice from behind them.

It is unclear what Slane Stockton’s motives for breaking into Jay Watchchild’s apartment could have been other than burglary. The idea of breaking and entering an apartment for the sake of a slice of pizza is indeed a ludicrous one. However this was the reason Stockton later divulged to police.

The Directors Cut

“They know. They know all.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They know nothing. How could they possibly know anything?”
“I can see it in their eyes. The mirrors of their eyes.”
Message left on the Directors answering machine,
At 5:31pm on the evening of the17th.
The message appears to record a conversation between two distinct voices. The former closely resembling that of the Director.

Save for a deep cut on his cheek beneath the right eye, no one had noticed anything strange or out of the ordinary in the behavior of the Director, in the days prior to his disappearance. It must be said that the Director was a man known above all else, for his regimental character, contrasting greatly with the strange, indeed macabre, nature of the movies he conjured from the deepest depths of his fantastic imagination. His absence at the film studio on the morning of the 20th, came as quite a shock to everyone present, above all his long-term crew members who had never known the man to be late a single day, in a career that spanned two decades as a film maker. The alarm was soon raised after the Cinematographer and long time friend of the Director, fearing the worst, drove out to the Directors mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and found it in quite a state of upheaval, wholly devoid of any sight or sign of the man himself. The Cinematographer grasped the seriousness of the situation immediately, owning that the Director never left his house, apart from his daily drive to the film studios. He was a man of solute routine, and this, it appeared, was decidedly out of habit. In the following days a million T.V. broadcasts held the same, most recent picture of the Director, taken on the 16th, four days before his disappearance, and the first day of shooting of his latest movie, entitled “the Dreams in the Witch House”.
As to the general state of upheaval witnessed by the Cinematographer at the Director’s home on the morning of the 20th, this would suggest burglary by some third party or perhaps some form of mental attack or breakdown on the Directors behalf. The very few who knew the man intimately, have fervently dismissed the latter theory. The Director never partook of alcohol or any other drug, legal or otherwise. Indeed it is to this that many attributed his unnaturally youthful looks. The man was 62 and yet if the truth were told, he did not look a year over forty. If a third party was involved, it is unlikely that the man knew the person or persons in question. The Director had lived alone all of his adult life, seeming to visibly shun the company of others. He limited his human interaction to those of his film crew he knew and trusted.
In the weeks following his disappearance, experts in their respective fields, put two strange theories forward:
Dr. Daniel Meehan, Head of the History Department at U.C.L.A. and leading expert on occult literature, has suggested a theory surrounding the strange cut beneath the right eye, that appeared on the Director’s face in the days prior to his disappearance. Dr. Meehan believes, after careful study of the last picture taken of the Director, that the strange wound could only have been made with an ancient Egyptian ceremonial dagger, as part of the ritual evocation of certain dangerous spirits of the underworld. Of course the police have been quick to distance themselves from seeming partial to any such line of enquiry, dismissing the theory as sheer fantasy.
The second theory is a more plausible one (and perhaps a definite lead), involving the recorded conversation on the Directors answering machine, on the evening of the 17th.

Communications experts now believe it took place between the Director, calling from a pay phone at the studio, and another person within the Directors mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

At Night- by Franz Kafka

Deeply lost in the night.
Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night.
All around people are asleep.
Its just play-acting, an innocent self- deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly.
And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you.
Why are you watching?
Someone must watch, it is said.
Someone must be there.

Europe After the Rain

A dream:
” I am propelled out of a black infinity towards a small circular light on the horizon. An aperture. After a time, I pass through this bright eye and am consumed by the light without.”

“I have absolutely no idea!”
Brendan answered with more than slight irritation, more interested in enjoying his early morning piss into the swan white toilet bowl, than discoursing at length on the topic of philosophy.
“Anyway Gandhi was a degenerate.”
From the bedroom a snort was all that was issued in response.
The issuer, a medium sized pig of indiscernible age, lay on its side on the bed, suckling a cigarette.
“I’ve just always felt… well felt that I should have lived in another time and place, from history I mean” Brendan continued.
”The Spanish Inquisition or Nazi Germany.”

Brendan stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. Touching his face, caressing the dark brown skin of his cheeks, his appearance rejuvenated his spirits. The change had consumed him. He felt the contrast between his body and the white of the wall tiles and sink.
Outside it was raining.
As the first rays of the new sun struck his body Brendan felt indestructible like a panther. He saw himself moving swiftly through the undergrowth of a deep jungle, attacking the genitalia on the carcasses of dead human beings. Later, standing in the shower he began to sing something from Wagner as the high power faucet washed all the pig shit of his body.
Drying off, he thought he heard a voice in the next room.
“What?” he cried angrily.
“We’re out of cigarettes,” answered the pig, more to itself than anyone.
For a long time Brendan was motionless, staring through the bathroom window into the streets below. The rain had finally stopped. He could sense their presence now, all around him. The panthers were getting closer.

Twenty-five stories below him, the people moved like ants on the floor of a vast concrete jungle.