Day 23

On the Indispensability of Feet


04.23 The End is Ever-Nearing
Subject: Oh Oh!

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


I have the most frightful news. I am not alone. I know I raised the alarm before, but this time I’m sure of it. I can smell the putrid skankiness of their motorcycles even as I write. I feel their ship as it slimes the lovely marble of my floors. I’m petrified; my sweat reeks of fear. What if I’m found out? And what if they find nothing to steal or vandalise and become provoked? What if they attack me with a router?

I can pinpoint exactly when this current break-in occurred, although unfortunately not the date. My life is so very confusing at the moment, and I can’t really be expected to remember everything, can I? Anyway, it was shortly after I submitted my ideas concerning low-cost housing. A big mistake to go public, as it turns out. Some extremely devious person, I don’t know who for sure (although I have an idea or two on the subject), hacked into my computer and stole my idea. They must have! How else could they have come up with the idea that my lovely house would make a suitable location for housing the unhouseable?

There is the strangest rattling and dumping and thumping going on, almost as though someone was emptying and scrubbing out kitchen drawers. This is a bad sign. A horrible sign. Although I resent having to share my house with anyone, I will do so at a pinch, and even gladly given the right circumstances. However, I’m damned if I’ll do it with a person who feels compelled to rearrange drawers in the middle of the night. That sort of compulsive behaviour I can do without.

It has occurred to me that if I no longer have any say about what goes on in my own home, it might be smart to simply move elsewhere and not fight a destiny that clearly no longer smiles upon me. The only problem is, I came across a large Stilton and a bottle of rather jolly, aged Porto a couple of days ago, and my waist has doubled in size. If it was for all intents and purposes impossible before, an exit is now completely out of the question. There is no way on God’s earth I shall be able to squeeze myself out through that miserable excuse for a slot. You were indeed fortunate that you were pregnant when your computer tried to suck you into its maw, and for that you should be eternally grateful to your precious daughter, Marjorie Barnacle. And, of course, to Whatisname (I say this in case he is peering over your shoulder and feels he deserves at least some of the credit for your condition). Schtuping you when he did turned out to be quite providential, didn’t it? Saved your fucking life.

There is suddenly the most awful crunching noise coming from God knows where. Please tell me it is not a family of les cafards, although I suppose that might account for the rattling of drawers. Please, please, please don’t let it be cockroaches! Crunch crunch crunch. How I wish I had a lamp in here, or at least a gun. Blasting away might not scare them, but it would make me feel a whole lot better. With my luck, no matter how many of them I massacred wouldn’t bother them one iota. It might even inspire them to seek revenge, and then where would I be? I don’t want to be eaten to death by ugly little scabby things with beetle brains. I have a bad enough inferiority complex as it is, plus no sex life, plus my skin is beginning to sag.

I just realised something. The rattling and banging might not be les cafards after all. It might be the owner of the Stilton. If so, again I am lost. There is no way I could pretend not to have eaten the cheese, not with every pore of my body smeared with the stuff. Further more, even with the distended state of my mid-section, the evidence offered by the nakedness of my nether region discounts any claims I may make concerning an incipient motherhood. I may not be hung like a donkey, but it is quite obvious I am a man, even with the weather being as cold as it is. I wish you were here to help me think up a few good lies. Is there anyway you can help? Can’t you think up a few good lies and send me an instant message? Or, even better, couldn’t you put your head together with Whatisname and come up with a way of getting me out of here? Hello? Are you there?

Supposing someone was merely hiding their Stilton and Porto from their spouse or their cat? How would you feel if you secreted your cheese inside a handy computer, and some specious idiot who happened to be living in it went ahead and ate it? I should be livid. Practically seething. What if he wants payment for it? What if he wants it back? Perhaps he is a vengeful sort who demands payment in blood? Oh, Forsythia, I do not have a proper defence for my actions. It is not as though I asked whom the cheese belonged to. It didn’t even occur to me to ask. I simply saw and ate. Oh God, the guilt that is rampaging through me. I can’t stand it.

I will hide. I managed to locate a small tunnel this morning. God only knows what it’s for, but I’ve nothing to lose by checking it out.

Be extremely concerned about me. This crunchy, crunchy, crunchy business is scaring the brown out of me and driving my brain towards implosion! Plus there’s this really annoying guilt over eating the cheese. And drinking the Port. Merde! Merde! Merde!

Perhaps what I really want is to get caught. Do you think that could be it? Be honest about it, what have I really going for me? Not only do I allow myself to be devoured by an appliance, but then I compound the problem by consuming someone else’s delicacies without even taking the trouble of ascertaining the identity of its rightful owner. I deserve to die. I deserve to be caught and tortured beyond reasonable limits, and then put to death. Slowly, painfully and without the slightest mercy. Oh, Forsythia, I need a priest. I know it wouldn’t do me any good, for he’s bound to send me straight into the pot of puss and then wash his hands.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. Rattle, rattle, rattle. Whoever is out there possessing my house and stalking me has a definite something about him. Body odour. Stifling. Suffocating. Like a routier’s kitchen in the summer during a heat wave. Body odour, plus massive doses of cologne and musk deodorant. Oh, Forsythia, where is death by some other torture? Not this. Please not this. Even I deserve a little dignity.

I need a blowtorch. I want to blast the bastards, and I want to do it now. – Laurent.

PS. Please accept my apologies for not sending the specifications for our latest blockbuster utensil unit at an earlier date. Our director of marketing has gone on holiday and has taken the engineers with her.

PPS. My visitor is moving about once more and, I fear, is closing in.

***

10.12 What the fuck, re-eating the Stilton
Subject: Industrial Action

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


A number of our girls and boys at Anita’s White-Slavery Motor Hotel and Karaoke Bar™ are threatening to go one strike. Can you believe it? After all we’ve done for them! Exclusive Executive SluttoBunnies™, indeed! The Wally-Mart of Slutty Slumo Grinders, is more like it! I am sorely tempted to discount them all and sell them el cheapo by the minute to the residents of Florida trailer parks. I am not in the least bit happy, Forsythia, and simply refuse to stand by and do nothing while they take us to the cleaners!

I thank God that I invested my money elsewhere. But how about you, my dearest one? Where abideth your portfolio? At Anita’s, that’s where. And that is definitely not for your greater good, I’ll tell you that much, not when you take into account their behaviour and the current market volubility. But enough about you and your continuing financial woes. We must turn our attention back to our beautiful though not-to-be-trusted slutikins. Who do they think they are, that’s what I want to know? What do they want? Is there no end to their heartlessness? Don’t they care that your entire life savings is tied up in their putrid though gaily decorated rat hole? Don’t they realise that your tender buddlets, the fruits of your womb, depend upon their vaginal and anal vigours for nightly naughty sustaining gruel and dumplings? Will Ms. Magenta Loinsifter (the madam, lest you forget) and her co-conspirators not rest until you and your little ones are ruined and cast out on to the streets? With only the sewer to bathe in? Without matching luggage or satellite or broadband or WiFi or a Dame Vivienne Westwood Snood for your nasal nozzle?

Do not capitulate. Never turn back. At this late date we simply cannot start actually paying them, no matter how much they threaten us. Think of the signal it would send. Think of what your political rivals would say if they suspected, even for a moment, that you employed beauteous young ladies and bountiful young men, as well as the ever-popular inbetweeners and ducks, to engage in deviant sexual practices for filthy lucre? You would be ruined, my dear Forsythia, absolutely ruined. Forced to live in an unfortunate arrondisement, in slimy mould-encrusted paper bags with not even a pot to piss in. With but one stained and stench-filled pillowcase to keep you warm. A target for derisive comments and oblique scorn. And with next to no chance for repatriation. And not only that, but you would have to colour your own hair yourself with products advertised on TV.

It seems to me, Forsythia, that you very well may be ruined and cast out into the street no matter what. I am so terribly sorry. But that’s the way it is. Can I buy your furniture, especially those pieces your little darlings haven’t actually thrown-up on? Your kitchen appliances? Your briefcase? I recall the latter was handmade for you at Louis Vuitton and is indispensable for my happiness.

There is one alternative for you, however, but only one. You must get thee into a hiding place for a dozen years or two, undergo extensive cosmetic surgery, and enrol in my Deluxe Power Personality Disorder Seminars™. Learn how your lips can drip with greed and lust. Learn how to get everything you want, as well as everything everyone else has. Learn how to leave nothing for your neighbours. Learn how to sacrifice tender plumpish virgins by the light of the moon. Learn how to convert your wishes and dreams into untold wealth. Learn how to prepare perfectly cooked vegetables with my All New Combination Sperm Bank and Roach Motel Veggie Slicer and Dicer™, only €9.99 ($47,000.49 US) per month for seventeen (17) months, or a one time payment of €39.93, plus VAT, luxury tax, title, insurance and shipping. Funds, hélas, must be paid in Argentinean currency, since it is most amusing, not to mention attractive and seductively redolent of the tango and musk.

Yes, Forsythia, with my New Combination Sperm Bank and Roach Motel Veggie Slicer and Dicer™, your life will never again be the same. You might even say that the sun will rise and set only for you! And how can I make this remarkable claim, you ask? Well, as an Extra Special Gift™ for valued, qualified customers such as yourself, you will not only receive a New Combination Sperm Bank and Roach Motel Veggie Slicer and Dicer™, but you will be presented with a Free One Year’s Supply™ of Blossom’s Extra Sticky Green Ear Wax™, complete with handy, ultraviolet dispenser at No Additional Cost™, merely a One Time Delivery Cost™ of €300 ($594,376.97 US), to be deducted from your Miraculous Ruchl Forever Glowing Never Fail Credit Card™. Impress your friends! Crush your enemies! Win elections and have fabulous orgasms!

Offer only good where local regulations are unenforceable. Limit: one to a customer. Lifetime warranty subject to customer’s credit history, springtime freshness and the quality of his or her fake tan.

More later. Please rescue me when you’ve a free moment. – Laurent.