Stories to make you crazy

Klein

(Black)

Klein walked down the street. The street was minimal in appearance; rectangles and squares and a token feminine circle.Klein's intentions were submerged in confusion. The stars were ignorant of his motives. The gods were still making notes. Klein passed the bookshop like he was passing a murder. He wasn't about to get involved in a lengthy court case.
Klein was oblivious to himself. He wasn't even aware that he was walking down the street. As far as he knew he was at home in the ditch, sleeping in the suicide tainted mud.
Klein was made of water and mud and discarded bicycle wheels. From his home in the canal he could see a garden centre. They sold gnomes and flowers and bird seed. But klein took no hope from this. He hoped to see bad things. Klein is not the hero of this story, he's the villain.
Klein passes the butchers. He passes the cafe. He passes the pub.
At some point Klein mentally approves of his present surroundings. It comes like a crack in the curtains. Shine. Light. Blink.
He remembers his human childhood: coastal pubs, pints of orange, packets of crisps, games of space invaders.
Then it is gone. Black machines crowd the scene. Intricate wiring and skeletal structures push into the mind of Klein. He hears the siren song of generators in the night. Throbbing pipes clad in white clay sprout from his subconscious. The canal is calling to him. But not the canal that he sprang from. This canal is the ultimate canal. It is the canal where god drowned.
That is Klein's aim.
Where God slipped and fell. Where God choked on black water. Where God's soul thrust out of panicked flesh into maternal light.
Klein is a monster. We should accept this. We should guard this information like we should guard our bank numbers. Klein was born from a mesh of dismemberment and incineration. His earliest memory is of pain and loss. There is nothing more than Klein's pain. No heaven. No love.
Then it happens.
Klein is passing a shop that seems to have no significance. There is no name above the door. No obvious wares in the window. Yet this establishment seems to be offering something.
In the window lies a mannequin's arm, sporting a sparkly red glove. Klein stops and stares(vast gray concrete machines collide within)(middle eastern countries clash)Klein can do no more than look. He knows he can never touch the glove. The glove is the unknowable.
The unknowable must remain unknown
Otherwise there is nothing left. Nothing left for Klein.
(Black)

The Parade

Soon Grum was passing houses. Then he was walking down streets. There seemed to be a parade on. Wasn't there always a parade going on here? People were throwing multi-coloured streamers and tooting horns. Pink smoke was issuing from the crowds obscuring the buildings and most of everything else. Grum's head began to spin. He didn't know where to look. Here was an orange boulder with legs, dancing. There was a man with fifty arms, puking.
Next came a skeletal man covered in hair, his eyes glowing like red hot coals. Behind him was a dog with human arms and legs. He was lighting a firework. There were explosions going off everywhere.
Blue elephants swayed. Vampires dressed in kilts shimmied. Robot mummies pranced with giant red puppies.Cobwebbed nuns with swords battled each other. Translucent gelatin entities wobbled as slender purple tentacles wound around them. Giant white hands flapped their silvery wings spreading glittery flashes of light. A huge black circle span like a coin as it screeched.
Grum was immediately confronted by what looked like a rolled up carpet with a head at the top and legs at the bottom. Thick hands sprouted from holes in the carpet. Next came a bright orange ball of light that zipped through the air leaving a trail of swear words in its wake. Then Grum was forced to watch a woman give birth to herself. He wasn't quite able to see what was going on but it seemed she expelled her innards out through her belly while her limbs and head seemed to shrink inwards and appear out of the front of her. She did this three times before running off, waving her arms.
Just then a figure swathed in bandages grabbed Grum by the hand and danced. He, she or it was asking Grum to join in. Grum could not think of a way to get out of it without being offensive so he began to dance, skipping from one foot to the other as they both swirled. They danced off down the street passing an eye on legs, a man with two heads that shared a tongue, a coiled spring of some kind of transparent material that boinged into the air, a man with no face dressed up as a king, a cobweb with vague arms and legs and a head that was a spider crawling across the web, a lavatory with a single arm sprouting from the bowl -the arm constructed from diamonds, a scowling face on legs, a floating bed with a human shaped stain on its sheet, a human waterfall of blood, a man exploding and then imploding back into shape...
A robot zombie marched, shouting obscenities at a multi-headed entity with flippers for arms. A green snake looped in the air, chasing a red dot of light. A giant red baby hugged a giant wasp with a human face. A gang of policemen with wrinkled prune faces danced to music issuing from a violin with legs and arms that was playing itself. A red and green striped pyramid span in the air sending out beads of white light. Grum could see images in the white light. Perhaps it was the thoughts of the pyramid?
A man with a red pyramid for a head played the trombone. A ball of green gas with a single red eye floated and danced. A gang of spikey headed women wearing black and silver dresses pushed each other around. A giant grey worm with a leg at each end writhed as it trod about. A woman with four arms was juggling four large spiders. A cowboy with a big blue beak was doing a jig. A tall man made from glass or water cavorted with a vampire with fangs as long and thick as elephant tusks. A blur of colours span on a single leg. Four figures in black cloaks and turbans danced in a circle. Swords hung from their red belts.
A hairy white octopus with a fleshy little ladder poking out of the top of its head undulated its limbs like furry skipping ropes as dwarfish characters with scabby purple bodies and round orange heads leapt over the thrashing limbs. Nearby a tall thin woman with huge glasses and a large mouth danced with a reptilian humanoid wearing laderhosen.
Grum had had enough and headed home.

Just Light

Brant opened the door to his late father's shed. He inspected the shelves looking for a likely jam jar. There were dozens of canisters and jars which contained mysterious chemicals. His father had collected them for years before he died at the seaside. Brant had no idea what was in the containers but he knew the effect they had on him. Had his father known what they were capable of too? Brant suspected his father knew full well.
Brant stretched up to a higher shelf and grasped a dirty looking jam jar with a purple liquid sloshing about in it. He sat down in the armchair that was kept in the shed and unscrewed the jam jar lid carefully. A strong whiff of chemicals met Brant's nostrils. He placed the jam jar under his nose and took a deep sniff. The chemicals stung his nose but he managed to inhale a good amount. Almost straight away he was there. His mind was bloated with euphoria. The knot in his stomach loosened. He was free again.
Brant staggered out of the shed and launched himself around the garden. There were weeds where the roses once sprouted. The bushes at the back of the garden were overgrown. He had no taste for gardening. He had inherited little from his father except the house and the shed and the magic it contained.
"Brool BROOL!" Brant called as he raced to the end of the garden. The bushes poked his hands as he parted them and stared out at the black ditch water that ran beyond the bushes. The sun glinted off the filth like diamonds had been cast into it. Who was to say they were not diamonds? God? And where did he live? In the next house? In the jam jars in the shed? Maybe God was the ditch water slowly edging towards the river?
"Banish yourself to a pink wasteland, God," he ordered.
There was a moment of darkness then. It was like Brant had closed his eyes for a second. Then he was seeing something in old man Parker's field. Parker's field was on the other side of the ditch. Nobody was allowed there and Parker was never seen in it. Brant only ever saw Parker in the village buying food. Now there was something in that forbidden field of long yellow grass. It was red and blue and yellow. A toy? Brant strained his eyes to see. He was supposed to wear glasses but refused to. In fact he had placed his glasses on a scarecrow years ago. Funny, but the scarecrow was never to be seen again. He still dreamt about it walking through straw.
"Black straw!"
The thing in Parker's field was moving. It was coming closer. Brant's mind toppled when he saw what it was. It couldn't be. It was! It was a toy train. It didn't look like the drabby painted models that his grandfather had shown him once. They were realistic. This was more like a child's toy. The colours were bright and magical. Brant peered closer, pushing his face between stiff twigs. The train was worming closer to the very edge of the field on tracks he could not see. Parker must have built it all. He was probably in his house controlling the train. Mad man!
"Maddy mad man."
Brant wished he could get into the field and play with the toy. But nobody would dare. Parker kept dogs and owned a gun. At school they all talked about the kids who went missing near his house. He took you inside his home and poisoned you with drugged buns. Then he ate you or fed you to his dogs, depending on who was telling the story. Sometimes Parker was seen wearing the clothes of the kids in the village. Brant wondered if the train was supposed to lure him into the field so Parker could set his dogs on him.
The train was on the very edge of the long grass now. If it went any further it would fall into the ditch. Maybe it was meant to? Maybe it would float like a boat? Maybe it would float out to sea?
The train turned as Brant was fantasising. He could see people now. Toy people surely. They were riding the train. They were amazingly detailed. They had real hair! He could see it blowing slightly in the breeze. And all their faces were turned to look at him.
Brant felt his mind turning inside out. He watched the train turn left and then it turned again, back into the long grass and away.
"Barrage!"
Brant went back into the shed and sat in the armchair. His head was swimming now. He felt sleepy. The jam jars did that to you. He closed his eyes and...
The boy was walking down the road, fields and hedgerows on either side of him. Then a house came into view. The boy strolled up to it and saw the man. Parker. Parker had a plate of buns with white icing sugar on them. The boy smiled at Parker. Parker smiled back and pointed at the buns.
"Wooooouuuuld yooooou liiiiiiike oooooooone?"
The boy raced up to Parker and took one of the buns. He bit it. Parker smiled some more and opened the door of his home.
"Wooooould youuuuuuuuu liiiiiiiike some teeeeeeeea?"
The boy nodded and they both went inside. The boy had already eaten half of the bun. Parker showed him into the living room. The walls were covered in weird brown stains. The boy sat in an armchair and dropped the rest of his bun on the threadbare carpet.
Parker laughed and put the plate of buns on a table that seemed to made from branches. He then pulled a magician's wand from his trouser pocket and touched the end of it on the sleeping boy's head. The boy began to shrink, clothes and all, until he was barely a few inches in size. Parker picked up the tiny drugged boy and took him into the back yard. There was a large kennel and inside it a pair of glowing red eyes. There were chickens in a pen and there sat on a curve of tracks was the train. Parker slotted the sleeping boy into a carriage of the train and quickly picked up a black square device with a long wire coming from it. He fiddled with a knob on the device and the train began to move. It trundled into the long yellow grass.
Brant woke up and felt his head spinning. The shed was spinning too.

Blood Squirt

Black mirrors travelling at the speed of light collide with lumps of pink skin in the ovoid substructure. Hair like steel wire sprouts from the pink skin and grow like trees in a millisecond. Spoons in space fire light beams into black images like pain that threatens high jaundice. Blue turnips speak of heavy flasks and begin to dance in circles towards gummy lips of liquid shadow. And spinning discs of light migrate towards entropy and begin to blame spires of turquoise and amber that count the bodies of local wars and fend off blight from rabbit glove living.
Sputnik alien stalag gulag transient high lights balcony building smile paste fruit drum puzzle prism spank. Past velocity cage jinx sterility drainage jelly junk pasture flank. Histrionics are blasted by elephant men in purple corduroy jumpsuits armed with acid guns and feather guzzlers. Punishment fortunes lift us to gooey sticky lights and staff shortages stink in grey waters that thrive in hell world #2. Black and white bread animals prune the sticks of bone to bend the solar thighs.

Still Alive

Dr Formby squirms in his seat. His wife, Sarah, switches on the TV with a remote control. She has a black wire sprouting from her head that connects to a watercolour on the wall. The picture is of an alien landscape. Dr Formby watches TV. Black figures fight with white figures on the screen. Dr Formby screams. His wife begins to shake. A door opens and a man in green clothes and a yellow helmet drags a purple chair into the room. Dr Formby stands up and punches the air. The air rips open in dark blue lightning. Sarah stands up and the black wire leading from her head snaps. She falls over on the floor and vanishes. The man in green drags the chair, which is now blue, through another door. Dr Formby switches the tv off with the remote. Sarah reappears in her chair, her head again connected to the painting with a black wire.

Flight Beacon Hugs Vast Aprons That Fluctuate In A Black Wind

The man grabs the flaps of his chest wound with both hands and tears them apart revealing black feathers.

Livid Junk

Trink knocks on the red and green door with his pink fist. Somewhere in his mind a gypsy caravan explodes expelling black ghosts; somewhere in the mind of one of those ghosts Trink knocks on a red and green door with his pink fist.
The door opens revealing a white ghost. Somewhere in the mind of the white ghost a six foot man with pink fists is standing outside her door.
"Can I help you?" she asks.
"Yes, I'm looking for a mister Frox."
"I know no mister Frox."
"I think you once did," Trink insists; somewhere in his mind is a red thing with three wheels and frost covered antlers trundling back and forth in a yellow room.
"Yes...yes...yes..." the white ghost says, her white hands fondling the white rosary beads around her neck.
"I believe he's in your mind,"Trink informs her, and smiles revealing sharp black teeth.
"The clergy have demonised mister Frox, I now recall."
"And now he lives in your mind to protect himself from sick prayers and vile ceremonies."
"But you have knocked on the wrong door, you should have knocked on the back door."
"Why is that?"
"The back door gives access to my subconscious."
Somewhere in Trink's mind a black balloon bursts revealing a floating white cube.