Dreamscape (Transatlantic Version)
David Antrobus Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 3:48PM So, I was in London somewhere on the Thames Embankment and we were looking for a decent place to get coffee. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. A passerby pointed around a corner, by a bridge abutment and below a patch of grass, and we saw a tall, wooden ladder leading up into what looked like a child's tree fort. We proceeded to climb it, and just as I was able to see inside the building through the hatch, my companion started to slip and I grabbed her under her thin arms before she fell the entire way. She was panicked and I tried to soothe her. She was not exactly human, I noticed now; her head more canine, from which hung spindly arms and a body shaped like a cylinder. She had no lower limbs. Once she had calmed down and I'd pulled her through the hatch, she said, both apologetically and matter-of-factly, "there is not much to me, I'm just a head and one vital organ, probably a kidney," as we joined the cafeteria/canteen-style lineup/queue. I felt puzzled and mildly irritated.
© Art Nahpro, 2011It seemed to take forever; the proprietor—an unkempt and unattractive man—kept leaving his post at the cash register/till to attend to something fussy and seemingly unnecessary across the café and I could feel my patience stretch taut like a garotte. When it was our turn to pay, I attempted to hand him a ten pound note/twenty dollar bill, and once again he left to attend to whatever it was that was bothering him on the other side of the room, and although I planned to say something along the lines of "this is too long to wait to buy just coffee", once we were finally served I lost my resolve, paid up in silence, and walked over to the crude wooden picnic-style tables, nursing two steaming drinks. The coffee was not even particularly good, but as soon as I'd downed it, I realised I had somehow managed to eat the entire face of my companion as well, whose exposed foxlike skull was still smeared in globules of yellow fat atop her hollow tubelike body, all of her still twitching gently. My wet lips tasted of salt. Ashamed and quietly horrified, I left quickly, throwing her remains down the ladder into what was now a foggy London evening, scurrying after them like death's ugliest sibling.
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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.
Reader Comments (1)
Well, David, this is beautiful and horrifying at the same time. "...probably a kidney." ?! Brilliant in its rich sparseness; even when working at the edge of creepiness, your writing is lyrical.