A Tale
Routine
The 12.45 pulled out from Manchester heading to Sheffield. Sweat permeated the air mixed with alcohol, vomit and sex all the sordid trademarks of a Friday night out on the town in Sheffield. Jared wondered why the dingiest trains seem to be always reserved for these early morning services and why were they not cleaned out properly before they were turned round. The train company obviously did not think much of its post inn crowd. Apparently it had been worse tonight because a well known band had been playing some arena or such. Jared didn’t have time for modern music. The semi vocal percussion hisses on those modern little music boxes sent a shiver down his spine. Like a pit of snakes and drums. The squeals of accompaniment often filled with profane language making it sound as if a castrated sailor had been tossed into the self same pit for amusement. What was worse though was the ritual nodding from the wearer. He’d noticed over the years the phenomena grow and grow. Technological Zombies all nodding to a distant Voodoo beat. It got worse if the wearer tried to sing. Strangled and bastardised murmurings made them sound like Middlewood madmen. Jared dimly wondered if they ever finished that extension to the mental hospital because he was sure the modern youth were going to need it! If only Roy Fox could get his band on board for him alone. The soothing tones of something by Porter would really help his nerves. He had gotten the train as he regularly had and as usual his carriage, the smoking carriage, was empty. Most nights it was empty because so few people smoked nowadays. He placed his outdated bowler on the upper rack and unfolded his regular copy of the Daily Mail. His friend Crawford Jones had advised him towards reading it and he had found its political sympathies reassuring. Jared had read it ever since. He wasn’t sure why he bothered nowadays nothing much ever changed just like his routine. Maybe it was the familiar comfort? He folded it and decided on a different comfort. He stoked his pipe and settled for a quiet calming smoke. He finished as the train pulled in at Edale.
The door opened to the carriage and a girl staggered in. She was immodestly dressed and noticeably obliterated on either narcotics or alcohol. She dragged an equally outrageous lout with her. Both their hairstyles were greased into vile parodies of Indian savages from the Americas and parrots. The seat backs flexed in response to pressures from the razored coiffures indicating the strength of the preparation needed to uphold such follies of vanity and Jared noted the streaks of black make up smeared from the lout’s eyes. Lloyd George certainly had a lot to answer for. His weak leadership formerly holding such promise allowed such freaks to flourish. After the war he could have been a strong leader and stopped the second one ever happening. He didn’t though and that necessitated action, action Jared had been proud to be part of. Jared had worn his black shirt with pride as he marched with the BUF. He had seen Mosley at Sheffield and the power of the man had bowled him over, so much so that he had been equally as delighted to meet him on this very train or at least its equivalent all those years ago in 1933. Jared was forced to avert his eyes as the lout thrust his black nailed hand up the belt that passed for a skirt on the young trollop. The lack of the scrappy undergarments that young ladies (if that word was even appropriate) wore revealing the epilated nether regions allowing him easy access as the girl started cooing in ecstasy. It infuriated Jared that he was not even considered in this display of pornography. People just didn’t notice him anymore. They hadn’t noticed him for decades. He always sat in the same seat only changing it when the train changed and he always would. They had the whole carriage to choose from and they still chose to sit here and molest each other like animals. Panting grew insistently from the opposite seats and the sound of a zip could be heard as a wet slapping filled the air accompanied by grunts from the lout. Well he wouldn’t move he had sat through worse! No one had ignored him in his black shirt; people had known what he stood for. People like the dregs sat opposite would have known also. Oh yes the louts face would have been streaked with red to mix with all the black rather like the colour scheme of the train. The smacking of the billy on his head would have been a perfect accompaniement for the rhythmic slapping and grunts. The girls squealing got higher as she undoubtedly climaxed and then the sound could be heard of her sliding onto the floor. Jared sneaked a look to find the lout leaning back as the avian hair of the trollop eclipsed his groin and initiated a bobbing motion. The repetitive motion of the train and indecent act seemed to be mocking his repetitive routine non-existence. One person, just one, was the only one he could recall who had noticed him since that fateful meeting with Mosley and that one observant soul had run away screaming. Jared’s neck still ached sometime from the remembrance of that meeting of his movement’s enigmatic creator.
The lout let out a gurgling sigh and his face contorted as the girl sat up wiping her lips on a filthily fragile hand only to stain the seat covering with the waste. Jared’s lip quivered in disgust. She pulled herself onto the soiled seat and demurely crossed her legs to preserve modesty. Jared laughed at the pointlessness of the gesture. A cigarette packet appeared in her hand and the lout snatched one from the crumpled packet lighting it with a fuel lighter decorated with a battered skull. If Jared had his way the lighters skull wouldn’t be the only one so battered. They hadn’t reacted to his outburst. Not even a twitch. The train pulled in at Dore. The couple got up and left the carriage, the stain on the seat the only evidence to their act. He watched them walk off. The lout zipped his fly unashamedly while he roughly mauled a handful of the girl’s derrière in his other hand. His cigarette drooped at a macabre angle and the chunky metal flashes on the girl’s boots glittered yellow in the station lights. The back of the girl’s jacket had the words “Daemons Whore” painted upon it in Germanic script. The irony forced a snort of derision from Jared’s nose for surely in his day the lout would be assumed to be daemonic in aspect if not a servant of such at least as much as Jared now was and the girl certainly acted slatternly. His time was not far off as the train pulled out of Dore. He pulled his pocket watch out and looked at its familiar terribly reliable face. Nowadays the final stretch took only 5 minutes. Back then it had taken 15 minutes at least. The door shut behind him and he shivered as the familiar chill overtook him. As always the watch showed nothing in the glass as the black clad figure walked by and sat down opposite him. He always marveled at how he had missed that small matter way back then. A two week older copy of his own Daily Mail was put down beside the newcomer unblemished despite age and the moustache still hinted at its waxy management. The dark hair dragged back from the scalp much like Jared’s own black locks crowned the awe inspiring visage. The lightning badge of the British Union of Fascists stood proud on his breast and with dread Jared noticed the Crown Inn flash by on his right. The train clattered over the road bridge sounding every bit like a drum marshal at an execution. Beads of sweat burst onto his cold brow as he realised how little time was left before the inevitable routine. He did not speak to that figure anymore the only change in an unchanging dance. The terror never diminished even after the decades that had passed. That first time he had spent the 15 minutes from Dore drinking in all of his hero’s thoughts and mannerisms only to finish with those wretchedly prophetical words, “What can I do to serve?” Time slowed down as it had seemed to at this moment’s origin. The simulacrum of Oswald Mosley stood and smiled in answer. The smile stretched till it threatened the ears and the mouth opened. It peeled back over that waxy moustache and the fiery passionate eyes. A smell like over ripe corn and brewery waste filled the carriage as the dark figure started to split, unzip even from the lower lip down ever down spilling forth the black leathery, red sinewy interior. Pustules and warts stood proud as the crimson hooked claws shredded their way out of the fascist leader’s finely manicured hands. Putrescent gobbets of rancid flesh splattered Jared’s face. A viscous mix of unnameable colours and unholy textures cascaded from the rent to pool sickly at both their feet. Jared once again felt his eyes glaze over and the front of his starched shirt dampen with sweat and drool. A myriad of wormlike chitinous tentacles spilled from the bulbous head surmounting four insect like compound eyes hued in dried blood.
Regret of ever reading that damned book filled him as he once again tasted the fragments of foul flesh casually deposited by the explosive transformation in his ever slackening rubbery mouth. The original journey had been carried in an ill mind, nerves jangled from the horrors revealed within that ledger of evil. Crawford Jones had assured him that Mosley himself had recommended the self same volumne to him so Jared had sought out the book to find reference of it at Manchester University Library. One Friday after he had closed up the bank he had taken a train to that Northern haven of knowledge and sat in a dank nook under the eagle eye of the matronly attendant. The language was difficult and crabbed in the sinister tome its leathery binding cool to the touch. This did not phase the middle aged Bank Manager who had seen far worse in the accounts of clients. The succinctly titled “Moorcroft’s Messages from the Pharaoh” however contained things of a much more malign bent. Angles and symbols alien to a normal mind and descriptions of things better left in distant realms of reality, worst of all the arcane phantasm known as the Herald of Chaos. What reason could Mosley have for this abomination? Why had Crawford foist the desire to read it on Jared’s measured mind? Why had he told him it would help him serve the organisation? A fever had fallen upon Jared and he had left in a bolted hurry to the sound of disapproval from the attendant observing the rapidly spreading dark stain in his pinstripe trousers. He had run straight to the Station to get the next train. A train he was assured would get him back near two in the morning That hoary phantasm now stood before him as his eyes slid to the header of that Daily Mail of 1933 drenched in ichors revealing his friend Jones’s murder spree and subsequent death not one day before his literary recommendations.
Jared vomited in fear, madness and disgust as one insidious claw pierced his shirt touching his breast. Rapture filled him and his seed spilled down his leg as his face twisted with the horror and ecstasy. From within the nightmare a cavernous laughter bore itself unwelcome finally unhinging Jared’s mind as the unbearable truth descended upon him and he almost wrenched the carriages door from its hinges in a fit of insanely enhanced power and threw himself from the train. The door slammed back with the energy of the act closing on the monstrous fiend. As the drumming from Heeley Bridge began its execution beat the momentum carried him perilously towards relief as the railing spike from the underlying fence impaled and decorously displayed him for all to see. It had been so cursed to do so every Friday night since that night in 1933. With his final breath the ghost of Jared Wilkinson listened to that rancorous laugh fading and his routine oblivion claimed him.
"Routine" Copyright July 2nd 2005 Tony Bennett
The 12.45 pulled out from Manchester heading to Sheffield. Sweat permeated the air mixed with alcohol, vomit and sex all the sordid trademarks of a Friday night out on the town in Sheffield. Jared wondered why the dingiest trains seem to be always reserved for these early morning services and why were they not cleaned out properly before they were turned round. The train company obviously did not think much of its post inn crowd. Apparently it had been worse tonight because a well known band had been playing some arena or such. Jared didn’t have time for modern music. The semi vocal percussion hisses on those modern little music boxes sent a shiver down his spine. Like a pit of snakes and drums. The squeals of accompaniment often filled with profane language making it sound as if a castrated sailor had been tossed into the self same pit for amusement. What was worse though was the ritual nodding from the wearer. He’d noticed over the years the phenomena grow and grow. Technological Zombies all nodding to a distant Voodoo beat. It got worse if the wearer tried to sing. Strangled and bastardised murmurings made them sound like Middlewood madmen. Jared dimly wondered if they ever finished that extension to the mental hospital because he was sure the modern youth were going to need it! If only Roy Fox could get his band on board for him alone. The soothing tones of something by Porter would really help his nerves. He had gotten the train as he regularly had and as usual his carriage, the smoking carriage, was empty. Most nights it was empty because so few people smoked nowadays. He placed his outdated bowler on the upper rack and unfolded his regular copy of the Daily Mail. His friend Crawford Jones had advised him towards reading it and he had found its political sympathies reassuring. Jared had read it ever since. He wasn’t sure why he bothered nowadays nothing much ever changed just like his routine. Maybe it was the familiar comfort? He folded it and decided on a different comfort. He stoked his pipe and settled for a quiet calming smoke. He finished as the train pulled in at Edale.
The door opened to the carriage and a girl staggered in. She was immodestly dressed and noticeably obliterated on either narcotics or alcohol. She dragged an equally outrageous lout with her. Both their hairstyles were greased into vile parodies of Indian savages from the Americas and parrots. The seat backs flexed in response to pressures from the razored coiffures indicating the strength of the preparation needed to uphold such follies of vanity and Jared noted the streaks of black make up smeared from the lout’s eyes. Lloyd George certainly had a lot to answer for. His weak leadership formerly holding such promise allowed such freaks to flourish. After the war he could have been a strong leader and stopped the second one ever happening. He didn’t though and that necessitated action, action Jared had been proud to be part of. Jared had worn his black shirt with pride as he marched with the BUF. He had seen Mosley at Sheffield and the power of the man had bowled him over, so much so that he had been equally as delighted to meet him on this very train or at least its equivalent all those years ago in 1933. Jared was forced to avert his eyes as the lout thrust his black nailed hand up the belt that passed for a skirt on the young trollop. The lack of the scrappy undergarments that young ladies (if that word was even appropriate) wore revealing the epilated nether regions allowing him easy access as the girl started cooing in ecstasy. It infuriated Jared that he was not even considered in this display of pornography. People just didn’t notice him anymore. They hadn’t noticed him for decades. He always sat in the same seat only changing it when the train changed and he always would. They had the whole carriage to choose from and they still chose to sit here and molest each other like animals. Panting grew insistently from the opposite seats and the sound of a zip could be heard as a wet slapping filled the air accompanied by grunts from the lout. Well he wouldn’t move he had sat through worse! No one had ignored him in his black shirt; people had known what he stood for. People like the dregs sat opposite would have known also. Oh yes the louts face would have been streaked with red to mix with all the black rather like the colour scheme of the train. The smacking of the billy on his head would have been a perfect accompaniement for the rhythmic slapping and grunts. The girls squealing got higher as she undoubtedly climaxed and then the sound could be heard of her sliding onto the floor. Jared sneaked a look to find the lout leaning back as the avian hair of the trollop eclipsed his groin and initiated a bobbing motion. The repetitive motion of the train and indecent act seemed to be mocking his repetitive routine non-existence. One person, just one, was the only one he could recall who had noticed him since that fateful meeting with Mosley and that one observant soul had run away screaming. Jared’s neck still ached sometime from the remembrance of that meeting of his movement’s enigmatic creator.
The lout let out a gurgling sigh and his face contorted as the girl sat up wiping her lips on a filthily fragile hand only to stain the seat covering with the waste. Jared’s lip quivered in disgust. She pulled herself onto the soiled seat and demurely crossed her legs to preserve modesty. Jared laughed at the pointlessness of the gesture. A cigarette packet appeared in her hand and the lout snatched one from the crumpled packet lighting it with a fuel lighter decorated with a battered skull. If Jared had his way the lighters skull wouldn’t be the only one so battered. They hadn’t reacted to his outburst. Not even a twitch. The train pulled in at Dore. The couple got up and left the carriage, the stain on the seat the only evidence to their act. He watched them walk off. The lout zipped his fly unashamedly while he roughly mauled a handful of the girl’s derrière in his other hand. His cigarette drooped at a macabre angle and the chunky metal flashes on the girl’s boots glittered yellow in the station lights. The back of the girl’s jacket had the words “Daemons Whore” painted upon it in Germanic script. The irony forced a snort of derision from Jared’s nose for surely in his day the lout would be assumed to be daemonic in aspect if not a servant of such at least as much as Jared now was and the girl certainly acted slatternly. His time was not far off as the train pulled out of Dore. He pulled his pocket watch out and looked at its familiar terribly reliable face. Nowadays the final stretch took only 5 minutes. Back then it had taken 15 minutes at least. The door shut behind him and he shivered as the familiar chill overtook him. As always the watch showed nothing in the glass as the black clad figure walked by and sat down opposite him. He always marveled at how he had missed that small matter way back then. A two week older copy of his own Daily Mail was put down beside the newcomer unblemished despite age and the moustache still hinted at its waxy management. The dark hair dragged back from the scalp much like Jared’s own black locks crowned the awe inspiring visage. The lightning badge of the British Union of Fascists stood proud on his breast and with dread Jared noticed the Crown Inn flash by on his right. The train clattered over the road bridge sounding every bit like a drum marshal at an execution. Beads of sweat burst onto his cold brow as he realised how little time was left before the inevitable routine. He did not speak to that figure anymore the only change in an unchanging dance. The terror never diminished even after the decades that had passed. That first time he had spent the 15 minutes from Dore drinking in all of his hero’s thoughts and mannerisms only to finish with those wretchedly prophetical words, “What can I do to serve?” Time slowed down as it had seemed to at this moment’s origin. The simulacrum of Oswald Mosley stood and smiled in answer. The smile stretched till it threatened the ears and the mouth opened. It peeled back over that waxy moustache and the fiery passionate eyes. A smell like over ripe corn and brewery waste filled the carriage as the dark figure started to split, unzip even from the lower lip down ever down spilling forth the black leathery, red sinewy interior. Pustules and warts stood proud as the crimson hooked claws shredded their way out of the fascist leader’s finely manicured hands. Putrescent gobbets of rancid flesh splattered Jared’s face. A viscous mix of unnameable colours and unholy textures cascaded from the rent to pool sickly at both their feet. Jared once again felt his eyes glaze over and the front of his starched shirt dampen with sweat and drool. A myriad of wormlike chitinous tentacles spilled from the bulbous head surmounting four insect like compound eyes hued in dried blood.
Regret of ever reading that damned book filled him as he once again tasted the fragments of foul flesh casually deposited by the explosive transformation in his ever slackening rubbery mouth. The original journey had been carried in an ill mind, nerves jangled from the horrors revealed within that ledger of evil. Crawford Jones had assured him that Mosley himself had recommended the self same volumne to him so Jared had sought out the book to find reference of it at Manchester University Library. One Friday after he had closed up the bank he had taken a train to that Northern haven of knowledge and sat in a dank nook under the eagle eye of the matronly attendant. The language was difficult and crabbed in the sinister tome its leathery binding cool to the touch. This did not phase the middle aged Bank Manager who had seen far worse in the accounts of clients. The succinctly titled “Moorcroft’s Messages from the Pharaoh” however contained things of a much more malign bent. Angles and symbols alien to a normal mind and descriptions of things better left in distant realms of reality, worst of all the arcane phantasm known as the Herald of Chaos. What reason could Mosley have for this abomination? Why had Crawford foist the desire to read it on Jared’s measured mind? Why had he told him it would help him serve the organisation? A fever had fallen upon Jared and he had left in a bolted hurry to the sound of disapproval from the attendant observing the rapidly spreading dark stain in his pinstripe trousers. He had run straight to the Station to get the next train. A train he was assured would get him back near two in the morning That hoary phantasm now stood before him as his eyes slid to the header of that Daily Mail of 1933 drenched in ichors revealing his friend Jones’s murder spree and subsequent death not one day before his literary recommendations.
Jared vomited in fear, madness and disgust as one insidious claw pierced his shirt touching his breast. Rapture filled him and his seed spilled down his leg as his face twisted with the horror and ecstasy. From within the nightmare a cavernous laughter bore itself unwelcome finally unhinging Jared’s mind as the unbearable truth descended upon him and he almost wrenched the carriages door from its hinges in a fit of insanely enhanced power and threw himself from the train. The door slammed back with the energy of the act closing on the monstrous fiend. As the drumming from Heeley Bridge began its execution beat the momentum carried him perilously towards relief as the railing spike from the underlying fence impaled and decorously displayed him for all to see. It had been so cursed to do so every Friday night since that night in 1933. With his final breath the ghost of Jared Wilkinson listened to that rancorous laugh fading and his routine oblivion claimed him.
"Routine" Copyright July 2nd 2005 Tony Bennett
posted by Tybalt at 9:20 pm
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