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============================================================================ Addendum Issue# 20 - 1st April 2002 URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/ Author : Phoenix ========================= Jock's Shock Shop ================================ Jock's Shock Shop A Short story by phoenix All characters in this work are actually fictionalisations of myself and my own neuroses, and any resemblance to manifestations of my own character is purely due to misbalances in my medication. Please don't look at me like that :-( I'm not a bad-guy, I'm just a mad-guy. ARTISTS DISCLAIMER: Oh, I can hear you say "What an arrogant bastard to call this stream of consciousness rubbish Art. Like stepping on a Coke can and hanging it up in Louvre. Besides, it's full of errors! I mean," you snivel "look at the sheer number of disagreements of tense! He should have edited this! Disgusting! Take it away!" Well, here's something for you, my ravenous little snots: I am utterly aware of EVERY LITTLE ERROR IN THIS DOCUMENT. TRUST ME. I AM, among other things, AN EDITING STUDENT. What's more, I don't like people dictating to ME the laws I live under. Hence I've taken a few liberties with the English language. I've used some punctuation incorrectly, employed a couple of non-sequiturs (sic, I really am) and as for the tenses, why should they agree? After all, time IS relative. Particularly when you're bent. This PIECE OF ART is just a photograph of my internal living room; if you don't like the sofa, keep your interior-design tips to your-fucking-self. Thankyou. On the other hand, try to look at my liberation of language constructively: how does it add to the story? It doesn't I suspect, but do try to think positive. JOCK'S SHOCK SHOP CHAPTER 0 When first I drew my breath in I knew it I shouldn't have but by then my early- warning (I'd ignored it) was far too late and I could see how I didn't have a choice anyway; alarms were going off but in vain I could only sit back and wait and watch because what is life but a movie anyway or so it seems when I smoke because you sort of watch it, removed, and whatever you do doesn't seem nearly as urgent - personal, that's the word - as when you live it, but you can sort of foresee your own death looming up and if you don't control your thoughts you realise that when you die, stoned or not, it's now it's actually happening and really can you believe it? But I didn't, no one ever does, and tonight I've ignored the too-late-early- warning because you can't change a movie, the script's already written and to rewrite the script causes problems, don't anger the director just say your lines then exit screen right and roll credits. Ivory or some such stupid name the guy insists on calling himself looks over at me, and says I forget the actual words, they sort of drifted past the first few times anyway but he says something like "Whaddyathink?" Now I can already hear the words I'm going to use before I use them with my mind's voice, then my body's voice a parrot-echo higher pitched than I'd like, saying something like "Not bad." And I know what's coming and something in me says No man stop there you know this is bad enough, because really I can feel a buzzing in me and its a bad ominous buzzing not a good one. I can't help it though, I'm an actor not a scriptwriter and I'm just saying my lines, saying something like "I COULD do with something stronger" though probably less fluent because the weed was strong and I feel I'm floating anyway. I said long ago I'm not doing stronger stuff anymore, ever again, something to that effect, or at least somethingwith that intention, though deep down I know I've probably given myself a loophole, maybe I also said At least for a while, or At least 'til I've got some money saved, or At least 'til I can handle it again, or even if I didn't what's a lie broken to oneself, and besides the camera's rolling and what's done in the past can't be undone and after I've done it it'll be in the past and I won't be able to undo it and if Ewan Mcgregor can do it and get away with it what the fuck (and I don't think about those who do the stronger stuff and who don't get away with it, fuck if it's me I won't care but the weed won't let me not care I can see me lying there getting colder were once I got warmer) but tonight Ivory (or whatever) asks me how much stronger cause no golden arms tonight, he says "Howbouta Platinum Head" or whatever and mentions Jocks Shock Shop. Jock's legendary. How is unclear, 'coz very few patrons use him more than once, and none more than twice, and nobody knows ANYONE who's used him once even, or at least anyone in a position to own up. Yet Jock's legendary - and rich, so rich that he's left alone by society and only visited by twilight-society, those who aren't society but haven't sunk beyond it. Now Jock builds pills. Not mixes, builds. Puts little wires and things and they get into you and go HAYWIRE short-circuiting brains and neurons and making pretty flashes and bangs and the like, all programmed on a nice little computer, a screen-saver for the brain. They're expensive enough, but you don't VISIT him to get them, you just need to find the right people who sell them, people with the slightly angular look to them, that is they've probably taken one too many fuse-blowers and always address someone three of centimeters past your right ear when they're really talking to you, and whatever knows I almost WAS one of them, for a while things seemed just a little skewed after popping a couple of the amazing mechanical pills. No, the pills are just computer viruses. You VISIT Jock's Shock Shop for the full reprogramming. Jock, the Scriptwriter of WhizzBang Lane himself. Like I said, NOBODY knows ANYBODY who's actually admitted to visiting The Shop, but you've seen those guys walking down the street at three in the morning clutching HUGE oversized soiled coats about themselves, arms crossed over their chests, talking to imaginary sprites and the like? Enough said. They wouldn't admit because they wouldn't remember. Now my mind's voice say No, have some sense kid you don't want to do that, because although nobody KNOWS anybody, you hear RUMOURS. See, the mind's older than the body, the mind's accumulated almost a hundred combined years of parent's knowledge, and more than two-hundred years of grandparent's, and thousands of years of author's knowledge. The body, though, is only twenty and has hormones and urges and wants to experiment, experience, and against the mind's immense wisdom says "Why not?" or some other affirmative. I've never seen the outside, let alone the inside of Jock's Shock Shop, but of course I know where it is, everybody, every-twilight-body at least, does. It doesn't look flashy, in fact it looks almost deliberately grotty, like those nightclubs situated off the streets with no signs or advertisments, just a door and a bouncer standing in front of it, and there's no music from outside but inside you can't hear your mind's voice and that's why people go, so only the body is loud to drown out the music, and besides the body is sympathetic to the music. There's no bouncer, though, we just stand in front of the door. There's no handle, no button or bell or anything, but suddenly the door opens of it's own accord and Ivory walks in and I follow. Outside it was dark, there were no streetlamps near The Shop, but inside it's much darker, a designer dark not a natural dark, as if the lights were actually cancelling light, and yet I could see: It looks almost like a milk bar, a few rows of shelves and a counter across the back wall. A dented, obsolete cash-register sits sullenly on the counter, brooding. It is probably far past retirement age and dreaming of: a hobby farm, with a milk cow and perhaps some sheep, a goat with a Ho Chi Minh beard placidly chewing cud (or whatever goats eat). A garden, with flowers like the ones his father grew back when he was young, and though his mother got down on hands and knees on Sundays and balanced those flowers on the brink, they were always his father's flowers. Germanys, or something, and Delilahs, they were called, and if he had time he would have learnt the names of those flowers and how to grow them, but it was always work, with retirement to look forward to. The register is only dreaming; it has already missed the retirement train and when it finally leaves the service of the Shop it will retire to the dump, rats not sheep, weeds not flowers. The shelves, along the walls and one long one across the room, are full of cans, jars, incongruous enough looking, yet a brief mid-distance inspection is enough to dissuade me from a close one. Eyes roll about in coffee jars, and a head floating in a vat of green fluid mouths (obscenities? pleas?) at me. Broken people try to sit up on the shelves, but crease over, flop a little. I'm not sure what my companion is seeing, but he is studiously avoiding the shelves. There's a doorway behind the counter, covered in a black curtain. For a second it's pushed aside and past Jock's gaunt frame I can see a bench, a soldering iron and desk lamp bent low; but now Jock blocks the view and the curtain again covers the doorway. ADDENDA: Appendix Eye (in Roman Facial Features) I strongly suggest you harass Leon 4 a writing called "The Light Within Frank Black" and don't tell him I told you about it it is one of the best short stories I have ever had the utmost pleasure to read, and I think it will mesh with Addendum quite fine. Or it will mash Addendum quite fine. (Smash?Trash?Crash?Bash?Lime?) ============================================================================ Addendum Issue# 20 - 1st April 2002 (C) Phoenix April 2002 ============================================================================