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Addendum Issue 020
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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?)
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Addendum Issue# 20 - 1st April 2002
(C) Phoenix April 2002
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