<IMPORTANCE HIGH> I NEVER FINISH ANYTHING AND I KILL PETS

 

the 10th silent volume with no other other parts nor point of any particular bias binding view other than that of someone else entirely different whose probably senile, definately dead or if she, but more likely being an unpublished writer, he.  If he is dead or isn't, is probably  innately insane, profoundly penniless and is almost certainly inconclusively confirmed by extensive soul researching to be officially AWOL from any gainful occupation, employment, excluding pre-occupation (see subsection 47, clause 32.4 minus 100% deletion), last seen absolutely nowhere near any address, dark corner of street or magnificent stratospheric entitlement to government benefit.  So ask them first and see if you can get anymore out of them than no-one, as aforementioned, does (not).

 

  Chapter 1

Subject: sincere apologies for the butler showing you into the junkmail

room.>Importance: High

 

Sir Maximillian Sulkywaite...may I please introduce Lady Constance P. Hardly. A small redhead dressed in denim crinoline attempts to enter the room, but failing to remember she is living in the wrong century, merely succeeds in smashing her face into the computer screen.

Lying there dazed on a cracked linoleum floor grateful there are no witnesses, she turned her gaze to the 7 neon tetras, 2 guppies, a shark fish and a not so angelic fish, who had they not already been in water would have been seen to wet themselves with uncontrollable laughter. Refusing to lose face even in front of gormless fish, she continued to lay there hoping to convince them and her poor aching body, that smashing faces on glass immediately followed by a backward horizontal landing of the sickeningly thud kind was a normal household chore. She had just been too lazy until now to bother.  The Angel fish was not fooled.  The redhead however was. Thinking that the little fishes might stay silent but just in case, she made a mental note to add  fish onto the ever growing immortal list of things to kill  along with several mice, a battalion of cockroaches and a squillion of guerilla warfare trained, bleach resistant mutant bacteria...Basically, with less valiant effort and slightly more pain than usual, just  an average day on the Housework Front.

Wondering if killing fish could be categorized under life-threatening vermin in the Buddhist code of ethics, she decided to give them a second chance and maybe aid her karma in the next life, if Valhalla eluded her,  As she proceeded to get up off the floor, she happened to glance under the table and saw to her horror several Daddylonglegs spiders had taken up residence, 3 years into a 6 years squatters lease and all were wetting themselves unabashed. Three had already begun  spinning the story onto the web worldwide. "Mortein Carpe Deum" she roared in full battle snarl. Snatching from between the rustling folds of denim her trusty aerosol can in racing car red. With elbow locked arm, she wielded the lethal weapon before the trembling arachnids, her trigger finger high, primed for action. Then using the power of an international tennis champion's ace-lightening serve, hit the nozzle, spraying 3.5g/kg Tetramethrin (20-80), 1.0g/kg Piperonyl Butoxide (20-80) and the merest soupcon of fragrant yet subtle undertone of 0.18g/kg d_Phenothrin (20-80) of environmentally friendly, non perfumed, low irritant, CFC free flyspray straight into her eyes.

Screaming at the top of her lungs, completely blind and therefore incapable of reading the very helpful instructions of 'what to do when product get into eyes' bit and she wouldn't have been able to read the ridiculously small print without her glasses anyway; she applied the warrior on the battlefield skill of multi-tasking.  Unfortunately having only done the first 4 levels figuring that with only two hands and two feet any further lessons would be a waste of money and finding multi-tasking was taking 5 seconds too long. She applied a second, much more powerful, only to be used in dire emergencies (or failing that take the caesarean) skill of unnaturally natural childbirth pain control. Deciding, more or less instantly, but still not quick enough,  that caesaring her eyes might hurt more in the long run, she combined the memory of all five kids labourpains , reached out for the help of the Sacred Goddess of Afterbirth and finally perceiving through streaming blurred eyes the answering white light.  Which had to be, when given due consideration at some other later revelatory moment to be the sparks coming from the plug socket or possibly the Angel Fish,. she grabbed the nearest body of water and dumped it over her head.

 She’d lost her dignity, lost the first battle of the day and through the natural progression of circumstance she then proceeded to lose the plot, A strangled gurgling of mortified anger, that rapidly became too disgusted to even  sigh emanated from the small, sopping figure, that should never  have been left in the kitchen on her own in the first place. Slowly her vision returned with the first sight being the discovery that even the floor had joined in and was wetting itself.. 

Although precisely none of the kitchen knives could cut butter, for 3 seconds she contemplated hara-kiri, but then decided she wanted a coffee and a fag beforehand. With humiliating realization, that she would only have to clean the mess up after committing suicide anyway and reaching for a cleanish tea towel, she failed to notice that despite her many years following Miss  D’Emeena -Treigning’s best selling book  “The crafty art of feminine chemical warfare�?the author’s strategies seldom worked on a permanent basis. Rather, it was her own innate, self-unconscious abilities in cack-handed botching that worked best. Often with irradicable finite fatality..

As she dried, what could only be described in pitying tones as a down and outdated haircut, she felt something under her feet, a not uncommon occurrence where plates were ignored in preference to the floor.  Peanut butter, cornflakes, honey...it felt very much with her trained pedi-sensitivity like a combination of all three and on further exploratory grinding, a couple, no. A further gristling grind., hmm, yes, three unknown ingredients.  Scrapping off two peelings of carrot and something definitely less palatable from the sole of her shoe with a serviette, she then committed the most heinous crime a warrior can perpetrate; giving your vanquished an ignominious funeral by throwing the serviette in the bin along with 2 mangled guppies and a reconstituted shark fish.

Later that day, realizing that, 'They-who-must-know-all�? would be returning home far too soon, she made a soothing cup of herbal tea. With the logic that anything that tasted bad had to good for you, therefore anything diabolically unconscionable would cure everything including cancer, she forced herself to take a sip and predictably almost vomited. Which was actually what it was originally used for, being the favoured source of losing weight by countless generations of  bulimic Turkish women.  <st1:place>Constance</st1:place> however was a borderline anorexic which was probably why she really didn’t enjoy its  effluviant eppicacious properties, so performing another daily ritual with unerring precision she threw it over the malnutritioned dehydrated pot plant affectionally referred to as  Squirt Growanot.

The pot plant bored beyond a Ghost gum riddled with witchity grubs, had in 3 years of  cruel isolation from nature, taught itself to read.  Its first language though it didn’t know it until later was Cantonese.  Growanot discovered to its surprise from reading the label, that the turkish herbal tea  was grown in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region> and packaged in <st1:country-region><st1:place>China</st1:place></st1:country-region>.  From the initial ping to the final pong, much to Growanot’s shame, the whole learning curve to fluency took almost 7 minutes. 20 seconds later through a bookclub price list it learnt not only enlgish, but also how not to judge anything by the cover  with the exception of recommended books from bookclub specials list and to never trust the small print, even if comprehensible after deciphering.  No more than a  minute later when Jung was dumped next to it, the knowledge that being a compulsive obsessive perfectionist and extending the habit beyond the written word, could work in its favour if properly synchronized with cross referencing.  From  the entire 8 minutes and 20 seconds of education and  a couple of extra minutes therapy with the lemon and chicken salt followed by a remedial massage by the sugar bowl Growanot managed to successfully transfer the guiltly shame of being a slow learner onto a passing ladybird.  The profundity of physical relief as it shed the guilt (along with two leaves it couldn’t afford to miss),  irrevocable changed its photoplasmic bio-chemistry at an intracellular level. Thereby enabling it to produce  the first effective natural cure (disregarding single malt whiskey and gin) for the notoriously excrutiating difficult to manage side effects  experienced after voluntary ex-comminication by 74% of Jews and 666%  of Roman Catholics (which on initial calculation appeared to be wrong but had now largely been agreed was due to the multiplying affects of the trinity which until the invention of the electron microscope had been invisible to the naked eye..  Squirt Growanot then began progressing slightly more rapidly through anything left in its vicinity.  Within 24 minutes  it was fluent in 18 languages, 14 of which were learnt from a Cadbury chocolate bar. It became conversant in bio-technology by reading the multifarious 'all natural, bio-degradable�?labels of  several cleaning products. Ratifying it through in-depth discussions with a cockroach who was a self confessed warphrin junky and liked to be called Sulphercrested but only when tripping. For the most part the cockroach preferred to be called by his birth name of Bong . The plant  became fascinated in construction. destruction and reconstruction through Ikea assemblage instructions for childrens bunkbeds with attachable ladder made entirely of balsa wood and 45 missing nuts( the screws having bolted before manufacturing had begun).  In between all of the academia, for light relief and a delightful sense of  farsecal  play it read religious pamplets;. mainly from Jehovah’s witnesses, only  occasionally dipping into Scientology.  Because with out too much generalization, its black humour smacked of too much alienation.  Yet depite all this, Growanot frustrating found, though by now very profound by nature, mothernature was proving somewhat stubborn and it was still incapable of mutating fast enough to grow a mouth to inform Constance that the greek grown, Turkish herbal tea packaged in China was killing it and could it have one of her strong coffees and a 'green tobacco' cigarette before it died in exactly 1 hour and 13 seconds. 

Oblivious to the imminent demise of the greatest living plant of all time, the likes of which would never again grace earth. Hyper-conscious that only 5 minutes of relatively surreal peace was left, Constance made a mug of strong coffee and sitting down at the table on which the plant rested, successful blew the much needed tranquilizing smoke out of the far window, not wishing to clog the pores of  few remaining nicotine-yellow leaves. Puff, puff, puff..4 minutes to go...... waiting... waiting......waiting. Puff puff....3 minutes.  Roll another greenie�?light with co ordinating suck�?puff , suck, go boss eyed, relight, burn left eyeballs lashes, use a splash of coffee to put it out, scream cos the coffee is boiling hot.  Give up, lighter use of the more careful kind and deeper synchronized suck, suck, more sucking.  Cough, splutter, have a shot of ventolin…puff  puff�?SPAN>  Accompanied by gently wheezing lungs sounding not unlike the punctured bladder of garish tartan bag, the relative silence was sheer bliss. Puff puff Must stop smoking the wacky backy, she was sure she’d just heard the plant say hello...3 minutes and 40 seconds..maybe just one more hopefully-not-cancer-stick.  Wondering if the fact that she put both brown and green tobacco together, where one caused and the other helped relieve cancer gave she had a better chance of not developing a too aggressive strain of the disease and if so in which proportions were more efficacious  then losing the train of thought due to short term memory loss, she became absorbed in the meticulous craft of rolling. Concentrating hard <st1:place>Constance</st1:place> heard, blaming it later on the tri-jointed effect, but failed to register the pot plant say “Would you mind awfully if I asked you to call me by my first name Herbert?�?  It took her some time in fact a week to remember that auditory psychotropic delusions were extremely rare, especially with home grown leaf and that what she’d actually heard was real with a further month cogitating before she fully understood  the magnitude of the loss. But for now she blankly lit the third joint with. 1 minute to go, 30 seconds, 20,  Her ears woke up and began sending imbalanced eustation tube messages via the rapidly increasing drum rock  of the hammer and anvil through the auditory canal  to smash the window of her mind, breaking into her brain and running off with everything, which was worth just a little over nothing.  13, 12, 11, 10 seconds..squealing noises trailed down the street, 9, 8 seconds, wailing as one child thumps the other, 7, 6 seconds, screaming as the hitter becomes the hittee, 5, 4, slam, bang, crash, large blue bags that breed their own compost using school lunches, homework and notes sent home from the teacher are dumped in the hallway directly in front of the door. Deliberately yet totally unconsciously placed there to enhance the gene battle for the fittest, biggest and fastest to anger, the bags lay there snickering to themselves waiting for the two older children who tired from a hard day’s truancy and flirting would arrive later.  The older ones�?presence was completely different to the younger two; not noticeable through sound but by smell.  She swore that eating a tablespoonful of wasabi was infinitely preferable on sinuses than their malodorous feet at 20 paces, but interestingly enough neither mouse nor cockroach was ever found in their festering rooms.  She could be onto something here....musing, puff puff  3, 2 seconds,.......the mini warriors after raiding, in those penultimate 2 seconds, the fridge of all sweet expensive things deliberately hidden from their eyes and then leaving the door open, in order to practice their arguing, blaming, sulking skills later with she-the-one-who-knows-better-but careful-she smacks-when-she-doesn't, One second, zero...lift-off......."Muuuuuuuum, Mu um, MUUUUUM where are the fish" wailed the difficult-not-to-laugh-at-ridiculous-red-curly-hair: Little Fuzz the youngest.  "You KILLED them" yelled the all-knowing because she was one and a half years older-Perspicacious 

The second most heinous crime a warrior can commit is not to honor the Vanquished's death upon the battle field, but not wanting to live an eternity of guilt laid by potentially abandoning progeny in her dying years and the fish were in the outside rubbish bin and less likely to talk than 4 hours ago, she made a decision anyone would in the innocent woebegone face of 9 year old Perspicacious's outrage and indignation.  She lied.

"No I didn't sweety"  "Yes you did, you kill EVERYTHING"...Perspicacious continued to bellow "the rabbit, my guinea pig, his guinea pig, the gold fish YOU KILL EVERYTHING". "No I don't!"  Fish don't live very long". "How long do fish live then" came the defiant answer-that-one-smarty-pants riposte.  "About  4 weeks, so these ones did very well to live to almost 2 months, they were very, very old"

Desperately needing to dodge further court martial she went back into the kitchen to check the primary source of the whole day's debacle. Sitting down gently at the computer remembering this time that the room needed a key, gate crashing was impossible and head butting the door merely lead to a further need for rhinoplast surgery she couldn't afford, she proceeded through binary, trinary, ram, motherboard and keyboard flagellation to open as Aladdin did with "sesame' the cave known as hotmail....no mail from male........oh well, she should have eaten before she wrote, should have not had quasi-socio-political argument with fascist doddering neighbor earlier and then remembered Malemail had mentioned dreaded Margaret Thatcher, should have not worried what strangers think of her chaotic domestile, should not have mentioned the laundry room was called Mount Washmore,  and what on earth possessed her to say she had hobbits feet, definitely should not  have said that�?should not, should ....don't should on yourself.  Disappointed and bored she decided to tidy up the virtual room.  This was much more fun than bugs, slugs and amoebic genocide, they may be legal even sanctioned but the thrill of obliterating, eradicating, annihilating the thoughts, demands, perceptions of other humans beings without reprisal. even the Vanquished would be unaware of their demise and less likely to wreak vengeance in their next lives.....well what more could a Berserker warrior ask for......and all with just one little lift of the finger and a depression of a key came the powerfully nuclear holocaust word, <DELETE>.  Spam Spam Spam.....delete delete delete.  Spam spam eggs and spam... Har Har, delete delete and double yoked delete....spam without eggs delete...and just to punish that request again for its sheer audacity and lack of taste, resurrect though trash the spam without eggs and delete the bastard again Har har take that.  Message from dubious source that neither teenaged son would admit to...have a quick look, giggle, sigh at nubility, admire ludicrous virility, then delete, immediately deleting again from trash to prevent further peeking and possible prevention of attending to the task at hand.  Message from even bigger penile extentions Saloonsand Bank.... delete 115% ya south northwest African baastaad.  Heady from the aftermath of slaughter and eager for more she came across the junk mail.

Junk Mail, JUNK MAIL WOOOHOOO!. How had she missed that? Some women cannot walk past shoe shops, others jewelry, she chose junk stores, flea markets, hardware stores and here in her house in this very room was a room she had never noticed before. NIRVANA  Goodoh, rubbing her hands in glee, her trigger finger still tingling with the blood of premeditated callous  deletion, she entered with anticipation of Armageddon glory.  Soflty calling at first then proceeding with increasing volume she sang a favoured battle march tune to new words, “junk-junk-junk-junk, Junk-junk-junk-junk-, Lurverly JUNK, lurverly Junk.    And there in the vast space of whitness with nary a virus in sight, looking very forlorn and pathetic was the malemail who had got confused as to which room he came from and quite rightly had been told by ferocious firewall that no he came from the dark side of the internet, his address was all wrong and to wait in the junk until someone came to collect him. Delighted she began to read.......unaware that her previous denials of real life slaughter were about to ruin her honour for ever. "You did kill them, You DID DID DID DID DID'........and there nestled in the back of her hair, flickering on and off with that irritating buzzing that she thought was just daily swansongs of human pathonegenic bugs were the seven neon tetras who had formed the word....'Murderer".

The Angel fish was nowhere to be found.