- A fevered dia­logue. Internal. A fevered dia­logue. Let’s go external. Let’s go bal­listic. Go.

- Yes, it all makes sense now. It all makes sense. Crys­tal. Stab me with your pen to make sure that it’ll all resound with the same per­fect but unquan­ti­fi­able clar­ity when I’ve got a fray­ing chasm in the centre of my chest, will you? Stab me repeatedly. I’ll need a big­ger hole, not just some glan­cing flesh wound. You’re not try­ing hard enough, damn you.

- I could only write this at two o’clock in the morn­ing, in a silence that is deaf­en­ing because it’s so gutted/guttural (and) raw/roar, while drunk to high heav­ens, and stick­ing the words in bleed­ing edge black and white on this obscure corner of the internet.

- Three out of four ain’t bad. If only I wasn’t stone cold sober. Sober and unstoned. Fuck me, what could be worse? Yet, and yet. And yet, maybe I need to be clear-headed, cold-blooded, hard-hearted. To purge and refill. To do these thoughts justice.

__________

- It’s a funny busi­ness, this writ­ing cre­at­ively online.

- I don’t want to use the term ‘cre­at­ive’. I don’t want to say ‘cre­at­ive writ­ing’, believe me. I feel exactly like the jerk you’re think­ing I am. I regress to being twelve years old again, foun­tain pen flood­ing blue a story in the back of a tatty exer­cise book. ‘This book belongs to Vaughan Simons. Do not touch!’ But I don’t know the word. The right word. How to describe. It. That. This. The other.

- Cre­at­ive. Cre­ativ­ity. Cre­ation. Will that do?

- There you go. I knew you could do it. Sing it ’til you spew.

- So. It’s a funny busi­ness, this writ­ing cre­at­ively online. On the web. Cre­ativ­ity. Writ­ing. Whatever. This thing. The thing. Thing.

- What?

- Thing. Thing. Thing. Thing. Thing.

- Fuck­ing poetry. Sheer mind­fuck­ing bloody poetry. I always loved you for your genius way round the Eng­lish lan­guage, but I want to cut your tongue out right now and keep it in tis­sue paper for posterity.

- I am going to go on until you die. Kill or be killed, voices. You’re my voices, remem­ber. And so. So. It is. A funny busi­ness. This writ­ing online. Thing.

- Yes, it’s fuck­ing funny. Side-splittingly hil­ari­ous. Some­times, as I sit here bash­ing away in digit-clattering, finger-fucking mas­turb­a­tion, I piss myself laugh­ing. I really do. I’ve taken to keep­ing a small trough under my chair, so that the waste product of my intense amuse­ment can simply seep into it. I have lined it with ripped up cop­ies of the numer­ous chap­books that I ordered from far and wide, from every corner of the world. I con­struc­ted my own under­ground lit­er­ary colostomy bag out of the souls of fallen verbal luminar­ies. Don’t be offen­ded, will you? Because I read every word. Every sod­ding word.

- Every word? Every single, sod­ding word? Truly? That’s it, then. I think I love you. No, I know I love you. Let’s get mar­ried — now, this minute; we’ll find the singing Elvis pas­tor. After that, we’ll fuck like sore-mouthed, bare-bottomed bun­nies and make writer babies who can grow up and pen taw­dry, thick as a brick best­sellers for sale only in air­port ter­min­als. Our sniv­el­ling chil­dren will be able to feed us mushed-up rusks in our dot­age. We’ll sit in our bath chairs, still piss­ing ourselves but with prob­ably even less blad­der con­trol, and get wist­ful as we remem­ber the good old days of not selling out. Not selling any­thing, in fact. The import­ant thing being that. Exactly that. That. We. Never. Sold. Out. It’s the per­fect end to a per­fect life, because we’ll hate our off­spring for selling by the shed-load and being paid by the spawn of Rupert Mur­doch. Christ, we’ll feel super­ior. If we can still feel any­thing other than the slop of senil­ity drib­bling down our chins, that is.

- I’m sens­ing some hos­til­ity. Is that a no, then? To our beau­ti­ful artistic mar­riage, then? Of a shared writ­ing room under the eaves, then? With his ‘n’ hers Mac­books, then?

- Yes. Look at me, sweet­heart. I’m still here. Still incap­able. Still piss­ing myself. The bad news is that I am not worthy of your lit­er­ary affec­tions, because I think my sick mind has infec­ted my urine. There’s a power­ful odour of malt vin­egar in the air. Am I dis­gust­ing you now? Please tell me I am. Please.

- Okay. I give in. I sub­mit. Yes, you’re dis­gust­ing me. Happy? I am indeed repulsed. I am giv­ing grave con­sid­er­a­tion to get­ting you exor­cised. You are not the romantic, aes­thetic, poetic long-hair whose meta­phors first plucked sweet music from my heartstrings from the other side of the screen; who made me sigh, swoon and flut­ter my fan over my lady­like blushes and my less than lady­like hot flushes. What happened to him? Oh, what happened? Come back to me. Come back to -

__________

So I tied him up. Thrust a black bag over his head. Dragged him into the boot of my car. Drove to the roof of a multi-storey car park. Beat him sense­less with a spade newly pur­chased from a garden store. The sound of dull thud­ding metal filled the air for a quarter of an hour. Like the sweetest of dis­tor­ted bass drums from a Roland 808. I hit him and kicked him and spat on him and screamed at him and lif­ted his head and smashed it against the tar­mac. It was good. It was so very good. And finally I slowly and delib­er­ately and viciously stepped on his knuckles and listened to each one crack and shat­ter under­foot. Write that, please. Write that down. Scratch. Grind. Press. No. Of course. You can’t. Rub­ber fingers.

__________

An angel (No more angels)
A devil (Only if it’s bloody and real)
A poem (Without any good reason)
A flower (Retch­ing weedkiller)
A blue sky (I can’t see for sting­ing eyes)
A clear night (Morn­ing phlegm)
A dream (Somn­am­bu­list and scarred)
A love (Abuse this, please)
A begin­ning (Once more)
A middle (Twice through and done)
An end (Hanging on)
An awaken­ing (We’ll let you know)

__________

Awake. Not exactly. Breath­ing. No. I was won­der­ing if. No. I was won­der­ing if you could write what you used to write. No. Stop ima­gin­ing end­less viol­ence and abuse and deprav­ity and all the rest of your dark, dis­eased ori­fices. Wouldn’t even know how. No. Open up and inhale and exhale and listen and. No. How many times. No. I am going to sleep with mag­netic words taken from my fridge. I will place them inside my pil­low­case and will them to breed­ing. See what sticks. If only I had a metal head.

__________

- So he’s gone? Meta­phors? Roman­ti­cism? Aes­thet­i­cism? Poet­i­cism? Long hair? All gone? Dead? Dead? Dead?

- Not dead. No. Merely tem­por­ar­ily stunned. He has a head­ache. A bad head­ache. I visit him once a day in a grimy lock-up under the rail­way arches, where he lies obscured by burnt-out cars, sniffed occa­sion­ally by passing stray dogs. I untie him, feed him a bag of chips, and then hit him with the spade a few more times to send him back into bliss­ful uncon­scious­ness. I’ve recor­ded all of it, too. The videos are avail­able on You­tube. I’ll send you the links. Grainy foot­age of beat­ing the shit out of failed writers is the new kit­ten porn. Here I am, ful­filling the public’s depraved desire for sense­less artistic viol­ence, and keep­ing that fucker quiet into the bargain.

__________

No more artistic exclus­iv­ity. We can sell this shit. [MARKET ME, IT MAKES ME HARD] Everything is sellable to some­body, even this. [WE HAVE STAPLES, CLEAN WHITE PAPER, AN UNREADABLE TYPEFACE] Everything is now sellable. [FILL THE CARDBOARD BOXES WITH PRODUCT] Even you. [PILE THEM HIGH AND BURSTING] Sell sell sell to the highest bid­der. [BUY ME, BUY MY MYTH, BUY MY CLIPPINGS] And the low­est com­mon denom­in­ator. [I DON’T EVEN NEED TO LICK YOUR PRINTED PAGES NOW] And I will learn to love hat­ing as much as lov­ing. [JUST INHALING YOUR INK LEAVES ME SPENT] Result.

Vaughan Simons doesn’t remem­ber things from one day to the next, but he vaguely recalls writ­ing at An Unre­li­able Wit­ness and edit­ing Writers’ Bloc. He hates writ­ing third-person bio­graph­ies. He is still vaguely apo­lo­getic about everything. The word ‘ves­ti­bule’ has fas­cin­ated him for the past twenty-nine years.