Army of Skeletons Read online

Army of Skeletons

  By

  W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh

  Army of Skeletons

  Copyright © 2012 by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,

  organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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  Table of Contents

  Army of Skeletons I

  Army of Skeletons II

  Army of Skeletons III

  Army of Skeletons IV

  Army of Skeletons V

  Army of Skeletons VI

  Army of Skeletons VII

  Army of Skeletons VIII

  Army of Skeletons IX

  Army of Skeletons X

  Army of Skeletons XI

  Epilogue

  ARMY OF SKELETONS

  It was all so typical for Taylor. She’d burst into my bedroom, regardless of the time of day or night. Me having nude company in my bed never unruffled her feathers. I was pretty sure that she’d checked first through the keyhole for any sound or sight of lust action. Now, don’t get me wrong. Taylor is a great friend. Not the perfect flatmate, but that’s ok. Whatever happened in her past, she’d never touch the drugs, and alcohol, even all through the night, would never take her off to the other side of the galaxy for a guided tour. And I owed her big time. My taste in wimin was as dubious as my taste in alcohol and Taylor had prevented my Rickenbacker to turn missing after many a mixed-up night. When I used to have just a battered, charity-shop electric guitar, it wouldn’t have mattered too much. But a couple of times, it had been close. And a Ricky was, as far as I was concerned, the best I could afford and only once in this lifetime. So, I could certainly put up with Taylor’s little eccentricities. There she was, standing tall and skinny, bald and brass, already two steps into my bedroom, “Morning, Sunshine! Fancy a coke?”

  Appraising the scene dim lit by brave sun rays breaking around thick curtains, a can in each hand, “My, my! You had quite a night!”

  My fitted boxer-shorts (“the Special”) fitted pleasantly and upside down on the top mechanics of my Ricky proudly relaxing on its stand. My red and black combats were still crumpled where I had jumped out of them. Next to them, I made out the contorted shape of a pair of blue-jeans. I vaguely and absurdly thought: “T-shirts?” I was for sure wearing only my tattoo suit and the rightful owner of the tattered jeans looked like she was wearing less than me under the zebra quilt. I spotted her tanga diminutive barely an inch away from Taylor’s bare left foot.

  “Does she drink coke too? I’m gonna get an extra can.”

  And out of the room before my brain even considered focusing on the spanking, brand-new day impatiently waiting to grab me by the throat. My bed mate stirred and her warm body crept closer to mine, with an apparent intention to snug very tightly. My right hand naturally found its way to the dark, short hair while my left arm wrapped itself around the co-operative body. Co-operative? Only one night of lust, really? My foggy brain didn’t get a chance to start up this dodgy path, Taylor was swiftly back, proffering the extra can. Virgin was her current fancy brand.

  I noticed she was still wearing her pajamas. A men’s cut she had got from some catalogue because they mistakenly and continuously addressed her as “Mr.”. She had never dared placing an order over the phone, too afraid of terminally damaging their delusional fantasy.

  “What’s up?” My voice croaked.

  “Well, are you gonna introduce me?” Referring to the peaceful and oblivious, naked womon wrapped around me.

  I sighed, “She’s still asleep.”

  “OK then.” And handed me over one of the blasted cans.

  Taylor was neither chemically bald nor close-shaved. She had boldly gone for total hair removal by painful electrolysis while I insisted on sporting a crew-cut which would have made Harvard and Yale universities proud and jealous.

  Whenever Taylor barged into the privacy of my sleepy mornings, she’d be like a big baby, grown too fast like Jack’s beanstalk. She had a lost look in her eyes. Damn! Where is Peter Pan when you need him to guide your best friend away from all the captain Hooks of the world.

  The first sip of coke startled my brain cells into slow motion, the second sip jostled them into disorganized action.

  I had met Taylor as a fresh-freckled and fresh-landed American in London (her, not me). The friendship had cropped up on the unlikely compost of mutual irritation. I admired her for her feverish intelligence and accepted that she could lose her marbles as fast as the snap of two fingers. I had learned to recognize her scars for what they were: sharp blades fuelled with unconscious anger. Her family spanned all over the British Commonwealth but she couldn’t care less. She behaved like an orphan with no adoptive parents.

  She was now sitting on my bed (a Swedish futon of course, it was the cheapest option; wooden frame, metal would be too hard to bang my head on). The square was reaching overcrowd. Where is this blooming sign ‘too full for vacation’ when you need it.

  I studied her profile and her sudden gulps from the can. She was too silent for normal. I checked for telltale signs, but no, she looked unharmed.

  Her lips jerked to the left quickly before her neck swiveled towards me and her voice quivered, “I got a letter from my mother.”

  I gurgled an extra sip of coke. The bubbles exploded in my throat and fired up a rocket into my brain. The comfortable weight against the length of my body prevented me from jumping through the ceiling.

  “The Infamous One?”

  “That One And Only.”

  “How did she get your address? She hired a P.I.?”

  My left hand, oblivious to the new development above quilt level, had slowly started studying the pleasantly curved buttocks.

  “She says so in certain terms.” The Sweet Irma in full glory. “She says it’s time to bury the hatchet and I should come home. She’s got cancer. Not for cure.” Full regalia.

  Taylor stopped for breath. The aluminum can felt icy cold against the palm of my hand. I waited for a next statement. Taylor whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”

  The mighty cornerstone of this genius’s life. She could sort out the whole planet’s and its entire population’s problems in as many seconds as it takes to a chameleon to swat the nearest fly or insect driving by. Less than one. But her very own life? Her very problems? Bloody Irma, from the other side of the Atlantic pond was now inducing her daughter with acute muteness and I was too busy fuming in my head to comment with appropriate words.

  In the ensuing silence, my nerve endings discovered a new anarchist turn. I caught my breath at the same time that I caught dreamy fingers slowly but dangerously sliding their way towards my pelvic area. My night guest shifted to an even more comfortable position and opened her sleepy eyes on Taylor whose facial expression sparked up with new life. I introduced Taylor and in the same brain motion it dawned on me that I had not a clue about the identity of this womon I had just spent the night with in such intimate fashion. Shaddock!

  ARMY OF SKELETONS II

  Shaddock? Yes, it’s my name. Well, let me clear it out for you. I have nothing to do with pomelos and I’m no descendant of the ship captain of the same name who brought the first pomelo seeds to the Barbados. Years ago, Segur nicknamed me Shaddock after some French cartoon characters from the 70’s. Something to do with pumping. The first time I ever met Segur, I was swearing obscenities at my bicycle for collecting one more puncture in front of an anarchist squat. Maybe I should avoid this neighborough? Segur made a joke and
I told him to piss off, go to hell, get lost, sod off, fuck off, and some more. He laughed, his wavy, dark hair swaying in the motion, and walked his thin and effeminate frame into the squatted building, leaving me to my fate. He looked like this friend of Boy George’s back in the early 80’s, this singer who had named himself after the actress Marilyn.

  As a matter of fact, Segur was a singer, too. I found out during one of these many squat parties I used to haunt with Taylor and a bunch of friends. Taylor, being so insensitive to the inanities of alcohol, was always in charge of driving us back home. She didn’t mind. She actually thought it was great fun to corral us and shepherd us, no matter how drunk, how stoned. Anyway, that night I was performing with a few friends. Our short-lived band was generally very punk and very drunk. I was the guitar player. We had a bass player who couldn’t bother tuning up. And the drummer, she had a tendency to speed up her rhythm, especially when on speed. We would all sing, preferably out of tune. We were called WASTED and we were not serious. As a matter of fact, a while later, the bass player almost did herself in with too much acid and the drummer took herself back to Germany. But back to that night. Segur was literally glamorous and more feminine than Marilyn Monroe with a few Culture Club’s numbers. He was the queen of the night and we were just a warm-up snack.

  “Isn’t it our Shaddock?” He teased me later, his smile full of pearly-white teeth. “You know, darling, your talent is wasted in this band. You’re worth so much more than that!” The crowd and alcohol separated us.

  A year later, after WASTED got wasted and totally disintegrated into oblivion, we started to hang out together. He insisted on calling me Shaddock and the name stuck. He started to talk about getting a band together. “A real band”. Something queer, something anarchist. “Oh, god forfend! We’ll be stars!” He would exclaim, more queen than ever, tipsy with red wine.

  Segur was simply obsessed with French culture. He had named himself after a countess from the 19th century who used to write children’s books. Thus the name he chose for the band was no surprise: PARQUES. French word for the Parcae, the Fates of Roman mythology. He wanted me to be the mean lead guitar.

  First, he introduced me to Epoxy, a talented sax player, focused sound engineer, and at the time pre-op transsexual, with nails varnished blood red. Segur and Epoxy enjoyed swapping cosmetic tips. Then later, it was the twins’ turn to show up. I guess Segur was into looks there, because Will and Pete were just acceptable rhythm guitar and bass, with Adonis bodies that stopped most gay men in their tracks. Personally, I go for brains. When Will and Pete were not playing music, you were likely to find them shagging in some corner. They were obsessed with each other.

  Last but not least, Segur discovered a drummer. She was a rare specimen of butch dyke, an American import fond of Southern Comfort and Cuban cigars. She’d never miss a beat. Her name was Gobo, named after one of the Fraggles, some characters created by Jim Henson, because of her thick, sandy hair and because “No one knows where Gobo goes when Gobo goes off the rail”, Gobo dixit.

  It took a year of on-and-off rehearsals for Segur to feel satisfied and want to test the hot waters of the London anarchist scene. Segur had cultivated a voice that sounded like a cross of Marilyn Manson and Boy George, with a sprinkle of special FX, courtesy of Epoxy. We went down like a treat. Maybe because we were one of the rare bands bothering with a proper sound.

  Within the last two years, our star had risen bright in the sky of anarchist Britain.

  This was how I happened to be at this huge squat party in Tulse Hill. We had been brilliant, of course, annoyingly brilliant, and I was now focused on sampling the various beers on offer at the bar. It was actually Red Stripe or Stella Artois, Stella Artois or Red Stripe. I was on Red stripe and Segur was, unsurprisingly, waiting for a Stella. I was actually feeling seriously tipsy. I wanted the PARQUES to go on taking more musical risks but Segur was happy where we were standing. He wanted us to be the next Chumbawamba or Poison Girls or Nirvana.

  “You need a girlfriend, my darling. Look at Gobo!”

  Gobo was busy chatting up a thin womon with long hair and stilettos. Will and Pete were nowhere in sight and Epoxy, who by now was post-op, had lost herself in the noisy crowd. I was drowning my frustration can after can and couldn’t care less if the music that made people dance was live or DJ-produced.

  I was walking to the bar in the dim light when I bumped into a guy who was, of course, taller than me (I don’t reach 5’5’’) and tripping his own trip. I apologized. My ma would have been proud, you see, she brought me up to be polite. Anyway, the guy said not to worry, looked at me and enquired. “Can I give you a kiss on the forehead?”

  I looked back, giving my best impression of ‘What the hell is going on here?’, not very thrilled by the prospect somehow, when a womon standing behind me, answered on my behalf, “Only on the forehead.”

  The guy had never waited for an answer, he was already giving me a kiss on the forehead and melting into the crowd. This was really all too weird. I turned to face the womon who had dared making such decision on my behalf. Coz, you see, I don’t like that. Too many people tried to run my life, regardless of my desires.

  So, I turned to the unknown womon and her smile had not trouble sweeping away my vindictive mind. I’ll never remember what we exactly said, but we had one sentence each, the basic gist along those lines, “What do you want?” “I wanna kiss you.”

  The next thing I knew, she was kissing me. Sure, I was kissing back and my right hand had found its way to her neck. So, yeah, we were kissing. But all too soon she broke off and disappeared into the crowd, never to be seen again. So quick that I couldn’t get a hold of her arm.

  “OK,” I thought, and resumed my trip to the bar, too tipsy to remember more than her smile and her dark, short hair.

  Well, let me tell you: a kiss is always more than just a kiss, it’s a snog.

  ARMY OF SKELETONS III

  I spent the rest of the night drinking more Red Stripe and trying to convince Segur to take a new musical approach, to not avail. Taylor, as sober as ever, drove me home, barely commenting on my vain attempts. I didn’t mention the stranger with dark, short hair, nor the weird guy on a personal trip, it was all too typical of the life of South London. Well, at least on our scene.

  I said so before and it had always been true for me: I go for brains. With just a snog I couldn’t have a glimpse of her I.Q. Then how come, suddenly, I couldn’t get this smile out of my mind? Besides, my memory has never been good at remembering faces, so, how on earth and in hell, would I ever recognize this womon if I ever bumped into her on the street or elsewhere? She could have been living miles away, just passing through London on her way to Africa. Yeah, sure.

  And maybe it was nothing to her. Maybe she indulged in casual kissing and casual snogging like others do recreational drugs. Maybe I was better off evicting her from my mind, getting her taste off my tongue. But she was a tenacious squatter.

  I tried to get on with my daily activities, but couldn’t focus. My regular guitar practice simply went out the window and into the street. I started roaming the neighborough with the wild and absurd hope that perhaps, just perhaps, she was living next door. I had things to get from shops every morning and every afternoon, pubs were suddenly fascinating in the evening, and Coldharbour Lane, Coldharbour Lane was simply the most attractive piece of pavement.

  At the end of this phase, with hardly any cash left in my pocket until the next giro cheque, I sat down at my computer and went on playing my favourite card game, my mind wandering the highways of London, scanning every borough, ticking off every squat, and missing out on combinations of red and black, 2 of clubs on ace of clubs, 7 of diamonds on 8 of spades.

  “You forgot to move this king,” Taylor pointed out negligently.

  “You know what? This game is called Solitaire. Any idea why?”

  “OK. I’ve got the drift. But, tell me something. Anything happened to you last time you were on Tulse H
ill?”

  Drat, Taylor always spotted changes in behaviour. This time, she had lasted 3 weeks before inquiring.

  “Er....... Whadayamean?” Obvious, I knew.

  “Nothing. I’m gonna get my skeleton. See ya!”

  It took me half an hour to realize where she had said she was off to. Not that it was something extraordinary and wildly extravagant in Taylor’s life. All the contrary. She collected all the Hallowe’en crappy plastic skeletons and skulls and they were like tinsels along the walls of her bedroom. Her bedroom! Is it gothic or is it medieval? The bed is an Abbey bedstead, a ‘medieval gothic design with fleur-de-lys finials’. Black. Bedside table matching. The bedding was an assortment of black and burnt orange. Even the walls were burnt orange. The whole picture would have been sternly sober without the skeletons.

  So, one more skeleton or one less, what’s the difference? Well, the difference was that she’d never mention the arrival of a new one because it was just a standard procedure. Then, what was so special about today’s skeleton?

  The dragging outline of the cards on my computer screen suddenly lost their appeal, appeal that had already lost it to the memory of a drunken snog, and I started to wonder. While I was waiting for Taylor’s old banger to cough its return down the street with the mysterious skeleton, a new thought on my obsession crossed my mind: what if I had it all wrong? What if I had been already beyond tipsy and relinquishing control to alcohol, to a point of delusion? Meaning: what if I had been the one initiating the snog with this womon, against her will? Wow....... That wouldn’t be so good. That would mean she won’t ever want to do that ever again and I was totally off my head.

  Didn’t get a chance to extrapolate on the potential disaster, I heard the front door slam open and Taylor hollered my name up the steps of our house, “Hey, Shaddock! Get the hell down here and give us a hand, will you?”

  Oh, oh. Yeah, I wanted to see ‘the’ skeleton! Find out what was so special about it. Hang on, she needs help? How big is it!