Stranger than Fiction

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Nemeses 

 

by

 

Marc Ellis

Published in Blue Crow Magazine, Vol. 2, October 2010

 

1. Beauty

Marianne was the world’s most famous model. All adored her long hair and flawless skin, her thin wrists and waist. The magazines had featured her for decades and people of both sexes wondered, what was the secret of her youthfulness?

But only Marianne knew.

One day, as Marianne was waiting for her limousine in the foyer of a great hotel, a laundry girl pushed a huge basket full of soiled towels past her towards the service lift. The girl was bent with toil and sweat glistened on her forehead. Marianne’s heart beat like a jackhammer, her face turned raspberry red and her neck muscles went into spasm. The laundry girl was not only her spitting image; she was fifteen years younger and much, much more beautiful. Marianne knew that her moment had come. She followed the girl through the service doors.

“Marianne,” she said softly, investing the girl with her own name. The girl stopped pushing the basket and turned, staring up into the older woman’s face with an expression which revealed the ambition with which she had waited for this very moment.

Marianne felt sorry for her.

Each knew instinctively what to do.

“Swap clothes,” Marianne whispered, reminding her. Wordlessly, the laundry girl complied then, indistinguishable from her mentor, she walked back through the swinging doors into the hotel lobby.

There, she seamlessly continued the legend of the ever-beautiful model, Marianne, while her mentor bent her back to the heavy laundry basket and resumed the life she had known before she became the most beautiful woman in the world.

2. Innocence

Owen was born and bred in the country; he had never been to the city.

He had always been a romantic. His first words were of admiration for a buttercup and, until it died when Owen was six, his terrier had been his best friend. When he was seven he proposed to his mother and when he was twelve his heart was broken when his father entered his favourite sheep in the Hook and Hoof competition at the Agricultural Show.

His romantic disposition made Owen think hard about himself at an unusually early age; he turned his attention away from his pets, and from his parents. He made friends with some of the local lads. He was pleased that they enjoyed his company and after a few tentative sessions in the oast house he certainly enjoyed theirs. They taught him to roll cigarettes of rough tobacco and introduced him to some of the high-spirited local girls. They were dark, broad-beamed women who drank the local brew and were always willing to accommodate Owen, for whom they developed a soft spot.

Nevertheless Owen knew he was missing adventure, city life and romance, real romance with an experienced woman who knew what she was doing and who would show him the way of the world.

On his sixteenth birthday Owen sold his last pet, an enormous, fat and intelligent pig of which he was once fond, and bought a one – way ticket to town. He rented a room above a laundry in a seedy but interesting bohemian neighbourhood. He bought a ghetto blaster a flannel bathrobe, a pair of jeans, a haircut and a pouch of rough tobacco. He hung out in the coffee shops where he chatted to the proprietors and smiled at the hookers and the cops and after a few days he felt that he had come home, that he belonged.

The locals were amused by him. The coffee shop bosses indulged his delusions of sophistication and the women who worked in the laundry were touched by his naïveté; he reminded them of their own sons, so they steadfastly left him alone.

One Saturday night he put on his new jeans, tuned up his ghetto blaster and rolled himself a smoke. A youngish, big-boned woman who cleaned the laundry machines after closing time put her head around his door.

“You better turn that music down young feller,” she said, “else you’ll have to dance with me.”

"Oh?” said Owen. He stared at her and did nothing.

The woman waited for a full minute, staring back at him with fierce mahogany eyes. As the coarse tobacco took hold, Owen became fascinated. Her black curls, shrieking with flame coloured streaks, had been pulled upwards wildly onto the top of her noble head. Her lips were full and her ear lobes were pierced by several dull studs from which escaped an occasional gleam. He had passed this woman each day on his way in and out of the laundry but had never given her a second glance. Now, before him, stood the woman of his dreams.

“So, dance then,” he said, though he hardly dared to speak. He was bound up in the fulfilment of his romantic destiny.

The woman swayed on her strong ankles, reaching long, gnarled hands above her head, behind her back, around her sides, swaying, rippling. She extended her arms towards him.

Owen put down his cigarette, took her hands and began to move with her. Her body was firm, surprisingly firm. Close up, he saw, her eyes were deep and knowing. Her body opened up to him and he moved in, gulping down the experience as greedily as her body was swallowing him. Beneath the smooth fabric of her dress, she was hard against him, angular and tough. His cheek docked in her neck, fitting into the broad sinews which twisted up to support her skull.

“Hey cutie,” she rumbled, sinking her jaw down to his, her strong arms pulling him to her as though he were a bottle from which she needed a drink. Her voice was hoarse and low, close in his ear.

“You be careful. You’re dancing with a real woman now.”

3. Food

Martine loved eating and grew fatter and fatter every day. She enjoyed food at all times and in any location. Hunger would strike her without warning in the oddest places and she was never without food of some description. Chocolate bars, pastry, wine gums and cans of lurid soft drink were inevitably secreted in the voluminous folds of her clothes and in the depths of her ubiquitous handbag. When her holidays arrived she travelled to one provincial city or another where she would take a hotel room and lie in bed eating pizza with the TV on.

One day she fell in love and decided to become thin in order to attract the attention of her beloved. She dieted, she exercised and she took pills which suppressed her appetite. After two months she was as thin as a painter’s ladder. She went to the gym and after another month her body was toned and petite. Then she went to her beloved and made him carry her away on a Pacific cruise.

Before more than a few days the weather turned foul. The ship failed to overcome phenomenal waves and it quickly sank. Martine’s lover was drowned and she found herself in a lifeboat with four enormous German tourists.

The days turned into weeks and Martine was dehydrated and starving. The huge tourists were relatively comfortable. Their bulk kept them warm and, unlike Martine, they had their supplies of chocolate, dried fruit, biscuits, éclairs, and cans of soft drink hidden, as always, in their clothes. They ate and drank and sang folk songs to keep their spirits up as they waited for their ordeal to end.

As her companions enjoyed their adventure and thrived in adversity, Martine lay in the prow of the cramped lifeboat, dying of thirst and starvation and cursed her decision to become thin and beautiful.

4. Family

Nigel lived in poverty with his parents. Their neighbourhood was dangerous and the people next door were smelly and disagreeable. Yet Nigel’s parents were clean, honest and kind and they provided him with every happiness they could afford. But Nigel was ungrateful and he frequently complained.

When he was twelve, Nigel’s mother felt honour-bound to tell him that he had been adopted. Nigel was thrilled.

“Oh goody,” he said. “Now I can go and find my real parents and have a good life at last.”

He filled out a form in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and waited, waited, and waited, while his parents tried to conceal their grief at the impending loss of their only child beneath a veneer of loving support and understanding.

Eventually an envelope arrived from the Registry. Nigel ripped it open. Imagine his astonishment to learn that his real parents were the smelly, disagreeable couple who lived next door.

“I don’t think I’ll go,” Nigel said to his parents. “I think I’d rather stay here with you.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said his mother and father. “You wanted to find your real parents and now you have. So, be gone.”

And so Nigel had to move to the house next door to live in starvation and squalor with the smelly, disagreeable neighbours while his former parents eventually overcame their grief and lived on in peace and contentment.

5. Marriage

Roberta and Michael were very much in love. When, at their wedding service, they said “with my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow,” they meant it. Hundreds of people came to their wedding breakfast and threw rice at the dove – grey Bentley which drove them to the airport to commence their Hawaiian honeymoon.

No sooner had they settled into a luxurious routine than tragedy struck. Michael went surfing at Waikiki Beach while Roberta sunned herself on the sand. She saw nothing, not even the dorsal fin at which Michael feebly grabbed as his body was ground to fragments by the jaws of a giant shark.

Roberta was inconsolable. She refused to leave Hawaii without her husband. She would not eat and she hid in what had been their honeymoon suite. Eventually she permitted a tray to be delivered to her door and she ate with moderation, hiding her hunger even from herself.

All at once she felt a crunch. She put her hand to her mouth and there she found Michael’s wedding ring, embedded in a mouthful of poisson meuniere. The words of her wedding vows came instantly to mind and she sobbed in the Hawaiian sunset as she hungrily finished her dinner.

6. Motherhood

Wendy was a happy teenager. She obeyed her parents and her teachers and she had a faithful, steady and chaste boyfriend, Errol.

When she had successfully finished High School, her parents rewarded her and two of her girlfriends with a trip to Hawaii where they cast off their innocence and enjoyed themselves in frantic evenings of drink and abandon.

Soon after her return, Wendy’s doctor told her that she was pregnant.

“But I can’t be!” Wendy wailed, “I’m a virgin.”

Her parents made Errol marry her.

“But he hasn’t done anything wrong!” Wendy exclaimed as her father firmly led to the altar. “I’m a virgin and so is he!”

“Balderdash,” her mother said, carefully putting her half empty confetti box back into her handbag.

Errol said nothing. He made no demands and gave her a panty-hose allowance. When the baby came the birth was difficult and Wendy was anaesthetised. Afterwards, when she had come around from the gas, the nurse wheeled up the humidicrib and opened the Perspex lid to show Wendy the little baby’s delicate, golden skin and sweet Japanese features.

“Lovely little nipper,” announced the nurse as she heaved the baby onto Wendy’s painfully inflated bosom.

The medication had not entirely worn off. As if in a dream, Wendy had a vision of that drunken night in Maui. “Oh no,” she wailed, staring at the funny - looking baby, “I’m not a virgin anymore!”

7. Christmas

Towards the end of the year Wayne and Denise lost their home to the interest rates and went to live with Denise’s mother, Iris.

Wayne and Iris did not get along very well but Wayne wasn’t worried because Iris was rich and her house was luxurious. There was a fine swimming pool next to a large barbecue area, so the three planned a hungi for Christmas Eve to which they invited all of the neighbours.

The week before Christmas, Wayne went away on business. When he had not returned by the day of the party, Denise became worried and preoccupied. She lay on a banana lounge drinking neat Blackberry Nip, leaving Iris to attend to all the arrangements alone. The guests arrived and everyone had a good time, except Denise who lay in her chair, standing only when everyone crowded around the hungi as Iris drew it up from the hole which neatly penetrated the turf beside the pool.

Suddenly there was a shriek.

“Murder!” rasped a stifled voice. No – one moved, though Denise trembled sufficiently to spill her Blackberry Nip all over the unwinding sheet in which was revealed Wayne’s baked body.

8. Friends

Damien was a young man of charisma and a rare, dark beauty. He was vastly popular, not only because of his wealth but because of his innocent, child-like charm.

One day Damien noticed lumps on the sides of his knees. The doctors shook their heads sadly and informed him that he had a disease and would die within six months.

Damien tried everything. His friends exhorted him to abandon conventional medicine and to cure himself with crystals. But Damien refused, saying this was nonsense. He sought second, third and fourth opinions from specialists but the diagnosis and prognosis remained the same.

Eventually, in desperation, he allowed his friends to persuade him to abandon the unhelpful remedies prescribed by his doctors and to turn to the crystals. They proudly presented him with splendid examples in blue, green and red and they optimistically waited for signs of improvement.

But all in vain. One day Damien’s dead body was found by his cleaning lady. His friends were dismayed.

“How can the crystals have failed?” they asked each other, incredulous. They felt let down and were too annoyed with Damien even to attend his funeral.

It was only weeks after his death, when the post mortem results were published, that they cheered up. Silly Damien had been eating the crystals ground up in his breakfast egg. It was this which had killed him, not the disease, of which no trace had been found in his remains.

9. Love

One day George decided that he was tired of the way his lover behaved. He told him that his behaviour was intolerable and that he was going to leave.

“But I love you,” said his lover. “Please stay.”

“I can’t,” said George. “The things you do drive me mad,” and he left.

After a few months of living alone, George met someone new and soon enough his new boyfriend accepted George’s invitation to move in with him. They lived happily together for quite some time, but eventually the new lover began to irritate George and the irritation increased until George couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I cannot stand the way you behave,” he said. “The things you do drive me mad.”

“I don’t care,” said his lover. “Get stuffed.”

And nothing changed.

Eventually George complained again, with the same indifferent response. He became exasperated.

“Look here,” said the new lover, “if you dislike me so much, why don’t you leave?”

“Because I love you,” said George, his ardour stifling his indignation at being asked to leave his own house.

“Then you’ll just have to put up with me,” said the new lover, and they continued to live together, to George’s infinite torment.


© Marc Ellis 2010

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