The Gorko Gazette

Daily Humor

thegorkogazette

11.13.2024 6:56 AM

(The Castle) by Tempest Miller

(THE CASTLE)

1
You live in filth.
Mud-dust mosses, dull-lit, in the room corners.
You recite Burns R.
Night hours, short of breath, a phone call with water on your lungs.
Room inspection (tomorrow – 8:45am).
But they don’t check cabinets or drawers,
however they will pickpocket from your two wallets and steal beermats
for compensation.
Legal terms say you can be turned out.
Job interview tomorrow (9.20am) – Zoom.
Zoom! and chimneypotsandblackkettles.
Space bar doesn’t work on your computer;
and you can find no record of the company.
Your scarf on the floor,
manuscripts on the floor,
spittle clinging to the pillow, half-sleep.
TV remote, bags of bird seed unopened, an iron.
Patches of mould seem to grow on your hips.
Your diet of just pineapples
and pineapple-water at the bottom of the pineapple tray,
and gone-off, maladapted pineapples that taste like flooring,
makes you weak.
You crave a burger
but they cut off your Internet
and you didn’t throw out the last burger bun eyeing you from the bedside table.
And besides, you can’t lift your head
and would likely bleed from the nose if you did.
You do the diet because it’s rich in fibre
and backs your waste up, unclogs.
You want to be clean within, even if vile without.

2
And from the scent of rotted eggs, a ghost is born.
She is green.
She swirls into a storm with the leftover malt vinegar.
She gains possession of the hoover.
She fashions it into a golden arrow and bow.
She takes out your eye.
She self-replicates.
Her second self repeats and does likewise to the other eye.
The snap of the bow.
Self-replicates again.
Three ghosts, made of bottle caps and mayoed-lettuce.
They slip under the door threshold and out into the block of flats.
Your dirt allows them to take charge and drive everyone else out.
And for months, paranormal investigators are subsumed
each into a different substrata of the derelict building.
Barbed wire fences are enmeshed, with time, around the perimeter.
Landlords consult with City Hall.
Your bereaved parents begin a campaign to recover your body –
now used as a sordid Voodoo doll for experimental spells
and farming out botany from a different astral plain.

Then: a hard-boiled Monday morning.
Breaching the ‘castle’ perimeter,
a pink-faced punk motorcyclist flicks a cig onto a trail of lighter fluid,
and flames project up the demonical student dormitory.
Burning down the groundsman’s lurid bougainvillaea,
making ash and liquid-plastic of the vending machine,
glowing crucibles of the accessibility toilets.
The flames project a harder, redder light
onto the prawn-faced young person
who says, afterwards, he did it because Elvis stole from
Joe Turner.
As the university accommodation building bangs and pops! whizzes!
the witches yelp and explode in detonations
of Prozac and paracetamol.
The building explodes in a horseshoe shape
of occult sparkle fluid.

3
Unfortunately, your body could not be recovered beyond chars.
Poor wretch! Sluggard!
And you were buried in an unmarked grave for having
confirmed the existence of ghosts.
Further regrettably, your unmarked grave stuck out like a sore thumb
and mental-cases – and again the now famous prawn-faced boy,
mottled with scuzz – exhumed your ashes
in the hope of enjoying a supernatural experience.
Eventually, what remained of you was moved to a private cemetery free of charge.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tempest Miller is a writer from the UK. His work has appeared in Boats Against the Current, Swamp Pink and JAKE. He releases a monthly chapbook on Amazon. His Instagram is @tempestm1ller.

Image generated on Magic Studio