Deerhoof

Part 1 of 6 by Peter Wild

The wheels started coming off that night we went to the dog track. It was colder than a witch’s tit – you could see the breath frosting even when you were breathing in – and we weren’t speaking, which wasn’t anything new, I know, but it felt different all the same. You were over by the tote guy getting a price on a dog called Fried Turkey Lunch when I overheard some little snot talking music and mispronouncing the name of Deerhoof – who are, like, my favourite band. (He kept saying Deerhuff over and over, Deerhuff, man, Deerhuff – Deerhuff rock, man – Deerhuff are the fucking bomb, baby.) I had to slap his face, had no choice, had to slap his face and say it isn’t huff you retard it’s hoof, hoof okay, hoof so it rhymes with roof and truth and proof and uncouth. I kept slapping at the kid until he took off running up the bank of seats, his friends yelling, asking me what my problem was but I didn’t care, I was proud of myself – leastways until I turned round and saw you stomping off towards the exit.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Gum Runner, has introduced a new concept to 6S - the six-part story (with each part exactly six sentences). Look for Part 2 of "Deerhoof" on Sunday, March 4th, and look for Peter at peterwild.com.

The King Bids Me Ride

by Peter Wild

The King bids me ride and so I ride. The King bids me ride and so I ride, though it be late in the day, figuratively and literally, though the moon doth punish the night with her scalding light, though the combined forces of our many enemies gather like stormbanks on the brow of the hills overlooking our city and though it may be many days before I reach my destination, too many days to count on the fingers of my hands and the fingers of the two riders sent to accompany me on my journey and though we may never return to see our city standing, still I ride. The King bids me ride and so I ride, even though I leave my wife, my dearly beloved wife, gasping and blowing like the sails of a ship in a gale, my dearly beloved wife in the midst of labour, our fourth child, my first son, possibly, due at any time so the ruddy-cheeked midwife had it and my wife, weakened and poorly despite the attachment of leeches and the drawing of blood into a cupped glass, gripping my hand, knowing I have to do that which I am called to do, knowing there is but one option when the King calls, the option being to ride, if that is what the King bids me do. The King bids me ride and so I ride for a rider is what I am, a man put upon this Earth to deliver messages from one place to another, swift as the North wind, driving my horse on until soapy foam spews forth between her teeth, until the sweat and heat of the beast between my thighs gives me pause to wonder how long she herself will last and whether I chose right in the stable with the rain thundering against the panel roof, the fetid breath of war and pestilence close by, tight agin me like the collar of a shirt. The King bids me ride and so I ride, though it be the last time, though each step takes me closer to my doom, though I am committed to a task I don't believe has any genuine value because in the final reckoning a man such as I stands or falls according to his ability to take an order and hold a position and do what needs be done. The King bids me ride and so I ride.

6S

Peter Wild, whose full catalog is here, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Hugger-Mugger

by 6S C1 Grand Prize Winner Peter Wild

Hugger-Mugger, she says, Hugger-Mugger, Hugger-Mugger, Hugger-Mugger, over and over and over again, without breath and without interruption: hugger-mugger, hugger-mugger, hugger-mugger. I try to break the spell, say ssssssssh and baby and come on now, push the sweaty hair from out of her blank terrified eyes, tell her it's okay, daddy's here, hugger-mugger has gone now, hugger-mugger has gone, ssssssssssssh, but nothing I say and nothing I do seems to work. This goes on for the better part of an hour and, you know, my patience isn't limitless, I do have work in the morning, after all. So, listen, I say, raising my voice to get the kid's attention, you'd better be quiet, I say you'd better be quiet right now, because I think... yes... Hugger-Mugger's coming back, I can hear him on the gravel outside in the garden, he's... looking up at the window... and we both know... he has an especial fondness for children who won't shut up. Her eyes grow wide as she clamps both hands across her mouth to manually silence the pants and the gasps and the sobs. I pull her to me and hold her tight and think to myself: you have to be cruel to get what you want.

6S - C1

Peter Wild is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Deerhoof

Part 5 of 6 by Peter Wild

You were at once a different creature: the wayward, contrary girl I’d fallen in love with was gone; suddenly, out of nowhere, you were docile, gamine, obedient, a girl out of time. If I came home from work in a mood, if I lashed out or barked at you, for whatever reason, whether it was deserved or not, you just took it, like a dog brought to heel. I couldn’t work it out, couldn’t work you out, had to keep asking you whether you were alright, whether we were alright, whether everything was alright – and each time I asked, you smiled sweetly and said yes and of course and why wouldn’t I/we/everything be alright? I tried to not let the change bother me (I tried to bask in all of the attention, luxuriating in the peace and the quiet, open and receptive to your many ministrations – you, the pliable doll) but your sweetness eventually provoked me beyond all measure. Over a period of days and weeks and months, I grew more and more cruel, taunting you and mocking you and hurting you in every devious way I could in order to shake you up and make you fight back. But there was nothing, nothing beyond your sweet, confused hurt, your bruised acceptance of whatever I threw your way, your stoical martyrdom – and that wasn’t the worst thing, not by a long chalk.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 4, makes his online home at peterwild.com. Part 6, the conclusion, arrives on Thursday, March 29th.

Pig Masks & Air Horns

by Peter Wild

She held up her hands like some sort of diminutive air traffic controller and said, "Excuse me?" He blushed and looked at his chubby sausage fingers, interlaced in his sweaty lap. "You did ask," he murmured guiltily. "I know I asked," she replied. "I know I asked. It's just, of all the things you could've said, you're telling me that that's your biggest fantasy?"

6S

Peter Wild, whose full catalog is here, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Sinister in a State of Hope

by Peter Wild

Her mother didn't approve. She said, He's a zombie in that tone of voice she reserved for pronouncements on milk (The milk is off) or the health of flowers (The flowers are dead). She tried to explain, tried to tell her mother what it was all about; but, typically, her opening gambit was denial (He is not a zombie) which didn't get her very far because, after all, he was a zombie. Not that her mother went overboard. She merely said Darling (Dah-ling), stretching the word out as if it was chewing gum or an accordion. As far as her mother was concerned, this said it all and would allow her, at some point future-hence, to preen, peacock-like, comfortable in the glow of howevermany I told you so's.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, makes his online home at peterwild.com. He has most recently edited The Flash, a book of flash fiction featuring contributions from the likes of Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody and 98 other writers, and it's available from Social Disease, priced £6.99 (with all proceeds going to Amnesty International).

The Girl Without a Beret

by Peter Wild

The first time I saw you, you reminded me of that painting by Lucien Freud, Girl With Beret. There was something flinty and quizzical in your eyes that just seemed to flip me over like a pancake in a skillet. Not that you were wearing a beret. You were wearing a scruffy little bobble hat, I think. A bobble hat and a parka. But, all the same, that first time I saw you, I knew it: you were a work of art.

6S

Peter Wild, author of the 6S C1 Grand Prize Winning Hugger-Mugger, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Deerhoof

Part 6 of 6 by Peter Wild

Concupiscent, made monstrous by your demure obeisance, I grew lusty and flagrant, crossing swords with whosoever took my passing fancy. And, as I dallied gradually further and further from home, sometimes for days at a time, you – you – grew strange, prowling the house like a vagrant Victorian, turning first all of the mirrors and later all of the pictures and photographs so that they faced away from you, prohibiting the use of any item powered by electricity during the hours of daylight and, latterly, posting meaningless bulletins (listing everything from types of jam to organisations responsible for public utilities) on doorjambs and walls and, on one occasion, to the ceiling above our bed. I knew it was a situation that could not be allowed to endure and yet, even so, I did nothing. I allowed you to wade out into the shallows, figuratively speaking, watching from the safety of the shore, my heart in the grip of trepidation and hushed, tentative awe, wondering what you would do next, wondering how mad a person could be before they were stopped by outside forces. There was a crisis (your older brother caught you bent over in the shoe cupboard under the stairs snapping 7” singles into bite-size chunks which were then placed upon your tongue like communion wafers, one atop the other, until your mouth was full of fractured slices of vinyl and blood, the sides of your cheeks in tatters from the shifting slivers) and an intervention, in which you removed, pointedly, from ‘my care’ to a secure facility capable of – if not curing – at least restoring a semblance of your former well-being. If there is a lesson to be learned, the lesson is this: however indirectly, be careful what you wish for.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 5, makes his online home at peterwild.com.

Silence is Golden

by Peter Wild

Alice and Bryan were sitting on the seafront, out front of a cafe, two coffees on the table between them growing cold as they silently watched their grandchildren race up and down the beach laughing and screaming, splashing each other as they dug in the wet sand for pebbles and shells. It wasn't an awkward silence. The two of them had been married for the better part of 33 years. Silence was the grain in their wood. In many ways, if you stripped away the layers of pain (his hands and his knee, her back and her eyesight), if you sought to leaven the daily grind of just moving about, staying upright, keeping active, if you attempted to compensate for the hard years and the struggles the two of them had waded through, the problems with their children, the inevitable letting go, all of the disappointments, it was arguable that silence was one of the things that kept them warm at night. Certainly, as the days grew colder and the nights drew in like a battery of unwelcome house-guests, silence was the greater of several lesser comforts the two of them still cherished.

6S

Peter Wild, author of The Girl Without a Beret, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

If I'd Known Then What I Know Now

by Peter Wild

She had the kind of face you see in magazines but not fashion magazines or glamour magazines, no, she had the kind of face you see in magazines that feature articles about sad prostitutes killed by cannibal maniacs who filled drains with chopped up body parts. There was something about her, perhaps something in her eyes that said she was predestined for tragedy. She obviously felt the same way about me. "You look sad," she said, apropos of nothing – or not nothing, apropos of my staring perhaps, her dark pupils a wishing well of hopelessness sucking me in, the siren, the minx, the sinkhole. If I’d known then what I know now – that her studied intensity was just a pose, balanced like a stork upon one leg atop a pile of sun faded Kierkegaard hardbacks – would I have done anything differently? No: I’ve always been a sucker for that kind of girl.

6S

Peter Wild lives and writes in the UK. He edits Bookmunch.

The Black Francis Flirtation Device

by Peter Wild

"Hey!" she barks. That usually gets their attention, whoever it is she has her eye on. She barks out "Hey!" and whoever it is stops in their tracks and the two of them look at each other for a moment (because there has to be a moment) and then she sort of sashays and she sings, "Been trying to meet you" - just like Black Francis sings at the start of that Pixies' song called Hey. The guy, whoever it is, always smiles, even if they don't know the song (although if they do know the song, if they smile a goofy smile and sing back must be a devil between us in time for the two of them to sing or whores in my head whores at my door whores in my bed together - that was a whole other kettle of fish, yessir). The Black Francis Flirtation Device had served her well for the better part of seven years. She was also fond of the Black Francis Dumping Device which involved her singing I got a broken face I got a I got a broken face uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh I got a broken face over and over and over again until the guy in question took the hint and fucked the hell off away from her.

6S

Peter Wild, author of No News is Good News, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

The Aphrodisiac

by Peter Wild

"All men," Martin, her boss, told her, "feel, in their innermost innermosts, that they are put-upon and undervalued and neglected by their nearest and dearest. What’s more, this feeling only intensifies as the years go by." Louise squirmed in her seat. The last thing she wanted was to be having a conversation about her personal life with her odious boss, a man who smelled of cigarettes and coffee and who, furthermore, had about him the dispiriting air of a man on the cusp of some dramatic and showy display of failure. "Take it from me," he said, perching on the edge of her desk thereby assuming the role of confidante, "if you were to go home this evening and say to your other half something along the lines of I’m horrible to you sometimes, aren’t I?, I guarantee: you will make his day." Martin drew closer (Louise could feel her shoulders bunching the closer his mouth drew to her ear) and whispered, "I guarantee it will be the best aphrodisiac your hubby has ever known;" in response, Louise involuntarily shuddered, the thought of sex and her boss conjoined nauseously in her mind with the notion of many men toiling, bare-chested and sweaty, amid a phalanx of subterranean machinery.

6S

Peter Wild, whose full catalog is here, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Gum Runner

by Peter Wild

They threw me into a Singapore jail for smuggling gum. Can you believe that? Fucking chewing gum, man. Fucking Juicy Fruit. I'm doing time because they caught me smuggling Juicy Fruit. I deserve to be ass-raped every day for the next 12 months.

6S

Peter Wild, author of The End of Us, makes his online home at peterwild.com.

The End of Us

by Peter Wild

We were miles from anywhere, the tank was nearly out of gas and the howling in the woods was getting louder and louder. But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was your mother, harping on in the back seat like some deranged harpy about what a loser I was, how you could do better anytime you wanted, how I should count myself lucky, yessir, lucky to have a goddamn mother-in-law harping on at me while the howling grew louder in the woods outside. I thought: fuck, fuck, fuck. This is the end of us. This is going to be the end of us.

6S

Peter Wild makes his online home at peterwild.com.

The End of Us

by Peter Wild

We were miles from anywhere, the tank was nearly out of gas and the howling in the woods was getting louder and louder. But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was your mother, harping on in the back seat like some deranged harpy about what a loser I was, how you could do better anytime you wanted, how I should count myself lucky, yessir, lucky to have a goddamn mother-in-law harping on at me while the howling grew louder in the woods outside. I thought: fuck, fuck, fuck. This is the end of us. This is going to be the end of us.

6S

Peter Wild makes his online home at peterwild.com.

A Classified Never Sent

by Peter Wild

Jon has mental relationships with about half a dozen people he sees more or less every day. For instance, if he leaves the house for work at 7:30 there is a girl on the bus, a cute girl, sort of indie looking with a dark bob, thin fingers and interesting, colourful clothes that tended to clash but not in a bad way; if he leaves the house at 7:40, there is an older woman with mousy hair and freckled hands. The cute indie girl is always reading and the curious thing is she is always reading books that Jon has already read and liked tremendously which makes Jon think that, if, somehow, the two of them ever got to talking, they would get on like the proverbial house afire. The older woman is sort of muted, subdued, downcast, she doesn’t read, tends to look out of the window – Jon thinks she’s sad and he’d like to know why because, if he could, he’d like to make her smile although he doesn’t have the first clue how he’d go about doing that. There are maybe four or five other women that Jon sees more or less every day, women he can imagine talking to, women he can imagine kissing, women he can, if push came to shove, imagine loving (loving desperately or noncommittally or ambiguously or glibly or sadly or dramatically or mysteriously or some other brand spanking new emotion that has yet to have a name). They comfort Jon, the mental relationships, and provide him with enough of an excuse to duck actually getting out there into the world, living life to the full, all that.

6S

Peter Wild, whose full catalog is here, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.

Deerhoof

Part 2 of 6 by Peter Wild

I called your name, sang Josie in that pathetic sea shanty sing-song way I have that you detest and I know you heard me because you jerked your shoulder, the way you would if some salesman or something was invading your personal space, you jerked your shoulder even though I was about forty, fifty paces away from you. It occurred to me that I could stay, try and win my money back and drink more beer – but if I did that whatever shit I was in would magnify beyond all proportion by the time I eventually made it home; so I didn’t stay. I did shout your name once more, though, as I legged it after you, heels kicking up sand behind me – shouted Josie, pleading, like a kid asking for ice-cream. You didn’t respond, didn’t look back, didn’t so much as register that there might possibly be a question in need of an answer. By the time I made the car park (sweaty, and it has to be said sort of desperate-looking like that guy at the end of the Don Siegel version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it was starting to rain and you – you were in the car with PJ Harvey shrieking Sheela-Na-Gig at top volume, driving away without so much as a second look at me, wearing that expression that says: I know you’re there and I know you can see me and I know you know that I can see you but I’m not going to let on to you, you can go and fuck yourself, you can go and fuck yourself, and when you’ve finished (fucking yourself), you can walk home in the rain and let’s all hope that the rain helps you work your shit out so that by the time you get home you’ll be in a position to apollo-the-fuck-a-gise, because that’s where you are now and that’s what you need to do. Knowing a futile gesture was called for, I removed my shoe and pitched it high and dumb in your direction, or in the direction of our rapidly diminishing car at any rate, and I said shit quietly once and then (as my shoe bounced off the bonnet of some other schmo’s car, thereby forcing said car’s car alarm to blossom forth in all its shrill glory) much louder – SHIT! – into the rain-wet, argument-spoiled night.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 1, makes his online home at peterwild.com. "Deerhoof" is a six-part story, with each part exactly six sentences. Look for Part 3 on Tuesday, March 13th.

Deerhoof

Part 4 of 6 by Peter Wild

You’d changed out of your clothes, out of what you were wearing at the dog track (standing there, exposed in the doorway, dripping and expectant of imminent anguish and earache, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was you’d been wearing) into your PJs and you were lounging on the couch with a half-filled glass of red wine and your book, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. I cleared my throat – not to attract your attention so much as to actually ensure I could speak without the cold and the rain and the walk and all of that getting the better of me – which, apparently was all the prompt you needed; you looked up, mouthed the word Oh, and sort of clambered (in a way that was at once both beautiful and ungainly) to your feet, placing the glass of wine gently on the floor and leaving your book to flutter closed. I wondered if you’d flipped your lid and considered making a run for it – leastways until you got to me and took my hand (the hand I’d slapped the kid with) to your mouth, kissing each knuckle in turn as you said, my – big – brave – man. You kissed my knuckles and you kissed me, softly, on the lips and then you said, Let’s get you out of those wet clothes. You said Let’s get you out of those wet clothes, I shouldn’t have left you, it was wrong of me and then you said the magic word: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what was going on (didn’t know what to make of the way you were behaving) but, as you led me by the hand up the stairs and to our bed, as you undressed yourself and slipped in besides me, as you gave and gave and gave and gave, for my sins, I didn’t care.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 3, makes his online home at peterwild.com. Part 5 arrives on Saturday, March 24th.

Deerhoof

Part 3 of 6 by Peter Wild

All of which leads to what can only be described as a pivotal moment – and the pivotal moment is awash with surface detail (like, for one thing, I retrieved my shoe from where it was lodged, in the mud beneath the car alarm car, and it occurred to me, as I crouched and hopped, one hand on the top of the car and one hand jogging the heel to get the damn thing back on my foot, that the car alarm sounded like a Beefheart tune but I couldn’t for the life of me say which one – and then I thought, as I made my way through the car park to the gate, maybe it wasn’t Beefheart maybe it was Daniel Johnston or Pig Destroyer or – hey, maybe it was Deerhoof; like, for another thing, within about ten minutes the rain was falling like rain out of a Kurosawa movie, the rain was Rashomon rain; like, for a third thing, the streets were empty even though it was Friday night, there were no cars, no bikes, no rickshaws, nothing), but the surface detail isn’t what is important. What is important is what was going on beneath the surface. I’m not saying I made a wish and heard thunder rumble and found myself caught in cut-out, a dark shape against the electric sky. All I’m saying is – as I hashed and rehashed the furious five minutes that passed between me slapping that kid upside his head and you driving away – it may be I thought life could only be better if we didn’t argue. I don’t know if there’s somebody up there or somebody down there or somebody some fucking where who was listening. All I know is, by the time I arrived – foot-sore and wet as a dog – back home, the world no longer resembled the world I knew.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 2, makes his online home at peterwild.com. "Deerhoof" is a six-part story, with each part exactly six sentences. Look for Part 4 on Tuesday, March 20th.

No News is Good News

by Peter Wild

There's a story on the news about Kurds from a mountain village in Northern Iraq who are fleeing their homes after four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces. The story cuts to a shakey-cam, with security officials swarming like bees about the former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif as he lands in Islamabad; someone in the studio says it's thought he'll be deported to Saudi Arabia where he'll stand trial on corruption charges. Elsewhere in the world, the news guy says, police in Israel have uncovered a group of neo-Nazis, comprised of illegal Russian immigrants aged between 18 and 21, responsible for painting swastikas on the walls of synagogues. I tune out as a young woman explains how, subsequent to the deaths of 30 people following the explosion of a van packed with dynamite in the coastguard barrack of Dellys, east of Algiers, and the deaths of a further 22 people when a man detonated a bomb in a crowd of people waiting to meet President Abdelazaziz Bouteflika in Batna, there are growing fears that jihadi militants affiliated to Al-Qaida are opening a new frontline in the Maghreb. My head starts to pound as positive steps taken by the Hezbollah-led opposition and the incumbent Western-supported Lebanese Government of Fuad Siniora are undermined in the wake of an announcement concerning the replacement for President Emile Lahoud, with anti-Syrian Christian leaders accusing Hezbollah of playing a very dangerous game. There is a good reason why I rarely watch anything other than SpongeBob SquarePants.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Silence is Golden, is the editor of The Flash & Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall. You can read more here.