Here is a chapter from my vastly incomplete Discordian novel called "Bun is the Hero" (note: language is flagrant and mouthy):
Accidents Anonymous
Accidents Anonymous was a secret society in which bastards from all walks of life congregated. Each bastard quaffed a whisky named "Old Friend" which was famous for the brutal hangovers it usually inflicted upon its consumer base. This strange coincidence was one of the few actual connections anyone in the group had to another, and as a result there was some opinion that the group should have been renamed to "The Old Friend Bastard Collective", but being a secret society, anything that remotely resembled marketing was pointless and so nobody ever bothered.
Accidents Anonymous was rather a prestigious social club to be a part of, because unlike many of the more famous secret societies, nobody knew anything about it, and therefore entry was difficult to gain. In reference to this subject, one might consider the old proverb, "If a secret society gathers in a covert forest when nobody else knows about it, does it make the least bit of difference?" And of course, the correct answer is: yes. It makes a difference directly to the members of the society, and indirectly to non-members if/when a member re-emerges into regular society. Having temporarily disappeared from the normal everyday world into another created by themselves in which they decide the social laws and taboos, their experiences during their time within the group have the potential to be more valuable in rarity than most anything they could easily have partaken in had they gone to the shops instead, or, perhaps, to a less-than-covert forest. Any kind of overt forest is simply not the place for such secretive social dealings.
Accidents Anonymous used a cleverly-construed forest that was entirely covert for their meetings. It consisted of a number of planks of plywood that had been passionately nailed into the floor of the AA High Priest's flat during a controversial night of drunken euphoria. The forest atmosphere was helped, the High Priest oft-opined, by the unpainted plaster walls, the complete lack of furniture in the room and the perpetual garish glare of the single lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling as if dead. The "trees" were chipped and cracked in various places, haphazardly affixed to the dull carpet at seemingly random angles. They clearly needed a good sanding down to remove sharp edges and splinters, but despite all this the High Priest was determined that they were "wizened oaks", and refused to recognise them by any other name. In fact, he was ranting about them at the few remaining members at that very moment, whenever that moment might be:
"Shut up! They are wizened oaks, filled with the spirits of yore! To insult them with your ignorant slander is to be cast out by the society that depends on them: our society, THIS very society!"
The rebel leader sighed and shook his head, exasperated. "Planks of f*****g wood."
"...look, you f*****g moron, these trees-"
A loud bang was heard from just outside the room, and the regulars instantly recognised it as the slamming of the front door of the flat. A quick and startled glance around by the High Priest confirmed that all remaining members were present; could it be that an old member had returned after having been cast out for infidelity, and if so, then for what purpose? Surely they knew that they could never rejoin the AA once cast out - the rules had been made quite clear several times - unless... they couldn't possibly have... oh no, oh God, no, please... surely they haven't revealed our location to the National Society for the Thwarting and Smite of Non-Central Denominations in the Name of the Corporate Post-Global Conspiracy of Earth, Middle-Earth, Big-Earth, Little-Earth, Non-Earth and Elsewhere! Oh dear God!
Just as the High Priest was tearing off his frontal bustle in a blind panic, soft footsteps approached the door, and the members watched in collective awe as the doorknob slowly turned and the door squeaked into motion.
In padded Bun.
"...I've had an accident," proclaimed Bun uncertainly, eyeing the High Priest who was paused in shock halfway through the interesting act of bustle removal.
The High Priest eyed back, his gaze narrowing into a slit of suspicion. "Are you anonymous?"
"Yes."
"God," gasped the High Priest in partial relief. "I thought you were the NSTSNCDNCPGCEMEBELENEE back to enact a spiteful revenge. This is a covert forest, you know. You can't just walk in here, the spirits'll have you."
Bun's gaze flitted around the room uncomfortably in a fruitless effort to understand. The High Priest reattached his frontal bustle onto its rightful place before his waist, and instantly felt a bit more balanced and in control. He didn't feel quite complete without his frontal bustle these days; he couldn't imagine how he'd lived without it for so many years.
"Give me your intestines," said Bun out of nowhere, with an implausibly sudden assertiveness. "I need them for a jump cable."
The High Priest looked up, certain that the words he was sure he'd heard couldn't possibly have been accurate. At least, they couldn't have come from the mouth of such a nice rabbit, surely, even if he was a stranger. Unless he was completely deranged? And come to think of it, who should "he" really refer to in that sentence? Perhaps intestinal jump cables had become the cultural norm in the few years since his enlightenment and subsequent ascension to High Priest status. Perhaps, nowadays, using "conventional" jump cables was an eccentric choice, as everyone who was anyone had moved on to the wondrous and far more efficient world of biotechnology. Fancy some toast? No need for a toaster, just pop some bread in between your cranial hemispheres and the electrical signals'll do the rest. Perhaps some steak? Cast away your obsolete forks and knives, for our world has left them behind! Simply use your fingers as makeshift chopsticks and your teeth as impromptu cutting devices! No longer shall we have to teach our children how to eat! The f*****s can f*****g work it out themselves for once!
"RIGHT!!" roared the High Priest, ferociously booting down a wizened oak in some kind of thought-fuelled fit of conceptual justice, "I'm going, you f*****s can all stay here and melt for all I give a f*****g damn about."
As he stomped out of the room with an incredible air of determination, he tore off his bustle and threw it aside before ripping open the front door, charging out and slamming it behind him with a kind of gusto never previously witnessed by anyone in the flat, so hard in fact that the catch broke and the door was allowed to shudder ajar.
After a few seconds of incredulous silence, the rebel leader looked up, and his gaze shifted slowly from Bun to the uncurtained single-pane window, the only window in the room. Outside, the sky was black and it was raining hard. He absentmindedly picked up a half-empty bottle of Old Friend from the floor beside him, and was dazzled once again by the unobstructed glare of that single bulb that illuminated the room mercilessly, day or night. The light looked cold - far colder than the Moon would look over a real forest, perhaps, if real covert forests even existed.
"...what now?"
None of the three remaining members answered... they never did.
Useless f*****s, he thought, raising the bottle to his lips.
He took some whisky into his mouth, and the strong warmth of Old Friend hit the back of his tongue. He loved it, at that moment, more than anything else in the world; it made even that cold room in its cold light a warm and comfortable place to be, and turned this good-as-dead group of miserable idiots into a clique of quiet drinking partners, just for a moment. It was as if he and the other members who congregated in this ludicrous room were together not out of desperation for social stimulus at the will of some pathetic freak, but storytellers, each knowing something that none of the others knew, and on these nights they would all gather together and silently share their stories under the cold covert lightbulb in this freezing stinking piece-of-shit flat in the bad part of Hoobland.
A few seconds silently passed... perhaps ten, maybe more.
The "rebel leader" got up from his place on the floor wearily, and reached for his coat which lay in a heap beside him. He brushed past Bun as he stepped through the door, perhaps in some belligerent gesture of gratitude, Bun thought, and turned back to face the room.
"I hate you all. You can all hoobing die."
He took one last swig of Old Friend, tossed it roughly into the covert forest and stamped out through the front door, slamming it behind him as usual. Once again, the door shuddered ajar.
While descending the stairs of the block of flats, he met a sodden and miserable-looking High Priest on his way back up to the flat. He kicked him in the bustle and went on his way like it was nobody's business.
To Bun, the whole experience bordered on the mystical. He wasn't sure what to make of any of it; the room of planks, assorted drunks lying around on the floor, the apparent social tensions among them, the strange man who was once so filled with an almost tangible aplomb and whose sobs could now be heard rising and echoing pathetically around in the stairwell; none of it made any sense. He surmised, however, that perhaps he had come to the wrong place.
He opened his eyes about halfway and took in the sunshine. It was more glorious than anything he had ever known, and more than enough to satisfy him.
"Fnord..." he spoke, and he recalled his quest. Sure enough, the blue existed before him, as he had suspected it would, although he could see greater detail in it now, and there was more of it. It was beautiful; the shining pieces that came from the Sun laid themselves out upon the melting, cascading surface of whatever wonderful machine he was heading towards, as if entertaining no fear of the power so obviously inherent in its massive and mysterious form. Together, the blue and the shining bright seemed to beckon Bun onward, onward into an experience of all brilliance where warmth, comfort and unconditional acceptance lay in wait for him if only he desired it. Could it be that Bun had found love in this great, unseeable thing? Perhaps; although it was very unlike him to be interested in such philosophical matters.
His train of thought was interrupted by a thief rummaging around in his mangoes, searching for an apricot.
"You're a very selective thief," said Bun to the thief, but the thief went away again, leaving Bun alone once more. Bun found that he missed him, and suddenly felt a bit tired. The Sun still shone steadily down, however, warming his fur pleasantly, and he found that he didn't really mind. The birds sang, and the chirrups chortled. "The calthrops whined, but saddles high! The Moon glows puce tonight, so drink the f**k up while we suck this sack race up," said Mr. Grasshopper. He clearly had no idea what he was saying, and Parliament was quite shocked, not to mention barefaced and footloose, perhaps even eggbound. They hung Mr. Grasshopper at high noon after a successful hotfoot in the name of good taste. Brer Snooker Player was distastefully amused, but could only swelter as his knees swelled to the size of small ape heads, and took on a similar consistency. Undoing his bloated underbelly skin, he reached past his bowel and felt around for a great pus-gushing mass of fleshy gelatinous membranes. When, to his horror, he actually found the thing growing from the inner-right of his abdomen, he grasped it as tightly as possible, grimly braced himself, and with a mind-flaying blast of pain wrenched his wrist and arm and ripped it out from his abdomen in one sudden sharp motion. The cry that emanated from his gullet as he performed this deed was one that plagued his nightmares for months to come, as did the unshakable vision of his own exposed bowel and stomach oozing black and brown pus from a half-torn and bleeding sack of the-gods-know-fucking-what. In the puce moonlight, a Sombrero-endowed guitarist sang a wonderful love song in long, melismatic sweeps, and did not appear to notice Brer Snooker Player's squawked gurgles of excruciation from the unlit terraced balcony above. On that night, Brer Snooker Player stopped breathing for a few moments, and within that short time he finally came to the decision that he had, once and for all, become an utter lunatic.
Hoppity-hip, hippity-hop.
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"Dont be silly," replied Bun, "You're a Chocolate Man."
30 Sep 2007, 6:27 pm
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