Sitting down to his evening meal, Scott was forlorn. Externalities, but more his own inherent fears, restricted dinner to flaccid cabbage, shredded carrot and an unknown, reconstituted substance passing for meat. Outside, galeforce dread raged. Under doors and through windows it blew, gripping and contorting him beyond recognition, beyond man. Up his arms it crept, into his chest, invisible but there just enough to keep him bound inside a hyperbaric tomb without companionship. He was prostate to it, gripped by absolute anxiety. He dared not take the risk of delivered food.
This was all he deserved. He’d die alone if he entertained the idea. He’d rot invisibly.
Stabbing the limp stir fry with a ‘70s fork, a face appeared in the drab, yellow mush. “You’ve saved yourself today, my friend”, the seething lump sneered, “but your time will come. You’ll see. You’ll eventually see”. Trembling to these foreboding words spat with a foul gas and flecks of onion, he flung the plate across the room, the contents hurtling into the kitchen and across a scuffed linoleum floor. Re-composing itself into a mat of vegetable-flecked noodles, Scott could see the face staring back at him from the other side of his period flat. Within its bulbous, asymmetrical eyes he confronted his fears and failures but, more than anything, in the face of that talking, scathing spoil he saw his own, eventual deprecation.
Tears streamed down Scott’s face. This portending food, concocted to keep the world at bay, began to edge towards him in haphazard fits and jerks. It left behind a slimy trail of Pick ‘n Pay’s own-brand black bean sauce. Inching ever closer, an incredible weight bore down upon his reluctant shoulders - an understanding of his place, glimpses of a capitulated life, a vision of the end. Were he to succumb to fear, to yield to this grotesque aberration that gawped and gulped like a floundering fish that gasped his name repeatedly, he’d succumb, in full, to the terrors of life.
Scott rued that terrible meal and his own cowardice. Gasping himself and clawing his chest at the anxiety eroding from within, he grabbed a nearby broom and struck the life-consuming monstrosity over and over again until he, and his kitchen, and the walls, and the well-worn lounge carpet were covered in sticky lament.
Standing alone in the empty flat he realised: pizza would never talk to him like that.
Four new rowdy, impossibly catchy songs from this post-punk group who bridge rough-edged New Zealand-style pop with darker, steelier sounds. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 31, 2018
It's actually live in Japan so there's a lot of Japanese people in the audience. This is exotic. The drumming stands out to me. Very interesting. I actually want to listen to it all when I'm allowed to. Thank You. Michael
