Reveries, by Bruno Cooke, is available on Amazon. Read about it on Goodreads, or buy it straight off the bat. Also, read a review here.

Richard’s affliction first presented itself on his sixth birthday.

After a wonderful day at the playground with both of his friends, his parents took him home for apple pie. Apple pie was his favourite. Then, it was time for his bath.

Splashing about in the tub with his ducks and battleships, he was completely carefree. He liked to smother his lower face in bubbles and pretend he was Father Christmas, then wipe his chin clean and pretend he was Nietzsche. He had very mature reading habits.

During this bath, as it was his sixth birthday, his mother made it extra special.

“Would you like one last present?” She touched his nose with her finger.

“Oh, yes!” Richard was overjoyed. He loved surprises.

Karen left, leaving the door open behind her. She returned a minute later, and when she did a strange aroma filled the room. She held a round object, covered by a tea towel. Richard marvelled at the strange object.

“Can you guess what it is?”

“Umm…” He couldn’t.

“I thought, because you like apples so much, you might like to try a new fruit.”

“OK!” That did nothing to explain the peculiar whiff which drifted up Richard’s nose.

“This is called a durian. It’s from south-east Asia. Would you like to try it?”

“Mm-hm,” said Richard. He was cautious because of the smell, but nothing could ruin his sixth birthday.

Karen unveiled the fruit. It was a greenish-yellow, and covered in spikes. It had a split down the centre, and emitted an odour incomparable to anything Richard had ever smelled. The smell intensified as the cover was lifted, and grew stronger and stronger. It wafted about the room and tingled in his nostrils. When Karen wrenched the fruit open, the smell became unbearable.

At once he felt his innards contract—he thought he needed to sneeze, then to be sick, then… His bowels reacted in the most formidable way. A rush of gas built up in his colon and burst through his anal canal, carrying with it all the diluted, unprocessed brown fluid which was being held in his intestine.

In an instant, the bathwater turned a murky ochre. Richard squealed as soft pulps of shit floated up to the surface. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Karen ushered him out of the bath. Then, when he started to drip the soiled water on the tiled floor, she panicked and pushed him back in.

“Oh, Richard!”

“Sorry, mummy,” Richard said. He didn’t know what else he could say. It was all his fault!

“Oh darling it’s not your fault.” He felt sure that it was. “Stand up and let me hose you down,” Karen stifled a giggle. “That’s it. Now, one foot up.” Masterfully, Karen ensured that no more poo drops made it onto the floor. She wrapped him in a towel and gave him a big hug. He began to cry. Karen drained the tub and rinsed it down while Richard went to the kitchen and stared at the fridge, shaking occasionally with a sob.

A cup of hot chocolate cheered him up, and his sniffles subsided. Karen sat with him and watched him drink it, wondering what had occurred within him to prompt such a violent outburst of faecal matter. Could it have been an allergic reaction? She’d never known that to happen, and so suddenly too. Something to do with bad smells? It was a mystery. She resolved to ask her friend Elisa the next day; he knew lots about these kinds of things! Then, Richard surprised her with a question.

“Mum, why am I called Richard?” 

“What? Oh, your name? That’s a good question. How long have you been thinking about that?”

“Um, a few days. Everyone at school’s been talking about it. Frank was named after a boxer, and Isabelle was named after an explorer.”

“And what do you think you were named after?”

“Well, everyone says I was named after one of the instruments used when I was made,” Richard looked up, and Karen saw that he was puzzled. “But I told them you and dad don’t play any musical instruments.”

“Mmmm.”

“And then they laughed so I went away.”

“Oh, darling!” Karen’s parental urge kicked in, and she squeezed her son’s little cheek.

“But can you tell me who I’m named after, so I can tell them?”

“I’d be glad to. You were named after a man called Richard Sterling. He’s a travel writer! He writes about all kinds of things. He’s how your dad and I found out about durian fruits.” Richard’s stomach lurched at the thought. Seeing his skin turn a shade paler, Karen decided to veer away from the subject.

“His writings will shake the earth, they really will. He leant us some of his notes and they are, well, extraordinary.” Richard swilled the end of the hot chocolate in his mug. Tea, chocolate, Mum and Dad’s coffee. Some of humanity’s favourite beverages are brown, he thought. Why did it have to be so?

“What do you think?”

“Um, so I was named after a writer?”

“Yes. So now you can turn around to your friends and say I wasn’t named after a boxer, or an explorer, I was named after—well, I suppose he is something of an explorer. So, you can say, I was named after an explorer too. That’s much more interesting than someone who fights for a living. Don’t you think? Richard?”

But he was lost, once more, in the dregs of his mug. He put it back on the table and saw the image printed on the side: Winnie the Pooh sitting merrily in a field of orange flowers. Richard didn’t feel so merry, but he did like knowing why he was called Richard.

“Much cooler,” he said. And then he went to bed. Thankfully, he didn’t dream of the durian. It never even crossed his mind, until one October morning, six years later.

*

If you enjoyed this, read more excerpts at the following links:
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard goes to his first Masturbators’ Anonymous Meeting
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard shits in the bath, is upset
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard, Jenny, and a pair of antediluvians
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Josie Haybottom is late

Buy the book here.

Reveries, by Bruno Cooke, is available on Amazon. Read about it on Goodreads, or buy it straight off the bat. Also, read a review here.

Eight minutes later, Richard returned. Jenny was etching something pornographic into the tabletop, scratching at the surface with a house key. She looked up, her gaze holding something devilish, almost diabolic. Richard grinned.

“Two Antediluvians, shaken and stirred.”

“Champion. Tell me, what goes into an Antediluvian? Does it require a sprinkling of arched nose and too-thick reading glasses? An artificial grey patch and stupid wizened curl?” She was referring to Ronald.

“Cherimoya, or custard apple. It’s one of the only tropical fruits I can handle,” he said, gleaming, missing the boat.

“What do you mean? You don’t like mangoes, papayas, pineapples?”

“Yes yes, of course they’re fine. But anyway they’ve been normalised. They’re no more tropical than palm trees, which are scattered round Torquay harbour like breadcrumbs, leading nowhere. But there are others, real fruits of the tropics which haven’t been integrated into the British palette.”

“For example?”

“For example,” he leaned back. “Well. I’ll tell you, but first, to your health.”

“To ours.” They clinked, drank, winced. There was an uncomfortable silence during which their eyes met.

“Richard?” Jenny’s face had coiled into a mutated spring, darkening in three areas.

“Oh, dear,” he said, letting the brownish yellow liquid flow back into his glass. “This cherimoya’s rotten. That’s rotten luck.”

“It’s awful, Richard. Awful. Don’t take me back there, I won’t allow it.” Her face was still distorted. He passed her a serviette to mop her chin, then went back to the bar. His thick wrists slid along the top, feeling the rough matte wood for signs of wear.

They were given lime daiquiris, a platter of carbohydrate-based snacks and half a dozen cans of Diet Coke as compensation. Reimbursement was impossible.

“The system doesn’t allow it,” he told her.

“Bloody typical. What do you call these?”

“Mini Cheddars, only they’re not. They’re posher.” He threw two into his mouth, only one making its target. The other collided with his unshapely chin and made him blink.

“They’re pretty good. Crunchy. And these?”

“Thins. Cheese thins, I suppose.”

“Anything that’s called a Thin is bound to be disappointing.”

“You’re right.”

“I know,” she said. “You were going to tell me about tropical fruits.”

“I was. There’s one I can’t handle, though I can’t recall—” He stopped short. Was he about to recall? His mind had been washed clean of childhood remembrances and adult guilt, was untarnished by all the shame of a human life. He thought of tropical fruits.

“Richard?”

“Durian. Oh, my.” His eyes began to trickle. “I remember. I can’t stand it. But how did I know I couldn’t?” Some shred of long-term memory wedged deep in his cranium, jogged by the fact of a dodgy cherimoya? Was it so fundamental, so formative as to survive hibernation, to be roused by the sudden sensory reference?

“Durian?” she said. “I’ve heard of it. I heard a story about a kid.” Richard groaned. “My father used to work at a secondary school, before he died. He’s dead now.”

“Secondary school.” His mouth opened and a spindle of saliva fell, hung an inch long from the corner of his mouth.

“Not far from here. They used to celebrate Ivory Day.” The words made Richard’s stomach twist. “It was really archaic. They all dressed up in robes and hung chandeliers and draped insignias on sheets in the Great Hall, the Ivory Hall. Talk about bloody antediluvian.”

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“That’s it. That was her first name. Christ, to think, all those wars. That’s what constituted a hero. Can you believe it?”

“Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, well, what happened went down in the annals. They split the fruit in some creepy, pseudo-masonic ritual. Elder and a Minor, textbook weird. Poor soul chosen at random, gallumphs onto stage with his tail between his legs, two thousand eyes trained on him begging for a false move. Fucking kids. Kids love failure. So do adults, mind. We’re barbaric. Richard?”

“Barbaric. You’re right.”

“I know. So the kid gets up there and he’s got this problem with his bowels. Nobody knows about it but him, maybe his parents. Actually I bet they do know but they’ve not let on that they know, leave him in the dark, neglect the sucker. Barbaric.” Jenny slurps the last of her daiquiri and instinctively cracks a can of Coke, cruising into the present tense. Her palette dries easily so she likes to have a drink to hand. She sips the fizzy drink, immediately regrets ridding her mouth of lime tang. Picks up the coupe and drains the dregs, craving citrus. Wonders if a daiquiri should even be served in a coupe. She’s sure it isn’t. What an establishment, mouldy fruit and misaligned glass/cocktail combinations. Muses on its origin – glass, not cocktail – remembers a classmate years ago telling her of Marie Antoinette’s breast, sliding into glass in conical perfection. Perfection? She imagines her own breasts being cast into silicone, handled by masters of ergonomics wearing white gloves and marvelling at her body. Artful hands playing her like an instrument. Future generations drinking from her shapely bosom. Indirectly but still. The prissiness of it all. Buxom, delightful.

“Richard? Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because it’s just getting to the good bit.”

“The good bit? What happens next?” Richard reclined sideways to nearly horizontal, world spinning about him, his weight propped under one elbow. Drool formed an eel-like bridge between the left corner of his mouth and his forearm, slid like a snail-trail onto the table. Jenny barely noticed, she was thunder and lightning.

“Kid goes up there, knees trembling. He’s heard of the durian, knows how bloody dangerous it is. How fucking stinky it is. And he’s got this problem with his bowel whereby all is let loose if too pongy a pong strikes his nasal cavity. This really is a recipe for disaster, you appreciate.” Jenny slurped at her Coke.

“So the leader, elder, whatever masonic bogus he goes by, slices the fruit in fitting with tradition. Tradition, that’s who’s to blame here.” A car horn carried into the room via the open door. “He cuts it right in half, its scent wafts kidward. Kid balks, freaks, doesn’t know what to do. What can he do? He’s at rock bottom, there’s nowhere he can go.”

“What happens?” Richard almost shouted, somehow counting on Jenny to rewrite this memory for him, as it flashed past his eyes in a foray of fleeting images. Dreadful, haunted images.

“He shits his pants, Richard. The whole room hears it. There’s a deathly silence, you understand. The sound of knife through durian husk is practically amplified by the reverence in the room. It’s a palpable silence broken only or at least first by the sound of knife through husk, then second and louder and more dreadfully by the sound of this kid passing gas, sludge, brown matter filling the space between his behind and the cloth of his pants. It’s pathetic and tremendous and unbelievably tragic. I almost couldn’t believe it.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t believe you. You are telling me this.” His faced drained of all colour and he lost consciousness. He slumped further in the booth, his chin inching closer to the table until it rested grubbily on the off-black lacquer. He was out for a minute, like a light, like a candle.

*

If you enjoyed this, read more excerpts at the following links:
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard goes to his first Masturbators’ Anonymous Meeting
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard shits in the bath, is upset
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard, Jenny, and a pair of antediluvians
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Josie Haybottom is late

Buy the book here.

Reveries, by Bruno Cooke, is available on Amazon. Read about it on Goodreads, or buy it straight off the bat. Also, read a review here.

At 05:01 on that fateful October morning, Josie awoke in a wet bed. Her bed was wet with urine, her own. The sun still slept.

Her brother, it seemed, observed an etiquette vastly transliterated from her own, regarding prank rules. To her, unconscious meant unarmed; to Drew, it meant easy pickings. He had been told the previous day about the trick of soaking your victim’s fingers in warmed vinegar-water during NREM3 (approximately 20% of a sleep cycle, his learned compatriot informed him). Roused by his alarm at 04:45 ante meridiem, he prepared silently while the blood throbbed in his ears. He crept into his sister’s bedroom, taking with him a tub of water estimated by his elbow to be damn near close enough to body temperature.

Needless to say (but hell, let it be said): the prank paid off. He watched on, petrified, feet fastened, shivering with gratified anticipation as the puddle grew. Josie released a soft groan, and stretched out her back. It clicked. The sound jolted Drew back to the immediacy of reality and he scarpered. In his rush he trod with full force on a stray Lego cube – Josie had not forgotten the value of tangible play, regularly creating for herself miniature worlds in which anything at all was possible, as long as it was constructed exclusively from quadrangles and could be connected, top and bottom, in the prescribed way.

Drew yelped to high heaven, quite unable to inhibit his reflexes against such a burst of visceral pain. The bolt shot up his leg and reached his brain before he could suppress it, and his cry rang forth. Josie’s torso snapped up like a spring, frightened into consciousness by her brother’s gasp. She retorted with a breathy AGH! which alerted Drew. Blenching at the thought of her impending revenge, he swung round and flung up his foot, wishing to soothe it for immediate escape. He lost his balance again, semi-somersaulted with a flying scissor-kick into the air, and landed on his bottom, unprotected but for a thin layer of pyjama cotton.

A blunt twinge seared from his left cheek and reverberated like a ripple through his rump. Josie tossed her duvet from her bed in order to reprimand her brother for waking her without permission, only to discover her compromised position. She sat in a pool of her own doing, warm and wet to the hilt. Her blood proceeded to poach. She knew her brother’s dastardly ways and knew in a second that he was the culprit. A ragged, fuming electricity began to pop and bubble in the pit of her stomach. It seethed and blew gales within her, raising her up onto her hind legs. Towering above Drew, she gained vantage, therefore advantage.

Standing now, a lioness in her prime, she roared with hearty rumble, her mane full aflame and plumage lit. She bounced once, twice, and then flew like a falcon onto her brother’s back. Her faithful talons sank in, prompting the blood to flow where it may. Drew’s sharp shriek could be heard from three doors down: Norwegian Ms Jerry in the yellow cottage at number 135 awoke with a start, shot up and knocked her head KATHUMP on the bedside lamp, wherefrom a searing bulge could be seen until a week later; sickly old Reverend Harklestamp, the Dane in the blue house opposite, yelped and defecated where he lay, staring up at the majestic compass which adorned the mantelpiece; down the hall, the fractious pair’s biological mother (their house was red; they didn’t have any fish) opened her weary eyes and, disorientated for a moment, flailed out beside her, thwacking her partner square on the nose.

Josie was in her element. All four limbs wreaked their most vengeful wrath upon her brother, inflicting so great a shock that he lost all consciousness. Drew crumpled under his sister’s bulk and, landing directly cube to cube, suffered comprised potency and generous scarring. Let that be a lesson to brothers all.

Unfazed by the hyperbole of the situation, and dehydrated after the fracas, Josie went downstairs for a cool glass of coconut milk. Coco was unassailable.

The morning’s set-to had, however, taken its toll on Josie’s foot-to-eye coordination. Steps were too much. Her humanness raised its gnarly head – or, more precisely, the minor discrepancy in length between her right and left legs went uncompensated for – she fell, oh how she fell!, with uproarious calamity. On her third step, her foot only narrowly shaved the stairlip, and clumped onto the level below. This knocked her so off course that she came tumbling down, step by step, with a series of percussive thumps which roused the whole household. Her mothers both, biological and nominal, came bounding out of their room, skipped down the staircase to find their daughter (biological, titular) star-fished on the tartan-rugged floor, florid and moaning. Knocked unconscious like her brother, Josie soon awoke to find herself one tooth down, a certified resident of sore-town.

*

If you enjoyed this, read more excerpts at the following links:
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard goes to his first Masturbators’ Anonymous Meeting
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard shits in the bath, is upset
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Richard, Jenny, and a pair of antediluvians
EXCERPT [Reveries]: Josie Haybottom is late

Buy the book here.