dogmatika
The Ruins of Fleisch
Michael Loughrey
"Sir? You need help?"
"Don't we all?"
"What can I do for you?"
"I left some parts of my body here."
"Sir?"
"Room 1849. I always keep receipts. Boxed. Numbered, year by year. I was in room 1849."
"I'm not quite sure I..."
"Some of my body parts fell off here. I want the hotel to give them back."
"Body parts? A vehicle?"
"Vessel. The corporeal envelope. There'll be organic minutiae a body sheds involuntarily—dead skin cells, dandruff, saliva, a small scab from my knee, I seem to remember. Stubble from shaving. Nasal mucus. Strands of my hair. I remember clipping my toenails. Don't recall masturbating. But I used the toilet, naturally, so you can make a note of that on your list of my missing body parts. You are making a list?"
"Sir. You need a doctor?"
"Forensic experts. To gather up what's mine, parts of me invisible to the naked eye. Did I mention sweat? I want it back. Every last drop."
§
Sir,
Your letter to me dated 12 February is both offensive and reprehensible.
I intend to forward it to the police since you are clearly a pervert and sexual predator of danger to the opposite sex, and possibly your own gender, not to mention beasts and fowl of the field.
For your information, my daughter has been happily married now for some years; but given your detailed description of her anatomical anomalies due to an accident with a power tool when she was a baby, I admit with repugnance it is possible that in her youth she was gullible enough to have had a brief dalliance with you.
Be informed that I am not in the habit of keeping intimate items of underwear she has long since grown out of, and even if I were, such garments would have properly laundered and ironed by our domestic staff.
Your request to purchase her school uniform panties you claim were soiled by your seed is as preposterous as it is disgusting.
Have you no shame at stooping to such levels of depravity?
May the Good Lord save your dark soul.
Sincerely,
Reverend Leopold Snipp
§
Dear Mr. Vosquito,
Following my telephone call to your offices today: I am dismayed by your negative response to my perfectly reasonable request for the return of all faeces and urine evacuated from my body and flushed into the city sewers of which you are Superintendent. An identical request made to the sewerage centre in Casablanca following a holiday there proved more fruitful.
At least they said they'd look into it. If Morocco can sort out my shit, surely our great country can?
Any waste from my body is by definition my property and the discharge of such matter does not give you any right to ownership of it. I attach a copy of my DNA information in order to facilitate identification of my belongings.
Kindly arrange for all of my stools and pee-pee to be separated from those of the lumpenproletariat and forwarded to me by return of post.
Yours in earnest,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
"Mr. Fleisch? Your hour's almost up and you haven't said a word."
"A pox on ghosts."
"More precisely?"
"Do you ever listen to me? All your other patients who've spilled their rancid beans on this couch left a contagious plague of phantoms."
"Shall we move on? In our last session, you wanted to tell me about an accident you had."
"Between natural decomposition and the odd mishap, my body is a crumbling ruin. The accident in question. Celebrating a birthday, some years back. Glorifying a step closer to death. How masochistic is that? I stood up to open the bottle and commenced a slow easing of the cork as I leant over the table. A champagne cork leaves a bottle at approximately one hundred and ten miles an hour."
"You lost an eye. Hence the dark glasses you never remove."
"Would you like to see it?"
"See it?"
"The eye. I wear it round my neck. On a silver chain. See? Preserved in crystal, the same process used to seal small flowers inside paperweights."
§
Howdy Reverend Snipp,
I'm not after olfactory gratification from your daughter's old panties or anything weird, but do want to recuperate any trace of semen I left that night in the church graveyard, even if it amounts to a crusty stain in the crotch of those panties a laboratory technician could scrape off with a scalpel and preserve under glass for me.
Scientific studies prove that the average male shoots off three hundred million spermatozoa with each ejaculation. Are there that many stars in the Universe? I don't expect to get all of my tadpoles back from your daughter's knickers, but do intend to exercise my Human Rights to get back as much as possible of what is unequivocally my property to add to the collection of various body parts I have shed during my life.
Similar requests I have made to multitudinous mistresses, one-night stands and whores I have impregnated have not met with the kind of antagonistic riposte which your missive contained. What's your beef?
Yours anti-theistically,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
With regard to your letter dated 27th June. Your information is correct, we do manufacture and supply spacesuits for use by NASA astronauts. Yours is a most unusual request, but we would be able to modify our existing spacesuit 4729/NGE/007/USA to your requirements. It will be necessary to consult with members of the scientific fraternity as well as laboratory equipment manufacturers in order to ensure a system within the spacesuit which would guarantee 100% collection of all natural fall-out and waste from your body.
Studies would also have to be undertaken to devise a complex network of conduits which would separate and collate your body fall-out and waste by category before distributing such matter into mobile storage receptacles exterior to the suit, since you wish to archive and store said matter.
I attach an estimate of costs and delivery of the spacesuit, pending feasibility studies of above-mentioned ancillary equipment and your acceptance of the estimates.
If you decide to proceed, you'll need to visit our factory for fitting, not entirely dissimilar to a visit to a tailor.
Best regards,
Theodore S. Kroog III
Vice-President
Stellar Suits Inc.
§
To whom it may concern:
A physician at your hospital removed my appendix thirty-two years ago.
Attached are photocopies of the files from my health care insurer containing the relevant details. This letter is a formal request for the return of my appendix, either deep-frozen or preserved in formaldehyde inside a glass jar, accompanied by a signed statement from you declaring that the appendix is mine.
Failure to comply with this request will result in legal proceedings against you.
My legal advisors assure me that theft of body parts could carry the same prison sentence as grand theft auto.
Yours seriously,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
From: Etra B. Fleisch
To: His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Subject: Everything
Your Holiness,
A lifetime anti-theist, I am considering converting to Buddhism since some guy on the Discovery Channel said that your religion includes belief in precedent lives and reincarnation from this mortal coil to future lives.
In order to convince me to become a Buddhist, can you please assure me of the following: if I were to convert,
a) would it be possible for Buddha to give me back all of my past lives (including all natural fall-out and waste from each of the bodies from those lives?) This request may seem a bit odd, but if they were my bodies, and what fell off or came out of them is surely mine.
b) Would Buddha object to my worshipping Him in this life whilst wearing a spacesuit?
e-mail me with your thoughts.
Take care,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
We ask your understanding that we conserve our anonymity. This is necessary for State security purposes.
We have been made aware of your curious quest to recuperate natural fall-out and waste matter from your body. Your abhorrent activities in this regard have been under surveillance for some time.
Whilst there is no law (as if we cared) prohibiting a citizen collecting their naturally-shed body matter, your behaviour demonstrates that you are a mentally unstable, dangerous subversive presenting a risk to the public at large, and as such are subject to arrest and incarceration for an indefinite period should the mood take us.
We have you in our sights.
Unable to be sincere for security reasons, we are
The Unmentionables
§
Dear heel-clicking government lackey,
I am in receipt of your gutless menace, and reading it on the crapper, laughed like a hyena before flushing it into oblivion.
Yours in stitches,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
"You slipped the groove, Mr. Flash?"
"Fleisch. Call me Etra. I'm fine. Just didn't expect an alien from another planet to look human. Or have a Hillbilly drawl."
"It's a disguise. If I had green skin and a cyclops eye, or whatever humans imagine extra-terrestrials look like, they'd lock me up before you could say Roswell. You said you wanted me to get some things back which belong to you. Stuff that had fallen into outer space."
"Affirmative. I want back everything I ever thought, said or dreamt. Must be out there in the aether, right? Ephemera that fell out of my brain."
"Normally I don't take on small jobs. But work has been slow. Heavy competition since the scum from Zoubaak landed. I used to have a monopoly in this forgotten corner of the Universe, then came those creeps from Phutmov, then a crew from Gixoid, and now the Zoubaak delegation. Thoughts word and dreams, eh? Okedokey. Where you want me to dump the stuff? I mean, a lifetime of thoughts, words and dreams, we're talking volume here."
"On my computer?...What's so funny?"
"Computer? Hell no. I'll distill it down into tiny pink pills. Wash them down with a stiff drink and you'll remember everything. Even stuff you didn't know about. Now, so I can get in touch with all that crap of yours floating around out there, just you lay back in that chair and let me put my antenna in your mouth. Does that bother you? I mean I'm clean, you know what I'm saying? You did bring cash? We don't take cheques."
§
From: Bunja Dhapagitali
To: Etra B. Fleisch
Subject: RE: Everything
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has asked me to write to you on His behalf.
His Holiness thanks you for your interest in Buddhism, but feels that it is not the religion best suited to your needs.
Have you tried the Catholics? Their karma is minor league, but they believe in reincarnation, and unlike us are not fussy about who believes in their god.
Should they object to you worshipping in a spacesuit, tell the Pope to go take a look in the mirror.
Om, etc.,
Bunja Dhapagitali
§
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
We ask your understanding that we conserve our anonymity. This is necessary for State security purposes.
Boy, are you in trouble. Transporting large quantities of shit and piss in a U-Haul trailer violates state and federal laws regarding sanitation. We are investigating the lease on the disused aircraft hanger in the desert where you are storing your piddle and crap and hope for your sake there is a clause allowing storage of freeze-dried human waste.
Furthermore, our monitoring of your Internet connections and phone calls shows that you contacted Mahal Noddleson, alias Hinckley Hufana, alias Gunnels McGrady. Mr. Noddleson is under surveillance since we suspect him to be a fraudster, duping innocent folk into believing he is an alien with paranormal powers.
On the other hand, if we were to pretend that Mr. Noddleson is from another planet, you'd be guilty of aiding and abetting an alien, adding to the growing list of crimes we're fabricating against you.
Unable to be sincere for security reasons, we remain
The Unmentionables
§
"New couch."
"Yes."
"I'm touched. That you care about me."
"I don't. A patient went berserk. Grabbed my paper knife and slashed the stuffing out of it. Is that an Adidas spacesuit, or a real spacesuit? How are you?"
"Frayed round the edges. At the end of my tether. Can you begin to fathom what a colossal task it is to recuperate all the body parts you've lost in a lifetime?"
"Sissyphus."
"What?"
"Not what. Who. Greek mythology. Sissyphus' lifetime task was to push a giant boulder up a hill. Each time he made it to the top, the rock rolled back and he had to start all over."
"If I told you government agents were persecuting me, would you say that I'm paranoid?"
"No."
§
Detestable üntermentionables,
I ask your understudy that I consecrate my anomie. This is necessitarian for stale secular porpoises.
Yours disrespectfully,
Etra B. Fleisch
§
Honeybuns,
My dad died last week, a massive stroke. One of the Nuns found him in church, butt naked, which didn't look cool for a man of the cloth. In one hand he had an empty bottle of Chivas, and in the other some photos of me when I was at school and a letter you'd written him about that night in the graveyard.
After I left college, I ran away from home and married a guy in white goods. He's dependable but trés boring, so when I try to sprinkle some spice on the mattress with a rented porn movie, I close my eyes and pretend he's King Kong.
Those panties are long gone. They were cotton, so maybe they got recycled as handkerchiefs or table napkins. I could send you some panties I wear now, though I oughta warn you I put on a little weight after the triplets were born.
Look me up if ever you get to Alaska.
Yours for a few wine spritzers,
Helen Snipp
§
A massive manhunt is underway to find Etra B. Fleisch, whose parents have declared him a missing person. Police are eager to interview Mr. Fleisch concerning stockage of materials which could prove hazardous to public health.
Mr. Fleisch was last seen wearing a spacesuit.
§
"Are you a real person? Or a recorded message?"
"Over here."
"In pitch blackness, that's hardly a precise navigational instruction."
"Don't worry, you're not that close to the edge."
"Edge? Yikes. Edge of what?"
"The border. Where gravity's pull begins to whisper its seductive sonnet."
"I'm dead. Gone to heaven. You're God. Jesus."
"Nothing ever dies. There is no heaven. There is no God."
"I've been kidnapped?"
"Returned."
"Returned?"
"Surely a familiar concept for the minor smartass that you seem to be. A seemingly insignificant fragment shed from the body returns to its source. Minuscule and of no importance, yet absolutely vital."
"What is this place?"
"The border. That way leads to the edge. The opposite direction leads to the body. From whence comes all, and to where all returns. A finite quantity of kinetic matter in an infinite void which parodies the grander quintessence by forming into smaller bodies which later decompose, ad infinitum. Parts of the body. Together. Separately."
§
Mother dear,
without normal means of communicating, I'm not sure this message will ever get to you. But I remembered what you told me when I was a kid about when you were a hippy on Haight-Ashbury, and how that shaman from Idaho taught you astral telepathy as a way of reaching out across space and time with your thoughts, and tuning in to those of others.
I guess you're wondering where I am. At first, it felt like I'd been abducted or had died and gone on to some afterlife, but now I know that's not true. So I just wanted to let you know that I'm fine, in fact never better. If you can get back to me, we'll know that all that paranormal stuff you dabbled in all those years ago works. Then I'll give you all my news and views.
How are you guys? Did PC's For Dummies get you up and running with the computer I gave you last Christmas?
Say hi to dad. I hope those herbal suppositories stopped his hair loss so he could keep what remains of his pony-tail, and that the arthritis isn't keeping him from strumming a few cast-iron torch ballads on the porch come sundown.
Later,
the prodigal son,
Etra
© Michael Loughrey 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Loughrey's short fiction has featured in Word Riot, Hobart, 5-trope, Aesthetica, Raging Face, Future Fire, Sein und Werden and Aphelion magazines. His story, 'Going Down', won first prize in the Authors Network short story competition.
To: His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Subject: Everything
Your Holiness,
A lifetime anti-theist, I am considering converting to Buddhism since some guy on the Discovery Channel said that your religion includes belief in precedent lives and reincarnation from this mortal coil to future lives.
In order to convince me to become a Buddhist, can you please assure me of the following: if I were to convert,
a) would it be possible for Buddha to give me back all of my past lives (including all natural fall-out and waste from each of the bodies from those lives?) This request may seem a bit odd, but if they were my bodies, and what fell off or came out of them is surely mine.
b) Would Buddha object to my worshipping Him in this life whilst wearing a spacesuit?
e-mail me with your thoughts.
Take care,
Etra B. Fleisch
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
We ask your understanding that we conserve our anonymity. This is necessary for State security purposes.
We have been made aware of your curious quest to recuperate natural fall-out and waste matter from your body. Your abhorrent activities in this regard have been under surveillance for some time.
Whilst there is no law (as if we cared) prohibiting a citizen collecting their naturally-shed body matter, your behaviour demonstrates that you are a mentally unstable, dangerous subversive presenting a risk to the public at large, and as such are subject to arrest and incarceration for an indefinite period should the mood take us.
We have you in our sights.
Unable to be sincere for security reasons, we are
The Unmentionables
Dear heel-clicking government lackey,
I am in receipt of your gutless menace, and reading it on the crapper, laughed like a hyena before flushing it into oblivion.
Yours in stitches,
Etra B. Fleisch
"You slipped the groove, Mr. Flash?"
"Fleisch. Call me Etra. I'm fine. Just didn't expect an alien from another planet to look human. Or have a Hillbilly drawl."
"It's a disguise. If I had green skin and a cyclops eye, or whatever humans imagine extra-terrestrials look like, they'd lock me up before you could say Roswell. You said you wanted me to get some things back which belong to you. Stuff that had fallen into outer space."
"Affirmative. I want back everything I ever thought, said or dreamt. Must be out there in the aether, right? Ephemera that fell out of my brain."
"Normally I don't take on small jobs. But work has been slow. Heavy competition since the scum from Zoubaak landed. I used to have a monopoly in this forgotten corner of the Universe, then came those creeps from Phutmov, then a crew from Gixoid, and now the Zoubaak delegation. Thoughts word and dreams, eh? Okedokey. Where you want me to dump the stuff? I mean, a lifetime of thoughts, words and dreams, we're talking volume here."
"On my computer?...What's so funny?"
"Computer? Hell no. I'll distill it down into tiny pink pills. Wash them down with a stiff drink and you'll remember everything. Even stuff you didn't know about. Now, so I can get in touch with all that crap of yours floating around out there, just you lay back in that chair and let me put my antenna in your mouth. Does that bother you? I mean I'm clean, you know what I'm saying? You did bring cash? We don't take cheques."
From: Bunja Dhapagitali
To: Etra B. Fleisch
Subject: RE: Everything
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has asked me to write to you on His behalf.
His Holiness thanks you for your interest in Buddhism, but feels that it is not the religion best suited to your needs.
Have you tried the Catholics? Their karma is minor league, but they believe in reincarnation, and unlike us are not fussy about who believes in their god.
Should they object to you worshipping in a spacesuit, tell the Pope to go take a look in the mirror.
Om, etc.,
Bunja Dhapagitali
Dear Mr. Fleisch,
We ask your understanding that we conserve our anonymity. This is necessary for State security purposes.
Boy, are you in trouble. Transporting large quantities of shit and piss in a U-Haul trailer violates state and federal laws regarding sanitation. We are investigating the lease on the disused aircraft hanger in the desert where you are storing your piddle and crap and hope for your sake there is a clause allowing storage of freeze-dried human waste.
Furthermore, our monitoring of your Internet connections and phone calls shows that you contacted Mahal Noddleson, alias Hinckley Hufana, alias Gunnels McGrady. Mr. Noddleson is under surveillance since we suspect him to be a fraudster, duping innocent folk into believing he is an alien with paranormal powers.
On the other hand, if we were to pretend that Mr. Noddleson is from another planet, you'd be guilty of aiding and abetting an alien, adding to the growing list of crimes we're fabricating against you.
Unable to be sincere for security reasons, we remain
The Unmentionables
"New couch."
"Yes."
"I'm touched. That you care about me."
"I don't. A patient went berserk. Grabbed my paper knife and slashed the stuffing out of it. Is that an Adidas spacesuit, or a real spacesuit? How are you?"
"Frayed round the edges. At the end of my tether. Can you begin to fathom what a colossal task it is to recuperate all the body parts you've lost in a lifetime?"
"Sissyphus."
"What?"
"Not what. Who. Greek mythology. Sissyphus' lifetime task was to push a giant boulder up a hill. Each time he made it to the top, the rock rolled back and he had to start all over."
"If I told you government agents were persecuting me, would you say that I'm paranoid?"
"No."
Detestable üntermentionables,
I ask your understudy that I consecrate my anomie. This is necessitarian for stale secular porpoises.
Yours disrespectfully,
Etra B. Fleisch
Honeybuns,
My dad died last week, a massive stroke. One of the Nuns found him in church, butt naked, which didn't look cool for a man of the cloth. In one hand he had an empty bottle of Chivas, and in the other some photos of me when I was at school and a letter you'd written him about that night in the graveyard.
After I left college, I ran away from home and married a guy in white goods. He's dependable but trés boring, so when I try to sprinkle some spice on the mattress with a rented porn movie, I close my eyes and pretend he's King Kong.
Those panties are long gone. They were cotton, so maybe they got recycled as handkerchiefs or table napkins. I could send you some panties I wear now, though I oughta warn you I put on a little weight after the triplets were born.
Look me up if ever you get to Alaska.
Yours for a few wine spritzers,
Helen Snipp
A massive manhunt is underway to find Etra B. Fleisch, whose parents have declared him a missing person. Police are eager to interview Mr. Fleisch concerning stockage of materials which could prove hazardous to public health.
Mr. Fleisch was last seen wearing a spacesuit.
"Are you a real person? Or a recorded message?"
"Over here."
"In pitch blackness, that's hardly a precise navigational instruction."
"Don't worry, you're not that close to the edge."
"Edge? Yikes. Edge of what?"
"The border. Where gravity's pull begins to whisper its seductive sonnet."
"I'm dead. Gone to heaven. You're God. Jesus."
"Nothing ever dies. There is no heaven. There is no God."
"I've been kidnapped?"
"Returned."
"Returned?"
"Surely a familiar concept for the minor smartass that you seem to be. A seemingly insignificant fragment shed from the body returns to its source. Minuscule and of no importance, yet absolutely vital."
"What is this place?"
"The border. That way leads to the edge. The opposite direction leads to the body. From whence comes all, and to where all returns. A finite quantity of kinetic matter in an infinite void which parodies the grander quintessence by forming into smaller bodies which later decompose, ad infinitum. Parts of the body. Together. Separately."
Mother dear,
without normal means of communicating, I'm not sure this message will ever get to you. But I remembered what you told me when I was a kid about when you were a hippy on Haight-Ashbury, and how that shaman from Idaho taught you astral telepathy as a way of reaching out across space and time with your thoughts, and tuning in to those of others.
I guess you're wondering where I am. At first, it felt like I'd been abducted or had died and gone on to some afterlife, but now I know that's not true. So I just wanted to let you know that I'm fine, in fact never better. If you can get back to me, we'll know that all that paranormal stuff you dabbled in all those years ago works. Then I'll give you all my news and views.
How are you guys? Did PC's For Dummies get you up and running with the computer I gave you last Christmas?
Say hi to dad. I hope those herbal suppositories stopped his hair loss so he could keep what remains of his pony-tail, and that the arthritis isn't keeping him from strumming a few cast-iron torch ballads on the porch come sundown.
Later,
the prodigal son,
Etra
© Michael Loughrey 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHORMichael Loughrey's short fiction has featured in Word Riot, Hobart, 5-trope, Aesthetica, Raging Face, Future Fire, Sein und Werden and Aphelion magazines. His story, 'Going Down', won first prize in the Authors Network short story competition.
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