Will Self - My Idea of Fun

There was a ‘lumpa-lumpa’ noise in the air, a deafening heartbeat. Richard looked down at the crook of his arm and saw that a massive thrombus had blown up in the vein; it bulged beatingly, uncontrollably: ‘lumpa-lumpa, lumpa-lumpa’. Richard tried to call out to Rosie, to tell her to cease with her injecting of him into her and her into him. It was no use, her eyes were glazed and rolled back in their sockets, she stared sightlessly up at the ceiling where Spiderman hung from his plastic web. The ‘Iumpa-lumpa’ grew, filling the cold closeness of the room. Outside the streetlamps came on, each one an island. ‘Lumpa-lumpa, Iumpa-lumpa.’ And still the lump grew and grew in the crook of his arm, grew until it eclipsed the arm itself. And still Rosie pumped up and down. Richard tore with his nails at Rosie's breast, feeling the skin pucker and give, like the wrinkled rubber of an old party balloon.

The breast exploded. The thrombus exploded. Suddenly the air was full with a spray of orange droplets; gouts of pussy fluid spurted out from arm and chest. The tattered skin of Rosie's breast fell slack against the exposed radiator of her rib cage. Richard stared down at his arm. Corners of flesh and skin curled away from the ragged hole in the crook of his elbow. Exposed to view, in the very core of his arm, were the crude struts and wonky rivets of his Meccano anatomy, lain bare for all to see.

A huge bald man came in from where he had been loitering in the passage and stood over Richard. He was wearing an immaculately tailored pin-stripe suit. The bald man mopped the orange gunk from his lapels and brow with a silk paisley handkerchief. Then he reached his hand down towards Richard's face, middle fingers and thumb bent in, index and little fingers extended, warding off the evil eye. With the two outstretched fingers he teased down Richard's eyelids and pressed him back once more, down into the orange darkness.

('He's right under now,’ said Gyggle.

‘An’ I suppose you want me to change his bloody pee bag an’ that.’

‘Well, yes. I do think that constitutes part of your duty as a nurse.

‘Usually there's a good reason for why a patient is unconscious for the whole damn weekend.’

‘Ours not to reason why — ‘ Gyggle shot over his shoulder, and was gone, off to interview his volunteer.)

Ian was in the Land of Children's Jokes. His gummy eyes prised themselves open to see a garish room full of clashing primary colours, post-box reds, viridian greens and cerulean blues. It was a large room and the furniture was all fungal. There were giant toadstools instead of chairs and grossly distended puffballs in place of sofas. Tall mushrooms gathered together, their slick flat caps grouping to form the surfaces of what might have been tables. The close air in the room was meaty, yeasty, damp and beefy.

There were two men in the room with Ian. One, who was plump and pink, squatted naked in the corner. The other wore a purple suit of satin covered with large black spots and moved about, stepping between the unusual soft furnishings. Every third step he twirled on his heels and as he did so struck an attitude, the cane in his right hand held aloft at an angle. Ian could hear him muttering to himself, ‘Cha, cha, cha! Cha, cha, cha! Cha, cha, cha!’ the emphasis always on the last ‘cha’.

‘Are you awake, dearie?’ said the pink man in the corner. He spoke without moving, but it was clear to Ian from the way that his flabby thighs quivered that the man was finding it difficult to hold his position. As if to confirm this every few seconds a little clenched hand would shoot out from his lap and drop to the carpet, steadying his wavering bulk. ‘Doh err!’ exclaimed the pink man. ‘I'm not: sure I can hold out like this for much longer. ‘

‘Cha, cha, cha! Cha, cha, cha!’ The character in the polka-dot suit shot between them, pirouetting. As well as the cane he sported a top hat made from the same shiny material, and in the same pattern — this he now began to raise and waggle, keeping time with his Terpsichorean promenade.

‘It's my balance, you see,’ the pink man went on. ‘It's by no means as good as it used to be, not at all as good, not at all.’ To underline the point, he then nearly fell right back on to his bum, only saving himself by grabbing the thick stem of a fierce three-foot-high fly agaric. ‘Oof! I wonder if it's worth it, it used to take a couple of days but now it can be a month or more.’

‘What?’ asked Ian.

Speaking had to have been a mistake. Before he spoke Ian could as much believe that the room and its occupants were a hazy figment as a real situation, but with speech came focus and precision: the sharp tang of a fresh crop of mustard and cress that spread across the rotting pile of the damp carpet; wan heaps of daylight that fell in from a tall triptych of sash windows at the far end of the room; Pinky's voice, which resolved itself into a soft-accented bucolic burr; and the ‘Cha, cha, chal’ that came rattling in between them defined itself as precipitate, intrusive, urban, American.

‘What only used to take a couple of days?’ asked Ian again. While it was quite true that he was riven by fear and wrapped around with the nauseous sensation of so much fungus in an enclosed place, his salvation still clearly lay in conversation.

‘To get the worms out, of course.’ Pinky essayed a gesture towards the puckered base of his body but his little arm could only reach half-way down the side of one haunch. There it rested, the index finger crooked inwards toward his hidden portal. ‘I'm sure it's not these, because they're just as good as they ever were. Why, they're even doing a special offer at the moment, you get twenty-five per cent extra — absolutely free!’ He was genuinely delighted by the bargain, his gently weathered features creased up with joy.

Ian propped himself up on his elbows as best he could. This motion set off waves of infective pollenation in the organic bed — spores the size of dragonflies lifted off in a puff of oxidised dust from around his neck and shoulders. The experience was truly appalling but there was some pay-off, for his semi-recumbent position allowed Ian to see beneath Pinky's bum. A Mars Bar lay on the carpet. It had been cut open and the chocolate coating prised apart to reveal the stratification of toffee, caramel and nougat within.

‘For the worms, you see,’ Pinky explained. ‘They love a Mars Bar more than anything else, although that being said, they'll usually take a Snickers or a Bounty as well.’

‘So what's the problem?’ Ian felt genuinely curious.

‘Oh! Do you really sympathise, do you really? Do you think you could really care? He never even asks what the situation is’ ('Cha, cha, cha! Cha, cha, cha!') ’he's completely absorbed in his own problems. But if you're interested I'll tell you.

‘You see, the cycle normally lasts about a week. First there's a funny pain, in a sort of a band around my tummy, then come the cramps and the squits. But it's when I actually start to lose weight, that's when I know that the worm is back for certain, that's when I have to act.’

‘So what do you do?’

‘Well, here's how it is. I usually push a Mars Bar up my bum every day for three or four days. On the fourth day — and mark my words, this has never failed before- I just lay the Mars Bar on the carpet and sort of squat over it. When the worm peeks out of my arsehole to see what's happened to his elevenses, I grab him by his neck and drag him right out! But this time things aren't going so well — I've been at it for two weeks and there hasn't been any sign of him. ‘

‘How do you know he's still in there?’

‘Oh my dear — I can feel him, of course. I can feel him right now, coiled up in me. His body fills me up, the end of his tail is jammed at the base of my gullet and his wet wormy head is questing in my colon even as we speak. Oh, I had so hoped that he would come today.’