The House of Writers (11 page)

“All right. I am Brian Lettsin and here is my story. I was working for
I & I Books.
It began innocently, with a few novels featuring bemused writers: their affairs, drinking problems, failure to produce their works, and so on. Nothing too harmful. Then I received this novel,
A Postmodern Postmortem.
Set in an afterlife for bad characters, the book was riddled with the kind of intertextual knowingness that was to set me on the path to destruction. There followed an orgiastic spree of metafucking—writers stepping into their novels to slap and screw their characters, writers appearing in other writers’ novels to do the same, then writers slapping and screwing the other writers in their novels, and characters taking over the narration of the novels and so on. One book,
I Am the Novel,
pushed me over the edge. Over ten thousand unidentified voices, zigzagging along the page, or huddled into spirals or boxes, even printed overlapping one another, squabbled for authorship, offering nothing in the manner of plot or character, or a conceivable
point
to the whole thing—one voice even cried out in orgasm ‘Oh! This is so pointless ... so ... oh oh oh! ... meeeeeaaaningleeeeeesss!’ epitomising the masturbatory emptiness at the heart of this publisher’s project. I suppose there was some theoretical logic behind these novels—I recall some drear pamphlet penned by the editor riddled with Derrida/Barthes references, as if cribbing from those two was a sufficient apologia for their gummy deluge—but this was too late for me.
I Am the Novel,
running at over 1000 pages, no author name on the cover, sent me into a spasm of self-doubt. I woke up having no idea who I was, if I was a character in a novel, if I had written a novel ... I cracked up. I spent my days staring into mirrors in the hope I might recall a mere snippet of the previous ‘life’ I was supposed to have led ... a life that is ... I am Brian ... hang on, who I am again?”

“Brian Lettsin. Not supposed. You are verifiably Brian Peter Lettsin. I have shown you your birth certificate. Your parents come around every week with family snaps. Your old college friends pour anecdotes into your ear every other day. Your ex-girlfriend writes you emails detailing your time together. No other Brian Lettsins exist in this country, you are unique in your Brian Lettsinness. So that name again: Brian Lettsin. Brian Lettsin. Erin?” the doctor offered.

“Brian Lettsin,” Erin said. At this, Brian’s pupils dilated and his neck swivelled back towards the mirrors, into which he stared again, muttering: “But
am
I?
Am
I?”

“Hmm. A tricky case,” the doctor said to Erin. “Have you encountered anything from
I & I Books?”

“Yes. Read two pages, hurled it against the wall.”

“Of course. The most severe waffle imaginable. I confess that after reading twelve pages, I was starting to question my sanity.”

“Cure?”

“Not sure. Saying ‘Brian Lettsin’ repeatedly seems to work. Perhaps if we invited everyone Brian knows, and they all said ‘Brian Lettsin’ simultaneously, Brian would snap back into sanity. It’s hard to predict.”

“It is oddly addictive saying Brian Lettsin. Brian Lettsin. Brian Lettsin.”

“Yes, I have grown fond of saying Brian Lettsin too. Brian Lettsin. Brian Lettsin.”

“Who?” Brian Lettsin asked.

“You, Brian Lettsin,” the doctor said. “Right. Let’s leave Brian Lettsin for now. Shall we proceed to the next trauma room? I can’t see a stapler in here.”

“No, me neither. Bye, Brian Lettsin.”

“Brian Lettsin,” Brian said, unsurely.

“Yes, that’s you!”

“Oh, right. Are you sure?”

D
UE
to a misunderstanding with the construction team during The House’s erection (Marilyn Volt had refused to accept the second estimate and cough up 100K in advance), the waste disposal and plumbing aspect of the building was unfortunate (entire floors from time to time were flooded in faeces) and pipes protruded from unusual places, the results wavering from comic (a vertical spume on the roof) to not-comic (a pipe releasing fresh urine into the lifts) and sometimes tragic (the long pipe outside the fifteenth floor window that C.J. Watson’s son Puff was hanging from, seeking to complete his survey of the pipes that he could insert his fingers into). The writers who showed concern (two of them—the others had deadlines) mistook Puff’s presence as a suicide attempt and persuaded him he had too much to live for (which was untrue—his mother didn’t love him and had told him several times he’d have to vent this lack into writing as an adult to cope with the ordeal) and offered outstretched hands, despite his being two meters away, already inserting his hand into the pipe. “Hey, I can fit my whole mitt in here!” he said, laughing. Concrete awaited his impact below.

Satisfied that this pipe was the fattest of those he’d inserted fingers into, disappointed he couldn’t insert his other hand into the pipe without going splat on the concrete, Puff shimmied back towards the window. One of the concerned writers secretly hoped the kid would plummet so he could have first-hand experience of that split-second terror that comes across the face once a person realises it’s over, but Puff was grinning and singing to himself a made-up ditty about the wideness of pipes:

My pipe is wide, my pipe is fat
I can stick my digits in that
Your pipe is not, your pipe is small
You can’t stick in anything at all

The other writer sincerely didn’t want Puff to plummet and had brought blood to her tongue and scrunched her toes so tight she strained a tendon. Puff shimmied along the pipe and dropped back through the window unscathed. The female writer hugged Puff so tight he coughed up phlegm on her shoulder, kicking her in the shin to free himself and giggling. He leapt onto her desk and began to boogie. He sang: “I
spat on the lady
/
I made drool on her dress
/ I
spat on the ugly lady
/
I made a horrible mess!”
and kicked her papers around the office, hopping from desk to desk shouting his song. Her concern vanished and she regretted not having karate-chopped his wrists at the last minute so he’d have made a more appealing shape on the concrete instead of the shapes he was throwing around the office as he continued to remark on the drool and how amusing it was to have made saliva over the ugly lady’s ugly shoulder. “I hate you, you little bastard,” she said. Puff flung a hole punch at her head and howled with laughter.

R
ING,
ring! Who’s there? This is your future speaking. My future? Yes, your future at ScotCall. What’s in store for me, future? How about financial security for life, an amazing pension plan, in-house dating,
en suite
accommodation and vital honest living? Wow! How about a safe environment in our housing complexes, where you can raise your children without fear of abuse or attack, the opportunity to invest shares with a 0.5% interest rate, and the chance to be part of a kinetic and highly motivated team of upbeat and enthusiastic people? Can it possibly get any better than this?

Yes!

Your future is a phone call away. Call now for an immediate interview, and you could be part of the ScotCall family in a matter of days! Boasting over 1,928 branches in Scotland, expanding further north into Thurso and the Orkneys, ScotCall is an exciting and inevitable part of your future. Our phone-slingers are on hand 24hrs to take calls about anything and everything!
Can you help our customers with the following queries?

Who do I contact to order a pizza? My girlfriend has a wrinkle on her left brow and she refuses to get the surgery—should I chuck her? My left leg is 0.4mm smaller than my right—am I deformed? I don’t like my stepfather—should I tell him? The picture quality of my seventh TV is slightly less powerful than the picture quality of my other twelve TVs—should I sue? My nails are chipped—should I get a replacement hand? What do I do if my sock has a hole in it? What’s a university? Can I download and upload at the same time, or will that explode my computer? How come boats float on water but anvils sink? Can I get HIV by kissing a penguin? Who do I call to get the number for the person who gives out numbers for the people who specialise in phone calls about calling people to get the number for the people who give out numbers for the people who specialise—My sweet pea, Joe Strummer: should I splay or should I grow? Id is, is id? I forgot how to walk—is it left, right, left, or right, left, right?

Can you help? Join us.

SCOTCALL.

YOUR FUTURE.

Recruitment Line:

0800 717 717

U
PON
arriving at The House and awarding myself the humorous title of Queen Momma, I knew I would have to make a sacrifice of Koreshesque proportions. These beleaguered people, these lifestarved wretches, these writers, were helpless children and I would have to act the part of their mothers, attending to their basic needs to keep the interpersonal relations smooth between departments and prevent reversion to a primitive society involving murderous skirmishes and overly messy blood rituals between floors, as in the fictions of J.G. Ballard.
¹
Apart from ensuring the food and water supplies are in constant motion and dispatching workers to mend the hundred or so broken thingies per day, I have more complicated and hair-pulling tasks to perform. For example, one day on the Western floor, a strain of yellow-bellied lily-livered cowardice broke out and the forty-seven writers in turn lost control of their bladders, drenching the shag carpets in hot piss. To solve the problem, I worked through the night making catheters to place beneath the desks, each with a long pipe attached that threaded its way along the carpet towards the open windows. Strong winds, unfortunately, redistributed the waste to the Children’s Books floor, and dozens of piss-covered writers in furious revenge rolled pipes bursting with water up to the Western floor in an attempt to flood their enemies. The Western writers merely used their catheters to catch the water, piping torrents out the window and back down to the Children’s Books floor, flooding the entire office until the writers were breathing in 30cm gaps between the waterbed and the ceiling before a plumber arrived and began “dealing” with the problem. This corner-cutting cowboy decided to “store” the unwanted water in various parts of the building—inside photocopiers, desk drawers, under ceiling tiles, parts of loose carpet, behind electrical sockets, and inside lampshades. This had stressful repercussions: writers being constantly besieged by outpourings of “stored” water. While replacing the toner in the Fantasy floor photocopier, C.K. Wilmot was knocked onto his arse by a vengeful spume, and waterswept down the emergency stairs to Fourth where he sustained a concussion and a migraine from all the writers bitching about their drenched manuscripts. And when C.J. Wimlot from the Czechoslovakian erotica dept. unhooked the lampshade to replace a bulb in the overhead light, a malfeasant spurt toppled him arseways and hurled him out the alasly open window, where he fell on a plasma TV broadcasting an image of a trampoline, landing face-first on the flatscreen and resting his burning head in 24 inches of fiery wires. And when martial arts writer C.V. Timpani went to fetch some foolscap from a drawer, a naughty geyser rendered him hilariously arsebound and drenched him and the fool’s scap of paper in a damp plop of unappreciated liquid. The cowboy plumber’s corner-cutting was not the only incident of this nature. A similar thing happened with a fire on Twentieth, whereby lazy firemen “stored” the fire in various closets and desk drawers. C.T. Periman reached into his desk for a pen and a raging conflagration burned his limbs. The solution to this problem was to store the excess water in fire extinguishers (made from cardboard) to be used whenever rogue flames erupted on Twentieth or elsewhere. These sorts of thinking-outside-the-box solutions are an essential part of what I do when I choose to do stuff.

_____________________________

¹
A SF and speculative fiction writer who was successfully resurrected in 2038, currently still active at the age of 78+12.

Memo: James L. Francis

J
ESUS
rose again from the photocopier on Fourth. He appeared in his popular guise—long white dress and trimmed brown beard— and delivered a brief sermon on his return heralding a new era of peace and love, etc. I observed Jesus’s reappearance while waiting for the last ten pages of my novel
Love’s Acorns
for my reader. My initial reaction was wonder and awe, but I lost time standing and listening to the Saviour and had to deliver the chapters and start my next novel,
Hate’s Faggots.
Unless Jesus had a large sack of banknotes in his dress there wasn’t much point hanging around listening to his prophecies! It was selfish of Jesus to expect an audience to volunteer their time at work to listen to his ramblings. I have circulated this memo advising writers to ignore Jesus as he hovers up and down the building promising people eternal love and peace and trying to put everyone off their work.

Memo: Arlene Gray

For the fifth time this week I have seen Jesus hanging around the vending machines hurling tirades about paradise and brotherhood as they wait for their coffee to pour or for their crisps and fruit to fall. I suggest we start a petition calling for the removal of Jesus from The House. His presence here is irrelevant.

Memo: Thomas Wood

I think Jesus might be one of these pranksters, most likely PeteXXX. We all remember the time he claimed to be ghost of Stephen King and made slaves of a thousand writers in exchange for bogus bestseller advice.

Memo: Lisa Blue

As an atheist I find Jesus’s presence here insulting. If Jesus is to hang around attempting to convert people to whatever whacked love-is-all-around-us dogma he is peddling in that absurd white dress I demand we have a resurrected Richard Dawkins around the place reminding people about the Big Bang and evolution. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve seen those frightening doe-eyes staring at me as if boring (pun intended) into my soul. Someone needs to check his Visa and his citizenship papers.