PETER PIPER

Writer’s note: to be read entirely by the audience, involving as much of the audience as possible.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

“Are you going to pay for those?” said the greengrocer.

“I don’t even like pickled peppers,” said Peter, padding his pockets with the peppers. “I have to pick them. It’s an impulse.”

“If you don’t put that produce down, I’m going to whup your mo-fo ass,” said the grocer.

Peter was perturbed by the perfunctory parlance. So he popped out of the shop, down the passage that lead to the promenade.

Peter plodded along the beach and searched the stretch of sand for Sally.

Sally stood among the seaweed and the streams of sewage, semi-slumped and sagging in her usual sad way.

Peter had never seen a more sorry sight. “Sally, I need your protection,” he said. “The grocer is profoundly peevish because I keep plundering his peppers.”

“Do you want to buy some sea shells?” said Sally.

“I’m not providing you with payment: you’ve just picked those off the floor,” said Peter. “Sally, I need a partner in my pepper problem.”

Sally replied, “Has the grocer slipped into south-side slang again? That sprout-seller always goes seriously Snoop Dogg when he’s sore.”

“He thinks it’s a perversion that I poached his peppers. But I’m Peter Piper: it’s my preoccupation to pilfer these pickled peppers. You have to point this out to him.”

“Silly Piper,” said Sally. “Your struggle has stumped me, however. Something has gone astray in your story.”

“I’m puzzled,” said Peter.

She replied, “You have a scarcity of peppers. Did they slip onto the street as you skedaddled to the seaside?”

She was right. Peter peered into his palms and the peppers were indeed misplaced.

Along the sea shore, they saw a groundhog whizzing among the seaweeds with the peppers in its mouth. It wandered around the Mr Whippy van then wedged itself underneath a whopping big pile of logs.

Peter and Sally walked up to where the wily wild animal was hiding. “That woodchuck! It purloined my precious peppers!” protested Peter.

They warily wormed their way around the woodpile listening for the wicked woodchuck’s whimpering.

Without warning, the woodchuck appeared. It wobbled a log in the air then walloped Sally with it. The seaside seller was slaughtered instantly.. Shards of shattered seashells spilled onto the sand.

Picturing his pressing peril, Peter retreated from his pepper pursuit in a panic.

Whole pieces of wood winged past Peter’s head as he pitched post-haste back down the promenade. Amid the pandemonium, Peter Piper decided his pepper-picking days has perished.

Yet the wood kept coming.

For weeks, the woodchuck kept chucking the logs, unwithered by the weight of the wood. It waged a wood war, wreaking wreckage on anything that got in his way.

*  *  *

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

The grocer looked proudly upon his specially-built shop extension, made from all the extra wood the woodchuck had chucked. Inside were hundreds of peppers from a dozen different countries and, in the far corner, a happy Peter Piper stuffed his pockets with as many peppers as he could find.

“This shizzle turned out alright,” said the greengrocer to himself. “Shame that seaside girl got iced by the little guy…

“For real, mo-fo.”

SOMETIMES IN LIFE IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE CHOICES

Writer’s note: Audience to be whipped up into a frenzy and made to call for A or B as enthusiastically as possible, with each choice being entirely ignored.

You are a 45-year-old man. You work in the administration department of a company that makes paperclips. Your desk is cluttered like your mind but unlike your love life. The joints that swivel your chair are rusted. The Camel Lights cigarette packet you use as a makeshift pen holder keeps falling over, spilling biros and highlighters and paperclips onto your desk. You have a spreadsheet to finish. The spreadsheet is a list of paperclips ordered by product code and then by date. You take a 15 minute break because the numbers keep blurring. You boil the kettle unnecessarily. On the way back from your break, you notice a door next to your desk, free-standing and new. It is plain wood with little ornamentation save for two beveled panels you’ve seen on a million doors. You place your head against the wood because you like it being there. A voice whispers from the other side. It explains that the door next to your desk is a portal into another dimension which contains all of your dreams manifested as a flank of beefy Roman soldiers, each with a different riddle. The voice beckons you through the door.

Do you:

A: go through the door into the other dimension to explore your dreams in a super-reality world of fairytale centurions, entertaining riddles and hope of a mysterious elixir, or

B: finish the spreadsheet?

You insert an extra column between rows G and H, creating another 92 cells. In each cell you individually write the word Paperclip, oblivious to the auto-complete function. Your lunch break passes with Linda from sales telling you about her holiday in Wales in which she stayed in an adequately provisioned caravan, in which she found a cheap coastal bus ride from Nefyn, and in which she couldn’t find a bucket and spade anywhere, for love nor for money. Sefton sits in the corner reading the Book of Mormon. He is a nervous man and he folds over the edges of the pages even as he’s reading. When Linda starts practising her cod Welsh and complains that os gwelwch yn dda is too long a phrase for ‘please’, Sefton puts the Book of Mormon next to the kettle and leaves the staffroom. You open the book. Instead of text, the book contains swirling mathematical symbols that swell and bounce off the margins of the page. You begin to understand the annotations as a code to solve the mysteries of the universe, the last key to unlock eternal life. You quickly become cold from your sweat and the chill excites you.

Do you:

A: take the Book of Mormon and set out on a quest to find an eccentric professor who can unlock its secrets with you in a series of bewildering challenges that involve advanced weaponry, nudity and unfamiliar flying machines, or

B: pour some coffee?

You swill the bitter, lukewarm mulch in the bottom of the cup and wonder how the first tea leaf fortune teller discovered their skill for tea leaf fortune telling. You wish your coffee was tea. You switch off your computer without using the Shut Down menu then replace the spilled paperclips back into the empty cigarette packet. You think, and then forget, about going to the loo before you go home. As you leave the office, you pass the photocopier. On the floor, there is a single paperclip. It looks odd on its own as you are used to paperclips being scattered on your desk or in bundles of 500 navy blue boxes, each one with the product code printed in dramatic Impact lettering. You wonder which box the lonely paper clip is from. It appears to be looking at you: a lonely paperclip looking up at you. You kick-slide it under the photocopier then walk to the exit. On the pavement outside, a buffalo with an old man’s face greets you with a polite blink. It is a large buffalo, although you don’t know how large buffalos are, and there is a meadow on its back with bright green grass and daffodils and streams. Bunnies frolic through the meadow and cascade merrily down the sides of the buffalo. The buffalo shakes you by the hand and says in a tenor growl: “Apocalypse.”
“A paperclip?” you reply.
“Apocalypse coming.”
“A paperclip’s coming?”
“No, Apoc—never mind.”

Do you:

A: follow the buffalo’s advice and prepare for the apocalypse by climbing onto its back and hiding amongst the bunny rabbits in the magic meadow, or

B: go back into the office?

Back in the office, a nagging pull in your groin reminds you that it’s eight hours since your last wee. Whilst sitting down for your wee, trousers round your ankles and penis safely tucked in for minimal splash-back, solids from your bowels drop into the bowl. You don’t normally have a number two at this time of day. Something feels different: maybe the paperclip next to the photocopier. You reach into the water to inspect a turd. It forms a paperclip spiral in your hand. Trousers still at your feet, you wipe the waste onto your shirt and waddle out of the toilet. You think about the buffalo. You think about the swirling letters in the Book of Mormon and Linda’s caravan in Wales and her strange incantations that may or may not have been Welsh and the mysterious door that was next to your desk and the paperclip, the paperclip, the paperclip looking up at you and leading you to the buffalo and the rabbits and suddenly it all makes sense. All the riddles join in your mind; they attach themselves with paperclips of clarity, and suddenly it all makes sense.

Paperclip salespeople recoil as you stumble-run back to the buffalo shouting, shit-stained and trouser-less: “It’s the apocalypse! it’s the apocalypse!”

In one week from now, the admin office will hand you a letter of dismissal attached to a P45; stapled, not clipped. A while later, you ask for clarification on the reasons for your termination. They will tell you about your last few days with the company, the drawing of a buffalo in faeces on the wall above the photocopier, the dead rabbits you collected in the drawers of your desk, and your continual insistence in not purchasing a desk-tidy for your pens and for your highlighters and for your paperclips.

“But I don’t even use paperclips at my desk,” you say. “Not any more.”

—–

Inspired by Chris Killen’s Choose Your Own Adventure story which was read at the Deaf Institute in October 2010. Sometimes In Life It Seems Like You Have Choices was read at Bad Language, the Castle Hotel, Manchester in March 2011.

THE PEOPLE VS THE TOOTH FAIRIES

Writer’s note: Audience to be given packets of Tesco Value Toothpaste as a visual aid.

The government slashed and burned with such ferocity, no-one listened to the screams of the poor. On November 14th, the economy collapsed with a thunderous roar: every major company went bust.

They tried to riot, the populous in their sackcloth togs, throwing their tin begging bowls with impotent anger. But the powers had ring-fenced the army so batons broke ribs and the hungry puked blood, sodden in warm red defeat.

In the murky autumn evenings, the tooth fairies still plied their trade, silent except for fingernails scrabbling on crumbling roof tiles. They’d scuttle through houses, sniffing for teeth under pillowed heads, trying not to jangle their coin bags.

The people would reach under their pillow on waking, feel the cold coin then weep with bitterness and delight. The pound or two they got for their tooth was extra gruel from a street vendor or a part-traded blow job from a needy neighbour.

Then came desperation. The poor would slaver through bloody mouths, having caved in their teeth with a brick, waiting for a night-time windfall. The white sprites flew in celebratory circles while their fairy dust clogged chimneys and gave thin boys asthma.

Some people revolted at the fairies’ power: “They don’t even give wishes.” The protesters created a black-market supply of cheap supermarket toothpaste. “Brush twice a day,” they said. And they slowly starved the fairies of income.

One by one, the fairies would drop from the sky, toothless and weak, exhausted from carrying an unwanted haul of coins, until there were millions of broken bodies littering the pavements.

A ravenous public tore off wings and feasted on the creatures’ bellies, devouring an endless supply of fairy limbs. The fairy dust poured from split guts into their mouths like champagne: it was sweet to the taste and fizzly on the tongue.

The dust got between teeth, formed tiny wells of sugary bacteria on gums. No-one noticed. They slept deeply, clutching their toothpaste. They dreamed of the future.

(A snippet of this has been previously posted on this blog and you can also read it on 330 Words.)

DESPONDENT CORRESPONDENT

Writer’s note: To be read with as little confidence as possible. Each letter to be written on a separate piece of paper and, upon performance, to be secreted about the body (pockets, taped to skin, shoe, etc) and found with increasing difficulty as the reading goes on.

* * *

Dear Mrs Newton,

It has come to my secretary Kevin’s notice that you are behind in your contributions toward this precarious confusion of random events we call Life. Your charitable donations of finance or time, what today’s celebrity culture would call “giving back”, has been found to be short by some considerable amount. Notwithstanding measurable achievements such as not wasting your salary on takeaways and online poker, there is an emotional shortfall that we ask to you rectify forthwith. The care and regard you offer people other than your cold, enclosed shell of a self would make Genghis Kahn blush. Kevin, feel free to edit that last sentence so it’s a bit more tactful. We ask that you begin making payments, concretely and metaphorically, back into Life. Failure to do so will result in the forfeiture of your Life with an unfortunate appointment from our bailiffs.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Cranborne, Life Associates Inc.

* * *

Dear Mr Cranborne,

Sorry for the delay in reply. I only check my post once a week, and sometimes I lose important letters in all the Metros and those weird charity sacks my husband uses for auto-erotic asphyxiation. Only joking, Mr Cranborne. I’m not married. Thing is, I work in a call centre selling parachutes to airfields, which sounds interesting but isn’t. People think a parachute’s a parachute, but there are all different kinds, like baked bean flavours and chocolate bars and guns. It’s my job to memorise all the parachutes and sell them, Mr Cranborne, because health and safety says they need replacing all the time. Parachutes are dull, Mr Cranborne. I spend my evenings feeling lonely in front of The One Show and in front of the washing machine and in front of CharlieIsSoCoolLike on YouTube and in front of unticked lists of life ambitions sellotaped to every wall of my dull, dull flat. So don’t think I can forfeit my life, Mr Cranborne, because I haven’t got one.

Yours lifelessly, ha ha,

Sally Newton

* * *

Dear Miss Newton,

I did not correspond with you regarding the forfeiture of your Life for my own amusement. Very few things amuse me, least of all your letter and even less so, The One Show. Despite your insistence that your evenings are spent in despondent misery, you still very much have a Life and, therefore, a debt you have failed to pay for the very breath that is in your body. You clearly demonstrate no intention to contribute anything towards your Life and that of others, so please consider this my final correspondence on the matter. The appropriate action to retrieve your Life will be enacted by our bailiffs. On the positive side, my secretary Kevin has insisted in enclosing some brochures of local evening classes. He says you may be particularly interested in the crochet circle at the synagogue on every second Wednesday, although Fencing Tuesdays at Fortnam Hall offers a dangerous yet entertaining evening of distraction.

Yours sincerely,
Aldous Cranborne, Life Associates Inc.

PS – Apologies for replying so tardily. We misfiled your letter.

* * *

Dear Mr Smelly-Face Cranborne,

Sorry for the tomato stains on that last letter. I posted it into the compost bin by mistake. When I say “by mistake”, I mean “deliberately”. And by “compost bin”, I mean “your face” because you cannot touch me, Mr Cranborne. A vicar told me that I do not need to earn salvation in this life; it is by grace that I live. Then I dreamt all the trees dripped fire until there formed a lake of unending hell from the base of my front porch to the hydrangea outside Mr Tariq’s at number 67. As a result, I have given my life to Christ. All I have is His, Mr Cranborne, because He died on the cross for my sins. Because my life now entirely belongs to Jesus, you will have to take out claim for my Life on God, or at the very least, with the vicar who is, he assures me, praying for your soul. God is my parachute, Mr Cranborne.

Yours in Christ,

Sally Newton

* * *

Dear Miss Newton,

I see you have met my secretary Kevin. You’ll have realised by now the church he told you he ran doesn’t exist. Apologies for the deception, but I hope this afforded you a pause in the tedium of your so-called boring existence, in which you seem to have confused relative wealth and comfort with mundanity. We debated on making him Mormon on account of the numerous wives, but my secretary Kevin likes to keep things simple, unlike his filing systems, and so portrayed a common-or-garden parish vicar. He constructed the dog collar from a bit of washing-up bottle, an impressive trick he obtained from his Saturday morning craft group. The black robes suit a bailiff, wouldn’t you say? I acknowledge receipt of your Life. You may now consider this matter closed; for legal reasons, your letters shall be kept on file, somewhere.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Cranborne, Life Associates Inc.

SANDRA SUE

Editor’s note: To be read in a Yorkshire accent because I can’t do an American accent.

i hate sandra sue. she used to pull my legs off in college and I never forgave her for it.

when i was sitting next to her in mr vesper’s class, i used her pen to write my essay about minerals. i thought she hadn’t noticed, but then she grabbed the pen off of me and broke my fingers on my right hand. i swear she deliberately chose a pen that looked like mine so i’d make that mistake.

mr vesper wasn’t interested in sandra sue’s evil trap and told me off for yelling out, so i waited until break, dipped my flaccid fingers in water then jiggled them all over her face. she later told friends it felt like a fish, a wet, wet fish.that was so funny.

on the week of my first prom, she cracked me in the nose with a hammer. she’d stole it from woodwork class. it ruined any odds i had of getting with todd or any of his pals on prom night.

back in freshman year, she was in the locker room bending over, as bare as the day she was born. sandra sue was always unabashed when the rest of us would cover up and hide and be shameful. i hated this about her. so i shoved a hockey stick right up her ass and she spent the rest of the day walking rigid like a foosball character.

she stabbed me later that day, which killed my appetite for the rest of the week.

anyways, that was years ago, but i saw her again yesterday. i serve on the trains on the early morning route out of boston thru fairmount. i’d been looking out for mr vespa for months so i could serve glass in his coffee. but there she was, bold and unabashed and ignoring. she looked straight through me and i thought, how dare you, after all you did to me.

so i got all the folks on the train to lean hard to the left and to push after three. one.. two… the train came right off its tracks and crashed into a jagged, smoking heap. the networks covered the appeal for the medical bills of some of the survivors. and i lost my job. thanks, sandra sue.

it was so worth it though. a carriage landed right on sandra sue’s face. she came up with a black eye the colour of drain water and people in the hospital hooted at her for days with the best, giggliest laughter i ever heard.

i thought, dignity’s not something you can get back so easy once it’s lost. a bit of me, an eeny bit of me, felt sorry for her. but if anyone asks, i still hate sandra sue.

(An edited version of this story has since been performed live in the wrong accent.)

25 WORDS ON SUPERCHARGED BEYONCÉ

She roared through glinting teeth. Eyes to swim in. Supercharged Beyoncé.

I snorted. ‘Er, gay.’

She drank me in, purring. Then unfurled her massive penis.