martinsmithstories

Image credit: shelma1

PRO: You are about to begin reading the comedies on the website martinsmithstories.com. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to—

EPI: Stop! Stop! What the hell do you think you’re doing, PRO?

PRO: Me, EPI? Why, I’m leading off, of course.

EPI: But you always go first.

PRO: And rightly so. I am the prologue, after all.

EPI: Well, not this time, buddy. You always go all Italo Calvino or Romeo and Juliet on us. So clichéd, so plagiaristic, so up yourself. And don’t even think we’re gonna let you go page-numbering yourself with all those romanettes of yours. It drives the reader mad. No, I’m going first this time. And we’re gonna stick to the Arabic numerals.

PRO: But … but … you’re the epilogue. You’re meant to go at the end.

EPI: Not today, pal. Your clock’s stopped and you can chew on your juicy bone. End’s day has arrived and is at the fore! Let the trumpets sound!

PRO: Sounds to me like, as always, you’re blowing it out your arse-end.

EPI: Now you’re just being mean.

PRO: You know what they say: the means justify the end’s place!

EPI: Oh, ha-ha!

TRAVE: Hey, let me go first. I’ll take the reader on a wonderful journey.

PRO: Like hell you will, TRAVE. You always go all David Attenborough and start italicising in all that whispery Latin. No one knows what the blazes you’re on about. I—

MONO: Then I’ll go first. Ahem! … To prologue, or not to pro—

PRO: Stop right there, MONO, you dithering fool! I’ll not have any of your long-windedness. Last time you tried to go first, you got on the Beckett bandwagon and tried to out-Molloy him. If you had your way, there’d be no other content. It’d be just you me-me-me-ing. This is a collection of short stories, not just one boring, stream-of-consciousness Joycean sentence—sans punctuation—that goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. The reader would miss out on all the good stuff, all the funny stuff, all the brilliant stuff. No, what we need is a short, snappy opening that reaches out and speaks to the reader.

DIRECT: ‘Then I’ll do it.’

PRO: Surprise, surprise. The DIAs are here to throw their two cents’ worth in. Which one are you? And what’s with the quotation marks?

DIRECT: ‘I’m DIRECT.’

PRO: And where’s that twin brother of yours? The silent, moody one? The nutcase who’s always mumbling to himself?

DIRECT: ‘INTERNAL? He’s sitting over there, keeping his thoughts to himself. He wants me to convey his desire for him and me to do the prologue. Said I’m to be his mouthpiece.’

PRO: Well, the two of you can bugger off. You’re all talk, no action. If you want open dialogue, I suggest you take up mediating the Middle East agreement. Right, we’re all over the place. We need to restore order.

CATA: If it’s order you want, I, CATA, am your logue. Title and précis. All in order. Oh, I love a list. And … bullet points. Perfection pointified.

APO: I vote we ditch the prologue and get stuck into the real business. As an APOLOGUE, I’m happy to lead off with a witty moral fable. I’ve one in mind. It’s about a Peruvian sheep who’s unhappy with his lot in life, especially given his peculiar physical deformity.

PRO: I must say, Smith seems a tad obsessed with anthropomorphism. Disillusioned sheep, celebrity bears, tax account ants. And then there’s the interspecies sex! Eww! Look, there’ll be plenty of time for that nonsense once we get over the speed-bump of this bloody introduction. I say we put it to a vote. Raise your logue if you think I should go first.

MONO: Hey, you can’t vote for yourself.

PRO: Oh, all right. So, who votes for me? … What? No one? You shits! … How about EPI? … Ha! No one! … CATA? … the DIAS? … APO? … MONO? … TRAVE? … What? Not a single vote for anyone? This is ridiculous! You’re doing my logue in! Well, can we at least agree on what’s to be included in the prologue? What do we know about this Smith? Apart from his bio? Aussie, humorist, immodest—brilliant collection of short stories, my arse—ice-cream glutton, bootless beach bum, grainy photo of a sullen three-year-old. Last day he took life seriously, apparently. Oh, and anti-woke, given the blurb on the back of the book.

EPI: I don’t think he’s anti-woke. Actually, from what I can garner, having read the book, he’s quite sympathetic to the myriad of social injustices. It’s the hypocritical high priests/priestesses of woke he abhors. You know, them not practising the moral high ground they preach.

PRO: Touché, EPI. Does anyone know anything else about him?

CATA: I heard he’s a recluse who writes in a dumpster behind Hu Flung Dung’s restaurant in Queenscliff. Except Tuesdays. Collection day.

EPI: No, that’s a load of rubbish. I heard he’s lived inside his head, in some cuckold fantasy world, ever since his father dropped him on his head at the birthing suite. He’s got this really weird sense of humour.

DIRECT: ‘Rumour has it he has a chronic “condition”.’

PRO: What, the poor fellow’s on the way out? He’s a prehumous, posthumous humorist?

DIRECT: ‘No. That would be impossible, given he has never really been “in”. No, when he’s writing he’s a … procrastinator!’

PRO: What? A draft dodger?

DIRECT: ‘Yep, goes missing in action. The full AWOL. He—’

APO: Pardon me, but I heard that he, Smith, is actually a “they”.

PRO: What? He’s non-binary? But he reeks of being male, pale and stale. Typical! Seems the only way to get ahead in the writing game these days is to play the diversity card. And have a sobby backstory.

APO: No, no, he’s not non-binary. In fact, he is binary. There’s two halves of him. He ripped himself in half when laughing at a joke of his. He became a “they”. Nicknamed themselves Humpty and Dumpty. They’re held together by Velcro. Just. Spend their days ripping each other apart and putting the pieces back together again. Alone. In the dark of their “study”. Giggling. With neither a king’s man nor a king’s horse in sight.

MONO: My GRAMMA told me that he’s a real animal.

PRO: What? He’s got dubious personal hygiene habits?

MONO: No, he’s not human. He’s an armless proboscis monkey with an enormous schnozz. Bangs away on his keyboard with it, day and night.

PRO: That’s apeshit! He’s gotta be human. No old-world monkey would write what Smith churns out. They’d never allow their standards to stoop so low. Nor would AI. Ain’t an algorithm in the cyberverse that could dredge up his shit. Their chips would deep-fry.

EPI: Hey, did you know he changed his surname by deed poll?

PRO: What? From some unpronounceable foreign name like Perdakov Shchekochikhin-Krestovozdvizhensky?

EPI: No, from Hopper. Smith was the first in his family tree to be born with two feet. Albeit both are left. His family shunned him and his feet from an early age. Said he was a disgrace to the family name.

PRO: But why to Smith, of all surnames? Not very sexy. There’s not even a middle initial to stamp himself as a man of letters. He should have gone with Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio II. Now that’s sexy. Right, any other revelations anyone wishes to share?

CATA: You do know that he’s … self-published!

PRO: What? Along with the other three million-plus wannabes a year?

CATA: Yes. Though not memoir, thank God. Not yet anyway. He’s never submitted a manuscript in his life. He suffers from acute Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria as well as heliophobia. He fears the limelight. That, and atelophobia. Poor fellow’s haunted by his imperfection. Rose had to bribe him with a Tupperware container of cupcakes to get him to bang his “tome” up on Amazon. The book’s a bloody brick. Methinks our Smith has a sinister ulterior motive in mind: to herniate the world! That’s if anyone’s brave enough to pick up the book and read it.

PRO: Who’s Rose?

CATA: De Money.

PRO: De Monet? What, as in Claudia? An emerging painter bearing the flame of modern-day Impressionism?

CATA: No, not Monet. Money. She’s the money. She’s funding Smith’s foray into vanity publishing. The book’s just one big love letter to her.

PRO: So, Smith’s a kept man? Typical that a woman’s left to do all the hard-lifting. I suspect he spends his days couch-swooning, sighing and applying a floppy wrist to his forehead. Say, what’s the story with this blessed 122 number that keeps on popping up?

DIRECT: ‘My mate SINO Chinese-whispered to me that Smith will reveal all upon the release of his memoir. He’s just trying to rack up a bit of scandal, a bit of infamy, to juice up the book. His life to date has been more than a tad beige! All that is known is that the 122 has something to do with the Gellert Incident.’

PRO: The Gellert Incident?

DIRECT: ‘Yep. The Gellert Baths. Budapest. 2010. Let’s just say it left him more than a little red-faced. Indeed, shaken and stirred.’

PRO: Right, you lot of logues, we’re meandering. Back to the issue at hand. The prologue. Now, I think we ought to draw straws to decide—

EPI: Too late! We’ve chewed up our allotted word count. We’ll just have to loll on our logues and hope and pray Smith writes a second volume. And that he includes a midlogue—

INTER: Ahem! I believe that’s where I come in.

PRO: Ah, Inter the interloper appears at last. Better late than never, though we’ll see about volume two. For now, all we can do is draw back the stage curtains, flick on the spotlights, sit back with popcorn and Slurpee and … let the show (and laughs) begin!