Jackdaw Fool

I never had a piece of toast, particularly long and wide, but fell upon the sanded floor, and always on the buttered side.

James Payn

Iago Coakes gripped a heavy tumbler, one quarter full and grunted his way through the academic tribunal. He’d developed a crippling flu - his throat coated in gravel, his nose plugged with steaming pitch. With all that and the provosts voice warbling through his puss glubbed ears, it took every drop of Coakes lake of bitterness just to stay awake.
Afterward he sat, dizzy on the exam hall steps, as they filed out, aloof in ermine. Stripped of his doctorate, bent double and wracked with snot, the big man began to cry.
Not since he’d been trapped in a pit of multi-ethnic, disembodied scrotes, attached via a grim fovea of ropey nerves to Alan Rickman’s brain and face, had Coakes felt so dirty. Sitting alone in Dublin airport, he began to comfort eat. He gorged on Haagen Dazs, on Eton mess, on Baklava, Pavlova and baked Alaska. He suckled at the teat of chocolate cake, gargled treacle pudding and inhumed banana spits. Sweat pooled in the muscle pouches of neck and he loosed his jodhpurs dramatically. Deep in the stupor of food a disembodied voice seemed to cry out, to call his name again and again. It was the tannoy, Coakes had a phone call.

“Big C, it’s not good.”
“Drop it on me Marty, just let it fall.”
“They’ve taken your Pulitzer.”
“Holy Borges.”
“It gets worse.”
“How could it not…”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this.”
“By the boat your whore of a mother rode in on, spit it out.”
“Albatross have reneged on your book deal and… Magnolia have killed the movie.”

Coakes dropped to his knees, the phones ancient bakelite mouth piece loose in his hand. His eyes, confused, wandering, focused on a chocolate stain, dark and round and sweating, new and previously unheeded, a crinkling coastline of fjords and salmon sanded bays, a milk-tray praline puddle in his crotch.

“What. About. My. Advance?”
“Toast.”
Coakes began to rhythmically slap the heavy receiver against his face and skull. Marty’s muffled voice continued remorselessly.
“Iago, my boy, listen. Don’t use your cellphone. The fed have been snooping round the office, I’m calling from a pay-phone across the street.”

Coakes lost all feeling in his arm, suddenly, completely. He stood in silence, taking in the hand, which lay, foreign to him, limp and unresponsive, the phone’s receiver swinging, Marty’s voice, broken and babbling through the bustle of the airport.

“Some artist…Playground of hate…Found your semen in the bodies.”

A splintering crack, wood like a gun shot in the night, and he is in, squeezing his girth through the ragged hole, track bottoms shredding on the splintered edges. Inside, all is quiet, warm but cooling in the nights stiff breeze. The man stands, and tilting his head a little, scratches his rusty beard in the gathering dark. He strides into the living room, pushing through sticky yellow fly-strips of police tape, somehow certain of his way. His steel toed boots, army surplus, hard and pungent, click across the kitchen. Softly the great Gorenje fridge door peels open, blinding him, the reek of dying condiments strident and cheeky. Reaching into cold with a duffel sleeved paw, he finds a carton of chocolate milk, contents suspiciously viscous, and raises it to crusty lips.

The man gags, but swallows deeply, now panting in relief. In the fridge light his beard and hair are knotted, filthy. Closing the door he lifts an iPod from his pocket, and clicks a button, brightening the room. With the machine held before him, he passes on into the den, Carter at Tut’s tomb, fingers sailing lovingly over the dusty surface of the television. To its left a bookshelf has been peeled back, cracked open to reveal the solid veneer, rows of wooden covers, beyond it a gap black opening the pastel yellow wall. He passes on, hip torch before him like a talisman. The room beyond is windowless, neatly bisected by row upon row of metal shelving. Empty. Here and there a discarded jewel case lies broken, labelless, winking. He closes his eyes and he can see them - bondage, diaper fetish, scat, guro and skull fucking, zoophilia and furries frotting, grannies groaning, Russians boning, brutal Slavic pelvic thrusting, vein mapped tranny cocks with ruby darling lips for suckling. He moans, low and desperate, strokes now empty shelves. Gone, all of it, years of effort, thousands of misspent dollars, buckets of glistening semen, pounds of rouge, acres of downy calf.
It’s then he notes the silent interloper, cocky, grinning, a furred thing, proud and jaunty on its hind legs, gnawing at the air like a pill fiend. He returns that icy, deadly smile, backs out into the living room. This place belongs to them now, the biting, scurrying things, all hair and claws and teeth and slick dead eyes.

He lights a cigarette from a cheap pack, not his brand, reclines on soft Italian leather. Faces the television. Fumbling in the couches sweaty crack he finds the magic pointy thing, switches on his machine. The great screen pops to life, and curtains swing back, virtually opulent.
Somehow he can’t focus, the figures on the screen are pink and purple lipstick smudges, disappearing behind the slow blinks of his tired old eyes. Their voices - echoing, crystallising, keening treble - pain him. He’s a junky emptying a spike into a thick rich vein and feeling nothing, feeling the absence of nothing. He seizes up, curls his toes against the tight confines of tough leather. From hidden speaker - above, behind, in front and either side, a high drone rises. He backs away, over the couch, lands on his neck and dizzy rises, turning, running from the TV like a screaming foaming mouth, its billion voices keening, then he’s out the door and flying, tarmac louder in the dark.

Coakes stumbled into a stinking cubical. He had to press his shins tight to the bowl to get the door closed. Someone had smeared shit onto the wall, and below it was a jumble of graffiti and boasts and phone numbers. The mechanism for the toilet must have been broken, the bowl was full of grey scummy water and deep darker turds. He smiled at it, recognising something of himself there.

He opened his fly, pulled out his stubby dick. A tiny human eye stared up at him from where the piss slit ought to have been, it winked at him. Coakes was used to this, by now, and winked back, reaching deeper, pulling his large ball sack forward and up, to allow a jet of urine to slosh from the gill-like gash beneath his balls. When he’d finished, he jangled his veg and put the whole tangled mess away, and zipped up. He used to enjoy pissing in the semi-public of the urinal trenches, but the eye had given him stage fright these days, and he didn’t want to weird his guest out. He spat deep sour green into the bowl, not even trying the flush. He noted a few of the more promising numbers into his pocket book before emerging, stumbling still.

O’Reilly giggled a little at his return, but more from nervousness. Coakes tucked in his long white shirt tails as the presenter held out a red rag for him to sniff. Coakes breathed it deep, and spluttered,
“Christ Bill, what the fuck was that?”
“I tried to keep it in, but it was too strong, so I loose myself unto that napkin. Thought you’d want to get it fresh.”
“You’re a hell of a good man, Bill. A good man.”
They shared a moment.
“Now where’s that fucker Murdoch?”
“Shup up. Cut his mike!” yelled O’Reilly spontaneously, and for no apparent reason. Coakes refused to take the bait. “I left him at the craps table. Iago, listen, a moment before we do this. Don’t fuck it up. It took a lot to set this evening motion.”
“Don’t be such a liberal Bill O’, we’re going to be fine.”

Coakes finished fumbling with his shirt and straightened his paisley tie. He sniffed the rag again, pocketed it, checked his hair in a mirror. Cool, all set. He began the walk towards the pit. His palms sweated. Dead eyed retirees pumped coins into slots as numbers swirled in front of them. He patted his jacket pocket, the blade was still there. His breath was shallow and harsh sounding. He kept on towards the pit, through an ever deeper sea of machines and noise.
Then he saw him, the fox king, fat and brutal looking. His guttural Aussie accent barked a laugh, and he sucked at his cigar aggressively, as if he meant to win this very personal war between him and it. Coakes took a breath, harsh smoke came at him and comforted him. He looked to Bill. Bill smiled and nodded and they started forward again.

Murdoch smiled and stepped towards him,
“Iago, old man, how long has it been?”
They had never met. It was to be played nice. They shot the shit for a while, talked Red Sox, bitches, gambling, pussy and CNN, a pet hate of both men. It played out tight and fast, each man watching the other. When the niceties were over, neither could remember what had been said.

“Listen Coakes, what do you want?”
Coakes was caught off guard and took a second to remember, and swirled the spit around in his mouth.
“A flat million per quarter for unfailingly positive reviews of everything Fox puts out. That’s it.”
“You want me to buy your praise?”
“Yes.”
“And you think I need to?”
“Yes.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
The place grew silent for several seconds as they eyed each other.
“Done.”

Murdoch lit a cigar and had a laugh. Coakes smiled with relief and looked towards O’Reilly who was wide eyed and happy. Coakes’ palms were sweaty and he had his usual terror hard. He wiped his hands on his slacks and shook Murdoch’s offered palm. He smiled at the baron as his left hand pulled free the stiletto blade from his jacket. A deep tug pulled Murdoch close and as the blade ripped up through the fat Aussie’s chin into his brain he whispered into his ear, “I am not for sale.”

O’Reilly kept the stunned flunkies back with a snub-nosed .38 as Coakes wrapped his arms around the dying mans chest and heaved him unto the craps table, twitching and spasming. There was surprisingly little blood yet. Coakes sheathed his knife and unsheathed his dick, massaged it between thumb and fore finger, slick with red. The tiny eye was weeping with joy as he pulled Murdoch’s leather pidgeon head back and guided himself into the wound, holding the barons face in his fat palms and fucking the skull. O’Reilly looked like he might vomit, but Coakes was in ecstasy. He could see how Murdoch worked, what made him tick. He could see his mind through the dickeye and he had no secrets any more.

Coakes came hard, not his usual weak seepage, but a full forced flood. He fell over, his legs buckling under the pleasure, striking his head on the dirty once white wall, the ruined, rotted watermelon skull slipping off his softening cock.

A fat hot tongue licks Coakes awake. He returns the kiss instinctively, desperately - blinded by the too bright sunlight, Wild Turkey hangover - surprised at the artless tenderness. The dog barks and Coakes leaps up, bends double and spits, then vomits into the grey green humus of the highway verge.
“Satan’s fiery asshole,” he says, glowering.
“I had a fucking Pulitzer, show some respect.”
The dog, unashamed of it’s amorous advances, merely wags, approaching cautiously. drops it head for Coakes to pat. It’s a handsome creature, clearly a mutt, some part setter, some part collie. Doe eyes framed in two inch lashes fawn gorgeously at him, and he pats forgiveness.
“It’s alright girl,” he says, sneaking a glimpse at the beasts undercarriage.
“Fraid you’ll have to join the que.”

On either side of the road, giant conifers scrape the sky, walling off eternities of forest. Coakes is weary of nature, and sticks to the road and the thin wet verge, the dog walking beside him, a proud scout.
“You know boy,” Coakes says, leaning in to rub the Mutt’s soft mane.
“All my life I’ve hungered. I’ve boozed and whored. I’ve smoked and I’ve snorted and I’ve hurt and been hurt… But I’ve never found my drug.”
The dog nodded sympathetically, padding along beside him, keeping back from sticky tarmac, hot and dangerous in the midday broil.
“TV came close though, that old seductress.”
Coakes grins, his eyes half closed, his full lips pouting, lost in the tender ministrations of a lover.
“All those faces bigger than life and twice as pretty, staring right at me, loving the camera, full and hot and pampered.”
Coakes’ hand creeps past the elasticated gatekeepers of trouser and under-pant. As he speaks he cradles his oily plums, a slick of drool worrying the corner of his mouth. The dog nuzzles closer, concerned, confused, its new master babbling strange breathless human words. “Exergym.” “Glistening pups.” “Ever loving couch mother.” Shaking his head, straying now into the road, shaken awake by the whoosh by trundle of an artic, fog horn blaring, “Fucker!”

They rest for the evening up and off the road, on a granite escarpment, a lip jutting out from the hive of forest, looking down and back the way they’ve come. A silent mint blue river, the road arcs away, till it gets lost in the arched and twisting humps of the Washington foothills. Coakes hangs his legs out off the edge, dangling two hundred feet above the roof of hooded black. Everywhere the signs of human life are all too absent. Only the big gull moon shines down to watch, illuminate.
The bitch hangs her head in his lap, obediently restive. Coakes runs a hand over her bonnie fur, the coat as slick and soft as hairless inner thigh. He strikes up a rhythm, each soothing stroke a drag from a smooth cigaretto. The hard comes, unbidden, but welcome all the same. He releases it gently, careful not to wake her, lays back, fondling the tubby shaft. Eyes on the moon, head cold on the flat stiff granite, he strokes them both, picturing the painted swollen television faces. Her tongue is unexpected too, a flat and gentle friend, pillow soft against the salt lick of his balls. He pictures Juliet, Missy, Melody, girls he has known and loved and lost as the beast lips the thirsty plunger of his nob. He pulls back, suddenly fearful of the teeth, and she mounts him, dominant and lapping, tight snatch strange and cozy on his prick. Drained almost immediately, Coakes lurks inside the bitch, her pleading grinds against his soft, awkwardly familiar.
“Women,” he thinks, disgusted, and heaves the dog out, off him, into space.