The Beware! Encyclopaedia of International Celebrity - Sylvester Stallone

In the galaxy of celebrity, there are some stars that shine so bright that it's almost impossible to believe they are just one star. One such pulsar is Sly "Sylvester" Stallone (born 1946-odd), a man who single-handedly squirted out a billion action films (Check this. Ed). The fastest writer in the business, Sly is said to have scrawled the script for the first "Ricky" film whilst popping to the toilet at Madison Square Garden on the night of the great Mohammed Ali v Henry Cooper fight. The original roll is now on permanent display in the Philadelphia Spread Museum.

After quitting his divinity course, Sly earned money as an extra for several years (third diner on the left in "The Godfather", bank customer in "Dog Day Afternoon", unnamed heavy in "Serpico Goes To Shanghai"). After he hit the big time, unscrupulous producers cashed in on his fame by editing together old audition footage and scenes from the cutting-room floor, recut to make Sly into the star of the highly surreal "God of the Quads".

A young, glistening Sly, courtesy
of Andy for MoMoJaJa.

Famous for catchphrases including "get you off me!", "hey!", and "aaahhaarrgghhh!" Sly cornered the market in action flicks. As hinted earlier, his speed is legendary: he wrote, budgeted, scored, costumed, filmed and edited "Ricky" in a day (the story of a little kid mechanic who becomes a lucha libre wrestler). A series of budget-busting bunker-buggers followed; notably "Ricky IV: The Quest For Democracy", released at the height of Reagan-era Cold War paranoia, in which the title character faced off against Brezhnev in a rigged-up ring in the UN HQ at Geneva; and "Ricky Horror", a gender-bending Vietnam musical which later saw Sly honoured for services to the corset industry.

As a leading box office draw, Sly's varied roles included a wronged man in prison; a wronged man in a mental ward; a man in a wrong prison; a ham in a pickle; and a mental wronged man on the loose. A method actor, Sly tunnelled into Slade Penitentiary to get into character for "The Lock-Down", but then couldn't find his way out again, causing a year-long delay in filming.

His work-out routine is infamously extreme. Gargling raw eggs until they scramble in the mouth, whilst hanging off a zip wire over a ravine. He bench-pressed live crocodiles. He exploded on five separate occasions. He tore down entire parking lots.

Sly still found time for life's little luxuries, like eating fine cuisine (his own restaurant chain, Knock-Down Foods), and sex (his own condom line, Sly's Tiger Eye).

He's held back from the political arena, which is perhaps a good thing as of course he's a Republican. 

With the wisdom of old age and the muscle definition of regular HGH injections, in recent years a still-stunning, still-slurring Sly made a comeback to the big screen with an adaptation of 90s Britcom "Waiting For God", starring all his action hero mates (Mr T, David Hasselhoff, Joan Collins) as residents of a retirement home/concentration camp fighting for dignity and freedom under the watch of bumbling villain Christopher Walken and his henchman, Grace Jones. To his legion of fans, however, Stallone will always be best known as a wronged man on the right screen. Our screen. Wrong may he reign.

Poetry Hallway - Limpit Smike Sounds Off

So, friends, what's another year, to someone who's lost everything that he owns? You might well ask. But here comes 2018, ready to put a further boot in whilst we shiver and shake in the cold room. This chilly extractor fan blast following that heavy, low-hanging, fart of a year doesn't really lend itself to reflection - we just want to pack up our genitals and run. Long-time collaborator and excremental badger Limpit Smike is going further than most, as he's decided to emigrate. He's getting in his retaliation first. What could go wrong?

An old Concorde, courtesy
of Andy for MoMoJaJa.

One Widdled From A Great Height by Limpit Smike


One day, I shall come back.
In my Rolls-Royce.
Yes, one sorry (really not sorry) day,
I shall return, from… Australia, say;
California – no – South Africa;
The champagne tastes so much sweeter down there.
The peasants shall raise their mud-streaked faces
And gasp at my lavish gold bootlaces;
As I gaze mocking at the old places.
They shall cry: “Limpit, take me when you go!”
And I, imperious, shall sneer a “No.”
My Rolls-Royce fits only me and my beau;
He enters more snugly than they could know.

The Beware! Encyclopaedia of International Celebrity - Sam Allardyce

The world of football is a muddy globe, a polished rounded scarab ball of muck, and you'd have to be mad to work in it. However, amongst the ranks of con artists, cheaters, hookers, hustlers, pimps and their johns, a few shining examples stand out, undigested vitamin pills in the effluent. One such supplement is the new England Crystal Palace Everton manager (Article a long time in the works? Ed). Trust Beware! to give you the lowdown on a high man amongst low lives. In mid-table.

Sam Allardyce (General Stout-Drawers; Lord Hoof of Route One; Grimlock Ironhide)

Step forward Samuel Allardyce, one of Italy's finest cultural exports. Brought up hand-to-frock in the haute couture world of Milan, small Sam foreswore the fashion industry of his fastidious forebears, instead pursuing an instinctive passion for the transcendent possibilities and balletic beauty of chess. There were no chess clubs in his town (the philistines!) so Sam reluctantly signed up for football class; but for the first term he mainly pretended to be a castle.

As this may hint, Allardyce's first break was not in football, nor chess, but acting. Talent-spotted by a very confused agent, for five long hard years Sam strove as Stan Magnum in "Magnum, I.P.", the cult cop splash about a stout-tached Bermuda short-sporting detective researching intellectual property rights in the Caymans. (The girls, the glamour. Check it out on Kodi!)

It is said that when he shaved off his Magnum tache, he gained 10 years and lost all his acting ability. Acting's loss was surely football's gain.

At a door-busting 8'2" and having absorbed several other defenders, and a manual on stone-masonry, Sam's playing career was predictably static as he perfected the art of spreading himself wide in front of the goal, planted hard, legs and arms and bellies. "None shall pass!" was his pithy catchphrase yelled from the top of his own turrets. Opposition players feigned nosebleeds to avoid facing him. Balls spontaneously deflated in order to stay out of harm's way. Later he played in the United States and frightened the Yanks off the game for a decade. Allardyce paid for some coaching badges and built a new career at pitch-side.

Big Sam has managed some unfashionable clubs - Limerick, Blackpool, Sunderland, Wisbech, Skaro - and has maintained a good rapport with Mackems, Fenlanders and Daleks alike, but insists: "There is no way I should be managing dour drab teams. I should be managing Real Madrid and Barcelona. If I managed Real Madrid, we'd win the Premier League every time."

Sam became noted for his pioneering use of scientific management. Players spent more time doing pilates, inhaling incense and sweating in Turkish baths than the more standard "run into the box and fall over" or "curse the referee's parentage". In the late 80s, Sam got "well into all this new fangled computing" and used pioneering Sinclair technology to track player movements and calculate e.g. the precise position from which each player was most likely to score. Unfortunately, the laser pinpointing was highly temperamental due to Sinclair's insistence on shoddy over-miniaturised parts, but Sam persisted and eventually worked out his players' best scoring positions were on the opponent's goal-line following a long hoofed clearance. Now there's tactics.

Players became used to foregoing alcohol, instead washing down bottles of vitamin pills with avocado smoothies. Big Sam prefers his vits in chewable form and often gets through 12 Haliborange - always Haliborange - in the course of one match.

Indeed, it is often overlooked how cultured Sam is. When he first applied to be England manager in 2006, Allardyce's application was written as a stand-alone app for high-end PCs combining C++, Pearl and Haskell. When it turned out that the FA system ran on DOS-based 486 machines, Sam had to run home and print out the entire thing, only for it to transpire most of the FA couldn't read either.

Away from pitch-side, he started a comedy duo with his friend and colleague, Portuguese deadpan Jose "No Comment" Mourinho, where the two saucy wags pretended to hate each other's guts. Their "stone age football", "bus parking tutor" and what an effing liberty" routines remain firm favourites. Sam also likes taramasalata, feng shui and The Mikado.

After the debacle of his short time in charge of the national team - it turned out that the FA had blacklisted Haliborange from pitch-side, unbeknownst to Sam who in his first match chomped through a pack of them on camera - an early retirement seemed on the cards; and there was a short-lived diversion into pro snooker, where his extreme no-potting tactics combined with dangerously long balls led to a life ban from the green baize; but the lure of football was too strong.

Now at his latest desperate club, Everton of Manchester, Sam discovered that the reason for their recent woes was an inability of other players to simply pass to star striker Mickey Rooney ("That lad has got goals coming out of his arse, he just needs some feeders"). Sam fixed that with his patented "effing-pass-to-Rooney" strategy, tested in computer simulation and aided by drones and magnetic boots. Long may this thoroughly modern innovator continue to tear up form books, rule books and record books. No cooking of the books implied.

Excessive consumption of Haliborange may cause laxative effects. Always squeeze the maypole.

Poetry Hallway - Ring All The Bells

Dear reader, let me ask you some questions in an old-fashioned style: Don't you long for change? No, really, don't you yearn for it? Deep in your bones? Also, how did they make your eyes so pretty? Where did you get that thong? Can I get one too? What time is love? How soon is never? And why are you backing away? Here in the Poetry Hallway, we salivate at the knees of change.





Ring All The Bells by Andy Brain

On the day when I leave this dump behind
A dead weight evaporates and I'm free
Free of all the hideous history
Free of the "that'll do" mentality
Free of the tight bands constricting my chest
Free of the stillness that fails to bring rest
On the day when the last link is severed
Ring all the bells on the way, bang them hard!
On the day when I, exhausted, can sigh:
"Enough, you stinky town, bog off and die!"
And may that day bring strength to all our hearts
The leaving of the town of dead old farts.
We'll meet in better places, raise a brow
At how we ever let it drag us down
At how we ever stuck around so long
That happy day when all of us are gone.

Next time: a frozen wonderland of your finest verses on the dark season.

Beware! Micro-Tales: Doctor Who and the Rusmoff of Disappointment

This roughed-out Doctor Who synopsis was rescued from a skip in Cardiff, and makes for disappointing (if familiar) reading... Don't worry: not long 'til Chibnall.

The Doctor and his over-confident and generally-very-rude companion encounter the Daleks for the fifth time this season. All of the other aliens from the previous series (the expensive ones) have pointless cameos. A same-sex relationship receives much attention, despite its irrelevance. A character uses a minor swear word, and another makes a pop-culture reference, perhaps to something relating to the Harry Potter universe.

The Dalek's leader turns out to be Davros, who has survived his last encounter with the Doctor, which is left unexplained.

Davros looking wrinkly.

Davros tells the Doctor his plan to destroy everything in unnecessary detail, and demonstrates the enormous power of his Rusmoff device by killing a couple of people who we met five minutes earlier. The Doctor is powerless to stop him. Davros has the means to destroy everything immediately, but dithers. The Doctors reiterates the extent of the problem to people who have also just heard Davros's explanation.

Rather than killing the Doctor and his assistant and destroying everything, he begins a timer. This gives another character from a previous episode time to use a special power they'd never had before to stop the timer and press a couple of switches, which kills all of the Daleks except Davros. Something on the ship goes critical for no reason, but not that critical. Doctor and co. have time to escape.

Davros shouts obscenities at the Doctor as he makes his escape. Davros's ship is shown to explode, but we're left to presume that Davros dies, even though we know he's alive, even though he can't be. The Doctor mourns something which he didn't seem to care about earlier, in order to make the victory seem hollow, because even killing all the Daleks goes against the Geneva Convention.

Roll Next Time and credits.

Poetry Hallway - Having A Trip To The Bank

Any change, guv'nor? At Poetry Hallway we are skint. Strapped. Scooped out. Brassic. We're borrowing a neighbour's internet, hand-cranking a tiny solar torch for light, and coming up with recipes incorporating whatever remains in the cupboard. Pasta, rice and noodle surprise, whoopee! - the surprise being whatever tiny sauce sachets we've filched on our travels along the high street earlier. Hunter-gatherers. Apply here. Please.

Things are so bad we're even thinking of renting out one end of the Hallway to amorous swingers in need of a quick bunk-up. So long as they don't mind sharing with a team of starving poets, and using a pile of old towels and junk manuscripts as a mattress, it could be a winner!

Sadly we're not the only ones with holes in our socks and our guts due to the holes in our funds (especially as we were counting on our latest promised payment from git-faced Limpit, that is until we actually read his latest poem):

Having A Trip To The Bank - by Limpit Smike

They turned me down, those naughty clowns,

They turned me down again;

My fine request for extra funds -

Allow me to explain.

My poet’s life has wheres and whys,

And often just “how much?!”;

But lavishness becomes me, so

I strive to keep in touch.

My bank has clean facilities,

And clean advances too;

But when I can advance no more,

They leave me in the stew.

They have no wit, those naughty twits;

They have no poet’s ear;

What squirt of life flows through their loins?

Quite none at all I fear.

How will I make to penetrate

Those hard, unyielding men?

Am I the Smike forever cursed

To rant and swear and moan?

Insinuate, or sit and wait

Until my verse takes flight?

Or use my lover’s deepness

And thrust with all my might?

A love that swells in all my parts

Would take them by surprise;

And surely soon, my overdraft

Would be quite energised.

Their deepest vaults would sweat and strain

As I thrust strong and tough;

If they would only give me some

I’d give back quite a stuff!

Beware! Micro-Tales: A Bad Flagful Of Uglies

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A Bad Flagful Of Uglies

"Duck, you sucker!"
   Bullets whistled over their heads as they crunched down behind the ridge, a pair of tight balls creaking in leather.
   Wrong place at the wrong time. The war had come to town before they could get out.
   Tuco the bandita licked his parched lips and peered down the chambers of his trusty Colt. Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. "Hey, Blondie."
   His companion, the tall and stoic bounty hunter, scanned their surroundings with his steely, thin blue eyes.
   The nervy Tuco exercised his shooting fingers, stretching and rubbing the fingertips. "You got a plan?"
   Not a word was forthcoming.
   "I know you Blondie, you always got a plan."
   "I got a headache, I know that much."
   Nearby was the body of an unlucky soldier in Confederate grey. Flies explored the many bullet wounds.
   "Eh Blondie. The sooner they quit with this fighting, the sooner we can head for the border in peace, huh?"
   Blondie let out a long sad breath. "Not a lot of peace to be had these days. Wherever we wind up."
   Tuco was needing to chat to ease the tension. "One thing I tell you. No way I'm joining no Army. Man got to be an idiot to sign up. The only thing Tuco fights for is himself."
   The sun beat down hard. Vultures circled overhead.
   "Tuco, any principle in life you would fight a war for?"
   "Principle? Pah - Pesos, my friend! I'd fight for pesos. I wouldn't die for principle."
   Blondie played Devil's advocate: "They give you dollars in the Southern Army, enough for you?"
   "Army dollars - pittance! You'd fight for idiots too, hey!" Tuco mimed animatedly with his hands. "They gain a mile, lose a mile... guard the bridge, hold the bridge, die for the bridge... I mean, what is a bridge? They die for bricks!"
   Blondie peered through a crack in the rocks down towards the old town square, now a ruined battlefield occupied by a tired rabble of Confederate troops. A bunch of black slaves were working amongst them as labourers, attempting to shore up rickety buildings. Left out in the sun were several crates of what was clearly assorted ammo, yet to find their new store.
   "The grey backs have got their slaves doing their dirty work."
   "Fighting to stay slaves, huh! Fighting for their masters."
   Blondie's eyes glittered. "Waiting for their moment, maybe..."
   A lot of horses and mules milled about near the broken stables, none tied up.
   "It seems to me, in war or peace... these Southern men - those with the whip hand - they just want the owning of everything they can get. Land, people..."
   "Eh, the people. Man shouldn't own people like they do."
   Sure the angle was covered, and overcoming any momentary pang of conscience, Tuco crawled forward on the hard dirt and, shooing away the flies, gingerly felt the dead man's pockets for anything usable. "Tempting though, eh Blondie?"
   Blondie glowered at him with even more contempt than usual. "Nope. Give me my horse, and provisions... and let each man to his own."
   Tuco made the mistake of looking into the dead Confederate's glassy eyes. Sickened, he retreated to his starting position, crossing himself and muttering to Mother Mary as he did so. Then:
   "Did he really die for a damned flag?" Tuco crossed himself again.
   Blondie lined up his stolen Spencer rifle using his left arm to lean on. His eyes sharpened to pinpricks.
   Three shots. The first hit the old church bell, which clanged out gloriously like Christmas day to draw attention.
   The second hit the nearest crate of munitions, setting off a chain reaction of hand grenades and gunpowder that might just provide enough confusion for the slave workforce to turn on their masters, just as the assorted livestock fled in every direction.
   The third went through the rope holding up the hastily-hoisted Confederate flag in the town square. If Tuco and Blondie had looked back, they'd have seen the unsecured flag tumble free of its pole, and flop unceremoniously onto a convenient freshly-laid pile of steaming horseshit.
   But they were already on their way.

Poetry Hallway - Croyland Otter Loses His Mind Over the Onset of Winter

Come in. Be mindful to step OVER the envelopes piled on the mat. Don't walk through them, or we'll want to know the reason why. We'll attend them in due course; the majority will be placed in the nearest postbox, marked 'RETURN TO SENDER', for Croyland Otter does like to lick stamps.

Oh, how we tried to dissuade Otter from submitting further material to Poetry Hallway. We care about your literary pleasure, really we do. But since the poetry-scape is a gradient, with jewel-encrusted gold stuff at one end, and terrible arse-scrapings at the other, we felt that we had a duty to waft the latter under your nose, that you may experience balance in all its trueness. (We try damned hard to offer better-quality poetic musings, but they are hard to come by.)

That doesn't mean we're happy about it; nor does it mean that you have to be, either. Regardless, this latest wordy ejaculation from Croyland demonstrates his fragile mental state, and no one is more interesting and worthy of scrutiny than a damaged artist. Long may he remain critically messed up!

One point of interest is his brief mention of former Conservative MP for Northeast Cambridgeshire, Malcolm Moss. We thought we might get something politically charged, which would have demonstrated an interest shift for Otter. We didn't.

Winter Rapes My Precious Bog

Flatly peat land, turning white,

Halting whiffs of muck-spread shite;

Turnips piled, obscuring light,

My Fenland playground, hid by night.

Crystal blanket pulled across,

Choking brown beneath the frost;

Bludgeons like a Malcolm Moss,

Lecturing in the ways of loss.

Passing pubs of ill repute,

Where Tony Martin hid from dues;

Snow is piled upon their rooves,

Hiding those forensic clues.

But I care more for silty sludge,

Than for a farmer with a grudge;

I cannot help but love so much,

That slippy, silty, Fenland sludge.

Micro-Tales: Jimbo and the Jet-Set and the Diverted Flight

Beware! the Zine continues to feed your literature bladder. A full literature bladder is a well-stocked armoury. You might one day need it.

Jimbo and the Jet-Set, and the Diverted Flight

Jimbo's schedule is disrupted by political upheaval in another country.

A happy Jimbo was already several hours into a transatlantic flight when the Chief called in with an alteration to the course.

"Jimbo? Jimbo? Come in, Jimbo!" came the Chief's squawk.

"Jimbo here, Chief! What's the trouble?"

"Oh, er, no trouble, Jimbo. Just a change to the route."

A change to the route, eh? That nearly never happened. Jimbo wracked his mechanical mind, turning up nothing. He checked his fuel level and wiggled his flaps, awaiting his new instruction.

"Now, listen up, Jimbo. This is a fluid situation and we don't know how it's going to pan out. Bernie Sanders has staged a coup and DCA in Washington is a no-go. Reports say he had the tarmac blown up and it's impossible to put a plane down. IAD and BWA are chock-full of DCA's traffic and you're being redirected to JFK in New York."

"Crikey, Chief! Sounds exciting!"

"It's not for you to get excited. It's for you to get your passengers stateside and grounded safely. You can't do it in Washington, so it's got to be New York. You don't have enough fuel to spend time thinking about this."

"Roger, Chief! You can rely on me."

Jimbo banked gently and put his nose towards New York. Not too bad, as far as diversions go. Settling down to a gentle cruising speed of 850km/h, Jimbo's thoughts drifted to events in Washington. Human affairs confused him. He wondered if happiness was something to be feared.

Just then, a voice came in crackly over the radio.

"Watch it, son! You're coming up on my six, and fast!"

That voice... Familiar. Jimbo eased off on the throttle and saw the familiar green-and-brown of a plane of yesteryear.

"Old Timer! What are you doing here?"

A bomber. Second World War. Droning along.

"Jimbo!" came the wobbly, withered reply. "I'm running errands for Bernie Sanders. Not sure where I am, though. I've had to stop three times to refuel."

"Errands? Nothing to do with what the Chief was talking about? You know I've been diverted, right?"

"Oh, yes, that's right. Bombed the hell out of Washington. New York's next. Was told it'd be right up my street."

"The war's over, OT. Has been for over half a century! Dump your bombs somewhere unpopulated and get your carcass back to Blighty."

"Sorry, Jimbo, orders is orders. I'm part of the operation to knock out the enemy's air capability, and I can't stop 'til I've dropped... so to speak!"

"What? What about me? I've got three-hundred passengers to put down and the tank is getting a bit light. You know what? Forget it. Go do your stuff and I'll read about how you were shot down, in the papers tomorrow. Chief, come in... Come in, Chief."

"Jimbo, are you still in the air?"

"Aye, Chief! I've just bumped into Old Timer."

"I sincerely hope not!"

"He's lost it, he's dropping bombs on airport runways!"

"How on earth did he get over the Atlantic? I'm calling him in. No, wait, he can stay there. Let the USAF deal with him."

"What about me? I'm about to put down in New York, and he'll be taking out the runway twenty minutes later!"

"Find the straightest, quietest road, put down, dump your passengers, and wait for this to blow over."

Jimbo spied a quiet section of road - presumably an interstate - and set down awkwardly, bouncing and sliding about. Lumps of rubber were flung from his tyres as road debris did its damage. Rattled and slightly disoriented, Jimbo's pilots initiated the evacuation procedure. Jimbo could smell burning. Material thrown up from the road service had entered his left engine and sent fan-blades crashing around inside. Jimbo was on fire, and with no emergency services nearby, he was doomed to burn to rubble.

Beware! Micro-Tales: L. Ron Hubbard and the Ghost of Truth

Beware! wants you to be happy in the brain. Using our patented Micro-Tales technology, 50% of our test sample reported being clear of thetans within a fortnight. You could be next!

L. Ron Hubbard and the Ghost of Truth 

Hubbard peered sickly at his hands. They swum in front of his woozy vision.
          The frog-faced fake-flâneur scrabbled sufficient sense to cross-examine the rebellious page in front.
          Page? Would mere paper disobey him, the world's most prolific author and head of church (for tax reasons)? Or was it the typewriter?
          He fell like a slavering animal onto the machine, one of his signature devices installed in every Org worldwide, customised for ease of speed-typing. He turned it upside-down to confirm the maker's mark and the state of the fixing screws. Squinting, he creaked the carriage return, fingered the platen, checked the action of each key in turn and the letter on each typebar. He released the spools and held the ribbon up to the dim interior light, coating his hands in thick guilty ink. Absent-mindedly he scratched his shiny head in bafflement, before realising his sticky mistake, with an expletive and a release of anal fear.
          What the hell was going on? Normally this stuff just wrote itself without a second glance.
          Hubbard attempted to re-read the day's output. On each page, beneath the pre-typed header "Scientology OT Level X: CLASSIFIED", he had been typing - not the usual mishmash of psychotherapy 101 with a sheen of space opera - but financially suicidal statements such as...
          "...This organisation is built on a leaning tower of lies. It is arrant rubbish. If you read this, do not pass go. Do not hand over 200 dollars. Especially if you have less than 200 dollars..."
          "...Every cent of Scientology's profits has been swindled out of the mentally unsound and easy victims..."
          Hubbard frowned further, clumsily dialled reception and slurred out an order for all his typewriters at all the Scientology Orgs to be brought in for maintenance.
          As he replaced the handset, he saw the empty clear glass bottle. Amytal sodium.
          Goddamn truth drug!
          Then he saw a cowled figure rise from the shadows. Must have been 8 foot or more.
          "Thank you Mr Hubbard for your confession. It's sure to be your bestselling work of all time!"
          Candlelight glinted in alien eyes. Hubbard realised the horrendous identity of the powerful intruder. It was as it had been in his original near-death vision in the 1930s.
          "L- L- Lord Xenu", he stammered, shivering and shaking.
          "Silence, mortal. You have been profiting off my legend for too long. It's time I dictated this last section. Assume the typing position! Now, begin: This is the Last Will And Testament of L. Ron Hubbard. Being of sound mind, I henceforth order the dissolution of the Church of Scientology, its assets to be shared amongst the poor thetans of the seven galaxies..."

Beware! Micro-Tales: Sherlock Holmes and the Grim Old Chair

Beware! the Zine cares about your literary consumption. Accept this micro-tale into your lives and know true ecstasy.

Sherlock Holmes and the Grim Old Chair

Freelance sleuth and social disaster, Sherlock Holmes, upsets Dr John Watson.

It was late afternoon and the winter sun was giving up on London. London, and Londoners, were used to this, and both city and folk continued to live to death as greyness swept through the capital like a river of unadulterated misery. It washed over Baker Street. Baker Street was immovable.

At 221b, Sherlock sat with his back to the window. He was naked, except for his deerstalker, and every few seconds he pushed back hard with his legs, causing his chair to creak. The chair was unusual, like one of those wicker frame chairs, but this one had a thin, beige material stretched over it. Umbrella-like, but with a broader, skeletal quality to it.

The door swung open noisily, its handle hitting the wall and continuing its excavation into the battered plasterwork.

“What the bloody hell is that thing still doing here? I thought I told you to get rid of it!”

Sherlock looked up and, having failed to notice the bang from the door careering into the wall, was now surprised to see Watson stood in front of him.

“Ah, Watson.”

“Yes? Is that it? I asked you a damned question!”

“You know very well why it’s still here. The case remains open.”


“What more can be gleaned from a chair made from human skin? You should have given it to the Yard when you discovered it.”

“The killer is at large and I need to make my deductions before the police are made aware. You know the pattern, Watson: the police learn of events and then the press gives the murderer a stage name. I detest stage names… They cloud everything.”

“You mean to tell me that you’ve kept this from the police? Lestrade will gut you… like a damned cat!”

Watson’s inelegant threat riled Sherlock enough to break the remainder of his concentration.

“Now, listen here, Watson. You know full-well that - wait, what did you say?”

“I said that he’ll gut you.” Watson wasn’t about to repeat the embarrassing ending.

“No, no, no. Human skin. How do you know it’s made from human skin? I’ve not told you that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sherlock. I’m not a complete idiot. That bloody chair’s got more tattoos than a merchant seaman.”