Le Chic

Les Film Noires

The Welcoming Rain: Scene 1

It was after midnight when the three men left the public house in which they had spent the proceeding few hours. The wind had increased considerably during the night and the trees above the road swayed violently, creaking vociferously as immense gusts of air swirled down through the valley. Few other sounds could penetrate the omnificent roar of the northern wind, a suggestion here and there, like the rusted hinges of a swinging gate, the muffled yelp of an unseen dog. The men seemed to pay the wind little mind however, accustomed as they were to strong gales, a feature particular to this region during the autumnal months. A full moon washed the road in an eerie blue glow between the swaying shadows of the trees and as they passed the few cottages of the village, no lights showed in their small dark windows. Beyond the last dwelling the road gradually steepened and after a mile or so the little village was below them, dark and slumbering, like a giant feral cat.

After a time the road levelled off, passing beneath the swinging canopy of a great oak of enumerable age. The climb had proven quite an effort, and the three men stopped up to rest beneath the sheltering, Vishnu like arms of the ancient tree. The persuasive northern wind, however familiar, still proved a worthy opponent and all three had felt the demands of such a strenuous hike. The clamour about them made it difficult to communicate but in any case the men were not inclined to talk much, apart from the youngest of the three, a boy of seventeen, who, having been very reluctant to leave the public house, now wore a decidedly sour expression on his wide red face.

Soon the wind died down a little and the two older men, who had noticed in the aspect of their young companion a particular vexation as if he was struggling with some idea, now waited for the Kid to speak.

“Are ye mad or what?” the Kid finally asked, throwing angry glances at the two men, “why the hell couldn’t we just have driven up here? Awwww….. better still we could be sitting in Patsy’s now enjoying another pint! No, instead we’re out in this bloody hurricane for the sake of a few pounds!"

The younger of his two companions, a man of forty years with a black moustache and a hardened complexion, said nothing in reply. Only his narrow eyes moved, scanning the village and farmlands below.

“Anyone could have seen the lights on the road”, replied the second solemnly, an older man of sixty with soft blue eyes and a thick main of grey hair, “it’s better we‘re not seen this night, Seanie”.

Even though this was the answer the young man had been expecting, his face still twisted with an expression of disbelief.

“What do ya’ mean “anyone”? There’s no one out in this weather, ya’ mad old badger!” he yelled, “no one’s even awake at this time of night! Patsy had to close up cause we left and even he is probably sleeping by now! Who’s gonna’ see us Jim?”

The moustached man, who had been silent till now, satisfied with his survey of the village and surrounding area, suddenly turned his full attention upon the young man, catching him firmly at the elbow and yanking him violently. The Kid was very much taken aback, turned pale and began a squirming procedure in order to free himself from the older man’s iron grip.

“Right, go on your way so ya’ little bollocks” the moustached man rasped in his ear, “Myself and Old Jim here will have your money between us.”

After what seemed like a long time to the Kid, the moustached man released him with a shove. The Kid steadied himself and instinctively clutched his arm. His face flushed red with rage and embarrassment, but he kept his eyes lowered to the ground. The Old Man, who had also been a bit shaken by the bluntness of moustached man’s reprimand, broke out in a forced but kind hearted laughter.

“Sounds grand to me” he chuckled, in a somewhat lame attempt to diffuse hostilities between his companions, “these young fella’s are all afraid of a bit of hard work.”

That was too much for the Kid. He didn’t have too put with crap like that from an old man.

‘I’ll show you hard work across the face in a minute, you old bastard!!’ the Kid bellowed waving his fist at the Old Man, his fear giving way to anger.

The moustached man’s response was swifter this time. He pushed the Kid to the ground with ferocious abandon.

“Shut up and do what I say Kid, and when he gets here shut up and do what he says, and you’ll make two hundred pound for an hours work” the moustached man sneered, pointing a long slender finger at the Kid, “if you keep complaining I’ll tell him give you nothing .And you can forget about a lift home too.”

The Kid had nothing to say to that. He sat on the road and stared at his antagonist with a look of fearful contempt. The moustached man, who was starting to regret bringing the Kid along, spat and turned to resume his surveillance of the village below.

No one spoke for a time. Until the Old Man, looking up at the full moon that hung between the branches of the oak tree, spoke with a strange inference in his voice.

“It’s a bad night”, he said solemnly, the light of the moon reflecting in the mirrors of his eyes, “a night for rogues and devils, if ever there was one.”

With that, the Old Man began searching his pockets for something he seemed just at that moment to remember. The Kid watched on in silence, a look of utter distain played upon his flushed red face.

“Ha- Ha!” he exclaimed, winking at the young man before producing a crumpled packet of John Player Blue cigarettes from the breast pocket of his grimy over coat, “more nails for the coffin….if one can kill ya, I must have lived a thousand lives by now.”

The old man coughed and put a cigarette between his lips. It hung there, suspended for that moment in time, as withered and emaciated as the old man himself. The Old Man held out the crumpled box to the Kid by way of an apology for what he had said earlier. At first the Kid turned his eyes away from the Old Man, too angry and frustrated to take one, but the urge soon over powered him. He could never resist a cigarette after a few pints.

The Kid got up, walked over to the Old Man and took a cigarette from the packet. There were only two left. The Old Man gave him a light, shielding the match from the wind with a large bony hand. Immediately, the Kid’s face began to soften to a state of only mild agitation. The old man too was smiling.

“What the hell are we doin’ a job for that Prod anyway” the Kid suddenly began with renewed confidence, addressing the moustached man, “his people don’t own the land anymore! Or the big house, what’s left of it. Jesus, he’s nearly poorer than old Jim there for god’s sake! A proper weirdo as well…….; writing books about devils and god knows what. No wonder he’s broke, who would read crap like that Frank? I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see a penny from him.”

At first, Frank seemed not to have heard the Kid’s words. But just at that moment the force of the wind reduced further, making it difficult for the two men to mistake what Frank said next.

“He’ll pay up alright” he said slowly, “or he’ll be joining his ancestors down in that crypt!!”

Carpark 2

Carpark 1

Unigolf 2

Unigolf 1

Mind's Eye

Self

F*ck Meteor

(Fills out forms, goes home to get passport and utility bill, comes back)

“They just need a prepayment of 300 euros.”

“Come again?”

“To switch your phone to bill pay, they need a prepayment of 300 euros’.”

“Why’s that?”

“That’s what they said”

“Go-way luv.” (Walks out of the shop)

Corporate Ghetto

"Come on, come on, I see no changes, wake up in the morning and I ask myself is life worth living should I blast myself?” Tupac said that shit.

Where u homies at fool? U better be packin if u plannin on hangin down in the finance department.Diz place is the streets and the streets is where it’s at, cracker!!!!Some girl got herself whacked down here just last week.An ex twelve yr old mother of three!!

Huh? You think I give a f*ck about a girl? I ain’t a sucka fool!!!!

You gotta learn quick up in diz biznaz.First day on the job and some sucka from the Bratislava office gets all aggro on my ass.Bitch I came from the city of limerick and I’m still here fool!!
Check this, two days later the bitch turned up for a meetin in my hood, sat himself right down across from my desk.Took out his laptop and started meetin his targets so I pistol whipped the sucker right upside the head with my calculator.I met my target of kickin his ass right there cracker!!

Huh? You think I give a F*ck about the head of finance of the Slovakian Office? I ain’t a sucka fool!!!

You wanna stay alive down here you best meet yr targets or get yoself a piece. Out in the car park I kick it with g and cronies. Guns in cars slide past and whatnot, bouncing to the sounds of the summer slap. Click-clicks from killers and rapists in luxury cars.Last desperate messages from young thugs tryin to make in the corporate world of the fiscal year of our lord 07.

You gotta watch yo back till you hit the shade of the call centre, the best air conditioned crib in all the city, fool! They got big mutha fans in there enough to slice a big brother’s fro clean off and not make a sound. Plus, the call centre is the best place to get yoself a weapon, cracker!!!Big boy Brendan been dealin glokz out of that place since we was in dippers.I pick myself up a little Jane Austin 9mm.And we be ready to fuck some homies up!!!!

“You better check yoself before you come in here without an appointment, boy!!!” My boss’s secretary is a racialist.But I kno she be hot for my white ass eventho she’s always breakin my balls over somethin.
"I came here to f*ck bitch!! You kno what I’m sayin?” I spit, bringin the streets right at ya.
God damn!! What I gotta to do to get up in diz bitch???

Shiiit, I gotta check myself before I wreck my pantz.

The clock says five and we back on the streets in no time. Back to illin.Back to slappin bitches with hockey sticks.Back to playin gta on the xbox. Back to the hoods of the frontal lobe.

The Opposite is Often True

When the sun was still young in the blue cloudless sky, the old man made his way to the small café. He may have moved with a slow, stumbling limp but his pale green eyes shun like tiny emeralds, examining all they looked upon. Walking in the bright rain washed streets of early morning always reminded him of his childhood and he was fond of taking his time, savouring the colours and scents of the old city like a vintage wine. Sparrows twitted and sprang between the branches of the lime trees, singing happily to each other.

The streets would remain thus tranquil until about seven, after which time crowds thronged the main thoroughfares and boulevards, a bustling, speeding swarm. He had plenty of time till then; the sun was not yet visible above the sunken roof of the small Methodist Chapel, long since derelict and ruinous even in the time of his childhood.

Jacob Heinz had lived all of his life within the fortified walls of the old city. Its wide stone pavements and verdant street corners spoke for him now, welcoming him with every slow step. His hands felt the brush of the rosebushes and the smooth cool wall tops, his leather shoes made a tapping sound on the clean wet cobbles. Whistling to the rhythm of his steps, the old man felt happiest at this time of the day, when the slow ebb and flow of the streets seemed to echo the soft internal beat of his own sense of well being. Recently he had been feeling better than he had felt for a long long time.

Two weeks latter, as Jacob’s nephew closed his uncle’s coffin, he fell to reflecting on the old man’s final days, and how his uncle had no idea the end was quite near.

Picture, No Text

In the foreground, a pig like man grins, his right, hoof like hand interlocked with that of a scrawny young associate. Both well dressed men are smiling animal like, that is to say they are not really smiling, as animals don’t really smile. Their smile is more of a grimace, a glair to show their teeth to potential enemies and known assailants. Between the men, a document is suspended by a left hoof and a long, thin fingered hand. Pigman’s face, however, is rather rough shaven, a peculiar contrast to adroitness of his dress and distinguished position in the upper echelons of our organisation.

This may reflect a move away from the traditional autocratic, hierarchical approach to management in favour of a more informal, fluid, team approach where every ones your buddy. Or it may signify that the Pigman didn’t have time to shave this morning.

Sometimes I practice the animal smile. When I hold the door open for a woman and she doesn’t say thanks, when I pass someone I don’t like in the hall way, when the lady at check out doesn’t say please or thank you, I animal smile.

The two men are standing in the middle of an office area. If you look in the background it is not hard to make me out, standing beside my desk, with the full contents of a plastic cup of water spilled down my crotch.

Fondle or Smash, Part 2: Snakeman Wants Cake

The audience too, swept up in the Dionysian orgy of sound and motion, cannot resist the urge to jump to their feet and wave there arms manically in time with the hypnotic afro beat. The pupils of their eyes seem to grow larger, perhaps in adjustment to the increased spectrum that comprises the spirit realm. Just when it seems that the performance has been lost forever to infernal cacophony, the performer suddenly seems to regain a purchase upon his composure, picking up the microphone from the stage floor and as the music is lowered somewhat, he addresses the audience in a deep African voice.


“Yeah, I got me somethin’ now Sir, I got me the truth. The Snakeman’s callin’ out in da 12th house and he says he is hungry, boy is he hungry! The Snakeman wants……… cake……. and he wants tea!”

“And… there’s somebody there with him. Who is that man there with you Mister Snakeman?...Mister Snakeman says the man’s name is John.
Does the name John mean anythin’ to anybody here?”

A fat man in the front row shouts “Praise the Snakeman!”

“Yes Sir, you there, I noticed you had a spiritual reaction to that name”, the performer smiles like a feral cat, “could you tell us what that name means to you?

“Well Mister,” shouts the fat man, “I was watching a movie on TV just last night and the man’s name in the film was John something or other!”

“Yes, Sir…….. It’s the truth and it’s for you. The Snakeman says it’s so. Come up here now Sir and spin that numbered disk back there. Which ever number you get fondle the same box there or take that mallet hammer and smash it into tiny pieces! Only then can you know what’s inside the box and inside of yourself!”

The fat man is so excited by the invitation that he forgoes the usual mode of passage when moving from the audience to the stage, namely the steps at each side, and attempts to climb to the level above, which he does, squirming and wriggling like slug on salt. Already, chants of “Snakeman! Snakeman! Snakeman!” are being heard from the crowd, keeping time with the omnificent beat of the still largely audible music of absolute madness.

Breathing raucously, the fat man makes his way to the back of the stage, in a half run; half waddle, crashing headlong into the silver disk, quite losing control of his motor functions in nervous sweat drenched excitement. Bending over to catch his breathe, he steadies himself on one of the four handles of the disk and wipes the sweat from his forehead with his free hand. After a number of deep breaths and a glance in the direction of the still smiling performer, the fat man suddenly straightens himself and without warning, delivers a violent jerk upon the handle, sending the disk into a powerful and prolonged spin. The fat man can only stare at the hypnotic spinning disk now and listen to the shouts of the hysteric audience, flabby arms akimbo, eyes burning as drops of sweat drip down from his eyebrows.

The disk spins on and on, through time and space. The chants of “Snakeman!” have either drowned out the music completely at this stage or perhaps it has stopped playing altogether. After what seems like an eternity, the spinning disc finally comes to a halt at that most ominous of numbers, the number four. The Fat man at first seems dazed and confused, struggling with the significance of that particular number, before turning to the performer, with the expression of a man that‘s been struck with some inner revelation.

“I spent four years of my life in the county jail for a hit and run while under the influence of alcohol, Sir” he cries above the chants of the crowd, “but I done my time and not a minute goes by that I don’t wish I never got behind the wheel of that vehicle”.

“The Snakeman hears that Sir” the performer reassures him, “he’s been calling out from the 12th house”

Snakeman! Snakeman! Snakeman! Snakeman! The crowd are working themselves into frenzy.

The fat man is reassured; his eyes again attaining their previous fiery intensity.

“I’ll take that mallet there”, his fat mouth cries, a stubby finger extended in the direction of the wooden table, “I wanna’ forget that number and smash it forever! I wanna’ forget those rotten years in that stinkin’ jailhouse.

This is perhaps the reaction the Performer/ Snakeman was hoping for. He claps his hands together in eager anticipation before addressing the fat man in a voice thick with barely concealed excitement.

“The choice, as always, is yours, Sir.”

The fat man however needs no encouragement and having speedily waddled back to the front of the stage; lifts the mallet from the table and in a dramatic, almost theatrical manner, and vents a tornado of blind, fumbling destruction down upon both box number four and the wooden table upon which it sits. Blood and what appears to be human tissue, spray everywhere. The frantic people in the front two rows of the audience are subjected to a torrent of bloody entrails.

Fondle or Smash Part One: Face of Feeding Maggots

There is a feeling before the performer steps upon the stage. There is a desperate moment, a yearning in the soul to propel one’s self beyond the normal realms of experience, to catapult out into the unknown. The mind struggles tirelessly against itself to bypass the mechanism of conditioned instinct and attempts to search instead for those dimensions our hunter gatherer forefathers dismissed as uninhabitable, the sparse and lonesome frontiers stretching out beyond Huxley’s doors of perception. It is upon this exploration of hereto uncharted country that the young magician longs to embark and the artist desires to record.

The stage, as always, remains sparsely adorned. In the foreground there is a small wooden table. Suspended in the background, a large silver disk rotates four feet above the floor. The words “Fondle or Smash!” are crudely scrawled across the back wall in red lettering. Upon the table are four small wooden boxes and a large mallet hammer.

After a time, the performer who has been sitting somewhere in the crowd, observing the expressions and listening to the conversations of his audience, chooses to make his way to the stage. This seemingly insignificant detail is perhaps a cunning ploy, to, from the outset, place his public on their guard. Even now as he begins to speak, their tiny minds are already at work, deciphering the meaning of such an “outré de entrée”.

“Sons of Abraham, I mean you no harm!!
Daughters of Dionysus, I pledge my love to thee!!
Children of Eden, let us be free!!”

“The hour has commeth and I stand before you that I may be your portal of truth, a window for thine soul, an instrument to help thee peer inside and know thine true self like never before!
Will you now, as you stand upon the precipice, take my hand and allow me to lead you over the edge and down into the fault below?
Will you be ruled by me, even when the siege walls are almost breached and famine lies down at night to sleep beside your family bedstead?
If the veil is lifted from the bride, revealing a face of feeding maggots, will you still kiss me?
Man hath no greater horrors than those which inhabit the cold and solemn mountains of the soul.”

These questions are designed to excite an unwavering interest and simmering horror of apprehension in the performer’s audience, establishing a foreground within which a number of items may be introduced.

“What I propose to undertake tonight is a journey to the centre of the inner self to find the hidden workings of the real mind, to arrive at the one truth which is undeniable and perfect, my only instruments: a spinning numbered disc, a mallet hammer and the four wooden boxes on the table behind me.”
Each number on the disc corresponds to a wooden box. Inside each box lies a truth for one of you here tonight in the audience. The question is whether it is better to embrace that truth or to smash it into a million pieces. The choice, as always, will be yours.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please allow me to tear the veil from your collective eyes, I shall by means of self hypnotism and mind control, visit an extremely dangerous trance upon my being, that I may encounter the spirits of the recently departed and the long time dead.”

With these words the performance may begin and strangely familiar trance music emanates from the speakers on both sides of the stage.

“What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more” a deep foreign voice calls out over the music before commencing what can only be described as some from of nonsensical mantra, “Bidi-Bidi-Bidi-Bo-Bid- a-Bom….Bo-Bid-a-Bom. Bidi-Bidi-Bidi-Bo-Bid-a- Bom… Bo-Bid-a-Bom.

The performer too, after a time begins to replicate this diabolic chant, his voice building in strength to an almost deafening crescendo until the he is finally unable to resist the rhythm and breaks uncontrollably into a disembodied techno dance of insanity. The microphone slips from his hand, hitting the stage floor with a vociferous thud

Transitions

About two weeks ago I received a flurry of emails about the recent changes to the blog. This post is to address those comments publicly so all visitors will be aware of the situation.

In general I agree with your comments on the readability of the site and this is something the blog administrators and contributors have discussed internally. We've currently working on a blog improvement initiative that will see a number of improvements taking place.

At the moment we're working on some upgrades and will moving over to 'New Blogger' shortly. We'll then be taking advantage of some of the neater functionality the new system provides without cluttering up the blog space with miscellaneous crap. In an effort to bring in fresh new talent, we're also in talks with select contributors from other blogs in the hopes of bringing their talent to where they can best be showcased.

We're going to be changing the this place up over the coming days and weeks, the background will be just one of these things. We look forward to the forthcoming changes and hope you do too.

Rage out.