Spontaneous combustion entered their lives like the mischievous ghost of a simian arsonist. Defying logic, things in the house would suddenly begin smouldering and burst into flames, only to suddenly and inexplicably extinguish. The first occurrence of this phenomena came after Munk and Monday returned from a nocturnal foray culminating in an explosion which rocked the sleeping city.
    Naked except for dark glasses in the sombre kitchen, they sat in a silence verbose on reprisal by the authorities, a meal of mango marmalade, black radish coleslaw, smoked eel and cold beer spiked with pickled ginger largely untouched before them.
     'You smell burning?' Monday said, twitching her nose.
    Munk stopped guzzling beer the time for three staccato inhalations. The dilapidated mansion they inhabited was a tottering pyre waiting for a compassionate cinder to end the misery which groaned from its foundations to its architraves. Meandering over five storeys, the building's former glory was in an advanced state of decay. Parquet floors creaked ominously, wallpaper pockmarked with mould peeled from damp walls, mildew-stained drapes framed filthy window panes and decorative plasterwork crumbled into oily water dripping from corroded plumbing. The building contained very little furniture with the exception of the ballroom which hosted a suite of tarnished gilded Louis XV bergères, malodorous fungus sprouting between threadbare silk upholstery. Other spacious rooms were filled with stuffed wild animals of every species imaginable, a sprawling zoo of timeworn taxidermy. As a further fire hazard, the snooker room contained a large refrigerator packed with plastic explosive.
    'So do you? Smell burning?'
    'Guilty of a minor flatus.' Munk confessed.
    'Shit.' Monday gulped, pointing over his shoulder. 'Smoke. The laundry room.'
    They leapt up, the cat sleeping beneath the table fleeing with a screech when Munk trod on its tail in their dash to the adjoining room.
    'Whoah. Your bra's on fire.' Munk sniggered, retrieving the blazing garment from the laundry basket.
    'Do something.' Monday squealed. 'Throw sand on it.'
    Munk chuckled. 'I'll smash the egg timer.'
    Whilst they quibbled, the flaming bra Munk held at arm's length suddenly extinguished, leaving a hole burnt in the centre of its left cup. They stared at other creased garments inside the laundry basket. Incomprehensibly, nothing else was even scorched.
    Back in the kitchen, they picked at leftovers, swallowed pills, swilled beer, smoked passionately, kissed dispassionately, postulated on the cause of the fire but came to no conclusions. Munk slid two fingers into her and let the cat lick them. Monday threw a grapefruit at him and said he was a pervert. The cat licked its lips and curled up in a flickering sliver of late afternoon sunshine.
    Exhausted from their outing and confounded by the burning bra, they retired to bed as sirens wailing from the city walls spurred the reckless to ignore the curfew.

~

    'Mardi? Is that you?'
    The lightbulb above the front porch had been shot out months ago. The culprit had then targeted the rusty weather vane on the roof, the T.V. aerial on which flapped a sheet of filthy polythene swept up there by the wind, the guano-encrusted cement flamingos on the weed-infested lawn. Squinting at the silhouette bathed in amethyst shadows through the spyhole, Monday sighed with relief when her twin sister replied.
    'Open sesame. This district is the end.'
    Mardi came through the doorway in a shroud of damp air and stale perfume. 'Did I wake you?' She whispered as they embraced. 'You reek of sex. Anything to drink? Munk?'
    'Sleeping.'
    Shivering, Monday took Munk's oilcloth raincoat from the horn of a rhinoceros in the hallway. They went towards the kitchen, Mardi motormouthing about everything and nothing at all. Like my new shoes? Was it you that blew up the watchtower on the east wall? Where you at The Missing Link concert? Got any aspirin?'
    In the kitchen, the cat was toying with the burnt bra. Monday poured cognac for her sister and boiled water for coffee. Mardi picked cigarette butts from an overflowing ashtray and smoked voraciously. They dealt Tarot and gossip, indulged in mirror narcissism with their honey coloured eyes, laughed like alley cats in a fish cannery and talked about nothing of consequence with passionate intensity.

~

    'Well look what the cat dragged in.' Munk snorted when Mardi entered the kitchen wrapped in a saffron bathtowel with a matching handtowel as a turban.
    'Munk. You look like you need an undertaker.' She said, scanning him from head to foot.
    'Where's Monday?'
    'I might be her.'
    'She doesn't tie a turban that way. So?'
    'We had a bath together. I ate her.'
    Between assembling a sandwich, Munk sipped coffee. When he looked up Mardi was gone, wet footprints on the floorboards evaporating with each blink of his eyes.
    Chomping on the sandwich, he followed her trail of perfume. From the bathroom he heard Monday singing a melancholy Blues melody. He found Mardi in the ballroom, eyes closed, curvaceous body backlit in lactic azure light as she danced amidst inanimate spectators which included a giraffe, a zebra, a goat, a rhinoceros and a kangaroo.
    Placing the sandwich on a rusty spring spiralling from the seat of one of the bergères, he reached out to support her trembling body in its climactic stasis.
    'One twin dances like the devil. The other sings like an angel. Thought you ate her?'
    'Hate. Not ate.'
    'Eat me.'
    When he forced his tongue deep into her mouth she drew away, slithering her tongue over the taught muscles of his torso as she slowly dropped to her knees. Munk loosened the turban from her head, spreading fingers through damp curls of hair to encourage the rhythmic movement of her head. When she suddenly pulled away, Munk ejaculated onto the dusty floorboards, bleating expletives for the interruptus.
    Eyes protuberate with disbelief, Mardi choked. 'That...that cheese sandwich just caught fire.'
    Atop a rusty upholstery spring, flames flickered over the sandwich. The toasting bread curled at its edges, molten cheese dripping onto the faded silk upholstery. Mardi stood up, wiping pouting lips with one hand, rubbing knees with the other.
    'I haven't imagined that.' She gulped, snatching the towels from the floor.
    'Happened once before.' Munk sighed. 'Your sister's bra.'
    Mardi made the smaller of the towels into a turban again and sauntered off towards the kitchen. Munk stood amongst the stuffed animals, hearing Monday singing the blues from another planet.

~

    When Munk woke there was daylight and the steady patter of rain. Nestled between the twins in a tangle of limbs, he glanced at the alarm clock balanced on the back of a crocodile which served as a bedside table. Seven thirty two. On the floor in a corner next to a gazelle with one glass eye missing, the remains of one of Mardi's new shoes which had burst into flames earlier was a charred blob in contrast to its shiny red twin. Seven thirty three. Munk slipped out of the warm fug, an early bird to catch a worm.

~

    The doorbell played la Marseillaise. Munk lit a cigar, checked his fly and opened the door with gusto, only for his greeting to be thrown off kilter by two, and not one visitors on the doorstep.
    'Mr. Blank.' Munk snapped. 'You're not alone.'
    The man in the crumpled white linen suit rolled bloodshot eyes.
    'We met at the gates. Coincidence.'
    Behind him, the Priest wheezed an explanation. 'Someone called. An exorcism?'
    Mr. Blank's cheeks flushed. 'Exorcism?'
    'Someone?' Munk said. 'Monday?'
    'No.' The Priest stammered. 'Today. Said it was a matter of life or death.'
    'Life or death?' Mr. Blank squeaked, panic etching lines into his face.
    'Do come in.' Munk said, ushering them inside.
    'Father Pear.' The Priest announced with a limp handshake.
    'Father.' Munk replied through a cloud of blue smoke before introducing the man in the white suit. 'This is Mr. Blank. He's in socks.'
    The two visitors shook hands, perspiration on Mr. Blank's forehead revealing his escalating nervousness.
    'Whisky?' Munk said to Mr. Blank, who nodded energetically. 'A drop of the Son's blood for you Father?'
    Munk led his visitors to the ballroom where they fidgeted in silence. Pouring drinks, Munk heard footsteps. Monday? Mardi? One of the twins sauntered into the room yawning, wearing a skimpy silk bodice, nipples and mons veneris clearly defined, buttocks peeking past a dainty scalloped lace hem. Mr. Blank gulped his whisky. Cheeks reddening, Father Pear fondled the crucifix suspended around his scrawny neck whilst staring at the sandals below the hem of his cassock.
    'I heard voices.' Monday yawned as she entered the room to stand beside her sister.
    'Ladies. May I introduce you to...Mr. Blank. And Father Pear. Mr. Blank and me have business to discuss. I understand Father Pear is here on a mission.'
    Munk led Mr. Blank into the snooker room, forcing warped doors closed with a hefty kick. His guest wiped perspiration from his brow with a soiled bandana before running a virtually toothless comb through pomaded hair. Lighting a cigar, Munk crushed a cockroach that darted past his foot.
    'Do we have a deal?' He said, refilling the other man's glass.
    'Priest rattled me.' Mr. Blank sniffed, pinched lips curling over yellowing teeth. 'What was that about an exorcism?'
    'Female stuff. They play Tarot. Speculate about Jovian moons influencing their karma. Astral planing. Etcetera.'
    Mr. Blank gulped his drink in one needy draught. 'Good whisky. A deal? Yes and no. No punters for stuffed animals these days. People got other priorities.'
    'What about the wine cellar? And don't tell me explosives are hard to fence.'
    Placing his glass on the snooker table Mr. Blank picked up the black ball from the geometric arrangement, rolling the smooth sphere in the palm of his hand.
    'My informants tell me your name is on a list. Question of time before you're arrested. Here's my offer. I'll take the wine and explosives in exchange for a reliable vehicle and forged travel documents. Take it or leave it.'
    Munk scratched stubble on his chin. His own informants advised that Mr. Blank was not to be trusted. Supplying insurgents with black market goods, he was also in the pay of the regime they tried to bring down.
    'The ship?' Munk asked, dragging his thoughts back to survival.
    The merchant's tumescent lips quivered into a crooked smile as he rolled the black ball across the green baize into the top right pocket. 'There's a Dhow leaving Wahdji on Thursday. Heading south. You can disembark at any port along the way you please. If you leave on Sunday, there's enough time to drive there and arrange your passage. Do we have a deal?'
    Munk nodded. 'We do.'
    'I'll leave by the back door.' Mr. Blank whispered, fishing an ice cube from his glass before popping it into his mouth. 'Men of the cloth give me the eeby-jeebies.'
    Alone, Munk removed the black ball from the corner pocket, polished it carefully and placed it on its spot on the table.
    The deal had gone down. Mould grew imperceptibly yet steadily on the fur and skin of his precious menagerie. The refrigerator motor chugged into action, maintaining its volatile contents at precisely two degrees centigrade.

~

    Father Pear was sprinkling water from a plastic container that resembled a large salt shaker with one hand, wearing out a rosary with the other as he muttered Latin incantations barely audible over The Missing Link blaring from a radio in the next room. Munk crushed a moth on a bison's haunches as he passed, resisting the temptation to throw the Priest out and deciding instead to begin packing for the trip.
    In the musty gloom of the attic he unlocked a metal cupboard and loaded items into aluminium suitcases. Two .38 Glock pistols, one sawn-off Mossberg pump shotgun. Ammunition, machetes, hand grenades. First aid kit with extra doses of morphine. Tarpaulins, hammocks, two compasses. Water purification pills, Véry pistol and flares, solar powered torches, Zeiss day and night binoculars. Basic rations, water, food, tobacco, drugs, alcohol and clothing he would prepare on the eve of their departure.

~

    Downstairs, the fetid dampness throughout the house was camouflaged by sweet smoke as Father Pear shuffled from room to room swinging an incense burner on a chain around his wiry frame, the twins hovering in his wake. Watching from the doorway, Munk had the distinct impression Father Pear was overstaying his welcome. When Monday caught his eye, Munk beckoned her into the shadows.
    'Who called God's dummy?' Munk hissed.
    'Me.' Monday giggled. 'I told Mardi about the burning bra. She mentioned this cool Priest who did exorcisms.'
    'Cool Priest? That's an oxymoron.'
    'Father Pear says the Devil plays with fire. That there's an evil spirit in these walls. He's confused by your dead animals. Said the house was a Satan's Noah's Ark in a sea of uncertainty. He'll leave after taking our confessions.'
    'Confessions?'
    'A game. Prick-tease the Priest with a little smut.'
    Munk snorted. 'We're leaving Sunday.'
     'We're starving. Make something to eat?'
    Munk wandered off to the kitchen, cursing Mr. Blank for his perfidy, cursing the twins for being irresistible, cursing the Church for its lies and cursing the cat whom he found pawing a half-dead rat in the kitchen. He cleared up Tarot cards sticky with mango marmalade, washed glasses filled with dregs of cognac, lemon slices and cigarette butts before cooking Chinese noodles, tiger shrimp and shitake mushrooms in fish stock flavoured with garlic, jalapeños and coriander. From the wine cellar he fetched two bottles of Puligny Montrachet. By the time he was lighting candles, he heard the front door slam and conspiratorial sniggers as the twins came to feast.

~

    Munk's thrusts into Mardi were so intense that the force of his body behind hers took them from the bed onto the floor. Standing with one hand clasped around a post of the brass bed, Monday stood in a voyeuristic trance, her tremulous voice improvising a nursery rhyme.
    When Mardi's head meeting the base of the French windows prevented Munk from driving her any further, she raised herself on her elbows, flattening palms against the window frame to increase the frenzy of his lunges. Opening her eyes, she espied the sombre figure of Father Pear in the garden through the half open shutters, just feet away from her face. Above bared teeth, his previously dead eyes bulged with demoniacal intensity. Raised cassock clutched in one hand, he masturbated wildly with the other, eyes fixed on hers. Suddenly, the expression on his face changed dramatically. Mardi pleaded for Munk to fuck her harder, willing the peeping Tom to a simultaneous orgasm. But Father Pear's expression had not changed because he was reaching a climax, for it was not pleasure he was experiencing but pain as the hem of his cassock had caught fire and his pale white buttocks and withered thighs were being seared by flames. Mardi and Munk's coitus ended in screams of ecstasy as Father Pear fled into the night, praying for the heavens to open and extinguish the burning torch of sin his body had become.

~

    An eighteen inch bolt from the crossbow pierced Mr. Blank's sternum, pinning him to the door about the same time the water temperature gauge of the vehicle he'd supplied hit the red zone some eighty kilometres away. The rampant polar bear in the hallway held the crossbow which Munk had duct-taped in its arms connected to a trip wire which the merchant triggered when he came to collect his part of their bargain.
    Even though it was only just after dawn, the vast wilderness of Bone Garden was already a blistering furnace. Climbing down from the air-conditioned vehicle, Munk and the twins were subjected to a massive climatic shock where even breathing the scalding air was a debilitating effort. An obdurate sun reflecting from pale earth and outcrops of ochre rock left them temporarily blinded. But the most unnerving sensory experience in the barren wasteland was an unreal silence, an auditory vacuum so perfectly hermetic that it caused disorientation only minutes after descending from the cool cocoon of the cab.
    Gingerly, Munk opened the engine compartment, thermals from the radiator scorching his face.
    'This place is scary.' Monday hissed irritably. 'We should have taken the main highway.'
    'That's what Mr. Blank advised.' Munk replied, recoiling when he touched the radiator cap. 'Which means he'd set us up to walk into a trap. Man would sell his own soul if there was a market black enough.'
    'There's nothing out here.' Mardi whispered. 'I had no idea so much nothing existed.'
    'No bones.' Monday said. 'I don't feel so good.'
    'Bones done turned to dust.' Munk whispered, drizzling water over the blister forming on his hand.
    The vehicle was a Scammel personnel carrier covered in a flaking pellicle of mottled rust beneath layers of arcane graffiti. Without its engine running there was no air-conditioning in the cab, so Munk set about rigging a tarpaulin to offer life-saving shade from the enfeebling temperature. Grabbing a .38 Glock from a kitbag he slid it into his belt, passed water to the sisters, spread ointment on his burnt hand, checked the compass and scanned the horizon with binoculars for signs of life through the shimmering heat haze.
    After thirty minutes had passed he decided it was safe to inspect the radiator level. Even with dark glasses, stepping out from the shade offered by the tarpaulin left him temporarily blinded. Coupled with the stealth of the ambush, Munk had no possibility of immediate retaliation when he heard the whistle of a missile cut through the silence.
    An equidistant length of the spear which entered the left side of his neck protruded from the right side.The wooden shaft had razor sharp flint barbs affixed to its tapering shaft with root twine. Munk stood perfectly still, feeling blood surge upwards from his throat dribble from his mouth. In great pain he withdrew the pistol from his belt as he fell to his knees, echoes of the twin's terrorised screams disappearing into the stillness of the white infinity as he tumbled into a pitch black vortex.

~

    The strange tongue the warriors spoke was a laboured, guttural baritone punctuated with falsetto screeching. Apart from sun goggles fashioned from bone in which narrow slits had been cut, their muscovy-skinned assailants were naked. Circling around the trembling twins, some brandished spears in heated debate, whilst others squabbled over trophies prized from the vehicle.
    Mardi's hair bursting into flames arrested their agitations. When Monday attempted to douse her sister's head with water, one warrior lashed out with a bone club, breaking her nose and knocking her unconscious. Mardi's body writhed in frantic spasms as she swatted flames crackling through the mass of curls. One of the warriors advanced, his shaven crown garnished with a mangy pelt from which dangled animal bones threaded amongst polychrome crystals. There came a whirring sound as the bolas he carried sliced through the hot air, followed by choking gasps as the wire tightened around Mardi's slender neck. She fell slowly to her knees, clutching at her charred scalp. The warriors stabbed her with spears and pounded her with clubs until her mutilated body was framed by a lake of blood which began to boil on the abstract mosaic crust of the Bone Garden.

~

    The sun was melting into the horizon when they arrived at the foot of the cliffs. Chill evening air numbed the pain in Monday's broken nose as ladders fashioned from plaited vine were lowered from the giddy heights. One of the younger warriors hoisted her over his shoulder and scaled the ladder with feral agility, the leathery skin of his other hand grasping her thigh in a vice-like grip. Draped over his muscular body she faced downwards during their ascent, mesmerised by blood from her nose splattering onto the arid soil hundreds of feet below.
    Within the vertiginous rockface the tribe dwelt in a labyrinth of caves hewn out over millennia by the wind. They led her into an area illuminated by the glow of tallow candles and a fire surrounded by an incongruous assortment of automobile seats from yesteryear.
    From the shadows, men, women and children assembled to gape and jabber excitedly at the stranger's arrival. Even with clotted blood filling her nostrils, Monday could smell a foul pungency, damp fusioned with burning tallow, malodorous cooking, urine, excrement and rotting carrion.
    The warrior that had carried her up the cliff face shoved her towards a woman in the throng whose nose was pierced with the surprising decoration of a gilded cuff link with an enamelled golf club and ball in its centre. The warrior spoke briefly to the woman, who nodded curtly before leading Monday through tenebrous winding tunnels to a smaller cave with a low ceiling. From a battered metal coffer, the woman took a filthy bottle bearing the brand of a soft drink that had been popular when Monday was a child. Stoppered with a scrap of rag, the bottle contained a thick, murky liquid. The woman gestured to Monday to drink. When she refused, the woman cackled and punched her so hard that Monday's nose began to bleed again. Repeating the gesture to drink, the woman's face bore a menacing snarl. Contrary to the stench coming from the bottle, Monday tasted a sweet nectar reminiscent of almonds, honey and orange blossom. Urging her to finish the potion, the woman studied Monday's face attentively. As a sudden drowsiness overcame her she collapsed, hearing her own voice chatter deliriously as the beginning of a very long and beautiful dream opened up behind her plombeous eyelids.

~

    She dreamt she was dozing beneath a Joshua tree in lush savanna. She dreamt that Munk's childhood dream came true, his stuffed animals had come to life and were running wild across fertile plains. She dreamt she was languishing in tall grass beneath twinkling stars after fornicating with a beast who had forced himself on her.
    Naked in the sticky warm fug beneath blankets of stitched pelts, she awoke, stared into the darkness, yawned and closed her eyes again. It was when she reached to scratch various parts of her body that she sat bolt upright in alarm. In the sombre candlelight she made out a shattered mirror leaning against the wall of the cave. With feline agility she leapt from the bed and padded all fours across the dusty floor to stare at the unfamiliar image reflected there, unsure of what was dream and what was not.

~

    'Don't try to speak. You'll tear the sutures.'
    A fuzzy puce blob with salt and pepper stubble, moth-eaten beret and a magnifying glass sprouting from his forehead, the Doctor's face loomed up from an abyss as Munk drifted out from the anaesthetic.
    'Blink if you understand. Good. You're a lucky fellow. For the Bone Gardeners to have left you for dead. And a smart one for not removing the spear. Ironically, what was meant to kill you saved your life. Plugged the hole and stopped haemorrhaging. Hopefully, my handiwork will see you get your voice back.'
    Munk spent the next two weeks without the faculty of speech. Having missed his passage on the Dhow, he killed time drinking and gambling with pirates and mercenaries until another vessel came into port. Tormented by guilt for not having returned to the Bone Garden to search for the twins, he drifted from bar to bar, maudlin in a state of permanent inebriation and remorse.
    The day before his departure, he sold the Scammel and bought a girl at a slave auction. Physically, she was the most desirable female on sale, an exquisitely beautiful quadroon with Titian red hair and a perfectly proportioned body. But one of her eyes had been gouged out, leaving a jagged scar where her other green eye would have been. She spoke a tongue he had never heard before, a melodic sing-song reminiscent of wild birds he remembered from his childhood. She was called Masasad, and when she understood Munk had bought her she knelt to kiss the hem of his djellaba, chattering in her little bird voice all the way back to the flyblown pension where Munk had rented a room overlooking scuttled hulls of vessels rusting in the toxic waters of the estuary.

~

    The Dolores Marquez flew an unidentifiable flag above fifty thousand tons of rusting hull propelled by fatigued diesels and navigated by obsolete electronics. Munk paid the roguish captain for the privilege of a cramped double cabin in the stern with a bathroom and a small balcony. Unpacking his kitbag, he heard Masasad practising the basic English he'd begun teaching her over the drone from engines deep within the vessel. Pouring a generous measure of cognac into a tumbler, he lit a cigar, examined the scar tissue on his neck in a mirror and stepped out onto the balcony.
    Hugging the coastline, the old freighter's propellers churned silt in the shallows into a grey froth speckled with brown. By the time Munk had finished his drink they were cruising at twenty knots, cool blue evening light flooding the coast of the Bone Garden to starboard. When Masasad came to join him, he turned to pull her to him and sought an embrace. Suddenly she drew away, pointing excitedly to the coast.
    'Quaja-ko! Quaja-ko!' She shrieked. Quaja-ko!'
    On the jagged crest of a butte overhanging the river, a magnificent young lioness stared at the passing freighter. Grasping the railing, Munk leant forward and raised his voice for the first time in weeks.
    'Lioness.' He croaked, his gruff baritone choked with emotion at seeing the first live wild animal since his childhood.
    'Quaja-ko!' Chirped Masasad.
    'Quaja-ko? Lioness?' Munk said, flinching from the pain in his throat.
    'Lio-ness.' Whispered Masasad, her one eye bright with sophomoric wonder.
    The helmsman had seen the animal too, for he slowed the ship's engines and veered hard to starboard. From cobalt shadows behind the lioness came an old lion, scarred and enfeebled from hunger and drought, its graceful majesty dulled by attrition. When he mounted the lioness, ribald catcalls from crew and passengers on the upper decks were suddenly drowned by the resounding crack of a rifle shot. The grizzled male's body contorted hideously as he bellowed an agonised groan before slumping lifeless onto the arid soil.
    There was a brief moratorium before the inferno began, an expanding sphere of blinding flames hurtling through the twilight from the distant horizon. Within seconds, the landscape was engulfed in a blaze of such intense heat that the parched surface of the Bone Garden became molten lava. Munk's last memory of the lioness before a wall of flames flared across the river was of honey coloured eyes gazing into his.



About the author:
Where have I been all your life? I was born in Greenwich, London, and have also lived in New York, Los Angeles and Paris.

I have worked as a funeral vehicle valet, translator and university lecturer. Several major advertising agencies have fired me for having seditious tendencies.

Authors whose work I admire include Flann O'Brien, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.

Another of my short stories won first prize in the Authors Network competition.

Currently, I live as a hermit in rural Norfolk, England, where I have recently completed a novel entitled Black Sheep Barking.

© 2009 Word Riot