Simon Collings Surreal Absurd-Sampler

“As a teenager I loved the surreal humour of Monthy Python’s Flying Circus – a programme my parents hated. Growing up in North Hertfordshire, in a lower-middle class family, life seemed pretty absurd. Python affected me to such an extent that my partner claims it has been the major influence of my life. When particularly frustrated by the small-mindedness and tedium of home and school life I would make up gibberish, a kind of Dada protest against mundanity, a habit I carried through into adulthood. It could be argued – as my partner does - that much of what I write now is an extension of my adolescent gibbering. More literary early influences included Beckett (what’s Lucky’s demonstration of ‘thinking’ in Waiting for Godot if not gibber?), Ionesco, and Dostoyevsky. Surrealism came a little later, initially through the films of Buñuel. Of course, I am constantly finding other writers, artists and filmmakers whose work I respond to, and with whom I like to imagine myself in some sort of dialogue, however one-sided it may be. I want my writing to encourage the reader to question received narratives, and embrace ambiguity and doubt. I’m depressed by the vacuousness of much popular culture and the way it damps down individuality, authenticity, questioning. A refusal to cooperate, poking fun, even resorting to gibber, is a way of living with myself.”—Simon Collings

Object no. 14

In the gathering dusk the neighbourhood looked unfamiliar, but I knew the car was around here somewhere. All I had to do was walk up and down the rows of parked cars until I spotted its familiar shape. The streets were virtually deserted, but anyway what would I have said had anyone passed me? I could hardly ask if they had seen a silver Passat. Then turning a corner I ran into what I took to be a small dog, a toy poodle to be precise, though its hair was bright pink.  ‘Can I help you?’ it asked in a husky American accent. ‘A robot,’ I thought. ‘That’s right,’ it said, wagging its tail. It eyed me quizzically, its head cocked on one side. Clearly I was going to have to be careful here.  I tried to empty my mind of thoughts, and set off down the street, the robot dog following. ‘Hey sarge, I don’t think you told me your name,’ it said. ‘Looking for your car, by any chance?’ I pressed on along the street, trying to shake it off. ‘Some sort of neighbourhood watch scheme,’ I thought. ‘Not even warm,’ the robot poodle said.

Burning ring of fire

There is nothing in the gallery, noting to see, no exhibits. People wander from one empty room to another, exchanging bemused expressions, imagining that perhaps it’s a joke. The labels on the walls seem to be left over from a previous show, some partially pealed of, it’s hard to tell. There’s no information, no audio guide.  ‘Why did you come?’ one label asks. ‘What are you looking at?’, asks another.  ‘Who are all these people?’ A teenage girl, dressed as an Italian Renaissance Madonna and with a small naked child in her arms, periodically glides through the rooms. She makes eye contact with those she passes, holding their gaze for a moment with a look completely empty of expression. In the corner of the final room is an old jukebox, like a piece of abandoned scrap. Every ten minutes it lights up and plays a record – always the same record – Jonny Cash singing ‘Burning Ring of Fire.’

Marigolds

The narrow room was hot and crowded with people. A young man in a suit handed me a chit of paper which I attempted to read. It seemed to be a set of instructions but the words kept dissolving before I could make them out. The man looked at me sceptically, then signalled for me to move on. There was a door to the left through which I hoped I might escape the press of bodies. But this led only to a low-ceilinged gallery, where I was forced to walk hunched over, picking my way awkwardly through the slumbering bodies of the inhabitants. A narrow archway at the far end opened onto an even more constricted space, shrouded in shadow. The floor was covered with earth and had been planted with marigolds. The only way out appeared to be through a hatchway, about the width of my body, low down in the wall opposite. Around me in the spectral gloom the orange blooms glowed with hypnotic intensity.

A true story

During the shoot Phil hit a mallard flying over the marshes at a height of about 15 feet. Instead of plummeting into the reeds, from where the dogs would have retrieved it, it stopped in mid-air. As other members of the party began to notice it, the guns fell silent, and the landowner came over to take a look. ‘We’d better get something to climb on,’ he said. Two of the beaters were sent off and returned with an extendable ladder. A group of men waded out into the marsh to set it up. While they held it in place a young boy, the lightest person present, climbed up to the bird. ‘It’s got blood around its beak,’ he shouted down to the men, ‘and on its breast.’ The boy took hold of the mallard by its wings, but it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be fixed in space. ‘I can’t shift it,’ he said. The landowner told the boy to come down and sent up one of the beaters, a brawny farm worker. After a lot of heaving and much swearing the bird was still exactly where it had been when it died. By this time the light was starting to fade. ‘Hadn’t we better hang a lamp on it,’ someone suggested.  ‘So people know it’s there.’

The wedding

Dan and Julia had decided to get married in a large bouncy castle. They thought it would be fun to have the guests wobbling about while a humanist celebrant conducted the ceremony. Guests would be asked to wear appropriate costumes, like characters out of a fairy tale. Julia thought Dan had said ‘humourist’ celebrant when he first suggested the idea, and she’d been a little upset that he wasn’t taking this seriously enough. But the confusion was soon cleared up, and they started making a guest list. There were thirty-two people at the wedding, including half a dozen children under the age of ten. One of the highlights was Julia’s mother falling over in the middle of the exchange of vows. Dan laughed at this scene a great deal whenever they watched the video.

Object no. 43

It hadn’t moved since we first noticed it and I guessed it must be stuffed. Millions of them once roamed the plains but they were later hunted to near extinction. What this one was doing on our lawn was anyone’s guess. Taking the shotgun I approached cautiously. It was an antique, as I’d thought. The hooves had small wheels attached and the parallel grooves in the turf showed where someone had trundled it over the grass. The left eye was missing, and here and there repairs had been made to tears in the hide, perhaps where moths had nibbled it. Underneath we discovered a flap exposing a chamber where a child or small adult might comfortably fit. Nickle-plated levers raised and lowered the head, opened the jaw.

Taken from Why Are You Here? Very Brief Fictions published by Odd Volumes of The Fortnightly Review. Some of these were first published in the journals mentioned below.

Simon Collings lives in Oxford, UK. His poetry, short fiction, translations, reviews and essays have appeared in a wide range of magazines including Stride, Fortnightly Review, Café Irreal, Litter, International Times, Junction Box, The Long Poem Magazine, Ink, Sweat & Tears, PN Review and Journal of Poetics Research. A collection of his prose poems and short fiction, Why are you here?, was published by The Fortnightly Review in November 2020. His third chapbook, Sanchez Ventura, was published by Leafe Press in spring 2021. He is a contributing editor at The Fortnightly Review. More information at: https://simoncollings.wordpress.com/