Intelligent writing inspired by rock’n’roll

Fast brutal fiction from:

Laird Long Al Guthrie
Delphine Lecompte Kevin Cadwallender
and many more…..

• Iceberg Slim • Pink Grease

• The Intelligent Dumbness • The Forty-Fives
of The Ramones • Johnny Burnette &
• Gene Vincent His Rock’n’Roll Trio
• Jawbone • Ray Banks Issue 3 - £3.00
• The Black Keys www.bulletmagazine.co.uk
Hi there! Welcome to the third issue of
Bullet - the ONLY magazine publishing
rock’n’roll noir.
We believe rock’n’roll isn’t just music, it’s an attitude that can
permeate every aspect of your life. That’s why the writing in Bullet
covers fiction and non-fiction. We imagine it as the sort of place
where James Ellroy and Lester Bangs sit happily together.

It’s loud, noisy and above all swinging. We hope you enjoy it.

In this issue we’ve got 15 new short stories from writers from around
the world. The response to the notion of rock’n’roll noir has had
global resonances and we think we’re on to something big here.
Rock’n’roll is so obviously the bedrock of so many people’s lives,
but that’s not surprising, after all it’s been around for over fifty
years. In that time it’s influence on the world has been immense.
And now there’s a rebirth going on, a rediscovery of the music that
is drawing deep on its blues roots. We’re trying to ride that wave
and take rock’n’roll into new worlds of writing.

We’ve also incorporated some non-fiction, intelligent criticism of

stuff that’s happening now that is of special interest to Bullet
readers. We’ve got reviews of new albums by Jawbone, the Black
Keys and others. What we’re trying to do is put new stuff into a
bigger context and provoke some intelligent thinking on rock’n’roll.

There’s some great new noir out which we think you should know
about. Pulp Originals and Point Blank Press are doing a fine job
and we look at some of their new stuff.

You’ll see at the back of the mag our line of T-shirts celebrating
Bullet Heroes. The latest to join those hallowed ranks is Iceberg
Slim, in our eyes, the greatest black american writer and one of
the greatest writers ever. Full stop. Find out more about him in our
tribute to the guy.

Hope you like this issue and remember ….. keep on rockin’.

Keith Jeffrey
Editor
Bullet No.31
wee andy’s punctuation is better than mine
Delphine Lecompte (Belgium)
i sure miss him,no not you,don't flatter yourself,
i miss wee andy,he doesn't want to see me
anymore,he reckons i'm too sleazy,i'm corrupting
him,i stole his innocence and lots of bollocks like
that,sod the middle class twat,i hope he dies of
boredom,the bloody wee coward couldn't even
say it in my face,he had to write it in a letter,
it was full of spelling mistakes,he sure rejected
me politely,but that only makes it worse,goes to
show he really doesn't give a fuck;i'm sitting on
wee andy's rooftop,i've spent my best moments
on rooftops,usually rooftops of people i love,i get
a little nostalgic sitting here,but fuck that,there's
nothing to be nostalgic about,it was all bad,they
were all rotten and twisted,there was the telly and
my smiths tape,but apart from that it was
horrible,and i'm still waiting for it to end,
and because i've had "such a hard life",his
words,not mine,i refuse to stack asparagus jars
any longer,or any jars for that matter;and i refuse
to take any responsibility,i just want to slash my
puny body,and suck dodgy cock,until it kills
me,and in between the slashing sprees and
compulsive shagging,i write totally inappropriate
shit about being raped by relatives,and i call
them stories,and they get gradually more vulgar
and more incoherent,but the three unimaginative
middle class editors who read them indulge
me,cos this is the nearest to rape they'll ever
get,and they're fascinated and whatever;
wee andy read them cos i plastered his bedroom
walls with all my stories and he couldn't bloody
well ignore them;it's a shame all my friends are
illiterate rentboys and retarded flemish cooks;
i tried to teach christopher to read,but i'm not
very patient,and he's not very bright,so that
project only lasted an hour,well at least he knows
the alphabet,and he can write his name,even if
it's in a totally crippled handwriting,and
christopher is not his real name anyway,i'm glad
he came to his senses and went back to the
streets,selling his fat arse,i'm sure them rotten
twisted adults will shag the fat of him in no
time,either that or some psychopath will arsefuck
him with a paring gouge and shoot an arrow in
his groin,which will rob him of his appetite,as
paring gouges tend to do;my poor traumatised
rentboy,part of me is pleased that he's a whore
again,cos as much as he denies it,i know he
loves sucking vicar cock,and i know he's more
attached to his nefarious pimp gavin than he is
to me,but i miss listening to oasis b-sides with
him,both of us wallowing in self-pity,both of us
loathing literature and despising conceited
yuppie scum,but most of all i miss his wanking
over liam gallagher pics,his gaze so serious,so
intense;and his boner was absolutely gorgeous,
it only ever raises itself like that for liam,only for
liam,definitely not for some sleazy vicar;i try to
avoid rapists,but there are so many,it's like trying
to avoid a tree in a forest,i'll probably never get
used to being gagged tied kicked hit arsefucked
etc,it's just that they can so easily kill me,it's not a
comforting thought,and as much as i love living
the life of a whore,i'd rather not die as one,
it's neither heroic nor romantic,i want to die by
my own hand,somewhere in 2008,january or
february,i can't make up my mind,january or
february?,gun or knife?,sea or tree?,pills or rat
poison?,jumping in front of a train that's heading
for france or jumping from a hotel morrissey
once stayed at?,so many dilemmas,possibilities
more like it,i've really warmed to the idea of
suicide,and now that i've written it down so
explicitly there's no way i'm backing out,i don't
bluff,i talk lots of shite but my shite is more
truthful than yours,so there;i stole a stuffed duck
from the bloody supermarket,i badly want to
shag it,i don't know why,it just looks so sexual,like
everything else really,i wish i was a dog,then i
could hump legs and lampposts and people
would think it funny rather than sick,lately i've
been "shagging" lots of inanimate objects,i'm a
bit bored of sex with people,it's cos none of
youse sleazy cunts can keep your gob shut during
the shag,language is a huge turn-off,and it's not
like them pervs are particularly witty,eloquent or
tender;it's either threats or clichés,and sometimes
i can't tell the clichés from the threats,so stuffed
ducks and television sets and rock'n'roll star
vacuum cleaners it is now;wee andy is
sunbathing in his back garden,the wee pale
scottish cunt will never get a tan,what does the
vain poof want a tan for anyway?,indie poofs are
supposed to be pale,surely the image-conscious
cunt must know this: "STOP SUNBATHING,IT'LL
RUIN YOUR MUSICAL CAREER!!",the wee cunt
looks up at me and sees me gyrating on his
roof,he gets all dramatic,like i'm about to kill
myself,the wee bored middle class twat just can't
resist a scene,"please,come down,delphine,we
can work this out,we can still be friends",he's so
full of himself,this has got absolutely nothing to
do with him,i just love his rooftop: "i saw
morrissey on the telly last night,it was the first
time i ever heard him talk,it was
amazing,andy,he was so kind,and so modest,
and he speaks so softly,and his quiff looked so
good,i'm so full of love for him now,what to do
though with so much love?to quote my surrogate
father himself:why did you give me so much love
in a loveless world when there is no one i can
turn to to unlock all this love?...maybe i should
jump after all"of course i'm only saying this to
bait the wee gullible cunt,i don't want to ruin his
smug patio with my smashed skull,that wouldn't
be nice,"please come down,delphine,we can talk
about it","about your letter?by the way,your
spelling sucks","by the way,your punctuation
sucks","cheeky cunt...go on,spell "punctuation","p-
u-n-c-t-u-a-t-i-o-n","hmm,spell haemorrhage","h-
a-e-m-o-r-h-a-g-e","WRONG,there are two "r"s in
haemorrhage","it's dormice,not dormouses",
"i knew that,i was taking some poetic liberty,sad
cunt","at least i put spaces after my commas",
"do you want a medal?",i'm pissed off
now,"dormouses" for fuck's sake,spaces after
commas for fuck's sake,pffff,as if i give a fuck
about those sad middle class
restrictions,"dormouses" though,"damn you,
you bloody pedantic middle class poof with your
supposed flawless punctuation,and all those
spaces after your commas,i have more sex than
you,so i win","i have lots of sex","no you
haven't,deluded tosser,twice a week isn't what i
would call lots","at least i'm having sex with
someone whom i love and who loves me too",
"no she doesn't,wee naïve cunt;at least i'm having
sex with stuffed ducks who don't pretend they
love me","they can't pretend,they're dead","maybe
they're pretending to be dead!!",we spend the
rest of the afternoon bickering about punctuation
and stuffed ducks until the sun sets and the wee
cunt has a wee date with his middle class slag,so
he cruelly rejects me for the umpteenth time,and
the rooftop is cold and lonely now,i slide down a
rainpipe and walk home,home where my
morrissey is looking ever so tormented and self-
conscious;and spelling is more important than
punctuation,i'm sure my surrogate father
would agree.
Bullet No.32
The Big Kink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter McAdam (Washington, UK)
Manipulation is the key to great Art.
It’s the way the sculptor chips away at the stone
to reveal his inner workings.
Like Giacometti, he would start off with a huge
chunk of masonry and gradually chip away until
he was left with these fragile figures that would
fall apart if you were close enough to breathe
upon them.
Manipulation is the medium but I work in
psychology and violence, not stone.
My name is Eddie Temple.
I respect both the client and my victim and I
approach the job in schematic terms.
For instance a victim’s personality is like a grid,
the inner squares are his or hers instinctual
behaviour, the outer grids are the weaknesses,
these are the hot spots you’ve got to mess with,
then the inner squares crumble and there you
have a full deconstruction of the personality,
ready to be put out of it’s misery.
You have to get to know the person …know the
nuances, you wouldn’t catch me whacking a guy
straight away, I’m steady EDDIE, cool
manipulative and a psychic vampire. I like to
feed off my victim, get to know them, make them
feel comfortable, it’s just the old fear in the eyes
when they figure out I’m not who they think I am,
that makes it worth getting out of bed for.
I suppose my old man’s right I do have a kink in
my personality, like if you drew a straight line on
a piece of paper, cut it in half and put the two
together, only you slightly alter them so the lines
don’t match up… that’s what you call a kink, I’ve
got the big kink with a crazy fucked up hobby
which I enjoy right down to my wiry bones.
So I have to whack a squealer based in LA,
called Lanky Williams, due to his small stature,
one of those playground ironies that stick like
eternal Velcro. He’s a little shit who would turn in
his own Mother. Warty with halitosis in fact he
deserves being whacked for his personal
hygiene alone.
He stitched up my Client, singing like an epileptic
mocking bird, you couldn’t stop his tongue
wagging and pointing to all sorts of worms.
They tried to catch him between safe houses but
he slipped away like a greasy warty little shit.
A lot of the old crew got banged up because of
his singing. But that doesn’t bother me, all I’m
interested in is the existential hit. I keep myself to
myself and don’t get involved in any of the crew
bonding crap. I get one telephone call and I
know I’m out there adopting someone who has
only a few weeks to live.
Lanky Williams has got the whole works, big fuck
off house, swimming pool, celebrity friends,
BBQ’s in the Californian sunshine, all paid for by
a Sunday paper. I’ve known him four weeks,
got to know he likes West Ham and Tom Jones,
Eastenders and Bruce Forsyth. I’m gonna miss
those drunken nights in the Cobra Club and
sleeping over in his ex-Bette Davis mansion.
He’s been a good four-week friend, a bit of a
scumbag but most people are.
But all good things gotta come to an end,
today’s the day. It’s time to get ready. I flicked on
the CD. The waspish slide guitar of an Elmore
James song jumped into my ears with sheets of
relentless lightning, his tight-dog-collar vocals run
around the room like a motorcycle wall of death.
I put on my stiff starched white shirt, wrestle with
the silky black tie, around and around, up and
through with soft manipulations, there’s
something erotic in dressing on the last day,
especially handling silk the way I do. I take my
two fingers, sandwich the silky tie and run it the
length of the material as though I’m squeezing
out the insides of a rattlesnake. Black Armani
suit, black winkle pickers with ornate steel caps at
the point. I vaseline my hair, sweep it back and
finger comb my goatee… Jeezuz I look like a
gothic Eddie Cochran.
One last tinkle with my tie and the Elmore James’
song ends, crashing into the floor. I’m ready
to go.
There he is walking by the poolside, he turns, tilts
up his shades, "Yo Tony" (that’s Tony Iommi –
I always create an alias from my favourite
guitarists). He eyes me up and down: bemused
by my black attire.
"You going to a funeral?"
"Aye…. Yours". We both laugh, he crumples onto
the sun bed wearing his loud Hawaiian shirt and
khaki shorts with the initials LW in bad stitching.
"Bloody hot innit? Too bloody hot"
"Aye, but it’s better than a rainy day in Peterlee"
"Too right son… Who’s Peter Lee?"
"Just a place Lanky, up North"
"Up North" he echoes, simulating a bad
Yorkshire accent.
He leans over to his right to suck on a bent straw
– the Cranberry juice goes down an inch.
He eyes me up and down again
"Going out tonight?"
"Maybe"
"There’s a new lap dancing club opened up north
of Belair"
"Really". The voyeuristic little shit, I’ve put with his
hookers and Blue Peter stories for nearly a
month, this guy is definitely king scumbag.
"Sounds good"
"Looks good… Leather and Snakeskin interiors
and lotsa horny Texas Cowgirls,
knowwhatimean?"
He flops his head back wearing a coat hanger
smile, catching the Sun’s bleach, full facial.
Craning his neck up he takes off his shades and
looks at me philosophically: "You know Tony –
I don’t miss England at all, not even the footie.
You can keep the Saturday afternoons,
everything’s here, the whole caboodle" he expels
a subterranean sigh as though he’s found his
inner peace, his personal utopian city – well –
loose tongues make walls crumble Mr Lanky
Jericho fucking Williams, your bricks are moving
their sorry little arses and it’s tumble time.
He takes off his Hawaiian shirt… Jesus he’s
wearing a string vest in LA. He takes that off to
reveal a wire mesh sunburn, people just have no
taste… I approach him in my "I’m your friend for
life" smile, he has no idea, he winks and rubs the
oil in his arms, his arms look like Cumberland
fucking sausages.
So I straighten my gun arm down by my side and
bring it level with his head, he gets up all of a
fluster offers me money, stumbles and looks up
puppy dog like, then I pull the trigger, it feels like
a single pubic hair of an Olympian God…
What’s his name?… Zeus?
This is what I call the God Buzz, the second
before you down someone, where time expands
and everything goes all slo mo.
This big fat ugly duckling of a scumbag tumbles
poetically into the swimming pool like a pregnant
donkey and leaks out all of his head blood
mixing with the chlorine. The mix of the blue sky
reflected in the water and his oozing red stuff
was fantastic, like an erotic fog eating up the
cumulus nimbus. You should have seen his face,
like he’s won the lottery but remembers he hasn’t
put the numbers on. His head floating above the
bloodied water like I’ve decapitated him,
a singular planet, his eyes rolling like billiard
balls in this fucking amazing universe that I’ve
created… jeez…I told you I was an Artist….
Shit reminds me….
"Must bring my camera" it’s on a yellow stickie on
my desk at home, next time, it’ll have to be
digital of course, this expels the photo lab
paranoia, don’t want the bizzies drumming on
my door like Cozy Powell at 5 am, just coz of
some holiday snaps. I’m a bit more sussed than
that. Anyway memory is a good camera I
suppose… it’s the film emulsion that rots inside,
I think it’s called conscience, but not with me,
conscience is a suitcase too many… a safety
valve that’s been fucked up for god knows how
many years.
I jump into my car, wind down the window. I
need a soundtrack to all of this, so I can reflect
on my party piece. Gene Vincent singing
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow" Why? Well it has
a sweet menace thing going on, it’s tailored for
aftermaths and follies… and because it’s nice.
The music sweeps in, like a wave of
choreographed flying swans, dipping and rising
up the driveway: curvaceous and trippy, just the
way I like it. And there’s a bunch of those
Berkeley Babes in the swimming pool performing
one of those kaleidoscopic water ballets, they’re
using Lanky’s head as a beach ball he’s wearing
a huge grin on his face – he looks over, sticks out
his tongue and winks with satisfaction.
I manage a wry smile. I drive off, with a few
good photographs in my head.
Bullet No.33
Wild to Possess . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allan Guthrie (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Thunk.
Mother of fucking Christ. It hurt.
Thunk.
She dropped to her knees.
Hi, Carol.
Words don’t mean anything. Not now. Not when
I’m . . .
At least she was alone. Oh, God, her guts
tightened. Here it comes . . .
Never got used to it.
What have you been up to?
*
"Girl said she’d been exorcised."
"Ah, keep fit fanatic. Can’t trust them."
"Exorcised, arsehole. You know. Priest came,
splashed her with water, spouted some religion at
her. All that shit."
"Couldn’t drag her sorry arse to church, huh?
I hate invalids."
"She was locked in her fucking bedroom."
"She didn’t have a key?"
"You winding me up?"
"So, okay. This girl, locked in her room, never
exercises, lazy cow. Fuck’s her name?"
"Carol."
"This Carol was what you’d call possessed, right?
By an evil spirit, kind of thing?"
"A six-year-old girl. Margaret Ann."
"And Margaret Ann, she make Carol’s head spin
three sixty and stuff like that?"
"I heard you were good. Seems to me you’re a
first rate arsehole."
"Aha. You were saying. Margaret Ann. Heads
turning."
"Fuck you, you ain’t going to take this seriously.
I’ll find somebody else."
"We’re hard to find. Anyway, I need the money.
Carry on."
After a minute. "She made Carol sick. Literally.
Felt a pressure in her head, weight in her
stomach like a bag of stones. Then, whoosh.
Projectile vomit. Man, what a mess."
"You witnessed this?"
"Heard it described. Pretty graphic. Guy who told
me about it, covered in the stuff. Not like proper
sick, he said. White slimy stringy stuff, he said.
Couldn’t get it out of his hair."
"Fuck did it get in his hair?"
Pause. "He was going down on her at the time."
"Yeah? Weird shit. Who was this perv likes getting
it on with the possessed? I’d like to speak to him.
See if he can’t line something up for me."
Silence.
"Sorry. I’ll try to be serious. Who is he?"
"My brother. Don’t fucking laugh."
"The girl, Carol? Can I speak to her?"
"Well, that’s the problem. She’s dead."
"How’d that happen?"
"I killed her. Think you can be serious now?"
"Tell me about it, Mr Harris. Nice and slow.
From the start."
*
Not much threat really from a little girl, you’d
have thought. Even if the little girl was an evil
spirit. Not that Harris held any store by that.
His brother might believe it, but it wasn’t the sort
of thing a sane person believed, now was it?
So the threat came from Carol. The words had
come out of her mouth.
“I’m going to kill you, cocksucker.”
See, how would a six-year-old know words
like that?
Life experience, his brother said. Well, John could
be right. Wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility
that some sick fuck would have messed about
with the poor wee soul. Sort of thing that
happened despite everybody’s best attempts to
sweep it under the carpet. But if it happened,
it had happened to Carol, who was twenty-three,
not a little girl.
He’d already told his brother what he thought.
John said, "It really isn’t like that. There’s no
connection. Margaret Ann isn’t Carol as a little
girl. She’s a different person. You gotta speak to
her. You’ll see."
Well, he had spoken to her and he didn’t see.
Not really. It was too fucking weird to decide for
sure. Her voice sounded really young, just like a
kid’s. That was convincing. Could have been
some really good acting. See, he’d never seen
the projectile vomiting, and that would have
convinced him. He didn’t see how anybody could
do that on cue. But he believed John. Why would
he lie?
Anyway, he was alone the second time when she
flipped. Came at him spitting, all fucking
fingernails and rage, calling him a cocksucker
once again. She really didn’t like him much.
Well, he didn’t mean to hurt her, but when he
turned, saw this slavering thing hurtling towards
him, he sidestepped, didn’t think, just slammed
his fist into the top of her head.
Thunk.
Down on her knees. Dribble sliding down
her chin.
Again.
Thunk.
Fucking crazy bitch.
Fell forward, smacked her head off the floor.
Could hear the crack when her skull bounced.
Bent over, checked her pulse.
Nothing.
A kid’s voice said, "What have you been up to?"
He turned, legged it.
* him into the bath. Landed on top of Carol.
"So you don’t know if she’s really dead,
Mr Harris?"
"She was dead. No pulse. Man, if you’d heard
that crack."
"You haven’t been back to check?"
"Nah."
"What about the kid speaking to you?"
"Must have imagined it."
"You think?"
"Must have. No other explanation, is there?"
"Let’s go take a look."
"No way. I’m not going back there. Here.
Take the fucking key. Go yourself."
Sure enough, just as Harris had described.
Body on the floor. Face down. Blood matting her
hair. Looking pretty fucking dead.
Shuffled over, asked, "Anybody home? Little girl?"
No reply.
"How about you, Carol?"
Half expected the corpse to roll over, sit up, say,
"What the fuck are you doing in my house,
mister?"
Nothing, of course.
Dragged her by the heels. Slid nicely across the
bare floorboards. Into the bathroom. Hoisted her
into the bath.
Sat on the toilet seat, thinking.
Jumped when her body slumped forward. Heart
hammered. Normally, he didn’t get nervous.
Jumped again when the front door opened.
Oh, shit. Sweating already. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Fuck. This, he did not need.
Footsteps. Man’s voice. "Carol?"
Fuck. Don’t come in here.
"Carol? You in the bathroom?"
Oh, fucking hell. Take the gun out, point it at
the fucker.
Enjoyed the look of surprise on the poor
fuck’s face.
Bang.
Deaf for a while after that.
Neighbours must have heard.
Heaved the new body onto his shoulder, dropped
They looked cosy together. Sweet.
Right. Fuck the job. Impossible to get rid of two
bodies. Just get outta here.
*
"You fucked up."
"Didn’t know your brother was going to pay a
visit, Mr Harris."
"Fuck, man. You didn’t have to shoot him."
"Had to make a split-second decision. Shot him."
"Yeah? Here’s my split-second decision."
BANG.
Bullet No.34
Home Deliveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TK Dan (Newcastle, UK)
I wake up about midday and Pasty is already in
overdrive. He‘s ranting about last night, about
the bastard in the pub who he’d had to pull the
knife on. Vague memories filter through.
Karaoke, a ripped pool table, a landlady with a
face that looked like she was sucking on a lemon
while someone farted beneath her nose. An
argument with the pub’s "unofficial bouncer" and
finally a hunting knife driven into the bar by Pasty
and left there, quivering and glinting in the
cheesy disco lights.
I spark up and switch on the Play Station. Pasty,
still wired to the national grid, gets on the phone
and starts ordering every fucking thing he can;
pizzas, Chinese, Indians ("cos I can’t make up me
mind") whizz, blow, coke, Viagra.
"Fuck me," I moan "you’ve ordered everything
except a bunch of roses from Interflora."
He shoots me a look and stalks out of the room
still punching numbers into the phone. I hear him
stomping about, barking out orders. When he
comes back in he’s talking to some escort agency
in Wallsend.
She arrives with her boyfriend/pimp in a fucking
charged up XR3 full vroom vroom exhaust the
lot. The neighbours twitch their curtains but,
in view of recent events, have the sense to stay
indoors. She comes in wearing a beige raincoat
belted at the waist, which she promptly undoes to
reveal a white lacy basque, g-string and
suspenders. She’s a bottle blonde, the wrong
side of thirty and carrying a couple of extra
pounds but when she leans forwards, laughs and
jiggles her tits saying "All right lads?" it gives me
the horn. The bloke just says "Hundred quid up
front for the two of yer."
Pasty counts out the money, looks at me and
says, "Me first. He who pays the piper" and leads
her off upstairs. I’m just settling down to a game
of Doom 3 with the pimp when there’s a god
almighty high pitched scream from upstairs.
The pimp’s up and out the room, there’s the
sound of thundering feet on the stairs.
She’s screaming and crying and the pimp’s
shouting "Yer fucking mental! Yer fucking cards
marked yer mental bastard!"
I go to the living room window and look out to
see her in her underwear hysterical, she trips on
her high heels and scrabbles towards the car on
her hands and knees, her arse high in the air.
I can’t see Pasty, but the pimp’s backing away
shouting and jabbing with his finger towards the
door about what he’s going to do to him.
He gets in the car, there’s the roar of the exhaust,
the scream of the tyres, a handbrake turn and
he’s gone. Every house in the street, a face at
the window.
I turn round and see Pasty stood in the living
room doorway. "Fuck me!" I exclaim. He’s stood
in his Y fronts and socks, combat paint on his
face holding an AK 47.
"What’s all the fucking fuss about?" he shouts
"It’s only a fucking replica!"
There’s a knock at the door.
"What the fuck now?" he bellows.
I pull back the curtains, "It’s some twat with a
bunch of flowers."
Bullet No.35
Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elle Ludkin (London, UK)
I hold her head against my chest. Tight. My right
arm wraps around her neck, pushing her face
sideways onto my skin. She is silent. She is still.
My left arm holds her waist. I can reach round
and press my hand into her belly. Her ear, flat
against my left pectoral muscle is close to my
heart. I am not aware of it beating. I am out of
breath. I listen to her breathing, in and out.
I need to concentrate, to hear her. There is noise
from the street. A police car, a man shouts,
women's heels click on concrete and a dog yelps.
My back aches and I look at blood on my
forearm. Smears downward. Bile comes upwards
from my stomach and I cough, spit onto the floor
and then lick my lips. I taste salt and her.
This makes me wretch and I move forward, bend
my head to the floor to vomit. I let her go. She
falls onto the floorboards. There is a thud and
she is still, her face sideways on the wood.
Vomit stings my throat and coats my teeth. I run
my tongue around the inside of my mouth, feel
cuts, ulcers and plaque. Pieces of food lift from
my molars and evacuate themselves along with
the contents of my stomach. A plateful of pasta,
pesto sauce and garlic bread, a white mass of
undigested food. I am empty and stand erect,
move away from the cooling vomit and her.
I turn around and reach for my shoes. They are
blue and I notice one of the laces has snapped.
It is shorter than the other one but still long enough
so I can fasten up my shoe. I tie a tight knot in
the left shoelace and move towards the door.
I have no t-shirt on but find a hooded sweat shirt
hanging on the back of the door. I put it on and
fold the cuffs over, twice. The zip sticks half way
up. I pull hard and it moves, up to my neck and
digs into the bottom of my chin. I turn the latch
on the door and it opens. The light in the hallway
is not on and it is dark. I reach the outside door
and feel in my jeans pocket for my keys. They
are not there. I again turn the latch and the door
opens I move out into the street. The door closes
behind me. It is cold and raindrops wet my skin.
I am walking, one foot keeps going in front of
the other and I move. The pavement is covered
with rubbish. I see packets, drink cans, a dead
pigeon and crumpled newspaper. The pigeon is
on its back exposing its belly. Street lights are on
and shine ahead of me. I follow the curb. It is
straight. Cars pass me and I start to count them,
one, two, three. I stop at twenty five, her age.
A woman and child are passing me on my left.
The child is in a buggy, crying and mucus is
streaming from its nostril. I feel sick again and
stop to vomit, aiming for a drain by the roadside.
The woman and child stop.
"Bloody drunk!" the woman shouts. She moves
away. She tells the child to 'shut the fuck up' and I
hear a slap.
Nothing leaves my stomach and I try to spit.
My mouth is dry. I stand upright, smooth down
my hair, which is wet, push up my sleeves and
continue walking.
He grabs at my right arm. I blink and his face
comes into focus. He is in front of me.
He breathes into my face. I feel heat and begin
to shake. His mouth is opening and closing.
He moves my arm backwards and forwards.
He points directly at me then I hear his voice.
It is loud.
"Got a quid, 'as hungry? Got a quid? You 'ear
me? Eh eh 'ear me?"
He squeezes my arm, it is painful. I stagger
backwards and my feet hit each other. I grab for
him to steady me. He stops talking. I reach to my
back pocket. I pull out my wallet and hand it to
him. I push him away. I move one foot in front of
the other and start to walk. He is saying
something but I do not hear him.
The digital readout on my watch shows twelve
ten. I glance at the clock on the station wall, it
shows past two. The station is empty. I walk
through an open turnstile. The shutters are down
at the ticket office and the information screen
is black.
I stand at the top of the stairs, I move to walk,
down to Platform 1. The steps blur and my eyes
water. The liquid trickles down onto my cheeks.
I close my eyes. My head is painful, full of noise.
I open my eyes, only to see black then flashes of
colour. My stomach contracts and my knees give
way. I fall onto concrete. A voluntary movement
pushes my hands outward and they break my
fall. Breath is forced from my lungs.
On all fours, I crawl away from the stairs, slowly.
My muscles ache. My eyes are still watering so I
keep them closed. Mucus is coming from my
nostrils. I lick at it then wipe it onto the back of
my hand. I crawl and crawl, kneecaps onto
concrete, moving forwards until my head hits
something. It stops the noises for a moment.
I open my eyes, in front of me is metal.
The metal is the lift door. A way down. Inside my
mouth a collection of saliva has built up. I open
my mouth and allow it to empty. The contents wet
my chin and soak into my clothes. I keep my
mouth open.
I raise my head slowly, the noise and nausea are
strong. The square 'call' button is alight and a
shaky hand reaches for it. I hit it, then fall onto
all fours. I lie prostrate on my belly, hold my
hand against the door and wait.
The door opens taking my hand with it. My palm
sticks then slides against the friction. I grasp my
fingers around the edge of the door and heave
myself inward. My sweat shirt drags downward,
trapped between my body and the floor. The zip
scrapes into my flesh and pulls at chest hair.
I manage to manoeuvre myself in. My breath
comes in heavy gasps, not quite filling my lungs.
I hear the lift doors start to close. My right foot is
still in the doorway. The doors close onto it,
squashing the flesh. I try to bring my foot in
toward me. I can not. The lift opens then shuts
again. My foot is in the same position. I sigh.
Open, shut, open, shut. It becomes painful.
Last time, open, shut. I breathe deeply and grab
my right thigh with both palms. I yank my whole
leg upwards. It brings my foot in, away from
the closing door. I collapse.
The exertion causes my stomach to contract and
bile escapes from my mouth. I turn my head
sideways, lay my cheek onto the lift floor and
allow bile, saliva and mucus to run downward
over my face.
The lift smells strongly. My nostrils react. I feel
wetness soaking into me from the floor. My skin
is cooling. My sense of smell detects urine and
faeces. I turn onto my back and my bladder
empties, it warms me.
The lights above are housed in a stainless steel
canopy. Small circles cut out, bulbs behind.
One half of the lighting system is not working.
Dimmed bulbs flicker on and off. Inconsistent
light is reflected downwards, outwards onto metal
walls. My eyes hurt. They sting from the
ammonia. I close them, then open. Just above
my head I see another square shaped call
button. This has the yellow outline of a bell.
'Alarm'. As my bowels empty this time, I raise my
left hand and thrash at the button. I close my
eyes and her face is there.
I listen to the sound of my hand slapping the wall
again and again and again and... it has a
rhythm.
Bullet No.36
Ahoy Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ed Lynskey (Annandale, USA)
Doubting why I’d come, I rapped on the screen
door’s crosspiece. The covered porch offered a
slim shade from the sultry afternoon. A hollow
barking in the back stopped. After an expectant
pause, I knocked harder. The deft shuffle of
sneakers brought a young girl into view. Even the
hachure of rusty screen between us couldn’t dull
her fine-featured beauty.
"Hi Frank," she said in a demure lilt befitting her
petite stature. "My step-dad and all are in the
kitchen."
"Hello Barbie," I said. "Does he know why I came?"
Those jade green eyes clouded with anxiety.
"He knows the basics," she said. "But he wants to
hear it straight from you."
"Not a problem. It smells sweet in here," I said.
Three ratty overstuffed chairs and a broken ginger
jar lamp made the living room resemble a
cheap motel.
"Mama made applesauce," said Barbie.
"Sounds good."
For a fleeting instance, I wondered if her mother
had preserved the high, proud looks Barbie
carried. As we invaded the unfurnished dining
room, she sidled a few shadowy steps ahead.
I hastened my pace to follow her.
The kitchen spanning the width of the house’s rear
took on boxcar dimensions. I pulled up just short
of the linoleumed floor. Citron-colored wallpaper
brightened the already sunny room three people
occupied. Her back to me, a lady at the sink
fussed with peeling shiny red apples held in a
dented colander. Nervous and rail-thin,
she engaged my glance for an extra moment.
An older girl, some of Barbie’s looks evident, was
at the table. She ignored me. Textbooks, one open
and several stacked in a pile, lay between shaky
elbows. My eyes swerved to the long nearest wall.
Midway, a man straddling a ladder-back chair
had eyed me the whole while. As a token of polite
deference, I averted my gaze, waiting on
introductions. "Step-dad, mama, and Sally,"
said Barbie, "this is Frank Johnson."
As a chorus of half-hearted greetings went up,
Barbie hitched aside. I nodded my way into the
kitchen debating how to address her "step-dad"
and "mama." Barbie’s surname had flown out of
my head. Her "step-dad" rescued me.
"Park yourself, Frank." The wiry man gestured a
hand, yellow with knobby calluses, at an empty
chair. "I’m Mr. Saylor, by the way."
I twirled the chair around on one leg to sit.
Three sets of rapt eyes sized me up. Barbie,
I sensed, hovered inches behind, shy and reserved
but still wary. Mrs. Saylor, turning, leaned into the
sink. Above her on the facie board, a clock’s
crooked hands froze at two-fifteen. I couldn’t help
but also wonder at the fist-sized hole in the plaster
over their wall telephone.
Saylor grunted. "So: my little stepdaughter says
you want to take her canoeing."
Nasally rapid-fire words made it sound like an
accusation. "Up at Lake Brittle." I recrossed my legs
but the act didn’t allay the awkward tension.
I grinned a leer at Saylor. He didn’t react. Odd.
"Is that a fact?" Saylor said. "Barbie swims like a
damn rock, you know."
I deliberately mistook his meaning. "Well, I do a
bit better," I said, forcing a chuckle.
"Did I say something funny?" Saylor asked.
He exaggerated a lip snarl.
"No sir." The scrawny son of a bitch was fast
getting under my skin, I hoped I didn’t blow it.
"That’s better," said Saylor. "What I mean is Barbie
is such a fragile thing."
"Oh Keith, give Barbie a little credit," Mrs. Saylor
said. "She’s almost sixteen."
Squinting glassy, surly eyes, Saylor nudged the golf
cap back on his cueball head. "She’ll always be
my little step-daughter" he said.
"Don’t worry. I’ll bring along life preservers," I said.
"Plus which, these canoes never sink. Never.
They’re Grummans with air pockets, aft and fore."
"Don’t sit there and tell me a ship can’t sink," said
Saylor. His unbuttoned Madras shirt fell away.
A hairless, washboard chest swelled out stretching
pulpy muscles. "I’m an old Navy salt."
Sally spoke to her reading material. "Step-dad
served twenty years in the fleet." Taking the
opportunity to study her, I saw a long face, coarser
and sadder than Barbie’s. My sympathy went out
to these women.
"Twenty-two years," Saylor corrected her.
"Are you hungry, Frank?" asked Mrs. Saylor.
"I’ve got fresh apple sauce in the fridge."
"No," I said. "I’m fine."
"Nonsense. I won’t hear of it," said Mrs. Saylor.
Limping across the room, she didn’t reciprocate as
my frank graze locked on her. I affirmed it. Yep,
the lady’s right eye carried a mean shiner semi-
obscured under a heavy layer of facial powder.
I snapped my glare over to Saylor, the real object
of my coming. "Sailed the seven seas, did you?"
"Aye, I did," the older man said. "Lemme ask you
something. It’s bugged me since you strutted into
my kitchen. How old are you, Frank?"
In the sullen pause, Mrs. Saylor hurried about her
business to sit out a chipped dish and tablespoon.
A ladle in the big red bowl scooped out the
applesauce. "Draw up your chair," she said in a
quiet tremble. "I made it fresh this morning. It’s
had time to chill."
Leaned back in the chair, I said, "It looks delicious
-- "
"Ahoy, boy. Are you deaf?" Saylor cut in, a grating
side to his voice. "I just asked you a question,
Frank. Your age?"
I almost laughed at Saylor balling up his fingers
into fists. They were croquet mallets. "No, I ain’t
deaf. I turned thirty-three last May if it’s any of
your god damn business."
Pinched-face, Saylor slipped a pair of hornrim
glasses from his shirt pocket to fit on. "You’ve got
some gall barging in here." Belligerence heated
gruff words. "You’re old enough to be this girl’s
father. That’s a crime. Rape."
Mrs. Saylor and Sally flashed me fearful glances.
Barbie’s tread scoffed nearer.
"The only crime here is you socking around these
folks," I said. "If this girl climbs on my school bus
with another mark on her, I’ll put two on you.
Unlike them, I’m not scared of you."
"Beat it!" said Saylor, bolting up. The hornrim
glasses tumbled off his nose. "Right now!"
"Go shit between your teeth."
As hoped, that goaded Saylor. He charged at me
now also on my feet. Graceful as a yak, I shifted
too late. His short left hook broke my nose.
Feeling its sting, I used my new rage to pour
through and hammer the smaller man’s defenses.
My right cross clouted him flat to the linoleum.
Snorting, he dragged himself up to all fours.
Sally shrieked.
"Let it go, Frank," said Barbie, alarm pitching
her voice.
"Not yet." I kicked him square in the guts.
Collapsing, Saylor wrapped into a ball, moaning.
"You touch any girl here again," I said, "and I’ll be
back to break your neck."
"You best go," said Mrs. Saylor, her monotone too
bleak. "You’ve only made it worse for us. Much
worse."
"Well, I doubt if this bully will lay another finger on
you. Huh, Saylor?"
"G-g-get the hell out," he said in hoarse gasps.
"Scram!"
"My god, Barbie," said Sally, "Mr. Johnson is
nothing but a thug."
"Well, it wasn’t going to be pretty," said Barbie.
"What did you expect?"
"You cooked this up with them?" Saylor scowled.
"I’ll kill you. And them."
A new insight led me to ask. "Is there a damn gun
in the house?"
Mrs. Saylor, white and shaky, half-nodded.
"Where I don’t know."
"You sorry bitch!"
"Saylor, shut up," I said. "You three can’t stay here.
Go pack your bags. I know a nice lady. I’ll take
you to her. She has the right connections."
Without much protest, they scattered from the
kitchen. Saylor repeated his threat. "You bastard.
I’ll kill you. And them."
"Man, you are so full of -- "
A crisp staccato of three gunshots yanked me out
of the kitchen. I raced down a hallway. Sally,
Barbie, and Mrs. Saylor sprawled bleeding and
dead on the floor in their respective bedrooms.
My nerves went numb.
A skittish engine spluttered to life. Hollering, I
sprinted to the screen door as Saylor peeled out
gunning the car from the yard. Gaping into the
gray hole, I next telephoned the sheriff without a
clue as how to begin explaining what all went
down here.
Bullet No.37
The Beauty Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shiv Madhavan (London, UK)
She walked in like she could understand all my
peccadilloes.
"Dr Shirton, I have a problem," she said sitting
down, smoothing the backside of her very tight
executive skirt and making herself very
comfortable in my office. I tried to avoid looking
at her breasts which were packed rather obligingly
in a clingy, pouty, white see-what-you-like blouse.
Heck, it was only 10am.
"Miss . . ."
"The name is Alba. Nikki, N, I, K,K,I."
"Miss?"
She interrupted.
"What makes you think I am, Doctor."
"Sorry, how would you like me to refer to you?"
"Nikki would be fine." I don’t like informality.
It always made me feel uneasy.
"I need you to rearrange my face." Nice
expression. I laughed to myself. I ain’t heard that
one before, at least not in my line of work.
I absorbed the essentials: she had long decorously
black hair, her cheek bones were as sharp as cut
diamonds, brown eyes, big and like a dark
chocolate liqueur, intimating dark and dangerous
secrets, I imagined. Her skin was a golden glow,
entirely natural and fashioned by nature, not
artificial devices. In her late 20s, she was about as
goddamn perfect as they make ’em these days,
I thought. Better not to play too clever. I’m 48 and
dying slowly, like we all are.
"Nikki," I said, trying to make it sound as
uncomfortable as possible. "I don’t quite follow.
You know, I improve people, I adjust their noses,
their chins, their cheekbones, I don’t tamper with
anyone who looks okay. There isn’t anything I, or
for that matter, anyone else, would rearrange."
It wasn’t flattery.
"I have a stalker," she said blankly.
"Ok."
"The man is a goddamn freak, won’t leave me
alone."
"Haven’t you turned to the law?"
She got out a cigarette and sucked on it hard.
"Dr Shirton, I understand you are one of the
foremost plastic surgeons in the world, I am not a
poor woman. What I am asking is not illegal."
I paused almost desperate to hear an interruption.
"Sure. I hear what you are saying, but my point is
that what you are asking seems very drastic.
Most people deal with such a situation with a
restraining order."
She stood up offended, and leaned across the
table and grabbed my tie. She held me about two
inches from her face. Her perfume had me
freewheeling into another kind of physical
encounter altogether.
"Dr Shirton, I haven’t come here to have my pussy
stroked, metaphorically or . . . literally," she said
letting go of me. "Don’t fucking patronise me.
This is business -right. I have the money, you
provide the service, is that so complicated?"
She looked straight into my shifty eyes with all the
purpose of a sister at Confession.
I brushed myself down. Technically that was an
assault – but no one would believe me in a court
of law.
All Jackie, my reliable secretary, had told me this
morning was that she was a late 20s woman
looking for a nose job. Routine. In and out after
about five minutes. A quick check-up, a smile and
few words of reassurance; the mention of needing
to part with a few thousand smackeroonies and
hey presto, that another’s another week at the
One and Only in the Seychelles with some tickle
my fancy whore. This Nikki woman was too much
like work . . . and trouble.
"What exactly do you want done?" I asked like I
was taking her seriously.
"Well – what can you do?" She replied, as though
she was in a beauty parlour.
"You have to tell me how you want to be changed.
Then I can tell you if it is possible." It was better to
show I still had control.
"Look, Dr Shirton, I’m not playing games. Don’t
think I’ll listen to your doctor consultant Harley
Street bullshit. I am paying for a service. You either
do it to my specifications or . . ."
"What – you going to threaten me?" it is." And it wasn’t her ego talking.
She looked away and sighed with great "But where . . . how?" I pleaded.
humorous effect. "Oh for crying out loud. Make my nose bigger, my
"You plastic surgeons are all the same. mouth smaller, reduce the size of my breasts, just
Underneath that respectable Hugo Boss suit you’re take a scalpel and get to work – it can’t be
just another pervert who wants to get into my that difficult."
knickers and thinks they have the fucking ten-ton "So why pay me £25,000 for something you could
Chubb key to do it," she paused for effect. "You get done in a back alley?"
ever had to fight a case of sexual harassment?"
"I don’t want to suffer."
She said like it was some kind of crazy challenge.
"This is highly unethical," I declared. "I don’t think I
"No."
can do it."
"You think I don’t know what is going through your
"This isn’t bloody ER. This is life. There is a man
mind right now. Right fucking NOW," she
out there who will follow me to the ends of the
screamed, leaning towards me her big crimson-
earth – and for what? A glimpse of me. A sniff of
shaded lips coming at me like Jaws.
my perfume. A chance to inadvertently brush past
Hell, that would alert Jackie. me. The man is sick. I don’t care about the law.
She came through on the intercom. I don’t care about the way I look. It was a curse
"Is everything all right, Dr Shirton?" So bloody right from day one. Nobody takes me seriously.
Mumsy, that’s why I liked her and it stopped me I could have ruled the world, but I get pestered,
from straying. and pressurised and cajoled into letting men
believe they have something to offer me. I don’t
"Fine, Jackie. Miss Alba just heard my fee." I
want it and I don’t need it. You’re the only one
laughed, trying not to sound like too much like
who can lead me out of this."
a hostage.
"Let me take some pictures, I’ll work on a few
"What if I told her you touched my breasts even
computer generated images. I’ll see what I
though I came here to get my nose done?"
can do."
"She wouldn’t believe you – no one would."
"Great," she said, rising. "You contact me when
"Oh, what 15 years as a consultant, respectable you’re ready," she said, handing over her card.
sit-at-home, shop all-day wife, two well-heeled
Three days later I chanced upon a newspaper in a
kids off to Cambridge." She let the words drip into
café when I grabbed a cappuccino and saw her
my ears. "You think I don’t know about those
beauty stare out from the page like another one of
airhead junkie floosies who snort coke off
her brutal taunts.
your dick."
“INTERNATIONAL conwoman Beverly K Jaynes
I almost had a coronary. Elitist were always so
died in a hail of bullets yesterday after being
discreet and there were only three girls who
tracked down by her former lover and crime
rotated around my needs in the last five years.
partner, Max Hope. Notorious gangland chief
"You don’t think the News of the Screws would be
Hope was himself shot dead by armed police
interested in your lifestyle," she continued,
following a tense 30-minute stand-off.
delivering the last word with an unholy, tantalising
relish. Instinctively, I wanted to throw her out there Jaynes is thought to have seized more than £20m
and then. I came to my senses, quickly. from Hope in a credit card scam they carried out
together across Europe over a number of years.
"What do I need to do?" I couldn’t believe I was
Underworld crime sources say 40-year-old Hope
putting a gun to my own head. But some things I
had placed a hit on 35-year-old Jaynes, who was
guess you do for kicks and rationalise later –
planning to undergo plastic surgery in an attempt
almost too late.
to evade Hope.“
"Make me less beautiful," she said it with a
starkness I found bruising, a vulnerability I couldn’t
resist and a simplicity hard to defy. "You know how
Bullet No.38
Ally Pally Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Craig (Newcastle, UK)
Out on the Circular, Jet Black Jimmy and three
rocker mates from the Ace run a snake through
the backed-up Saturday traffic, tankin’ it for a
faceoff with Ricky. Jimmy’s found out Ricky
screwed his bird. Stupid bastard’s dead when
Jimmy catches him.
Up at Alexandra Palace, Ricky swaps his sharp red
drape suit and white beetlecrushers for black
donkey jacket, jeans and steel-cap workboots.
Dishes out brass knuckle dusters to his two mates,
picks out a short black cosh and a flick knife for
himself. They climb into Ricky’s dark blue Zodiac
and go, radio on, Saturday Club yakking about
some new group from up North. Ricky switches
off. He’s a Johnny Kidd man.
Playing catch-up from Stonebridge, Ewan leans
along the Triton’s fuel tank, grips the clip-ons and
weaves in and out of the crawling Minxes, Minors,
Anglias. The Ton, 105, 107... any other day he’d
be lovin’ it, today his head's full of how he’d
bottled out when Jimmy asked him point-blank
who got off with Kika.
Ewan’s no hard lad, but Dad flew tail-end Charlie
in a Lanc. Went down over Essen, Stalag Luft III in
Silesia, came home, made up for lost time, along
came Ewan. Now Ewan wants to straighten it with
Jimmy before someone gets hurt. Well, YOU work
it out.
Jimmy and his mates peel off the Circular into a
pre-war council estate, ride past scruffy kids
playing on a bomb site. They reach the place
Jimmy sorted on the blower with Ricky, a one-time
magnet for Goering’s bombers, crisscrossed
railway lines, marshalling yards, old arteries
feeding London’s greedy heart. Road ends in a
cobbled hill, overgrown grass and weeds,
drops down to a half-dozen damp, gloomy
railway arches.
Down the slope, Jimmy climbs off the Bonnie,
looks around, nods. Noise of steam engines,
whistles and wagons being shunted will drown out
the scrap. Good spot for it.
Ten minutes behind, Ewan turns into the estate.
Lost. Ask the kids, but they just want a go on the
Triton, mister. Rides on, frantic to find Jimmy
before it all kicks off.
Dark under the bridges, water drips, dogs bark.
Jimmy fires up a smoke as the Ace boys move
through the first arch.
Ricky’s Zodiac pulls up, framed long and low in
the tunnels. Ricky and the Ally Pally Boys get out,
start towards Jimmy and the lads from the Ace.
Both sides fan out, ready for it. Jimmy’s off his turf
here, he knows he can get badly hurt. But he’s still
mad about what happened between Ricky and
Kika. Bastard screws his bird and acts like nothing
happened. Comes in the Ace, large as life, egg
chips’n’beans, even has her up for a dance by the
jukebox. Jimmy’s mates say that’s what you get
with posh birds. Well, sod that.
"What’s it about, Jimmy?" Ricky wants to know.
His voice rebounds off the damp tunnel walls.
Jimmy’s not having that. "About you and Kika,
bastard! Don’t piss about."
"Nah, not me mate - not that I’d object to a
test-ride (Ricky’s mates laugh) but you’ve got the
wrong bloke. Wastin’ me bloody time on a
Saturday too - whaddya think this is, Charity
Week? Bloody hell. What? Do your bird? A man of
my cali-ber?"
Ricky’s mates laugh again. Even the Ace boys
admit Ricky does a good Hancock. Wasted on
Jimmy though, Jimmy’s in a red mist.
Up above, Ewan drops the Triton off its side-stand,
desperate to get down to the arches.
Ricky and Jimmy stand-off: Ricky grips his cosh,
Jimmy swings a bike chain. Smoke from an
overhead shunter swirls round Ricky and Jimmy.
Hellish train noises echo off the bricks.
Ewan climbs a fence onto the rail tracks. Whistle
blares, black shunter rumbles past pulling empty
cement wagons.
The last wagon grinds by. Ewan sprints the rails,
leans far out over the sooty bridge parapet. Clocks
Ricky’s Zodiac, two of the Ally Pally boys. He
screams down at them, his voice wiped out by the
clank-clank of the cement trucks. No one hears.
Ewan shudders. All this shit for one night in a cold
attic flat. Kika. Couldn’t believe his luck. Kika.
Daddy a Polish Squadron hero with a posthumous
DFC, Mum another war widow with a walking
talking keepsake.
Some grateful Polish charity pays for little Kika to
go to a posh school in Brighton. Nuns call her a
holy terror. Takes up her school skirts in
needlework, blows her dinner money on fags and
Billy Fury on the jukeboxes in town.
One beating too many from Mother Superior. Kika
junks her schoolbag, does a midnight flyer on the
back of Jimmy’s Bonneville, a new face at the Ace.
The one they only talk about when Jimmy’s on
a burnup.
Ewan never told Jimmy it was Ricky. Jimmy just
guessed it. Rick’s the cat with style; big shoulders,
big mouth, big quiff, fancy jive moves. An Ally
Pally Boy. No other rocker would have dared go
after Kika while Jimmy was around. Ewan wouldn’t
even show on Jimmy’s radar.
Jimmy lashes the bike chain. Ricky holds his
ground, grips the cosh harder. The two gangs take
position, marking, watching.
Ewan looks along the tracks, sees a steep grass
embankment leading down to a high stone wall
that drops to the street below. He clears two more
tracks in front of a shunter, forces through a
barbed wire safety fence, rips a piece out of Dad’s
old sheepskin flying jacket.
Ewan stops at the long drop, squeezes eyes shut,
jumps out long, lands on the grass embankment,
slips, rolls head over heels down the steep slope.
Speed carries him over the lip of the stone wall,
crashes onto the pavement between Ricky
and Jimmy.
"What the fuck was that about?" Jimmy’s pissed off
and jumpy at the interruption.
Winded, bruised, cut, Ewan struggles to stand.
Legs give way. "Kika", he rasps. "Not Ricky. Me."
"You? YOU??" Jimmy laughs. "I don’t believe it.
I don’t fuckin’ believe it. You never did it with
anyone yet. You and Kika? Not a chance."
"At her flat," Ewan’s voice cracks. Deep breath,
remembering. "Jazz drawings. Candles in bottles.
Stripy mattress on the floor. It was me, Jimmy."
Ricky stands, cosh ready, watching.
Jimmy grabs Ewan’s jacket collars and drags him
upright against the dirty stone wall. Ewan can’t
stand, but meets Jimmy’s stare. "That’s right, it
was me. Just bloody listen for once!"
Jimmy smiles unnervingly. Ewan flinches. Jimmy’s
eyes flare again and his fist comes up to smash
Ewan in the face. Ricky steps forward, Jimmy stops
himself, hold out his open hand to show Ricky it’s
ok. Lets go of Ewan’s jacket. Ewan slumps in a
heap.
Jimmy aims a half-hearted kick at Ewan, turns at
the last second, braces both hands on the wall,
shakes his head slowly.
"What happens now Jimmy?" Ricky wants to know.
"I dunno. Nothing. Nothing happens. We go
home. I was wrong, was’n I? Bloody hell. I was
out of order, Rick."
Ricky punches Jimmy’s shoulder, always the joker.
"Yeah, well, I was the only obvious choice, wasn’t
I?" He grins. Jimmy tenses, then nods back. It’s ok.
Ricky lets out a long breath, pockets his cosh,
flicks back the stray hairs that escaped from
his quiff.
Jerking his head for the Ally Pally boys to follow,
Ricky sets off towards his Zodiac. Jimmy’s mates
from the Ace help Ewan to his feet.
"So what are we gonna do with you, Lover Boy?"
Jimmy asks. He’s adjusting. Ewan’s not a threat
like Ricky. If Kika wants to play with babies like
Ewan, so bloody what? Jimmy’s no angel himself.
But Ricky, that’s different. That’s competition. Yeah,
but he can’t let Ewan and the boys think he’s soft
either. His hand tightens on the bike chain.
Jimmy looks back up the tunnel, sees Ricky and
his mates get in the Zodiac. Ricky fires it up,
punches the push-button radio, whacks it full on
for the Moontrekkers ‘Night of the Vampire’. The
opening chords clang out as the King of the Ally
Pally Boys hits the Zodiac’s hot rod air-horn, spins
his back wheels on the gravel path.
Wolf horns, electric guitars, Ricky’s laughter.
New echoes down the old dark tunnels.
Bullet No.39
Mister Kurt, He’s Dead
Grunge...a good word grunge. Fits the sound
really. Parallel lives me and Kurt, Kurt and me.
I never saw Nirvana, not live, on the telly, MTV,
unplugged, do you remember?
I was shaggin’ Lisa in them days. She was fit. The
type of lass Kurt could have had any time he liked.
I met her in the pictures, she was in the Tyneside
watchin’ one of them foreign films and I was
sleeping off a session and snorin’ like a bear.
She turns round and says to me dead polite like
‘Shut the fuck up you noisy get ‘ It was love
all right.
Then after when the lights go up she looks at me
again and says, ‘You look like Kurt Cobain’ and I
was in.
We’d got a pizza in and we were gonna watch a
load of Nirvana stuff that I’d collected over the
years from thievin'. We were watching Kurt with his
left handed guitar and I was just saying to Lisa
how maybe I was born left handed and maybe the
teachers or someone else made me be right
handed and how I’d tried to write with my left
hand but it looked like a bairn’s scrawl.
Kurt was in the middle of ‘The Man who sold the
World’ when me mobile goes off and it’s Kev
saying how it’s just like Ernest Hemingway and I’m
saying ‘Who the fuck’s Hemingway?’ and he says,
‘It’s Kurt, man he blew his fuckin head off!’
I just dropped me phone like it was too hot and
Lisa looks at me and says ‘What’s up?’ all
concerned like.
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t talk, I just picked up the
remote and switched off the TV and fucked her
while she called me Kurt, over and over and over
again. She finished me when I called her Courtney.
Next thing I know and Kurt’s been dead for years
and I’ve surfaced from years of blankness to buy a
Foo Fighters CD. So I’m in Virgin megastore and
this lass just keeps looking at me and staring,
staring so much that I think ‘What?’
And then it dawns on me that it’s Lisa, beautiful,
accommodating Lisa. But she has this horrified
look on her face and I realize I must look pretty
. . . . Kevin Cadwallender (Sunderland, UK)
wasted, I smell pretty bad too. She just points at
me like one of those girls in ‘B’ movie horror films
a sort of silent scream edging its way out. I
absentmindedly put my hand up to where she’s
pointing and feel this warm liquid running down
my head and I can feel my ear is like almost
ripped off.
I’m a bit pissed off at this point cos I just want the
Foo Fighters CD.
Well, I’ve never liked blood, so I just keel over like
a total blouse and I can hear Lisa screaming and
shouting ‘Kurt, Kurt’ over and over again. I reckon
she’s forgot my real name. Next thing I know I’m
in intensive care and there’s Doctors and Nurses
like in E.R. everywhere and there’s tubes and wires
everywhere, snot and blood, tubes and wires. Eyes
wide open now I expect this geezer with the
stethoscope to go, ‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive’. Lightning
never strikes twice, it doesn’t need to.
In Edinburgh there is a hotel where they had to
change the name from the Nirvana Hotel to the
Ardmillan Hotel or summat like that in order to
stop Kurt wannabes going there checking in for
Bed, Breakfast and the top blown off your head,
please. Where I’d fucked up, I realized lying in
that hospital bed was in using my left hand to try
and blow my head off. Turns out I’m not left
handed at all and can’t really play the guitar
whatever way I hold it.
Also I’m a shite singer and well it broke my heart
when I realized I wasn’t gonna be a star like Kurt,
but Kurt killed himself man, which is only cool
when you’re not in the same room or don’t think
about the utter despair it takes to do something
like that.
I never saw Lisa again, she married some gadgey
who looked like Jeff Buckley, she was always a bit
of a tragedy junkie I reckon.
Me, I’m alright, I don’t buy too many records
nowadays, Everything sounds like Kurt but it’s just
cold. I have a scar on the top of my ear. I’ll do
something with my life or not, it doesn’t matter.
Whatever.
Bullet No.40
The Valentine Day Massager . . . Breanda Cross (Queensland, Australia)
It was Friday night in the down part of town and
the drunks hadn’t sobered up from the night
before.
It was the 1st day of February and I was on my
way to a Valentine’s Dance. Hey, I like to
be early.
My name’s Bond, Wannabe Bond. I’m 5’10,
weigh in at too many lbs. and I’m dynamite in
tricky situations – it’s a hereditary medical
condition that may be terminal.
As I walked through the door of the Spicey and
Hot Nite Club I could hear the sounds of The
Reluctant Virgins all female rock band playing.
They were famous for their brass section.
The oral sax player was unbelievable.
A full size Barbie doll was standing at the door,
but when I looked more closely I recognised most
of her accessories had once belonged to Pamela
Anderson. Her dress was out of place, and so
was my imagination.
I said, "Hi there, dollface, is this the place for sex,
drugs and rock’n’roll? She looked me up and
down, noting where I placed my I.D. and said,
"Well, the sex is D.I.Y., the drugs are B.Y.O., and
the music is Rhythm and Blues."
"That’s O.K." I said, "I’m Catholic, and whenever
I forget the rhythm method it makes me blue
anyhow."
She laughed and it set my XY chromosomes
looking for partners.
I began to walk in but she said, "Hey we’re pretty
fussy who we let in here – and you look like a
gal I’d like to forget." Now I’d heard this kind of
talk before. It sounded cheap and nasty, just how
I like it. I could see we were going to get
on great.
It was a square sort of dive, even the female
impersonators were women, everyone was in
disguise. And in the dark it was hard to tell de
guys from de gals, unless you used braille. And I
know from experience that gets you into trouble.
It turned out the dame’s name was Trixie, and
boy, did she live up to it. I asked her to dance,
and as we sashayed our bodies meshed to the
cadenza of poker machines. She clung to me like
poison ivy, and there were parts of me getting
a rash.
I asked her if she wanted a drink. "Sure she said,
an Elvis Presley special".
This was new to me until she added, "I wanna be
All Shook Up."
Now this is an invitation you don’t get too often,
so I began to manoeuvre her towards the bar.
We kept bumping into other couples who had got
stuck playing leap frog, when she suddenly
gasped and ran from the dance floor.
"Hey, what’s the big idea, ditching me in front of
strangers", I asked her, pulling her towards me so
that we looked like Siamese twins.
"I’m sorry Wannabe" she crooned, "But my
boyfriend has just walked in.
I turned and saw a big dude with most of his
DNA missing. He strutted over and stood in front
of me like a towering inferno. His belly was so
big his trousers hung on hope, barely covered his
faith, and had little to do with charity. It was
difficult to realise he was the product of a million
years of civilisation.
I could see the glint of a knife in the top of his
sox and knew it wasn’t there as part of a
designer label.
"Let me introduce myself, Tacky" he said. "My
name’s Razor Sharp, and if you don’t leave my
girl friend alone you’ll find yourself with more
slices than a cut loaf"
"Sure Razor" I said, "but you won’t mind if I call
you Rusty".
He growled like a centipede with new shoes and
came at me like a kamakaze pilot with attitude.
I knew I was in trouble when my goosebumps
went a.w.o.l.. I went for my gun in its usual
hiding place, but it was a bad time to find I had
a hole in my knickers.
"You can’t hit me", I sneered. "Don’t you know I’m
a woman."
He stopped in his tracks thinking it over. I made
my move.
"BIFF, BAM, BABOOM", Batman would have been
proud of me. "KERPLONK, KAZAM", I shouted
again in full voice - but still he kept coming.
He used his Jackie Chan moves and I
counteracted with Charley’s Angels. It was a
close call. He had me in a half-Nelson, bent over
double and began moving things I didn’t know
I had.
And then it happened.
Dynamite.
He backed away gagging.
"That’s below the belt" he spluttered, holding his
hand over his nose. And I was happy to agree.
My medical condition had struck in the nick
of time.
I looked around the room, it was empty. All but
for Trixie. She was looking at me with stars in
her eyes.
"Wow, you’re some mover, shaker" she said with
admiration a few minutes later as we propped up
the bar. "So Wannabe, how do you make
your crust?"
"I’m a P.E." I told her.
"A Pest Exterminator" she said, "Hey that accounts
for the strange smell."
"Well, that’s one way of describing it" I agreed,
"but I prefer to think of myself as a Private Eye."
"A Peeping Tom" she said with a shiver of
anticipation that made all her body parts move in
different directions. "Why, what a turn on."
I could feel the electricity between us fusing.
I made my pitch.
"Fancy coming back to my place for a game of
tiddley winks" I asked. ‘I’ll get you tiddly",
wink, wink.
"Why I can think of better ways to use the time"
she said salaciously. "You know, my hands are
my weapons of mass instruction.
I could only think that with a woman like this I’d
be a willing pupil but asked her what she meant.
"Well, I put ads out in all the telephone booths
and newsagent windows, that I do Swedish
massages – satisfaction guaranteed." she said
with a secret smile, and suddenly, everything she
had hidden was up for grabs.
We walked out of the club, and out of the story -
the moral of which is – women are clever bitches.
And no man should mess with them.
Bullet No.41

Three Down at the Furt Fark Perimeter . . . Liam Sharp (Derby, UK)

SHIT! Jungshit and passing round the "Blowman" tm,

Things might've been different if Gail, the
pneumatic endorphin-spume dol, hadn't toppled
past on her distractingly elegant pins at precisely
the moment Jed Lightsear chose to spatulate
about access codes to the Furt Fark perimeter.
(You remember Jed? Still talks a good sandwich,
but you wouldn't trust him as far as you could
spit him.) So there we are, me, Jed and Gail.
Jed's like "it's amazing man..." some-such, and
"two off the New Danube Delta - six back from
Arcadia... yadda yadda" and I'm like "yeah yeah"
‘cos Gail's pink nipples are winking at me over
the top of her pink latex corset and her pink
shiny lips are goin' "yeah, honey..." (Down boy.)
Next thing you know we're high over mount
Hubris watching the sparkles dancing out of
Permafrost City like arc welding. I'm trying to
concentrate on what Jed's saying, but Gail's got a
four-digit handle on me and she's steering pretty
good! Soon it's full nightscape and the wind is
straightening even Jed's Dapper Dan hair as we
take the "Taunton Excesses" down town to Port
Miramax. (Yeah, old Jed always did have an eye
for my ship. She’s a babe, retro-styled custom
scape-bender. Bit damned independent, but you
gotta love her! Guess that’s why he asked
me along.)
And there it is. The Furt Fark perimeter.
Bigger than Mohammed's mountain and twice
as profound.
"Holy fucking Dick!" shouts Jed, laughing.
It’s some info-dump and no doubt! Our neuro-
receptors are buzzing like ‘Lectro-Wasps round a
stat ball. Gail is spurting endorphins all over us,
trying to fuck everything at the same time. I whip
out the Exodus I acquired along Sunset B while I
can still think clearly enough and drip 10ccs into
our eyes. Soon we’re flat out spin-drunk, talking
just like we used to in the Monde.
Then Gail’s off, riding the monkey, and we can
see the ectoplasmic trails drifting off her like
spectral filigree.
"There she blows. Whoa yes." Jed, one eye half
open, waves an arm in the general direction.
"Listen, man. We got the codes. What say we
check it out, you and me?"
"Jed Jed Jed." (I’m at the upper end and flying.)
"I can’t leave Gail. I’m hooked man. Proper bitten."
"Shit."
(You ever ride the monkey? One time you’re
down like a gump-child, all Jungshitted out and
dumbass. Next Spyro the giant cosmic monkey
has manifested between your legs. Soon you’re
clinging on to that bright golden fur and
bounding along the seventeenth dimension like it
was a high wire, praying that the metawhals
don’t blunder into your plasma-trail and send
you Crazyeddy.)
I can see Gail up ahead. Jed’s whooping behind
me. We ride the monkey all the way to Proto
China Town.
The Aurora Hendrix is advertising Base Adaptoids
when we come down. Below it the Synthtown
New Bizley flashes smooth invites at us and, too
down-dumb to argue, we climb back into the
"Taunton Excesses" and let her take us in. The
Hyatt Flotel has sub-stratos rooms available so
we take one. Later, all honeyed up in the jack-
ouzi, we plan our entry into the perimeter.
"I’ll press the guardians with code." Jed says.
"Gail, you gonna stick out honey, so spray ‘em
good. Keep ‘em sweet."
We wake and dress in the splintered morning
light, chopped and diced by the prismic windows
of the Hyatt Flotel. Bathed in magenta, Gail
smiles her fuckme smile then looks out at the
perimeter. Jed, in cyan, slicks shut his suit. His
smile cries "come on now baby dol. Come on
baby." The suits make us look like highflights,
cool and rich. We hide our smiles with trendy
flute-masks. The air is cleaned and jacked up
with nutrients. Our voices ring with harmonics.
Mandelbrot shades hide our eyes behind a
dancing spectrum, like diesel films over water.
"Come on now baby dol."
Later we ride the elevator shuttle back down to
Bizley Town and take a rickshaw to the perimeter.
The driver, a Spumoid, tries to charge us triple
fare. He trembles, indignant - like a giant purple
jellyfish - three feet above the ground, and finally
stings us for double.
"Fucking highflights", he warbles.
"Fuck you!" Jed yells back. (Old Jed don’t much
like it when somebody gets one over on him.
No sir.)
But we’re at the perimeter.
(Remember the imagiplants we used to watch as
kids? Sailing round the virtual Furt Fark perimeter
together, thinking "this is what it must be like...")
It’s not.
The effect the actual Furt Fark has on the body,
even at distance, is near indescribable. Once,
you’ll recall, we gatecrashed the technotrance of
30,000,000 initiate Quantumonks and briefly
glimpsed an abstraction of god - before they
spotted us and drove us out of empathspace.
Not even close.
The Furt Fark takes you apart and puts you back
together. Perfectly. It fills the quantum spaces
between your atoms with a symphony of feathers
cast from an angel’s wings.)
Gail sprays and we’re all like "Oh God oh God"
and the Guardians - protected in their armor of
rough-spun diamond punched into lead and
shrouded in zappy plasmashields - ask for
the codes.
Maybe it WAS the endorphins that got to him,
though the flute-masks should have taken care of
that. Maybe he lost it ‘cos there was three of us
there. Maybe the proximity of the Furt Fark made
a better man of him and he couldn’t lie.
Or maybe Jed pulled a fast one and worked
those codes like they was basic trig. Whatever.
Those Guardians soon had us rumbled good!
I unfolded the metascape access and jumped us
three parsecs before they got off a single round.
12000 light-years away we booked into a lowpro
sleep spa and zoned out for two weeks in zero-
gravitanks.
Gail had been transfigured, I suppose.
Her endorphin mists were laced with
pheromones, and she had taken on a more
organic shell. I’m pretty sure she was actually
alive after that. Either way, somehow I wasn’t
enough for her anymore. Maybe I never was.
She didn’t much talk, just smiled a distant smile,
and soon she was gone. Still hurts.
And Jed? Jed just fucked off.
The ‘Taunton Excesses’ paid our bill at the Hyatt
Flotel and headed out to the Pyramid Nebula
without incident. I met her, as arranged, at the
Mountain Momma Inn, southside of the planet
West Virginia. She pretended she was sad to find
me all alone, but the next day she had gone too.
(And to think of all the love I lavished on her!
Bitch! And you know what? I just bet Jed
Lightsear knows EXACTLY where to find her...)
SHIT!
Octavia Flume once wrote that "The Tachion Tract
is the model for human consciousness." I’m still
puzzling over what she meant when suddenly I’m
back in Mean Time and everything is dirty again.
I had forgotten my knees ache when I walk. It’s a
short distance from the check-out desk to my car,
but it reminds me.
Bullet No.42
Hit Parade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Coombes (Sussex, UK)
Dancer is strutting down Main Street, he’s
thinking Ramones but his body is shouting Tony
Manero, Bee-Gees, Staying Alive, the mirrored
aviators and wavy shoulder length black hair
making him look like a ‘70’s throwback.
He’s in a groove, on top of a mountain, he’s a
tiger, tooth and claw, he’s fucking King Kong,
man, don’t cross him.
Spotting her a hundred yards ahead he crosses
the road, speeding up a little, getting closer
without getting close, steering through the
pedestrian traffic like sidewalk slalom is an
Olympic event. He gains ground, slipping
through the throng like an errant shadow.
Phone rings; Dancer flips it open and holds it to
his ear. "Yeah?… I’m on it… No worries… Five
minutes max." Phone flipped shut.
She turns into a quieter side street and he
accelerates as they get closer to her apartment
block, getting closer, closer, until he’s right
behind her, until he’s invading her personal
space and, right outside the building, right in
front of the waiting doorman, she turns to see
who the jerk is marching just a pace behind her.
Her mouth opens but before she can speak her
tongue is pushed aside by the snub gun barrel
grasped in a latex surgical glove that has
appeared from his right hip jacket pocket.
The doorman steps towards them, sees the gun,
steps back.
Dancer looks into her eyes and sees himself
reflected in her super-dilated pupils, bizarrely
sees the reflection of her image as reflected in
the aviators. Time stretches to an eternity as he
wonders whether a person stood between them
would get the elevator-mirror infinity effect,
reflection bouncing off reflection bouncing off
reflection…
He senses her mouth tensing around the barrel –
just a second has passed – she’s going to
scream. He pulls the trigger. She falls.
As she lies prone at his feet he calmly fires two
more bullets into her head. A passer-by is stood
staring at him, and a cab has screeched to a
halt, but no heroes. He holds the gun straight
down by his side and walks briskly away, pockets
the gun as he rounds the corner, into the burger
joint, straight through to the washroom, gun in
the cistern, flush the glove, flush the wig in the
next cubicle, reverse the jacket (turning it from
black to gaudy mint green) out through the fire
exit, aviators crushed under heel in the alley.
He gets back to the scene of the crime before the
first squad car, before the crowd gets too big,
pushes through the few rubberneckers to where
passer-by and cabbie are telling everyone who’ll
listen how they saw it all. The doorman has
reappeared, his faux-military overcoat draped
over her shattered head, blood already
congealing on its journey across sidewalk
to gutter.
As the squad cars converge on the sidewalk and
the ambulance wails into view he flips the phone
and hits redial.
"Yeah, it’s me… yeah, she’s gone… No, no
problems, it was sweet… Sweet enough to give
me a hard-on… OK, later." Flip shut, move on,
job done.
Dancer is strutting down the street, he’s thinking
Velvet Underground but his body language is
shouting Bee-Gees, Staying Alive.
Bullet No.43
A Cup of Kindness . . . . . . . . . . . E.Smith Gilbert (Tennessee, USA)
Vance "Dutch" Flowers wasn't the sort seen in
coffeehouses. He thought meeting his contact
here was stupid. He'd never have set this up.
It was odd. Rattler had told him it was a fast,
easy deal. Rattler knew the contact. Rattler would
take a fifteen per cent cut. A fast seventy-five
hundred. Flowers would keep the rest, a little
over thirty thousand.
A man like Flowers stood out in Starbucks Coffee
shop in the fanciest neighborhood in Atlanta.
But three o'clock in the afternoon was slow time.
That was ok. Anyway, straights would be too
afraid to look at him. Not many outlaw biker
types in fancy suburban coffee bars. A giant
man, long hair, beard, in denim, greasy and
unwashed, he'd put fright on them. They'd never
remember his face. They wouldn't want to.
Flowers got black coffee and took an outside
table. It was too hot to sit there at midday, but he
needed to see things. He'd wait for the contact
who Rattler said demanded to meet here. Rattler
said the contact's office was nearby and he was
pressed for time. One thing, this place was near
the interstate if he needed to run.
Rattler told him he'd recognize the guy. Flowers
couldn't think who it'd be. He owed Rattler ten
large on their last deal. Rattler hadn't gotten
paid. The deal had soured. That didn't make any
difference, the Rattlesnake had to be fed, always.
This deal would square plus eight thousand clear.
He'd take a vacation.
Flowers was the bouncer at a strip club on the
south side. He liked it. He was big, over three
hundred fifty pounds. He liked to fight, was good
at it. He liked hurting people. Bouncing was
good, a night job. Sleeping in the daytime left
room for things.
He did ok. Made out on his meth business selling
at the door, more than ten times his time clock.
The only meth available was his crank. It was
easy keeping out competition. When he started,
there was another neighborhood seller. Flowers
took care of him one night. Flowers jumped him
in a parking lot, snapped the guy's spine. Word
got around.
Soon, he'd bought a custom soft tail Harley out
of Florida, with cash. Perfect gold flake paint,
plenty of chrome. All was good until the deal
Rattler banked went bad. This would clear that
and leave some.
This guy, Rattler's man, a dentist and cycle
fancier, that maybe he knew, wanted his wife
dead, fast. It was a rush job. Rattler told that the
mark was edgy, needed fast money, wife had
heavy insurance. Flowers thought killing split tail
would be easy, he'd make it fun, slick and wild.
Today, he hadn't ridden his bike, lot of guys knew
that ride. He'd driven his pick-up. He'd parked on
the side lot in easy sight of where he sat.
He saw the Porsche Rattler said the contact would
drive. It turned onto the lot from West Paces Ferry
Road and parked side ways in the middle of the lot.
"He's a careful one. Doesn't want his car dinged.
Prissy. Maybe cheap" he told himself.
Flowers recognized this man. He knew him from
his last gig at the bike shop, Rattler's shop.
Flowers had tuned this guy's bike. This one was
queer for big heavy European touring bikes,
BMWs. Seemed to live high, liked toys.
The man walked up to his table. The man wasn't
nervous, smiled like a politician on television.
The contact said, "Hi", nothing else.
"Hi yourself", Flowers said back.
The dentist looked thirty-five, maybe forty,
weighed about one-fifty. Hair clipped short, had
a black moustache. He was wearing sweet
cologne and expensive sunglasses.
Flowers looked hard at the dentist, then said,
"Don't talk. Listen. Nod 'yes or 'no'. Keep smilin'.
Act like I'm discussing you capping my teeth.
Don't screw with me. I'll snap your neck like a
baby chick's and be gone before anybody here
knows you're dead. Answer my questions. You
carrying cash?"
The contact nodded.
"All of it? On you? You can talk now. Be short."
"It's in the car, the glove box."
"OK, that's enough. Quiet. We're going to take a
ride in your pretty little Porsche and you'll give me
the money and tell me the play, where little
wife is."
"Fine by me" said the smiling man who had
unusually white teeth. "I've got your money, minus
the Rattlesnake's part."
"Ok. Let's go. You drive."
"Look, sir, I've been working all morning, on my
feet, with back to back patients, so I could get
away this afternoon and set this up. I'm hungry.
I'd like a cup of coffee and a pastry. I get jumpy
if I don't eat. Low blood sugar. Just give me a
minute to pee, and get a roll and coffee. Please."
"Yeah, ok. I could use one too. Black.
You're buying."
"My pleasure. Just sit easy. I'll be right back."
The contact returned quickly with coffees and
cinnamon rolls. "I'm sorry, I forgot you said black.
I put in cream and sugar. I'll get you another cup".
"No. Eat fast. We've got things to do with a little
lady." Flowers stuffed most of one cinnamon roll
into his mouth, swallowed. He took a deep swig
of heavily sugared coffee and gagged. His face
flushed. His throat was scorched, burning. There
was grinding pain. A generous dose of cyanide
works extremely fast.
Flowers acted like he suffered a devastating heart
attack. Perhaps for twenty-five seconds his body
shook cruelly, and he drooled vomit. He tried to
reach out, then sagged flabbily in his chair. He
died in very little over a minute while the dentist
was in the parking lot getting into a waiting gray
sedan. The huge man had been alive scarcely
long enough to hear the contact whisper "Rattler
sends his regards."
Bullet No.44
The Jimmie I Made In Metal Shop . . Pat Lambe (New Jersey, USA)
The Jimmie I made in metal shop wasn’t long
enough to reach the latch on the van we were
trying to boost. So I had to break out my lock
pick and play around with it for a few minutes
before the latch turned.
I moved aside, watched the bar’s entrance while
Junie went to work on the ignition. I looked at
her lips pursed in concentration between the long
hair surrounding her face; saw the change, pure
joy, when the van started. She moved over in the
seat, let me drive.
This was the first van we had ever done. No
money in it, but this cop Junie knows - I think
she’s fucking him - just got thrown off the force.
I don’t know why he needs a hot van so bad, but
he’s willing to pay for it and we don’t ask
questions.
It turns her on, used to turn her on, hotwiring a
car. That’s why I think she’s balling the cop.
Time was she’d blow me as we were driving
away when she should have been watching for
other cars.
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe a van just doesn’t
do it for her. I ask her about it. She looks away,
out the window, doesn’t say anything.
I want to say something else, catch the red light
in the rear view, one short burst from a siren.
I slip the jimmie in the front of my pants, pull
over, ease to a stop, roll down the window.
Put my hands on the wheel at 3 o’clock and
9’o clock. The guy coming down my side of the
car has a gun in his hand. I can’t tell what kind,
but it feels like a 45 when he cracks it against
my head.
I don’t really lose consciousness, hear something
like, "so you like to steal cars." He opens the
door, drags me out around the car, kicks me a
few times to the shoulder. I can’t move for a few
minutes, stay put for a few more while I catch my
breath. Get up.
There’s two of them. They’ve got Junie on the
hood of their car, one of them is raping her. I
pull the jimmie out. Get behind him. It’s not too
short to reach his head. I pull him off her. His
buddy had been holding Junie’s arms down from
the side of the car. We both go for the gun
caught up someplace in the unconscious
guy’s pants.
I get there first, get a shot off, a little high.
Junie grabs my gun arm. "Don’t," is all she says.
She has her pants back on. Her tits fly free
because all the buttons of her shirt have been
torn off. She bends down, checks the guy who
had been raping her. Takes his wallet.
I order the other guy to give over his wallet.
Check it out with the gun still trained on him.
Volunteer fireman. That explains the siren, lights.
I kick him in the balls, hard. Work him over with
the jimmie.
Junie stops me again. She’s holding her shirt
together with her right hand. "If you kill them we
won’t be able to sell the cars."
I take the rapist’s wallet out of her hand, start up
their car, follow Junie in the van. I memorize the
addresses before I empty the cash and throw
them out the widow onto the Jersey Turnpike.
I should have ditched the gun too, but I would be
using it soon.
Bullet No.45
Ghosts of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . Laird Long (Winnipeg, Canada)
Charlie scooped up the giant pumpkin and
gently tossed it into the back of the open
trailer. He banged his massive arms with his
huge hands, more from reflex than for
warmth, like he used to do before a big
boxing match. That much he remembered.
Ten years ago, a savage beating had parked
him in a state hospital for eleven months.
The beating had left his heavily-concussed
brain with little memory of the past. But at six
foot six, two-seventy, he had quickly regained
all of his former strength. ‘Not much for
brains, but goddamn for strong!’, is how is
baba from the old country put it.
Charlie brushed dead leaves from his thick
wool coat and let his eyes roam over the
hushed, snow-crusted countryside. It was the
middle of October, and thin blue smoke hung
in the air. The air was crisp and chill, and the
gentle breeze carried a veiled, but friendly,
threat of winter. In the brilliance of the
afternoon sun he could clearly make out his
neighbor over a mile away in his own field.
Orrie was working on his broken-down
tractor, trying to pull one more year from the
rusting hulk. Orrie still owed him a hundred
bucks from the Super Bowl - Charlie had gone
Bears, while Orrie had crapped out on the
Pats. Charlie was no homer when it came
to money.
Charlie grunted contentedly, horked out a
sticky yellow gob, and bent down for another
pumpkin. His mind held the thought of a hot
cup of coffee and a cool wedge of pie - his
wife always had something good waiting for
him when he took his afternoon break.
A rogue gust of cold air suddenly shoved him
backwards, but he shrugged it off.
One hour later, a long black Cadillac with
out-of-state license plates steamed down the
dirt road alongside Charlie’s property. It was
moving fast. It stirred up a whirlwind of dust,
and, in Charlie’s dented skull, a cloud of
cobwebbed memories. He watched it thunder
by like an unstoppable doomsday machine,
and then, not fully knowing why, he ran for
the freshly-painted, white frame house he
called home. He anchored his huge body in
the middle of the long driveway and his grim
face signaled ‘Stop!’ The Caddie surged to a
halt, its front bumper bouncing softly off of
Charlie’s knees.
Four city men in funeral suits piled out of the
car and fanned out in a skirmish line in front
of Charlie. Three of the men gripped
shotguns. The fourth spoke. "Long time,
Paulie. Ten long years," he said. He was short,
fat, and oily. His stumpy, brown teeth clenched
a stumpy cigar, and his hands were buried
deep in his coat pockets.
"Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,"
Charlie said, truthfully.
The pissed-on fireplug of a man coughed out
a laugh and spat it into the dirt. "Yeah, yeah,
I heard about the amnesia act." The dead
cigar dropped from his mouth. The other men
casually raised their weapons on cue.
"We heard you didn’t squawk. Couldn’t.
But the old man don’t take no chances. So,
after ten years of witness protection bullshit,
here we are - you know, to finish the job."
The fat man gulped down some fresh air and
broke into a coughing spasm; he was used to
swallowing his air in chunks. He looked back
at the scarecrow guarding the pumpkin patch,
at the gently rolling hills beyond. "Quite a life
you’ve carved out for yourself," he smirked.
"Life is where you find it," Charlie replied
calmly.
The fat man nodded slowly, solemnly.
"And death," he whispered.
"Drop your guns now!" The voice seemed to
thunder from the heavens.
The men spun around as a group at the
sound, but they didn’t drop their guns.
The animatronic scarecrow, with cameras for
eyes and a speaker for a mouth, stared down
at them. It flailed its arms wildly. Charlie and
Orrie had put in ten months building the
thing, but the kids and the customers loved it.
It was operated by remote from Charlie’s
workshop in the house.
shotgun again. Fatso flew through the air and
smashed to rest at the base of the scarecrow.
The scarecrow went limp as Charlie’s wife
raced out of the house and down the driveway
towards him. Her arms were outstretched and
her face was soaked with tears of terror.
Charlie turned to meet her. The scarecrow
looked on blindly as the fat man rolled over,
squeezed off one more shot, and then went
cold. The heavy bullet tore through Charlie’s
thick neck. The only other witness to a certain
prominent Teamster’s disappearance toppled
over and died in his wife’s arms. He had
forgotten one of the rules he used to live by:
when your man is down, plant him; one more
bullet - the final nail in the coffin. So the
ghosts of the past stay buried.

As the men gaped in astonishment at the

cavorting scarecrow, Charlie’s memory
dredged up a few more things from his murky
past. He went into action. He grabbed the
man closest to him - a little guy with a scared,
pimply face. He crushed the punk in his thick
arms and fired the kid’s shotgun using a
sausage-sized finger stuffed into the trigger
guard over the little guy’s broken digit.
The gun boomed and one of the goons split
open at the back. Shards of cloth and flesh
flew into the air in a red mist. Charlie fired
another blast. The gob in the longshoreman
coat did a jig, folded up, and plowed the
ground with the side of his head.

The fat man ripped his hands out of his

pockets and blazed away with a pair of .45’s.
The little guy caught in Charlie’s love embrace
jerked around a couple of times as the bullets
tore up his insides and then noodled.
Charlie shoved the body aside. The fat man
ran for the field. Charlie opened up with the
 NO 6 – Iceberg Slim
Robert Beck was the real deal, a stone cold
pimp, maybe the biggest purveyor of whores in post war
Chicago. He may have been successful but after one jail
stretch too long he gave up the Life and became one of
the best selling writers in black American history. Ladies
and Gentlemen, let me introduce Iceberg Slim.
In a series of vivid, hard hitting and above all truthful
novels Iceberg Slim documented "The Life" as he knew it.
Life in the criminal underbelly, the con men, the pimps,
the gangsters, the hookers, he knew ‘em all and he
loved ‘em because he was one them. Iceberg Slim had
done it, lived it and done time for it. What he spoke of
was real and he told it in some of the most compelling
prose ever put to paper. Ultimately though, he knew
how destructive that glamorous, addictive, immediate
life was. Be sure he didn’t shy away from the pain.
He started writing in the late sixties after one prison spell
too many. Within days of the warder giving him back his
possessions he wrote "Pimp", a straight forward
portrayal his life in Chicago. That success enabled him
to produce a series of books that have since sold over
six million copies world wide, making him one of the
most successful ever Black American writers.
Watch out though, his books vary wildly in quality.
His strongest, and certainly my favourite is "Trick Baby",
the story of a con man called "White Folks". This is a
man light skinned enough to pass for white but
underneath is completely black. He uses this "disguise"
to great effect and becomes the greatest hustler in the
ghetto jungle. It’s a damning indictment of racist white
culture. Then and now.
"Death Wish" on the other hand is a confused mish
mash of gangsterism and black power but, read
"Doom Fox" and "Pimp" and you know you’re in the
presence of greatness.
The thing about Iceberg is his brutal honesty, everything
he writes you know is the truth (ruth) it bleeds
authenticity. Slim was an integral part of the world he
describes and delivers his prose in a fast swinging style
that derives its influences from blues and swinging jazz.
That’s why we love him, you can feel music oozing
through every sentence. Driving, loose limbed rhythms
that give the feel, the texture, of what it’s like to live the
large life. He writes in a sinuous, finger poppin’ manner
that lets the eye just glide along. It reads like real people
talking, it flows, it swaggers it gives you that delicious
jive of a great Duke Ellington record, brash and bigger
than life. Man it swings.
Iceberg’s heroes have a lot in common. They don’t want
the Square Life; they don’t want to get up at six in the
morning to do some Joe Schmo job for peanuts and a
bollocking from the boss. They want the feel of brand
new clothes, a roll of green bunched up in their pockets
and some hot dame (or guy) on their arm and in their
bed. They want all the good things life has to offer but
they sure as hell don’t wanna work for ‘em.
But this ain’t no paradise he’s describing. All human
frailty is painstakingly laid out for examination in brutal,
forensic detail. And don’t even begin to talk about his
portrayal of women. Iceberg’s heroes are no gentlemen.
Their idea of being considerate to a woman is to give
her cunnilingus, opening doors and raising hats don’t
come into it.
With Slim, you get the truth and you get it with style.
Iceberg Slim remains a profound if perhaps unspoken
influence today. 50 Cent would be less than a dime
without this guy, Ice T used his inspiration to transform
himself from a hustler into a top MC. Modern day rap
would be nothing without him.
Buy his books and read. He is a hero of Bullet and we
salute him.
Recommended reading:
Pimp: The Story of My life
Trick Baby
Doom Fox
The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim
 The Intelligent Dumbness of The Ramones
Tony Lagosh (Cambridge, UK)

status quo brings (and I do also mean the band) can

"Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee
…good times" – The Human League
The death of Johnny Ramone now means that all three
key contributors to the Ramones sound are now dead.
Okay the drummers are still kicking around, but let’s
face it; these three were the heart and soul of
the Ramones.
It really is astonishing to think that all of them are dead
but then again getting out early always was their forte.
It’s hard to think of any other band who have been so
comprehensively wiped out (save for the Bhundu Boys,
the Zimbabwean Jit band ravaged by Aids). McCartney
is still performing and recording (unfortunately), the
Stones (Jones apart) are still pretty much intact. Even the
Dolls god bless ‘em still have a couple of survivors, so
to lose all three is well, the word upsetting just don’t
come close.
The Ramones are now fully fledged members of
rock’n’roll aristocracy. They’ve even been inducted into
the rock’n’roll hall of fame. It wasn’t always like this,
they were once treated as a comedy band, not to be
taken seriously but who are now acknowledged as a
band changed the direction of popular music.
They appeared out of absolutely nowhere and were
direct inspirations for the Clash and the Pistols and it is
no exaggeration to say that without these geeks, punk
rock would never have happened in the way that it did.
Back in 1975 you see, Da Bruddas were a startling
idea. Take the cover of the first album, a stark black and
white image, four punks loitering with intent in front a
brick wall above them one word, RAMONES. You knew
what you were going to get before you even heard the music.
But despite the warning, it was still shocking. 14 songs,
none of them longer than 155 seconds, a simple three
chord thrash, with a rumbling rhythm section, a
liberating buzzsaw guitar backing some lanky geek with
a whining, nasal drone you really couldn’t call singing.
It sounded like nothing on earth.
You see context is the important thing in popular culture,
reacting to the here and now may seem ephemeral but
it can create music for eternity. The frustration that the
make people angry, forcing them to reject the
mainstream and carve out something new for
themselves. To be that innovative, to be that intelligent,
to be the Ramones, takes huge creative talent.
Simple, simple, simple. That was their great innovation,
they brought rock’n’roll back to its roots. Back in 1975,
dinosaur time and excess abounded. Fleetwood Mac
and Zeppelin ruled the roost, musical behemoths driven
by coke, heroin and groupies. The Ramones had to
make do with sniffing glue and a quick fumble in the
basement. It all seemed so real, so attainable and of
course look what happened. Punk fucking rock.
It was their direct inspiration that led to Bullet.
They created the blue print of rock’n’roll noir, short, fast,
brutality with a buzz saw energy and a sledge hammer
impact. Say what you have to and get out, quick.
Their influence lingers and it’s immortal.
But they were more than just a three chord thrash band.
Underneath that fuzz noise was an intelligent dumbness.
They were funny and they made you realize that you
didn’t have to sing about dungeons and dragons or how
your old lady has left you. You could sing about horror
movies or comics or just standing around. The Ramones
were sharp. They realized that you can create your own
cultural landscape and that you don’t have to accept
that there is a right way to do things. There’s just your way.
Okay they hadn’t made a decent album in at least
twenty years and they probably weren’t the greatest
musicians of all time (at least technically), but they
represented something, an archetype, a reminder of
what you can do with great ideas and tiny resources.
We’re gonna miss ‘em but hey, we still got the music.
Hey ho, let’s GO!
For everything you need to know about the
Ramones check the first three albums:
Ramones
Leave Home
Rocket to Russia
 Gene Vincent - There’s one in
Every Town Mick Farren (The Do-Not Press)
Rock’n’Roll Revolutionaries
John Collis (Virgin)
There must be something in the air. The limping
skinny ghost is coming back to haunt us because up
until now there were perhaps two serious books
about Gene Vincent. Yet, in a period of months,
another two come along hot on each other’s heels.
This is getting scary.
In the past, if you wanted the definitive low down on
the life of Gene Vincent you had to have Brit
Hagarty’s "The Day the World Turned Blue". It’s a
little Joe Friday in its approach (Just the facts
Ma’am) but it tells you everything you need to know,
in the order it happened. What it doesn’t do is tell
you exactly how and why Gene Vincent was the key
genius archetype for rock’n’roll. If you want that
then you gotta get Mick Farren’s book.
Farren is a bit of a Brit rock’n’roll legend in his own
right. He fronted his own band the Deviants,
was there in the sixties for the Beatles and the
Stones; and in the seventies when punk happened.
He was editor of the underground newspaper
"International Times" and was involved in the riot
that was officially known as the Isle of Wight
Festival. This guy has lived and breathed rock’n’roll
since the fifties and he knows his stuff.
What’s more, he has produced a book which gives
you a direct and visceral connection with the sheer
electric energy of Vincent and his Blue Caps music.
The writing itself is pure rock’n’roll, particularly the
descriptions of Vincent’s live performances. Farren
gets rock’n’roll in the way that we at BULLET get
rock’n’roll. It’s a wild passionate life affirming
energy, channeled through voice drums and electric
guitar, that these days maybe the only we way can
actually touch the essence of life.
It’s a short book (c 30 000 words) but we like that,
this is not a book for the fact finders, this is a book
for seeking out the spirit. It’s short on biographical
detail but the bones are there, however that’s not
the point. For the first time, the fact that Vincent was
a truly great musician, absolutely integral to the
development of rock’n’roll is nailed, here in black
and white. Read and understand that without Vincent
rock’n’roll would be a very different beast indeed.
There are some fascinating hints of this, perhaps
best exemplified in Farren’s description of his
relationship with Jim Morrison. The Lizard King was
in absolute awe of Vincent and actually saw himself
as something of a bastard son. The leathers are the
give away of course. There are even hints of the
Doors wanting to back Vincent live but were too lazy
to get out of bed in time. He had to make do with
Alice Cooper’s band instead.
This isn’t a perfect book, the discography is
unnecessary and we certainly could have done
without the dodgy poem, but for me, if you want
to understand Gene Vincent, then this is the one
you want.
Hunt it down wherever you can. It’s essential for
Bullet readers.
Not quite the same can be said of the latest book by
John Collis. Nothing wrong with it, very scholarly
and academic but maybe that’s the problem.
It’s a slightly confusing book, uncertain as to
whether to focus on the biographical details of
Vincent and Cochran’s lives, the 1960 tour or the
two rockers’ relationship and it contains much
familiar material.
Where it scores is in its almost forensic analysis of
the 1960 tour, the tour that ended with Cochran in a
coffin. It convincingly makes the case that this is
when rock’n’roll took hold in the UK. All of the huge
names of the sixties and seventies rock saw Vincent
and Cochran on this tour and this, if not actually
turning them on to rock’n’roll, then certainly fully
showed them the possibilities.
Back in 1960 remember, rock’n’roll was all but
dead. In the US you had to be called Frankie or
Bobby or Pat if you wanted a hit and in the UK we
were still suffering from a WWII hangover.
Dirty screaming rock’n’roll was not what the kids
were allowed to have and it would be another three
years before the Beatles and the Stones kicked in.
As a guide to the lives of Vincent and Cochran,
Collis does a good enough job but the whole feel is
that of a quasi academic tome. The basic stories of
their lives are laid out effectively enough but you
always have the feeling that this is one of those
greasy old rockers from the Ace café moaning on
about how crap modern day music is and how none
of them are fit to lick the boots of their fifties heroes.
Like Brit Hagarty it gives you the facts but if you want
to understand the real gut-busting impact of
rock’n’roll get the Mick Farren book.
 The Big Blind – Ray Banks (Point Blank Press)
Squeeze Play – James McKimmey
(Pulp Originals/Point Blank)
The Devil Wears Wings – Harry Whittington
(Pulp Originals)
Pulp – Charles Bukowski (Virgin)

Really the reason for doing Bullet in the first
place was to have something decent to read.
Trying to find great quality noir, stuff that bites,
that says something about the here and now
was proving extremely difficult to find.
Which is strange, as this stuff has a long and
honourable tradition. Like rock’n’roll though,
publishers are rather sniffy about it, refer to it
as pulp and generally regard it as not proper
writing, not real literature. Well fuck literature
we say, we want stuff that excites, that reflects
the world we live in and isn’t hung up on
notions of art.
That’s where Ray Banks comes in. “The Big
Blind” is a stunner, a driven drama based in
the seedy underbelly of a Manchester I
certainly recognize. Its hero if he can be called
that spends his days selling double glazing
and his nights wasting time and money in the
sort of casinos you don’t see in Bond films.
The story focuses on Alan Slater, a borderline
alcoholic who ends up in a mess when his
mate’s card game goes badly wrong.
Slater has a small life which is going nowhere
and is accelerated down that path by murder.
This is no glamorous hit man job, just
something bad and messy down by the canal.
And there’s a point to the murder too, it opens
up new depths to his soul he never knew
existed, Slater takes a peek in and he ain’t at
all impressed by what he finds. In trying to
escape he’s pulled back further in by his love
for his a woman who is plainly wrong for him
but he’s too desperate to care.
“The Big Blind” is a fine achievement and is
an essential for all Bullet readers.
Which is not what can be said “Pulp” by
Charles Bukowski. For some reason Virgin
have decided to bring this worthless piece of
shit out again. You know these literary types,
they see a popular genre and think “Hey, not
only can I make money out of this but I can
take the piss at the same time.” The egg
heads call it a pastiche, I call it a bleeding
cheek. Charlie boy (I’m speaking through a
medium here) you can’t do this, leave it to
writers who know and care about what they’re
doing. People of real style flair and ability,
people like Harry Whittington and James
McKimmey.
Pulp Originals have done us the great service
of publishing two long lost pulp classics
“Squeeze Play” by James McKimmey and
“The Devil Wears Wings” by Harry Whittington
These are two fine, fine books. Lean and taut,
driven and passionate, they’re about men
losing control of their lives because of dumb
decisions they make.
In “The Devil Wears Wings”, an alcoholic pilot
agrees to take part in a bank job because he
and his partner have convinced themselves
that it’s a dead cert and that, nothing can
possibly go wrong. Of course it does but that
isn’t the real story. The real story is of a man
aching for the passion and drama he once
tasted as a World War II pilot. The bank job is
his way out of teaching spoilt brats how to fly
planes for a cheesy crumb which he
immediately blows in the nearest bar.
This man lost the big life and is ready to do
anything to get it back again.
“Squeeze Play” has a different take on the
desperate loner motif. This is about a small
town guy, confident and capable, wanting to
get on with life. Out of nowhere though, it all
goes horribly wrong and he is fucked over by
everyone and I mean EVERYONE. His wife, his
boss, his putative lover, even total strangers
combine, knowingly or not, to frame him for a
murder he didn’t commit. He’s out of control
and driven to desperate acts that lead him
into a fevered chase against time to find the
real murderer before the police nab him. It’s
told in a fractured style similar to “Memento”,
switching back and forth from character to
character, time shifting the story to reveal it in
the most effective way possible.
The whole world should know about
these books.
 Johnny Burnette & the Rock’n’roll Trio:
The Complete Coral Recordings (Hip O Select)
Superpill – The Forty Fives (mp3 from yeproc.com)
Lupine Peroxide – The Barbs (Mother Tongue)
This is for Real – Pink Grease (Mute)
Fucking A – The Thermals (Sub Pop)

The Swing’s the Thing
But just what do you mean by rock’n’roll?
Don’t you just mean rock? No I fucking well
don’t. There’s a big, big difference. I’m not
saying one’s better than the other it’s just here in
Bullet we’re celebrating rock’n’roll and that
means understanding certain things.
Let me explain a tiny bit more rationally.
You see rock means steady, fixed, without the
swing. Rock’n’roll swings. That’s the first question
you ask if you see a guitar, bass and drum set
up. Do the band swing and if they do, then they
have a chance of being a rock’n’roll band.
Swing seems an old fashioned word these days,
it’s associated almost completely with big band
jazz of the Benny Goodman era but when you
listen to great rock’n’roll carefully it’s that swing
that sets it apart from rock. That finger popping,
hip swinging, pelvic gyration of the blues seeping
through the spaces in the electric noise.
But if you really want specifics try listening to this
lot, a diverse bunch on the face of it, but
underneath there’s that blues swing we’re
looking for.
For some reason Hip O Select have chosen to
reissue every recording the Johnny Burnette Trio
made for Coral. The Burnette Trio are one of the
greats, they didn’t make many records and a lot
of those that they did weren’t particularly good
but when they did it right, man it was pay dirt.
They’re the greatest exponents of the stripped
down archetypal rockabilly sound. Recorded
nearly fifty years ago, their teenage electric
energy still sounds fresh and exciting. Make
music like "The Train Kept a Rollin" and
"Honey Hush" and you’re knocking on the doors
of immortality.
Right now there seems to be a whole load of
bands emerging that have this instinctive feel for
the swing with which they are imbuing their
music. They’re losing the stiffness that the Beatles
& Dylan and just letting it flow baby.
Take a listen to "Superpill" by the Forty Fives
available on down load from the Yep Roc
website. Underneath all the fuzz and the rock
posturing, that swing is there, oh yes it is, feel the
groove and you tell me you ain’t in the same ball
park as Elvis.
Check out the Thermals whose aptly named
named Fucking A is lining up for album of the
year accolade in the Bullet office. The Thermals
have produced an object lesson in lean taut
noise backing a vocal as nasal and American as
you could ever wish to find. 12 songs in less than
thirty minutes, no half assed ballads, just sheer
electric energy hung around songs imbued with
their own inherent clarity. The Thermals get in
quick; say what they have to then get out.
Just like Bullet in fact.
Pink Grease, on the other hand, take as their
starting point the early seventies and we love ‘em
for it. They draw upon people like Eno era Roxy
Music, Glitter, Bolan all that stuff but infuse it with
a sleaziness that Prince would be proud of.
The Barbs seem to be inspired by the Cramps but
they have a more straight ahead boy girl
configuration. Their sound is less louche but they
still have that swing, underpinning a tight buzz
saw guitar drawing upon all the greats of
rock’n’roll yet somehow imbuing it all with their
own identity. On their website and blurb they
push the horror show aspects of rock’n’roll but
that all seems kinda fake. What they do have
though is a great rock’n’roll sound. You should
get on the bandwagon ASAP.
The swing’s the thing and man it’s back.
 The White Stripes
Dang Blues - Jawbone (Loose Records)
Rubber Factory - The Black Keys (Fat Possum)
The Blues is Coming to
Save Us All
This is 1975.
Feels like it anyway. 1975, that vast rock’n’roll
desert inhabited by dinosaurs, cheesy pop and
heart throbs. It’s back to haunt us. However, all is
not lost. If I’m right, this means there’s something
big around the corner. Very big.
Back then that big thing was punk, and looking
back it is possible to see the roots poking
through. Nothing comes from nothing. The
Pistols et al may have hated the prevailing music
scene but they had their own stuff to love.
The Dolls, Bowie, T. Rex, Iggy kept them going in
the dark days of dominance by Floyd, Zep and
ELP. But they still needed that one major catalyst
to switch on the light bulb. Back then it was the
Ramones, today it may just be the White Stripes.
Now I’m not the greatest Stripes fan in the world,
they’ve made some great stuff (Seven Nation
Army, Hotel Yorba, Fell in Love with a Girl) but
their poor and mediocre stuff far outweighs the
good. What is important to understand about
them though, is that they’ve led the way for a
resurgence of the blues. Without them it would
have been impossible for Jawbone or the
Black Keys to make any sort of sense in the
modern world.
The White Stripes are a pointer back to the roots,
a back to basics willingness to get down and
dirty with the blues and maybe start over again.
They’re also cool and this means they can excite
young people into discovering music they’ve
never heard before. What’s more, they’re
reinventing it for their times. Exactly what the
Stones did.
Take Jawbone for example. "Dang Blues" is a
driving primitive almost feral piece of music.
It has lost every modern day influence you can
think of and gone right back to the archetype of
the blues shouter in the cotton fields. But he ain’t
living in the last century, no sir, he’s very much of
the now. The singing is horribly distorted, like it’s
been put through an electrified megaphone so
that the end result is that of a terrifying intensity,
a wild eyed prophet wailing in the desert.
Jawbone is a one man band who recorded these
tracks in less than a day and "Dang Blues" is the
ultimate exercise in DIY. Every home should
have one.
The Black Keys on the other hand are a different
kettle of fish. When I heard their "Thickfreakness"
album I was less than impressed. It seemed old
fashioned, out of time, I ignored it. Context as
you know is everything in rock’n’roll and now,
in the light of Jawbone they suddenly seem
important, authentic, true.
We should beware of those words, there is no
such thing as authenticity or truth argue the
academics, influences abound everywhere.
They’re wrong of course. Academics almost
always are. It’s the feeling that has to be
authentic and true, like Eric B said, its not where
you’re from its where you’re at. Eric Burdon was
authentic and he used to come round my
Grandad’s house in Newcastle. But he had the
feeling and that’s what’s the Black Keys have.
Although they have a Paul Rodgers sound-a-like
on vocals and they often fall into the seventies
blues rock mantrap, they sound sufficiently of the
now to make me feel there’s a lot more to come.
Maybe they need to understand the context
they’re operating in a lot better but that
will come.
Get both these albums. Prepare yourself. It’s all
starting again. Strap in for the ride.
Author! Author! Top Ten - Ray Banks

Ray Banks, author of "The Big Blind" published by
Point Blank Press has the audacity to tell us what
he thinks are the greatest albums of all time.
1 - London Calling, The Clash.
Possibly the greatest rock 'n' roll album ever
created, and certainly the last great rock 'n' roll
album of the seventies and best of the eighties
(depending on where you bought it), which is
precisely what Strummer and Jones wanted it to
be. A last howl of rebellion before punk
effectively died.
2 - Closing Time, Tom Waits.
6 - Superfly, Curtis Mayfield.
This is blaxploitation and morality tale all rolled
up in a cute little bundle, shot through with brass,
balls and the falsetto spit of Mayfield himself, a
throbbing underscore to the movie as well as
providing a funky Greek chorus.
7 - Murder Ballads, Nick Cave And
The Bad Seeds.
Ahhh, Laughing Boy Cave and his Bad Seeds
aren't known for their sense of humour, but this
album is the Ronseal of Cave's discography -
it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Tough call, this one. I still love Blue Valentine, 8 - This Is Hardcore, Pulp.
The Heart Of Saturday Night and Small Change,
Fucking hell, Jarvis Cocker hit middle age hard
and Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs have
and fast with this one. But what makes this
some real heartbreakers on them. My favourite is
album one of my favourites are the sleazy tracks
actually Nighthawks At The Diner, but seeing as
"The Fear", "This Is Hardcore" and "Seductive
it's a live album, it's been kicked into touch.
Barry" - lush orchestral odes to bad sex and
So the debut it is, and there isn't a duff tune
dirty movies.
on the entire record, cynical as well as
sentimental, all delivered with that trademark
9 - New Boots And Panties, Ian Dury
whisky-soaked voice.
And The Blockheads.
3 - Greetings From LA, Tim Buckley. The whole album has a rough, violent and
Eschewing the ethereal wandering minstrel bit, irreverant feel to it, Dury's talent for sketching the
this is the nastiest, most vulgar and downright minutiae of the British classes is at the forefront.
funkiest of all of Buckley's records. Oh, and
10 - This Year's Model, Elvis Costello.
"Sweet Surrender" is the most unapologetic
"I cheated on you" song there is. Hey, it wouldn't be me without a Costello album
on here, and this is the one that gets the blood
4 - Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, going. For some strange reason, this one had a
profound effect on The Big Blind ("Pump It Up"
Billy Bragg.
and "Lipstick Vogue" both made it onto the
Raging, weeping, busking genius from the poet unofficial OST) and it's nice to be reminded of
with the one-amp guitar. Costello when he wasn't shit.
5 - American IV: The Man Comes ‘The Big Blind’ by Ray Banks is available from
Around, Johnny Cash. Point Blank Press.
Again, another tough call. All of the American
recordings proved that Cash was an exceptional
performer and let's face it, the man could
read the Bible and make it sound like a
personal threat.
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ISSN 1740 9721