Just heard from Hybrid Sequence Media, the publisher of my second Collection, Gimp World, that they are currently pulling a cover together for it for a provisonal March release. As I was going through the manuscript I saw that I have now completed what could be called my "pandemic trilogy;" stories all written in and inspired by the pandemic. Now, I admit I find the whole "inspired by the pandemic" thing rather tiresome, when most such stories are realist in nature and focus on feelings of loneliness or isolation or fear of the invisible virus, and so on. Thankfully, seeing the world through a genre lens, it is possible to just see patterns that trigger bizarro-style trains of thought that lead to absurd tales only nominally related to the pandemic, even if somewhat inspired by them.
The first of these stories was "Gimp World" itself, published by Horror Sleaze Trash.
The second was "Porno Park" published at the same place.
The third is "Scoby Snacks". I haven't yet started hawking it around for publication as yet, but as it is in the Gimp World collection, I thought I would publish it here, as an exclusive.
So here we go - enjoy!
Scoby Snacks
“It’s great for the gut micro-biome” is
something that Rob had never thought anyone would say to him, partly because he
didn’t know what a micro-biome was and partly because prior to meeting Natalie
he would never have found himself in a hipster emporium buying things that were
good for the gut micro-biome.
The guy behind the counter handed him a
sealed plastic bag, an artificial amniotic sac, within which a white mass
slipped between his fingers. Rob peered
at its featureless form before turning back to the assistant. “And you just put it in green tea and sugar
and that’s it, yeah?”
“Yep, “the assistant said, his waxed
moustache vibrating like a tuning fork as he spoke. “The scoby eats the sugar then converts it
into beneficial bacteria. And when it’s
done fermenting your green tea, not only will your scoby have grown, but there
will also be a baby scoby there which you can use to make your next batch of
kombucha.”
Rob had always liked the sound of getting
anything for free, even before he had met Natalie and his interests had changed
from beer and football to kundalini yoga, chakra opening and
environmentalism. Funnily enough, all of
which were her interests.
So it was that Rob found himself whizzing
back from Camden on his electric scooter, in his backpack a glass demijohn, a
bag of sugar, a box of organic matcha green tea-leaves and some steriliser.
It could never be said that Rob bore
responsibility well. However, this time
he was determined that he would prove something to himself and, more
importantly, to Natalie. He placed the
scoby into the sickly-sweet brew and gently tapped on the glass as it settled
within, as if expecting a response. As
the days passed, he got into the habit of inspecting his slimy new ward, as it
day by day slowly, but noticeably grew, developing glutinous tendrils which
reached out for sustenance from the furthest reaches of the jar until one day
he saw it; another baby scoby growing from the mother. And while Rob posted pictures of the scoby on
the ‘gram with joking, self-deprecating messages like “I’m going to be a
grandfather!”, truth be told he did, for the first time in his life, actually
feel a sense of responsibility for the oleaginous blob of fungus growing in his
kitchen, perhaps even a bond.
After bottling up his brew, Rob was left
with the decision on what to do with his now two distinct scobies. He was relieved to find from various websites
that he would not need to part with his original scoby, so he decided to use it
again for his second batch, reluctantly giving away the offspring to a friend
of Natalie’s, surprising himself when he found himself asking her how it was
whenever she popped round for a chakral cleansing or burning bowl ceremony.
And so it went on, month after month,
batch after batch, brew after brew until, finally even Rob realised that his
original scoby, now several times its original size but looking distinctly
worn-out and jaded, probably needed to be replaced.
Reluctantly,
regretfully, he picked up his scoby and, needing both hands to manage its slippery
weight, threw it in the bin.
Rob didn’t think any more of it until he
woke the next day and stumbled, still half asleep, into his kitchen and
literally tripped over it. The scoby had
now quadrupled in size and was the size of a medium-sized dog. What it was doing on the floor next to the
bin, he didn’t know, but he could only assume that it had consumed the
contents– various types of fruit pulp from Natalies’s juicer and other organic
vegan scraps – and then climbed out, either in a bid for freedom or in search
of more food. Taking a fresh bin bag
from under the kitchen sink, Rob placed the scoby in it, the bag barely big
enough to cover the whole thing, and then struggled down the stairs from his
flat with it in both arms, before finally heaving it into the wheelie bin.
The next day, as Rob opened the front door
to get to work, he saw the scoby seemingly waiting for him on the front
step. It was now almost waist high at
its central point, its sides spreading out in a circle almost four feet in
diameter, its edges climbing up the walls of the porch.
What
the Hell do I do now? He thought. I can’t just leave it here?
Eventually he decided it was easier to
just drag the thing down the alleyway at the end of the road and then just dump
it in the mucky waters of the Thames.
And true, while the scoby was heavier than expected – he estimated it at
3 or 400 lbs now – and it was also slimy and slippery to the touch, by finding
an old rusty pick axe in the derelict shed that was hidden in the undergrowth
at the end of the communal garden, Rob was able to bury the pick deep into the
scoby’s quivering mass and pull it, in sharp, energetic jerks to the edge of
the river before, groaning with the effort, hoiking it in, pick axe and all.
And as the weeks passed, Rob did not think
of the scoby again, too busy was he navigating the traffic on his e-scooter,
whizzing past the hundreds of missing cat and lost dog flyers posted on the
lampposts to work, like Xerox leaves blooming on metal trees. He would be partially aware of local news
reports on TV expressing confusion about the vanishing homeless population but
he was too focused now on trying to read GreenPeace newsletters on his phone as
Natalie had now apparently developed a passion for biodiversity and fighting
climate change so he felt it would keep him in her knickers if he could be
similarly well-informed. So as she
whined about diminishing species in the Amazon, dwindling numbers of tigers in
India and fish populations in the Channel suddenly plummeting to the point that
the whole body of water now seemed barren and lifeless apart from a foam of
beneficial bacteria that washed up on the coasts in greater amounts every day,
he would tut, and shake his head in disbelief and exhale sharply, while not
really paying too much attention.
That was until one day Natalie called him
through to the living room, where she was stood rigidly in front of the TV, her
hands clasped to her mouth in disbelief.
“L...Look at this!” she said finally, gesturing to the BBC News report
on the screen, a banner “Mystery Mass in Channel moving towards U.S.”
ticker-taping across the image of what appeared to be a slimy white island,
some half a mile across, drifting against
the waves, a tiny pick axe embedded in its centre. It was undeniably his scoby and, as
disinterested as he actually was in environmental matters, even Rob felt a
twinge of guilt as the scoby slowly made its way across the Atlantic, doubling
in size every day, as it consumed mega-tonnes of bio-matter to fuel its growth.
Indeed, as time went by it became clear
that the scoby itself had stopped moving but was now instead just accumulating
mass at such a rate that its mere growth meant that its outer edges moved
hundreds of miles outwards – towards Greenland, Europe and the East Coast of
the States - the Scoby now an expanding fungal continent in a diminishing
kombucha ocean. The American military
tried bombing it, but even their heaviest ordnance did no damage and was as
futile as trying to destroy an island by throwing pebbles at it.
But then the reports from China started to
come in.
Terrifying footage posted on Twitter of
coastal cities collapsing into the sea, clouds of sea-water, rubble, dust and
pre-biotic foam. Grainy cell-phone
images of masses of people being plucked from seafronts by mesophylic tendrils,
of whole cities locking themselves away in fear, screaming their terror into
the night skies. Initially, such footage
was dismissed as CCP propaganda but soon it became clear what was happening on
the other side of the world. An uber
kefir – a kefir kaiju if you will
–was rapidly expanding across the Pacific, consuming all in its path as it
gained mass at an incalculable rate.
Panicked discussion then moved on to what would end life on Earth first
– the kombucha or the kefir – the entire planet girding its loins for the clash of the two pro-biotic titans as
their respective masses swelled to envelop the globe.
Still, whether it was his ADHD or he had been vaping too much Moroccan hash, but by this point Rob had long-since lost interest.
Besides, sea water was delicious now and was outstanding for the gut microbiome.
And for Rob, who had always liked a freebie, that was very much a win.
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