Member-only story
From ‘Ghost Queen’
Wavelength
Horrifying short story, as well as a good laugh
(‘Paris Review’ said they liked it very much but couldn’t possibly publish it. Could I rather send them something else?)
London, late summer, 1970: a grey Friday evening, overcast, but not raining. September the eighteenth, I think it was: the very night Jimi Hendrix died. Quite a juxtaposition: there was I lecturing on the deepest, most profound, philosophy in the world, while Jimi was drowning.
Then again, it could have been the Friday before that, or the Friday a week later: I’ve never been good with specific dates and times.
I flicked my glowing cigarette stub through the gap between a pair of shabby swing-doors, and sent it spinning out into the night.
8.10pm.
I strode purposefully into the foyer of the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 and, savouring the smell of stale floor-polish and shit-cheap tobacco, struck an expectant pose. The Conway Hall has long been a meeting place for the most advanced minds of our era.
With no one looking, I discretely clipped a yarmulka — as much a fashion accessory as an eschatological symbol to me — on to the back of my dandruff-infested, peppercorned crown.
