Violet Insight
Clara Parsons smokes vape.
Tobacco: violet.
Violet tobacco: Clara Parsons’ favourite flavour.
Violet tobacco: Clara Parsons’ favourite flavour for quite some time.
Clara Parsons doesn’t smoke violet tobacco all the time in case she tires of it and thus won’t have anything to look forward to.
Colour Arrival
Clara smoking vape in gung-ho manner out in passageway.
This is “the norm.”
Clara spots spectrum of colour out of corner of eye.
The spectrum of colour is not “the norm.”
A morphing, pulsating colour ball—Neon red, blue, purple, pink, squished and smidged together like Playdoh—oozes under fence into passageway.
Fuzzy electric-static colours as one ball, schmoozing and sliming.
A blurry, coloured orb, hive-like, buzzing and humming.
Multiplicity
The colours come into the passageway and multiply.
The reds, the yellows, the greens, the purples, the pinks, all the forementioned colours, rapidly multiplying.
Looks like fireworks, Clara thinks.
Looks like fireworks made of neon highlighters.
And holograms and sequins.
Or maybe just holograms, Clara Parsons thinks, doubting herself for a moment and retracting the sequins part, then reinstating it after another look.
Countdown
Clara watches the colours set up camps as if she were watching an episode of Countdown.
That’s not to say that she is dispassionate. It wouldn’t be fair to give that impression, but the way she watches, the way her well-defined features gaze, yes, it is in the gazing, is similar to how she had at least once watched an episode of Countdown.
Please note that never once did she once gaze in that manner when watching Robert Kilroy Silk shows or Supermarket Sweep from the 1990s or Nightmare the children’s fantasy program from the 1980s. Not on repeat or at the time, not never.
Clara’s gazings are very specific to each programme. She categorizes her gazings and files them in a card-based filing system—like Nabokov did with his dreams—so that they are documented. She takes her gazings very seriously. Clara buried her Gazings Files Volume I in a time capsule some years back and it gives her great comfort to know someone or something will learn of them one day.
She hates to think that her gazings might be in vain.
She cannot stomach this thought at all.
Telepathy
The colours have populated Clara’s passageway.
They communicate telepathically with her.
Communicating telepathically is a big change for Clara, having never communicated telepathically before.
The sort of thing you “read about and think that’s fascinating what must it be like” and now it is happening, it “didn’t seem as strange” as she thought it would, she writes in her journal.
Instructions
The colours deliver Clara Parsons instructions telepathically.
The telepathic voice that they emit in her head is weak and wiry.
This is your life now, Clara Parsons.
You must follow these instructions very carefully and precisely and all will be well.
Oh good, Clara Parsons thinks, I like it when things are well, trying not to let the weak and wiry voice diminish the grandeur of the situation, which she is enjoying.
Clara Parsons smokes her vape. The flavour is peach and while smoking her eyes are drawn to the orange colour, part of the new community in her passageway, which lies in front of her.
Orange is milking an invisible cow.
“This is interesting”, she notes in her diary, and draws a cow.
The colours say that she may keep her journal, but other things might change from this point forward.
This seems reasonable, she thinks. They hear her assessment of this situation as she is now communicating with them telepathically too, but they feel no need to respond as they are busy multiplying and activating their camp.
(They can’t hear all her thoughts, their ability to hear them cuts in and out like a faulty microphone.)
Soon the camp is colourful and alive and bustling, and the colours say they have prepared her first set of instructions.
This isn’t much like Countdown, Clara thinks. Or Kilroy.
Platter Advantage
The first set of instructions in weak and wiry voice are thus:
Fetch dead rat from an alley
Bring back
Soak dead rat in WD40
Serve to us on a platter of your choosing
Clara Parsons likes the way they are willing to be flexible on the platter part. They don’t have to be, she thinks.
The instructions are delivered in a telepathic note, a form which Clara is still getting her head around.
The telepathic note states further:
If you carry out your task without error, you will be rewarded.
The voice for the note is different than the one for the standard instruction.
The telepathic note voice is still weak and wiry but with a raspiness and a more nasally sound to it. Possibly more mysterious but Clara Parsons isn’t sure if the mystery is being laid on a little thick. The colours make a note of this from her thoughts and discuss that they need to work on the voices.
Clara has no previous experience of collecting dead rats from alleyways and soaking them in WD40 but remembers the assortment of Victorian serving platters she inherited from her Great Aunt Lucinda who had done extensive serving at a Victorian Theme Park in Redditch. Though Aunt Lucinda’s WD40 soaking experience was unlikely due to her aversion to WD40. She made no secret of this in her last will and testament (there were at least two pages dedicated to the aversion.)
Clara focuses on her platter advantage and heads out on the street, her can-do attitude shining like Dolph Lundgren’s sweaty skin in Rocky IV during the fight scenes, as bright as a rescue flare set off by a person lost alone in a forest with wolves and bears circling.
Feather Jumpsuit Tupperware
Clara Parsons leaves house in simple cerise jumpsuit lined with feathers.
It is one of Clara Parsons’ own creations.
The feathers are pink and blue.
Clara Parsons pretty much exclusively wears jumpsuits.
Clara Parsons likes a look.
Breathing in the autumnal air, Clara Parsons wonders if, telepathically, the colours can connect to her thoughts from a distance.
As there is no answer to the question in her head, she surmises it must work a bit like a phone signal.
After walking for around half an hour, poking her nose in and around any alleyway she passes, Clara Parsons finds a rat and deposits it in the Tupperware box, which has accompanied her on this mission.
Clara Parsons has no instrument with which to deposit it into the box so does so with her fingers, washing her fingers in a puddle straight after.
For a moment Clara sees her sculpture-garden features (think more The Gardens of Bomarzo in Lazio, rather than Barbara Hepworth’s in St. Ives) looking back at her from the puddle.
Clara Parsons’ sculpture-garden features seem to be judging her with severity, so she draws away as if bitten, pricked with a pin, or on the losing end of a paper cut, taking a sharp intake of breath.
Clara Parsons starts back to the flat, gleeful in knowing her duties have been carried out to perfection.
This will impress them she thinks, her face positioning itself in one of those smug sideways smiles she always wanted to have reason to carve out of her sculpture-garden features.
Colour Kingdom
Clara is soaking the dead rat in the WD40 in Tupperware box.
While soaking she takes a look at the colour kingdom outside her window down in the passageway.
Neon tents, neon children, neon community, all very tiny.
“Very abstract, quite electric”, she notes in her diary, which at present she is still permitted to use.
Clara Parsons sees Purple walking an imaginary dog and Green washing an imaginary car.
There is a hologram of a car wash flicking in and out of focus at the far end of the passageway.
Clara Parsons draws a carwash in her diary.
Clara Parsons serves the colours the WD40 soaked rat on a late Victorian J H W and Sons Hanley Belmont Aegean Platter.
The colours are pleased. They tell her:
You must rest now.
And prepare for your next task.
Clara has never felt so vital, so wanted.
Electric Currents
It is night.
Clara wakes to electric currents surging through her body. She is wired up to something.
What is happening, Clara Parsons thinks.
The colours tell her:
This is essential for your progress.
This is essential to your program.
The pain is intense but nothing she can’t handle, she assures them, just before she passes out.
Cat Explication
Clara Parsons rises early ready for next set of instructions.
She has a vague memory of being wired up to something but can’t quite grasp it.
She plays ‘Totally Wired’ by The Fall on her record player.
The Fall are Clara Parsons’ favourite band.
There is a hologram of a rainbow in the passageway.
Clara Parsons has shaved head as thinks this will make her seem more serious.
Clara Parsons is thinking of Joan of Arc/Sinead O’Connor. In her head she is unable to separate them.
Clara Parsons is thinking about martyrdom.
At no point does she think about Brittany Spears. Not never, not once.
The telepathic note informs her:
This time it must be a cat
Clara says that she would prefer it wasn’t a cat, as she is really very keen on cats.
The colours say that it is essential it is a cat so she will need to change her mindset.
Oh she thinks, I see, well perhaps if it is simply a matter of changing a mindset, I might be able to fulfil the task.
The colours explain that where they are from it is necessary for the survival of their kind for them to see a cat’s workings.
Clara draws a picture of a cat’s workings and presents it to them. No, they say, that won’t suffice.
The colours say that Clara Parsons has “real potential” and if she does this, they will consider progressing her up a level and this will be a prideful moment for all of them.
Clara feels herself brimming at the mere thought.
Dead White Cat
Clara Parsons finds dead cat down by motorway.
Dead cat stiff and white and dead like chalk and charcoal sketch.
Dead cat stretched right out as if someone has lain it there.
Dead cat spread carefully on embankment by someone with teary eyes and guilty conscious, Clara thinks.
Clara deposits dead white cat it in large faux-wicker bag she’s been saving for a special occasion and takes it back to her residence.
Porcelain Horses
On her return, Clara Parsons notices two packages waiting for her in ‘safe place’ outside.
Two packages: WD40 and porcelain horse (1962, pink and cream).
Clara Parsons picks up packages and walks through passageway way up to flat to start the soaking.
Clara Parsons pops her 1962, pink and cream horse in with her collection of porcelain horses in her cupboard which is a kind of shrine to porcelain horses.
She calls her collection in the cupboard a stable. She has fifty-two porcelain horses now. She likes to spend time with them and take them out and play with them. When she was a girl, she wasn’t allowed to play with anything other than domestic appliances, which back then were her only friends.
She names the horses after episodes of Dynasty. Her favourite horse is The Gospel According to Blake Carrington, but Trashy Little Tramp is a close second. Enter Alexis she’s had the longest. That Unfortunate Dinner is a bit battered, but the collection overall always leaves her beaming.
The new pink and cream horse she names: ‘Oil – Part 1.’
Clara Parsons hears general hubbub of the new community of guests.
Clara Parsons gets up and peers out her window and sees some of the colours floating, flying each other like kites.
Clara Parsons says “This is beautiful” to her porcelain horses.
The Glitter Residue
Clara Parsons soaks dead cat in plastic basket.
When ‘done’ Clara Parsons selects Oval George III serving platter of Aunt Lucinda’s and takes down to passageway.
She briefly remembers Aunt Lucinda’s death on a Victorian rollercoaster that was authentic but needed updating and thinks “it’s what she would have wanted.”
Well shone, Clara Parsons polishes the serving tray once more before decanting cat.
The colours are pleased.
The colours tell her to drink some liquid and relax and watch the hologram show which is a speech from their leader.
The leader also has a weak and wiry voice and is giving off Yoda vibes.
She writes “Yoda Vibes” in her notebook. The colours ask who Yoda is, but she says it is too hard to explain.
The colours make a sort of clucking and gulping noise in pauses in his speech where humans might clap or say here here.
During meeting something unexpected.
The colours drag in one of her porcelain horses, a lemon coloured one: Two Fights to Tahiti.
The colours draw a circle around it in chalk and hover over it screeching in high pitched electronic tone.
During the ceremony they emit a kind of humming noise.
They lift off the ground and in mid-air revealed their fangs, which are about ten times the size of them.
Electric currents pass between them.
They descend and go back to normal.
There is a strange residue.
The glitter residue.
She is to sweep it up and snort it.
Then they will conduct experiments on her which will be vital to the survival of the planet from which they are from.
Seeing how important this is, and with a sense of pride, Clara Parsons complies.
They need wet towels, a dead dog and the foot of a human.
Animal Morgue
The dead dog, ok this will be harder.
Animal morgue. Animal morgue. Animal morgue.
There is a guy Clara Parsons dated on arrival to the city.
The guy works for council.
The dead animal pick-ups are his job.
Why hadn’t she thought of this for cat? She can’t tell the guy. For one, he wouldn’t understand, she reasons, also as they don’t speak to each other anymore. Due to his reaction to the stable and his dislike of The Fall she had completely cut him off. So she decides to follow him without him knowing.
Council Compound
Clara hides behind bin at council compound which she enters via woods.
She watches him enter the compound with a selection of dead animals, one badger, couple of cats.
He offloads them in a designated area and goes into the building.
While no one is looking she takes a dog and a cat and pops them in her rucksack which matches today’s camouflage jumpsuit, just in case another dead animal is needed, and goes back to residence.
Electrocution Dreams
Clara Parsons wakes vaguely sweating at 3am.
Clara Parsons is dreaming.
This time she is dreaming she is in bed with a bear.
The bear has a twisted smile.
It is so twisted that it makes her stomach lurch.
Then the bear is purple
Then the bear isn’t a bear it is a weasel and it is pink.
The weasel says it wants to penetrate her but doesn’t specify how.
Clara Parsons feels sharp pain in her sensitive places.
Clara Parsons hears the colours laughing.
They are in her room.
Pink whispers to green.
Green bears gnashers.
Red warbles.
Purple reveals claws from sheath like sockets.
Pink growls and adjusts wires.
Blue does a little tight rope walking on the wires.
Electricity surges.
Something is extracted she hears something dripping, something collected in a bottle. A bitter scent.
More sharp pain then darkness.
Tanned Hand
In the dream Clara is violet.
In the dream Clara is riding a blue porcelain horse, not one of her own, across a dusty plain. (She names it Seizure out of courtesy.)
It is space dust it is purple dust; it is the glitter residue.
Clara is sinking into glitter residue as if it is sand as if it is quicksand.
Clara hears the Countdown music.
Robert Kilroy Silk reaches towards her.
Clara reaches for Robert Kilroy Silk’s tanned hand. Robert Kilroy Silk’s hand turns into his microphone; he is interviewing her about the colours in the passageway.
Clara is trying to speak but is inhaling the glitter residue.
Clara chokes.
Darkness again.
Spoilt Victorian Child
Clara wakes up in her room.
Everything is completely normal.
Clara puts on a record by The Fall.
The song ‘Spoilt Victorian Child’.
Clara has vintage 1980s porcelain horse with Victorian child on it.
She puts on her Victorian Child jumpsuit and polishes her 1980s porcelain horse with Victorian child on it. (This horse is simply called Spoilt Victorian Child.)
Clara vapes looking over the courtyard reciting Chares Dicken’s Hard Times from memory.
Yes, just another normal day.
Waving, Friendly
The colours wave at Clara.
The colours are friendly this morning.
The lilac smoke from her vape reminds her of her dream.
The colours tell her that they have intercepted her dead dog and the experiment went well.
They tell her that she too might become a colour one day if things continue to go well.
They remind her that they are still outstanding the human foot, though.
Voxish
Oh yes the foot, Clara thinks.
Clara hangs around and snoops around the amputations ward of the hospital but soon realises that it could take a while so heads to the morgue.
She is remaining upbeat, refusing to get bogged down on the whole heading to a morgue thing.
Clara listens to The Fall ‘I Feel Voxish’.
Clara thinks that she feels voxish even though she doesn’t know what Voxish is.
“I’ve been sharpening a knife in the bathroom / on a brick I got from the garden”, Clara sings ♫
Amputations
Clara finds her way into the morgue.
She orders pizza for the staff with a note saying: “Thanks for all your hard work”, and while they are working out what is going on and tucking in, she sneaks in through the back door.
There is a body here. Several, naturally.
Clara has her very sharp knife from home.
Oh look here is a small hacksaw type instrument.
Feeling like some kind of outlaw, she removes the foot with ease and takes it back.
She was good at this.
The colours will be pleased.
They can go ahead with another ceremony.
Popping Candy
Another of her porcelain horses is brought out by the colours. Classic brown aka A Well-Dressed Tarantula.
The foot is on Aunt Lucinda’s tray, this time an ebonised chinoiserie paper mâché drinks serving tray c.1870.
A hologram of the colours’ leader, a multi-coloured being, with what looks like throbbing, coloured boils like fairy lights or lasers pushing through his skin.
The electric currents start, the humming, they all rise circling around in one big colour circle.
Then they are bobbing and weaving as they share electric currents between them.
Fangs, glitter residue.
Again, she must scrape up the residue and snort it to prep for their experiments.
The glitter residue tingles but does not pain her. It’s the nasal equivalent of popping candy.
Music for Operations
The colours gather in her room.
They buzz around her with fangs and bite her and pierce her sensitive body parts. They have Brian Eno’s Music for Airports on when they ‘work’ on her, opening parts of her up. She wonders if they are Eno fans generally or whether this is the only work they are familiar with. The colours intercept this thought and tell her not to be so insulting, of course they are familiar with the work of Brian Eno, who is practically worshipped where they are from. They are so touchy she regrets thinking it and gets back to being in pain.
They shine lights in, make diagrams, have heated discussions about her insides. At one point they have to get some advice and buzz up to leader, who gives them a few tips.
Clara can’t move or speak.
She recites ‘Spoilt Victoria Child’ lyrics again in her head:
“Past trees the fairies are flyin / Past trees with rose bushes in / The child was spoilt Victorian / The child was spoilt Victorian”
♫♫♫♬♬♬♪♪♪
Dull pain.
Then darkness.
Dream Lava
This time the glitter residue is a lava-like river, the soft-peach porcelain horse, who she swiftly names Sammy Jo and Steven Marry, is a Lilo.
Clara is shooting along the rapids on whatever planet it may be.
The colours are by the side of the water waving to her.
Brian Eno is the soundtrack with Kilroy Silk doing spoken word over it in the background.
The colours keep reappearing. Further down the rapids, like a set of dolls again and again glaring at her.
She shoots through a hole, through a tunnel, Countdown theme tune, something explodes (perhaps Robert Kilroy Silk’s head), then darkness.
Which Piece?
The colours say they want something of hers on a platter, so they know she is serious about becoming a colour.
She may select a finger or toe of her choice. It’s up to her they say.
Clara is even less keen on this than the cat idea.
They can give her more glitter residue they say, so that it doesn’t hurt.
And it will help with her score they said, and she will have bonus points towards her becoming a colour.
Oh well that’s good Clara says, not actually sure if she wants to become a colour.
Forever the people pleaser, she smiles awkwardly and says toe?
Pumping Residue
This ceremony is different.
Clara’s toe is at the centre of the passageway.
The glitter residue is pumping out like sand.
In a timer.
It is overflowing like the fable about the porridge pot.
The colours’ fangs seem bigger as if her fear is making them stronger.
The loss of blood is making her queasy, but the excessive amount of glitter residue is undoubtedly helping.
She keeps requesting more glitter residue, they keep producing it and she keeps snorting until she is transported into a dream.
Work Noises
Sharpening
Silence
Humming
Metal scratching
Screen
Hologram
Robert Kilroy Silk?
The face behind the leader?
Lady Godiva
This time a violet porcelain horse: Dex, this time blue and white ‘Asiatic pheasants’ meat plate.
Clara inhales more glitter residue.
She is in the passageway.
A Victorian child appears. Robert Kilroy Silk says that he is not to be here. The child is a street urchin. He tells Clara that she is being tricked, that the colours are evil.
Clara sees the colours then as they are, as evil and gnashing as tiny devils.
Clara is naked, she is LADY GODIVA on a violet porcelain horse WITH SPEAR!!!
She is on a hologram horse and spears them with a hologram spear and the whole passageway is full of hologram rainbow blood.
She awakes in a pool of hologram rainbow blood.
Then the passageway is empty again.
Apart from the Victorian child who starts to multiply.
Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor, and educator from Bristol now living in Edinburgh. Her books include Corpses (Sublunary Editions), Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions), Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), One by One (No Press), Poets (The Red Ceilings), Strangers Wave (zimZalla), The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN) and Cassette Poems, (above/ground press). Her most recent publication is Some Deer (Broken Sleep). Vik’s work has appeared in Poetry London, PN Review, The Rialto, Magma, Gutter and Dreaming Awake: New and Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom (MadHat Press). A regular performer at the European Poetry Festival, Vik is a Poetry School Tutor (teaching on the surreal narrative, absurdism and the grotesque). She co-edits Firmament online and Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius. Vik has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry from the University of Birmingham.
minor literature[s] 