John clay SPIDERFINGERS The Russian doll Stories Photo of John Clay By Keira-Anee (additional post shoot treatment By Catherine Chambers) Copyright © John Clay 2020 All rights reserved The right of John Clay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 2 This is a work of fiction. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s. 3 Index This Thing We Call A Foreword 10 ACT I 13 Chapter One: A Stage Called Shrewsbury 14 Chapter Two: The Voice 17 Chapter Three: Pretending to be David Shape 20 Chapter Four: Better Out Than In 26 Chapter Five: Magic Words 28 Chapter Six: Spiderfingers to the Rescue 31 Chapter Seven: Not Again 35 ACT II 40 Chapter Eight: They’ve Found You 41 Chapter Nine: Mine 45 Chapter Ten: There Is No Off The Radar 48 Chapter Eleven: The Sudden Conversion of Samson Owusu 53 Chapter Twelve: How The War Of The Gods Began 56 Chapter Thirteen: Spider Goes To Hollywood 60 Chapter Fourteen: A Night In The Life 63 ACT III 69 Chapter Fifteen: Far, Far Behind Me 70 Chapter Sixteen: Meeting The Cheerleader 73 Chapter Seventeen: Tend To Your Wounded 78 Chapter Eighteen: The Pseudologoi 81 Chapter Nineteen: How Do Your Powers Work? 83 Chapter Twenty: I’m Not the Bad Guy 88 Chapter Twenty One: The Best Weapons You Have Are In Your Mouth 92 4 ACT IV 98 Chapter Twenty Two: Operation Genie Bottle 99 Chapter Twenty Three: Bits And Pieces 104 Chapter Twenty Four: Invisible 109 Chapter Twenty Five: The Sex Ninja 117 Chapter Twenty Six: Steph’s Biggest Fan 122 Chapter Twenty Seven: Man is the Meal 127 ACT V 130 Chapter Twenty Eight: Collateral Damage 131 Chapter Twenty Nine: Ruin Lives 134 Chapter Thirty: Rise of the Unmaker 139 Chapter Thirty One: And Then The Dog Starts Talking 147 Chapter Thirty Two: Redrafted 150 Chapter Thirty Three: The Good Soldier 153 Chapter Thirty Four: Who You Know, How They See You 162 Chapter Thirty Five: She Who Carves The Doll Maker 165 ACT VI 168 Chapter Thirty Six: Stage Fright 169 Chapter Thirty Seven: A Dream Come True 176 Chapter Thirty Eight: S Is For … 178 Chapter Thirty Nine: Until The Next Death Of The Sun 183 Chapter Forty: Hero-worship (I Of IV) My Skull The Vocal Booth 188 Chapter Forty One: The Killing Moon 194 ACT VII 196 Chapter Forty Two: Of Hope And Memory 197 Chapter Forty Three: Hero-Worship (II Of IV) Everyone Likes Monsters 203 Chapter Forty Four: Hero-Worship (III Of IV) Pets, Their Masters And The Chains That Bind Them 212 ACT VIII 219 5 Chapter Forty Five: Black and White and Red all over 220 Chapter Forty Six: Hero-Worship (IV OF IV) Forces Of Nature 225 Chapter Forty Seven: Ammo 240 Chapter Forty Eight: The Gallery of Mirrors 243 Chapter Forty Nine: Hello Father 252 Chapter Fifty: “This Is The End” 258 ACT IX 262 Chapter Fifty One: My Only Friend 263 Chapter Fifty Two: Ungumpo 279 Chapter Fifty Three: The Show 291 Chapter Fifty Four: Red, Yellow And Blue 298 Chapter Fifty Five: Revelations 305 Chapter Fifty Six: Manz Gotta Eat 319 Chapter Fifty Seven: Help Yourself 323 Acknowledgements 329 6 Illustration By Jennifer Ingram 7 Cover art: Jennifer Ingram Subsequent art: Elliot Batten and John Bishop Photography: Keira-Anee, Lauren Brown, Catherine Chambers and Paul Giovanni Chapter image manipulation: John Clay Photographic manipulation of Keira-Anee: Catherine Chambers 8 SPIDERFINGERS The Russian Doll Stories By John Clay Volume I - A Lesson in Transmutation 9 This Thing We Call A Foreword Some nights I’d stay up late at night waiting for John Clay to follow me back on social media. I’d follow him on Instagram, and a week later, when he hadn’t followed me back, I’d unfollow him again. Sometimes, I’d follow and unfollow John multiple times a day, just so he’d notice that I’d followed him, and then maybe, at some point, he’d notice, and follow back. The algorithms of ecstatic social communication (Facebook) had pushed us together, I am happy to say, on multiple occasions, in fact. Even so, I daren’t send a friend invitation to someone with the phrase, ‘Don’t ever meet your heroes; they don't know who they are and they don't know what they're doing’ in their author biography – not because I thought it was a strange biography, but because I hadn’t met any of my heroes, and probably never would. It was a sultry day in August when John Clay finally followed me back – finally – and I was as radiant as the collectibles that appear in chapter seven of this book, which is the first chapter I read of The Russian Doll Stories, sent to me – not through an email, but through a messenger, because me and John, we were friends now too. I love the term ‘radiant collectibles’, which characterises so many of the brilliant, hallucinatory images that appear here, in this book. I am noting my restraining order level obsession with following the social media accounts of attractive people who post images of ‘radiant collectibles’, particularly images of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, for example, from which entire collections can be sold for thousands of pounds, I am told. I tell John this – I tell John – when he has known me for less than the time it took him to read my piece on the hyperreality of the capitalist death drive, full of references to Lil Peep and Ted Kaczynski, that I have the unhealthiest interest in the Pokémon TCG, and the attractive people who post pictures of themselves holding Pokémon related memorabilia. I like to imagine myself as one of the very peripheral characters described in this book, looking like ‘Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys.’ These days, I like to imagine myself as sounding like Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys, too: “If you’re playing the games, you’re voluntarily taking a tranquilizer.” He says in that film, “Very few of us here are actually mentally ill. I’m not saying you’re not mentally ill, for all I know, you’re crazy as a loon. But that’s not why you’re here. You’re here because of the system. There’s the television, it’s all right there; look, listen, kneel, pray. We’re not productive anymore, we don’t make things anymore, it’s all automated. What are we for, then? We’re consumers. Buy a lot of stuff, you’re a good citizen – but if you don’t buy a lot of stuff, if you don’t, what are you? What are you then, I ask you? 10 Mentally ill. […] If you don’t buy things; toilet paper, new cars, computerized blunders(?), electrically operated sexual devices, serial systems with brain implanted headphones, screwdrivers, miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers…” Take it easy, Alex, be calm. Here’s the thing, I’m a bad reader of fiction. Even so, for some reason, John asked me to write the foreword to his novel, and whilst I write this, I’m thinking of myself as deeply unqualified for writing a foreword to anything, or for even existing in this world that we have made for ourselves, a world that is increasingly terrifying to me, and should be increasingly terrifying to you, too. Nevertheless, a large part of The Russian Doll Stories captures this terror, in the same way this book also reads as a borderline-ish, schizomanic, accelerated, transgressive, funny discourse with a man-god-superhero. This is all to say that John Clay’s writing is like Chuck Palahniuk’s writing if Palahniuk was Black and read Deleuze and Guattari. Consider yourself warned. Alex Mazey, Sept 14th 2020 11 For posterity and for the shark that got away 12 ACT I 13 Chapter One: A Stage Called Shrewsbury Back and forth I rock. A ball of skinny me in the corner of a padded cell. Imagine me as foetal, hunched, chin to knee. Like many of Shrewsbury Court’s lost souls I consider my room a sanctuary, but it’s also a stage. Time has long since abandoned me to a near vacuum, the occasional inhuman scream of a fellow resident muffled just beyond four walls of protective white. Sometimes my cell door heaves open, flooding my room with incantations peppered with made up words. My attention slides past the communal insanity and over the shoulders of those who’ve paid me a visit. Through the corridor windows, past metal and glass, I home in on the long dark stretch of Mother Nature. She rattle’s against double glazing. My hands grasp at crayon yellow foliage as the door closes behind my visitors, these officials who process me as a puzzle, not a person. There he is: portly bespectacled Doctor Kwame flanked by twin towers of muscle. Taut biceps ripple through medical whites. Faces interchangeable with protocol set so deep under the skin I can’t imagine their masks of officialdom ever soften. Not even around families after their long day in hell. Shrewsbury Court, my stage. Time for this scene’s lines. I clear my throat: “My family send their servants to densely populated areas, cities, cos that’s where they think I’ll hide.” Doctor Kwame fumbles in his cardigan pockets, no doubt for a notebook, the feigned 14 sympathy in his eyes – so practiced.