i am reading wee andy's palm: "you will be trampled by an equine creature in april, it's hard to read when exactly, you have a very messy palm", "will anything exciting happen to me before i die?" the wee cynical cunt says all coolly mockingly, "hmm, there's a minging orphan girl who will spraypaint slanderous stories on your bedroom walls on the fourth of march, you will also be attacked by a mancunian shepherd at the end of march!", "there are no shepherds in manchester", i read his palm more carefully, "it's illegible, i'm sorry, but what i can make out is that he's gonna shove five frozen hesperian hares up your bony arse", "oh shut up", "don't shoot the messenger, andy", wee andy rolls his eyes and gets up, he leaves the kitchen, oh well, i'll have to read my own palm: eww, that's just disgusting, oh no, that's horrible, so many??, but that's physically impossible, twenty mongolian longbows in one hour, oh dear, a stand-up comedian from milwaukee?, whee!!, my sheffielder angel's gonna let me suck his endearingly black cock on the 26th of february, a car accident, will i limp?, another crack-crazed badger, 22 polish gynaecologists..wee andy's back, "maybe this'll make you feel better", i show him my palm, "oh i forgot: you can't read palms..it's fucking miserable, lots of wax and stuffed rodents, lots of kinky clerics, lots of treacherous middle class twats, lots of stitches, lots of blood, BUT: i get to fondle my sheffielder angel's cock on the 26th of february!!", "that's great", we put on our coats and scarves and leave the house, we walk into the wee forest next to the disused russian casino where i danced on green velvet and sold my good luck to a gullible liverpudlian jockey one sultry summer night two years ago, we sit ourselves on the mossy paws of a bronze satyr, satyrs aren't supposed to look this gloomy and self-conscious, i spit on his bronze knee and light a cigarette, "discipline", "what??", "can't a girl say random words out loud??", "i suppose she can", a ruddy conceited tourist passes, i scowl and hiss at him, "contrition", wee andy sighs and kicks leaves, "boredom", "despair?", "no, no, not despair, guilt perhaps?, or maybe something a bit more crass: ox", "discipline, contrition, boredom, ox??", "and why the hell not?", the wee dour middle class cunt shrugs, "damnation", "oh shut up", "damnation! i've accidentally swallowed the key to my dodgy neighbour's safe, the one where he keeps my lithium and my tacky bracelets and the key to my handcuffs, he's gonna beat me to death", the wee endearing twat starts stroking my hair, "blimy", "now what?", "we're back in the game, thick cunt", "maybe i don't like your game", "don't be so bloody childish", "starvation", "that's no good, you lose, i get to pick two words", "that's so unfair", "bereavement, donkey", "appetite", "pattern", "lovelorn", "don't be such a poof", "what's wrong with lovelorn??", "too fucking sentimental..i get to pick two words: edelweiss, incest", "poverty", "are you trying to depress me?", "what's so cheerful about your words? bereavement, incest, boredom..", "alright, alright, you can have your poverty..punctuation", "goldfish", "tenant", "apology", "pffffff, i'm fed up with your silly game", "it's your game", i bite wee andy's hand angrily playfully and run out of the wee forest, how dare he diss my game, that wee arrogant cunt, i can't wait to attend his funeral in april, i sit myself on the doorstep of a closed irish grocery and wait for the illiterate rentboy, i wait till the sun starts setting, he's probably dead, strangled by some perverted vicar, bless him, the rentboy, not the vicar, "i'm sorry i'm late, i had to jerk off that vicious cuban vicar, he bloody well nearly strangled me", thank god he's alive, he sits himself next to me, we share a bottle of spanish rum, i tell him about the game, he doesn't get it, i don't get it either, "orifice", "moon", "redemption", "fringe", "hey! you are good at the game! much better than that wee jock, he's way too well-read to be good at the game.. statistics", "navy", we play the game till two am and then we go back to more violent games, the ones wee andy refuses to play: mugging fucking self-complacent middle class cunts and selling our supposedly underage chests to rotten twisted locals.
i am sitting in my dodgy neighbour's brass tub in his attic, he's locked me up, i don't know why, maybe he got bored of my liam gallagher impersonation, ever since that demented bat bit my shins last tuesday i can't stop impersonating liam, well i'm just glad i haven't got lockjaw, i'm feeling pretty supersonic to be honest, it's strange though that i get bitten by a rabies-crazed mammal every tuesday, though admittedly it's usually my neighbour or christopher when he's out of his head on inferior smack and swedish bleach, but three weeks ago a siberian goat attacked me and bit my shoulder, this happened in a bleak meadow in the north of france, i didn't do anything to provoke the beast, i was reading a graham greene novel and clutching a scarecrow when all of a sudden that fluffy foaming demoniacal mammal came running towards me with the speed of a japanese cartoon mammal, before i could shout SHOO it had already viciously bitten my left shoulder, and then it just evaporated like a nemesis in a yankee cartoon, i felt terribly gloomy after that bite, i couldn't stop moaning about trivial stuff like electricity bills and the smugness of wee andy's golden retrievers and how it infuriated me, i was a very miserable cunt for a week and all my clients and editors scoffed at my ugly self-pity and rightly so, but then a week later while i was gloomily reading an obscure russian novel about suicidal polish peasants an old balding cat approached me, it bit my big toe before i could pat its frail perforated ears and then it just staggered away, my gloom was instantly replaced by murderous thoughts, i didn't act upon them, i tied myself to my dodgy neighbour's radiator and let him feed and fondle and flog me for a week, and then when i was free again i ached for another bite, i didn't have to ache for a long time, i was only free for an hour when that bat bit my shins, it happened at noon, it was gone before i could exclaim: "but i thought that bats were nocturnal?!"; i am slashing my arms with my stanley knife, i've refreshed the blade, i've kissed the dull one goodbye, the cuts are bloody marvellous, they ooze a pus that shines like dew or trout spawn, my dodgy neighbour unlocks the door and enters the attic: "you need to slash vertically if you want to die", "but i don't want to die, i don't know enough about death, it might be boring, it might be perv-infested, it might be cold, it might be bleak and quiet, it might be coastal, it might be hell, besides, life has its perverse charms, you are one of them, austrian crack being the other one", my dodgy neighbour lifts me out of the tub and carries me into his living room, "someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky, and i won't need your bulgarian lithium then, and i won't need your callous knuckles then, and i won't need your german cognac then, and i won't need your prickly shawl in my mouth then, and i won't need your flemish crossbows up my arse either", "shut up, kitten", "i'll sing the blues if i want, knobhead", my dodgy neighbour punches me in the nose and rips off my jeans and knickers, he shoves a pillow under my buttocks and starts licking my minge, it's nice, i think i'll stay here for another year, i don't even know what a champagne supernova is, i gush and twitch for 185 minutes, i put my knickers and jeans back on, my neighbour turns the radio on, i go to the attic and scrape the dried-up blood off the floor, i sit myself in the brass tub, smoke a fag, fondle my stanley knife and stagger back to the living room, all theatrically, the blood isn't fake, but the stagger is a wee bit affected, my dodgy neighbour bites my nipples and then bandages my arms, i caress his meaty cheeks and then suck his limp cock ferociously, after all he's my wonderwall, i mean: after all he pays my rent and buys me lithium and raspberry-flavoured lollipops and war poetry anthologies, and also: i'm quite fond of his testicles and of his horrendous colonial tales, i swallow his cum and blow his ivory tusk, live forever, but it sounds a bit out of key.
Delphine says, "my full name's Delphine Lecompte, i'm 23 (born 22nd january, 1981), i was born in east london but moved to belgium a few years ago, oh and i thank my french name to my father (who hailed from lille), both my parents are dead; i used to stack milk bottles for a living, but now i'm back in the hooking game."