Here I am, sitting at this machine, hammering these words onto the page, putting over a decades worth of thoughts onto paper; sometimes, however hard I try to suppress it, I wake up and catch the trail end of a conversation, my own voice, as thoughts evaporating from the surface of my mind. I don't like to plagiarize from real life, but everything that I am about to tell you is completely true, all the character and place names are imaginary; I couldn't take the credit for somebody else's work – it really isn't me, and as my teacher from school used to say, 'by copying your friend's homework, you're only cheating yourself!' The other reason that I don't use names from real life is because I have a terrible memory for them – you see, the only reason why you would need to remember names is for reference within a conversation to another person, and since I haven't had the need to talk to another person for over ten years, I've lost the ability to remember places and faces.
So I shall begin by creating the room we are in, oh yes, you are in my book Mr. Publisher! The room will have four white walls, one kilometre in every direction, a white floor and a white ceiling. It will be evenly lit so you cannot see the boundaries of the room. By the way, I never said that I had a good imagination. There is a white round table in the centre of the room, surrounded by three white chairs. Everything has been recently painted, so you can still smell the paint fumes – it isn't pleasant, but bearable. How shall I describe you? I've never seen a publisher in real life so I'll assume you're a large guy with a roundish belly and a moustache, your skin is shiny and flecked with red from years of alcohol abuse, I'll put a cigar in your hand and a daisy in the pocket of your cheap green polyester suit which makes a static noise whenever you move and explains why the few hairs that remain on your head rebel when you comb them down with your podgy sausage fingers.
Dotted around the room are people holding glasses of champagne, these are the representatives of all the future readers of this unpublished novel, they are the jury and you are the judge. Take a seat Mister Publisher, plonk your bubbling fat arse on the chair! I take a seat next to you and pour you glass of champagne, you hear my nose wheeze as I do so because I'm allergic to some chemical in the cheap paint. Let me introduce you to the person in the third chair on this table, his name is Robert Dalmatian, a fictional name of course, but a person that exists in everyone's lives; he is crucial to the plot of the story that I am about to tell, so remember his face. He sits like a swan in the chair, poised perfectly and not slouching like you. If he were a colour, he would be blue; cool and calm like the sea on a clear day, even an ocean liner could not disturb what lies in his depths. His features, perfect, like chiselled granite. What is there not to love about this man? - oh, what there is to hate! He was a straight A student through school, graduated university with a first and quickly moved up his career ladder. Anyway, enough about him, for now. “Glass of champagne, Mister Dalmatian?”
Note to myself: this chapter may need a rewrite; Mister Publisher does not look too amused, but perhaps he will keep reading ...
To be continued ... PART 3
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