Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

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10 Exotic Delicacies And Why You Shouldn’t Eat Them

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Made by Morgan Delaney. Photos by Jennifer Martin and Debby Hudson on Unsplash

We’re back from a week in Georgia! The thing about Georgia is the food…or the wine… or the wine and the food. Mmmmmm.

So, inspired by a week’s gluttony, this week’s post is a killer list of things you shouldn’t eat.

As my mother always used to say: just ’cause it looks nice, doesn’t mean you should put it in your mouth!

Bon appetit!

1. The Pharyngeal Trumpet is a tall, annual flowering plant with a vivid yellow trumpet-shaped bloom and creamy white leaves. Its taste is of peppered beetroot, and the leaves are rich in both antioxidants and curcumin.

Unfortunately, they are also rich in the parasitic spores that the plant uses for reproduction.

The fine spores line its host’s throat until an opportunity presents itself—for example, when the throat dries out during sleep—to detach themselves and be inhaled into the lungs. Once there, the plant grows rapidly, expanding and crushing the host’s lungs.

2. Chipmunk spine. Long regarded as a delicacy in parts of Florida, they have since fallen out of favour, as the spine only retains its flavour (milk and earth) as long as the chipmunk is alive.

3. Dog milk. No further explanation required*.

4. Butterfly spice. Butterfly spice is nothing more than prepared and dried butterfly wings. The iridescent “spice” is tasteless and was used rather to sprinkle over dishes for its blue shimmering appearance. The link between consuming butterfly spice and a tendency to elephantiasis and incest is now well established.

5. Le concombre d’escalier. A type of cucumber native to French Polynesia. While it tastes delicious, the taste is impossible to describe afterwards until the person who wanted to know has gone away.

For this reason, it is a leading cause of fatally high blood pressure among frustrated food bloggers and chefs who continue to eat it, determined to have the perfect description ready the next time someone asks.

6. Celery. Their outward resemblance to rippled potato crisps is misleading.

7. Merscale sushi. Highly prized, these rolls consist of pure green-gold fish scale and sushi rice. These days, the fish scale is most likely to have been sourced from battery-farmed merfolk as it is no longer economic to meet the increasing demand any other way.

8. Sugar and spice and everything nice. Bad news for anyone with a sweet tooth, but you are basically eating the raw ingredients of little girls.

Expecting Roe v. Wade to be overthrown, several US states have now drafted trigger laws which will require any woman caught carrying sugar or spice on her person to continue carrying it, until such time as it is capable of looking after itself.

9. Raw fish of any kind. Scientists still don’t know where human dreams “go” after being experienced, but evidence continues to mount that fish store theirs in adipose pockets in their flesh. Cooking dissolves this fatty residue. Eating fish raw means the dream is ingested too.

A sure sign that you are consuming too much raw fish is a dream where you need to do something or go somewhere, but cannot move faster no matter how hard you try, as if wading through molasses.

This is caused by the disconnect between your subconscious mind, which accepts that the dreamer is “still” underwater, and the conscious mind, which expects the dreamer to move at its usual pace.

10. Teeth. Although mustard and curry powders are no longer made with teeth, trace elements can still be found in factories with older equipment. The teeth of anorexics were long preferred for these and other yellow spices, because of the discolouring effect of stomach acid on them.

The recent photos from Catalan of the victim of internal biting provide a graphic reminder of the effects of consuming too much ground teeth.

*On the off-chance that you do require further explanation, here’s a relevant clip from Red Dwarf.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be bouncing along to new ska punk by Random Hand and new Deutschpunk by Joseph Boys.

Newsletter subscribers can expect to get some exclusive deep cuts about life in Kazakhstan on Saturday, I’ll see the rest of you on Thursday!

Acceptable

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A woman in the bath, superimposed faces beside her.
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

Hello!

Summer’s here, so we’re all hot and sweaty. Time for a bath in this week’s dark flash fiction.

Bring your rubber ducky.

You don’t want to be alone.

No matter how I scrubbed my flesh, I couldn’t get the smell off. The steam from the hot water still pouring into the bath saturated my lungs. My red skin glowed in it.

The roar of the water almost hid the sound of someone knocking on the bathroom door.

It was a soft knock, when it came again, like a timid house guest who wanted to know if they could brush their teeth after their host seemed to have forgotten they were there.

That had happened to me once. Years ago, when there were still people I could visit.

But there wasn’t—wasn’t ever—anyone else in my house.

I lived alone. That was the problem.

When the knock came again, it sounded so familiar that I was tempted to answer. I knew that knock, and it would have been a relief to pretend I had company.

But who would want my company?

I said nothing, but turned off the water to better hear what they might do next.

Leather shoes squeaked in the hallway as they shifted their weight. This must be what it was like to have someone. You recognised them by the sound of their shoes.

But it only sounded familiar to me, because my own shoes squeaked. I had never worked out how to buy shoes which would carry me quietly and confidently down the busy streets, like you see in the ads. My shoes squeaked like mice, drawing attention to the fact that I hurried along alone.

They knocked again. Exactly the way I knocked whenever I came to a closed door, hopeful but knowing I wasn’t welcome.

I had been a lonely child, but it wasn’t until my parents died that I realised how bad it had become. Loneliness had seeped into my pores and marked me out. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never get its stink off my skin.

All those skin cells over the years. All the loneliness. Washed down the drain to… where?

The knock came again, needy, the knuckles almost caressing the door in an attempt to ingratiate themselves. Familiar. Because only one person would come back to me for company.

Also this week, after two great EPs, Orochen have released their debut album! If you haven’t heard them before then now is the time to jump onboard the post-something/something-folk/metal bandwagon. It’s packed full of gloomy, moody bangers. Perfect for your next bath.

Get it here!

10 Street Accidents You Don’t Need To Worry About Any More

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Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

We’ve had a grim couple of years, what with Boris Johnson’s ongoing Billy Bunter impression, then Covid, followed by Putain’s bloody, bungled war.

But things aren’t all bad.

And I can prove it with this week’s Killer List: 10 kinds of accident, once common, now practically extinct!

In chronological order!

(And a special offer at the bottom of the post.)

Enjoy!

1. (11th century, England) Rioting caused by gallant knights.

The knights’ paths have crossed in the middle of the village’s main thoroughfare (there is only one thoroughfare, so it is the main one). They are now stuck, as neither will move first, as both wish to prove that they are more gallant than the other.

The village’s peasants are unconstrained by the knight’s code and after several days of this mediaeval gridlock, they are also starving and dozens die in the ensuing riot.

(The knights have snacks in their saddle-bags.)

Once the riff-raff are dead, the king commissions a statue to the “perfect knights.”

2. (late 13th century, England) Being miraculously cured of leprosy by a travelling monk then dying of peritonitis, knocking over a display of oranges as you fall, because it was your appendix and not your leprosy you required help with. (There’s a reason some of these monks are forced to travel. Always ask to see references.)

3. (14th century, Europe) Getting into a fender-bender when the cart in front of you suddenly stops to watch a barrow of mostly dead bodies be dumped into a plague pit at the side of the road.

4. (15th century, Europe) Being crushed to death by a maddened horse fleeing the foul odour of its rider. The rider believes that a good stench keeps the demons of ill-health away, and the horse can no longer bear the thought of having the filthy, stinking man sitting on its back.

5. (16th century, England) Being brained by a loaded bedpan on a frosty morning as it slips out of the emptier’s hand onto your head as you pass underneath the window they are attempting to empty it from.

6. (16th century, France) Being burnt alive as you attempt to walk home from the pub. The court jester was trying out some edgy political stuff for his routine for which the king set him on fire. The fire quickly spread, destroying the entire village.

7. (Early 17th century, Germany) Sudden death caused by spontaneous lynching when you are overheard on a street corner musing whether to “poppe over to gette some Milke”, having forgotten that it is a Sunday. Only witches buy milk on a Sunday.

Milk from the Devil’s bottom, probably.

8. (17th century, America) Whistling and then being stoned to death for having “lippes possess’d bye Thee Deville”.

9. (18th century, Europe) A massive traffic pile-up caused by a gust of wind which blows the white face powder worn by fashionable lords and ladies across the street, blinding everyone.

10. (late 19th century, America) Your train being derailed because a moustache-twirling scoundrel has tied a lady to the tracks to convince her she should marry him.

(The thinking behind this type of situation still exists, but everyone has beards these days*. They are harder to twirl.)

Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is available for $1.99 for a limited time only, so grab it quickly!

I’ve included the link to HarperCollins, you can navigate to your preferred ebook store from the links down the right-hand side of the page there.

(I went to Kobo and grabbed Jonathan Sims Thirteen Storeys for $2.99 and Ryan Leslie’s The Between for $0.99 while I was there.)

*Everyone has beards?

That’s right.

We’re pretty sure that’s not true.

I said “everyone” and I meant everyone. You have beards.

That’s true. A repellent sound like young chickens being softly plucked can be heard as thickly curled beards are fingered covetously. But you don’t—

Look! A single-origin Latte Crappacini!

Where? Where?

Boast

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Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction takes us into the master bedroom of the haunted Davis Hall. Enjoy!

“You wouldn’t make it through a single night. You hate sleeping alone.” John’s gentle teasing had degenerated into blunt “home truths” over the evening, and he laughed off my claim that I could survive on my own if I had to.

“I could if I had to. I could get through a night at Davis Hall, if I had to.”

“Alone?” he scoffed.

“I wouldn’t be alone at Davis Hall, would I?” I batted my eyelids suggestively to turn the argument back into a game.

He held me to it, though. He wanted me to back down as usual.

When I wouldn’t, he argued with me all the way to the preserved hulk of Davis Hall the following evening, listing reasons I couldn’t possibly go through with it.

Nobody ever stayed the night.

We had planned on going to brunch the next morning, I wouldn’t be in the mood after a bad night’s sleep.

I’d only scare myself.

What if the ghost really was real?

I didn’t need to prove anything.

But I did. And I’d had butterflies all the way over, until I realised that he was scared, too.

All I had to worry about was getting through one night with a ghost lurking behind the curtains of the master bedroom at Davis Hall. But John would have to deal with the fact that if I could do this, I might be able to do a lot more without him, too.

John offered to come to the door with me, but I refused and pushed my way through the bushes that overgrew the gap in the fence and made my way to the door. I waited for John’s car to roar as he sped home. Instead, he sat in the car, his quiet presence pulling insidiously at me as the damp wooden front door pushed silently open and I entered the hallway, which smelled of green moss and damp plaster.

I had my purple sleeping bag under my arm, with a rucksack full of extra blankets and clothes, a book, a camping light, a flashlight, and a tin of pepper spray still pinned between its cardboard backing and plastic bubble.

In my Thermos was green tea, and there were lettuce, and egg sandwiches in a night-sky blue Tupperware box, and packets of new biscuits.

I staked my claim to the master bedroom with them, deciding that a space near the door, with a good view of the curtains, was mine for the night, and arranged my items like totems around me.

It was a late summer evening, and the light was fading, blurring the shadow of tree branches as they beckoned me to come out to the garden to play. The curtains were tied back to either side of the window, and I had wedged the door open to make sure I had a clear run to the front door in case I needed it.

I took a lonely tour of Davis Hall, wondering how many people had been here over the years to explain the piles of bitter-smelling dry leaves in the centre of the empty rooms. I took my shoes off when I arrived back at camp, which is when I heard a car driving away.

My original idea had been to take energy drinks and caffeine tablets to stay awake until I realised it would be better to sleep. Let the ghost appear behind his shroud of curtain while I slept until the alarm woke me at seven the next morning.

It was supposedly one of Mrs Davis’ lovers who hid all night behind the curtains of the Hall, having been driven to suicide when she stayed with her husband. But he did nothing other than lurk behind the drawn curtains, holding his vigil over the deserted room.

When I woke in the submarine blue of my camping light during the night, the curtains were closed. I woke confused from my surroundings by the pain in my back from sleeping on the floor. Between the sag of the drawn curtains and the floor, two neat black leather shoes pointed at me. The ghost had not pulled the curtains tight and a black gap about an inch wide promised to reveal the ghost if I cared to look deep enough, close enough, into it. I stayed where I was, listening to my harsh panicked breathing, hoping the illusion would reverse itself, or that I’d fall asleep.

It felt like ages.

When I tried holding my breath, I realised the sound was coming from behind the curtains, a strained breathing sound, regularly uneven, impatient.

I kept my eye on the dark gap. Whatever had happened—whatever he’d done to himself—he didn’t want to be seen, and the room was empty with nothing else for him to hide behind if I kept him in view.

I pinched the mound of flesh at the base of my thumb to avoid falling asleep again.

Several times, though, the sly squeak of leather woke me as he tensed to move.

A chill woke me as the dawn lightened the darkness in the room. Though the curtains were still drawn, the shoes were gone and the gap between was empty, simply a grey gap.

I groped around for my sleeping bag, wondering at the cold. I couldn’t see the sleeping bag in the murk and pushed myself up on my elbows, to see where it had got to..

In the corner behind me, some odd rectangle shape moved.

Even as I turned towards it, the leather shoes poking out from the mouth of my upside down sleeping bag squeaked as the ghost closed the distance between us in a rush.

Riddle

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Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash

We’re still in Berlin, but I’ve been thinking about a walk I took a couple of weeks ago while I was in Ireland. An odd thing happened.

Let me tell you about it in this week’s flash fiction.

I did a double take when I walked through the rainbow. They’re always far away, aren’t they?

Turns out, they’re not, they’re just a lot smaller than everyone thinks.

This one was barely 6 foot high at its zenith, meaning my head passed through the violet and indigo bands.

Pretty amazing.

But rainbow or not, it was pissing rain, so I left my phone in my pocket, rather than risking a selfie and drowning the poor thing.

That must be why you don’t see pictures of small rainbows. It all makes sense when you think about it.

Things were different on the other side of it, though.

I didn’t notice at first because of all the rain everywhere, but I realised that someone—something—was following me in the field beside the road.

When I moved, it moved. When I stopped, it stopped. My first thought was leprechauns because I couldn’t see what it was, so it had to be small (and, you know, the rainbow).

I waited where I was for a while, then started walking again, keeping my eyes on where I had thought I’d seen something. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because other than the rain twitching the grass, all I could see was spots of grass being flattened as if the invisible man were strolling through the field beside me.

The next thing was that I realised I wasn’t getting wet, despite the rain. I was freezing and getting colder with every step, but apparently untouched by the rain.

It had to have something to do with the rainbow, so I turned around to make sure it was still there and wasn’t also following me.

It was still where I’d passed through it, but there was something else, too.

On the ground, equally distant from it in the other direction, was a shadow.

I looked at my feet to confirm my suspicion. It was my shadow.

That’s when it made sense to me. I hadn’t passed into some other world where leprechauns were stalking me. There was no otherworldly nonsense. I’d been reflected and refracted, that was all. Split into my component parts and spat out again.

I felt cold because one part of me was gaining altitude as the rainbow reflected some of me upwards. I was dry because another part was travelling further down into the ground with every step I took.

There was no invisible man in the field. It was the weight of my own footsteps, which had been displaced from my actual body, which was flattening the grass.

The shadow was refracted to travel in the opposite direction. I just needed to go back through the rainbow to be whole again.

I started running towards it, hoping to crash into my shadow as it, in turn, raced towards me.

The rain was stopping, and the rainbow was getting small and fainter.

I ran faster, accompanied by the sound of my footsteps from the empty field.

In other news this week, German punk-post-punks, Joseph Boys, have announced their new album will be out in August. The first single will be released tomorrow. Check it out!

10 Types of Berliner You’ll Meet On The U-Bahn

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An electrical boy with a suggestive logo on Weinbergsweg in Berlin
Photo by Morgan Delaney. Emergency Dildo Box on Weinbergsweg? #BerlinsRobotsNeedLoveToo

We’re travelling at the moment, so as promised, here’s your guide to some of the major fauna infesting Berlin’s public transport in this week’s special Killer List! Enjoy!

  1. The Zehlendorfers

Occurrence: Late evening/Early night.

Friends from their university days are visiting Berlin. This blast from the past has made them frisky, so they decide to leave the car at home and “slum” it to a show (perhaps at the Wintergarten, or the Friedrichstadtpalast). Now they are on their way back home.

In their fifties, Herr Zehlendorf is still tall, but needs a slightly bigger belt. Frau Zehlendorf has let her long hair go grey.

They appear relaxed as they sit beside each other holding hands, but Frau Zehlendorf sits closer to her husband than usual and Herr Zehlendorf is sitting very straight, despite the discomfort to his spine after having sat for so long already.

Careful to avoid catching anyone’s eye, they radiate alertness as they count the remaining stops until they are safely back home.

  1. The Mohawk from Madrid.

Occurrence: Irregular/Any time

A lot of Spanish people live in Berlin, the most colourful type of which is the Spanish punk.

It’s easy to see why they like Berlin, where their appearance (mohawks, piercings, facial tattoos) blends in perfectly with Berlin’s “original” punks who haven’t changed (except for getting older, and, perhaps, their t-shirts) since their first visit to Kreuzberg’s SO36 in 1978.

  1. The Sweet Homeless Man.

Occurrence: Constant/Mornings to late evenings

Begging and busking are not allowed on the trains of Berlin’s U-Bahn, but the rule is seldom enforced (see also no. 10. The Real Musician), and a steady stream of hopefuls travel up and down most lines every day.

The Sweet Homeless Man has been a fixture on the U8 for years, accompanied by a pungently sweet smell as he staggers through the moving carriage on crutches. One foot is encased in a massive grimy cast.

The musky smell is thicker and sweeter than honey and causes noses to wrinkle involuntarily, but, after all, it can only be a richly sweaty sock, and one day the cast will come off and he can wash it.

Until one day he reveals that the smell comes from the gangrene eating his toes, and for years passengers have therefore been inhaling the particles of his rotting feet.

  1. Mister Berlin.

Occurrence: Constant/Any time

Mister Berlin (not Herr Berlin, not Mr Berlin) views everything and everyone on the U-Bahn with a look of tolerant disdain, which stems from the fact that he was born in Berlin. The U-Bahn is therefore his by birthright and it amuses him to let others use it.

Anyone foolish enough to engage the red-faced and leisure-weared Mister Berlin in conversation will discover that his voice has one setting: loud.

He offers his opinions freely, though only passengers skilled in cutting through the thick vegetation of Berlin’s buzz saw accent will understand their meaning.

  1. Schulietta Mädchen.

Occurrence: Irregular/Early mornings

Morning commutes in Berlin are always at risk of being interrupted by marauding packs of ten-year-olds on a school outing. U-Bahn carriages, which were previously full of the strained silence of people strenuously ignoring each other, suddenly morph into noisy fried food-smelling commuter cages.

Berliners rarely like children (until they grow old enough to hold a useful picket at demonstrations), but nobody has told the children this.

In their happy ignorance, they kick other passengers’ knees as they jump up and down, or swap seats with each other.They pick their noses or block the doors with psychedelically coloured backpacks more suitable for the Love Parade.

But as bad as they are, these are normal children.

Then Schulietta sits down.

Alone among her fellows, she is quiet. She sits properly in her seat and does not require the teacher to keep explaining why Paul is wearing a green jacket, when he usually wears a blue one.

(Paul is wearing a green jacket because he lost his blue one at the museum, although he didn’t tell anyone at the time. He simply took a blue one, which he found. When the teacher asked, he confessed to not being able to remember what colour jacket he had put on that morning until they made it onto the train, at which point his classmates’ questions reminded him.)

While everyone else is staring and pointing at Paul and his new green jacket, Schulietta is only interested in you.

For the distance of five solid stops, she stares at you without blinking, then starts turning her head slowly to the window, but without releasing your blushing face from her gaze, hoping you will be tricked into acknowledging her.

Her stare gives you a headache on the top of your head as you attempt to continue reading. The need to move your head from under it, together with the reasonable conviction that surely her eyes can’t be as big as they feel, are almost too much to resist.

She smells of chewing gum, unless it’s her shampoo, and the synthetic smell is creeping up your nostrils, pushing the headache down into your back teeth.

What is wrong with your face, that she keeps staring at it like this? Did you cut yourself while shaving? Perhaps you sliced right through your jugular and are dead.

After several stops, you wonder if Schulietta is dead. Perhaps the school’s classroom was built on an old grave Prussian grave?

Perhaps the green jacket belonged to Schulietta, and Paul killed her to get it.

None of the other children pay her any attention, and your attempts to catch the teacher’s eye have earned you nothing more than suspicious glares.

Just don’t look at her, you tell yourself. Don’t look or she’ll bore through your eyes and dig into your brain.

You clench your fists hard enough to draw blood from your palms as the force of her black hole stare presses on your scalp.

You want nothing more than to get off the train, but somehow know that if you leave before the class does, then she’ll belong to you.

  1. Herr Wurst.

Occurrence: Rare/Afternoons

You continue reading your book as the seat across the aisle from you is taken. It is Herr Wurst, but you do not yet realise this.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed bobbed red hair and a short leather skirt, with a grey face and a chunky woollen yellow sweater between them.

Ah, you think. A woman has sat down opposite me. Fine.

As soon as the train starts moving, the person spreads their legs.

Their skirt is short, and they are sitting opposite you, and your eye is drawn inexorably to some incongruous detail.

Turning the page of your book—and knowing full well you shouldn’t—you risk the tiniest glance. In that infinitesimal moment, Frau Wurst turns into Herr Wurst, as that most telltale detail has slipped out from behind Herr Wurst’s panties to wink rakishly at you with its good eye.

  1. Frau Alt-Schmidt.

Occurrence: Constant/Early morning to mid-evening.

In fact, you will most likely not see Frau Alt-Schmidt, as she has discovered a way to make herself invisible while in transit.

On occasion, she can be spotted at the exit to the U-Bahn, making her slow and painful progress up the stairs to the exit, at which point you remember she exists.

  1. Alan Party-Ridge.

Occurrence: Regular/Late evenings

Alan is English, here to party, and doesn’t care who knows it.

Hey, he didn’t lose a war!

Used to the UK’s licencing hours, he’s conspicuously nursing that first beer on his way to the awful club he’s chosen for the night.

What makes him most conspicuous, however, is how ridiculously underdressed he is. Even in the middle of winter, he won’t put on a jacket in case it creases his favourite Top Shop shirt.

  1. The Lonely Goth.

Occurrence: Irregular/Night time.

Standing in the corner furthest away from Alan is the carriage’s only goth.

Painfully introverted, the lonely goth has found the least judgmental piece of panelling in the entire carriage and is trying not to stare too hard at it, in case it starts staring back.

The intensity of the goth’s self-consciousness snags everyone’s attention, most of whom are wondering if the goth is truly unaware that black just isn’t his colour, and if there’s a good reason why his hair has to be so greasy and limp.

But nobody will tell this to the goth, who—like the vampires he admires—cannot look in mirrors and it is only the thought that he will soon be back in a pitch-black club, or bedroom, that is keeping him going.

  1. The Real Musician.

Occurrence: Daily/All day.

A species of busker who wants you to know they are not in it for the money.

They do this by playing an entire song (bloody “Hallelujah” with an extra helping of yearning, if you’re really unlucky) rather than only playing until the next stop, despite the fact that everyone knows buskers are paid to go away, and perfectly good, proper music is being wasted on dozens of headphones while The Real Musician wrings every bit of juice out of each Hallelujah.

(If you are in this situation, just remember that it only lasts four minutes—or six for the “full Buckley.” It only feels like forever.)