Mud Pie's Revenge

MUD PIE'S REVENGE

Joshua Preece unbuttoned his Agnes B shirt and dropped it onto the
tiled bathroom floor. He looked at his white fat stomach. He squeezed a
tyre of flesh hard, leaving a red imprint. He raised his head and,
peering at the mirror on the wall, he carefully lowered his head and
watched the jowls re-forming under his chin.

-----

The girl he had taken for dinner, Rochelle Patterson, had watched him
as he scoffed his food.

'I always,' he said, 'eat quickly.'

'That's okay,' Rochelle said.

Later on in the meal, he sensed her looking at him again and he said,
'I know I smack my lips. I can't help it. I've done it since I was a
boy.'

'I didn't notice you doing it,' she said.

-----

After the waiter had collected the plates Joshua ordered his dessert.
The waiter then asked Rochelle and she said, 'No, I couldn't, just a
filter coffee for me, please. Thanks.'

'Oh, you must,' said Joshua.

'I couldn't. The dinner was delicious. I just couldn't eat a
dessert.'

'Go on,' said Joshua.

'I'm full. I couldn't.'

'Don't be a spoilsport.'

To the waiter, she said, 'A filter coffee will be fine, thank
you.'

'As the lady wants,' said the waiter.

Joshua ate his Mississippi Mud Pie, scraping the plate with the
spoon.

-----

They had gone to the Conran on Butler's Wharf by the Thames. He paid
the bill and when they were outside the restaurant he said, 'Have you
enjoyed the evening?'

'Yes,' she said, 'it's been pleasant.'

He went up to the embankment wall and said, 'London is the greatest
city in the world.'

She stood by the wall.

'I know we have the beggars, drugs addicts, blacks and the sponging so
called refugees living here, but for all of the undesirables, London is
great and that is an amazing view. Sometimes I think it's the poor that
help give the city its character.'

'I don't think you should talk about people like that,' she said.

'Oh, am I too outspoken for you?' he said.

'No, I just&;#8230;. Forget it.'

'I've never,' he said, 'been afraid to speak my mind. Listen, I've an
idea, let's go to Waterloo bridge. It's one of the best views there
is.'

'I'd like to,' she said, 'but I have to be in Leeds tomorrow for a
meeting with a client. I must get the tube home now, I'm afraid.'

'You have to go?' he said.

'Yes.'

'But you have enjoyed the evening?'

'The meal was lovely, thank you.'

Joshua tried to kiss her.

She turned her head.

He adjusted and kissed her cheek.

'I must be getting that tube,' she said.

They walked across the footbridge spanning the river and parted at
Charing Cross Station. Joshua was trying to think of something to say.
She was very quiet after his attempt to kiss her. He talked about the
first thing that came into his head. He told her, for the second time
in the evening, about the project he was working on: designing cheap
warehouses for several new Hypermarkets opening in Cumbria.

'It sounds,' she said, 'very interesting.'

'Oh it is, it is,' he said.

They reached the station and stood next to the Sock Shop booth.

'Goodbye,' said Rochelle.

'I'll be seeing you soon,' he said.

'Thanks for the dinner,' she said and she walked towards the steps for
the underground.

Joshua hailed a taxi from the station's taxi rank to his flat in Tower
Hill.

-----

Had she, he wondered, enjoyed the evening with him? She was relaxed in
the restaurant. The quality of the food was reasonable. The kiss was
the problem. He knew he had forced himself upon her. If he had showed
patience then she might've been willing to kiss him as he wanted to
kiss her.

Yes, she had said, it's been lovely, thank you.

Yes, it's been lovely.

Yes, that's lovely.

Kiss me.

Yes.

Joshua, standing in his bathroom, was rubbing his fat, stumpy cock
through his trousers. He unfastened his belt, pulled down his trousers
and boxer shorts and started masturbating.

He watched himself in the mirror.

'Rochelle,' he said, panting. 'I'm going cum in your face.'

Yes.

He spurted cum into the sink and onto the mirror. He wiped himself with
a hand towel, pulled up his shorts and trousers, fastened his belt,
leaving his semen splattered across the sink and mirror for his
forty-three-year-old Argentine cleaner, Andrea, to clean up the
following day.

He didn't use this bathroom. He washed by using the shower suite next
to his bedroom.

------

Rochelle Patterson lay in bed. She was thinking about work and the
report she had produced for the Labour MP she was going to meet in
Leeds. The MP, so the rumour went, hated consultants and Rochelle was
expecting him to give her a mauling.

The assignment - assessing the use of space in buildings used by the
Post Office - was crap, it really was.

She couldn't sleep. She heard her flatmate, Annabelle, get up and go to
the bathroom. There were wine bottles in the lounge and a man's jacket
was on the back of a chair. Annabelle had gone to a work function,
celebrating a new media contract.

Rochelle tried to guess who her flatmate had shagged this time
around.

--------

The Mississippi Mud Pie was not happy. I'm in, thought the pie, the
wrong stomach. It believed it was different to the other pies who,
coming from the Deep South, were religious and fatalistic. This pie,
however, read philosophy, particularly the Germans, favouring Friedrich
Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. It considered itself destined for
someone with stature, importance, for a man with a reputation. A food
critic, say, from The Style section of The Evening Standard or, even
better, A A Gill at The Sunday Times.
The pie had listened to the conversation in the restaurant and it was
indignant that a man could talk while eating at the same time.

I am, the pie reassured itself, a tour de force.

And the eater had said, 'This is tasty, you should try some.'

Tasty&;#8230;

Adding insult to injury, the woman rejected the pie and said, 'No, I've
told you I don't want any dessert.'

The pie had wanted to be savoured and appreciated by someone,
preferably a man, a handsome man with culinary expertise, with
elegance. Having money and being affluent wasn't enough. The consumer
had to possess that cultural awareness which made them stand out as
special. This man, whose stomach the pie now found itself trapped
inside, did not have those qualities.

A tour de force, thought the Mississippi Mud Pie, should not be treated
like common bruschetta or French onion soup.

----------

The phone kept ringing. Rochelle was sitting up in bed looking at
leaflets of one bedroom flats in West London sent to her by an estate
agent. After the tenth ring Rochelle wondered if it might be her mother
or father. She got out of bed, put her dressing gown on and from her
basement bedroom she walked up the stairs to the phone in the lounge.
'Hello,' she said.

'Rochelle, hi, it's Josh.'

'Hello, Josh.'

'Are you okay?'

'Yes'.

'Are you sure you're okay?'

'Yes Josh, what is it?'

'Well, you said you had a good evening, didn't you? You did say you
liked the evening.'

'The meal was good, thank you.'

'I'm glad about that, that's good to hear. I'm glad and I wanted to let
you know that I had a really pleasant evening too. I enjoyed
myself.'

Rochelle was looking at the sofa. The cable of the phone stretched as
she walked round the two seater and saw a pair of trousers and her
flatmate's skirt and G-string on the carpet.

'I enjoy your company. You're very good company, Rochelle.'

She wasn't quite sure what to say to him. Agreeing to the meal was a
mistake. They had met at a vodka &; melon party held by a mutual
friend and he was charming enough then. The friend's bash wasn't that
long ago but Joshua appeared fatter tonight than he did when she talked
to him at the party. Weight alone wouldn't dissuade her from going out
with a man. Personality was the main thing and he didn't have one.
Although he had plenty going for him in that he was a professional and
he owned his own flat and she had heard he did have an amazingly posh
car, she didn't find his conversation too engaging. In fact, it
bordered on the offensive.

She'd been told that he hadn't had many girlfriends and she could now
see why.

'I'm glad you enjoyed the evening, Joshua.'

'I did, yes.'

'Right. Was there anything else?'

He hesitated.

'I'll speak to you soon, Joshua.'

'Yes, that's fine. Thank you. I did enjoy your company too.'

'Bye, Joshua.'

'Yes, a lovely evening.'

'Bye.'

'Yes, bye Rochelle.'

She hung up.

Were there, she asked herself, any normal, confident, non-neurotic men
left to go out with? Her second to last boyfriend, a marketing manager
for Tesco's, had slashed his wrists in a hot bath because of the
pressure of his job and an underlying inferiority complex with his
incredibly successful and domineering father. The last one, a manager
of a nightclub in Shoreditch, dumped her completely out of the blue and
then she kept getting postcards from him in Paris of the Moulin Rouge,
saying he loved her and what a "top time" he was having.

She made herself a peppermint tea and went back downstairs to
bed.

-----------

A number of soft cheeses were unwrapped. A tin of truffles from
Strasbourg was opened and a fork jutted out of the tin. Joshua was
grilling a large Scottish salmon he had bought from Smithfield's
market. He grabbed a handful of Camembert and stuffed it into his
mouth. He opened his fridge door and took the strawberry sundae he had
bought at the Marks &; Spencer on Fenchurch street. Snapping off the
plastic lid, he then reached for the fork that was stabbed into the
truffles and began eating the sundae. The smell of the cooking salmon
was beginning to agitate him. As he was getting close to the biscuit
base of the sundae he decided the salmon must be ready. He went to the
grill, switched it off, dropped the salmon onto a plate and sat at his
long, shiny enamelled dining table. He used his fork to rake apart the
fish. With each mouthful he spat the bones onto the table. When he had
eaten most of the fish he looked at the head, gave it a twist and broke
it off from the spine and stuck his greasy forefinger into the fish's
skull, scooping the innards with his forefinger. He sucked his finger
clean, looked at the head and stuck his finger back inside and ate some
more.

---------

Flats in London were overpriced. Tens of thousands of pounds were asked
for flats that didn't have gardens, for flats with cramped little
kitchens. Rochelle blew onto her tea, having radio four on as
background noise while she studied the leaflets. For two years she had
waited for the house prices in London to drop before she bought a place
of her own. The value never dropped, instead it climbed higher and if,
as she suspected, the market was rigged, then she knew she would have
to bite the bullet and buy wherever she could afford. It went against
the grain though, buying in London. For what she would pay for a one
bedroom flat she could buy her mother and father's five bedroom house
on the outskirts of Birmingham.

Rochelle placed the leaflet onto the "no pile" on her lap. There were
two on the "yes pile" that she would try and arrange to view on
Saturday. As she looked at the next leaflet she tried to ignore the
ringing phone upstairs.

-----------

The cheeses were acting all blas?. The tacky strawberry sundae was
evidently pleased with itself whereas the Strasbourg truffles had the
wherewithal to know that all was not as it should be. As its life began
to fade, the Mississippi Mud Pie quoted Nietzsche to itself: "There are
no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of
phenomena."

The dying pie resolved to make a stand against its inevitable
destruction. I will not, said the pie to itself, be treated like
this.

Naturally, from the day of its inception it had realised one immutable
fact about existence: it would die, and soon. Inspite of this, there
was an understanding that pride could be taken in that ephemeral
life.

To burn brightly, if only for a short while, was still an honour.

The pie had embraced its fate, its destiny, but the expectations it
held dearly were falling to pieces and the invasion of the cheeses,
truffles, the crass sundae and the vulgarly undercooked fish somehow
exacerbated an already awful predicament. For all of the pie's oaths
and resolutions, it was slipping away and on the verge of passing into
that mythical tunnel of death, when something so putrid and unspeakably
evil crashed into the stomach that the pie was jarred back into
consciousness.

Even the cheeses lost their self composure.

The salmon brains had arrived.

----------------

'Answer, answer, I know you're there my pretty girl,' said Joshua,
sitting at his table, naked except for his faded paisley boxer shorts.
He rubbed his hands through his receding blonde hair, needing to speak
to Rochelle. Why, he thought, can I never say what I mean? Always
getting tongue tied. Holding back those feelings that sound true in my
head.

The voicemail came on and he heard the voice of a girl he supposed was
her flatmate.

He re-dialled the number. He wanted to arrange another date with
Rochelle, that way she would know that he had enjoyed the evening with
her. The voicemail came on. All he was asking of her was a brief chat
and to see her soon. She must, he thought, like him or why else would
she have agreed to go for the meal? And above everything else, she told
him what a good evening she'd had with him.

Thinking of what she had said made his cock stiffen and rise. She had
such a pretty face.
She had lovely eyes.

He pulled his shorts off and kicked them under the kitchen table and
began rubbing his cock, feeling a slight ache in his stomach. A
tightening in his chest. He kept masturbating. Telling himself that he
wasn't fat. That he was an attractive, successful young man. Women
liked him. She liked him. She wanted, he knew, his stumpy, blue veined
cock shoved deep into her pretty mouth. He looked at his large, pale
gut and squeezed a tyre with his free hand. He thought about taking
Rochelle from behind. She was on her knees, her head pressing face down
onto the pillow, and he was about to start pulling gently on her hair,
tugging back her head as he picked up the tempo of thrusting into her,
when his own body jack knifed with such violence that he knocked the
table sideways and fell off the chair and onto the kitchen floor.

He curled his legs and clutched his stomach. He rolled about. Holding
his gut. Squeezing it. Crying for his mother.

Shit was spewing from his arse, shooting against the cupboards,
spraying the cooker. He tried to cover his arse with his hands but the
shit seeped through his fingertips, over his hands, dribbling along his
wrists.
'Make it stop,' he said, slipping on the floor as he tried to get on
all fours.

Joshua slipped and landed on his belly.
He could hear a voice. It was coming from inside him, saying: 'Do you
know what I've gone through, do you appreciate all that I've suffered
to try and make you happy? I gave you everything. You treated me like I
was ordinary, like I was average.'

Turning onto his back, Joshua could feel himself going dizzy. He saw
his cock was still hard. There was a lump inside the shaft, a slow
moving lump. He watched as it neared and forced open the tip of his
cock. In a congealed, gooey ball, Camembert cheese eased itself out.
With his shit covered hands, Joshua pulled at the soft, warm, sticky
cheese. More of it appeared. While doing this, he kept stifling the
need to retch.

Something had come up and was in his mouth. He retched. Choked. Forced
himself to cough and out popped a truffle.

Joshua sat upright. His head limp, he flung an arm sideways to the
cordless phone on the table and knocked it further from him.

The pie was talking constantly, 'You think you have everything, don't
you? Perhaps you do. You had the private education, you have the
wealthy parents, but you're not a cultured man. You don't understand
artistry, do you? You're not a man of class, of stature, of taste, of
will power.'

Joshua touched his eyes. He examined his fingertips and saw that stuck
to his fingers were coloured specks which earlier had decorated the
strawberry sundae. The hundreds and thousands were re-surfacing in his
eyes, blinding him. He told himself he had to move. Other voices were
beginning to chatter. They talked over one another. French. Dutch.
Colombian. American. Scottish. Babbling away. Incoherent. Ceaseless.
Joshua, unable to see, stood up, a string of cheese dangling from his
cock, and staggered to the table and climbed up and onto it. He patted
the table for the cordless phone, crying for the voices to shut up as
shit streamed from his arse.

------------