“PULP FICTION”: a short story by Lauren Beukes (Patreon)

hello loves. 

here it is, our first patreon-inspired piece of short fiction. i recommend reading while (or just after) listening to the song and/or watching the new video. the video is here on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPTcq8neRWs

and if you just want audio it’s here streaming on bandcamp:

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/track/pulp-fiction

listen. read. feel. 

love  

x

a

..........

PULP FICTION 

by Lauren Beukes

Abi has always known this about the world – there are unseen doors and shortcuts, and all you need is someone to show you the way. Or send you a dead posh invite on black card with foil letters raised on the page so that you can trace the words with your fingers, over and over, until they become sense memory, and a single dented key. ‘You are invited to an appointment with The Courtier.’ A simple address. A time and date. And the most important part: ‘plus one.’ That would be her, Abi Thornton, the eternal additional, sidekick and hench-babe to the glory-in-human-form that is Felicity Kazmi, striding ahead in a gold sequinned dress under her short black coat that leaves her legs bare and goosebumped against the cold and makes Abi feel self-conscious by association. Because it’s a bit much, isn’t it, for Romford at three on a Friday afternoon?

They turn down a street she can’t disclose, that she’s been down a hundred million times before. because she has been down all of them, stuck on repeat, a lifetime sentence in Romford. 

And it’s no wonder she has never noticed this particular door, of all the nondescript doors squeezed between the authentic Turkish barber and the Help2Move motorised wheelchair store (which is not where they bought her dad’s scooter after the stroke, but an entirely separate, competing shop, because apparently this is a thing everyone needs now, along with chain coffee shops and kebab places). 

The paint on the door of number 11 has peeled through several layers, the colours raw and scuffed underneath. ‘But how do we know it’s not a human trafficking operation?’ she says, going for jokey, as if this is not her real and pressing concern.

‘I dunno, Abigail,’ Felicity drops the butt, crushes the glowing ember out beneath a twist of her shoe. ‘Cos maybe slavers don’t send out gold-fucking-embossed invitations?’ 

Felicity has friends of friends who have been for a consultation. Someone’s cousin in Bristol, an ex-boyfriend’s sister’s bestie. It’s hard to keep track. You’re not supposed to talk about it. That’s also on the invitation, in fine print at the bottom. ‘Discretion is the only price tag’. It’s all rumour and speculation, she hums the words inside her head. 

Due diligence on the Internet turned up nothing useful. A Reddit question, unanswered, ‘Anyone know how you get an appointment with this magic makeover guy?’, an Instagram account for @0_TheCourtier_0 with 44 578 followers and only one post, a black square, ‘bespoke by invitation’ in the same gold font. Thousands of comments begging: invite me, check out my profile, I’m ready, please. 

Please. 

‘Well,’ Felicity says, as she takes the key from the ribbon she’s tied around her neck and slots it into the lock, ‘Here goes something.’ 

She pushes the door open onto a steep, dark, staircase that smells of damp carpet and stale cigarettes and that sharp piss brine, and Abi’s not so sure about this, not sure at all. But Felicity doesn’t hesitate, and Abi has no choice but to follow after. 

The delicate floral wallpaper is marked with crude graffiti tags and sharpie cocks and balls, and the carpet has a spongy give under her shoes. They go up, and up, until she is short of breath and her thighs are burning and somewhere along the way, they have lost their coats, tossed them beside them on the stairs, and Fliss’s shoulder blades are like chicken wings, and her arse does a see-saw jiggle under her dress. Up and up, and up. Impossibly up. 

She’s not supposed to call her Fliss. Bad habit, old habit, from school. She has worse nicknames, AKA ‘Velocity’ round the clubs or, more unkindly, ‘Fertility’ as if one abortion defines you, just one, like everyone else is so bloody immaculate around condom use and fucking around when you’re fucked up. But she hates ‘Fliss’ most of all, because that’s what her family calls her. 

‘Fliss’ is someone she used to be, someone she has cast aside and walked away from without a single doubting backward glance. Abi has always been just Abi, gawky and awky and no leaving it behind. Like the aphorism says: everywhere you go, there you are. 

Felicity stops so abruptly on the stairs that Abi nearly pinballs off her. 

‘Why did you—’ she protests and then sees that they have reached their destination. A beaded curtain, like a hippie girl might put up in her dorm room, but classier, with tiny shimmering sequins, almost exactly like Abi’s dress, as if this was made for her. Of course it was. 

‘You silly cunt,’ Felicity’s voice is breathy, turned-on. ‘This is it.’ She pushes through the gold-spangled waterfall. Every forward step is a choice you make. Abi follows after, into a waiting room done up in deep blues and more gold, a chandelier dripping stars above them. A wildly overdressed receptionist is standing at the desk waiting to greet them, but Abi is staring (she can’t help it) at the other clientele, four young women, just like them, in their best Friday night gear, but bare legs squeaky against the leather couches. They don’t acknowledge the new arrivals. Their gazes are downcast towards their phones, swiping and jabbing, and something about it makes them seem so uncertain and vulnerable. But at least it means this isn’t a trafficking operation. Like you’re any kind of catch, her traitor’s heart sneers. 

‘Your invitation please?’ the receptionist enquires. She’s wearing an elaborate crenellated ballgown that Abi’s brain informs her is the exact meaty colour of the inside of a pigeon. (Like the one she found crushed on Gidea Close near the park, ripe with maggots.) The woman’s hair is piled up in coils on her head, the dark slashes of her eyebrows like punctuation. High fashion, as if she is waiting for her moment in front of the camera. Me too, Abi thinks. 

Her nails, when she reaches for the embossed card, are as shiny as beetles. ‘Ah yes. Thank you, please take a seat, relax, but please don’t talk or otherwise disturb our other patrons. It’s a very personal experience. You’ll be called in one at a time.’ 

She turns to Abi ‘You must be the plus one?’ she takes her hands with vivid sincerity. ‘What a pleasure it is to have you with us. I know you’ll have a wonderful experience.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Abi mutters. ‘Thanks.’ 

‘If you could sign this, please?’ She pushes a clipboard towards her. 

The indemnity is a dense swim of words; free will, my own volition, waive my rights, full accountability, accept all risks. ‘Yeah, and how is this different to my normal life?’ Abi mutters under her breath as she scrawls her looping signature, spilling out onto the lines above and below. Contain yourself, she thinks. But she doesn’t want to be contained. That’s why she’s here, with all these others, who don’t make eye contact, who are all, like her, waiting to become. She doesn’t know what. Something more. Something real.

‘Thank you,’ the receptionist says. ‘Please take a seat. Try to relax, take deep breaths—’

‘Yeah and don’t disturb anyone else, I got it. Thanks.’ 

She slides onto the couch next to Felicity, who has her phone out and is staring numbly at it. It’s switched off, she realises, the screen a dull mirror. So is everyone’s, even the girls jabbing at theirs, like they’re on automatic because what else would they do with their hands. 

‘Well, this is pretty weird,’ she whispers.

‘Shhh,’ Felicity hisses and draws looping figure eights on her screen. 

Abi follows suit and pulls out her phone, also dead, even though she charged it before she left. She sneaks glances at the other girls and wonders who the plus ones are, and then a bell rings, a cheap electronic warble and a red-headed girl peels herself off the couch and pushes through the thick brocade curtains on the other side of the room with cool-headed certainty. 

Fifteen minutes later, or three hours (she’s lost track, staring blankly at her phone), the bell goes again and another out-of-focus blob stands up and disappears inside. One by one, everyone leaves, even Felicity, until she’s all alone except for the receptionist bent over the desk, writing intently in a ledger. 

Of course it was Felicity who got the invitation. The confident one, the bolshy bitch who is full of shit and gets right up in peoples’ faces, especially the catcallers, although that word doesn’t do it justice. It’s not a yowling, but a low humming chorus of comments and compliments – the warm and sticky sea they swim in. ‘Bit of all right’, ‘You could sit on my face any day of the week, darling,’ and the drunk boys who lurched towards them as they were crossing the street for the 23 bus last weekend, and whooped, ‘Are you a feminist?’ 

‘Suck my bloody tampon,’ Felicity screamed in his face, don’t give a fuck, and the boy spun towards her, his eyes bulging and his jaw popping (like a cartoon character, she said, recounting it at school the next day.) But to Abi, he looked like a man caught mid-transformation into something terrible and furious that bulged under his skin as he started towards them, jabbing his finger in the air. 

‘What did you say to me? What the fuck did you say to me, you fucking slag! You dumb cunt!’ 

His friends had to drag him away, laughing. 

‘It’s not worth it, mate. Leave it.’ 

‘Yeah, get wankered, cos no-one else is going to do it!’ Fliss screamed, top of her lungs, and took Abi’s hand and they pelted down the street, not looking back. 

On the bus, she stroked Abi’s hair while she leant against her shoulder. ‘Silly, what are you crying for?’ which made her cry harder, because she was so sick of being Abi. 

It’s a prank, she thinks, suddenly, wildly, looking around the room where she is the last girl standing (sitting). A terrible, vicious joke. If she goes over to look at the forms on the clipboard, she’ll see that she’s the only one who signed her real name. The others will be celebrity names or cartoon characters or simply, ‘hahaha, you dumb bitch! Joke’s on you!’ She shoves the thought away. The receptionist glances over, gives her an encouraging little smile and goes back to her own phone, bent over it as if studying sacred texts. Abi turns her phone over in her hands and stares down at the blank screen that reflects her face back at her. The last person anyone ever wants to see in there. 

There are ways of getting away from herself. Alcohol helps. Coke. Molly. Speed. A stranger’s lips pressed up against hers, his hot breath in her mouth, his hands under her shirt. A thousand glittering distractions, but it’s not enough. She wants the life that’s promised in the movies, the one that she deserves. 

The bell rings, with a staticky hitch at the end. The electric bird clearing its throat. She rubs her hands down her thighs in her shiny black leggings. Winter padding, her mum calls it, trying to be kind. You’ll shake it off, love. You don’t shake off genes, ma. Look in the mirror, you fat cow. 

 ‘Hey, Cinderella,’ the receptionist says, ‘This is your moment.’ 

Please. 

She stands up, mimicking the same certainty the other girls had. Fake it ’til you make it. She goes inside of her own volition. Every step is a choice you make. The Courtier is waiting in a room full of shadows and coils of fabric like cocoons and the glint of gold scissors like teeth. Through the huge windows, the city lights are pinpricked against the dark. When did it get so late, she thinks, and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, pasty and stupid. She wraps her arms across her chest, suddenly self-conscious. 

‘No don’t do that, please,’ he tuts, taking her hands, gently unlocking her arms. She can’t tell you what he looks like. Not ‘can’t’, that’s not the right word, implying it’s some part of discretion. Couldn’t. She only has impressions. His features shift, it’s hard to see him in the light. He is a possibility. 

His voice is warm like a song. ‘Hello. Let’s get a look at you.’ His hands on her body (but not in a creepy old pervert way, like he is an artist and she is the sculpture waiting inside a slab of stone to emerge). He is a bird or a man or a shadow. She can’t tell. 

But there are helpers, women in pale meaty ballgowns and blonde hair that shines in the dark, and blank mannequin faces, perfectly smooth, who flutter around her and tug away her clothes, yanking off the strappy silky top Felicity picked out for her, cutting away the shiny black leggings with the gold teeth scissors. 

‘Oh Abigail,’ The Courtier breathes, taking her in, now that she is naked and ashamed. ‘You are beautiful.’ 

She shakes her head, miserable, moves to cover herself. ‘No. I’m not. I’m really not.’ Crying, again, like a fucking loser. 

He takes her shoulders in his hands, looks deep into her eyes, which aren’t eyes, but golden mirrors, or that’s the light off his glasses, reflecting her back. ‘But you will be.’ It’s disorienting. ‘I can make you everything you are. If you want it. Do you want it, Abigail?’ He gives her a little jokey shake. 

‘Yeah. I, mean, I guess.’

‘That’s not enough. You’re here to be remade, which means first you have to be undone.’

‘Yes,’ she says, and tries again, putting flint and fire in her voice. ‘Yes. I want this. Please.’ 

It hurts. Of course it does. Ask the sculpture how painful it is to emerge from the stone. You have to cut away the chaff. The blank-faced women tug at her insides, gold scissors going snicker-snack until she is reduced to bone and a heartbeat tremor. Is there blood? 

There is blood. 

You have to suffer for beauty. 

‘All that weight of fear and doubt and self-loathing. We’re getting rid of all of that.’

‘Yes,’ says Abi as the meat drops with wet smacking sounds to the floor and the blank-faced women crouch down over the remains, shoulders vultured up, the ruffs of their white dresses obscuring their blank faces and the tearing sounds they make. 

‘I feel so much lighter. It’s amazing.’ 

But she feels empty, and the words are empty too, a dull mirror voice like a blank cell phone screen. 

‘You are beautiful, so beautiful,’ he says again. ‘An angel.’ 

‘I’m beautiful.’ She stares into the mirror, admiring how he has nipped and tucked and folded her away into herself, so small inside herself that she is nothing except that. Beautiful. Just like in the movies. Just like all the other girls who aren’t afraid, and she will take her place besides them, on the carpet outside the club, and the velvet ropes will be lifted to grant her entry and she will join in the parade. 

And she steps outside, into the night, feeling empty, and full of stars.

................

dear patrons,

thank you for reading. for now, this story is patron-only, but lauren may we’ll publish it in her own collection (or who knows). 

please comment with feelings, thoughts, reflextions, responses, it’s just us here. 
feel free to circulate this story to your reader-friends & family. you can forward the email from patreon, or paste the story to them. but please make sure to share the following alon these lines (or cut and paste this) as well:

this short story was created exclusively for Amanda’s Patreon by the South African writer Lauren Beukes inspired by the song “Pulp Fiction” by Amanda Palmer & Edward Ka-Spel and the accompanying video by the artist David Mack. all images above are stills from the music video, which you can watch in its entirety, HERE: https://youtu.be/dPTcq8neRWs

if you’re not a patron and you’d like to join the family and support more art like this, please go to patreon.com/amandapalmer 

one more thought: i would encourage you to just share this URL (https://www.patreon.com/posts/19666247 ) and encourage people to join the patreon (for $1 or whatever) to unlock it. 

loves 

xx

afp