MicroHorror

There’s a Martian porn star called Venal Zpunk. He’s more octopus than man, but he keeps his tentacles hidden in a pair of slacks. He looks like you and me, only he’s green, and he’s got no lips, and he reeks of epic death.

Venal is living above me, in an apartment in Soho; he throws fruit out the window, because he can’t be bothered to learn our customs and introduce himself.

He has six wives, four are kept in the fridge, spares no bigger than shriveled foetuses. They can be grown in a day. Venal was visited by the home office, but only once.

Venal came here to grow his aunt in a bathtub of his own faeces. There has never been anything so utterly unnatural and alien on the earth before. We look at him and realise that our knowledge is insufficient, but frankly, our curiosity is waning.

Venal took a couple of kids inside the other day, showed them some of his movies. They came out shaking, faces twitching, strangled words alluding to things beyond articulation. Within an hour their pubic hairs had turned white.

Venal flashed a woman and her dog recently; it amused him because he didn’t know which was which.

Oh, how long will he be here? Nobody wants to say anything, but this isn’t right. We know we’re supposed to accept him, it’s important he sends back a good report. But he’s obscene.

He was mating with his wives last night, I think one gave birth. Judging by the sounds, he shoved it back up her. This is awful. Venal knocks on my door and asks for milk, then he looks too long at my nipples.

I tell him I’m the wrong sex, but the words don’t seem to translate.

Venal says others are coming. Females. They’re going to film the first Martian hardcore on Earth. Nobody wants this.

I think I’m going mad, I dream of Martian porn titles and tentacle penetration. I smell things coming through the floorboards and find myself hanging out the window, gasping and screaming.

I bang on the neighbours’ doors, but no one wants to talk about it, they say they don’t mind, or they don’t have an opinion.

What, they don’t have an opinion on Martian hardcore?

What has to be done?

There’s a Martian porn star called Venal Zpunk, he is making love in the room above me. It sounds like three octopuses fighting for space in a hot tub.

I try to drown out the sounds with a porno, but I can’t look at the flesh without thinking of Venal writhing between the bodies, an ever-curious pervert groping his way to contentment.

I turn the tap for a sobering drink, and some kind of bubbling black ink dribbles out. It’s too much. I snap.

I’ll burn him out if I have to. I don’t care if the whole building goes up, I don’t care if he’s an “entertainment emissary,” enough’s enough.

I pour petrol through his letterbox, I light a match. This fire will cleanse. This fire will purge. The building can be sacrificed, everyone will understand.

But then I pause. I think about the stars we sent to Mars. Are they being treated like this? Will they be purged by distressed Martian folk? Is it just me?

Eventually, I don’t know what’s right or not, I just accept that he’s driven me insane, and relax.

The fire comes and licks my face. The warmth comes and sits in my heart.

***

I come to covered in ink, the fire doused. I am lying in the hall, stunned. In his room, Venal has put one of his movies on, the sound reaches me, and for a moment I am nauseated.

But then I look down at the ink, the pungent, disgusting, life-saving ink. I could be dead, I could have been left to barbecue. But I wasn’t…

Does… does this make me the monster?

• Copyright: © 2009 Barry Charman