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Hello. This is the first issue of RGB Colourscheme. Please won’t you have a read. Content warnings can be found in the back inside leaf. This issue was released on 05/12/2019. Facebook: @RGBColourScheme E-mail: rgbcolourscheme@gmail.com Editors: Thomas Dervan Adam Husain
Cover desig
n © Michał
Krenz.
Art on page s 10, 12 an d 16: © Amy Dou glas-Morris (www.amyd mb.c
om).
Contents
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50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Adam Husain
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You don’t have to say anything. Just nod. by Emma Levin
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Two eggs, 330g flour, 100g milk. by Eimer McAuley
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Party Time by Frankie Taylor
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orange stained by Naomi Pacifique
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Abortive Fiction by Michal Krenz
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Chubby Spaniel by Alicia Hayden
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Access by Thomas Dervan
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ADAM HUSAIN
50 ways to leave your lover Adam Husain, RGB Colour Scheme’s very own relationship advice guru, gives his 50 hottest tips for terminating an affair in 2019.
1. 2. 3. 4.
Suggest that monogamy is a ‘social construct.’ Accidentally call her ‘Mother.’ Suggest that condoms are a ‘social construct.’ Claim, in defence of calling her ‘Mother,’ that you call all women that and that, anyway, like, once she meets your mother, she’ll know what you mean. 5. Self-immolate, and claim it was because she didn’t ‘believe in you.’ 6. Self-immolate, break a fountain pen nib in your arse, then claim cryptically that it was ‘all for her.’ 7. Wonder aloud whether Girls Aloud, an all female singing group, didn’t ‘hamstring its potential’ by failing to secure any male members. 8. Accidentally get her a Mother’s Day card. 9. Accidentally call her a ‘good girl.’ 10. Self-immolate while trying to explain the off-side rule.
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11. Claim, in defence of using the term ‘good girl,’ that you call all girls ‘good girls,’ that is, if they happen to be good. 12. Refuse to acknowledge that there’s anything inappropriate about that, or about anything you’ve ever done. 13. Get caught feverishly whispering to yourself during sex, as if performing an incantation. 14. Do a few lines of Viagra, then, bellowing loudly, crush your penis between two leather bound books, which may or may not be Bibles. 15. Split your penis into ribbons with a blunt penknife then run through a Fnac, purchasing discounted copies of the Jamie Oliver calendar for two-thousand and six. 16. Months after the incident, admit that you were whispering ‘there’s no scientific evidence for the Oedipus complex,’ over and over again that one time. 17. Refuse period sex because you think it’s gross, then vigorously canvass for anal. 18. Link her to articles claiming anal sex is more pleasurable than vaginal sex for women. The articles must be written by men. 19. Get her to peg you once or twice and pretend you ‘love it,’ when it’s clear you don’t. 20. Crying, eat liquid soft scoop vanilla flavour tesco’s ice cream with your mouth open, while quoting Golden Girls seasons from start to finish. 21. Say ‘I love you’ way too soon in the relationship, when it’s also clear that you don’t. 22. Refuse to introduce her to your mother because ‘they won’t get on,’ only for her to find out, when they finally do meet, that really it’s because they’re, in her words, ‘almost the exact same person.’ 23. Ask her to dress up as Rory from the Gilmore Girls while dressed up as Blanche from the Golden Girls. Then, invite her to ‘hotwire your arsehole.’ 24. Explain your chronic insensitivity by claiming it’s because you’re ‘scared of commitment,’ when really you love commitment and it’s because you’re chronically insensitive.
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25. ‘Self-sabotage the relationship’ by founding a cell of elite resistance fighters. Their mission? To cut wires, leak information, and ‘lay waste to your cock.’ 26. Invite her to ‘romance your hairy tent.’ 27. Refuse point blank to discuss the shrine in your room with all the memorabilia from two-thousand and six. 28. Book holidays with friends in the only weekends in summer when she’s free because, despite saying you “want” to go to Bath, you DO NOT WANT TO GO TO BATH. 29. Wonder aloud whether, by taking the penis growth hormones that are occasionally advertised on pornography websites, you could grow your dick so big that you could literally ‘blow your ass apart.’ 30. Claim one can still enjoy R Kelly’s music. 31. Claim one can still enjoy Woody Allen’s films. 32. Claim that, after the mojito thing, Dianne Abbott should ‘show some respect for the rule of law’ and ‘step down.’ 33. Prank-call her from A&E claiming she ripped your taint. Then, actually rip your taint, from the excitement of the prank call. 34. Accidentally unlock the safe under your bed, and let her find all the letters, presents, and precious objects that you’ve ever received from Mother. 35. Refer to your cock as ‘mastiff cock’ – not in the sense that your cock is as big as a mastiff’s; but with the implication that a literal mastiff actually legally owns your cock. You’re serious. You’ve drawn up the papers. 36. Ask if she can dress up in the swimsuits and underwear modelled by Joanne, a brunette model, from the Bravissimo summer collection of two-thousand and six. 37. Beg that she write down the words, ‘My boobs feel so supported!’ and ‘This bra really supports my boobs!’ on a scrap piece of paper. Then bend down and eat that scrap. 38. Use the term ‘lady-killer’ to describe yourself. Refuse to admit that the term ‘lady-killer’ means someone who kills women. 39. Insist you write secret love poems about her, when you definitely don’t. 40. Insist you’re writing a novel where she’s the ‘main character.’
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41. Get caught kneeling along side your bed, praying your dick ‘get big as the Eiffel tower.’ 42. Call her from a reunion with old school friends, crying and high, and get her to console you, after they kept joking she wasn’t real. 43. Even more stoned, ask her repeatedly whether or not ‘she is real.’ 44. On the same phone call, get so high you forget both her name and your name, and refer to both of you, and everyone else in the room, as ‘Mother.’ 45. Get caught feeding your dick to a mastiff as you repeatedly explain the offside rule to yourself, which, by the way, you don’t understand. 46. Design and construct an iron maiden device for your penis, lock it around the erect member, and then get her to solve a series of puzzles, in the style of the CBBC show Trapped, within a specific time limit in order to get the key. 47. Jailhouse tattoo the words ‘two-thousand and six’ onto the undercarriage of your penis in Helvetica Neue. 48. Refuse to get it checked out when the infection starts. 49. Carefully establish feudal rights over large swathes of England and Wales, slowly amass tithe money, and then actually go ahead and mastermind a Children’s Crusade, in order to besiege and eventually recapture (for the children) your own twisted and gangrenous cock. 50. Accidentally repeatedly refer to yourself in the thirdperson, as ‘pussy ass li’l bitch.’
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YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING.
JUST NOD.
by Emma Levin You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do or say may be used against you in a court of law. Anything you do or say that’s interesting might be used on Channel Four, royalties at 0.07%, and they reserve the right for international syndication. You have the right to consult an attorney. The attorney has the right to break down and sob and bury her head in the elbow of her pinstripe suit. You have the right to request a new attorney seven times, before wondering what it is they put in the water around here. If this is your first time being processed, we will need to take your fingerprints. They will be given back to you at a later date, and with interest. If you are here for more than sixteen hours, you get an extra thumb. If you manage to collect an entire set of spare fingerprints, you will be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win one of six ‘commemorative postcards.’ It will be unclear what it is they are commemorating.
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Roughly once every two hours, you might hear an alarm. Do not worry, this is merely an auditory hallucination – please note it down in the sparkly purple ‘dream journal’ provided, then feed it into the cold, metal ‘dream journal shredder’, also provided. You are permitted to make one phone call. While there is no strict time-limit on the call, please be aware that time is weird, and also has a habit of running away from you. You don’t notice it passing until one day you take a morning walk along a beach and look down at your hands and think ARE THESE REALLY MY HANDS? THEY LOOK FAR TOO OLD TO BE MY HANDS. And then a couple of days later, when you’re putting out the recycling you catch sight of them again and think SERIOUSLY? THESE ARE MINE? I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WAS EXPECTING MY HANDS TO LOOK LIKE – BUT, WELL, YOU KNOW, MAYBE LIKE A PAINTING OF SOME HANDS, NOT FRONDED MEAT-SPATULAS. And before long you’re sitting on the couch, staring at your fingers and your wife’s saying “Alan, can you look up at me?”, and you’re just wondering whether you’re a sort of reverse Dorian Grey, ‘cos although you seem to be decaying, up in the attic there’s this graduation photo of you as a young man, and that hasn’t aged at all.
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Two eggs, 330g flour, 100g milk. was it too predictable that on the day of Shroves she asked me to make pancakes. Maple syrup not sweet Cigarettes and bananas. I wonder if, under Spitfire skies did they make pancakes then, dropped, like an egg cracked too soon
enough,
but your pancakes are bitter
when they stick to the pan,
we both know then, that this ritual will never become a tradition
next year on Ash Wednesday
i smoke rollies with someone else.
By Eimer McAuley [Editor’s Note: Poems from Eimer’s new collection Softboi poetry: from pre-prep to Pembroke will be published in every edition of the Isis, from now until the end of time.]
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PARTY TIME
by Frankie Taylor At first the job had been pitched to Gary Lineker as a golden opportunity. “Nothing but sun, beach, and (finally) the time for you to brainstorm some new flavours of crisps!” But life on mars hadn’t turned out that way. It hadn’t turned out that way at all. It was less about sexy robots, and more about rocks and dust, and having to poo into a special machine that turned his poo into fertiliser. And using that pooey fertilizer for the potatoes in the potato patch. And hand-cutting those same potatoes into crisps, knowing that every time he ate some, he was basically eating his own shit. What’s more, the only flavour he’d come up with so far was ‘disappointed marmalade.’ When Gary was honest with himself, he knew no one wanted ‘disappointed marmalade’ crisps. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t have to look after them alone with his brother, Wayne Lineker. It wasn’t just that Wayne didn’t work. It was that, even long before they’d been sent out there, he’d – well – lost any semblance of compos mentis, after one too many drug addled Ibizan weekends. His rapid narcotic appetite was a problem. Wayne guzzled medical supplies like tic-tacs, and Gary was left cleaning up his messes. They’d already
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lost two stiffs on the way over, because Wayne had thought they were K-holing, springing them from the capsules that said (quite clearly, or so Gary thought) ‘CRYOGENICALLY FROZEN’ into the great dark beyond. Gary’s only comfort were the memories he had of the massive, lustrous face of his ex-colleague Alan Shearer. As he returned from another afternoon walk, bounding down through the hissing airlock, he imagined he was back on Match of the Day. Alan Shearer there sitting down on the pundit’s sofa, sounding off again about the antics of some poor Argentinian teenager. That made him happy. But as he dusted down his suit, he remembered Alan was millions of miles away. That made him sad. Once inside he saw his brother Wayne, who was furiously gyrating the mechanism of a French press, trying to froth up some powdered milk. Typical. Ever since their arrival, Wayne had been preparing for a massive party for when all the sleepers had been woken up. It had become Gary’s job to explain, over and over, that this wouldn’t be happening for another five years. Wayne only ever responded with jittery, cracky nonsense. ‘I don’t care if those bloody Martians do – vibe cultivation is a part of my being – in Zante the – ambience is a spiritual – Gary, she’s a fickle mistress, Mrs. Feng-shui –’ he says, dumping his fresh crop of milk foam into a bucket. ‘It’s going to be banging, mate!’ he screamed. ‘A huge foam party! Girls, drugs, and all sorts of different alcohols in a giant bin bag…’ Unseen by his rambling brother, Gary removed his protective leopard and slumbered away to his own sleeping capsule. Perhaps Wayne couldn’t be blamed. Perhaps NASA should have known better than to choose the lead proponents of their Mars Mission by random postcode selection. In any case, it wasn’t just Wayne that was making liberal use of the new colony’s medical supplies. Once the capsule locked, Gary clawed two blue pills from his sleeping bag, took them both, and closed his eyes. He dreamt he had been
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sliced thinly and was being cooked slowly by Jake Humphries in a giant oil vat. The dream made him feel very good. One day around a week later, as Gary sat fingering at a control panel with a flailing hand of crisp-coated digits, Wayne ploughed through the doors to the control room, dressed in nothing but a pair of fingerless gloves, covered in luminescent liquid. ‘I THINGKH I GKNOW WHAHKT FOOOD TO SERVE HAT THGE PATRTY’, his mouth was full of the same liquid. ‘GYOU CAN EAT GLOWSCHTIKS!’ He spat a coin of goop into his palm and offered it to his brother. Gary looked at the mixture, then at Wayne’s face, jaw agog, surrounded by bright yellow spittle. ‘ITS AGCTUALLY REALLY TASHTY, QUITE NUANCED.’ Gary sighed, and retrieved another blue pill from the pocket of his jumpsuit. As his brother carried on ranting, he swallowed, and let the sleeping pill muddle his mind. Nothing like this ever happened in the films. No one in Star Trek had to worry whether Spock was too wired to operate the tractor beam. In the absence of any other options, he just sighed, and walked back to his sleeping capsule again, falling into another deep-fried sleep. He was awoken by the distant sound of a thumping 4/4 techno beat. It shook the floor so hard that Gary found it difficult to walk back into the main building. Entering through a pair of white sliding doors, he saw a hundred, two hundred … thousands of yawning people. They milled about, eyes glazed and silent. Wayne rushed about in a pair of early 2000s shutter-shades, telling the newly-awoken that their days of off-world partying had just begun, and handing out plastic goody bags. Gary hit him hard in the face. Once more, pointlessly, he explained to Wayne the key facts regarding the cryogenic freezing. Currently, their supplies could barely support a population of 2. It would be five years before they would get another supply drop. That was when the sleepers were due to awake, and the mission could properly begin. Everyone here would starve before then. He had just murdered them.
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To drive the point home, Gary called his brother an idiot. Placid, Wayne looked back, his massive pupils soft behind the shuttered sunglasses. Wayne said sorry. He only wanted to throw a big party. He didn’t mean to kill everyone. Someone in the crowd asked what was going on and if there was anything she could eat. Gary shouted at them to shut up. As Wayne apologised, and as he heard the fist sounds of crying from the recently unfrozen children, Gary tried to focus on Alan Shearer. He thought of Alan Shearer making a wry quip. He thought of Alan Shearer’s great bald brow, frowning. He thought of showing Alan Shearer around Mars, of their picnicking together in the red and rocky deserts. He was never going to see him again. The Mars mission was over before it had even begun. Gary wouldn’t even live to get his retirement package. He wondered if there had ever been any opportunity to make anything even remotely important, out the tattered, worthless, imminently terminable shards that he had called his ‘life.’ Then he wondered back to his sleeping capsule and locked the door.
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by Naomi Pacifique
orange stained
the evening is orange stained. because I put orange zest in my chocolate cake. I baked my chocolate cake using a recipe a best friend gave me. she said it was the best chocolate cake she had made so I made it today. the evening is orange stained because I feel better after all, despite waking up feeling like shit. it has been a week since I felt his touch so I made the chocolate-orange cake. I wrote a poem on the way home about his touch, it goes like this: I like you
in the dark in the nearly black in the place my body loses ground & finds its flights & breathes & breathes & breathes
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it isn’t much of a poem but at least I know how I felt right then. it is a good cake. I taste it two hours before he is meant to arrive. it is a good thing that I made two batches because I eat quite a lot of it to taste it in the orange stained evening. one day he told me I am a chocolate monster and he was right. I like the taste of chocolate a lot. I like to think that the richer the chocolate the better, but I eat white chocolate so quickly too even though I know white chocolate upsets my stomach, and my stomach rumbles, like I really am a chocolate monster. it is one a.m. and I am drained so I lie in bed and read some poetry. I discover some more Sharon Olds that I love. I love Sharon Olds. there is a poem tonight where she’s a connoisseuse of slugs. she says about the slugs – I liked to stand there in silence until the slug forgot I was there and sent its antennae up out of its head, the glimmering umber horns rising like telescopes. she compares the naked jelly of those gold bodies to the first time she saw a naked man, seeing that quiet mystery reenacted, the slow elegant being coming out of hiding and gleaming in the dark air, eager and so trusting you could weep. I like the dark. I love the dark with someone in it. I love all the bits I forget are there and then the bits I see are there which I hadn’t known about. I think of trusting and how I trusted him so quick with my thoughts. I am lying still waiting for him but it is not the same as watching and waiting for antennae to rise in the blue-black dark of a night. the evening is not orange stained anymore. it is just tired. I am really tired. he said he would be back at 2.30 am. it is 2.30 am and I decide I will wait half an hour longer. he is driving back from Scotland. it is a 10 hour drive, which is very long. I wanted to be there for the 10 hour drive with him but I am here in this evening instead. Sharon writes about her dad and her lovers in a way that makes me feel I’ve had a similar life to hers but I probably haven’t.
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I could say that the evening is stained in Sharon now and it is stained too in all the memories I associate her poems with – like those gold bodies. I want to write honestly like that too. it is hard because I have to see honestly before I can write honestly. seeing honestly is hard. I am reminded of it each time I go back to my childhood flat. each time I have an argument with him. the bedside table lamp is still on at 3am when I decide I’ll doze for a bit. I’ll fall asleep just enough so that if the front door opens I will hear it and I can go touch him. it is always strange to touch him after I have not touched him in a long time. it is a bit like my body asking is he real? is he real? there must be a ripple in my skin that happens just because of his. it was there the first night we slept with each other and it is still there one year later, so at least I know some things are what they are. the second night we slept with each other he told me I was so liberated but I think we were braving the liberation together. through the window I keep hearing people coming out of cars with suitcases on the street – endless suitcases on the street I am still in my dungarees when I doze off. at first it’s with the book still on my chest but then I think I need a bit more comfort – not too much or I’ll outright fall asleep – I take the book off my chest and turn so I’m clinging to the duvet – I doze – I doze – I wake up – the front door has opened I go to him, touch him – hug him – it is always strange to feel him again after time has passed. an inner breeze settles in through me is he real? is he real? it is 5 am, I have been dozing for 2 hours – on the couch he tells me about his time away, he complains – perhaps it is falling, still the falling – the night speckled in orange-black. when he gets in bed but I am still busy flossing he says it’s okay I have been waiting over a week for this, I can wait another two minutes in bed his skin feels so good on mine. his skin feels so good.
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his skin feels like it is tied to some deep knot inside me and the deep knot is pulling and pulling inside me now that he is here. or perhaps it feels more like my layers of skin multiplied into many sheets of skin rubbing and rubbing and frictioning against each other it takes me ages to fall asleep. I am trying to cover as much of my skin with his skin – it takes me ages to fall asleep, I try several positions each position I am touching the translucent body – his chest, his armpit, kissing his armpit like taking a gulpful – my skin tracts in his skin in small ways which feel big – the small skin feels like the big skin finds the big skin – my skin feels big inside his – like the tide inside me lapping in, like mm mmm mm – the evening is big – the evening is so big, inflated, re-flated, re-flated. and when I wake up he is splayed out like a dancer in his sleep. his arms stretch to the wall – I like to see him like this, I love to see him – tender and always naked because I have never met someone who gets naked as quick as he – in his golden skin, in bed, where a skin craved skin. our small antennae raising for each other under the pores – umber now under the sunlight – yes, I am addicted to him in bigger ways than I am a chocolate monster. and he is the orange to the evening, sometimes – now the umber to the morning, spraying it in bigger wider – exhales, and stretched, and tender, and slept, awoken, and rising still, and rising still, inside my skin
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Abortive Fiction by Michał Krenz
The Red Hare The red hare peered out of the shallow den he called home. Thanks to his blindingly fast reflexes, he almost managed to escape the rusted blade of the plough. “The red hare peered out of the shallow—” passed through the red hare’s head before it landed eighteen furrows further, cut off at the fourth cervical vertebra.
Absolutely Ridiculous “This is absolutely ridiculous,” said Jenny, in a state of elation which she tried to conceal with apparent annoyance. But who was Jenny? There arose a suspicion, and a rather sneaky one at that, that Jenny was nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a person. She would not pass the Bechdel test, and she definitely wouldn’t work as the protagonist of her own story. “Oh, Jenny... We love Jenny!”
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Valerie Fails to Quit Valerie failed to quit once more. Just like her internet browser, she had several unfinished processes running in the background that she was unable to close.
Three Hundred and Forty-Six After he established he only had three hundred and forty six thoughts available to him each day, Matt became very careful with his stream of consciousness. Surprisingly, he didn’t think of the limitation much at all, at least he didn’t want to. Once an hour, perhaps. That in itself removed sixteen thoughts a day. Neither did he think all the thoughts he did have, had to be brilliant. He mused about it fleetingly only after having had a particular thought. He also thought the thought he did have was not brilliant enough. That meant two additional thoughts for each actual thought. That left him a hundred and ten thoughts free to be thought whenever he wanted. That was still plenty, especially considering he was able to brush his teeth using only five thoughts each time and urinate using only four. Defecation was a somewhat more complex procedure and demanded twenty-three. Then, there was shopping for groceries and cooking and, even worse, washing up, which all together accounted for seventy-five individual thoughts. That left him with two perfectly satisfying opportunities for brilliant, independent, creative, outof-the-box, and proactive thinking. “Time to get up,” he thought every morning after his alarm went off. “Time to go to sleep,” he would think every evening after brushing his teeth.
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Chubby Spaniel by Alicia Haden
For some reason they’re always brown with a white diamond on their neck and they’ve got so many rolls. Normally with their tongues hanging out they have the most peculiar expressions like they can’t decide if they’re hungry, or irritated at their tubbiness. I remember when we had a puppy. We fed her too much so she looked like a pear. Sometimes they have chubby cheeks that look a bit like fluffy moustaches. They cause us endless amusement, apparently. They entertained my boyfriend for hours. But above all we do love them oh yes we do even if they are a bit on the chubby side.
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cc
Access by Thomas Dervan
Your dog, it has had a litter. You must do something about this, and what are you going to do about this. God, they remind you of guts when they spill out. However, guts do not squeak. Alright. Well, how are you supposed to do this. One dog, one dog is already a lot. Because some time in the future you will have died. Day. You are out in the garden. There’s heat and light with the morning, which you feel among the spaces of your body. You are pulling out weeds from the grainy dirt. Doing it slow, as usual. It would not do to trip again. Your leg still has purple and blotches from last time. And you enjoy it too much. Yes, the juices inside of your body have soured. And whenever you draw blood — whether on purpose, or not — the smell of it. So sharp it pulls and urges the dead skin off your
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face, and makes a fizzling like ants in your toes. And makes you think, Heck yea, motherfucker: everything abominable about your body is also extremely funny, when you think about it in this certain special kind of way. You feel tired. You think, I may sleep tonight. The ground looks clear now. You’ve got the weeds all in a bucket. And you look up. Somewhere beyond the hills things are happening. But here it is quiet. Quiet like air like trees like grass and like gravel. You pick up the bucket. The thing is. Is that you don’t have the time for them. The years are coming, and you can’t give so many of them away. Already there are dogs barking ridiculous echoes along the valleys every night. There isn’t a house around here without one. And anyway you barely, who would you give them to. You barely know anyone out here anymore. You take the bucket with you when you walk around the other side of the house. To the kennel. And it feels good to be in the shade. But when you open the gate you swear. First you do short swears, single words, words about waste matter and sex. Then you do longer ones, stuffing several of them in together. You say, Fuck you, shit-head fuck-face fuck-head idiot, Jesus Christ, fucking hell. You gather the litter up into a basket with a blanket and wipe the gunk off the kitchen tiles. The smell stays. You could do what other people do when this happens. Feed them, wait till they can walk. Drive an hour up into the roads that curve round the mountains. Drop them off, wait for someone to find them. And then. But then they’d probably just go off into the woods, wander till they died of thirst. As a child you’d found bone heaps while out looking for pinecones. The earth underneath still sodden, and grass, green, growing round them in a ring. But no, but anyway. You can’t drive. Not anymore, since, anyhow. By the side of the kennel door there is a ring, through which there no longer runs any rope. And there’s a rustling down by the scrubs at the end of the enclosure. You swear, and also, you swear again. You are tired, really tired. You are swearing in a language you do not understand. And your teeth hurt, because your teeth
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THOMAS DERVAN
always hurt. At all times, your teeth, they hurt. Well done teeth, you think, you are doing a very good job, well done. Great. No, really, Great. You don’t know why you brought the bucket over. You put it down. Move toward the end of the enclosure, which is big. Involves a steep incline. Your knees, your knees, your knees, they begin to lock, there’s a bouncing jolting feeling in them. So you turn around, place your hands in the dust and in the dirt, and keep going, backwards, down towards the bushes. Look at you, doing what you are doing. Night again. The tapping, probably ominous, on the rooftiles, it has turned into a storm. The wind is coming through. Thing are flailing and flapping outside, you can hear. And you’re almost done with it, didn’t take very long. You can still hear the rustling. You lean your head into spindly branchlets there, and you can see. You’re about to call out. Go on, do it. Bet you won’t. Because the dog looks extremely serious. Her eyes are wet, and tremble. She is very sorry, you think, though she does not seem to have noticed you. But the other dog. Dogs cannot grin. There’s another dog there. Frantic and shiny with popping eyes and a little tongue that is hanging slack from the side of its mouth. Its body gyrates around its tail, which is wagging. Wagging hard. Dogs can’t grin. But this other dog, preparing to mount, has a shit-fucking-eating grin on its face. On its snout, on its face. And he knows you’re there, he knows you’re there, you can tell. No, he does. Definitely. He says it to your face with his face. And you flee. You have habits. Some of them are good. Worthy of recognition. Praise from commentators around the globe. But very few people will ever hear about them, apart from you. On good days you feel lucky to bear witness to your own actions. In the turbulent, multiplicitous darkness you can imagine outside, the million-division vagueness of the rain-patter, you hear something distinguishing itself. You were just getting up, and it seems closer. And of course, the door. Of your habits, there is one in particular, and it goes like this. You rise early. Go to the bus stop, sit on the bench there. And stare out into the aching air. Feel tired, feel sort of scummy and amazing because of how tired you are. Dirty, giddy, and
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ACCESS
also, somehow, serene. Tired. You wait a while, think, concentrate on things and get a little lost in them in order so that the time arrives sooner. The sky, which can be stainless and cold. Or burning. Accelerating into the horizon. The wind, which comes for the Eucalyptus trees. The occasional sound of a car, somewhere far off. The attenuated smell of rotting fruit. And the air, also the air, the air, the air. You sit there, and you think that maybe you can intuit something just beyond it. A particular quality, a vibration or a hue, that implies something about you. Something that comes from you and is you. That maybe, and maybe. If you think hard enough, well. The door, the door the door the door the door the door the door. There’s a knock. And then another knock, knock knock. You say, Shit, fuck. You’re always early to the bus stop. So here’s what you do. There’s an orange tree in the neighbour’s front garden. Good oranges. Burning up nice in the shade of the canopy. So you hobble over, grinning. Figuratively rubbing your hands together, figuratively cackling. You go over to the tree. Pick up one of the oranges, unpunctured and clean, that has fallen to the ground. And you take it to town. Munch it. Vicious. Squeeze it, get juice all over your face and hands. Turn the skins inside out and knaw at the pith. Yea. What’s so good is. The neighbours, the ones whose orange tree this is — they know about it. After a while they’d moved their sofa so it faced the front window. So they’d be watching. But I mean, yea, motherfucker, you keep doing it anyway. Pretty brilliant, don’t you think. One of them’s there pretending to read, maybe, you can see his face in the shadow. I am here within the bounds of your motherfucking property, what are you going to do about it. I am here, I am holding something that belongs to you. And I am going to tear it the fuck up. Go on a squishy rampage right here in front of you. Squish-spith-shh-eaakch-chwiiiish-crish-dripdrip-drip. And what the freak are you going to do about it. You’re looking straight at him, and he makes a mistake. He looks up from his book. And you smile and nod, go on, do it, and you even wave. Laws do not apply to me. Feel my wrath, not from concentrate. He looks embarrassed. Fiddles and shuffles. Changes his facial expression as to communicate that he has forgotten something. And leaves.
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A voice says, Cecília! Are you Home! One moment! Your name is Cecília. Cecília is your name. Besides that, please note that nothing of the following, involving you, is consequential. You shout as loud as you can. Which is not very loud. Your heart is beating. Edge of nervousness in your voice, you notice. Please. But they heard you, you didn’t think. And now they’re coming through the door. Cecília. When you arrive in town you usually end up going to the café. There’s always a long wait for the bus back. There’s a corner in the café where you always sit. Your corner. Where you sit, protected by your large very plastic sunglasses. There are some other regulars around, usually, like the very beautiful woman. Who is so beautiful. Eyebrows and eyes. Black hair, long, always tied up. Something like a portrait, faultlessly executed in thick permanent marker, is how she looks. You envy her, and also not, because the men, the men who come to the café, they’re always pulling up chairs next to her. The men, who are crinkly and toothy. Who sit there eating snails, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer. Playing backgammon. Laughing. Laughing. Leaning back, placing their hands on their guts. Some of them, you will admit. Some of them can speak quite well, can, well. But they smell that terrible way. And you watch closely the slime of snails on their gums as they chew, mouths open. And you always end up hating them. Dreaming up elaborate plans to make them feel mildly uncomfortable. Plans that you can never carry out. If you’d just please, you say, One moment, please! If you please. But they’ve closed the door behind them. One second until. They’re coming through into the kitchen. Whenever young people come into the café, everyone else stares too. There’s not many of them around here. Anyone would admit. They’d be stupid not to leave. Like your sons. Living in small apartments in a place far away from here. With tall, thin girlfriends, and no children, not even any children. But you do love your boys. Your little boys, laughing. First their facial expressions say: shock. Then they indicate anger. And you become very afraid. They’re the neighbours, and they are large men. Their hair is matted
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from the moisture, their shirts cling awkwardly to their torsos, they are dishevelled, they are not predictable. It would be a little better, a little less worse, if it were quiet, but the rain is there, it sounds like rush and like scatter, and the velocity and the trajectory of everything is disturbed. They are there, almost vibrating, poised in the doorway. And you feel the feeling you get when you think you know someone may be about to hit you, and then you feel pathetic. When you get home from town you might clean the house. Fulfil other habits, these less worthy of prizes from organizations of international prestige. Watch television. Take bowels of leftovers to the dog. Clean the tiles on the walls (some of them have fruit designs and you like to make it so they shine.) Rearrange the glittering translucent objects in the wood-glass cabinets. You try to stay very still and, and wait. They do the same. They haven’t moved forward from the doorway. Or they have, things are moving and not moving, straining to move, only just attaining non-movement. Seconds pass, the longest, slowest seconds. The extremeness of the rain, probably ominous, and how between each instant, and among all of them, there is a messy openness, contorting like an internal organ. The next moment comes to pierce the previous, revealing another gaping absence, shivering and irregular. Seconds. From the tub, there is a shallow gurgling. The old dog. Suddenly she’s there at the door. Wanders lazily into the room, stinking and wet. No time is passing. Nothing is occurring, happening, transpiring, etc. Her paws click against the tiles. She looks at the neighbours and wags her tail, in a way that you know will seem to them later excessively poignant and meaningful, a knowing look. Fuck. The seconds. Then the dog looks at you, and it seems to you then that her face and her body communicate, somehow, no information. And then she wanders out again, and there are drips and clicks in the corridor until she goes, of her own accord, out into the rain again. There is a pup there, in the tub, and it is still alive. So you raise yourself from a kneeling position, and stand. You do not say anything. You retreat into the corridor. One of them goes, Where are you going. When you emerge from the bathroom all that is left of the tub is some water on the floor. You go out to the front door, and, for some reason, open it. The rain has
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stopped. You look out into the night and see nothing, less than nothing, and close the door. Why had they come, you think. The neighbours never came, never, unless you asked them to. And you think, and you know that they are going to talk about this forever. Each time someone came to their house for the first time. They’d pet the animal, which would grow to be insistent and endearing and sloppy. Have we told you His Story, they would say. He survived, they would say, He was the one that survived. There is hate, a lot of hate. Purple and swelling in your centre. That was it, they could not understand. Could not know that really Your Life Had Been Quite Difficult. That Your Life Had Not Been Good. That Your Mother Was A Person Who Lived And Also Who Died, And That Was The Truth. But you want them to know, for one of them to say these things to their friend, who is stroking the animal, for them to purse their lips and suddenly look away at the floor, a little bashful. For everyone in the room to look at them in sad concentration, for their eyes to glitter. Later that night you slip on the tiles in your bathroom. You are stunned. And an irridescent void forms itself around the darkness, and you stare into it. It is not possible to know how long you stayed there motionless on the floor. In any case, after a while, you rise, and begin to crawl. Out of the bathroom and along the corridor, half blind, guided by the premonition of light coming from a wall lamp in the kitchen. And now you feel the compact, lucid darkness of your room touching against the liquid in your eyes. You climb on to your bed and sit cross-legged and rest your palms on your knees and you think, I am a statue in an abandoned chapel, on a forsaken island, in a large ocean, whipped by a storm. Inexplicably a candle burns. Things seem to approach towards a calm at your centre. When you sleep, finally, you dream not of people, or of events, but of language. Dense manuscripts scribbled in ancient, obscure alphabets, hundreds of voices, greetings, connectives, nonsense, all whispered as if directly into your ear.
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This is the end of the first issue of RGB Colourscheme. We hope you enjoyed.
Content Warnings: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover includes includes slurs, mention of sex, violence, drugs, and a extremely very terrible relationship. Party Time includes mention of drugs. orange stained includes mention of sex. Abortive fiction includes mention of the killing of an animal. Access includes swearing and mention of the killing of an animal.
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