Rat Out of Hell

It was Dante who arranged Hell in circles, sorting the damned into categories like a library. The innermost circle of Dante's Hell was reserved for traitors. That's how I think of my body now.

There's a tiny circle on my most recent scan. I've printed out the image, although it took some editing for the tumour to show up on the black and white copies. They're taped up around the house.

You can hire guides at Disney Parks. The cost is outrageous, but everyone says that you can't take it with you. Dante had Virgil, and I'll have some suntanned Floridian to lead me and my tumour through the Magic Kingdom. A better journey than the one the consultant has laid out for me.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Devil horns look like mouse ears from certain angles; and Dante's theme park has much in common with Disney's. I pass my days exploring links between them.

There are secret tunnels under Disneyland. Every system has its bureaucracy. Every circle has two centres. And every trap has its way out, if you're prepared to pay the cost.

Live Reading on February 28th

I’m performing on February 28th at In a Land Gallery in Hebden Bridge. Also appearing is Rosy Carrick, reading from her new collection; Halifax poet Toria Garbutt; and our friend Lou-Ice, coming from Sweden to perform River love/Ecosexual, which is about “feeling attracted to nature and having sexual or romantic relationships with it”. Lou’s piece is about being in love with a river, wild-swimming, passion and protecting our world.

I’ll perform a new piece The Haunting of Wuthering Heights, which I am currently working on. It’s about a book that’s also a haunted house.

Tickets are £5, which is a bargain. You’ll get four performers and Swedish treats. After the show, we’ll pack away the gallery then head down the pub.

Full details and ticket booking on the In a Land Website

Story Background

Rat Out of Hell was written for my writing group last year. It’s similar to the stories I wrote in my MA. I started with a much longer piece and cut this down until there was the minimum left that told tell a story. And it seems to have worked, based on the discussions in the writing group.

Meta

You will have noticed this email is a little different to the other ones you’ve received. This is the first one I’m sending from my new Buttondown account.

Substack is a great service in many ways. It’s free for the writer and easy to use. It brings in an audience through cross-marketing.

But it also has problems. One is platforming actual Nazis, based on an incoherent ‘free speech’ policy. But there’s also the fact that it’s venture-capital funded. Substack needs to continue growing, and keeps adding features, slowly becoming an entire social network.

While it’s great to see a constant rise in readers from Substack’s growth hacking, these aren’t real readers. Some of them have accidentally subscribed to this email through Substack’s use of ‘dark patterns’. I’d rather this email went to people who read it than being deleted unread. I also don’t want to be ensnared in a platform that is transforming itself into a social network, with all the issues that brings.

It’s a little scary to shut down what is, basically, the main ongoing source of new readers - even if most of them are not actually reading this. I thought about this and decided I’d rather have 20 people reading my work that care about it than a larger vanity number.