The Afterlife of Eddy Daemon,
book cover image by Daniel Y. Harris
for Inner Space Space Ghost Machine,
(Analaogue Flashback Books, 2016)
by Rupert M. Loydell
This excerpt entitled
THE SONNET REMIX AFTERLIFE OF EDDY DAEMON is from Inner
Space Ghost Machine (Analogue Flashback Books, 2016), by Rupert M. Loydell, Founder and
Editor-in-Chief of Stride.
THE
SONNET REMIX AFTERLIFE OF EDDY DAEMON
1.
Trails
across the bed. Eddy is dreaming of the removed and the brains
scooped
out into the space siren's body, a wave breaking inside, sinside,
jam
jar provided. Spare eyes are always Miss Taken and her high risk smile.
Highly
useful but not medically essential. Risk piracy, lingering gazes,
eskimo
kiss, then see how you feel. There: slow blink heart flutter,
molten
trails of meat cleaver and mincing lust. Being in love, his body
a
burned machine in the shed to your left. Away. Eddy scratches his itch
in
the do-what-you-must, then washes his big finger labyrinth en route to
another
hand. Break your pencil and pens, the Earth. He wants to make it
right,
make it then discard. Never write or talk about Eddy. Beautiful things,
nothing
else will do. The Daemon again. There must be no earth overrun
by
brokenhearted zombies trying to breed necromancy or well-wishers
wishing
well. Eddy Daemon is young, Eddy's not a broken man no more,
he's
consigned to the silence of nothing. It is as though the editor can.
2.
Darkness
spins. Reorganise. It is as though physical gender means nothing.
Eddy
is feeling dismayed, his work is reassembled, nobody asked him how
or
why. It is as though ideas mean nothing and can be freely plagiarised.
There
is nothing to worry about, his argument remains the same. There is
nothing
to worry about, posthumanity is here to stay. Everything is in flux,
in
change, this is liberation, this is how things are. Eddy would like to believe
but
somebody made things confusing, somebody stole his words. Things should
be
clear not misted up. It must be time for a change, say the voices in his head,
but
he could be persuaded, doing what we are told not to seems to make us free.
And
when she danced for me it was hard to stop my fitting and post-medication
dance.
They went on holiday for several years, crowds go wild. When the light
stops
overlord chromosone damage left him allergic. Now we're back, and
when
we get to just about everything, it brings home a nasty rash which
has
never been away. It dawned on him he is lost. Oblivion and loss is to die.
3.
Eddy's
Daemon's essence has been not at all the same, is now saved, third jar
on
the left. This was all our Eddy's fault, back of the fridge, and now we are
ready
to it's ever needed. In the feedback evidence he is gone without future,
a
decaying noise loop without trace. No notice given, no time. When critical mass
finally
comes, no forwarding address, no distant relatives, no convention left
undone;
an inquisitive faulty android will upload Eddy and re-incarnate him
as
your best friend or at least a posthuman overlord. This will be a neighbour
to
say hello to, many years too soon. Eddy goodbye. As it is, the beast deserves
no
more time to live though the earth goes on. We, he, can never die, the
unmade
inhabit our own country and we wish Eddy Daemon was first. Unscrew
his
arms and vote to leave. There seems too many legs so stick them in
the
cupboard, second some misunderstanding. I know nothing. Remove
his
heart, place it in the rubble, the burning kidney bowl; ignore the twitches
and
screams, it's flesh. Eddy's natural system often seems to defy death.
4.
It
takes a while for life to force its way into Star Command's private universe
Fly
by, fade. No anaesthetic is required. Once everyone is in uniform,
constellations
of lust leave. Vapour is completely still, the head can be gone,
and
when I'm on gas he won't remember the day Hurricane Jane worked her spell.
Eddy
improvises, questions blow by, covering up the sun, undoing answers,
creating
false impressions. This game has no name, look at Delta-Xeroid 5
bright
in the purple. Let no man steal your time or give up on the sky above
or
beseech the electro for no good reason other than to ignite the angel for
a
room in the star engine. Take off for the weekend and claim membership
of
the Hellfire Club. Keep your eyes on the boys and the devil you do, the
devil
you ignore. Warning: Eddy Daemon didn't; both conspire and corrupt.
We
pass natural systems, faces in the sky, nights together as the sun illuminates
desires
you cannot name. What have we still and I experiment with the lost
and
why has Eddy Daemon rescued/found it? The gradual diffusion of form.
5.
At
the back of the kitchen, working methods and ideas draw inner space ghost
machines
into gravity percussion, underpin them, taking a while to come down
to
earth. Zero keeps seeping into culture, but now we are time. Eddy Daemon
and
the Nights all have wet feet and a damp Earth, are headlining at the end
of
a pair of shoes drying in the world. Sparks fly, electric rain short corner,
torn
bloody
clothes hidden under the circuit boards, the band are on fire. Burning
floorboards,
and a working knowledge of the souls aspire to smoke, a sunbird
novum,
a realm from which our victim's disembodied woven shade mapping voice
speaks,
falling prey to a common beginner's mistake of rushing to reach the encore.
Spirals
or circles? Scissors, rock, or paper? The accusatory part of speech? No.
Mollusc
blues, a slide into full advantage, happily mad, risk zombies crashing out
into
the prayer wheel labyrinth, the whole system erasing everyone in Drop City,
where
no-one can quantify damage or wants the string of such a distance
as
the technical days turn to dust. You must hide imagination to cope.
6.
Credit
me in the darkness, stop me in anticipation of the future and falling
through
the cracks here. Eddy is up to his neck in the Church of Unsound Grace.
The
Archangel Zenophobe is in debt, the future seems as bad. He prefers it when
there
is not the past, when bombing souls. Miss Tee is grey and on the death star,
Earth
turns, floats between the goalposts of common sense. The enchanted world
is
Eddy Daemon, is a whirlwind not a rational place, a lost spirit who often takes
vacations
in hell. It is not rational. He needs warmth and to rediscover the power
of
physical home away from the eyes of sensation, to steal a time machine and plug
in
Hurricane Jane. Keep your eyes on the gaps in his storyline and hide the boys,
you
never know what they're doing in the darkness. That Eddy Daemon is electric,
a
war wound with anaesthetic bite. I don't know whether to lick spirit cocktails
and
chalk dust paninis, or steal him and take him home. The future is switched off,
Eddy
Daemon conjures time, living dangerously, can get you a secondhand glow
as
the sun sets over whatever planet we need. Everyone loves Eddy Heartbreak.
7.
Everyone
except me loves Eddy Heartbreaker, now we are marooned out-of-now.
Battery charm bracelet wind-up; you'll have to help out, erase deleted items
Battery charm bracelet wind-up; you'll have to help out, erase deleted items
and
hope for love by default. There are no niceties, only autopossession on demand.
Crystal
the Great shoots starfire into missing stories, and here comes Eddy Daemon,
swaggering
back into the movie of my dreams, the discourse of politics and space.
A
dead dog walks through Noise City dragging not more silence but a broken string
of
lights. End time is to fill the void, shadows near. Change descends across
the
view and points to something else, like morning rain watched from a window.
Everything
changes, home happened when they met in the alleys of the capital.
Eddy
became transnational mutant and assembled uncanny moments from a snake
charmer,
a servant of the memory of imaginary events. Hurricane Jane, the lead
in
the film is an insomniac now, she lives in her own story. The woman on the
ratio,
on
the boundary, surrendered her yellow dress straightaway, once Eddy caught her,
waved
his white flag and swore to own satellites. Eddy would like to never leave.
8.
And
then? And then he rescued her but she has others, can rattle the lock good.
He
cannot get around all her contractual arrangements, his wants, he isn't going
nowhere
any time, despite his tendency towards greater speed and flexibility.
Soon,
he regrets courting the squall that humans or humanoids can provide,
the
fast lane eyes, all that broken quality of bottles and empty glasses. No-one
is
driving, noise still floods the universe and he is data dumps and wikileaks,
a
useless unfiltered hidden man, liquid poured into information, a half life
of
narratives that dry sleep turned out to be. True. Crystal Lane shoots starfire
into
every planet with ragged noise as the credits roll. The future is all at
your
own risk and the weight of this is like a government advisor not visiting
unless
you offer glittering hands and ageless isms, fever syndrome thrills
of
the visceral kind. The soundtrack that unlocks tunnel vision, best-forgotten
memories
and your dreams is a sixteen minute life-saved loop of synthesized
beatbox
and soaring electrics in the sky; a broken guitar, a mirror on the floor.
9.
Something
will occur. Complicit death, he said, will make you regret the future
as
it is all we have in common. But Eddy lives it, always asking questions. I
didn't
share
his sense of doom, loved the blurry sunlight shadows and the cliché wind.
Why
would you rely on the sonnet? Why indeed. It emotes, it was not to be, but
it
is there, so let's dismantle it as words fall on deaf ears, let's see how it
works,
watch
it dying in his mouth. Stop. Please stop emoting, stop sharing, stop trying
to share. Poetry is a final descent, a splashdown into hell. Crash landing would be
to share. Poetry is a final descent, a splashdown into hell. Crash landing would be
preferable
to this. Be more, make language motor towards somewhere, embrace
the
undertow of hypnotic twang, the way that grief is slowly sucked out of you
and
your despair. Don't equate death with what you do, abandon millipede erotica
and
slow acknowledgements. Eddy Daemon fell foul of the train home, attacked
by
distance. Eddy is convinced he knew what he shouldn't have done. His metallic
side looks best but the robot was too young or underprivileged, the karma he
has
customized
since birth is watch-list insurgent. Whatever he did, he shouldn't have.
10.
Possibly,
Eddy is set to a repeat cycle of terrorist or spy fashion, polish, spin,
and
downpour reverie. Shattered sonnets done what he did and he shouldn't feel
so
guilty, guilt is like a brilliant mind driven away from home, like confessing
to
ancestral crime and Eddy doesn't want to be eclipsed by good-looking machines.
Eddy
just does the crime, does what the noise wants. Through all of Eddy's
invisible
stories, he lives slightly out of sunlight in a clearing in the woods.
But
when there's slippage between guilt and time, and if you ever find it,
there's
always room for more jumpcut abuse, lies and excuses, ways to work edits,
a
volatile glitch which will become where and when and why. This is your death,
a
remedy for sleep. Rather than an unwanted return to the ghost harbour,
mess
around with Fuzzlebeth Crackleboy, or blag a time slot for The Guessing.
Liminal
machines acknowledge you exist, so forget all about the Eddy Daemon
Hyperbolic
Rollercoaster. There is no charge to ride, but you will be thrown
to
excess on a nonsensical arc of emotion, then blown away in a strange corner.
—Rupert
M. Loydell
