Liars' League

Letters from the Housing Committee by Joel Blackledge

LETTERS FROM THE HOUSING COMMITTEE, read by Louisa Gummer


Dear Lorna Fullingham,

It is our pleasure to welcome you to Starling House as its newest resident. All of us in the building were delighted to receive your submission. We’re a jolly community here in the block, always living in a neighbourly spirit and ready to band together for the common good. We do hope you find apartment 11B to your liking. We’re afraid the previous resident was something of a slob, but we were thorough with the clean up. Let us know of any residual offensiveness and we’ll tackle it together.

You’ll find a community of like-minded neighbours here in Starling House. Our values are tolerance, inclusion, and togetherness. Learn those words, friend, because here they are ideas by which to live and die.

You’ll notice that every other apartment with a balcony on the southern wall has a planter of flowers. There’s a pattern of geraniums, chrysanthemums and marigolds alternating with a bouquet of nasturtiums and crocum – the latter of which your balcony falls into, being on the 11^th floor. The effect when seen from the retail courtyard is quite something. Let us know if you need any help getting the flowers to bloom. Rubbish collection is on Wednesdays. Recycling Thursdays. Welcome again,

The Housing Committee

PT Fuckin' SD by Richard Jay Goldstein

PT FUCKIN' SD, read by Nicholas Delvalle 

           Saturday, so no patients. We close the office early Friday afternoon and don’t open until Monday morning. I’m just in the office to tidy up a few charts and notes — then I’ll take off for the rest of the weekend, maybe hit the beach. There’s nobody here except me, and the door is locked. I like being alone, where it’s usually so busy.

          Well, it’s usually so busy because our office is right here in Oceanside, which is just north of San Diego, next to Camp Pendleton, the big Marine Corps base. Mostly what we see these days are military or ex-military, suffering with PTSD — post-traumatic stress disorder, as everybody knows. PTSD’s a big deal for the Marines — too many cases, and too many suicides. Has a venerable history, PTSD does. Started out as shell shock, then became battle fatigue or sometimes Combat Stress Reaction, before finally morphing into PTSD. The docs on the base send me the especially bad cases, the ones they just don’t have time to deal with.

          My name’s Mark Jensen. I’m a PhD psychologist, with this big solo practice, and — like I say — a special interest in PTSD.

 

We/She by J. A. Hopper

WE/SHE, read by Charlotte Worthing 

We are all She, all 3,117 of us; itemised, docketed and accounted for in a mothballed warehouse just outside Milton Keynes. Our puffy caramel blonde hair, waved and styled in miniature, is just like hers – is hers – from TV. Our kiss-shaped lips, pink as guava pulp, are hers too, wearing her sensual sneer of command.

Her full name is Empress She-Ba, an eighties reboot of Wonder Woman in response to the success of He-Man: the empowered heroine of a big-budget pilot commissioned by a toy company with its eye on the teatime prize. But the company went spectacularly bankrupt before the full series ever took to the air, another victim of the Transformers craze – and She was gone, like a mayfly, in a single day.

Susan Fay Saunders, the actress who played her, had a career of sorts afterwards, but it never got that good again. You might say her big break broke her. (We know these things because we are her: there is some of her in all of us, and we can feel her still, in our bendable plastic bones).  But we – the action figures, the empowering Barbie-alternatives that were the whole point of the exercise, we who were going to conquer every home in the land from under the Christmas tree – we remain: perfect, untouched by time.

The Reading, or Performance Anxiety by David Guy

THE READING, or PERFORMANCE ANXIETY, read by Peter Kenny

            Yeah, I’ve never done this before. I‘m fucking terrified. I was terrified before, for weeks, and I was terrified earlier, out the back, waiting, trying to relax. And I’m terrified now, standing here on stage behind this mike. Holding on to this lectern as tightly as I can for courage and trying not to look any of you in the eye. In case I see your disgust, your anger. Your boredom. Or possibly worse, your delight and amusement. So I’m going to concentrate as intently on my notes as I can, pick them up, and start to read.

            “Yeah, I’ve never done this before,” I read out loud, word for word from the page. “So, um, sorry. If it’s, you know…” I give you an amiable shrug — at least I hope it’s amiable — and then finish my sentence… “if it’s a bit shit.”

            A couple of you laugh. Not many, and not for long. The audience equivalent of a polite smile.

            “So anyway,” I say, “I hope this is okay.” A slight pause before the next line. “I’ve been dreading this all week.” And I try to say that, I mean to say that, with a laugh, but at best I manage a sort of forced unnatural looking smile.

Sharing by Judy Birkbeck

SHARING, read by Carrie Cohen 

            A bounty of peanuts! Quickly we lay eggs on them and let the little ones gorge all day. We like the new guests. They are newly-weds from a bigger flat and our cupboard is a fetid jungle of bedding, shoes, pots, handbags – and peanuts. Water rushes through the pipes but the cupboard door stays shut, keeping the young warm till they grow fat and venture abroad.

            One day the man opens the door. We hold our breath and pray the little ones won’t wriggle while he unwraps the plastic bag and peers. We have never seen the like: his head begins all right at the bottom with a bushy ginger beard and big lips, but at the top are button eyes and a bald crown with a ring of decimated hair.

            ‘Come here a minute,’ he calls.

            The reverse head appears: thick ginger curls, sweeping ginger eyebrows, eyes as big as conkers, a snub nose, scarlet lips hardly big enough to hold a peanut, ending in no chin. We swoon at the bar of hazelnut chocolate she munches.

Five Baby Rats by Michael Sano

FIVE BABY RATS, read by Silas Hawkins 

Colleen shudders.

“What do you mean what should we do with them?”

Eyes closed, the disgust shakes through her gently, vibrating her neck and rolling through her shoulders and down her spine before settling in a wiggle at her waist.  

Joey replies with a nervous smile.

“Yeah, what do you mean?” booms Matthew. “They’ve gotta go.” Matthew means to imply they will kill the young creatures and Colleen agrees with a fervent nodding, though in her mind she imagines driving out of the city, into the woods somewhere, to deliver the little beasts to freedom. Joey gives them both a slight nod to confirm his misaligned agreement as well. He is thinking about how to keep the creatures healthy while obscuring them from everyday life in the apartment.

Next event: Us & Them on Tuesday 8th November

November's swarm of stories features baby rats, traumatised soldiers, uppity moths, self-consuming metafiction, 80s action figures, and a very sinister housing committee. No narrator is too unusual, no story too strange for our Us & Them event on Tuesday November 8th, as we hand over the mike to collective voices, extraordinary viewpoints and life-or-death clashes and connections. Click on the Facebook event for full details and let us know you're coming!

 

US & THEM WINNING STORIES

Letters from the Housing Committee by Joel Blackledge, read by Louisa Gummer

PTfuckingSD by Richard Jay Goldstein NEW AUTHOR, read by Nicholas Delvalle

Sharing by Judy Birkbeck NEW AUTHOR, read by Carrie Cohen

Five Baby Rats by Michael Sano NEW AUTHOR, read by Silas Hawkins

The Reading by David Guy NEW AUTHOR, read by Peter Kenny

We/She by J. A. Hopper, read by Charlotte Worthing

 

As ever we'll be bringing the wonderful as well as the weird, in the form of our infamous literary quiz, brand new books to win and all the sweets we couldn't finish from Hallowe'en :) 

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and it's just £5 on the door (cash only).We usually finish around 9.30 and stick around for a drink after. Seating is first come first served - so it's an idea to get there a bit ahead of time if you want a good table - but if you have a party of five or more you can reserve a table by calling 07808 939535. 

The venue is in the basement bar (accessibility note - there are stairs) of:
The Phoenix
37 Cavendish Square
London
W1G 0PP

Nearest tube (a 5 minute walk) is Oxford Circus (Victoria, Central & Bakerloo lines).