Dissecting Murder at The Club

Some have asked what acids I took to write my noir and fruity short story “Murder at The Club“. Others found it intriguing but couldn’t understand what was happening. There are too many hidden meanings and an excessive use of single letters to identify each character. It’s just too strange, odd, and confusing, full of descriptions and heavy imagery that are hard to follow — each new line adds overwhelming details to the scenario. I usually don’t like to explain stories, poetry, or any written art, believing anyone could take out whatever meaning they want from what they read. But in the “Murder at The Club“ case, I think it would be a good exercise to dissect it, guide the reader through my creative process, and give an insight into how I achieved all this mumbo-jumbo of pulp fiction.

It all began with me playing around with a Zeniko VS5 R, a mini RGB light my dad gifted me. I’ve been using it to add light magic to my photography. One late night, fueled by my love of taking long exposures — a photo technique that allows one to register an extended period of time — I searched for subjects willing to be part of my experience. Two oranges, one apple and one avocado mingled next to me, smoking their late-night cigarettes, counting the dead, and waiting for morning. Not much to do as society sleeps at 3 AM. Invited to be part of a number, they accepted. My hand placed them into their positions, and a couple of photos were taken, helicoptering my Zeniko around the fruits.

When I checked the photos, I saw a mesmerising amount of colours; it felt like I was in a nightclub with fruits dancing around. The next few days, I enthusiastically revealed the photos to friends, telling them I had taken some fruits to dance at Lux, a famous nightclub in Lisbon. They laughed, but the story was already gaining a peculiar form in my brain. I worked on the idea for weeks, never writing down a word, not exactly knowing what would happen to these fruits, just knowing there would be a murder…

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the one illustrating the main short story is the key to the thousand wild words written from it. Listening to Tom Waits, who inspired the writing and mood of this fiction, I was ready to start.

Let’s dissect the story.

Setting the outside scenery with an intense and surreal image, allowing the reader to creep in slowly, sounded like the best way to start. I throw in some dogs, a moon, a dirty alley, and some motion: dogs cutting their shadows under the moonlight to later scare some fool.

The moon hounds wail in the distance under the influence of moonshine. Aren’t they adorable? Snipping their shadows, tucking these black clippings in astrophysics tote bags for later, like they’re saving them for some cosmic voodoo job down the line.

I also like ouroboric stories where the beginning is the end and vice versa. Attention to the previous and following details is essential to understanding what happens to the narrator of this tale. I added a location where the dogs might be: a piss-stained alley.

Maybe some poor bastard will take a wrong turn down a piss-stained alley on a waning gibbous night, and those hounds will unpack their wrath.

Now, the narrator tells you what happened at The Club, with a tiny reference to the type of folks there: nobody had a mouth because they are fruits.

That same night, I witnessed a murder at The Club. Nobody screamed ’cause nobody had a mouth.

I introduce two characters. They are twin brothers, both called O, which stands for Orange. These two oranges are part of the Rutaceae tree gang.

Mr. O and his twin brother — also Mr. O — are two ripe young sons of the Rutaceae family, the youthful juice from the illustrious tree-gang clan.

They usually go from nightclub to nightclub, rolling their bodies — oranges roll, right? — to listen to bad music and sell something that isn‘t exactly legal.

They often pivot joint to joint, rolling their bodies to satiate their terrible music taste and materialise their citrus pursuits.

I let the reader know the brothers‘ enterprise sells vitamin C, which is something that doesn‘t bleed. But I couldn‘t resist wordplay with the letter C and the idea that in a nightclub, you have women, and women have Cunts, which, as we know, bleed. Playing with that C is bad for business in the brothers’ case.

Hungering for sweetness, lust, and a slice of profit from their vitamin enterprise, both brothers have an appetite for C. And not the kind that bleeds; that tends to be bad for business.

There‘s an added layer here, but it‘s a very elaborate one that only I know. If you‘re reading this, let me share with you that C is also the first letter of Crime. The way the story unfolds at the nightclub ends up with a bloody crime, which is also bad for business. They just want to sell their vitamins, man.

I’m yet to describe The Club’s atmosphere, but I started painting what nightclubs feel like in this juicy world — a place of gathering for unfortunate sods. And I mention another letter: E. Many years ago, I learned from the British Shameless TV series what a couple of E‘s were. Ecstasy. The fruits consume ecstasy. A picture illustrates what the entrance to one of these nightclubs could look like.

[…] nightclubs were precious pearly lairs full of narratives, dens for writers, lovelorn tear-tattooed girls, and drifters who acquired infamous titles for their orgasmic E usage, tab after tab. The neon lamps frenetically flickered shades of all conceivable colours, pounding the core of a shady clubbing society that consumes the sadness of a desolate night.

After a long day working at a fruit stand, Big A enters the scene in one of these nightclubs. Looking at the main picture, we can identify Big A. It‘s the Apple — or, as I say, a couple of sentences later and, in other words, Newton’s pupil: a reference to the apple that created gravity.

That was precisely the kind of dive where Big A would undoubtedly go sniffing after a hell-whipped day of fruit stall rot.

I photographed a flask of Ouzo, a Greek drink, using the same long exposure technique. This photo helped me find the colour and tone for the nightclub Big A entered: The Club.

Pursuing aromas and poor decisions like a biped drunk on Greek anise. Big A enters The Club.

I invite the reader to The Club and describe its fantastic collection of drinks — liquid poems — that, if consumed in excess, might lull fruits to sleep. I show the surroundings and explain The Club‘s fauna of loaded seed holders — fruits with seeds, or is there a sexual meaning to loaded and seed? — is delightful to watch when dancing intoxicated. Everyone is perfect, but only when the lights are off. You need to drink until your brain loses its senses, and then you become or feel perfect. Don’t do this, kids.

Known for harbouring the most exquisite selection of liquid poems anyone could sleep on, The Club’s orchard is most spectacular when loaded seed holders are stumbling to juke with crooked limbs and borrowed grace. No one’s perfect until the lights go off.

I take the reader‘s attention back to Apple — here, I‘m referring to him as Newton’s pupil — and letting the reader know he‘s caught the gals’ attention — grove sirens — who now crawl to get some of Apple‘s fallen star. I repeat the same idea that no one is perfect until — this time — they peck Big A‘s core or, in other words, prick.

Newton’s pupil hits the downtown setting with fumes and sweats, and the grove sirens crawl out of their bodies and ooze to get some of that. And no one’s perfect until they peck Big A’s fallen star.

But there’s a hidden meaning to a fallen star: A fallen star only exists at the very centre of an apple. I learned this when I was about eight years old, and my teacher cut an apple across and showed us two perfect stars on each side of the apple. She told us that all shooting stars, when falling on Earth, go to hide inside apples. So, in the end, The Club‘s ladies are attracted to a shooting star.

The Orange twins don‘t like Apples with stars at their core, and when they see Apple entering and catching everyone‘s attention, they start devising something. As the author, I decided this was the moment to create tension and give a hint that some drama is about to get real. Remember, blood is unsuitable for business; they will try to find another way.

The O brothers squint their juices, pondering if mischief hands should rattle at A’s cage, making him another pulp-page of their empire. ’Cause no one enjoys a big shot in their garden’s pen.

Before the twins make their move, I toss an Avocado onto centre stage. But this isn’t just any avocado — this is Madame A, a sultry, show-stopping diva here to spice things up at The Club. The ladies may have been fascinated by Apple, but when Madame A made her entrance, jaws dropped across the bar. I reference the Watusi dance because I owe it to Patti Smith. On her Horses album and track with the same name, she sings, “and then you do the watusi“, a phrase that has stuck with me since the beginning of days. Now, I could use it, as Madame Avocado requested it.

Madame A also has a tongue, which implies she has a mouth. I previously said Nobody screamed ’cause nobody had a mouth. which hints that she, the only one with a mouth, dies.

Like an electric Watusi dancer jigging on a busted bottle, Madame A arrives — all bumpy skin, creamy curves, and downy galvanic tongue. Sparkling eyelashes smooth the doomsday fringes, and the trembling bartender stirs a velvety cocktail in her wake.

I continue with another hidden riddle. An environmental impact, some would say suggests the whole place was stunned — which was, in the story — but because it‘s followed by while others simply perch on the dancefloor railings, I manage to hide a message here. Avocados are known for being bad for the environment, as they need a lot of water to grow. It adds nothing to the story, but I like these tiny Easter Eggs.

An environmental impact, some would say, while others simply perch on the dancefloor railings.

Oh no. A quarrel between brothers battling to conquer this alligator-skinned diva that stunned the bar. Or will something happen, and the Oranges will work together and postpone the fight?

The brothers never caught that alligator-skinned fruity feline around here, and that’s the type of thing that breeds family quarrels or tightens pith knots.

It looks like Apple hasten to meet Madame Avocado. Gravitating — oh, the word choice. Do you remember Newton‘s pupil? — and stem wagging — Another detail to pay attention to is the stem, wagging — Big A meets Madame Avocado at the dancefloor before the brothers do.

Big A moved when the brothers stalled — gravitating, stem wagging, towards this fresh pulp in town, leaving a trail of envy throughout the room. Wretched is the life of the undecided.

Having delayed the Oranges’ moment of action in the last paragraph, I needed to introduce a fungal reaction. Fruits and fungi, or a new letter into the game, P, which stands for penicillium, show how pissed the brothers are at Apple‘s behaviours.

Under ferocious UV light, the twins’ glowing bodies of sin engendered a fungal scheme. Slithering into the secret folds of their corporation — the bread of their living — they produced a teeny hexagonal-shaped solution, a remedy that never failed in times of need. P is the market name for Fleming Industries, Penicillium.

Nightclubs are a dangerous place. Between loud noises, drunk strangers, and overlooked drinks, I try to bring some music and rhythm to the scene. A DJ is playing with his tools, and right on the track‘s drop, the Oranges rub some penicillium under Apple‘s nose, thinking the fruit would leave the dance area. They drug him to take him out of the scene. This sequence has a lot of rhymes, which indicate rapid movements — knobs, jogs, drop, slipped, smudged, rubbed, hop, thought — read it out loud, the whole paragraph below.

To the squeezing of pads and knobs, sliders and jogs, and on the hammered beat of hellish racket, the citruses swung to a misguided flick of the drop. There goes the pill — slipped, smudged, and rubbed right under Big A’s nose — one last laced hop. So they thought…

A train of bizarre images follows. Big A is so strong that no one can put him down. Howlin’ howl is a reference to a Portuguese short story I wrote.

A three-hundred-pound mule, a howlin’ howl, and the rain hoisting beggars’ bottles could never harvest Big A’s swag.

No, no drugs can put him down. He has taken them all. Oh, and now you, as a reader, are brought to New York City, as I call Apple, Big Apple. It‘s the whole of New York in a juicy and drug-fueled nightclub. And no one can put New York down.

No E, no P, no alphabet soup would wheel this Big Apple on a barrow.

Apple‘s eyes explode in love for Madame Avocado, clutching the diva tightly against his body. Avocado couldn‘t believe what was happening.

Baking in a brain-oven, Big A’s eyes burst passion spores while Madame A, caught in a sticky-sweet enlace, watched the bloom with dismay.

And the Oranges are waiting for Madame to slap Apple‘s face and push him aside. He would definitely leave The Club, wouldn‘t he, and the twins could return to their dispute.

The Os gaze at the heartbreaking scene, grinning mischievously as Madame A untangles and hobbles back like a marionette on a bad string.

Big A wasn‘t pleased with Madame A distancing herself from him. While the brothers were ready to dispute a C, they would drop the vitamins and go for a bleeding C tonight, maybe even share Madame Avocado. But Apple snapped.

If not for that last snap of Big A’s stem, Madame A would be Mr. Os C tonight — just another crop in their basket. But this ain’t one.

The earlier Apple‘s wagging stem is now the weapon that kills Madame A.

That stem swished fast and deep, a crack in the night, and the fruit, sweet and soft, lay punctured on the floor. As limp as a broken puppet, Madame A’s body settles into the silence, with nothing left but the stuttering buzz of a hiccupping neon lamp. It’s just another bruised fruit tossed away.

The story ends for Madame Avocado but not for the narrator. He knows the cops will soon come, and he has to run away from there as he hides a secret — the story coldly shifts, aiming for another tragic end.

The Club has a no-vegetable policy. Our narrator is a T — a Tomato — dressed as an S — a Strawberry. A tomato is a fruit frequently found in the vegetable stand. That could lead him to problems with the police and a permanent ban at The Club. So, T rapidly goes down the second-floor stairs, away from the crime scene, jumping to the cold street outside. How could he ever explain he‘s not a vegetable if the whole world thinks he‘s one? Poor bastard…

The cops wouldn’t take long, and I — a T in an S suit, fooling those who still think I’m a vegetable — had to unhook from the balustrades fast, stagger down the stairs with a cough in my knees, straighten my jumbled calyx toupee, shake my phoney achene, and hit the dusty, cold street. I don’t wanna be the poor bastard buried in some police mumbo-jumbo paperwork. How the hell would I explain I’m a Tomato?

The cycle ends with the Tomato, a poor bastard who just wanted a fun night, taking a wrong turn down a piss-stained alley — the full ouroboric disclosure, you get it?

And now, this tomato has got to leak — and there’s nothing better than a calm, off-the-eye, wall-to-wall backstreet for a smooth, squishy exit.

What a ride. I may have missed a few details here and there, but it’s already quite a long explanation. One thing I find interesting when writing stories like this is the research involved — in this case, finding the right botanical terms and blending them with strange elements.

Thank you if you have managed to read it until the end.

Warmly,
Miguel