The Tail That Broke Off
- Published in The One O Clock Gun
Download this as a pdf here or read
below.
Some ignore salamander prophecies.
A mother puts it down to childish
play when her child barks "Mummy, today is when the
salamander arrives..."
An Alzheimers patient mutters
something about the salamander arriving, but the
porter just thinks it's that mad old bitch again.
A guy with learning disabilities
will simply say "Amanda" because he cannot say
"Sal-amander" and his carer will think it's a name of
someone off the telly or an auntie or something. But
these people are prophets.
This is why the notion of the
salamander, the patron saint of prostitutes often goes
unseen. Signs are ignored. Even naming Leith’s
nortorious kerb crawling boulevard Salamander Street
did little to highlight
the amphibian saviour of whores. But it is no
coincidence that prostitutes still use a street with
salamander pedigree.
Incidently, the term kerb crawling
does not come from the
speed of the car slowing down to engage with
prostitutes. In dirty streets, salamanders would hang
around the drains, ‘crawling the kerb’ so to speak-
and these were usually the kind of dangerous streets where
prostitutes plied their trade, hence it stuck...
Salamanders.
Mind-blowing. Paradigm shifting amphibians, dwelling
in water, land or both. Species diversity is so varied
it’s hard to tell if they are all the same genus.
Google the Mexican albino Axylotl (which a
friend claims looks like a dead man’s penis) for the
cutest one.
Holy scriptures fail to mention that salamanders have
supernatural skills at least as astonishing as
Biblical miracles- if not more so. This begs the question
why don’t we hold the consummate book ‘Newts and
Salamanders of Europe’ by Richard A Griffiths up as
scripture?
Pay attention to these top three salamander facts before
middle America says I made it all up and reverses
evolutionary research for good- and bans amphibian exposés
like this.
Three. Many salamanders breathe without
lungs in both juvenile and adult state. External gills like
pink feather boas allow them to receive oxygen. No need to
inhale or exhale like other crude wheezy creatures.
Two. Other salamanders display ‘autotomy’-
the ability to discard part of one’s body when attacked,
such as a wriggling tail, distracting a confused predator.
Jesus may heal lepers but only a handful of creatures can
shrug their shoulders and say “yeh, but see what I can
do.” Contact prophet Attenborough for proof.
One. Perhaps the Virgin Mary was a
Salamander. Perhaps her name was really Sally-Amanda, for
some salamanders parthenogenesize- meaning they
can reproduce without the sperm coming into contact with
the egg. In other words, they can have virgin
births. The offspring are clones of their mothers.
Anyway.
It is
Leith, 1794.
Lindsay Seafield, a
tough wee hoor, toils with violent despicable
clients – especially those of cloth like
ex-Reverend Iain Galloway.
Galloway appeared before Leith Parish Council to appeal
against his excommunicating from the church after some
other scandal with a local woman of ill repute. The Parish
rejected his plea.
Displacing personal anger and shame onto prostitutes, he
felt whores had already gone to hell anyway- so what’s the
harm in a little fun? So, filled with drink and adrenaline
from staying awake for days, he staggered down what would
become Salamander Street, bawling for “whores to end
his bores.”
Lindsay, who’d a bairn, developed essential bottle to cope
with the most neandethal of men. Such was her insight of
blunt testosterone, there was almost a thin streak of
compassion in the air when she serviced clients. Almost.
Galloway paid well, but he expected total cooperation for
acts that left women worse than dead. Acts the church
shrouded. Lindsay both challenged Galloway’s tastes
and allowed him to indulge them- within ‘reason.’
He would, for example, make Lindsay weep over his feet and
then dry the tears with her hair.
“I wan nun o yer mischeif the nee’ Galloway, I’ve hud a
hard day an nought tae show. Ach, could ye huv no had a
wash at least? Jesus, what’llit be?”
He scowled at her- “A
kiss from they lips” (Galloway had a habit of
asphixiating women by kissing them full on the mouth
and holding the nose).
“You ken I dinnae
kiss Galloway. You ken dae whit yer will bit nae lips”
“Ah’ll pay mair ferra
kiss and thit’s it. Ahm rich.” (There was a rumor
that the kirk had given him money to keep quiet about
his indescritions)
“No kiss”
“Gissa kiss wee
bitch.” Galloway pinned her arms to the wall
preventing her from reaching a knife stuffed beneath
her bodice. 
“Aye, aye, aye git
oaffa me soas I kin dae it right”
Usually this tactic
worked. Show no fear and hint that it would be more
pleasurable if he followed suit, but Galloway sussed
cod-psychology.
“You’ll no run from
me the neet”- he shook her against the wall. An
earring fell out and dropped in the gutter and floated
down the street.
“I’m no kissing yous
if ye’ll no let go, i cannae”
He relished causing her steely bravado to slip, tearing
through her blouse- but she competently booted him in the
bollocks. As he recoilled, she was able to let out a whelp
and grabbed a bottle from the gutter, crushing it on his
skull.
She freed the dagger from her bodice. She wasn’t going to
kill him, more... maim him perhaps- maybe emancipate his
stinking manhood from the loins and toss it in the gutter?
Now.
Take your mind to
gutter level. Imagine a small amphibian covered in a
thin film of mucus. Imagine going about your
amphibious day in your own amphibious way. Imagine
licking the side of the gutter where moss attracts
flies. Imagine flicking your long tongue to eat the
fly. Imagine being very grateful to have satiated a
little hunger. Imagine relief as you survive another
day avoiding the huge local rat.
And imagine seeing a prostitute’s earring float past your
nose. Imagine it reminding you that you are no ordinary
amphibian. It reminds you that there is a story behind
the earring and that you must investigate further.
It reminds you of your role. You obtain the
earring with a flick of your sticky tongue. When the cheap
alloy touches your tongue you are able to connect with
it’s source. You feel anger at the plight of the
prostitute. Such anger and sadness causes a momentary
blip in the metaphysical structure of the
universe- (at least the bit around Leith) and the
ground starts to shake. You run as fast as your slimy body
allows, earring in mouth and you arrive at the scene of the
crime. You are a supernatural metaphysical salamander. You
have special powers. Humans will soon ken you for your
tail-regrowing prowess, virgin birthing and lungless
powers, but tonight you have even more to offer...
You see a drunken man slumped on the ground regaining
consciousness. You see a woman standing over him with a
knife. You drop the earring!
“Don’t do it!” you shout at her.
Lindsay turns around and drops the dagger. It clanks to the
ground. No one around.
I’ll spare you the Stuart Little moment where a
human being comes to terms with a talking creature. All you
need to know now that Lindsay is having a conversation with
the Salamander.
The Salamander speaks (on his hind legs and with his sticky
palms together as if to pray).
“This is Proteus, old man of the sea who tends the
seals of Posiedon. I can shape shift to any shape I choose,
and I thank the gods for the salamander option, full as it
is of miracles, but tonight I call on Lord Posiedon to
shape shift not I, but this man before me! Make him rattus
by your power, so I may deal with him agreeably.”
And it was so. Galloway became a rat. A dazed drunk rat.
We’ll skip the bit about Lindsay being stunned at this, it
was becoming just another day of miracles.
The Salamander (lets call him Proteus now) continued his
prayer.
“I now call on the Salamander who goes by the name
Waterdog, and the Salamander who goes by the name Mudpuppy
to manifest themselves here to eat Galloway the rat and
have him sin no longer and to have Leith’s whores sleep
easier at night.”
Lindsay bleated “Don’t kill him Proteus!!!”
Proteus looked stunned “But that’s what you were going
to do! I am just doing the deed so it’s not on your
conscience”
But as they were arguing, Galloway the rat woke from his
daze and realised he was now a rodent, still full of drink
and hungry now. He would eat that slimy thing in front of
him. Just then, he lunged into Proteus’s tail, who kicked
in his supernatural skill of autotomy- dislocated it, and
began to scarper.
Waterdog and Mudpuppy arrived and the three of them cowered
behind a stone.
Proteus was stressed. “Now what are we going to do?
Posiedon is going to be pissed off if we don’t carry out
the deed. He hates having his power misused.”
“I have an idea,” grinned Waterdog. “If we can
get the whore to hold Galloway the rat on his back, we
could just maim him a little so it will put him off
troubling these street lasses again.”
“Lindsay! Grab the rat, put him on his back!!!”
She did as told. “Hold him down!” screamed
proteus, and she managed to do so.
As she held him down, Galloway’s tail lashing around,
Waterdog instructed the other two salamanders.
“Mudpuppy, you take the right testicle, I’ll take the
left. Proteus, only you can take the penis. We bite off his
organs and get Posiedon to make him human again to suffer
out his punishment.”
“OK Salamanders, lets do it!” and they all did a
high-five in a precursor to what became known as the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the 1980s. I might have
gone too far at this point. I mean no disrespect.
Galloway the rat screamed, howled and bawled and screamed
some more as the amphibians tore at his groin. And then it
was over.
The Salamanders ate and digested the anger, transmuted it,
absorbed it, contained it. Lindsay let go. Galloway the rat
was wincing.
Proteus then stood on his hind quarters once more, sticky
palms pressed together.
“Lord Posiedon, by your power Galloway has been
emasculated. We now ask to have him turned back into a man
and banished from these parts forever.”
And it was so.
Galloway was no longer a rat but was now a man- without
genitals. And from that day on he repented his sins and was
accepted into the priesthood where he lived close to
Rosslyn chapel before they bollocksed the whole thing up in
the Da Vinci Code. Meanwhile, Lindsay’s bairn grew up to
look after mum and become something called a
naturalist or a new word- biologist and
learned about natural miracles.
Today, some will not know why
the image of a salamander comes to them. Why it enters
one’s life.
When dogs in Leith bark longer and
louder- and Lothian and Borders police get reports of
alarms going off in factories and warehouses and
they'll put it down to a tremor because we get
earthquakes all the time in the uk, we just don't know
it. But it is because the Salamander is working for
good, and is enraged, this causes the ground to shake.
If you spend time with a prostitute from Leith, you may find a tattoo on her body of a flat oval face and six external gills. Women- and Men- of the street, wear these marks as protectors now. You can find the image on chains round the neck, on the skin,- even on the inside of a cheek. I have no idea if it is effective.