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Rochelle Patterson watched Joshua Preece scoff the food on his plate. They sat at a table for two in a bland, over-priced Mayfair restaurant with neutral abstract art on the walls. She observed how the picture frames were decorated with thin strands of tinsel, as if the owner didn’t want Christmas tackiness to cramp the restaurant’s minimalist style.   

‘I eat quickly,’ said Joshua.

Rochelle forced a smile and sipped her Winter Aperol Spritz, noting the glittery dried cranberries floating on the surface. He carried on talking about the finance deal he was negotiating to enable an acquisition to go through before the holidays began.

He sensed her looking at him and said, ‘I know I smack my lips. I can’t help it. I’ve done it since I was a boy.’

‘I didn’t notice. So anyway, what are you doing for Christmas?’

‘I spend it alone.’

‘No friends or family?’

‘I’ll see friends on Boxing Day. As for family, no, I cut them off long ago.’

She could tell he was lying about having friends. As for family, they probably distanced themselves from him once they realised what an obnoxious prick he’d become.

The waiter collected the plates and Joshua ordered the Deconstructed Christmas Pudding for dessert.  

‘Aren’t you having one?’ he asked.

‘Just an espresso for me.’

‘Oh, you must have the figgy pudding.’

‘I couldn’t. The dinner was pleasant. I’m not big on afters.’

‘Afters.’ He sniggered.

‘Dessert.’

‘Don’t be a spoilsport.’

To the waiter, she said, ‘An espresso will be fine.’

The waiter nodded. She detected sympathy in his eyes.

Joshua’s concert of lip smacking continued as he spooned the pudding into his mouth, scraping the bowl. It gave her the ick. She hated the mulch and mush of the food and the sight of raisins always struck her as resembling dead flies.

‘So, you’re a coffee drinker?’ he said.

‘It’s my one vice.’

‘People go so overboard about coffee these days. Their espressos, flat whites, macchiatos and cappuccinos—honestly, I don’t know what the fuss is about. It’s not like we’re Italians.’

‘I like coffee.’

It was the only question he’d asked her throughout the meal. He’d shown zero interest in her job, hobbies, life or family—what she might be doing for Christmas. She thought about going to the toilet and not returning as he droned on about the intricacies of mezzanine finance. She wondered what was wrong with men, or was it people in general?

When did they become so self-obsessed?

***

Joshua insisted with tedious machismo on paying for the whole bill. They put their coats on and stepped outside, standing by the thick-walled bank of the Thames.

‘Have you enjoyed the evening?’ he asked.

‘I liked the meal.’

He stood by the embankment wall and said, ‘London is the greatest city in the world.’

‘Hmmm,’ she said, ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘Oh, I know we have the beggars, drug addicts and the sponging, so-called refugees living here, but for all of the fringe elements, London is a historical marvel. How amazing is that view of Tower Bridge? And you know, sometimes I think it’s the ethnic mix and the poor that give the city its Hogarthian flavour.’

‘You what?’

‘Hogar…’

She interrupted him and said, ‘I find you offensive on every level. Don’t talk about human beings like that.’

‘Oh, am I too outspoken for you?’

‘No, you’re just a stuck-up cu… Oh… Forget it.’

‘Were you about to c-bomb me? You are cheeky.’

‘Nevermind.’

‘Let me walk you to Waterloo.’

‘No.’

Joshua stepped-up close, stuck his fingers in both her ears and tried to kiss her.

‘What are you doing?’ she yelled, pushing him off and wiping his touch from her ears.

‘No kiss?’

‘What was that ear shit? And no, I wouldn’t kiss you in a million years.’

‘Why not?’

‘Fuck off, Joshua—thank you for the meal and for paying but please fuck all the way off from me.’

She turned and walked along the embankment.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

She hoped he was joking.

***

Joshua hailed a black taxi home to Canary Wharf.

Uber was for chavs.

He rode up the glass elevator of the new build and entered his two-bedroom apartment, overlooking the Thames. The flat was a place of smooth shiny surfaces with no trace of homeliness.

He drank a tall glass of sparkling water and went to the bathroom and undressed.  

Had she enjoyed the evening with him?

She was relaxed in the restaurant. The quality of the food was reasonable. It was a shame she had rejected the figgy pudding. And the kiss was a blip. She was shy. Working class. Probably intimidated by his aura of accomplishment. But he had gone and forced himself upon her too quickly. If he had shown patience, she might’ve been willing to kiss him as he wanted to kiss her.

Sticking her fingers in his ears.

The two connected.

Penetrated.

Electrified.

Yes, she had said, it’s been lovely, thank you.

Oh, that’s lovely.

Yes.

Kiss me.

Joshua rubbed his stumpy cock and started masturbating.

Watching himself in the mirror.

‘Rochelle,’ he said, panting.

Yes.

He spurted cum into the cube grey basin and onto the mirror. He wiped himself with a hand towel, pulled up his shorts and left his semen splatter for his cleaner, Alma, to scrub the following day.

He only used the bathroom off the hallway to masturbate. He showered and washed in his en-suite.

***

The Deconstructed Christmas Pudding was not happy. I’m in, thought the pudding, the wrong stomach. It believed it was different to the other desserts, who were generally a suave, optimistic bunch. Christmas Puddings had a reputation for being jolly and jovial but that wasn’t the case in this instance. It detested Christmas and yuletide cheer and resented the idea of only ever being appreciated once-a-year like some disposable novelty. This pudding was steeped in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. It considered itself destined for greatness and rapture, not to be eaten by some blabbering financier who read mindless self-help books by narcissistic, ill-bred Americans and had a serious porn addiction.

No, no, no.

The Deconstructed Christmas Pudding listened to the conversation in the restaurant and was indignant that a man could talk while eating at the same time.

I am, the pudding reassured itself, a nihilistic tour de force.

And the man had said, ‘This figgy pud is tasty, you should try some.’

Tasty.

Figgy pud.

Adding insult to injury, the woman remarked, ‘No, I’ve told you I don’t like Christmas Pudding.’

‘But I’m deconstructed,’ the pudding had cried out.

It wanted to be savoured and appreciated by someone with culinary expertise and elegance. Money and affluence weren’t sufficient. The diner had to possess cultural awareness to make them stand out as special and distinct, whereas this man, whose stomach the pudding now found itself trapped within, did not have those qualities.

A tour de force, thought the pudding, should not be treated like common Crème Brule or a Double Chocolate Brownie.

***

Rochelle was in bed, trying not to think about work and the report she had produced for the Labour MP she was going to meet in Leeds. The MP, so the rumour went, hated consultants and Rochelle was expecting him to give her a mauling. The assignment – assessing the use of space in buildings owned by local councils – was awful.

The mobile vibrated.

She sighed at the sight of Joshua’s name appearing again on the screen. 

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Rochelle, you got home okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘You never answered my texts.’

‘I know.’

‘You did have a good evening, correct?’

‘Incorrect, Joshua, I told you to fuck off.’

‘I enjoyed myself too.’

Rochelle reflected on what she had walked into when she returned home to the flat, seeing clothes and underwear scattered over the two-seater sofa in the lounge and dollops of lube from a plastic tube on the coffee table. Her flatmate, Annabelle, had evidently enjoyed her Christmas party at work. Rochelle tried to guess which colleague Annabelle was shagging this time around.

‘When can I see you again?’ Joshua asked.

Agreeing to the meal was a mistake. They met at a vodka and melon birthday party held by a mutual friend. She must’ve been drunk because he wasn’t remotely her type.

She said, ‘Please listen to me—I find you to be a repellent and odious dick, now leave me alone.’

‘Ha! I love your dry sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of somewhere else for us to go. Sweet dreams.’

She ended the call.

Were there, she asked herself, any normal, kind, non-neurotic males left to date?

Her last boyfriend, a manager of a nightclub in Shoreditch, dumped her completely out of the blue, quit his job and kept sending her postcards of the Moulin Rouge, saying he loved her and that he was having a ‘top time in Paris’.

She made herself a peppermint tea and went back to bed, hearing yelps and spanking from her flatmate’s room.

***

A number of soft cheeses were unwrapped. A tin of truffles from Strasbourg was opened and a fork jutted out. Joshua was frying a large trout he had bought from Borough market. He grabbed a handful of Camembert and stuffed it into his mouth. He opened his fridge door, swigged double cream and took the strawberry sundae he had bought at the M&S on Fenchurch Street. Snapping off the plastic lid, he reached for the fork that was stabbed into the truffles and began eating the sundae.

The smell of the cooking trout agitated his taste buds. As he was getting close to the biscuit base of the sundae, he decided the trout must be ready. He went to the frying pan, scooped the trout onto a plate and sat at his long, shiny enamelled dining table. A sprig of holly sat on a bowl of apples and oranges. He used his fork to rake apart the fish. With each mouthful he spat the bones onto the table. When he had eaten most of the fish, he looked at the head, gave it a twist and broke it off from the spine and stuck his forefinger into the skull, raking the innards. He sucked his finger clean.

***

The cheeses acted blasé. The tacky strawberry sundae was evidently pleased with itself, whereas the Strasbourg truffles had the wherewithal to know that all was not as it should be. As its life began to fade, the Deconstructed Christmas Pudding quoted Nietzsche to itself: “There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena.”

The pudding resolved to make a stand against its inevitable destruction.

I will not, said the pudding to itself, be treated like this.

From the day of its inception, it realised one immutable fact of existence: it would die. And while there was a sadness to mortality, it understood that pride could be taken in an ephemeral life lived well.

To burn brightly, if only for a short while, was still a privilege.

The pudding embraced its fate and destiny, but the expectations it had set for itself were falling to pieces and the invasion of the cheeses, truffles, the crass sundae, and the vulgarly undercooked fish exacerbated the situation. As it felt itself on the verge of crossing through to the tunnel of death, something so putrid and unspeakably evil crashed into the stomach that the pudding was jarred back into consciousness.

Even the cheeses lost their composure.

The trout’s brain had arrived.

***

‘Answer, answer, I know you’re there my pretty girl,’ said Joshua, sitting at his table, naked except for his socks and silk boxer shorts.

He rubbed a greasy hand through his receding blonde hair, needing to speak to Rochelle. Why, he thought, can I never say what I mean? Always getting tongue tied. Holding back those feelings that sound true in my head.

The voicemail came on.

He re-dialled. He wanted to fix another date with Rochelle. That way he would know that she had really enjoyed the evening with him. All he was asking of her was a brief chinwag and to meet soon. She must, he thought, like him or why else would she have agreed to go for the meal?

He sent text after text.

Hearing her voicemail message made his cock stiffen and rise.

She had such a pretty face.

Lips.

And those lush ears…

He pulled his shorts off and kicked them under the kitchen table and began yanking his cock, feeling a slight ache in his stomach. A tightening in his chest. He kept masturbating. Telling himself that he wasn’t fat. That he was an attractive, successful young man. Women liked him. She did too. His mother as well. Sort of. Not really. It didn’t matter. He was looking at his large, pale gut and squeezing a love handle with his free hand when he jack-knifed with such ferocity that he knocked the table sideways and fell off the chair and onto the tiled kitchen floor.

He curled his legs and clutched his flabby belly. He spasmed and rolled about. Shit spewed from his arse, shooting against the cupboards and spraying the cooker.

The hot frying pan sizzled.

‘MAKE IT STOP,’ he pleaded, slipping on the floor.

Joshua heard a voice as he crawled. It was coming from inside him, saying: ‘Do you know what I’ve gone through? Do you appreciate all that I’ve suffered to try and make you happy? I gave you everything. You treated me like I was ordinary, like I was average—some cheap and phoney Christmas Pudding from the local SUPERMARKET.’

Turning onto his back, Joshua could feel himself go dizzy. He saw his cock was still stiff. There was a slow-moving lump in the shaft. He watched as it forced open the tip. Camembert eased itself out in a congealed, gooey ball. With his shit smeared hands, Joshua pulled at the warm sticky cheese.

Something rose up through his oesophagus. He choked. Forced himself to cough.

Out popped a truffle.

Joshua sat upright. Sweating. Body shaking. Head limp. He flung an arm sideways to his mobile and knocked it farther from him.

The Deconstructed Christmas Pudding never stopped talking throughout. ‘You think you have everything, don’t you? Perhaps you do. You had the private education, you have the wealthy parents, but you’re not a cultured man. You don’t understand artistry. You’re not a man of class, of stature, of taste, of will-power and essence.

‘I am beyond Santa and his elves. Sleigh bells and cash tills. Debit and credit cards. The wheels of commerce. I am a secret galaxy of Michelin stars.’

Joshua touched his eyes and examined his fingers. He blurrily made out coloured specks stuck to his fingertips. It was the hundreds and thousands from the strawberry sundae. They were re-surfacing in his corneas, blinding him. He told himself he had to move. Other voices were beginning to chatter. They talked over one another. French. Flemish. German. Finnish. American. Scottish. Babbling away. Incoherent. Ceaseless. Joshua, unable to see, stood up, a string of cheese dangling from his bellend, and staggered to the table and climbed up and onto it. He patted for his mobile, crying for the voices to shut up as raisin and almond laced faeces exploded from his arse.

***

Rochelle spilled peppermint tea onto the duvet. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ she said, getting up and walking to the bathroom for tissues, feeling angry, almost tearful because of her disappointment at men, people, and the realisation she was lonely. She grabbed a wad from the bathroom, hearing the sounds of her flatmate, and went back to her room.

She answered her ringing mobile.

‘WHAT DO YOU WANT NOW?’

There was no reply.

‘JOSHUA, I’VE HAD ENOUGH. I’M GOING TO BLOCK YOU.’

She listened to the noise on the other end of the phone.

A thick, phlegmy gargling.

‘This isn’t remotely amusing.’

She listened.

‘Is that you?’ she said.

There was a low gasping sound.

‘Urgh, you disgust me. Blocked.’

Wiping the duvet dry, she got into bed and switched off the light. She felt herself wanting to sob but the tears didn’t flow. She listened to the voice of the shipping news on her retro-style radio with its fake aerial. The broadcaster, in a wise and controlled manner, reported the weather forecast. The information was alien to Rochelle, but she liked the fact it had meaning to the sailors and the fishermen who were out on their boats in the ocean at night.

***

Four pounds and fifty pence an hour.

Joshua’s Latvian cleaner, Alma, said, ‘Eight.’

He flicked two fingers from each hand – she knew he was doing it to be rude – and said, ‘Four-fifty. Take it or leave it.’

‘Eight,’ she said.

‘Let me see your passport.’

‘I have passport.’

He sniggered.

She accepted his rate. After cleaning the apartments of a broker, a CEO, and an elderly alcoholic woman who talked about the churches of a man called Hawksmoor and complained about Alma unplugging devices, she went to Mr Preece’s flat. The stains he left for her to clean were disgusting. He was sometimes there as she dusted and vacuumed and would walk about without any clothes on. When she asked him to cover up, he’d say, ‘Passports, please.’

He knew her name was Alma but he called her Stasi.

She said she wasn’t from East Germany.

He thought he was funny.

‘COME AND LOOK AT THIS GOO, STASI.’

She told him he was an animal. A pig.

As she entered the flat, she knew that not even swine smelled this rotten.

The place reeked.

She hooked her t-shirt onto her nose when she entered the kitchen. Food and faeces were plastered on the floor, walls, cupboards and windows. On the table she saw a mound of dried, caked shit with a sprig of holly on top.

She called for the Pig.

He wasn’t in the flat. She went to the cupboard to fetch her mop, bucket, sponges, polishes, sprays and detergents. In the bathroom she filled up her bucket with hot soapy water, noting what he had left for her on the sink and mirror.

In the kitchen, she heard murmurs from the table. The pyramid resembled one of those horrible Christmas Puddings the English liked so much, especially with the holly. She poked at it with the handle end of a broom. The murmuring grew louder. She went to the knife drawer and jabbed the blade in. She stabbed faster with the knife, splintering and smashing the surface apart. Meaty air, combined with the scent of rum, nutmeg and ginger, wafted out and she retched. Covering her face with a tea towel, she leaned closer to try and make out the sound.

Alma heard a gentle moan. She decided to cut deeper and used a long carving knife. Steadily, the moaning faded to silence.

Once she had fully broken off a section of crust, she looked inside to see a bloodied lump of meat.

The flesh sliced easily.

She pushed the blade and pierced smoothly into the carcass.

There was no bone.

She saw the Pig’s blood-stained mobile buried in the flesh.

It still worked.

Alma dried the expensive phone with strips of kitchen roll and assessed what items she could sell-off quickly in the flat. She used her own mobile to call her daughter, who came over and together they swept the remains into black bags and left them by the outside bins on the ground floor for collection.

When the mess was cleaned, they invited friends round in the evening, drinking Joshua’s booze and eating his food.

The earthbound spirit of the Deconstructed Christmas Pudding lingered in the apartment. It watched Alma, her daughter and their pals party though to the early hours.

And, for the first time in its disjointed existence, the pudding felt good about itself.

Justice had been done.

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Bio:

Mark Burrow has published a novella, Coo, which is about an alcoholic transforming into a pigeon in a world where people are turning into birds (Alien Buddha Press). His short stories have appeared in a range of titles, such as Bubble, Literally Stories, Cerasus, Flight of the Dragonfly and Paragraph Planet. He is currently close to finishing the first draft of a novel, which will include Torture Origami. He lives in Brighton in the UK and can be found on social @markburrow20 and @markburrow.bsky.social.

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