Portable Curiosities Read Online Free PDF

saying. He pauses occasionally to shake a finger at an imaginary audience.
    She knocks on his window but he doesn’t notice her.
    â€˜I predicted you,’ she says.
    She knocks harder.
    â€˜I predicted you,’ she repeats, raising her voice.
    He continues to pace and talk to his audience.
    â€˜It looks like a mental asylum,’ she says to herself.
    â€˜Crazy old mimes, eh?’ The usher from downstairs has suddenly appeared next to her. ‘Your session is about to start.’
    *
    There are just three people in the audience.
    She watches them from the stage.
    Two sit next to each other in the front row. They wave at the interviewer and blow kisses.
    The third is the tweed man. He is sitting in an aisle seat in the last row, flicking through his notepad.
    â€˜Welcome to this session of End Game,’ says the interviewer, crossing her legs. ‘Today we have as a guest a woman who needs no introduction. The most notorious satirist in the world, once described as mankind’s most dangerous individual, appears as a guest of Curiosity Inn – Where Curiosity Will Get the Best of You.’
    â€˜What a slogan,’ says the satirist.
    â€˜You’re ninety-seven years old this year,’ continues the interviewer. ‘Let’s rewind almost a century and revisit your childhood in Tasmania. Any early memories?’
    â€˜When I was born,’ says the satirist, ‘the doctor held me up to the light and said that it was unfortunate. I was Libran, he told my mother, with Satirist rising.’
    â€˜You mean Sagittarius.’
    â€˜No.’
    The interviewer shifts in her seat and scans her notes. She clicks a button on a small remote, and an image appears on a large screen behind her.
    â€˜This is a photo of you as a child,’ she says. ‘A very pretty girl.’
    â€˜I was extremely vain.’
    â€˜You look quite different these days.’
    â€˜I grow uglier by the second.’
    â€˜How is that possible?’
    â€˜My work is a special kind of demon. When I point out ugliness, I, too, grow ugly. When I cripple with my words, I, too, become lame.’
    â€˜What do your friends say when you come to dinner with a new deformity?’
    â€˜Dinner? Friends?’ The satirist snorts. ‘Nobody stays friends with a lady devil.’
    â€˜It can’t be that bad. There must be people who haven’t abandoned you.’
    â€˜I keep myself clean of responsibilities to individuals. I’ve shed friends in order to protect them.’
    The interviewer raises an eyebrow. She clicks the remote again. The next image appears on the screen. It is the cover of a book – black with the title in bold, white capitals.
    â€˜This is, by far, your most famous work,’ says the interviewer. ‘ The Self-Fulfilled Prophet ,first published in 2015.’
    â€˜You mean The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy .’
    â€˜Sure. Talk us through the origins of the book.’
    â€˜Where to begin?’ The satirist leans back in her wheelchair, crosses her arms. ‘The Prophecy was a satirical future history. It purported to be based on the movement of the planets. It was structured as a day-by-day, month-by-month and year-by-year account of the future, arranged by star sign. But as the world lost its imagination, the book was reinterpreted as actual prophecy. People began to remake the world in the image of the book. They started nonsensical wars that I’d plucked out of my arse. The Six-Point Pan-Amphibian Crusades. The Smaller Greater Peninsularis Conflict. History repeated itself in progressively absurd iterations. News headlines were copied straight from my work.’
    â€˜It’s rather a sweeping claim, isn’t it? That the world might have religiously copied your fiction?’
    â€˜Have you even read the thing?’
    â€˜So you’re saying the landscape of your satire has been mapped out before your very eyes.’
    â€˜Worse