Prince of Tokyo by Kelly Vero

Originally published in 2018 by Blood for Blood Books. Published in 2022 in web3 by verobooks.xyz

Copyright © Kelly Vero.

The author or authors assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author or authors of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Stories

• Prince of Tokyo

• Mojave/A1M

• The Young Neues

• Tiger River

• The Banyan Tree

• Queen of the Cast(l)e

Preview

Marella shifted in her seat and swiped between profiles, nibbling the huge slab of chocolate whilst the TV blared. She tried to position the cushion behind her to achieve the maximum comfort as she sought her perfect suitor. Alas, the cushion was cat-shaped, warm, and therefore her cat itself: nothing like the John Lewis one with synthetic filling she’d saved so hard to purchase.

‘Voltaire!’

A ridiculous name for a cat, though not as bizarre as some of her fellow singletons’ choices for their feline spouses. Voltaire was a scruff and lived up to his namesake with aplomb. Marella had known other people’s cats. OJ for example was named for the convicted felon and one-time Naked Gun star. Or was it just Orange Juice? Marella thought; she’d never asked. Because being around friends and cats and friends with cats was just a thing that women in their 30s seemed to do.

November was easily a miserable month for anyone living in any year of the modern age. Oh, the pressure of finding someone to take to family dinners or, God forbid, Christmas Dinner and office parties. Or, you know, just anything that requires some element of George Michael’s cheerful yet guarded/bearded alpine scene in that famous seasonal music video. Depressing. What was more depressing: Marella hadn’t actually dated at all since her summer fling in Turkey had become something of a non-starter.

‘He couldn’t wait for the EU, I guess,’ she recalled telling someone in the cat’s circle. ‘And I wasn’t going to marry him, so…’

Swipe, swipe, swipe. Jeremy Corbyn. Swipe, swipe. Jeremy Kyle. The television barely concealed the destruction of her will as she took another glass of wine like Meg Ryan in that film where she played the role of a functioning alcoholic. But she, unlike Marella, had Andy Garcia to make it all better.

‘Voltaire. Come here, lover,’ She clicked her fingers and he nestled into the zigzag of her leg in the onesie. ‘Do you think I’ll find someone as awesome as you?’ she asked, with that kind of Bridget Jones sincerity.

She started the descent into sleep, peppered with the last round of Pop Pop Sugar—which had been tough—and the blue light of the phone, straining her vision for the last time as she checked statuses of people who were seemingly having a better life than she. She closed her eyes. She listened. The cars on the street squelched over the wet road with a tentative? determination to keep her awake. But it wasn’t that which made her open her eyes; it was the churning of her stomach as she lurched to the toilet.

Was it the wine? She squinted to look at the alarm clock on her bedside table. It looked as though it was 2:00am when she started vomiting. Was it the wine? She tried to tie her hair behind her head but it was at that funny stage where it was neither long nor short. Voltaire came to check that the smell wasn’t anything to do with his hairballs. Satisfied, he jumped out through the cat flap and back into the night jungle of the shared garden.

Her stomach roiled aggressively, lurching again as she remembered that scene in the really old film, Trainspotting, where Tommy died of toxoplasmosis. But the fatigue from the sickness made her finally drift off.

Her eyes opened as the alarm, which had featured heavily in her vomit-induced dream state, stopped. It would start again in five minutes and she would get up off the bathroom floor.

Was it the wine? It can’t have been the wine; she always drank wine. It’s what she did. Wine was fine. Marella either had toxoplasmosis or a stomach bug. Either way, she wouldn’t be making it into work, preferring instead to spend the day with Jeremy Kyle or Jeremy Corbyn.

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