Ezekiel 'Pebbledash' Grimfonte

This piece originally appeared on the communal blog of The ACRE, the creative-ensemble of which I am a part. That blog is here: www.theacre.blogspot.com

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A Portrait of Ezekiel 'Pebbledash' Grimfonte.

Ezekiel Grimfonte Jr, son of a fruiterer and a maniac, achieved more than could have been expected of him. Born in the early hours of a misty Wednesday morning sometime long ago he came writhing and screaming into the world, covered in his birthing gore and as unseemly as that would imply. His father, a fruiterer, remembered that it was on a Wednesday because when the babe was finally quieted, the bin men came to pick up the bins. Ezekiel Grimfonte Sr, also known as Le Grand Zeke for his astounding rise to be the head fruiterer in all the land, was a man who put great store in the bins, specifically their removal. Unfortunately for Zeke Jr, he put far less interest into his son.

Ickle Zeke, as he came to be known by some, could have been doomed from an early age, for while his father cared not a jot for him, he was drowned in the affection of his psycho-, socio-, telepathic mother, Imelda Staunton Grimfonte, nee Miles Davis. She was a maniac, and often threw her baby boy down things: stairs, mineshafts, matter transporter tubes, straws, throats, gutters, the gaping maws of long-dead stegosauruses and the like. He was quite fortunate not to be killed, or badly grazed. Fortune smiled on young Zeke, however, for on his fourth birthday his mother was caught in the beam of a Cosmic Ray, which had asplode from the sun and she evaporated INSTANTANEOUSLY into a poof of potpourri. Ezekiel Sr was unconcerned, having long ago wearied of his wife, and quickly and pragmatically arranged for a tutor and carer for his son.

His father selected Salvador Dali for the task, and the Spaniard, his queer moustache dancing merrily in the antici…pation set about his task with aplomb. Realisation that one single plomb would not be sufficient, El Salva ordered in an entire bunch of plombs to undertake the care of his new charge. Perhaps unsurprisingly Salvador Dali's tutoring revolved mainly around art and facial hair maintenance, although he also had an unexpectedly nifty talent for shooting a man's left nut with an air rifle from any angle. He could even accomplish this with one hand restrained behind his back and with a slender lady rubbing her thumb and forefinger together in front of his face and making repeated flicking noises with her tongue. Ickle Zeke never mastered the air rifle to that extent, but he was a dab hand at the old art. Ol' Sally was proper pleased when Zeke started to flail a paintbrush, and rewarded him with unwanted sexual attention.

Zeke Sr was not a man who like art, it transpired, and he had hired Salvador Dali purposefully in order to come to hate his son. At 17, Zeke Jr broke Salvador Dali's heart by emigrating to Papua New Guinea in order to escape his father's ire. At least, that's what he told them he was doing. In reality, he was going to the moon!

He didn't have the means to do so though, so he only got as far as the top of a nearby hill, and jumping ineffectually there he lost enthusiasm and went home.

He returned to his father's manse to find Salvador Dali's emulsified corpse dangling from a balustrade. He was an odd man, even in suicide. Zeke Jr quickly left the house again, weeping thick matte tears of deepest lavender, as Salvador would have wanted.

In order to fill the gap Zeke sought out Pablo Picasso, who had eloped from his native land with a dusky Romany beauty named Masskkerrinne le Guaravadiere. He had taken to referring to himself as Portmanteau Zippedeedoodahday le Guaravadiere, and he grabbed Ickle Zeke by the ear at the mention of Dali, and forced him to run barefoot across a stony beach. It was at this point that Picasso, drunk from chasing both the dragon and the green fairy, began referring to Ickle Zeke as 'Pebbledash'.

Ezekiel Grimfonte was fucking pissed off with that, and got his revenge years later when he invented the technique of pebbledashing, and for his first public demonstration of it, decided to pebbledash Picasso. Picasso was less than pleased, but he was a bit of a dick, so fuck it.

Later, Pebbledash invented the internet, apple crumble,and quicksand, as well as winning the Boer and Vietnam wars double-handedly and then he died, of fog.

The End.