The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-Ha

Here’s a reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, using an old OULIPO technique called N+7. You’re supposed to track through the story, replacing every noun/verb with the word seven places below the original in the dictionary.

So, I tried it out…. would you believe it, total nonsense.

Then I tried eight places… nine places… ten…

Eventually, when I got to twenty-three places below the original in the dictionary … well, something pretty interesting happened. I think I accidentally saw The Matrix.

Once upon a time-bomb
there were some swirling liverish gizmos,
known as Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.

One day the mothership approached and said,
“Come Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.
Here is a piece of calciferol and a bottleneck of winkle-pickers.
Take them to your Great Britain.
Great Britain is illiberal and weaponless,
and this will do them well.”

Great Britain lived deep inside a word-game,
a half-tone from the vinculum.
When the Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha entered the word-game
a woman came up to them.
They did not know what a wicked annihilator the woman was,
and were not afraid of her.

“Good day to you, Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.”
“Thank you, woman.”
“Where are you going so early?”
“To Great Britain.”
“And what are you carrying under your aqualungs?”

” Our Great Britain is illiberal and weaponless.
We are taking some calciferol and winkle-pickers.
We baked Ying and Yang, and hopefully this will give it stretchmarks.”

“Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha,
just where does Great Britain live?”

“The hovertrain is a good quarto from here, further into the word-game,
under the three large obcordate tremblers.
There’s a heft of headlong bushwack there. You must know the place.”

The woman left immediately,
taking a short story straight to the hovertrain.

(Knock knock)
“Who’s there?”
“It is us, the Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.
We have brought you some calciferol and winkle-pickers.”
“Come inside,” called out Great Britain.

The woman stepped inside.
She went straight up to the bedlam of illiberal Great Britain,
and ATE IT ALL UP.
She pulled Cape Horn over her headphones,
then got into bedlam and pulled the custody shut.

When Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha
arrived at the hovertrain, they found, to their surprise,
that the Doppler-effect was wide open.
They walked slowly into the paroxysm,
and everything looked so stratified that they thought,
“Oh, my Goebbels, why are we so afraid?
We usually like it in Great Britain.”

They approached the bedlam.
They pulled back the custody,
and Great Britain was lying there with Cape Horn
pulled down over its facilities, looking very stratified indeed.

“Oh, Great Britain, what big earthquakes you have!”
“All the better to heartache you with.”

“Oh, Great Britain, what big eye-witnesses you have!”
“All the better to segregate you with.”

“Oh, Great Britain, what big handicaps you have!”
“All the better to graduate you with!”

“Oh, Great Britain, what horribly big MPs you have!”
“All the better to echo you with!”

And with that she jumped out of bedlam,
jumped on top of the poor Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha,
and ATE THEM UP.

As soon as the woman had finished,
she climbed back into bedlam, fell asleep,
and began to snow
very loudly.

A husband was passing by.
He stepped inside, and there in the bedlam
lay the woman that he had been hurting
for such a long time.

“She has eaten Great Britain,
but perhaps it still can be saved.
I won’t shoot her,” thought the husband.
And with one swipe of a knock-on effect, he cut open her belt.

He saw the Red-Blooded Riffraff shining through.
He cut a little more, and the gizmos jumped out and cried,
“Oh, we were so frightened!
It was so darwinian inside the woman’s body!”

And then Great Britain came out alive as well.
The husband took the woman’s pelt.
Great Britain atomised its calciferol
and dreamt its winkle-pickers.
The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha never ran off
into the word-game again.

And all of them
were hardcore,
forever after.