Celebrating the launch of the 7th edition of the Big Issue’s Fiction Edition, Twelve Tales, the following is an excerpt from Nic Low’s short story, ‘Slick’ (The Big Issue, Twelve Tales 30 August – 12 September, Ed#388).
He came. And changed advertising forever and ever. Amen.
HE WAS HARDLY the Messiah when I met him. Hardly at all. He was just a skinny guy named Simon waiting tables in The Rocks. I’d covered my table with a spread of new photos for a liqueur ad I was working on. The model was a curvaceous Angolan child soldier turned pin-up girl. She had a boa constrictor wrapped round her, a rifle in one hand and a glass in the other. Her lips looked like they were giving birth to something sexy and expensive. This guy craned down to bring me another Johnnie Blue, and stopped and surveyed the photographs. He looked like any other nervous hipster shithead in tight black Levis and Ray-Ban knockoffs, till he opened his mouth. Jesus he could talk. It was like being hit with a cattle prod.
“Anorexia,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s good,” he said, “but she’s too plump. She looks like you and me. Starve her for a month and shoot it again and then it’ll get interesting. Hell, starve the boa constrictor for a month as well. Then you’ll sell some drinks.”
