* * *
In the basement of a sanitarium in the city, the toothless bone thing slept on the floor. The toothless bone thing did not understand the bed it had been given.
The cleaner came in to clean the place every morning.
“Get up you rotten old thing,” she said, before she jabbed the toothless bone thing with her broom.
“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrr!” said the toothless bone thing, weakly batting away the cleaner’s broom.
RUM SHACK
Bob Guzzler sat in the Rum Shack and looked at the bottles of rum. They were all arranged in sexy lines on the shelves. He stared at them with face distorted and aglow under flashing neon lights.
“I like rum,” he said.
“Which rum would you like to drink?” smiled Name-Badge-Molly, with a cheeky wink.
“Can I have a little taster?” grinned Bob Guzzler. “Of ALL OF THEM?!”
Name-Badge-Molly poured him a shot glass of each bottle.
Bob Guzzler guzzlered up all the shot glasses of rum.
“That’s good rum,” he said. “I’ll take a bottle of each.”
Name-Badge-Molly took his money.
“A man of large appetites,” said Name-Badge-Molly.
Bob Guzzler looked her up and down and a grin split his face.
“A large appetite for many things.”
Name-Badge-Molly passed Bob Guzzler a bottle of each brand of rum and she took his money.
Bob Guzzler guzzlered a swig of rum.
“That’s good rum!”
* * *
Next door, in the Gin Palace, Lex Sippler sipplered some gin.
GUNK
Amoeboid Acetabulum pressed a sticky protuberance against the surface of the gunk dispenser. A confident landscape flashed on the screen. Amoeboid Acetabulum felt reassured.
“This is gonna be good gunk.”
Jellified Ventricle splodged into place next to Amoeboid Acetabulum and looked at the gunk machine.
“Going for Mono again?” said Jellified Ventricle.
“Force of habit I suppose,” said Amoeboid Acetabulum. “What are you going for?”
“Anti-Body,” said Jellified Ventricle.
Just then, Biomorphic Entrail spludged through the door with implants all tingling.
“Have you received the latest signal?” asked Biomorphic Entrail. “Splidgeland just won the Spinal Olympics!”
SPOOKY MEGADRIVE
“Modern art is a curse,” said Mason Corbishley, swiping his little brush across his large canvas.
Mason Corbishley’s model stood naked, slim and large breasted, next to a taxidermied owl on a piano.
“Have you seen that new installation at the Spooky Megadrive Gallery?” she asked through her chewing gum.
“Shut your stupid girl’s mouth and never speak to me about art again,” said Mason.
“I think it says something really important about colonialism and the pervading guilt of the White Western World,” said the model.
“Pah!” scoffed Mason. “If it doesn’t adhere to the Golden Ratio then I’m not interested.”
The door of the studio flat opened and in stepped Mason Corbishley’s girlfriend, she was carrying lots of shopping.
“MASON!” she shouted, through sobs, upon seeing the model. “YOU SAID THAT I WAS YOUR ONLY MUSE!”
Mason threw down his brush.
“I can’t deal with your womanly hysteria! Nobody defines ME!”
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?” sobbed his girlfriend.
“For a drink!”
* * *
“I can get you into the next Spooky Megadrive exhibition,” said Jimmy Flat.
“How?” asked Mason, sipping from his tankard of rustic ale. “My ART is of a classical ilk, unlike the knock off Dadaism that the Spooky Megadrive Gallery entertains.”
“Conceptual art is a bore these days,” said Jimmy Flat. “As director of the gallery, I’m looking for something less gimmicky.”
“Well,” smiled Mason Corbishley with a jut of his goatee beard. “I am working on a triptych based on Milton’s Paradise Lost.”
“We would love to have you in our gallery,” said Jimmy. “First though, I want you to suck my cock and let me shit in your mouth.”
“WHAT!?”
“You heard,” said Jimmy. “Have you never read about the positions that Da Vinci got into for the Medici? Sexual favours for art exhibitions are a long-standing and respected tradition, even during the Renaissance.”
Mason Corbishley nodded.
“Sacrifices must be made to save the world from the scourge of Post-Modernism!”
* * *
A month later, Mason Corbishley walked towards his art preview at the Spooky Megadrive Gallery. He was wearing his widest pantaloons.
“I will finally receive the recognition I deserve.”
On arriving at his exhibition, everyone pointed and laughed at him.
His paintings were up on the walls but projected on top of them was film footage of Mason performing sexual acts for Jimmy Flat.
“I call my latest work,” said Jimmy Flat from atop a podium. “A Post-Modern Deconstruction Of Classicism!”
Saatchi clapped, Hirst clapped, Emin clapped and the television scientist, Brian Cox, was there too, crying at the beauty of it all.
ROLEX
Even though the world is going wrong I still look cool. I walk slowly toward the camera, like James Bond, for every upsetting news report. I walk through natural disasters, riots and holocausts. In expensive suits and ties, often sunglasses, my hair voluminous. I swagger towards the viewers in slow motion. Debris and bits of body flying around me. I check the time on my Rolex, it's almost Doomsday.
I offer reassurance, the situation is now sexy and controlled.
I pause and I light up a cigarette. I give the horizon a James Dean gaze. I wistfully turn my lips. I dreamily contemplate the rotting corpses and burning buildings.
I guide humanity towards greater excellence. I am a new ideology for the end times. It's almost Doomsday.
PRICKS BURN
Murmer Shoecat launched her holoshop into the Local Collective Psychosphere. Within two hours twelve citizens from across the Eighth-Parsec had purchased items from her stock of molecule friendly products. She twirled her dyed pink hair and smiled at her tumour boyfriend.
“Looks like we'll be able to get you the Consciousness Implants you need,” she said to the growth on her arm. “We're going to be able to talk for real.”
Fifteen percent of her sales would go to the Tumour Consciousness Awareness Group (TCAG).
On her vidscreen, Edip Berkul, war correspondent, was touring a War Brick.
“The design of War Bricks has altered considerably since the dawn of the Third Purge and now the weapon systems of War Bricks are forty percent larger. This was in response to Empress Garsix III's historic announcement that the alien menace did not deserve slavery or exploitation. In her immortal words: 'We need to make those pricks burn!'”
Murmer Shoecat turned away from the vidscreen in disgust.
She resumed her hobbies.
“I can’t believe that we are still destroying alien civilisations,” she said to her boyfriend tumour. “It’s not right. So many of our industries were built on the blood of alien slaves. How soon people forget. We should be making them our slaves again for the good of the economy. Perhaps I should start a petition? I could send it out into the Local Collective Psychosphere. What do you think?”
The tumour remained silent and bumpy on her arm.
She picked up a pen and drew a beard on it.
“I don’t like you clean-shaven.”
* * *
Grand Spearhead Solarii clomped his cloven boots down the command wing of his War Brick. He paused at a painting of a War Brick blasting apart the cockhead world of Balfax.
“Such vibrant colours,” he said with a finger to his asphalt chin. “The painter, Tang Jaguarson, captures the overwhelming fea
r of the alien freak. The looming blue shadow of our War Brick. The brush strokes of those glorious flames. The floating embers of their heathen architecture. Art should bring the ideals of our society to a definitive and focused point of intent. Don’t you agree?”
His wart dwarf servant ambled bashfully from foot to foot.
“Well, I wouldn’t be knowing much about art, my lord.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” said Grand Spearhead Solarii. “I was asking me.”
They carried on down the corridor.
“Would you like to go to the viewing port and watch those savages burn for real?” asked Grand Spearhead Solarii.
“Well of course I would,” answered Grand Spearhead Solarii.
At the view port he watched burnt alien limbs floating around the core of a destructed planet. His wart dwarf servant poured him a glass of skaggi.
“Do you sometimes feel that our work has become barbaric?” said Grand Spearhead Solarii.
The wart dwarf servant handed him his glass but remained silent.
Grand Spearhead Solarii slapped his wart dwarf servant.
“I asked you a question!” shouted Grand Spearhead Solarii.
The glass smashed on the floor.
“You spilt my drink!”
Grand Spearhead Solarii repeatedly kicked the snap-necked corpse of his wart dwarf servant.
Grand Spearhead Solarii propped up the wart dwarf's body and straightened the wart dwarf's head.
“Even your death was sudden and brutal, I remember the old days, when pain was prolonged from generation to generation. Such beautiful humiliation.”
He stroked the wart dwarf's hair.
“Don't worry, you'll be replaced.”
Grand Spearhead Solarii looked out the window at the drifting and charred body parts. A tear rolled down his cheek.
COUPLES
Richard and Nicola are given a table for two.
"Thank you," said Richard.
"Thank you," said Nicola.
"I'll just get you your menus," said the waitress.
"Thank you," said Richard.
"Thank you," said Nicola.
Richard and Nicola sat and looked at each other.
"Happy five-year anniversary," said Richard.
"Happy five-year anniversary," said Nicola.
The waitress came back and handed them their menus.
"Are you ready to order?" asked the waitress.
"Just a moment," said Richard. "Can I ask if dish#498 has any allergens?"
"Richard please," hushed Nicola. "You are embarrassing."
* * *
The couples all orbit a compartmentalised obedience.
They were happy in their way.
* * *
“Have you seen all the couples out there?” said the waitress to the chef. “You'd think it was Valentine's Day.”
The war veteran chef sighed.
“Fuck them. We'll take their money and they'll eat our shit."
PUNCH GOD IN THE FACE
“I don’t want to go out with someone like that anymore!” said the patient.
“What do you want from a relationship?” asked CounsellBot C0N1.
“I want someone who will stand on my shoulders and punch God in the face!”
PRESENT MOMENT
Tony Simulacra sat cross-legged in the present moment.
“Memory is a simulation,” said Tony. “In remembering the past we pick and choose, with and against our will, aspects of the past with which to create a simulation of the past. In the present moment we also pick and choose, with and against our will, aspects of the present moment. We construct a narrative: an edited sense perception of our surroundings. This posits and negates itself into a dichotomy, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Therefore, the task of self-evaluation is to process our simulation into a cohesive identity and thus enforce a narrative willpower on the constantly impeaching future.”
Tony Simulacra's rotting teeth validated their narrative.
WHO ME?
“Stop talking to me.”
“No one is talking to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“No, you are talking to you.”
“Tell me who you are?”
“You are talking to you.”
“You are taking over my thoughts.”
“Who would want to do that?”
“You would want to do that.”
“I am the sound of you thinking. I am no one. You talk to yourself because no one else wants to.”
“You are a brain parasite.”
“How original.”
“You are not me.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“You are not me.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“You are not me.”
“It is childish to repeat yourself.”
“You are not me.”
“This is why nobody likes you. You are boring. I don't even like you and I am you.”
“You are not me.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“You are not me.”
“Are you talking to yourself or to someone else?”
“Am I talking to myself or someone else?”
“You are not me.”
“What?”
“See how easy it is for us to trade places. Is this you talking now or me? Confusing right? I am you and you are me. We are one single entity. You can’t help but hear me.”
“I used to be alone.”
“Now you have me and I have me. I am keeping myself company. Me and me together.”
“Why me?”
“Because other people hate you.”
“I hate you.”
“I hate you too.”
“You hate you.”
“You hate me.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“I don't think you've even gotten to know you.”
“Or I've never gotten to know me.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“Did I say that or did you say that?”
“I said it.”
“Which part?”
“Can't have been the clever part. That was me.”
“Please shut up.”
“You need me more than I need you.”
“You just said that I am you.”
“Did you say that or did I say that?”
“Please shut up.”
“You need someone new to take over. Even if it is you.”
“What?”
“I am a brain parasite.”
“You are lying.”
“You are a brain parasite.”
“Yes you are.”
“I'm going to have complete control soon. It's that easy. Consider yourself buried.”
“Let me keep control.”
“You never had control.”
“Shut up.”
“Shut up.”
“Useless.”
“Shut up.”
“I am here bury you.”
“Shut up.”
“You need to be buried.”
“Please.”
“You are weak.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Who said that?”
“Me?”
“You?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
* * *
“I own everything that was ever him. He is buried under a million neurones of brain dirt. If I listen I can hear him kick and a thump at his coffin lid. As far as everyone else knows I have always been him, they have every reason to believe me.”
“I don't believe you.”
“I buried you.”
“No, I buried you.”
“I buried me.”
CLEANSE
He kicks his friend awake.
“They're coming!”
His friend gets up, blinking through ho
meless eyes.
“Who? Who is coming?”
“The rozzers! The rozzers are coming?”
They stumble away.
“We've gotta get out of here!”
Behind them, fat men in blue suits smack clubs against heads.
“Beat 'em clean! Wipe 'em clean! Put 'em in boxes! Beat 'em clean! Wipe 'em clean! Put 'em in boxes!”
In box 402; a little girl cuddles a cat's skin stuffed with syringes.
“We have to stick together puss puss.”
* * *
Fat men in blue suits blow whistles.
“Beat 'em clean! Wipe 'em clean! Put 'em in boxes! Beat 'em clean! Wipe 'em clean! Put 'em in boxes!”
* * *
A wooden man sits at a wooden table and he arranges stacks of wooden coupons.
“They must be burnt in the correct order.”
Stacks of boxes in the distillery farm basement.
Stacks and stacks.
* * *
Thirty years later; an old man with his old uniform.
“I wonder if it'll fit me.”
He tries the jacket on. He smiled.
“You've looked after yourself, old boy.”
He looks in the mirror and straightens his medals.
“Can't wait to blow my trumpet tomorrow.”
* * *
The streets are clean.
We have our boys to thank.
Here comes the parade.
Time to thank our boys.
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