Hole Punch Read online

  * * *

  One time, Dan and Liam stood in the backyard of the flats. Liam had built a bonfire by using gasoline and plastic chairs. Dan thought the toxic fumes were giving him cancer.

  “Fuck me,” said Liam. “I'm going to have a lie down, I've got a proper headache. You don't mind, do you mate?”

  “No problem,” said Dan.

  Dan stood in the backyard of the flats. It was three in the morning and he could hear the boy racers and the sea. Dan wondered as he often wondered.

  “What's point of all this?” he wondered. “Why did I come to Scarborough to study Marine Biology?”

  After he'd finished wondering he went back inside Liam and Claire's flat. Claire was still awake, she had no make up on and she was wearing her dressing gown. She looked tired without her makeup on.

  “Do you want a coffee?” she said.

  Dan shrugged.

  “Why not?” said Dan.

  FRIEND

  Me and my best friend have lunch together every day.

  My best friend isn't a nice friend. He tells me that all my actions are vindictive acts of a cowardly passive aggression; symptomatic of my struggles with a vain narcissism and a confused idealism.

  I disagree with him.

  He asks me why I'm writing this?

  This thing I am writing now.

  I tell him that I am writing this as a vindictive act of passive aggression against The Way Things Are.

  There's a purpose to it.

  There's a meaning to it.

  My best friend laughs.

  He always laughs.

  I hope he doesn't follow me home from school again because I don't like how he smiles down at me from the bedroom ceiling.

  NEWS

  “Important announcement!

  “The Enemy struck the Eastlandia Mining Industry today with an act of germ terrorism. The area is quarantined and working conditions are desperate."

  Footage of miners and their families covered in layers of sweat, boils and blood. Close ups of pustules at high temperature. A child's nose dribbling snot.

  "Preventative measures have been taken!"

  Men in protective rubber bubbles shoot at the plagued people with flame-throwers. Mining shafts filled with burnt bodies.

  "Talks happening today between senior orbs of the Conglomerate, planning instant retaliation against The Enemy."

  “Important Announcement!

  "The Enemy struck the Westlandia Mining Industry today with an act of germ terrorism. The area is quarantined and working conditions are desperate."

  Footage of miners and their families covered in layers of sweat, boils and blood. Close ups of pustules at high temperature. A child's nose dribbling snot.

  "Preventative measures have been taken!"

  Men in protective rubber bubbles shoot at the plagued people with flame-throwers. Mining shafts filled with burnt bodies.

  "Talks happening today between senior cubes of the Syndicate, planning instant retaliation against The Enemy."

  GO

  Everywhere I go I see me there.

  Everywhere I go.

  No.

  MISTAKE

  The muscles fall screaming into the Mistake's cracked skull and they bloat the Mistake's brain with red.

  Everything ending and everything sliding in and everything bloating red.

  This is all a mistake.

  The Mistake is a mistake is the Mistake is a mistake.

  “I wanted to love you!” said the Mistake, mouthlessy. “I wanted us to love each other! I didn't want to be alone and I didn't want everything else to be a mistake! I will never forgive me! Everything will be better now that there isn't any me!”

  The red darkens.

  “I am sorry!”

  The Mistake can't be anything but this.

  “I shouldn't have done this!”

  The red is now black.

  “I will never forgive me.”

  The world ends.

  No inside or outside.

  Just everything.

  A mistake.

  IN

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  I know it’s you.

  The door opened and someone new stood there.

  Not another one.

  The door closed.

  A knock on the rain wet window.

  FACE

  I look at my trail of words.

  Pin prick holes.

  A dot to dot image.

  These dots join together.

  Connect the dots.

  Fill the holes with questions.

  What's wrong with me?

  What's wrong with me?

  What's wrong with me?

  What's wrong with me?

  It rolls its eyes around.

  The dots connected with surface.

  A reactive surface.

  Divisions between coordinates.

  Blotched visions.

  Far beyond moisture bloated.

  A questioned surface converges towards an answer.

  It opens its mouth to speak.

  Gloopy, pink foam along its outline.

  It doesn't speak in words.

  I fall.

  My reflection closes its tongue.

  BEATWATER

  Grizzle Beatwater leant back on her talons in the sad sludge. Despite her sleepy bead eyes she cawed a loud squawk. Her school of disciplined chicks tottered to a stop, their feathers bloodied by the rain. The tree branches above stabbed down at them with dripping winter intent. The winds sang songs of cooking still clucking birds.

  A spe
ctral voice in those bad shapes said:

  “Trust in me my love, I'm not wholly dead, I will always be watching over you, my Grizzle and our flock, you will live up to the name of Beatwater. Now beat water my lovelies!”

  Grizzle Beatwater and her chicks trudge onwards in the sad sludge.

  Someday, they would find their coop.

  WINNING

  I’m working on a pattern design. It's made from images of smashed skulls and sliced eyeballs.

  Emmet Corcoran stands at my shoulder and looks at my work. He doesn’t understand.

  "What are you doing?" he asks.

  "Winning," I tell him.

  I convert a bitmap of a crushed brain into a flat vector.

  Emmett points at the paperwork at the end of my desk.

  "You need to process all those work orders by the Friday."

  I lift my leg and kick the paperwork on the floor. Emmett gives me one of his cow eyed stares.

  I light up a cigarette and I look at my design.

  “Something's missing,” I said. "Do you think it needs more spinal columns?"

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I’m escorted outside by security. I walk down Burton Road and I see cosmopolitan people sat in cosmopolitan bars.

  How do they all live without jobs? Maybe one day I could do that. If I could only make a success out of my creativity. If I could just do that then I could sit around in cosmopolitan bars all day. I could be just like them. Successful. Just like them. I could be just like them.

  If only I had an inheritance just like them. If only I could afford one or more holiday a year, just like them. If only I could get a house and a mortgage and be one hundred feet tall on a billboard. If only the normal people, the people who reject me, would let me live and breathe in their high-priced compartments so I can suckle on the latest Neo-Liberal teat!

  Can I be like them? Just like them? Please just let me sip hydroponics and dribble bay leafs. Here I am! A drooling, hungry animal. Aspiring for a life of sitting, drinking, shitting and pissing in a Cosmopolitan bar. Look at my dignity, there it goes, a stunted rodent!

  Whatever my position, all I have to look forward to is a life of prescribed, corporate hospitality! Soma! Tranquillise my consciousness to the size of a pixel and kick me to my grave!

  KOOMS

  Eddie sprayed his graffiti tag on an a bit of wall:

  “KOOMS.”

  Eddie walked further down the alleyway and sprayed his graffiti tag on another bit of wall:

  “KOOMS.”

  Eddie walked further down the alleyway and his foot hit against something. Eddie looked down and thought it was a bin bag at first. He stepped on it. It groaned. It was a man.

  “Sorry man,” said Eddie.

  “Help,” said the man.

  Eddie knelt down.

  “You alright man?”

  “Please help.”

  The man was covered in blood because he'd been stabbed loads of times.

  “I'm calling Nine-One-One,” said Eddie.

  “No, don't, no hospitals.”

  “Why?”

  “They took it.”

  “Took what?”

  “They took the plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “Please take this, destroy it and don't open it.”

  The man passed Eddie a USB stick.

  “They can't finish the plans without this.”

  “Look man,” said Eddie. “I don't want to get involved.”

  “Destroy it for me. Run. They'll be back soon. They'll realise they need both USB sticks. I've hiding this one up my ass.”

  * * *

  Eddie got back home to his bedsit, he put the USB stick on his bedside table and threw his bloodied clothes in the bin. He looked at the USB stick. He should destroy it. He decided not to yet. He wanted to see what was on it first. He plugged it into his laptop.

  “Password protected, typical.”

  He threw it in the bin with his clothes.

  Good thing tomorrow was the day they collected the trash.

  * * *

  He went to the news-stand in the morning to buy a chocolate bar. He saw a headline about the man in the alleyway.

  “DEAD CIA AGENT FOUND KILLED IN ALLEYWAY.”

  Eddie got a call from some girl he was seeing.

  “Did you know about this?” said the girl.

  “What? No,” lied Eddie. “I only just saw it in the paper.”

  “Some Russian guys have been going around asking questions about you?”

  “About me? What? Why?”

  “Your tag is sprayed on the wall next to the body.”

  “I could have tagged that weeks ago.”

  “It's fresh paint Eddie.”

  Eddie froze.

  “Oh crud!”

  “What happened Eddie?”

  “This guy in the alleyway was dying, he'd been stabbed loads of times, he gave me a USB stick that he'd been hiding up his ass. Don't worry babe, I threw away the stick and my clothes. They aren't going to find it. Bin collection today babe, that USB stick is going bye-bye.”

  “Bin collection is on Wednesday, not today.”

  “What? I thought it was Wednesday.”

  “It's Tuesday.”

  “Oh crud!”

  Eddie ran back home. He had to get the USB stick out of his bin and throw it into the sea or something.

  Two Russian spies in black suits and sunglasses were looking through Eddie's bins. When they saw Eddie they chased him down the street.

  “Get back here Kooms!”

  They wrestled him to the floor.

  “Tell us the password Kooms!”

  “What?”

  “Tell us the password to the USB sticks, or we'll kill you!”

  Two bullets went through the Russian spies heads and Eddie was covered by their brains.

  “I just saved your life,” said an attractive redhead holding a big smoking pistol.

  Eddie wiped the brains from his face and gawked at her.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to get you out of here. Agent Wilson must have really trusted you to give you those plans and the password. Thankfully, we now have both USB sticks. I take it you’re Kooms?”

  * * *

  They drove down the highway towards Washington DC.

  “Good cover disguise by the way,” said the redhead. “Not good enough though, those Ruskies tracked you down pretty quick.”

  “What? No lady I'm just some stick up punk. I don't even know Agent Wilson. I found him in an alleyway when I was doing my tags.”

  “Sleeper agent?”

  “What? No. I don't even know what that means.”

  “I'm taking you back to headquarters. They'll get the Intel we need out of you.”

  * * *

  They strapped Eddie to a table in a basement and fired electric shocks into his brain.

  “Whoever programmed this guy did a good job,” they said. “We need to burn the Intel out of this deep-cover hotshot.”

  * * *

  Twenty-eight years later, back in his home town, Eddie is sweeping the floor of the supermarket. This is the best job he could get, as he hadn't been in proper work for so long. He'd been working in a government basement. His job was to try and remember a password for the government. He'd tried so hard to remember but all he could do was forget. Eddie is a much better janitor than he ever was as an undercover agent. Undercover agents shouldn't forget things.

  After his shift, on his walk home, Eddie passes some faded graffiti on a railway bridge.

  “KOOMS.”

  He stares at it.

  It means something to him.

  He got on the phone and called the CIA.

  “You asked me to call if I remembered the password,” he said.

  “I'm listening.”

  “I think the password is KOOMS.”

  “That's your name dumb-dumb! Don't you think you've wasted enough of our time?”

  SORRY

/>   "I feel bad that I shat on your bed."

  "I'm sorry that I smashed your windows."

  "We were different people back then."

  "We weren't the people we are now."

  They both looked thoughtfully across the landscape and they felt clever.

  ENGLISH LITERATURE

  She stood on the stage, she had broken teeth and a black eye, she held up a shop receipt with her poem on it.

  "I am wot ya see, dat's me."

  She walked off the stage and the audience clapped, her English Literature Teacher stood on his chair and clapped.

  "BRAVO!” he cheered. “A powerful and enigmatic new voice for the Lost Generation! The Street Generation! The TWEET Generation!"

  ART HISTORY

  “Can you not see?” said the critic to the other critic as they looked at the abstract image. “These shapes depict a simultaneous implosion and explosion of the traditional methodology of self-portraiture. See that frozen movement of the eyeball as it careers from the socket, whilst also being held by kinetic strings and springs. Thus creating a tension between action and inaction.”

  “Oh yes,” said the other critic. “The helicopter blades seemingly erupt from the eye-socket to aid the propulsion of the ocular orb. Thus depicting the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.”

  “Can you not see the convergence point of the piece? The shattered teeth in his concave mouth. A throat tunnel leading to the most tight bound singularity.”

  “The darkness at that point of the image is clearly a deliberate ploy of the artist to develop perspective and visual depth, which has, insofar, not been seen in his work.”