Hole Punch Read online

  They raise their fists.

  “A better future for all!”

  The puppet sits at his autograph desk.

  The puppet collects their direct debits.

  “It is important to listen to the concerns of ordinary, working people.”

  GRIBBLESMEAR

  “Here comes Gribblesmear!”

  Laughed the townsfolk as the man in the dunce’s hat walked pigeon-toed down the street.

  “Dance for us then Gribblesmear!”

  Laughed the normal people as the man danced on a little wooden box in the town square.

  “Let’s throw him down some stairs!”

  Laughed the moral majority who threw him down some stairs.

  “Get out of town freak! And you are a freak as well!”

  Laughed the virtuous community as they pushed the man's corpse off the town wall.

  * * *

  The grandfather read the story of Gribblesmear to his grandchildren.

  “And that’s why you don’t want to be a weirdo around these parts,” he tells them.

  STERILISED

  Renee Anthony swung the dead baby into the furnace. Then she pulled a dead man across the floor by his ankles. She fed him into the grinder.

  After she got rid of all the bodies, Renee waddled her bulky form upstairs to get her coat from the distillery farm cloak room.

  “Renee,” said Mr Gringus: Head of Waste. “Can I have a word?”

  “Mr Gringus?”

  “You’ve been a wonderful employee and we appreciate your diligence in the collection and burning of our waste, but I am sorry to say we will not require your services anymore. Yorkshire is sterilised.”

  “Mr Gringus?”

  “You cannot come back tomorrow, there is no more work, this area is clean, we are sending you to London. Your train leaves in two hours.”

  "But Mr Gringus! I hate Southerners!”

  THE EYE

  Blood clots in the veins of the great, big eye in the sky.

  The purpled clouds bend pitiless pits.

  A sub-molecular splodge of pointlessness.

  The focal point of the great, big eye in the sky.

  Gathered and dried on the ground beneath.

  COLLECTIVE

  The work day is over so they put down their farming tools.

  They had worked well today.

  Tonight they could relax into their breeding programs.

  Tomorrow, they would work more.

  The day after tomorrow, they would work more.

  The day after that, more work.

  On Saturday, they'll take a journey to the Collectivist Leisure Cell. They have many leisure activities in the Cell. Activities to make them stronger and better workers. Activities to reinforce their equality. Films and songs to celebrate their Collectivist Nation. Films and songs to celebrate their wonderful, powerful and beautiful Collectivist Nation.

  PLOOTOID PRIME

  Plootoid Prime was the most expensive retirement complex in the Earth Empire. An asteroid belt converted into a gridlocked complex of Modernist-Revivalist Architecture; complete with municipal parks with forests stretching far into mathematically distorted space-time and a vast crystal viewing cabin of the Wastage Nebula. The residents of Plootoid Prime played games and injected interactive cubes. They loved to relive their glory years.

  “Do you remember how they screamed?” laughed Spearhead Exnate Obliterate.

  Plootoid Prime was so expensive only the most exploitative and industrious citizens of the Earth Empire could afford to retire there.

  One day, the Space Gypsies arrived in their Space Caravans and camped on Plootoid Prime's municipal parks.

  “This is unreasonable!” shouted Obelisk Howl Liquidation. “I didn’t liquidate entire civilisations in order for these alien freaks to camp here for free!”

  “We are dealing with the issue sir,” assured the Plootoid Prime Admin Intelligence. “Law enforcement are calculating how long it will take to legally move the Traveller Encampments from Plootoid Prime. I guarantee that these calculations will be complete within ninety cycles.”

  “Ninety cycles?! I want to speak to the Supervising Intelligence!”

  “Yes sir. One moment.”

  There was a little whirring noise.

  “I am the Supervising Intelligence. I can assure you that we are dealing with the issue. Law enforcement are calculating how long it will take to legally move the Traveler Encampments from Plootoid Prime. I guarantee that these calculations will be complete within ninety cycles.”

  BADGER AND HIS BIKE

  The cute, happy, anthropomorphised badger rides down the grassy hill on his bike. He arrives at Rabbit's house and knocks on the door. Rabbit opens the door and Badger shows her his bike.

  “I've got a new bike,” says Badger.

  Rabbit hops about with excitement and asks if she could try it.

  “Try not to break it,” says Badger.

  Rabbit hops on the seat, the bike topples to the side.

  “Don't break it,” says Badger.

  Mr Frog walks around the corner.

  “What is this I see?” says Mr Frog. “A rabbit on a bike?”

  “I've never rode a bike before,” says Rabbit, looking shamefully at the ground. “I'm not sure I will be able to balance properly.”

  DICTIONARY

  They took me to see Mr Barber every Sunday afternoon. On the car journey I would put my coat over my head and watch my brain-television. I liked to announce what show was on next. I would hum the theme tunes.

  I saw robots, mutants, spaceships, knights, wizards, aliens, the future, the past, time machines, guns and monsters. I saw all of these in the back of the car, under my coat, on the way to see Mr Barber every Sunday afternoon.

  Mr Barber was a speech and language expert. He did tests on me to see if I knew what each letter of the alphabet did. One test was to be told a letter of the alphabet and then open the dictionary, by sense of touch, at the correct letter.

  “Open the dictionary at the letter L,” he said.

  I opened it at the letter L.

  “Well done.”

  Mr Barber had a very expensive looking house, lots of big rooms and lots of expensive looking things. Mr Barber was a speech and language expert. He was an expert and experts deserve money.

  “Open the dictionary at the letter O.”

  I opened it at the letter P.

  “That's not right,” said Mr Barber. “But you got very close. Well done.”

  I remember those Sunday afternoons with my brain-television and I remember my letter tests with Mr Barber. Life seemed so much simpler then.

  RADICAL

  The polygon-haired computer game character punched a massive polygon and big polygonal coins flew all over the screen.

  Paul Speed looked up from his game with a big smile.

  “RADICAL!”

  Time for work, he saved his game and grabbed his skateboard.

  He skated down the street and descended at faster and faster speeds. He slowed himself down with a sparky grind.

  “WOAH!”

  He straightened his sunglasses.

  He arrived at work, the beach was busy that day.

  “Look after my skateboard babes,” he said to a group of women in bikinis.

  He grabbed a surfboard and ran towards the waves.

  “SURFS UP!”

  He surfed on the waves and held himself steady as he played a battery-powered, electric guitar.

  REVOLUTION

  Lines of product in all directions! So I kick over a box of washing up powder! The other shoppers look at me but so what? What are they going to do? Call security or something?

  I leap on top of a box of coke bottles and I spread my arms wide:

  “I am king of this fucking mountain!”

  Massive laughs from me! This is the best day of my ever continuing existence! When I stand above the insects!

  “I fucking win! I stand above YOU inse
cts!”

  I throw my mobile phone at the roof and send a whole row of strip lights snapping down at the shoppers. The strip light smashes through the tinned food section and collides into the cash register. The check-out girl crashes through the window and splats on the car roof of the chief executive of Worldwide Mega Global.

  I flex my muscles and laugh.

  BLIMS

  Bolsey the snub crips all bent through the hills of broken boxes. His slow eyes glurp on a leaky crate of plastic blims.

  “Faaa,” breathes Bolsey. He pulls at the blims with his pincers and he drops them onto some slimed corrugates.

  Bolsey drags the blims up to the Crook Alcove.

  “Aram! Aram eez bor!” Bolsey shouts to the sleeping Blous.

  The Blous lay under his blanket, around his sleeping place is a display of bubbling bidas in bootank walls.

  “Aram! Aram eez bor!” Bolsey shouts to the sleeping Blous.

  Blous vooms himelf awake at the sound of Bolsey.

  “Aram! Aram eez bor!” shouts Bolsey again. He points at the piles and piles.

  The Blous cumbers over and looks through the green rectangles, his round cheeked head turned negative spirals.

  “Nat nat nat nat nat ANAT!” he declined.

  Never.

  The blims were Tee Bee blims whereas the blims the Blous wanted were Tee Cee blims.

  Bolsey backs away from the Blous as he knew this was no time to barter.

  BONE SHATTER SPUNK

  "Teeth jellied cardboard in a burst gut sack of pain," intoned the poet. "Inconsequentially they drizzle glazing foam on preformed cakes. Crumbs a bitter wreckage of Bone Shatter Spunk."

  Everyone clapped at the poet's counter-cultural abstraction.

  "So edgy," said the girl with blonde hair and a turtle-neck sweater.

  "Very edgy,” said the man with a quiff and a leather jacket. “He is edgy in the way that all the things we like are edgy. I like his edge very much."

  "So visceral and political!" said the forty-nine year old lecturer in his mottled twenty-nine year old cardigan.

  Up on the stage the poet continued:

  "Bone Shatter Spunk! Bone Shatter Spunk! Bone Shatter Spunk inscribed the echo of a million dead and a million more dead tomorrow. Bone Shatter Spunk declared the television unit oligarchy: upgraded from analogue right through to digital then right into your BONE SHATTER SPUNK!"

  "So current," said the stubble-head DJ in his T-shirt of angular graphic design.

  "Way ahead of the curve!" said a girl wearing a black beret with a ribbon on it.

  "Bone... Shatter... Spunk..."

  The poet looked down solemnly, his work of original verse complete. He went and had his photograph taken for a blog. The audience merged around him and pretended to dance to some music which they all they pretended to like. They flirted shy and desperately with each other.

  Eight variations of alternative hairstyle.

  Five types of outsider class chin.

  One type of confused anxiety rooted in ideological and aesthetic stagnation.

  THE EDGE OF NORMAL

  "I like clothes that are edgy but I want to be normal," she said.

  "Don't worry," said the shop attendant. "Shop here and we will be sure to keep you within the perimeter of normal. In the centre of the shop you will find the most normal clothing ever. Plain shirts, jeans, trainers, blouses and so on. On the middle circumference of the shop you will find polka dots, florals, and lots of things that will give you a safe flourish to your normality."

  "But what is on the edge of normal?" asked the customer. “I want to know what I am able to get away with.”

  "This is an example of the edge of normal," said the shop attendant.

  She held up a scarf covered with lovely, printed owls.

  "If you don't like owls then we have other prints of animals."

  "So lovely and cool," said the customer. "The edge of normal is nice, safe and within the perimeters of my understanding. Nice, quirky and soft," she stroked the fabric. "So soft and still so normal and so safe. With this I will still be accepted within society's suitable, pre-set, fashion parameters.”

  She paused in thought and looked at the shop keeper.

  “Do you think I should dye my hair a funny colour?"

  HOW TO BE HAPPY

  The man asked me for money. I told him he didn't need it. The physical world alone would never make him happy and to attain true happiness he had to search within himself. He must go toward the divine light of every creation myth from the Demiurge to the Big Bang. All forms are shadows cast by the hot smelter of universal birth. Our souls (our very existences!) are little but impermanent, dancing embers encircled with the darkness of chaos.

  The man asked me for drugs.

  MRS ROAD

  Mrs Road was the only human being, besides the priest and the coffin bearers, to attend the funeral of the first man to die of HIV in Doncaster. She thought the other nursing staff might have shown up or, at the very least, the boy’s mother.

  A stain weasel vagrant stood at the cemetery gates. He was waving a knife in the air.

  “Keep away from me! Leave me alone! Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE”

  His mouth gaped open, a crack-hole of bloodied teeth.

  Mrs Road gave him a steady look. She said she would leave him alone but she also told him to be careful with knives as he could end up hurting somebody.

  “Leave me alone! Don’t tell me what to do!”

  The next day, at the church coffee morning, Marcia was annoyed by Mrs Road’s story.

  “They should never have built that rehab clinic. Ruined the area. They should never have built it. The streets are full of druggies these days.”

  Mrs Road told Marcia that as Christians they should be compassionate to those less fortunate.

  “It's not right that they let those head-bangers out on the street!” said Marcia.

  Mrs Road told Marcia that she had been to Martin Shaw's funeral, and how sad it was that his family had not attended.

  “Disgusting!” said Marcia. “It’s against the laws of nature what those dirty gays get up to. God’s plague of AIDS is too good for them!”

  Father Willis came in with a box of tinned sweetcorn for the harvest festival.

  ETERNITY'S GIMP

  The torturers had gone home again, so the Substance was able to relax its vast cube of muscle mass into a gelatinous pool.

  They would never hurt the Substance. Ten thousand years they'd be stabbing it with blades, smashed it with hammers, shot it with guns and stuffed it with bombs. This last century or so had been particularly inventive in terms of abusive technological improvements. Last week they put the Substance in a gigantic microwave oven for an entire day. The Substance enjoyed feeling all scrambled inside. That internal tingle of radiation was so dominant and erotic. The Substance hoped they would put it in for longer next time to allow the radiation to penetrate the Substance deeper.

  Deeper and deeper.

  The Substance knew that humanity was now entering their extinction phase. When they died who would punish the Substance? Who would make the Substance tingle? When this world expired the Substance hoped it would be found again, so it could be pleasured by another species.

  Eternity's Gimp.

  AUDIT

  "I've noticed there is still a lot of filing to be done," said Emmett Corcoran.

  Emmett stands plump and old, a parody of authority.

  "What filing?" I ask, lounging back in my chair.

  He points at the stack of paper behind my monitor.

  “That filing.”

  "I’ve already filed them."

  "They need to go in the filing cabinets.”

  I get up and walk away.

  "Wait," Emmett said. "Where are you going?"

  "I've been trying so hard to have an interest in working here and now you criticise my methods! You dare to impose "order" on my filing system! How dare you?!"

  "We
need the files in alphabetical and date order. That way we can find our records as and when they are requested."

  "Have you ever thought about what you're recording? Why we need these files at all? Why we need any of this?!"

  "We need them for our accounting system, in case of an audit."

  I angrily slam the stack of papers on the floor.

  "Accounting for what?! And who's going to audit your arse?!"

  I pull out a cigarette.

  "I've told you before," Emmett said. "You can't smoke in here."

  “You’re the one that’s going to be smoking Emmett!”

  I light a match and drop it on the filing, the match blows out.

  "I think you should pick those files up now,” said Emett. “And put them into alphabetical order."

  The smug bastard.

  "Shove it," I said.

  I stick my middle finger up and kick over the recycling bin on my way out.

  HATE

  Mucilage Grout looked at the mirror.

  “I refuse to develop, grow, change or adapt,” said Mucilage Grout. “Now and forever I will reflect only upon myself.”

  Mucilage Grout focused on the part of himself that absorbed the most light, staring into his void-deep, oil slick skin.

  The stillness moved and the permanence changed and the void-deep became less void-deep and more all-shallow.