the animal police

Johnny Mondays was fast becoming the least popular private dick in all Norwich, and he wasn’t even a private dick. He was one third of an outfit self-dubbed ‘The Animal Police’: bored freelance journalists, ex-heroin addicts and crime fighters unextraordinaire. Petty stuff, mainly: lost dogs, tired cats, loud birds. It wasn’t that their rather paltry detective skills were limited exclusively to the animal kingdom, but Mondays and his associates did have an almost preternatural ability to solve these dull cases with a half successful rate of accuracy.

They’d hit East Anglia when times had drawn hard in the capital. The smack had been getting out of hand for a while. Billy Dryskin had taken a series of hard line beatings from his dealer in the street, and Jack Oddbins got fucked dissolving his fix in lemon juice and wound up blind in one eye, that now lingered dead-looking and lazy after the rest of him looked away. They all three decided to get out while they could, get some help, get clean, get the business back on it’s feet. Norwich seemed like the place to do it.

How wrong they’d been.

They’d only been in the city walls for a month and already the cases were flooding in, five maybe six a day. It shouldn’t have been like this, Mondays thought, reaching for the scotch from the desk drawer that he shared with Dryskin and Oddbins. Animal Policing was as much about trust building as it was solving the cases. No one was going to come and start puking their guts out to a perfect stranger, especially one with a blinded fungal eye and needle tracks spread up his arm. It should have been a long process, but the phone only stopped ringing when they unplugged it. What the fuck was going on in this town?

He heard the door going, his already acute sense of hearing heightened by withdrawal. His mother had thought he must have some dog in him, some wolf maybe, due to his powerful brain and his acute sense of hearing, but Mondays knew that was bullshit. It was Oddbins; he could hear his stupid voice. Yeah, and Dryskin. Back from the clinic, pacified with methadone and ready to sleep. Not this morning. Mondays knocked back a hunk of scotch and slipped the bottle back into the drawer, 10:24 am.

“Mondays,” said Dryskin. “You missed your fuckin appointment.”

“And who gives a shit?” asked Mondays.

“Longo. She was not happy. She’s gonna stop the script if you miss another one,” said Oddbins, one eye engulfed in a dull yellow sheen.

“We’ll see about that.” Mondays plugged the phone in and it started ringing immediately. He took the receiver and hung up, then dialled a number from memory. Good memory. He looked at the other two and nodded, and mouthed ‘ringing’ with hand over the mouthpiece. They heard a muffled answer, unclear past Mondays scruffy hair. “Maria Longo,” he said quickly. “Johnny Mondays.” A few seconds happened and they could hear more noises on the end of the phone. “Maria?” he said. “Mondays. What? I know. I’ve got nothing to say. I missed it. Of course. Is that a threat? I wouldn’t, Longo. I just wouldn’t. Fuck with me. Yeah, fuck.” He smiled at his buddies. “It’ll be ready next week? Right.” And he hung up.

“Sorted?” asked Dryskin.

“Yeah,” said Mondays. The phone started to ring again. Mondays snatched the receiver. “Animal Police,” he said. “Uh-huh. Sure. Address?” He wrote some words down on the back of an envelope. “Okay.” He hung up and pulled the phone out of the wall socket. “Fuckin phone won’t stop.”

Dryskin and Oddbins sat down on the two chairs in front of the desk and they all lit smokes.

“What the fuck’s going on, Mondays?” asked Oddbins. “That’s the third time this morning I’ve found the car burnt.”

“And the sixteenth time this week,” said Mondays, his fingers sliding into a steeple. “Interesting,” he spoke slowly, methodically, contemplatively.

“What’s going on?” said Dryskin this time. “This was on the doorstep when we came up here.” He passed a plastic supermarket bag over the desk towards Mondays, who took it between thumb and forefinger, weighing it up. “Be careful man,” said Dryskin gravely. He leaned in a little and whispered. “It ain’t human.”

Mondays opened the bag and looked in. “Shit,” he said. “Day old, solid mostly.” He lowered his nose slightly, to the opening, and inhaled deeply. “Dog, medium size.” He sniffed again, two short sharp pumps. “Spaniel?” Another sniff. “There’s some cat in there.” He shook his head disapprovingly, tied the bag up by its handles and threw it out of the open window. “A bag of shit,” he said rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “A burnt out car. A bag of shit and a burnt out car. Very, very interesting.”

“What do you think, Mondays?” Oddbins was sweating heavily in his customary way.

“I don’t know boys,” he said, looking at his watch. “I don’t know.”

*

Maria Longo left the hospital around half past four, as always. She’d only worked at the clinic about a month, transferred from London. Change in pace, she’d said, spend time with the family. An Italian, definitely, and probably a lesbian, most people thought, heavy-built and moustachioed, ripe with sweat and easily worked up, stretched into plain crew neck t-shirts of the primary colours. Despite the Italian roots her family were Norwich-dwellers, she said, but she didn’t like to talk about her family. It was personal details, and Longo wasn’t into being personal.

Back at the three bed redbrick house she lives in it was 4:45 pm and Longo glanced surreptitiously over her meaty shoulder joint. No one. She pulled out the keys and hulks through the front door, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hallway. In the confines of the house she seemed nervous, and jumping a little she puts her bag down and is straight in the kitchen, drying her face down with a tea towel. The place smells of animal but there’s nothing in sight.

“Maria!” boomed a male voice, the accent thick heavy Italian like the noise of meatballs. “Maria, come-a the fuck-a in here-a!”

Longo crossed herself and rushed in the direction of the voice. It looked like there were tears in her eyes. She opened the door off of the hallway and into the living room and went through it. Seated in the middle of the bay window on a threadbare armchair there was a fat octogenarian dressed head to toe in black vestment-like garments. His fingers are weighed down with countless gold rings and he wears prescription sunglasses on his vast football shaped head, his body a rack of solid fat. Not the flexible, doughy fat of the English but the solid, compacted fat of the Mediterranean, unmoving and dangerous.

“Well?” he snarled gruffly, his skin the colour of cigar clenched between his black teeth. Longo dropped to her knees in the doorway.

They’re here!” she said, herself heavily accented. “I’ve-a seen them!”

“All of them?”

“All but-a the one they call the Mondays.”

“Mondays,” he repeated, his eyes narrowing behind the glasses. “Perhaps the Mondays should get a little visit? Show him the way things a-go in the Norwich. That we don’t need no fucking Animal Policemen. That-a we-a do-a things our own-a way in-a the East-a the Anglia.”

“Yes Ambassador!” said Longo, hands clenched together in ecstatic agreement. The Ambassador smiled.

“Now get-a the fuck outta here woman, you fucking stink.”

“Yes Ambassador, yes!” said Longo, edging backwards out of the room.

*

The Animal Police pulled up at the address. The car was in a bad state, windows smashed and upholstery still damp from the fire extinguisher, but somehow it still moved. It was 4pm and the sun was still hot in the sky.

“What the fuck’s this place supposed to be?” asked Dryskin. “Looks like a factory.”

Mondays nodded, peered over the metal frame of his sunglasses. “It does, doesn’t it?” He rifled about in his jeans pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. He checked the address. It was right. “I don’t see no Mrs Fucking Michaels.” He opened the car door and stepped out onto the dry gravel floor. “Sonofabitch.”

“What’s it supposed to be, Mondays?” said Oddbins past a pencil thin cigarette, also getting out of the car, along with Dryskin from the back.

“Stolen pooch, she said.”

“Why here?”

“Said this was her place. Residential address, she said.”

“Residential?” said Dryskin. “This is a fuckin abandoned factory. There’s nothing here.”

“Hoax,” agreed Oddbins. “Another one. Let’s get the fuck outta here Mondays. It’s a fuckin prank.”

“Just shut up,” said Mondays, sitting himself slightly on the bonnet of the car. He looked around the scene. Something wasn’t right about this set up. “Let’s take a look around,” he said. “Nobody fucks with the Animal Police.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is, dickhead, that people don’t just make pranks calls and drag poor bastards out here without reason. Trying to fuck us up? Then they’re probably here right now, watching. They’ll wanna see it. See us fucked up. In fact,” he said, lighting a smoke with a match, “I’d fuckin bet on it.”

“He’s right,” said Dryskin. “Let’s take a look around. See what we can find. If there’s anyone here I wanna have some serious fuckin words. That fuckin phone isn’t for bullshit.”

“Boys,” said Mondays, raising a hand for silence. “Let’s Animal Police.”

They wandered forth towards what looked like an entrance, which gave in quickly to the forceful sole of Mondays boot. “Michaels?” he growled. “Michaels?” Met with stolid silence his voice echoed around the space. They moved in further, an awkward half-light making it through the dirty windows, until they reached the foot of a metal staircase. Dust was spread thickly throughout the building, and the floor looked hollow where the machinery must once have been. Now it was littered with empty drinks cans and cigarette butts and tissue paper. Always tissue paper, thought Mondays. He raised a foot to the bottom step but stopped when something caught his eyes, just underneath the lowest part of stairs.

“Wait,” he said, pointing to what he saw. It was pink and fresh and raw looking. Like some kind of meat. But what was it, and what was it doing here.

“What is it?” said Oddbins.

“And what’s it doing here?” said Dryskin.

Mondays knelt down next to the pink matter and reached out a hand to pick it up, which he did slowly, raising it to his lips. He darted his tongue out in lizard-like flecks, gently dabbing at its surface. Swallowing a few times to get an idea of what he was dealing with and his face suddenly turned with recognition and he spat, spat until nothing was left to spit out, and threw the matter back onto the floor.

“Fuck,” he said, rubbing his tongue onto his sleeve and reeling backwards. “Fuck!”

“Jesus Mondays, what is it?”

“It’s a cock,” he said angrily, “it’s a fuckin dogs cock!”

“Christ,” said Dryskin authentically.

“You better believe that,” snarled Mondays, putting his fingers down his throat.

“What kind of monster?” said Oddbins.

“You don’t wanna know,” said Dryskin.

“On the fuckin contrary,” said Mondays, shaking his head with something way beyond scorn. “I wanna know very much.” He stamped his foot down on the disembodied dick. “There’s some sick bastards at work here,” he said. “And this ain’t no coincidence. This was left here for us. Some kind of threat. A warning, maybe. Someone’s got something they don’t want us to know, that’s for fuckin sure. Something big. The car, the phone calls, the dogshit, and now the cock. Well I don’t give a pound of shit. No one cuts off a dog’s cock on my watch. Not in my town. Or my name ain’t fuckin Johnny Mondays.”

His fists were clenched as he spoke, and they jumped when they heard the roar of tearing metal coming from outside.

“What the shit was that?” said Oddbins.

“Sounds like the fuckin car,” said Mondays.

“Move!” said Dryskin.

They ran back the way they came and outside. Sure enough, the car was ablaze, torched out, ripped in two like a sandwich by the heat of the blast.

“What did I say?” said Mondays. “They’re here.” Bang on cue the ambience was pierced by squealing car tyres and a huge black Merc drove off at speed, kicking up a cloud of dust as it hit the B-road and flew out of sight.

Mondays walked around the car. Spray painted onto the side were large poorly executed letters. It read: ANAL POLIC FUK OF. Illiterates, he thought. “Look at this,” he said, pointing at the text.

“Anal polic? What the fucks that supposed to mean?” asked Oddbins.

“I’d hazard a guess it means Animal Police,” said Mondays.

“Mondays!” blurted Dryskin, pointing. “Look.”

Monday followed the path of the finger and saw it, there on the floor. Another bag. He opened it. “As I suspected,” he said, and tossed the bag to Dryskin.

“Dogshit,” said the latter, tossing it Oddbins.

“Dogshit,” he agreed.

They looked at the car, didn’t even bother trying to put the flames out. Mondays was about to speak when he saw something else, about thirty feet from where he was standing. He walked over to it and picked it up. A white handkerchief. He smelt it. Garlic. Garlic and olive oil.

“Italians!” he shouted.

“What?” said the others.

“Fuckin Italians,” he said, passing Dryskin the handkerchief. “Smell that.”

Dryskin did as he said. “Garlic.”

Mondays nodded. “Garlic,” he said. “It’s the Italians.”

“Fuck me,” said Oddbins. “What would the Italians want with us?”

“That’s what were going to find the fuck out,” said Mondays aggressively. “No fucker burns my car beyond repair and gets away with it. Not with spelling like that.”

“Let’s Animal Police,” said Dryskin. They all shook hands and set off towards Norwich, slowly and on foot, sweating, the smell of petrol oppressive in the heat.

*

The Merc swung fast into the garage and farted to a halt. Longo jumped out of the drivers seat, her eyes hidden behind a pair of reflective sunglasses. She peered out of the garage door, checking that no one had followed her. The road was clear so she looked at her watch. 4:45pm. The Ambassador would be waiting. Longo felt in her pockets for her handkerchief but couldn’t find it, instead wiping her forehead with a dishcloth left blackened and oily on the workbench in the garage. The heat was unbearable.

She removed the black leather gloves and placed them into a yellow plastic medical waste bag that she had taken from the hospital, along with an empty petrol can and a dead German Shepherd dog, dickless and thick with drying blood, flies already covering it. She tied the bag closed and put it inside an old tumble dryer in the garage.

Longo pulled the garage door down behind her as she left and skulked around to the front door, feeling observed. She was starting to think that she wasn’t really cut out for this type of thing, but she had no choice now. Besides, the Feminist Mafiosi needed every penny they could get, and the Ambassador paid handsomely for satisfactory efforts. And the Animal Police were nothing, no one. Junkies and pigs, trifling interferences. She hadn’t enjoyed killing the dog, but needs must. She was working for powerful men, for whom powerful symbolic gestures were a prerequisite. There’s little more powerful than a dog’s dick, she thought hungrily. If it hadn’t been her it would have been someone else, she thought. Killing the dog. Old age or a traffic accident. Or it would have gone to the Ambassador’s business partners for reformation. Its time was already up, before she made the incision. There was always death. As good this way as any other.

A small part of a grand plan. A catering plan.

Where was that handkerchief?

In the house the voice of the Ambassador. “Maria! Get-a your fat-a fuckin ass in-a here!”

She did as commanded, the Ambassador in that same chair.

“It’s-a done,” she said, on her knees. “Ka-boom!”

“Magnificent,” he beamed, eyes sunken gleefully into his doughy countenance. “And-a
these Animal Police?”

“Stranded,” said Longo with pride.

“You mean-a,” his face turned from the smile. “You mean-a you-a didn’t kill-a them?”

“I… no, but-a they are-a stranded, Ambassador.”

“You stupid woman. They may-a be a-stranded but-a they can walk. You were supposed to-a kill them, Maria. Kill them! Instead-a you just-a burnt their car? What are you the fucking stupid? You-a can’t-a be trusted, Maria, can’t-a be trusted!”

Longo sobbed apologies. “But I too sprayed-a their car a-with the nasty words.”

“Oh-a you a-sprayed their automobile! Shut up!” screamed the Ambassador, head engulfed in a thick cloud of cigar smoke. Longo honked as she tried to stifle her fear. “Do we-a look-a like we are in-a the playground Maria? Do we?” She fell to her front, sobbing in ugly tears, her face pressed into the carpet.

“Maria, Maria,” said the Ambassador, his voice quieter, “this-a may not be the end of-a the world,” he went on. “Stop-a your crying. We scare them, yes? We burn their car and put-a the dogshit in the letterbox. But-a still they don’t-a know it’s us. We are-a calling the shots Maria, yes? Hmmm? We are-a pulling the strings? We will get-a those-a Animal Police exactly where we want them, and then-a bang! Next time there will be no mistakes! We must-a make them afraid to walk-a the street of Norwich, Maria, make-a them fear their own shadows and-a even themselves. Of course!” He clapped his hands together. “It’s-a so simple. Intimidation. To chase-a them outta town and-a outta my-a animal business! Bellissimo!”

He laughed, laughed and laughed, clutching his thick abdomen with one massive hand. Longo crawled towards him, along the floor.

“Yes-a, the masterful Ambassador,” she said.

“And-a there was nothing to a-lead them here?” he asked.

“Nothing, nothing, I-a swear!”

“Very well, a-Maria. Now suck-a my dick, you fat-fat bitch!” he roared, unzipping his fly. “There is still a-much-a to do before-a da opening!”

Mouthful: “Yes! Oh-a yes!”

Groaning orgasm: “We-a make-a the facking rules.”

*

The Animal Police were back within the city wall, walking now in an intense silence. Mondays was shaking and needed something to take the edge off of it. It’d have to wait until they were back in the office. He sneered as they walked past a kebab shop, opening up for the evening shift.

“Fuckin stinks,” he mumbled, peering through the dirty glass with disdain.

“Like a dogs dick,” snorted Dryskin without thinking. He looked apologetically at Mondays, who involuntarily clenched his fist. “Sorry, John,” he said quietly, head slightly bowed.

Unexpectedly Mondays face dropped to slack, struck by a revelation. He clicked his fingers and grabbed Dryskin enthusiastically by the shoulder. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s fuckin it! Kebabs, dog dicks, that’s it!” He let go of the shoulders and paced backwards, gripping his jaw in concentration. Dryskin and Oddbins watched him, and watched the dusky boys by the kebab shop grill, amused as they were by the unusual. “But who?” said Mondays rhetorically. “Who? What’s the link? Who? What?” He paced more, in tight circles, drumming fist into palm and whispering hurriedly to himself.

It hit him like motorcar. Something about the rotating doner and the godawful stench made him think of Longo.

Longo. Italian. Greedy. Meaty. That was it. She was their keyworker, knew them, knew their business, knew their address. And she was Italian. It was all coming together.

Feeling the smile stretch across his face Mondays turned to his colleagues. “Longo,” he announced proudly.

“Longo?” they replied simultaneously.

“Longo!” he said again, shouting this time.

Oddbins noticed the eyes of the kebab shop goons widening with repetition of the word Longo, as though someone had uttered a swear word. Or a secret. The smallest of the three ran to a phone and started punching in numbers, then talking animatedly into the receiver and gesturing towards the window. The middle sized one kept watch of the grill, while the biggest threw his cloth down onto the stainless steel surface and came to the door.

“Junkies fuck off,” he said harshly, in a thick unidentifiable accent.

“That fuckin Longo.” Mondays, oblivious, said it again.

“No fuckin Longo here man,” said the kebab goon. “Now get the fuck off from outta here.”

“Mondays,” said Dryskin, shaking him from his reverie. “I think this gentleman wants us to leave.”

“Huh,” said Mondays, looking to Dryskin and then the Arab, arms folded like tree trunks and blocking the entrance to the shop. “Leave?” he said. “We only just got here. Doner and chips.”

“You’re Mondays?”

“My reputation precedes the fuck outta me,” said Mondays, smile locked onto his face.

“No doner for you. Fuck off.”

“And what about Longo?” said Mondays.

“What you want?”

“Longo.”

“There ain’t no facking Longo neither. Now don’t you ever facking come here again with your facking Longo. There ain’t nothing we need to talk about.”

He spat down onto the street, a thick yellow emission, pointed at each of the three Animal Police in turn, then went inside the shop and locked the door behind him.

“What the fuck’s going on?” asked Oddbins. “What’s this Longo shit? And why the kebabs?”

“I have a feeling it’s simple,” said Mondays. “See…”

A screeching of brakes shredded the sentence. Mondays looked up to see a black Merc, the same black Merc, tearing around a corner just up the road. It was headed straight for them, and didn’t look like it was going to stop.

“Son of a…” he said.

“They ain’t fuckin stopping,” said Oddbins.

“Agreed on that,” said Dryskin.

“Get the fuck out of here,” said Mondays.

“Agreed on that too,” said Dryskin, and they erupted into a run. They hit the riverside walk, knew the car couldn’t get down there. Mondays looked back and saw the car pulling to a halt by the footpath they’d taken down to the river. No one was getting out and he couldn’t see through the tinted windows.

“Stop,” he said to the others. “They’re not getting out.” Oddbins and Dryskin walked back to Mondays reluctantly, stared at the car. It was an absurd standoff. Slowly the car pulled away and was gone. None of the Animal Police tried to follow it. Left in its place at the head of the pathway was the stub end of a thick cigar. Mondays approached it. There was something else next to it, wrapped in the same kind of white handkerchief as before. He lifted it up and unravelled the handkerchief. As he suspected.

It was the severed paw of a German Shepherd.

Fresh.

Mondays beckoned Dryskin and Oddbins over to him. “Let’s get some smack,” he said, and gave the paw to Dryskin. It was 7:52pm.

*

“Ah, Maria, you piggy piggy,” said the Ambassador softly. “We are a-gaining on them, huh? One-a step closer, huh?” He prodded her flanks playfully with his sausage-like fingers as he spoke.

“The car-a, Ambassador, it-a wouldn’t fit a-down the footpath.”

“No no Maria, you are-a misunderstanding me. Everything is a-working as I a-planned.”

“But…”

“No-a buts, Maria. This is a-part of-a the plan. The Mondays will-a come-a to us, it is-a only a matter of time. He has a-had-a his clues, and-a he is-a the big-a-shot-a detective. I have laid-a the map Maria, and-a all he must do is-a follow it into my trap. He will know-a the truth if he-a follows the clues. Right-a where we want them.”

Longo bit one corner of her lip, concerned expressing on her face. “And-a then?”

“And-a then? We kill-a the shit of-a the Animal Police! And-a without-a them to stand in-a my way, the multi-a-million pound takeaway industry of-a Norwich will-a be mine! All mine!”

His laughter ricocheted around the leather upholstery of the Merc as Longo drove it North, towards the warehouse.

*

Mondays tried to open his eyes and puked, twice, three, even four times. What did they do last night? Oh yeah. The smack. Without remorse he stood up. 8:29am. Dryskin was draped over the table, entirely naked, widthways, his body in a crippling crescent shape, his ribs covered with bruises; Oddbins was underneath the same table, completely flat, straight and with his arms by his sides. The phone rang and woke them up with a start. Monday grabbed the receiver, lighting a smoke with his free hand.

“Yeah?” he said, voice sounding like it was being scraped out of him. “Hello? Hello?” There was a laughing at the end of the phone, male and persistent. “Hello you sick fuck? Fuck it,” he shouted, and threw the handset into the wall. It didn’t break.

Dryskin screamed as he pulled himself up, spine grinding back into a vertical stance. “Who was that?” he said, looking for some underwear.

“Laughing boy,” said Mondays pulling hard on the cigarette and pouring a scotch. “Again.”

“Laughing boy?” asked Dryskin.

“From last night,” said Oddbins, who was now laying face down. “The fucker was ringing last night.”

“Right,” said Dryskin, given up on the underwear and slipping on a pair of jeans.

The Animal Police looked at each other, around the office. It was a state.

“Fucking Longo,” muttered Mondays, spitting the scotch back into the glass, drinking it back and then smashing the glass against the wall. “Fucking fucking Longo.”

“Shit yeah, Longo. That was it!” said Dryskin excitedly. Mondays nodded. “What’s the story, John?”

“The Longo Story,” said Oddbins.

“It’s not a story you dickheads, it’s a theory.”

“Tell us then.”

“It’s Longo, all of this. The dogshit, the paw, the car, the handkerchief for Christ’s sake. The fat fucker’s up to something. She followed us here from London, got in as our keyworker, found out our fuckin address, burnt out our car and planted that dog dick in the factory.”

“But… why?”

“Simple,” said Mondays. “Kebabs and takeaway.”

Oddbins and Dryskin gave each other a look, like he’d lost his mind. “Are you alright, Mondays?” asked the latter.

“Course I’m alright, and I’m telling you: kebabs.”

“What do you mean kebabs?”

“Exactly that. They’re using dogs and cats as meat.”

“Shit.”

“Explains all the missing pets,” offered Oddbins.

“Right,” Mondays went on, “and the body parts. And that fuckin stench. I recognise grilled dog meat anywhere and that shit last night, that was dog meat. Even the paw,” he said enthusiastically, picking it off of the floor. “Look at that,” holding up the severed limb for inspection. “Cut with a fuckin catering knife.”

“Jesus,” said Dryskin.

“But this doesn’t make sense. Why Longo?” asked Oddbins.

“Well that’s the difficult bit. Aside from the fact that the big bastard’s probably got a thing for kebabs, I don’t really know. And she doesn’t have the brains to be organising a racket like this, so she must be working for someone. But she’s in on it. This kebab job’s got Longo and the Italians written all over it.”

“Maybe,” pondered Oddbins, wandering to the window. “Maybe.”

“Maybe nothing,” said Mondays. “It’s the only explanation. Why do you think we’re getting such a hard fuckin time? Last thing you want sniffing around a racket like this is Animal Police. We’re enemy number fuckin one. Longo’s just a stooge, but I don’t doubt that those filthy Italians are supplying half the county with cheap animal meat. I mean, how many people’d really know the difference.”

“Not many, it would seem,” said Dryskin.

“Fuckin bingo,” smiled Mondays.

“I don’t get it though,” said Oddbins. “Why the Wops? Isn’t it the Arabs that make kebabs?”

“That doesn’t matter for shit,” said Mondays, “although it is odd, I grant you. Must be money in it. And power. It’s the way of the world – everybody respects the man who gets the meat. Maybe it’s a respect thing, I don’t fuckin know. All I know is that it’s happening, and Longo’s in on it. And if that bitch will burn up our fuckin car, what’s her boss gonna be prepared to do to us?”

Dryskin whistled through his teeth. Oddbins watched a twitch pass over Mondays’ face. “You okay, Mondays?”

Mondays shook his head and poured another drink. His was having a memory, that much was clear to anyone.

“Mondays?”

“I’m fine,” he snapped, but then looked guilty for his aggressive reaction. “I’m fine,” softer this time.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Fuck you!” he shouted, face reddening. Oddbins recoiled and Mondays caught himself, grabbed some lungfuls of air. “I’m… sorry,” he said. “It’s just… the memories.”

“Kebabs?” asked Oddbins.

Mondays nodded. “Kebabs. I had a bad experience once. A bad experience.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know if I can. I’ve never talked about it before.” He slumped down into the chair behind the desk.

“Take your time,” said Oddbins, perching on the windowsill. Mondays knocked back the drink in one.

“It was ’97,” he started. “Summer. It’s hard to believe it looking at me now but I didn’t always used to be… like this. I wasn’t always a scumbag. Used to be somebody, with a job, a wife, a place. And then it happened.”

“Go on,” encouraged Oddbins gently.

“Oh, you know how these things go. It was a hot day, the wife and I were having a drink, feeling a bit toasted. I had whiskey, she had pints of lager and lime in half pint glasses. Then off home, feeling a bit peckish, so what do you think to do?”

“Kebab,” said Dryskin quietly, reverently.

“That’s it,” intercepted Mondays. “What more normal thing is there?” His eyes had glazed over, somewhere awkward between tears and anger. “We got our kebabs – lamb doner for the gent, chicken shish for the lady – and thought we’d walk them home. Only lived a few minutes away. That’s when it happened.” He brought his fist down hard on the desk, displacing the bottle of scotch. It broke on the floor.

“It’s okay man.”

Mondays shot him a glance. It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay.

“These fuckin... two bit muggers. Followed us a way and then jumped us. They knocked us both over but pulled me up, to my feet, asking for my wallet. I was a bit drunk and I didn’t want any trouble, Jesus I just tried to give them the fuckin thing, but they weren’t having it. Start laying their hands on my wife, whose still on the floor. They’re holding her down.” He has tears running the length of his cheeks, but he doesn’t sound like he’s crying. “Fuckin touchin her, the dirty little bastards. And they start unwrapping her kebab, fuckin laughing while they’re doing it, and all I can hear is her crying and crying, but I can’t do nothing because they’re holding me. I can’t do nothing.” He shouts, frustrated, wipes his eyes. “Fuckers force the kebab into her mouth. She’s gasping for breath and they force the kebab in her mouth, dripping garlic sauce and grease and limp fuckin salad. And they laugh while they rape her. She isn’t gasping by then. She isn’t nothing. Just lying there.”

“Mondays I...” managed Oddbins. “I had no idea.”

“By the time they’re through I kneel next to her but I know she’s dead. Choked on a kebab. A fuckin kebab! They murder my wife and they take my wallet and what am I left with? A tepid doner. What could I do?” he said, bleary eyed, stung by the pain of the past. “What the fuck could I do? I lost everything, and for what? Kebabs? It was no fuckin good. I threw myself into the heroin and never once came up for air. I wanted to obliterate every shred of myself that was leftover from that mess. I didn’t want to see it again.”

Dryskin wiped the sweat from his face with a t-shirt, then put it on.

“And now we’re here,” said Mondays, slapping his thighs as though he hadn’t said a word. “Present fuckin day.” He lit a smoke.

“Mondays...”

“Another day in paradise,” he scoffed.

“You don’t have to bullshit us Mondays,” said Oddbins.

“I’m bullshitting no one man. I fuckin hate kebabs, and that’s why. Kebabs killed my wife, they took everything I had. And it was all because of kebabs. That I can almost live with. But using dogs? Fuckin cats? And Italians fuckin doing it? It’s not right boys, I’ll tell you that much.”

“I think you might be right,” said Dryskin, looking at the clock ever-frantically.

“That’s why we’re going to track the bastards down and put a stop to this. Put a fuckin stop to kebabs in the Norwich area. For the animals. For my dead wife. For the future.”

“Right,” said Oddbins.

“Starting with that ape Longo. Make the cunt talk.”

“Right,” said Dryskin.

“First things first we better get to the chemist,” he said. “Get us a medicine breakfast.”

“Nothing like methadone in the mornings to get you going,” said Dryskin.

“It’s what detective work was founded on,” said Mondays, pulling his old brown suit jacket from the back of the chair and opening the door. They’d be at the chemist in five minutes, 9:15 by the yellowed wall clock.

*

By 11 they had Longo tied up to a straight-backed wooden chair. She smiled pathetically as Mondays drove a fist hard into the centre of her face, nose popping under the force of the punch.

“We want answers Longo,” he said. “Answers.”

“I know a-nothing,” she said, apparently unfazed.

“Nothing is it, tough guy? You know nothing? Well I know this much, and that’s you’re fucking dead if you don’t spill the sauce.” He tossed Oddbins a nod who, nodding back, brought his fist down like a gavel on the top of her head. “Now tell us about the fuckin animals.”

“What a-fucking animals?” she said slowly. “I don’t a-know no fucking animals except-a you!”

“Very, very stupid, Longo,” said Mondays, enjoying a cigarette. He tossed another nod, to Dryskin this time, who responded by slapping a firm backhand across Longo’s broad face.

“What-a you want me to say?” she asked, tasting blood on her tongue.

“Tell us about the meat, Longo. About the kebabs. About who the fuck would let a stupid lump like you loose working for them.”

“I don’t know the kebab,” she said. “I know a-nothing about-a no meat or no animals.”

“You’re an Italian liar, Longo, like all Italian liars.”

“You bullshit,” she said.

“Bullshit nothing,” snarled Mondays. “Are you gonna tell us what the fuck we wanna know, or are we gonna fuck you up?”

“I say not a word,” she said in the kind of defiant way that required folded arms, but she couldn’t move because of the rope.

“Wrong answer Longo,” said Mondays.

“You murderous kebab mongering mothershit,” said Dryskin, leaning in close and accentuating the words as he said them. “People like you make me fuckin sick.”

Mondays strolled around the behind the chair and stood in front of Longo. He was holding a knife and loosely gesturing towards Longo. She panicked, visibly, her breathing deepened.

“Oh-a shit,” she said. “Not-a the knife.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this Longo,” said Mondays softly, dragging the blade gently across the flesh of her neck. “We don’t want it to be like this, we just want the answers. There’s some bad shit at work in this town and we’re here to put a stop to it. And you,” he said, flicking the knife against the back of her ear, where it joined onto her cannonball head, “are a big old part of that bad shit.” He started whispering, into her ear. “But we know you’re not pulling the strings Maria. Do yourself a favour a fuckin talk. Tell us. Who’s in charge? Who’s running the racket? Who’s pimping the kebab meat?”

“I...”

“Who?” he shouted.

“I don’t-a know,” she pleaded desperately, almost childish.

“Who,” he said, stabbing her right shoulder with about two inches of blade.

“Boss,” snapped Oddbins, interjecting and pulling Mondays back some.”This is a lot fuckin more than gentle persuasion.”

“Shut it,” said Mondays. “We need the bitch to talk and I’ll get the fuckin job done.”

“Just don’t become one of them,” said Oddbins firmly.

Mondays lunged behind Longo’s chair and grabbed her by the forehead, pinning her head back against his chest as he held the sharp end of the blade right against her throat.

“Do yourself a favour Longo,” he said over her terrified screams.

“No-a! A-please!” she was shouting, trying to free herself from the ropes but it was hopeless. “Please! The-a Ambassador will-a never...”

“What Ambassador?” interrupted Mondays. He threw the knife to one side and ran to face Longo. He slapped her, trying to calm her but she was trembling violently, delirious with fear. He slapped her again. “Maria, what Ambassador? Is he the one, Maria? Is he doing all this? Is that who you’re working for? The kebab giant? The meat cunt? Dog eater? Longo, who’s the fuckin Ambassador?”

“My a-brother!” she said, sobbing in frenzy. “My a-brother! The Ambassador is-a my brother. He-a made-a me do it!”

“Fuckin Italians,” said Dryskin, punching his palm.

“Good fuckin work Longo,” said Monday, tweaking her cheek like a kid. “Now you’re gonna fuckin take us to him, understand. Right now. And don’t make a peep or I’ll slit you throat” – and he made the throat slitting gesture – “from ear to fuckin ear. Got it?”

“Ah shit-a,” she said in woe.

“Shit-a indeed, Longo. Oddbins. Cut the ropes.”

*

The Animal Police pulled up outside of Longo’s house in a borrowed car, Longo stuffed in the back seat between Oddbins and Dryskin, Mondays driving. It was 1pm by that point, and thoughts had turned to revenge. Nobody makes Johnny Mondays taste a dog dick, and certainly not this Ambassador Longo.

“This the place?” Mondays snarled, looking at Longo in the rear view mirror.

She nodded in the affirmative, snorting tears back. “Please a-don’t-a do this!” she begged. “The Ambassador, he will-a kill me.”

“Kill you? He’s your fuckin brother,” said Dryskin.

“Exactly,” she replied wretchedly.

“You both should have thought have that before you fucked with the animal police,” said Oddbins. “Right Mondays?”

“Right,” said Mondays. “You burnt our car and left dog shit through our letterbox. But maybe even worse than that, you sick fucks are selling dog meat for kebabs. Kebabs, for fuck sake! Scourge of the drunk. And we will not tolerate dog meat in Norwich.”

“Fuck-a,” she said.

“Let’s do it,” said Mondays, cracking his knuckles. “Get her out of here.”

Oddbins and Dryskin struggled with the bulk of Longo from the back seat while Mondays lit a cigarette. This was it. The big one. This was so much more personal than dogs, or faeces, or burnt out Ford Escorts. This was about memories. He imagined himself crying as he sucked on the smoke and looked at Longo’s hunched form, snivelling before him like a broken child.

“Open the fuckin door,” he said. “Now!”

Muttering curses under her breath Longo pulled out her keys and lifted them to the lock. She looked back at the Animal Police, stood about a foot behind her and all frowning. Hopelessly she turned the key and the door opened with a clunk. The stench of sweat and cigar smoke hit Mondays like an eighteen-wheeler, and he shoved Longo through the door and beckoned in his colleagues with a hand, signalling for their silence with a finger to his lips.

“Maria?” came a heavy Italian accent from what looked to be the living room. “Maria, get-a the fuck in here!”

Mondays nodded to Dryskin and Oddbins. “That’s the cunt,” he whispered, pointing to the door.

“Maria? Maria?” The voice sounded angrier, louder. Mondays slapped her on the shoulder, to get her to reply.

“Ambassador,” she said eventually, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice. “It’s-a me Ambassador.”

“Of-a course it’s-a fackin you, Maria. Who-a the fuck else-a would it-a be? You-a fackin live here.”

“Yes Ambassador,” she said.

“Now-a come in-a here, you fat-a bitch.”

She looked to Mondays for guidance, who nodded. She went for the door. Mondays quickly grabbed her, counted to three and then threw her through the door, where she slumped in a heap at the Ambassador’s feet. Mondays lunged through after her, and came face-to-face with Ambassador Longo, dog meat baron of the East Anglian kebab racket. He was sat in his decrepit looking chair, beaming like a fat doll and half enshrouded in a thick cloud of cigar smoke. Enormously fat, he was stretched into an off-white vest, evidently well tailored trousers open at the waist. Fuckin Italians, thought Mondays, feeling his teeth clench. The Ambassador sucked a vast breath on the cigar, thick as a baby’s arm. With the exception of his currant-like eyes, everything about him was enormous, oversized.

“Mr a-Mondays,” he said, smiling as he spoke. “We meet at last.”

Without warning Mondays swung an open-handed slap into the side of his fat face. It knocked the cigar out of his mouth but otherwise the Ambassador didn’t move an inch, almost as if he hadn’t noticed. There was a dot of blood in the corner of his lips, which he licked happily, relishing its flavour. “That’s Johnny Mondays to you, you filthy bastard.”

“Johnny Mondays,” he said, trying the words out for size. “Johnny Mondays.” Longo had crawled to the side of the Ambassador’s chair, and was prostrating herself at his feet. She picked up the dropped cigar and passed it back to him, spitting out muttered pointless apologies. The Ambassador took the cigar and with one huge hand held Longo by the head and drove the burning tip of the Stogie into her cheek, holding it until the cigar went out. She screamed and he pushed her backwards into the wall. The screaming stopped and she fell unconscious to the carpet. “Fuckin-a bitch,” he said, throwing the spent cigar to one side.

Mondays was looking on disgusted. “Hey,” he snapped. “Hey! Look the fuck at me!” The Ambassador slowly turned to him. “That’s right you fat sack of shit. I’m here to bring you down.”

“Is-a that a-right, Mr Mondays?”

“You can fuckin bet it is, porkchop,” he said, grinning himself.

“And-a why would-a you want to do-a that?”

“Why? Are you really that fuckin stupid as well as fat?”

“Humour me,” replied the Ambassador, pulling another thirteen inch cigar from the table next to him and striking a match for it.

“Because, git, you’re a canine racketeer.”

“Is-a that a fact?”

“Yeah, it is. Your selling dog meat to all the fuckin takeaway’s round here. Kebab shops. You’re stocking the bastards with this filthy dog meat and it ain’t fuckin right.”

“And-a why is that?”

“What?”

“Why is-a that so wrong?”

“Because the dog’s have gotta come from somewhere and your fuckin nicking them. For food.”

“So? Does it really matter what-a happens to these dogs? They are everywhere, my friend.” He leaned forwards in his chair, happy with the cigar. “Everywhere. We-a take-a them off people’s hands, sure, but they get over it. They-a get another dog. The cycle goes on, Mr Mondays. People are-a fickle creatures. They don’t-a give a shit.”

“Fuck you,” said Mondays, pointing at the Ambassador. “You’re full of shit. People do mind. That’s why I’m here. Animal fuckin Police. People like dogs. I fuckin like dogs. It’s not okay to kill them, not here. You’re not in fuckin Italy now. People don’t want to eat dog meat. Not in their burgers, not in their chow mein, and not in their fuckin kebabs.”

“Oh but-a they do, Mr Mondays. They do eat it.”

“But they don’t know about it,” Mondays was losing it, shouting, slurring his words, Oddbins and Dryskin could hear it from the hall. They exchanged a glance that asked whether they should go in. Not yet. “You’re not telling them what they’re eating. These are our pets.”

“One man’s pet is another man’s bitch-a, Mr Mondays.”

“You’re only interested in the fuckin money,” said Mondays. “That’s all you people are interested in. Not the love of the animals, or the meat. Just the money.”

“We all-a want money,” smiled the Ambassador behind his cigar.

“Fuck money.”

“No, Mr Mondays. Fuck you.” He clicked his fingers three times, the Ambassador. Heavy footsteps, and Mondays turned around to find two vast figures, more ape than man, standing right behind him. One punched his face as the other punched his stomach, and then both grabbed an arm in an iron grip and held him fast in place. Blood poured from his busted nose and he coughed from the gutpunch, which had knocked the wind out of him like a heavy fart. They held him up and pointed him to face the Ambassador.

“This is-a worth-a too much to let-a you to fuck it up,” he said. “The dogs, the meat, a-the kebab. You can’t-a stop it. It’s too late-a for that. We run-a the meat in a-this a-fuckin town, and no-a fuckin Animal Policeman is-a going to fuck-a that up.”

“Fuck you,” mumbled Mondays.

“I like-a your spirit, Mondays. Perhaps we could-a work together, if-a you weren’t such a fuckin bastard.”

Mondays tried to struggle, as pointless as it was in the hands of the bodyguards. In the confusion he somehow managed to get an arm loose and crunch an elbow into one of their faces, smashing their sunglasses and blacking their eye, but he got a broken arm for his trouble, snapped painfully with a twist of the bare hands.

“Dear-a Mr Mondays,” continued the Ambassador. “This is-a very amusing for me.” He stood up from his chair, slowly, and fastened his trousers as he did so. They were pulled up over a huge chunk of his stomach. Towering in front of Mondays he was huge, seven feet up and as many around, like a radioactive disaster. He leaned in to Mondays, who was in a bad shape, hanging limp and hurt and busted up. “This isn’t about-a the dogs, is it? This isn’t about-a the dog meat. The dog’s is just a bit-a money for you.” He lifted Mondays chin up with a finger that was as thick as the cigar clenched between the other digits. Mondays tried to open his eyes, to focus on the Ambassador’s grotesque head, which was difficult because of the perspective issues associated with its incomprehensible size. “It’s about-a the kebabs, isn’t it. The kebabs.”

“You son of a bitch,” said Mondays, spitting into his face. “You son of a bitch.”

“That’s a-right, Mr Mondays. The dogs are-a just your excuse-a. It’s a-the k
kebabs you want-a to stop, and it doesn’t matter to you whether it’s-a the lamb, the chicken, or the fuckin dog-a, because it’s a-the kebabs that-a killed-a your wife.”

In the hallway Dryskin and Oddbins looked at each other horrified.

Mondays face dropped. The Ambassador grinned victorious.

“That’s-a right Mr Mondays. I know all about-a that a-little accident. It was a long-a time ago, but I can still-a remember it so clearly. You-a were-a helpless then, as-a you are helpless now.”

“I’m going to fuckin kill you,” said Mondays with more than a shred of sincerity.

“No, Mr Mondays, you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Just admit it, Mondays, admit that you don’t-a care about the animals. What-a you want is a-revenge for-a your wife’s death. It’s a-kebabs you hate, not-a me, and not-a the dog meat.”

“I want revenge alright,” said Mondays. “For my wife, and for the dogs. They need us, you see, you piece of fat shit. They need us to protect them from people like you.”

“Us?” laughed the Ambassador heartily. “And-a where are your-a Animal Police now? Huh? Where are they?”

“We’re right here,” said Oddbins, and both he and Dryskin pulled a knife across the throats of the bodyguards, who fell over, swamped quickly in their own thick blood, spluttering meaningless threats in the throes of their imminent deaths. Mondays looked back at them with an appreciative nod, then turned immediately to the Ambassador, mouth still open in surprise. In a well practised movement Mondays had pulled his own knife from his worn-out Chelsea boots and slashed it once across the Ambassador’s face and once across his throat. The fat Italian lay on the floor, looking up at Mondays with his good eye, breaths becoming shorter, fewer. He opened his mouth as if to speak but Mondays kicked him in the face, so hard he could hear the skull fracturing under his feet. He threw the knife on the floor and pulled Longo to her feet, slapping her awake.

“Longo,” he said. “Hey Longo, wake the fuck up.”

She opened her eyes. “I’m-a sorry Ambassador,” she said in delirium. “I’m-a sorry.” Mondays shoved her onto her brother’s body, a mountain of flesh rising from the carpet.

“He’s dead Longo, and so is your business.” She sobbed, soaked in the Ambassadors plentiful blood. “Now get the fuck out of Norwich before I cut your tits off.” She looked at Mondays, lost and confused. “Go!” he shouted, and she squealed and ran out of the house with nothing but the sweaty t-shirt and jeans she was standing up in.

“You okay Mondays?” asked Dryskin.

“That was pretty fuckin intense,” said Oddbins.

“You think,” said Mondays, smiling. There was a sadness in his eyes, but it could have been the light. He tied a bit of rag into a primitive sling and eased his arm into it. He’d have to get to hospital. “Come on,” he said, and walked out of the room and down the hallway to the kitchen, and then out of the back door. All around the perimeter of the sizeable garden were cages, and each of the cages contained five, ten sometimes as many as fifteen dogs, all different sizes, all different breeds.

“Shit,” said Dryskin. “That’s a lot of meat.”

“No, Dryskin,” said Mondays, resting his good hand on his buddy’s shoulder. “That’s a lot of dogs.”

Oddbins started unlatching the cages and the dogs burst free in a frenzy of barks and excrement. “Poor bastards,” he said, “they’re this fuckin excited to be in Norwich.”

“Open the gate,” said Mondays, and Dryskin did. The dogs surged out onto the street, running to freedom and not looking back.

The Animal Police looked at each other.

“So what now?” asked Oddbins.

Mondays looked back to the gate, the last dog sniffing the concrete and thoughtfully trotting off on its way, wherever that might be. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Maybe we should take the Merc,” suggested Dryskin. “We need a car.”

“Good idea,” said Oddbins.

“Yeah,” said Mondays. “Let’s take the Merc and get fucked.” Dryskin laughed.

“What about the arm?” asked Oddbins.

“We’ll worry about that tomorrow,” said Mondays.

“Tomorrow it is,” said Oddbins. “Tomorrow it is.”

ask the idiot child

the hot air balloon

I looked out of the office window and saw the hot air balloon. “Hey look at that hot air balloon,” I said, which met a unanimous silence. It was gliding steady and majestic across the distant countryside. Later, after I had already forgotten I had seen it, I looked into the equally forgettable sky, filtered and dampened by the tinted windows of the fourth floor, and I saw it again. This time it was veering jerkily, oddly, erratic and stupid across the skyline, only closer to me, the window, the centre of the city.

I wasn’t sure what was happening at first, just watched it getting more and more out of control. I tried to rouse the attention of a colleague, slumped over a computer keyboard and sighing heavily like a man without dignity, but it was pointless. He looked like he was dead, only livening up marginally for another cup of awful instant coffee straight out of a machine. The hot air balloon whooshed back and forth, much like a regular balloon does when you let go of its end tunnel, midway through blowing it up, and I imagined it making that humorous raspberry sound. I suppose it did look pretty humorous, but it was hard to escape the scale of this balloon, the idea of the people on board screaming deathly screams past the raspberry, swung defiantly around the city breadth and waiting for the sweet oblivion of a bloody mangled death when they finally hit the ground, the pride stripped even from those awful last moments that went on forever. It took some of the humour away.

After a few minutes of watching, the balloon reared out of sight in the direction of the Roman Catholic cathedral. I stood up from my desk and walked to the farthest window, trying to follow the balloon, to watch this bizarre journey to its horrific climax, but by the time I’d reached the window I could no longer see anything. Maybe it had already made its plummeting descent into the busy shopping streets of Wednesday? Or maybe it had gone further, carried onwards to the future by gusts and integrity? Either way, it was gone, and I returned to my desk feeling a little let down.

The afternoon passed slowly and without event, my attention interchanging between the computer screen, the lavatory and the window.

By about three o’ clock I had noticed a difference when I stole a quick observational into the street below. It took a while to realise, as it sometimes does when you look at scenes all the time, but eventually I saw it. What had been a beautiful clear – if a little cold – February day was now thickened with a dense white fog that had settled like an old blanket across the mattress of the city. But it wasn’t just a fog. It filled the air, from the top of buildings right the way to their bottoms, so thick you couldn’t see more than a couple of inches in front of you. All I saw from the window up here was whiteness, thick oppressive whiteness, a void of sorts. It was as though the world had ended whilst I had been looking at the screen, and just this one bastion of commercial exchange stood, eternally alone, at the precipice of some great nothingness. The rest of the world gone, into some cosmological vacuum, without a trace. It was apocalyptic, the fog, and I shivered at the thought of an eternity in the office building.

I looked around the office, terrified that I would be the only one who could see this, the cloud really the smog of my encroaching madness, but the others were whispering to each other, pointing smutty fingers with lewd incomprehensible jokes. I didn’t want to imagine the genitals in their business suits, but something about the easily rippled material of business suits makes it hard to think about anything else. Heavy squat lumps, stretched withered lengths, crusted baked flaps, forgotten overgrown openings.

“What is it?” I heard one of them say. He didn’t look up from the spreadsheet as he spoke, despite making direct reference to an external occurrence, a scene unfolding outside of the limited jurisdiction of his ergonomic workstation.

“Must be the fog they’ve all been on about.”

Of course it was fog. But the fog? I’d heard no mention of the fog anywhere, and I subscribe to eight different weather channels. If there was fog at large for which only the definite article would suffice, I would know about it, of that much I was certain. I knew the importance of the weather. But this fog was unlike mere weather, it was unnatural. And so white. It defied prediction. But yet this definite article, this ‘the’; it somehow humanised it, gave it form and motive, physicality and spatial existence. It was appropriate somehow. Unnatural, inhuman, but most definitely alive. And yet this was not the fog of dinner party small talk. It was something else.

Mumbles of dissent and weather quips surged around the office like farts, and I felt myself starting to sweat under my easy-care shirt. I loosened a couple of buttons, already felt like I was trapped somewhere underground and falling apart piece by piece. I went to the window, pressed my face against it trying to see some familiar landmark, any hint of life, but there weren’t even silhouettes or outlines through the intensity of the fog. I was short of breath, convinced I was choking on the air conditioning, panicking wildly. The sweat had dampened my hair and it was plastered to my face, huge wet rings under my arms and on my chest, and I groaned, probably much louder than I was aware because people were looking at me. I needed to calm down.

Lurching desperately from my chair I went to the lavatory again, to freshen up, sort myself out, do anything that would get me through the remaining hour and half before I could go home. I looked at my face in the mirror. My nose was so red. What is always this red? And my cheeks too, I looked like a burns victim, blotchy under the halogen. I wanted to slap my face, and did, then splashed it with the tepid water from the tap. Fuck, I was dying. I must have been dying. I pissed into the pristine porcelain of the sink, and tried out different smiles for size on my reflection.

The lift chimed its presence on the fourth floor when I moved out of the toilet door. Something made me stop when I heard it, and I looked back at the two men stepping from its proximity. They were suit clad and as bald as bald babies, without a hair on their heads, not even eyebrows. I was slightly taken aback by such hairlessness, more so by the fact that they were laughing and joking amongst the pair of them, as businessmen will:

“So I gives her one in the ripply buttocks!”

“Fucking climbing frame!”

“Creosote soups for families everywhere, cunt it!”

“Getta fuckin’ loada that calculator sum!”

“CHILDSPLAY!”

Bald yet joking, it was disorientating for me, and with the sweat creeping back under my second hairline I pressed myself back into the cool white wall and let the bald men pass me in moist-palmed self congratulation, through the door and to where they came from.

“Fuck,” I said, or meant to.

I wiped my cuff across the breadth of my forehead and went into the office, but screamed aloud as soon as I had done so. Suddenly the world had fucked me.

Where once had stood stocky men with short backs and sides, or women layered and enshrouded with the fruits of their gender, or sideburns, or pony tails, there was nothing. Now there was nothing. Just bald pates, cue balls, postmodern fruits, slapheads. Nothing.

They were all bald!

They had all lost their hair!

Every last follicle!

Hollow and hairless!

Lumps of skin they were!

Hairless office workers they had become!

As bald as mistakes!

Their faces had grown from the exposure, bizarre new life forms sprouted from the
features!

My god, it was hideous!

I felt gazes hitting me and threw my eyes desperately to the window. And then it hit me. Of course! The balloon had been a weapon, a kamikaze inflatable! It was loaded with this inexplicable synthetic nightmare. And now they were bald, all of them, bald.

It must be the air conditioning. It was in the air conditioning.

But then…

I had the feeling that I had shit myself, that it was the only logical act left to
me, but there was no warmth, no solidity, no bulk. Nothing. Just another feeling.

If it was in the air conditioning then…

Then…

Panicked I ran back to the toilet, flung my reflection into the polished glass of the mirror. My hair was there but looked so frail, like it was hovering inches above the surface of my scalp. I put my hand up to it and it fell out in thick greasy clumps, just stroked off of my head like the hair from a moulting cat. It fell into the sink and onto the floor at my feet, and I puked as I rubbed it away, erasing it as though already a memory, wiping it away from the future. I felt so bald and tried to smile but I didn’t recognise me.

I thought I must have been dead when amidst the voices chiming with bravado and camaraderie I was lifted from the ground and carried back through the secure doors and into the thick of the open plan nightmare, set down unsteady and reeking of stomach and there in front of my now bald boss, who smiled and looked strangely like a woman and with a hand on each of my shoulders said:

“That’s it, that’s it, we can all do it and welcome. A harmonious life lived well amongst the bald. Adaptation spells remuneration. Colonize the skin.”

I puked again, a vomit of resignation.

It was business.

a warm feeling of helplessness

I love to read about military incompetence. It warms me from the cock up. If I had kids, I’d sleep well in my bed just knowing that a crack team of armed, moronic, dangerous, bumbling idiots was safeguarding the future security of all of the world’s stupidest nations.

Great to hear that crew at the Minot airbase in North Dakota slept like the dead while in charge of:

1. The control centre containing launch keys of ballistic missiles

and also,

2. Boxes containing the codes required for launching a nuclear attack.

Who the fuck are these people, and why are they safeguarding anything? We all want to go to sleep at work, and sometimes maybe we’re even lucky enough to do it, but most jobs don’t involve high-grade nuclear weapons. What kind of training programme were these fools given? Was basic health and safety even covered?

This is the same airbase that last year flew a B-52 across America without realising that there were six air-launched nuclear missiles on board. Considering we have to remove our shoes to even get on board a plane, or buy special small toothpastes to avoid an x-ray buggering, one can’t help but wonder how – in these turbulent times, all significance teetering on the edge of a hate-fuelled apocalypse – an aircraft can leave a high security US Airforce base and fly a military jet containing nuclear missiles up, up and away without being noticed. By the pilots, by their superiors, by hangar staff, by anyone. How does this happen? Were they waving it off with handkerchiefs like a departing ship in a black and white film? Had it slipped their minds?

These are nuclear weapons – don’t we have some protocols in place? Little things, maybe, like don’t fall asleep while guarding the codes that could launch the burning destruction of a chunk of world; or don’t unknowingly take a cargo full of nuclear missiles from a military airbase out on flights over America. I’m sure something clear and simple like that might make everyone feel a whole lot better. Common sense, call it, or some base survival instinct to not have our eyes melt from our sockets.

The very fact of nuclear weapons, on a fundamental level, makes most sensible people feel the occasional pang of paranoid discomfort. Add to that the kind of thugs and clowns lumbering around to keep a (closed) eye on them and that soon starts turning into a distinct sense of taut uneasiness. Furthermore and thricely, Bush is the kind of brainless trigger happy pervert who would agree to anything if the question was phrased in more than two syllables, nodding his head like a brainless defective doll.

It would be funny if it wasn’t serious. The military can’t even keep their eyes (literal and metaphorical) open for long enough to check the cargo of an airborne deathship in a world run by maniacs. Do we feel safe? Are we supposed to? Why can these mistakes happen?

Asleep, perhaps. Mass narcolepsy strikes US military in simultaneous danger nap. Must be Iran.

Minot airbase: unjustifiable idiots.

bad experience in the underpass

The group of youths encircled me, their bizarre collective deformities creating this lumbering gait, edging heavily back and forth on in-turned feet. Their faces twisted and convulsed into hideous fleshy representations of the human image as they hulked further into my person, guttural groans echoing from cleft palates and around the
cold stone walls of the city underpass, under roads running like clogged arteries through the run-down 60s developments left rotting and empty and towering into the twilight with outdated aerials defunct and pointless rusting on their roof. I didn't know what they wanted, these primitive locals, still patiently waiting for an act of evolution to drag their hidden gills and webbed toes from their primordial residential steaming swamp, fetid subhuman stench, rooftops, windows dripping with
condensation and the colour of pain rich and alluring in the faded brickwork of factory exteriors.

One of them pointed at my pockets. I recoiled agape at the indignity, and grasped my heart as though it were broken by this merciless violation of personal space. A final rusted nail through the human condition. The bastards. Trembling of hand and clenched of teeth I delved into the pocket, its depths uncomfortable and inaccessible past the keys, my grasp locked rigid and ineffectual around the same few items, fingering tips of coins awkwardly, desperately. I tried to feel their shapes in my fingers and allocate them a distinct physical space built around their respective numerical values.

I couldn't bear to pull a pound out; issuing them with such significant fiscal value would demoralize the situation even further. I needed to plead poverty, to carefully select a low value of coinage, extract it fully from the pocket whilst secreting coins of any larger value in some dignified sleight of hand performance. The youths looked on, eyes widening involuntarily as I rummaged so methodically. They looked at each other and made sounds like animals. Eventually satisfied I pulled out six coins, one for each of the youths, which the deductive processes of my touch had identified as coppers of the two pence valuation. I held my hand out in front of me, between my body and those of the youths, and we all seven of us looked down at the palm expectantly. The coins looked tragic on my skin, their smell like blood filled my nose as I drew breath deeply and found my head nodding in encouragement.

"I think I have a little something you might be interested in," I said, rattling my hand slightly. "A little something for all of you." I rattled the coins again. "Take them," I said, to the confused youths. "One each. A two pence piece. Take them."

The youths peered hesitantly into my hand, their faces doubtful. They moved cautiously, as if they were nervous of the money, or in reverence of it like some strange arcane idol, the coins themselves possessed by the soul of a god, a spirit and a life, a being, of sorts, each with their own head and tail even, shackled to banks and treasuries and desecrated and blasphemed in pockets and purses and desired and manipulated by all who learn of them.

"We don't want none two pence," said a male with a thick, meaty neck. "We don't want none two pennies from you log."

My pride battered I poured the six two pence pieces into my back pocket.

"But I have nothing else," I said amongst swallows. I tapped my hand onto my pockets. "Keys, here, keys alone." I tried to speak firmly, a tone commanding and authoritative, but instead sounded as though I were conducting a caricatured impersonation of an abstract concept.

"Not gold for our wants mister," said another of the youths, his neck like dried steak, pierced with two metal eyelets through the coarse flesh from which he had hung lengths of thick security chain like braids. He pulled a sheet of plain white paper from the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and scrunched it loudly into his mouth, chewing with concentration and commitment. "We none that interested in you fakkin pences or your leggish tappy tappin," he went on, past the A4.

"Then. What do you want? From me?"

The first youth leaned into me, the visor of his baseball cap jabbing the side of my head. "We wanting the whiteness," he whispered.

The second youth leaned in likewise, the visor of his baseball cap jabbing the side of my head. "The white juice," he said. He was licking his lips as he said the words. They were all licking their lips.

"Mister got the white fluids, got them for us eh mister."

“My God,” I gasped, my anus clenching like a fist. “Surely you don’t mean?” I tried to step backwards, but could only move as far as the youths to my rear. “Oh Jesus no,” I went on.

They were nodding, nodding and licking their dirty lips. “White mate,” they said, as though unanimously be-struck by a debilitating speech impediment.

I grabbed my balls like a knee-jerk reaction, some desperate clinging to self-preservation, shreds of dignity, something.

“It ain’t goina hurt you like log,” garbled a youth’s voice. It came from behind me, and I was glad I couldn’t see the mouth from which it came, for fear of punching it. I thought about the two pence pieces, idly wasting in my back jeans pocket. Such a meticulous plan. The little shits.

“Nah mistah an we is in appreciate.”

“Yeah mistah.”

“Yeah.”

“You is an urban hero of the east anglan skies me mate.”

“Bona fide.”

“Pistachio!” they chimed harmoniously like some two-bit MC outfit out of the Norfolk flatlands.

Even as my horror rose in the form of bilious expulsion to the very tip of my throat, I knew that I became fragile in confrontation with flattery, even incomprehensible flattery such as this. I could feel a sweat breaking across the breadth of my white forehead, my pupils dilating at the very tones of their slurred voices.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s do this. You need what I’ve got. Let’s play some ball, motherfuckers, play it up.”

They started clapping, not as applause, but unpredictable, arrhythmic, spontaneous, piercing claps, perhaps a further extension of their building excitable frenzy.

“You getting the gazebo!” whooped he of thick neck, more boy than man with his eyes electric like a Christmas morning.

I unbuttoned my fly, rubbing the frontage of my jeans with an open hand to stimulate the hardening of the shaft within. Recoiling the youths hit me once in the face.

“You terribly fucken faggut queer bastard!”

“Of all me fucked plops!”

“What in fuckin you doing and on, you crazy gay nonce?”

“Fuck I puked inside of my head!”

I gasped desperately, apologetically, my tone begging for quiet in case anybody heard this exchange and thought to come and investigate. “But you asked for the whiteness!” I said. “As in the molten white love juice. As in…”

“You fucken people is all the same,” said meat neck. “Perverts and animals.”

“Don’t yo see bull this is the white juicea life we wanna feel in the side of us?”

Juice of life? I reached again for my genitals, pale with concern but sweating heavily. The youth’s hand struck my face again, and again and again, and I fell into a taut heap on the floor, approaching foetal but without space, quivering in the cold tiled indignity of the urban underpass, smelling well of urine and disaster, of family breakdown and wet blankets. I felt a little like all of them.

“But please but!” I urged. “You tell me the white juice of life, you tell me the white fluids, and yet here you strike me when I proffer said globes of goodness from the nurturing warmth of my sac!”

“Shat your snakes cunt you don’t listening, observamation? We ain’t for your cock or you bollick or even your wordsearch.”

“Contrarywise an sunder, we come here for milk, sir, and you goin get us some.”

These calcium crazed hoodlums running amok in the city centre! In my head I shook my fist to the heavens of the twenty-first century and its terrifying regimes of antisocial maniacs, by-products of commercial development one and all!

“Milk?” I said. “You just want milk?”

Like Catholics they crossed themselves as I said the word.

“Fuck mistah shhhh your flaps up!”

I didn’t want to question this ritual, and I imagined milk-drenched sexual rites, milk intersecting through vaginas and anuses and a milky hip-hop undercurrent.

“Fine,” I said, getting to my feet. None of them helped me up. They had a look of milk in their eyes. “Follow me, we’ll go to that shop just down the way.”

And off we walked together, back out of the underpass and towards the shop. The youth’s kept a distance of a few feet behind me, making heavy disorientating tribal beats with their mouths and screeching unintelligible words over the top. They sounded like pack animals and spoke the language of the future.

In the shop they knew exactly where to go, pushing past me and running to the aisle housing the dairy refrigeration units. They each grabbed a four pint plastic jug of milk, full fat, unscrewed the blue cap and peeled off the plastic stopper, and drank, heavily and with such determination into a blissful silence. A shopworker looked on, face frowning and gruesome under strip lights, a bitter face, hard like a frozen turkey that would never thaw.

“Hey shoppy,” I said, throwing my wallet at his feet. “They’re with me.”

And they drank and drank, pint after pint, neatly piling the plastic jugs at their feet, thick white moustaches left on all of their lips. A wholesome drink for strong bones and teeth. They sure loved milk.

They weren’t mugging old ladies or taking drugs or doing unprotected sex with each other. They were drinking milk.

Struck like a car accident with a sudden feeling of clarity I cracked open a four pint jug of my own, so cold and creamy. It was a school night after all.

this buckskin holiday

Pending doom of realisations! Hangs heavy, curdling the air like weird dairy products, aspyhxiating through air conditioning and convection heaters. Ticking clocks, long haunting dreams like an old TV serial, just waiting for the end to come and sweep us all away, and dancing with arms and arms only, and mouths an awkward splutter through evacuation from the bowels of Godhead. Like crooked and desperate lovers our lips meet again as the rain comes to wash my murky vest, murky with the life of another, and you and your soft linen trousers, and I make car noises because I never learned to drive, and steer my imaginary wheel to edge the world, and fall with breathless abandon and butterfly-tummy into the perils of ourselves, so far away.

The preoccupation of the endless grassway to the crest our crest, and salt tastes my lips and methodically perforates my elephantine fingers - textural consistency and never bulk - and so thrust powers through cracked circular wicker baskets in thrift shops piled carelessly with such careful postcards, other memories from other lives that really are our own and become one with us through our visits and our fictions and the poetry we never write and refuse to at that, and so with diamonds blazing sparkling over left hands and right hands we initiate tearful plans, tearful because there can only be so much joy before it overflows, and in the grey afternoon light our souls pour loose, one into the other, and we kiss until the night time.

the reassuring face of bruno ganz

please take me with you someplace better than this

Jerry Mandible stopped the lawnmower with a sigh and, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand, turned back to look at his bedroom window. It was the middle of the day but the curtains were drawn, and inside the room he could hear his wife. She was receiving sexual intercourse from one of their mutual friends, an arrangement that had been going on for some time now. It wasn’t that it bothered Jerry as such, or upset him, or even made him particularly angry, it just seemed to leave a slightly unsavoury taste in his mouth and a nagging sense of discomfort about his person.

The sun was pounding heavily on his faded baseball cap, and Jerry wiped a handkerchief across his brow that glistened moistly under a film of sweat. He thought about his wife there, flat on her back with her legs spread wide apart to accommodate Bill’s salesman’s cock, gasping in a way that he had learnt over the years was almost definitely false. Should I feel stupid?, he wondered to himself. That’s my wife in there with another man, in my house. And Bill wasn’t the only one, not by a long way.

He could never decide whether knowing about all of this actually made it worse. It took away all of the deceit and the lies usually associated with such extra-marital liaisons, but still left him burning with the embarrassment of what other people thought about him. He daren’t even imagine how it must look to anyone else. They all knew what she was up to, everyone in the street (in fact she was up to it with most of them). How weak must he look? Oh dear, he said with a sinking despair, but he couldn’t tell whether it was out loud.

Carefully he started the ignition of his sit-on lawnmower and manoeuvred it dexterously into the left hand garage. He dismounted and pulled the door down behind him. It was stifling in the darkness, and he could see thick particles of dust illuminated by the erratic shafts of light that broke through the slit windows running along one wall of the garage. He pulled open the fridge, his fridge, and stood in close to its feeble coolness. He could murder a beer, but when he crouched slightly to see what the fridge had to offer he felt his heart sink a little when he saw that it was empty. Completely empty. He pushed the door closed, his fingers resting on its rust-flecked white frontage for a few seconds longer than perhaps they usually would. He caressed the empty fridge as though it were his empty life.

It smelt like mild labour in the garage. Jerry pulled of his cap and hung it up on the allocated hook. He felt suddenly nauseated by the meticulous organisation of the workspace. Screws were separated according to size and stored in individually labelled boxes. Hammers rested with hammers, screwdrivers with their kind, a variety of handsaws were organised according to the dimensions of their ascending sizes, and all there under his own stringent regime of clear and comprehensive labelling. He yearned for chaos, felt it boiling up inside of him like a pending volcanic eruption, as though it might explode from him at any moment. Looking at the cap he felt his breath quicken, a slight tremble initiating in his biceps. He grabbed the cap with a quick rough yank, and threw it defiantly to the floor. With a breath, as of an almost erotic release, he walked through the side door and into the house, but was back in the garage and had replaced the cap with the exaggerated gestures of a scolded child before the door had even had a chance to close.


Bill was in the kitchen drinking milk out of the carton, naked apart from a small pair of underpants. He saw Jerry walk in but didn’t seem surprised, or perturbed, despite the underpants. Bill knew Jerry, knew that Jerry knew about him, and knew that Jerry wasn’t the kind of guy to do anything about anything anyway. He took another long swallow of the semi-skimmed and slung the carton back into the fridge. Jerry saw that the lid was still left on the surface and narrowed his eyes.

“Jerry,” said Bill, as if he were greeting an old friend.

“Bill,” said Jerry, coldly. “How’s Susan?” Susan was Jerry’s wife.

“Fine, fine.” Bill lit a cigarette from a packet he had set down on the top of the fridge. He offered one to Jerry, but Jerry didn’t like to smoke. “She wanted you to know that she won’t be in for dinner.”

“No?” said Jerry. He stepped past Bill’s bare flesh and pulled a beer out of the fridge, which he opened up and drank from thoughtfully.

“No,” Bill went on, eyeing Jerry with a look more of intrigue than concern. “Bit early isn’t it, Jer?” Jerry looked at his wristwatch. It was lunchtime.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Whatever you say buddy, whatever you say.”

“Yep.”

The two men looked at each other, one with his beer, the other his cigarette, one in his house clothes, the other his underpants. Bill dragged hard at his cigarette, trying to finish it up without losing face, which he did, letting the smoke trickle from his nose. He put the butt into the sink, and Jerry flinched.

“Well,” said Bill, running a confident finger under the elastic leg band of his underpants, which seemed to be digging into his thigh, “Good seeing you, Jer.” He extended his hand for Jerry to shake. Jerry shook it very slowly. “I better get back up to her.” Bill spoke as if he were talking to a raunchy pal in the office about some mindless physical conquest, not the husband of the wife he was screwing. Jerry picked the butt out of the sink, turned the tap on it and threw it in the dustbin.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I need a word with Susan anyway.”

“Hey, you’re the boss buddy,” said Bill, clapping a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. He started off for the stairs, and Jerry watched his buttocks and their hair walking off ahead of him with waves of vibration from the footsteps. Bill then stopped, as if he had suddenly been struck by a single thought, and turned to Jerry. “After you sir,” he smirked, like everything in the world was his joke.

Jerry walked silently past him and up the stairs, past the photographs of their little boy, his beautiful smile. They shouldn’t have lost him. It wasn’t fair.


In the bedroom, Susan was reclining on the bed also smoking a cigarette, gazing out of the window. Jerry would have said contemplatively, but he knew she wasn’t that kind of person. He didn’t know she smoked, or rather he had never actually seen her smoking. It made sense. She had a light sheet pulled half over her body, but her breasts were exposed at the top of it, the nipples still dark and hard following Bill’s efforts. They looked somehow different from the way Jerry had remembered, heavier, like she was getting older too. She turned to the door when it opened and saw Jerry, with Bill grinning behind him, but she didn’t say anything, just sucked on her cigarette in a way that Jerry thought made her look profoundly unattractive, that limp-wristed way that smokers tend to hold their cigarettes, as if their whole body has been overtaken by a ghastly debilitating nicotine paralysis.

“Can I just squeeze past?” asked Bill, shuffling past Jerry. Without shame or thought he slipped out of his pants and under the sheet, right there on Jerry’s side of the bed, next to Jerry’s lamp and book and reading glasses. He dick had looked thick, heavy and red, and Jerry found it odd to imagine it nestled between his sheets.

“Susan,” he said quietly. She didn’t speak, dropped her cigarette into a used teacup by the side of the bed. It hissed acutely as the residue of the morning tea extinguished the life of its burning tip. “Susan,” he said again, a bit louder.

“What do you want, Jerry?” she asked. Her voice was nasal and sour, and she and Bill looked at Jerry with equal measures of amusement and thinly veiled disgust.

“I…” he said.

“You what?”

“I think you might need to talk to someone. It’s okay to miss him. I miss him. I miss him so much.”

“Shut up Jerry.”

“But it is,” he persevered. “It’s okay to miss him. It shouldn’t ever have happened. God shouldn’t have let it happen but…”

“God!” she snorted.

“We need to talk about these things,” he said. He sounded like he was going to cry because he was trying to stop his bottom lip from quivering. Bill just sat there.

“We don’t need to talk about anything.”

“We have to, Susan. I can’t do this. I… When I see his pictures hanging on the stairs I… I miss him so much.”

“Then don’t look at the pictures,” she said, so coldly. When did she become so cold?, Jerry wondered. Had she always been like this? She was running her hand up Bill’s leg on top of the sheet, but she looked Jerry dead in the eye.

“Just don’t look at the pictures Jerry,” said Bill in his salesman’s honk. “Think about something else.”

“Think about something else?” said Jerry.

“He’s gone Jerry. He’s dead,” said Susan. Jerry bucked with the tears that he cried. In front of his wife and her lover his shoulders jerked with their sadness.

“But I miss him,” he mumbled between the sobs.

“Just go, Jerry. We’ll talk about it some other time. When we don’t have company.”

Jerry wiped his eyes with his sleeve and raised his downcast gaze to the bed. Susan was frowning with such hatred and Bill was smiling. He would relish telling his friends in the pub about this, thought Jerry. About old Jerry the loser. The crying loser.

“Right,” he said. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and threw it onto the bed. Then his car keys and his house keys. He unbuttoned his blue overalls and stepped out of them, unlaced his shoes and tossed them into the corner, took off his grey slacks and his comfortable shirt and put them all on the trunk at the foot of the bed. Finally he removed his cotton boxer shorts and his socks and stood naked in front of the two of them. Bill’s face was turning red as he struggled to hold his sniggers in.

Jerry turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door behind him. He could hear the terrible drone of their laughter as he took a picture of his dead little boy from the wall on his way down the stairs and, still entirely naked, unlocked the door to the garage and mounted the hot leather seat of the lawnmower.


Jerry drove slowly as the equipment demanded. He had balanced the photograph by the steering wheel, and he looked at the picture as he drove. The sun felt good on his body, and he didn’t have to pass many people on the quiet residential streets that neighboured his own on this short drive to the cliffs. The few people he did see would only stare in disbelief, before picking up the phone to regurgitate the gossip. Jerry Mandible, nude on a mower in the afternoon sun. Hadn’t been the same since the incident. They couldn’t say it, couldn’t even say the word. Accident.

It wouldn’t be a police issue though, which suited Jerry. He didn’t want any trouble now.

Turning off of the quiet cliff top road and into the primary car park, Jerry edged his mower past the parking attendant, whose eyes couldn’t help but drop to Jerry’s genitals with a blush, even a grown man, and rode it to the farthest parking spaces, right by the edge of the cliff.

He shut off the engine and climbed from the mower, taking the photograph with him. When he peered over the edge he could see the brilliant blue sea below, crashing with minimal force but maximum constancy onto the sheerness of the rocks. It was a pretty straight drop.

He could hear the muffled shouts of the parking attendant, who was running across the length of the car park towards him. Jerry’s bare back was glaring white in the brightness of the day, white like the milk that Bill had swallowed, white like the door of the empty fridge in his garage. Distorted by the wind as his voice was, Jerry thought the attendant was shouting “goodbye! goodbye!”. Jerry turned and waved, waved the photograph of the little boy high in the air.

And then quickly, without delay, or consideration, or fear, Jerry stepped over the knee high wire fence that ran along the cliff edge and threw himself over, still clutching the photograph, and even as he fell he didn’t feel like he was falling but soaring up into the sky, through the clouds and to heaven itself.

He was flying at last.

bernard matthews fat

meaningless figures

the dogshite

the dogshite was the short lived bastard of the one huge peachy moniker. it started as a juvenile parody of a low-grade, toilet wall mounted mag produced by morons within the cambridge university system, and climaxed as four A4-sized humour documents with an almost non-existent readership. I'll post some pieces up here from the peachy archives over the next few weeks.

otherwise, during casual office-based research into necrophilia, I came across an incidence of a male mallard engaging in coital acts with another dead duck. a dull thud at a window in Rotterdam was followed by discovery of the dead male mallard, who had flown into the glass. to the surprise of dutch onlooker, Kees Moeliker, another mallard of the male gender proceeded hurriedly to first pick at the corpse and then mount it, sexually, in an act of copulation that lasted for 75 minutes. one must wonder why this Mr Moeliker felt the compulsion to observe the sex act for the full 75 minutes, but his exhaustive research into the necrophilic impulses of the common mallard have proved to illuminate significant points of interest in their behavioural exhibitionism.

firstly, the duck apparently took two short breaks during the congress, each time returning to finish the job. in other words, it had more than sufficient opportunity to think about what it was doing and the inanimate state of its lover (and the subsequent immensity of the argument from consent that would accompany any discussion of necrophilic persuasion within the sphere of humanity).

secondarily, both ducks were males. necrophiliac and homosexual. that particular duck must have had a hard time as a kid. while all of his mallard buddies were shooting the shit and waxing lyrical about guy stuff, he was looking at their beautiful green heads, their full plummages, their bright bright beaks in the sunlight, and wondering "what if?". tragic really. the only way he could get them interested in his package and introduce them to this whole other world of sexual exploration was by waiting for one to fall prey to an accidental death.

As Moeliker put it: "when one died the other one just went for it and didn't get any negative feedback".

negative feedback? for one, the fucking thing was dead, and probably wasn't going to start dishing out constructive criticism of the necrophiliac's sexual technique. for two, it sounds as though it's probably for the best. if you had added being bad in the bedroom to the poor fucker's already extensive list of complaints you could have probably added homicide (or at least suicide) to it.

again, I would have been curious to see what Mr Moeliker was doing while this was going on. face pressed against the window, tape recorder on, mood lighting, tie slightly loosened. of course we'll probably never know about all that kind of stuff. you imagine the guy who watches live gay mallard necrophilia probably wouldn't go around bragging about it, but there the poor bastard is, right on wikipedia.

I wonder if his wife knows the kind of thing he's into?

maybe that's why she married him?

does he even have a wife?

who is Kees Moeliker?

the andy letters: 12th august, 1997

Dear Andy,

It's been several minutes since I composed my last letter, and now again I submit my will to the near autonomy of linguistic representation.

I fear that the end is nigh for me, fear it with all of my heart. My legs are stiffening, I can feel them stiffening beneath my aged pinafore, as old as I can remember. It’s as though the joints are solidifying, fossilizing in their skin, preserving me as a hideous memorial to the self that still goes on. And my chest, oh how my chest hurts, tearing through me with every breath I can or cannot take, the lungs forced into a space too small for the fleshy scale of their once mighty bronchioles, my breath’s only a fraction of the necessary intake. My brittle fingers are dry like shortbread; I spend each second waiting for the break, the crumbs. I am malfunctioning, seizing up like poorly maintained machinery, and soon I will disappear. Perhaps with only an orange smear, trace amounts of rusted hopes painted in erratic flecks across my armchair, my tomb. I want to see blood pour from my fingers again, caught awkwardly on nails jutting, or hawthorns, or memories, but I’m afraid that only powder would poor from the crippling drought of my veins.

Time is perceived as such only with appropriate passage, of food, distance, conviction. I have none.

Did you find the treat? Originally it hadn't fit in the fridge, but I forced it, much to the joy of the children.

I will write again soon, if I ever learn what soon is.

Your ever fanatical

Ma

a mistake in the print shop

Mr and Mrs Cecil Hamburger were both cremated after their deaths, lowered onto a man-sized grill.

They tossed a coin up: that or burial in a polystyrene box.

Everybody loves a hamburger, thought the town priest carefully.

It was an amazing funeral. The mourners had dressed for a dinner dance.

The invites had accidentally said that.

It was a simple mistake in the print shop.

Dinner dance.

the rise of the ants

Because she really wanted one, and because I generally like to think I’m a decent enough guy, I bought my girl an ant farm as a present last christmas gone. It was a pretty exciting time in our little flat, I can tell you: feverishly awaiting the delivery of a big box all the way from Berlin, Germany, which would contain the two part ant farm, along with some extra sand, petri dishes for the distribution of foodstuffs, and a couple of packet of dead crickets.

When it finally arrived she tore into the package whilst I was still at work and set it all up, although we didn’t have any ants to put in it yet, because we had to order them separately from a low-grade online English company (queen, workers and a few miniscule eggs). It felt quite hopeless having an ant farm on the table when it didn’t even contain any ants, so once I got home we set to making sure the little bastards were sealed and delivered within the week.

It was more trouble than I care to mention getting the ants out of the sealed test tube in which they had been delivered and into the ant farm. They were extremely reluctant to do it, no matter how much coaxing with good fresh honey or vigorous shaking we sent their way. Eventually, after seeking counsel with some serious ant geeks on the kind of bizarre forums that only the twenty-first century could come up with, we stuck them in the fridge for a while. This would make them drowsy, apparently, and they would lose their grip on the glass of test tube and fall easily into the farm. I was doubtful, as I often am, and refused to have anything to do with the whole business, preferring instead to lounge around grumbling. But she pressed on, my girlfriend, with the determination of a kid at Christmas (which I suppose she was, although 22 doesn’t really count as standard kid age).

Still, she kept at it and the ants eventually succumbed, although we did lose one, crushed to insignificance by a poorly placed plastic lid.

Weeks passed and finally they buried a little tunnel for themselves. By this time I was thoroughly bored with them. As far as I could see they spent the entire day doing absolutely nothing. It was like I expected an amazing flea circus. That’s just the stuff of dreams, my dreams. But they didn’t look about, pick stuff up, goof around - they just sat there, around the queen, tending the eggs in ways far to small for a great lump of a crude human being like myself to even notice, let alone get excited about.

It was about this time, when the tunnel began it downward trajectory into the security of the sand, and a little nest area was established for the larvae to develop and grow, that I started swearing at the ants when I looked at them. I don’t know why, and now I think about it it does seem like a stupid thing to do. “Fucking ants,” I’d say, “don’t know shit.” The slightly repulsive smug superiority I couldn’t help but have in my tone of voice, recent graduate that I was, was completely unfounded, and wildly misguided, but it happened nonetheless, and whether I was proud of myself for trying to feel like the bigman compared to a handful of little ants I couldn’t tell you, but sometimes these stupid things happen, no matter how stupid they are, and this thing proved to be really goddamn stupid.

You see, eventually the care of the ants was in my hands while my girl finished up her shit elsewhere, and after discussion with her we decided that, to recreate the warmth of the earth’s soil where they would usually be - and thereby hopefully increasing the likelihood of the larvae actually bothering to hatch, which they still hadn’t done, despite it being May - we agreed to whack the whole farm into the airing cupboard for the night and see how things went.

So in I popped it, mumbling obscenities about the foolish ants and how even the old airing cupboard trick would make them believe as true something that was plainly false to any intelligent human man and closing the cupboard door and thinking no more about it, instead turning my attention to potatoes and cheap fish.

Next morning I went off to work as always, fucking work, and forgot in my hurry to get the ants from the airing cupboard. When I remembered, way down the street, too far and too late to bother going back to rectify my slip of the mind, I figured they’d be alright anyway. I mean, it’s not that warm in there, and we haven’t got the heating on (in fact we haven’t even got heating, but that’s another story).

And so imagine my surprise when I got home and found a mansized ant sitting in my chair. No apology, no nothing - just sitting in my chair reading a newspaper (God knows where it came from - I refuse to keep newspapers in the house, for personal reasons). It looked at me without expression and said, in a bold, confident English:

“Ah, cunt. Make me tea.”

“Excuse me, ant,” I quickly retorted, “but this is my flat and that’s my chair. I don’t quite know what the hell is...” And then I twigged. THE AIRING CUPBOARD! Swallowing hard and panicking I edged backwards away from the gently rocking ant, but was stopped sharp by five more of them, each as tall as me.

“You heard him, you rotten little wanker,” one of them said. “Tea, for all of us. Make it. Now.”

They shoved me roughly into the kitchen. What else could I do? I put the kettle on and counted out as many mugs as I could find. I could hear them playing my records and dancing, shifting the furniture around to make more space. I was terrified. How many more of them were there? Where was the queen hiding? What did this mean for the world as I knew it? Before I could answer these questions, even to myself, the kettle boiled and the ants started making a noise.

“Come on!”

“Get it made!”

“You’re a tosser, mate!”

I hurriedly poured the water over the teabags and went about the business at hand. The ants were laughing like drunken louts after a home game. I could hear what sounded like the head ant, who had been reclining in my chair, telephoning my work, explaining that I couldn’t come in tomorrow, or any other day in fact, because I was being held captive by man sized ants.

“Yes, ants,” he shouted. “A-N-T-S, that’s right. Ants, you deaf fucking bitch.”

Even Melissa the administrator was powerless against these monsters, laughing again now, the phone smashing against the hard stone walls. I knew then, as even employment crumbled, the final bastion of civilization completely overruled by the cunning and intelligent dictatorship of the ants, I knew then that hope was gone for me. Lost. If I could just hold out until Kelly got back. She would worry about me, wonder why I hadn’t answered my phone, and then come back to investigate. Wouldn’t she? With her scientific mind she would think of something, I knew it, just whip up a quick antidote with the minor chemicals to hand in the flat (toothpaste and bicarbonate of soda) that would bring the ants back down to their regular size. Right?

Biting my tongue, then, I carried the hot tea into the living room. One of the workers knocked the almost boiling mugs of beverage from the tray in my hands all down my frontage. I tried not to scream but it was hopeless.

Since then I have been living with ants, under their control, passive, unquestioning, keeping my head down, counting the days until this might all blow over. I am their prisoner, they use me for every one of their cruel plans. I am not even safe from them sexually. I have been gang raped by more ants than I can even count anymore. It never stops. When they’re not fucking me they whip me. If I fall asleep they target me with minor electric shocks. If I make a mistake, of any kind, they beat me beyond comprehension. Even I do not feel human anymore. I can barely remember the world outside, can’t understand how it continues to move, unchanged, how normal life carries on, or even what normal life is. This is normal for me now. The world feels like the anomaly. Is there anything left out there? I couldn’t even guess.

I’m only able to write this now because they are busy wrestling in the bath, an activity which never ceases to amuse them. This is my obituary, perhaps, or one last stab at life, the outside world. A desperate plea before it’s all gone.

I’ve never been so afraid.

Will there ever be an end to this madness.

Ants. Everywhere. Ants.

I feel I should warn you.

The ants are coming.

big night out

Stewart Grimme chortled down his cornflakes with a gusto he hadn’t known since borstal. He deserved those crisp golden flakes, doused liberally in semi-skimmed and lightly sugared to sensory perfection – it had been quite a night, after all. A couple of frames of pool followed by gang-rape in the car park; what better way to get back into the swing of the working week than that?

He looked at the severed head that had been left on the table in front of him. Female, apparently. It must have been Derek, or Bobby, or Wills, or Jacko. Those guys… crazy one and all! Whose was the head, though? As Stewart looked at it, deeply, his little blue eyes darting from ear to ear, munching slowly on his breakfast, milk liberally spilling from bottom lip and down chin, he tried to think back to the actions of the previous night. It wasn’t easy seeing anything through the haze of WKDs he’d put back – two for one.

He had joked around, had a sing-song to the Quo, lost at pool twice but won three times and then raped poor Suzie Dire over the bonnet of Jacko’s Capri.

Of course. Suzie Dire.

She didn’t look much like Suzie Dire and had clearly been given a bit of rough and tumble by the lads. Par for the course with a gang rape, he reckoned. What a scorcher of a night, he thought, and felt a bit of a stirring in his boxer shorts.

Who had cut the head off, though, he couldn’t remember for the life of him. He’d have to whack a quick text off to the lads and get to the bottom of it. It was a totally mad joke, and that was all of them to a tee – mad. A bit crazy, off the wall. The old class of 96, never growing up, still playing the field in the old hometown.

It was truly glorious to be alive, he thought, slurping the last of the milk from the deep white cereal bowl he had picked up in Sainsbury’s. With friends like I’ve got who even needs any other friends? Who even needs to leave town, to try new things? It’s all here! We’re always having a laugh! Ha ha ha! Always! We’re cards, cads, cunts, crazygood! Fucking YES!

He smiled and stood up, placing the bowl in the dishwasher and giving Suzie’s blood-matted hair a little stroke. Wonder where the body is, he thought, pulling at the nubbin of his cock, so tiny and offensive. Wouldn’t mind another go on that one, went like the clappers she did.

He grabbed his new Nokia 3.2 megapixel from the top of the fridge. No new messages. Those crazy fuckers must be pulling the sicky. Why not? We’re young, free, and mad, after all, isn’t it! He started composing a message and went into the front room.

Where he found all of his friends severed heads.

There was Derek, scalped and nasty.

There was Bobby, no eyes left.

There was Wills, razor-sliced cheeks.

There was Jacko, car keys just glistening at the back of his throat.

Oh shit, thought Stewart, tossing his phone onto the couch, then picking it up and placing it more carefully on the coffee table. He sat down between the heads of Derek and Bobby and drummed his fingers on them.

This is totally wacky, he thought. Nuts’n’bonkers! These guys. He pulled down his pants and felt a little tearful.

I mean, who was he gonna go out with tonight?

Fuck it, this is always happening and it always works out. Nothing to get down about. He was a great guy, crazy, a bit of a wildnut.

He started to thrust his cock into Derek’s mouth, the tip jabbed unnervingly out of the severed neck.