GASM
After they bung-pummelled her every olfactory smuggle pit, the Smong Sphere tickled all its hard spickles over the Queen Dung. Every prong swollen red and waiting to spew tumescent dribble after such a prolonged, thronging and tordid rubbling. Squeals of greeling satisfaction were shrill loud as the muscle reflex spizzled into drooling.
The scientist looked up from his microscope.
“This is gonna be a big splash.”
He put his eye back to the lens and got ready to witness the orgasmic tsunami of this subatomic sex war.
SLIVERS
Brian has worked his way up over the years but still feels pressure from above. He has accepted that this was the way life works. Someone is always higher up.
He can afford three holidays abroad a year, regardless of the discomfort of being with his wife and children, going abroad makes him feel like he is experiencing life.
It can't all be work, work, work.
He polishes his shoes four times a week.
* * *
Alan wears science - fiction themed t-shirts in two sizes too big for him. He plays computer games online. One game in particular he really likes and his character is in the top five hundred throughout the world. He knows that these games are made for fun, so he plays them for fun. If you play these games too seriously your character becomes rigid.
He visits his mother as often as possible but he worries it isn't enough.
* * *
Hannah works at the Post Office; selling stamps and so on. A sore and spotty-faced man used to come in a few years ago and make shy glances at her. One time he queued up to post an envelope of dry pasta to his own address, just to get the chance to talk to her. He gave her a note that said:
“You seem really nice, sorry this is a bit weird but if you want to hang out my number is...(number removed)”
She never contacted him and he hasn't been in since.
* * *
Between the wall and door it feeds on slivers.
* * *
Sarah used to love school. They were the best years of her life and she had a “right good laugh”. She loves her children but she envies them. She tells them:
“These are the best years of your life, don't waste them, they'll be over before you know it.”
* * *
John works at the Citizens Advice Bureau. He has a bad leg after a car accident. He lives with a bald cat. He does yoga in his living room to improve his joints.
He uploads his favourite DVD box sets to streaming websites. There is nothing wrong with sharing.
* * *
Rachel is devastated that after paying off her debt, her dentist has charged her over one thousand pound to fix her teeth. At the age of thirty-seven she wonders if she will ever have children?
* * *
Mabel can't remember much but that's okay because the nursing home looks after her.
* * *
Baz kicks cans down the street the way footballers kick footballs. Baz loves football and spends as much time as he can watching football, playing football and practising football. He plays football at least twice a week with his mates: Bazza, Baz, Baz, Gaz, Baz, Gazza and Barry. They let Maz play too even though she is a girl. Baz hates Maz because she sniffs glue at school and she is having sex with Baz instead of with Baz.
* * *
It screeches across nothing in an emptiness full of nothing.
CAPPED
The bright light covered all sense of location and memory.
Nothing had ever existed.
No questions.
No demands.
An old woman's face peered through the brightness.
“Be normal!” she shouted.
Wart fleshed horror.
Concrete and chalk.
Tooth snarl browns.
The other children stared at me as I returned to where I was forced to be. I thought I was thoughtless, but now there was thought.
Again.
Hello again.
No escape.
Never escape.
There never will be.
Never?
They said I had a handicap.
I imagined all the gadgets in that cap.
They sent me to a Special Unit.
Police Academy?
AFFIRM
At the Primate Disco a mass of malformed muscle, fat and bone danced.
Each dumb head had illusions of self-awareness.
The drumming of music beats brains dead.
Please approve of me – please allow me into your club - please let me be cool - I like the latest tunes – I am an individual – I am cool – please affirm me – please affirm – please affirm me – please affirm - I am edgy – I like the latest tunes – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm – affirm –
* * *
Outside, in the smoking area, Vince met Sarah and they told each other lies.
“Sounds like a really interesting job,” said Vince.
He smiled, blunt-toothed through his bushy liar's beard.
“It must be really nice to help the homeless,” said Vince.
Vince was the rhythm guitarist of a band (or something else counter-culturally accepted). Whenever Vince chatted up girls it made him feel like he was still thirty-five. She was young, pretty, alternative and everything a good trophy should be. His eyes receded into a non-event horizon.
“My band were in the Guardian newspaper,” said Vince.
* * *
Up the street, two apes argued.
“You don’t affirm me anymore!” shouted the girl.
“You don’t affirm me anymore!” shouted the boy.
Their taxi arrived and took them home to their capsuled fear.
* * *
A girl sat on the disabled toilet and cried into her mobile phone.
“Please affirm me. Please don't leave me. I'll die. I'll die. I'll die.”
A soil-headed man banged on the marker scrawled door.
“Hurry up then!”
He wanted to shit and piss.
PLUMBER
“Do you remember when shit used to mean something?” asked the plumber to the old woman as he plunged his hand
