The Situation Demands A Little More Lead...

Uncle Charles had the cruel unknown fate of belonging to a family of accidental serial killers. I say accidental, but it was his own ideas that directly led to the deaths of hundreds of people who put their trust and faith in him; accidents of course. Uncle Charles essentially became an entrepreneur in an age where science seemed a stagnant swamp of ideology. Uncle Charles planned to rejuvenate rationed research and break the mould with something extraordinary. He set about reading every book, article and newspaper he could get his hands on.

Sadly for Uncle Charles, the greatest mobilising influence upon his later research was an article dedicated to the subject of homeopathy and its efficacy as a method of physiological treatment. Uncle Charles became obsessed. He’d become a prominent scholar on particle collision in those intervening years. Now, he cast aside his limiting energies in that area and focused fully on adapting an old project; a homeopathic method to allow man to fly.

Uncle Charles, like all of us, had been raised on a diet of psychosexual parental abuse and American cartoons. As he sat cradling a skinless forearm one day, he mused at the ludicrousness of the coyote and how he took so much time to realise the ground beneath him was nothing but fresh air. Uncle Charles constantly found himself referring back to that moment and it proved to be the guiding light in his later research.

Uncle Charles knew even at that early stage, as he diluted the Parazone fluid to prevent it working its way into his retina, that his project required rationalisation. He decided early on that addressing mode of flight was not the answer. He’d thrust his Russian hamster Veronica from a height of two meters caked in bubble wrap to the ground and achieved only a chorus of popping, cracking and squelching. As he frantically unwrapped the limp beast from the snap and crackle of its final vessel, he decided rapidly to abandon the project. Any hopes he had of an ‘all the king’s men’ rebuilding of the deceased were dashed when a colony of ants took up lodgings in a cerebral cavity and the dog partially defecated on its colon; the nightmares had been terrible.

Perhaps it was maturity and years of cathartic incidents of canine related abuse that finally directed Uncle Charles back to the project as a rationalised physicist. As mentioned, he became convinced that homeopathy was the way to go in achieving flight in man. He noted the existence of three immediate problems: the need for suitable protective clothing, the ability to harness gravity in the form of a homeopathic remedy and the early instigation of a plea bargain for criminal insanity. If Monopoly had taught him anything, it was the value of a Get Out Of (a maximum security) Jail Free Card. Once these issues were resolved, it was all go for the project.

Uncle Charles reviewed the protective clothing of choice for previous attempts at human flight and rationed that previous equipment had been far too safe. He decided based on some self-constructed law of opposites that the most suitable flying suit should possess the absolute minimum of safety features. You could argue that this was where the demise of the whole project as a rational exercise began. Nonetheless, no-one managed to persuade Uncle Charles that a suit resembling a sabre-toothed prolapsed chameleon was simply bad design and he redoubled his efforts towards harnessing gravity.

Uncle Charles decided that the best homeopathic cure for the inability to fly was located in the essence of heavy things. Initially, he introduced his subjects to heavy metal remedies containing lead and arsenic. However, later he was known to try anything heavy from bricks to lipid extractions from obese bingo players. Uncle Charles also extended his programme to include things ‘that got us down’, believing that such things weighed too heavily upon us. Howls and roars of excruciated laughter would squirm from his lab as his subjects undertook intensive courses of tickle-therapy and were subjected to cruel overdoses of slapstick comedy.

However, it seemed no matter what remedy he applied, his subjects simply could not fly. A last gasp attempt involved indulging a bi-plane trial flight lesson so he could capture the essence of light things like clouds, but the results remained disappointing. His homeopathy was becoming erratic also at this point. His calculated dilutions amounted to nothing more than casual guesswork and his means of succussion amounted to nothing more than screaming at the clouds ‘diffuse you floaty bastards’. Uncle Charles himself began to consider whether his project was ever going to garner results.

Perhaps the biggest indicator he should have noted was the growing count of unaccounted missing persons being tallied in the city. Naturally, in the pursuit of science, Uncle Charles had attempted practical investigation of his methods. In true homeopathic style he had decided to introduce height gradually. However, he deduced that attempts at flight were doomed to failure unless the subject leapt from at least fifty metres…

(At the time of writing Charles Whitman is serving an unspecified time in state hospital care. To his evident chagrin, no American state endorses a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card system nor has any intentions to. The bodies of around two hundred people have been recovered from various gorges around the city where the experiments took place and fourteen homeopaths were brutally murdered in revenge attacks someone ironically involving the reckless administration of arsenic oxide).

Auchmillen: Whaur Th' Dae It Twa Days A Wik!

I couldn’t decide if, in dressing up as a gorilla for Christian Science Week, our openly disillusioned vicar was trying to convey a certain message. Everyone hoped he wasn't on borrowed time with the clergy, especially after his infamous pro-Jurassic Park III rants at the Women’s Institute GLBT Dinner Dance. No matter how much Audrey Phillips waved her dripping nipple tassels and crinkled her faux moustache, there was little they could do to stop him going off on one. It was at least 10.45am before he got onto Jeff Goldblum being God’s representative on Earth and Milton and Sedgley arrived from Deranged Ministers and Priests and Sons and carted him off for his usual post-Park sabbatical…

Today’s rant was unusual; the vicar had kept his clothes on. Usually the mere mention of Sam Neill was enough to have his scrotum out dangling like a mangled goat over the forbidding border of a Tyrannosaurus’ razorwire front plate. Perhaps it was the difficulty associated with manoeuvring the gorilla suit to establish his freedom, who knows? But the villagers were nervous enough to call it into question.

When the vicar was carted off to the loony basket and out of the way, all the pricks and fanny gathered together in the fuck-house for the review meeting. It had been four days since the vicar had last gone mad and for William (Bill) Hunter in particular, that was far too long! Bill, with his trouser pockets flapped out along with his cock to complete the desired elephant impression, stood before the throbbing crowd and roared his disapproval at waiting such a long time to perform his chosen indiscretion. Feeling the early panging throngs of release, old Maisie May thrust up onto her lurching chair and peeled down to a leather catsuit that was as geriatric as her straining heart; both met with the rowdy applause of their audience.

The point of the meeting was made with plundering haste and everyone knew what would be done. For now, it was time to let their hair down. From out of nowhere, a riotous ensemble of musicians appeared, seemingly accompanied by a back catalogue of the most forbidden of music. Beneath the gyrating minister’s wife, a seeping smile of enthusiasm was dripping across the face of the coked up organiser of the Women’s Institute GLBT Dinner Dance. The one judiciary present in the room, Sgt. Felt, was overseeing the room with a look of stunned bemusement on his face – purely a panicked reaction to the overly ambitious exercise in fellatio being performed on him by Mrs. Gripp, of Scalpel and Sons Butchers. The whole room had a smile on its face.

Two days later, an entire village had come and was now very much stuck in the end phase of coming down. Jenna Taylor was, as always, the first to return to the shackles of decency and cast her worn silken corset mercilessly into the licking fire. She glanced over to see the wrapping orange tongues lapping gently around and sensually digesting it, and afforded the whole event a pious look of utter disgust. As everyone pieced together their lives of three days ago, the look of utter disdain for a life more ordinary was only matched by the look of yearning for the profanities that had nearly killed them hours before. Though they wouldn’t say it, most of them hoped the vicar would hold out longer this time.

At 12:00 on the button, Milton and Sedgley arrived from Deranged Ministers and Priests and Sons and gingerly ushered the vicar into his private quarters. As he passed, the villagers couldn’t escape his ashen face and aged expression. Maisie May wept a moment to see the look of abject fear and confusion passing over his trembling eyes. Perhaps they’d let this all get way out of hand? The vicar was ushered into his private quarters and the residents began the customary moral evaluation of the events of the last few days. As usual, most decided it was time to call off the entire thing, no more picking and no more parties; it was over.

A week though is a long time in a little village like Auchmillen. The vicar surprised himself most of all by being fit as a fiddle and ready for the lectern by Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Cludge had been dispatched on the Thursday for the picking and the vicar’s Sunday service had gone smoothly and broken no bones of contention with anyone. Sins admonished, the flock was fit to flee. The vicar was glad it was done and was looking forward to a spot of offenceless radio 4. He always enjoyed a herbal tea after Sunday service and maybe he could get round to watching that debatable yarn about dinosaurs he’d been force fed by that sinful harlot Mrs. Gripp…

As she heard the last mutterings of the vicar to her expectant but exiting audience, Mrs. Cludge remembered the crux of the meeting. With careful consideration of her charge, Mrs. Cludge discreetly galvanised the Jasmine Pot with enough acid to shit clouds of diamonds from the arse of a purple sky…

‘See you Tuesday vicar’ she smiled grimly.

Call Your Daughters John & Save Yourselves FromTyranny...

She didn’t know it yet, but the moment her parents uneasily uttered ‘Geraldine’ before hastily scribbling on the birth register form, her life was changed forever. Her unwitting guardians had high hopes for Geraldine with her father seeking a doctor and mother certain she would become a child rearing housewife of dynamic and dignified repute. Sadly for them, this would never be the case for by choking out those three naïve syllables they had consigned their beautiful little bundle of promise to one of the last enduring caste systems in her world…

The first signs of the prophecy coming true were evident as early as her third birthday. Her father had gone to Woolworths and purchased the most beautiful and striking doll. It was one of those psychopathic ‘keep me in the box or I’ll eat your hearts’ lifelike numbers, and Geraldine was furious. Her father for his part had been oblivious at the time. He merely found it queer that Geraldine calmed down the instant he agreed to her request to write Great Expectations on the doll’s dress and place an imaginary barcode under her dress.

The more concessions they made to her whims, the further Geraldine pushed her parents. Geraldine logged everything, even how many logs they used. For their part, her parents tolerated it. At times it was pretty helpful for them as they were able to superimpose their emerging contempt for one another onto their dry distaste for their daughter’s lunatical tendencies.

So often, Geraldine’s father had watched those wildlife documentaries where the cautious water buffalo waited… waited… waited… until it was too late and a pack of lions were gagging on her pancreas. And now, after so many years burdened by her oddities, he saw what was going on with his child and he knew it was too late to save her. He was wracked with guilt, as he squirmed in terror at the realisation of his last breaths his most dominant though remained; why did we give her that name?

From that moment on, Geraldine’s father was known in the house as Ian the Bastard. Geraldine’s mother was frequently overheard muttering about being left to deal with it or her own or to lament that even his urn had a ‘fucking barcode’ on it. Her mother rarely spoke from then on other than to curse his name but Geraldine remained oblivious…

In her 18^th year, Geraldine waved off the few friends she’d made from within a contentious swarm of bullies and deviants at school as they headed for University and all its sordid associations. Geraldine had been pressed to join them from more than one angle, but as much as she tried to fill out the form she could not. Every time she tried to write down her particulars, all that would appear on the page were titles. Her personal profile amounted to nothing more than a whodunit of Penguin Paperback Classics.

Every potential employer looked at Geraldine in amusement and bemusement. They could see something in the girl for sure, but not in their line of work. One person was kind enough to promote Geraldine to an old friend of hers, a senior librarian in the district library. Geraldine was hired the second she entered the building, there wasn’t even any need for an interview…

The senior couldn’t believe her luck! A ‘G-CLASS’ handed to her on a plate and at such a young age. It was hard to find a real one in this day and age. Geraldine for her part slotted in amazingly well in her new role. Somehow, the filing systems made such easy sense to her. As years turned into months, Geraldine honed her near instinctive ability to hold the elderly in contemptuous regard and to be nothing but suspicious of the young lenders who needed to do little or nothing to merit expulsion from the building. Geraldine quickly became merciless. For Geraldine, a late book was nothing but a raging haemorrhoid on a silken rectum of perfection. There could be no excuses for late returns; fines were enforced with scant regard for the ability to pay them.

Geraldine died last week. As with any member of her caste she produced at best weak children or maybe even none at all. Her children were the many books and publications which she kept so ordered and predictable in her literary paradise. Word has it that she hung on until a suitable replacement had been found; a natural caste librarian such as a Maureen or a Lorraine. In the end, she saw off fourteen Sarahs and Jennys before an Audrey walked through the doors and began hollering incandescently at a group of subdued adolescents with the audacity to be studying for their A-levels. Audrey didn't need to be told she had the job, it was given to her seventeen years previously by her parents. Geraldine slipped out of the world as she had entered it... a librarian.

Recipient Not Known...

I’m a pretty shaky nervy kinda guy man. I remember when I was four getting a Transformers toy for my birthday, coming from a pretty backward village the idea of turning a fucking dude into a (SIN3EWOP) car really blew another hole in my ass. That’s no shit man, it fucked me up so much I spat my guts out all over my Thomas The Tank Engine jigsaw puzzle… Fuck!

It was about two years before I ever saw the image on that puzzle clearly man! The Fat Controller had changed his fucking name by the time I found out he was fucking fat in the first place man. Probably didn’t like putting his real name to the project of installing such a massive intricate railway ne(VIS70UOP)twork on such a shitty small island. I mean who the fuck goes on holiday to a place called Sodor anyhow except mutant fucking dwarves with suspiciously powerful rings man!

I was a pretty dizzy kid man! I had no idea the fucking Care Bears was such fucked up shit! You know…political messages and shit? I was too busy puking up all colours of free Opal Fruits onto my Beano comics to see it as anything other than an acid hazed security blanket for dumb-assed kids being (TING2WALP)weaned off the long demised Sesame Street!

Though I think I was the only kid who couldn’t stand that shit man! Sesame Street drove my round the fucking twist man! Even the hyperactive saccharined theme tune had me chunking Skittles all over my WCW wrestling ring man!

Everybody else had those fucking WWF wrestlers with their fucking bullshit special moves built in! Those guys were pussies man! Your WCW wrestling figure came with one stance – kinda like a stunned juggler taking a shit! Now (RAL47SER)you may not know this man but you can execute a million fucking moves under your own steam from that position! The stories are fucking endless man! Try doing that with your fucking pre-programmed automated special move WWF shit you fucking cripples!

I fucking hated those WWF assholes but man the actual show was the shit! There was this one fight where this clown guy had a broken arm that was (KIJS34DF)like not fucking broken then his evil twin clown came out and clubbed the referee to death man! It was a total mind fuck man! About a year after that man he suddenly starts hanging around with a midget clown man! I mean what the fuck? WTF?!

That whole fucking summer had the Bluebells at number one in the music charts with Young At Heart man! I think it was that ‘t eventually sent me off my springs man! They came to my house and wheeled me off in my sisters pram to what they called a Unit for the Sociologically Confusing. It was a fucking sweet deal man! Fiv(IOPI34ND)e days of electro-convulsive counselling, toast and marmalade with the sharp edges cut off ‘cos they fucked with my fucking mind man and I got to work as a school-crossing patroller on weekends. Saaa-weeeet!

That’s how it was until last week man ‘cos I’m out and I’ve got myself a job man! They said I was(JIKDOF45E) the perfect dude for the job man! I know you use the internet now man ‘cos they cut my toast and marmalade allowance ‘cos you downgraded to pay your online bingo debt… FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! But next time you gotta type in those little words in the box to send a message over the internet man keep me in mind cos I made that man... I made that…

Meal Ticket

Eleven years of dedicated service as a registered proctologist had done nothing to dampen Angeline’s reputation as an arsehole magnet. Amongst her few acquiantances, it was commonly countenanced that Angeline’s fondness for arseholes both encompassed and escaped the boundaries of her chosen profession. Angeline knew it too…

That bloody name… Angeline! A hideous moniker given with the scant regard only those obliged to process orphans (for Angeline saw herself as nothing more or less) can muster.

Where was that old bastard George anyway? The flamboyant George was almost traditionally her half two on a Wednesday ever since a very uncomfortable bowel disorder had rendered his career as an operatic tenor untenable. Angeline was pissed off… Of late, George had developed the un-Freudian ability to align his biological issues of anal retention with an irritating tendency towards reckless tardiness.

Angeline always INSISTED her arseholes show up on time.

Angeline attempted to straighten herself up, she was sweating. Bugger! She approached the mirror with the caution of a child sensing an impending scold. Her understated lipstick had smeared slightly since her last preen and she was instantly drawn to the branching veins grasping across the whites of her eyes. Her hair it seemed had developed a mind of its own and was weaving a determined path across her forehead. She swept it away with rehearsed precision and lurched towards the door in frustration.

She paused a moment…

It would not do, she skipped almost secretively back to the mirror and intensively sculpted her hair with Freudian precision. Angeline hated the thought that Ms. Berling might identify any hint of bad taste about her appearance. For sure, she’d had plenty to say in the past; Roy had been the one good man in Angeline’s life but also had the audacity to grow corn for a living.

Angeline accepted it; Berling had given her so much. She’d only been eleven when Berling first spotted her nursing a skinned knee through the cold iron fence of the Sisters Orphanage. It had been seven months since her husband had oh so fortunately met with the most deserved of ends and the gargantuan payout from the bus company had elevated her to privileges earned; but never previously known. She’d never told Angeline naturally, but something about the surgical methodical silence of the child had struck a chord in Berling’s mind if not her heart. The sponsorship saw Angeline out of the orphanage through to college. Now, she was keeping her end of the bargain in keeping the old girl in work; hardly a curse given her meticulous hard on for bureaucracy.

Even still, she resented somewhat the extent to which the old dear had her in her pocket. In Angeline’s eyes, Berling feared every man she had cause to bring under her watchful eye. Passing on her estate to Angeline was one thing but carelessly thrusting it into the arms of some all too willing jack the lad was definitely another. Men were out. It was strangling - so much so that it seemed the surgery was the only place where Angeline felt time alone with men was achievable. Berling was too proper and rehearsed to ever interrupt her during consultation.

That’s how it had all started…

Angeline naturally felt a fair degree of dominance and freedom when confronted with a pensive but unknowing arsehole. It was not long until the wretched fantasising of the prone wrinklies was matched only by that of Angeline. It only took her four months to move out from the murky depths of prostatic massage and into a whole other world of genitor-urinary manipulation. Perhaps it was the role of subject that meant none of her prey would resist her advances, or perhaps it was her tendency towards oral examination that turned incident into habit. Either way; she was addicted quickly enough.

Berling of course remained oblivious even from the first. Nonetheless, Angeline – unconsciously at first – built up a wall of secrecy . It would crush the old girl if she knew the depraved interpretation of the Hippocratic oath that was being tugged and thrust in the business end of office 442B. Professional cleaners quickly ‘unburdened’ Berling of her cherished access to the surgery while four mirrors reinforced a now entrenched superstition ensuring Berling’s only response to Angeline’s activities was obliviousness. Even then it was never enough…

Where the fuck is George anyway? That old bastard had stood her up for the last time! Angeline fumed inside, mindful not to let her volatility spew over into beady evidence of discord. George was beginning to call the shots and Angeline didn’t like it. She resented being held to ransom by a man who was biologically doomed to shit himself when backed into a corner.

That little bastard had fucked with her for the last time!

Bollocks to Berling! Where the fuck was he?…

Foregoing the usual caution with the surgery door, Angeline wildly wrenched the door open, unconsciously bursting through into the foyer. The sun was breaking in through the window and Ms. Berling seemed to leap in terror at Angeline’s unusual abruptness; what on Earth was going on?

Still, Angeline was surprised to see palpitation in Berling; she was shaken up. A hasty apology was the least she could do and even then her head bowed and her body lurched inwards in defence of her distasteful behaviour.

Berling was flustered…It was alright Angeline. 'Perhaps you should return to the surgery' she said sitting erect and ruffled from shock. Her chest was heaving from the upheaval of it all…

Angeline didn’t want to go back. She wanted to call George. He was (fffffff…fucking – she said under her breath) late after all. And as much as Berling protested through her rasping breath, Angeline’s fury erupted over her mobile as she scrawled over it to stamp George Mobile. She was gonna find that arsehole and get it told.

It was the most peculiar thing, as the shrill ringing purr of the earpiece penetrated her right ear, the dull trill of vibration stirred in her left. Berling, sensing the game was up exhaled as if in relief and backed her chair away from the clamped security of the writing desk.

The dampened scrawls of George’s moustache slid from beneath her reversing skirt before his steamed red face crept forward in nervous smile.

A tide of confusion slowly washed over Angeline…the room stank of shit.

Give Me A Second While I Write This All Down...

Before our less than equal eyes stand the four men, each one once a poet and scholar of no particular order or place; now runners. They used to have bodies but these have long been replaced by ghosts of souls long transcended back to a far more tolerable past. The shell that trembles on its stricken stilts thinks about keeling over but lingers on for the next moment in vain contemplation that one day body and soul might somehow reunite.

Fourteen surround us, each one with killing eyes fixed on us like the pointed bayonets ready to strike expecting us to strike. They are not men but boys in big coats with dogs like dinosaurs and hungry teeth. All this parades before me and I have to laugh because only two men will do the shooting today with the weakest guns.

I face the four. You turn towards me in the side of my head looking hopeful. Ghosts can’t speak you fucking idiot everybody knows ghosts can’t speak. Even in my mind the quotations are absent because I know I’d never say it to you. You are three weeks old and I am two years old. I am your great great great great grandfather and a bullet away from being your fucking meal ticket out of this bullshit.

I took my eye off the four. I haven’t eaten today. You may not know it but you fucking tricked me there. I don’t need to look at the fourteen for instruction as I know what to do and the punctuation begins to die away as I automatically press the trigger and start firing like a fucking madman none of the shots miss not even the ones my last shreds of a soul attempt to send askew and I see ribbons of red and pink bursting back and hosing out onto the milkshake snow and each of the four drop to the ground and now I can see its not all my work and your spraying those fucking bullets like a piss strewn amateur and I don’t look around because a single tear blundering from your sorry eyes is cutting into the side of my head like razor wire

A full stop. My composure is returning. There’s humanity in me I can sense it but all it does now is tells me that you’re one more burden one more mouth to feed. Knowing the four have been helped at my hand I feel it turning towards you in your mind. The hand stays still but in my eyes I’m spraying your fucking brains all over the fucking wall. Four is not four but five. If only the fourteen would not turn me into six my hand thinks and the punctuation begins wandering before I reign it back in under the merciful burden of experience and education.

… I can’t wait to go home.