Distant Rumbling

Did I ever tell you about the time I made it to the semi-finals of the Official World Paper, Scissors, Stone Championships? I can’t remember how I got there, or basically anything else at all about my life up to that point, but whatever, it helps keep this junk a bit shorter so enough with the questions already. What I do remember, fair brothers n’ sisters, is this:

- that I was incredibly fluttery before the bout, muttering and pacing and hand-wringing in tortured anxiety at the prospect of failure before a worldwide audience exceeding 492million across eighteen continents

- and that I had thus decided to allow myself just the tiniest nip of my bespoke and wildly experimental ‘nerve tonic’, and that I then felt like the king of the horses, and by the way I’d totally publish the ingredients and earn about a billion Euros but I’m not really in it for the money and besides I pretty much just made the recipe up out of whatever was in those alarmed biohazard bins at the back of the animal testing place that one time

- and then I don’t know, I guess I somehow got pushed or carried or tricked up into the ring at some point, because the next thing I remember is that suddenly the house lights went down with an audible thunk, replaced simultaneously by the sobering flare of two hi-beam tungsten spots that sent weird conjoined twin shadows criss-crossing out over the taught, machismo-greased canvas of that iconic hendecagonal ring

- and how, around the kaleidoscopic periphery of my adrenaline-blinkered vision, a forest of giant foam fingers that had hitherto been swaying ominously, rhythmically, like some voracious and grasping carnivorous coral suddenly froze and hung as one, tremulous and baited in mass mid-salute

- and how, somewhere in the darkness beneath them, a ketchupy carpet of discarded twice-bitten hotdogs steamed away, flabby and unfinished and forgotten in their waxy cardboard coffins

- and how the warm, wafted breeze rushing in to fill the void left by ten thousand inhaled breaths tugged lightly at the hem of my day-glo short shorts, their sheer satin flutter replacing all other sound as the frenzied roar of the crowd died to a pin-drop

- and how the salty, almost prudish ding-a-ding of the rusty old maritime bell sent me spinning back into myself, back into nothingness where I slammed right up against a sort of root primordial realisation that the universe has just imploded, leaving only this moment and nothing else anywhere ever, and suddenly the whole essence of the galaxy was rushing up through my knee-boots and into my chapsack and belly and lungs and face and go GO GO GOGOOAAAAARGH!!!1hfk¡a#sk

- and then the fact that I sort of came to, disorientated and naked and screaming in a ‘language’ that more or less consisted of budget brand names and gigantic shuddering sobs, on the ceiling of a police cell some two or three days later

- and that I was wearing a prickly and slightly-too-tight polyester suit when I was shown, several months down the line as part of the media-saturated high court proceedings, a few harrowing seconds of grainy amateur video footage in which I could clearly be observed ‘Papering’ my unnamed opponent with such breathtaking and unnecessary savagery that he instantly fell stone dead of embarrassment and a liquefied pancreas

- and that I will never, ever be allowed back into an Official World Paper, Scissors, Stone Championship ring as long as I draw breath, and also that it’s kind of irrelevant anyway because they immediately had to cancel the sport forever and invent trampolining instead

I’d like to think that I’d be pretty sensitive if I was one of those doctors who had to deal with all the yeah wow I really don’t know I guess I was just doing a spot of attic-clearing and then I kinda fell on this sports trophy or whatever and yes as a matter of fact I was doing the attic-clearing naked and look will this take long because I’m on double yellows and I had to leave the kid in the car so the warden thinks I’ll be right back oh what like YOU’RE such a perfect and responsible babysitter I suppose injuries.

And I’d like to think that I wouldn’t be the sort who just nods sagely and tuts in sympathetic regret and winces at all the right moments until the very second the unfortunate patient is finally checked out, but who then immediately runs down to the smoking room or wherever and totally laughs about it with all the guys from accounts. (Wait, do they even have accounts departments in a rectal hospital? Ok well the guys from wardrobe then.)

And I’d totally like to think I wouldn’t insist right there and then on taking them all out for happy hour pitchers at Wetherspoons so they could scream and laugh about it even louder and more crudely now they were away from the workplace and I’d definitely like to think I’d have the basic people skills to at least recognise the unfortunate patient if I ever saw him again, especially if he was only sitting about 15 goddamn feet away over here and hearing every word you were all saying and trying not to weep into this fourth Bacardi Breezer because whoever’s stupid kid will only ask a bunch of super emasculating questions about the streaky mascara when I finally get it together to limp back to the car and drive him home.

Here’s a good idea for an advert, don’t steal it*.

So this businessman-looking guy (mid-thirties, you’re thinking he maybe plays squash but probably rents the racquet) comes stumbling out of a telephone booth all covered in sweat and shaking pretty badly, but in that kind of manly way that says jesus you guys would not BELIEVE the shitfest that just went down in there seriously and not just, like, oh god oh god that was so horrible and I can’t really deal with elevators either I don’t know what it is but well hey that was like 35 seconds longer than last week right? or whatever. And he just stands there in the street, tie askew and five o’clock shadow starting to blue his moderately (but not insanely, like you’d immediately be all oh right, an advert guy) square jaw, with his eyes scrunched closed and face raised to the sky in silent prayer as life goes on around him in this big anonymous chrome and glass metropolis. And then after say two or maybe four minutes this soft pinkish snow begins to fall with an almost eerie delicacy while some fashionable emotive acoustic music starts to twinkle, and the camera pans and wheels out in a graceful yet dizzying arc and right as we feel we’re about to leave this curiously ambiguous vignette behind forever and spiral out backwards into the icy cosmos like a weird drunken meteor we suddenly crash-zoom all the way back in and the music stops and the man is immediately devoured by a massive greasy robo-alligator that just slithered right off a waiting bus like it was a fucking tourist or regular bus guy or some crazy thing. And then there’s a strange bit of dead air for a couple of seconds, barely enough to make you wonder if it’s a mistake or what the hell is happening here, and then you just get the pack shot of the product while a klaxon blares for seriously about another two minutes, yeah it’s quite a long advert and it wold be pretty expensive and annoying but you would probably remember it and maybe even be impressed or annoyed into buying the thing it wanted you to buy. Right now I’m thinking it should probably be an advert for a macrobiotic yoghurt drink or a range of travel-sized board games.

*If any of you are advertising moguls and currently nodding slowly with a sort of crazed grin starting to spread across your face because of this idea, I will only ask you for £3,000 and six of your travel-sized board games (your choice) or a month’s supply of macrobiotic yoghurt drink (my choice) if you want to steal it.

Step 1: When you get to the field or wherever this is happening, position yourself above the giant demon eye monster using either a jet pack or a stepladder.

Step 2: Drop down on to the GDEM while it’s distracted by the cool papier-mâché castle you previously placed c.150ft in front of it, and don’t forget to do that beforehand or you’re pretty much boned at this point.

Step 3: Cover up as much of the GDEM’s eye (which is more or less all there is) as you can. If you thought ahead and remembered to bring a duvet cover or large eye patch with you, now would be a good time to deploy it.

Step 4: Stab the awful creature with your longsword as many times as you can (and honestly, those things are quite unwieldy so try to have realistic expectations) or alternatively try to ‘ride’ the disorientated GDEM over a cliff if you’re not super bothered about either of you coming out of this alive and I can totally empathise there so don’t feel bad or anything.

Step 5: (Do remember to bring your longsword with you, I meant to write that between Step 2 and Step 3 but I’m a busy guy and I haven’t got time to go back and start editing all this stuff right now.)

Step 6: (And if you somehow fail to source a stepladder or jet pack or duvet cover or large eye patch before the battle commences, ignore Step 1, Step 2 and Step 3 and just proceed directly to Step 4.)

Step 7: Collect your cool papier-mâché castle even if it was crushed in the gory struggle, because it’s still technically going to be viewed as littering especially when it eventually goes all soggy in the rain, and besides if you’ve made it particularly rad then it probably took you like most of an afternoon or something so why would you leave it hmm? Crazy is why!

Step 8: Leave instructions with a friend or lover for carrying out Step 7 in your absence if you’re thinking maybe Step 4 might involve the cliff-plunge doom scenario for you.

Step 9: Go home and celebrate with a beer or soft drink and stare out of the window for a while and just, like, bask in the hot prickly flush of VICTORY.

Step 10: Leave instructions with a lover or nemesis to carry out Step 9 on your behalf if you plummeted over the cliff to your heroic death in Step 4.

We awake bathed in silent blue static, the mute TV fizzing a mist of electromagnetic spit-spray over the crumpled bladders of Malibu Caribbean Cosmo strewn about her belly and floor. Clawing the mangled remnants of a flaccid cheroot from her suprasternal notch, she levers a slippered foot down from threadbare sofa to bubbling lino, and I wince at the crunchsqueal of empty blister packs on the rug behind my oven-mitt pillow.

Beneath the coffee table graveyard of noodle cartons and soiled wigs, the carmine blink of her JULY SUBSCRIBER GIFT WHILE STOCKS LAST radio alarm clock reckons 21:89, which I blearily guesstimate puts us at something close to 3:45 in the not-even-morning, and I’m all great so I have to be at the chicken auction in like two hours and I can barely even focus on my own retching at this point, perfect.

I swallow dryly through the sickly cobweb of fajita mix and nitrous. Her screen door sags loosely ajar, and buzzy heat oozes in from the breakers yard with the stifling gloop and tang of cooking asphalt.

She hacks up pretty fierce, mumbling something cotton-mouthed about how the Swedish name for TV static means “war of the ants” or whatever, then flicks on a lamp and stumps away across the kitchenette and hoists herself on to the rinsing sink and I scrunch my up eyes super tight and swear to god Nana this is the last goddamn Carcassonne night I ever come over for and guess what I’m probably like 65% serious this time.