Chapter 21 The Big Bad Love Machine.

153.

Lady Rothschild was in the attic searching the cardboard boxes for a handsaw.

A dim lightbulb swung overhead, and the air was filled with dust.

She tipped a box on its side, and a stack of comic books came spilling out.

She picked up a book, labelled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was a brick too, three hundred pages. Who the fuck has time for that? She wondered.

She threw it away, then moved on to the next box when the lights went out, plunging the room into grim darkness.

‘Shit.’ She said, getting up slowly to her feet.

She walked over slowly to where she thought the light cord was and gave it a tug.

Nothing.

She pulled it again.

Nothing.

‘For fuck sake.’

Then was the sound.

The skittering noise of tiny pixy feet. Something thumped into a cardboard box.

Lady Rothschild felt her asshole open and closed it just in time to avoid shitting herself.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

Silence.

Then came the skittering, heading straight towards her.

She screamed and ran immediately tripping over. She saw honey shade light spilling out from beneath the curtain of a window. She felt hot flesh brush against the side of her ankle, and slither over her shoe. She squealed. ‘Gross, gross, gross.’ She ran for the light, the skittering chased her, and chased her and gained on her, then she flung the curtain wide open revealing…

A flash of worm-tail, a streak of fur, tiny teeth.

‘Oh my god it’s just a rat.’ She laughed.

Then the rat bit her toe and reflexively she kicked it across the room hearing its spine snap.

She gasped and covered her mouth.

She didn’t mean to do that.

She closed her eyes, then started taking deep breaths and started trying to calm herself down.

‘I am a proud, white woman. I am a proud, white woman.’

She blew the air out her lungs between pursed lips and opened her eyes.

The room was filled with dust. It was actually kind of beautiful, the way the particles seemed to come to life and dance in the sunlight. Looking at the dust dance made her calm.

At night she would see the dust again in her dreams.

So hypnotic.

So sexual.

It made her so happy.

She breathed slowly.

She found the handsaw, picked it up, then started to walk her way to the trapdoor when she spotted the rat.

It was still alive, twitching and squeaking.

Lady Rothschild averted her gaze. Too scared to look at it. 

‘It’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘It’s not my fault.’

She undid the trap door, and the ladder came down. Then she looked up at the rat again struggling to breathe. She shivered and dropped out of the attic as quickly as she possibly could, leaving the dust to fidget and twitch in the sunlight while the rat lay dying.

154.

The truck driver was currently speeding through the country side, between fields of sheep, listening to that sweet, sweet AI generated music.

I say he was a driver, he had his feet up on the dash board and the truck drove itself, he was shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards.

A van overtook him.

‘On the road again.’ the driver sang. ‘My truck drives itself, I’m on the road again, Hiyeeeeee! I’m on the fucking road again.’

He was thinking a bit about the trolley problem, whether it was okay to kill a person if it saved five lives, when the truck, came to a shuddering halt, the driver jolted forward and the cards exploded out his hands.

He looked up and saw the van had stopped sideways in the middle of the road, taking up both lanes.

‘The fuck.’ He said. The driver sighed. Then leaned forward to honk his horn.

The van’s side door glided open and a swarm of terrorists came out.

‘Oh no.’ said the truck driver.

They all had guns.

All of them came swooping round the back, while one remained to talk to the driver.  

‘Look man, I’m so sorry,’ said the gunman, currently bearing an assault rifle and dressed in bullet-proofs a diaper and balaclava.

‘It’s- it’s okay.’ Said the truck driver. ‘It happens, y’know? it’s okay.’

‘But it’s not.’ Said the gun man.

The squad of diaper men opened the back of the truck, revealing stacks of crated tin cans, wrapped in cellophane.

They began to slowly disembowel the truck.

‘You see,’ said Balaclava. ‘I was given direct orders to, uh, watchacallit, shoot the driver, because: no witnesses or whatever, but I don’t feel comfortable with that, cuz… we’re just taking your spaghetti hoops, seems just like a pitiful thing to kill a man over.’

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, god bless you.’ Jabbered the truck driver.

‘Don’t mention it.’ There was an awkward silence. Balaclava looked side to side, snorted, leaned back on his heels then dropped back down. ‘Sorry to sound like a cliché but… it’s… really lovely weather we’re having.’

‘THE BEST!’

‘Especially, in this country.’ Balaclava giggled.

‘HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAH! That’s a good one! Ha Ha.’

There was a silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the truck driver. ‘It’s just… I’ve never done this before.’

‘Hey man, I totally get it, like, if I was attacked by a group of gun wielding terrorists, I’d be shitting myself right now. But it’s gunna be okay, okay? None of us want to kill you.’

The truck driver just nodded his head up and down non-stop.

‘HEY NOT THE BEANS YOU FUCKWIT, THE SPAGHETTI HOOPS!’ came a voice from the back of the truck.

‘Hey what the hell’s happening back there?’ asked Balaclava, using a cupped hand as a mega phone.

‘SOME ASSHOLE, JUST TRIED TO TAKE A CRATE FULL OF BEANS!’

‘What?’ Balaclava laughed. ‘Why?’

‘I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!’

A feeble voice too quiet to hear spoke up.

‘WHAT WAS THAT?’

‘I said I’m sorry.’

‘YOU BETTER BE! NOW PICK UP THE SPAGHETTI HOOPS LIKE YOU’RE NOT A RETARD!’

‘Hey! Less of that language!’ said Balaclava.

‘FUCK OFF!’ 

Balaclava was shaking his head, rubbing a hand down the side of his face. ‘Fucking cannibals the lot of them.’  He turned back to the truck driver. ‘Do you have kids?’

‘Uh, two boys.’ He said.

‘They have names?’

‘Ben and Jerry?’

‘LIKE THE ICE CREAM! Oh my god, that’s so clever.’

The truck driver chuckled. ‘Yeah, like the ice cream.’

‘Oh that’s so cool.’ Balaclava said.

‘Hey, um, top brass is gunna ask where the shipment went.’ Said the truck driver. ‘what do you want me to tell them?’

‘Hmm.’ Said Balaclava. ‘Oh, right, um… fuck, that’s a good point, uh... would they believe a computer error? Yeah, just act confused and tell ‘em the shipments here in full, let their imaginations do the rest.’

‘Oh,’ said the truck driver. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll do that.’

‘Okay,’ one of the diaper men came up from the back of the truck with no mask on, it was Mad Dog. ‘Vans loaded, we can roll out.’ He spotted the truck driver. ‘Why’s he still here?’

‘Oh,’ said Balaclava. ‘Well we’ve come to a-‘

Bang! The driver’s brains hit the window.

‘OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!’ Shouted Balaclava.

‘He knew too much.’

‘He had kids man, I mean God, two fucking kids, Jesus.’

‘I’m going to drive the car off a cliff, make it look like a bloody accident.’

Balaclava was far away: ‘What a fucking waste.’   Pause. ‘Ah shit, what a fucking waste.’

155.

Suzi was riding through the supermarket, her IV bag shivering in the motion, her oxygenator humming, the mud that clung to the rim of her wheel chair, left a trail of dash marks on the super market floor.

A young pizza-faced acolyte was driving the trolley behind her, with one wobbly wheel.

They came to the canned food aisle.

‘You know what to do, acolyte.’

The acolyte sighed, began picking up crates of canned spaghetti hoops and depositing them, into the trolley.

‘You sure like spaghetti hoops.’

‘less chit chat, acolyte.’

‘But you do love spaghetti hoops.’

Suzi was silent, then said: ‘Not really.’

‘What the fuck do you mean?’ said pizza face.

‘I mean I don’t like spaghetti hoops.’

‘But- but you killed people for them! You ended a human life for them!’

‘Of course what else was I going to do.’

‘I-‘ the acolyte was speechless. ‘I’m so confused. You don’t like spaghetti hoops?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So, why are we going from super market to super market buying all the spaghetti hoops?’

‘Because Heinz, won’t sell me their spaghetti hoops making factory, you know I offered them three billion, but no, they refused and now I’m buying spaghetti hoops at the shops like a poor person.’

The acolyte’s face crumpled, and he made fish lip motions.

‘You stopped packing spaghetti hoops.’ Said Suzi.

‘Oh, yeah.’ He said in a dazed sort of voice. ‘I guess you’re right.’ He crouched down low to pick up the next crate of spaghetti hoops. He turned around ‘BUT WHY?’ he screamed.

‘Look, okay spaghetti hoops are fine, I guess if you’re dealing with the macro scale, things you can see with you’re eyes. But what about the nano scale, hmm?’

‘What about the nano scale?’ said the acolyte.

‘At the nano scale, the spaghetti hoops are as mountainous at the Himalayas. That’s insane and cannot continue. I mean you see where I’m coming from right?’

‘Absolutely fucking not.’

Suzi gasped.

‘What I want, Is an atom thick wire bound in a loop. Now do you understand?’

‘No. No, I don’t, why do you want this.’

‘I just want holes!’ screamed Suzi. ‘Oh my god, it’s like talking to a simpleton!’

The acolyte said nothing.

‘The stupid apes were actually eating them,’ she stared at the spaghetti hoops in the trolley. ‘can you believe that? But it’s okay, I can protect them. I can keep the holes safe, so that nobody will ever harm them ever again.

‘Now, just pack the fucking trolley, and stop moaning, would ya?’ said Suzi.

The acolyte picked up the next crate of spaghetti hoops and dropped it in the trolley.

***

Chapter 22