(i) broaching the membranous skin of reality
The general consensus taken amongst J’s brain cells indicated that he should have not taken the Special K. And yet they yielded to the glassy inverted heart as it fell from the dropper and onto the tongue. The cells shifted in form and colour. They altered in vibrative rhythm. They back of the neck, which – due to the Special K – put the animal promptly to sleep. He also noticed the presence of some well placed tiki torches topped with smoking dung.
“Hail the gods of the sky, the sea and the earth!” said Ensign Hot Karl as some sort of greeting.
Ensign Karl stood respectively in tight leather and bulging pants, looking like a sculpture by Tom of Finland and spray painted with a fake tan.
“May they appease us,” said J unexpectedly and added, “robjob naber or something.”
“Fuck. I’m really out of my depth now,” he thought.
His number two, Assistant P.A. Crystal, entered through whooshing doors and was holding a clipboard. J recognised her immediately as Jemima Suckworthy, the immortal and defaced sex queen he had wristed-off to on many an occasion. Jemima looked like a hot fuck; wild and crazy. Air hostess with a cock in her mouth and gun to her head. Yow! She must have wanted to go mainstream with her acting career at some point and this was the pitiful result. Nevertheless, she looked fetching in her black leather jacket zipped to the neck and microskirt. He could see the tops of her suspenders.
J looked at the large screen of the bridge. It appeared to show their travel through space, the stars represented by tiny ping-pong balls flecked with black ink. They passed slowly by.
Momentarily, the Special K had transformed the upper part of J’s body into a Lego man. He held the curved fingerless yellow hand to his face and laughed uncontrollably. Tiny yellow Lego blocks fell out of his mouth as he did so. He could barely see out of the solid black dots on his face. The harsh studio globes sitting on rods above his head began to melt. They dripped like a glowing hot white glass onto his shoulders. Jemima smiled and her tongue was a tubular garbage bag tied into sections with red string. A little hole burnt open at the end of the bag and a thin red tail poked through, flicking about. He grabbed the tiny tail, which broke off at the stump in his fingers. He lit up the tail and started smoking it. Tiny purple dots on it glowed as he inhaled. Jemima tilted her head and smiled. He eyes turned almond-shaped and reptilian. J’s head expanded to the size of the bridge, actors pushed against the wall in avoidance of potentially deadly nasal and ear hairs. His body detached from his head, the clean break at the neck like plasticine being pulled apart. From the soft neck stump grew a new head. It was a curved, moist train engine with Jemima’s reptilian eyes instead of lights. The little wheels fell of the train, rolled along the floor and started a commune.
“Interesting,” said the new head in a series of toots.
The old head was suspended in place by the walls of the set. In their cramped surroundings, the crew seemed nonplussed and went about their work. From out of the old head’s ears emerged sinewy mechanical arms. One was mounted with a saw and the other with a pair of pincers. The saw made a vertical cut above the nose of the old head. Blood spattered the walls of the set and the old face. A yellow sac of pulsating fluid fell out of the cut and lolled around on the floor. The new head’s tongue, which was made of brown seat leather, poked out of its grating and licked J’s hands. His body climbed up the face and into the weeping cut. The saw and pincers made a little clapping motion. The body pushed apart the jagged skull doors and slid into the claustrophobic purple and pink wormy brain matter. The train engine head rubbed up against the intestinal slime of the brain, some of it made of yellow plastic. It took some time to make its way to the centre. It encountered a large brown bullet on the way. It was lodged and un-detonated. The body entered a small circular room in the centre of J’s brain. It was entirely black. The rectangular tabs of Mono that lined it were marked with tiny decimals. One was marked ‘00000.1.’ A mixing desk that was completely black took up most of the space of the room. Empty and well-worn black leather chairs sat in front of it. The desk was topped with a musty glass pane. Behind it was a minuscule recording studio, housing mic stands and leads made out of black nerve endings. The nerve endings pointed, as if forever, to a three tiered rotisserie holding a number of black pies. The body sat in one of the seats and played with the black sliding buttons of the mixing desk. As he slid one of the buttons up, the volume of the voice inside J’s head rose. This track was the command to kill Germy. The body listened to every track with intrigued tooting. He slid every button up, one at a time, and created a massive cacophony. The layers of tracks spoke to the body:
Track Three: “Take lots of drugs.”
Track Four: “Re-form your crappy band.”
Track Eight: “Act like a wanker sometimes.”
Track Twelve: “Break out of prison.”
Track Fifteen: “Violate a corpse.”
Track Eighteen: “Find Ree-Land.”
Track Nineteen: “Say ‘fuck’ and variations thereof… a lot.”
Track Twenty-One: “Drink more booze.”
Track Twenty-Two: “You love Mary Sinthasomphone.”
Track Twenty-Five: “Make self referential jokes.”
Track Twenty-Seven: “Dance in a circle dressed as a Smurf.”
Track Twenty-Eight: “Read more Hernandez-Prize.”
Track Twenty-Nine: “You think you’re in a sci-fi TV show.”
Track Thirty: “Ben Lee is a musical genius.”
Each track ran in an eternal loop, running in multiple reel-to-reel tape decks concealed in the walls.
The body tried to slide the only red button that controlled Track Sixteen. It exerted all of its energy into moving the button but it wouldn’t budge. The body stepped back and looked at the panel that lead from the desk to the floor. Aligned with the red button was a ribbed socket. The body could barely see the complicated series of intertwining chrome parts at the back of the socket. J’s body decided that the best thing to do was to unzip and insert its penis into the socket. He thrust slowly at first, moving the red button a smidgen. It could barely hear what was being said. The black pies rotated a little faster. He started thrusting madly away at the socket, moving the button a little further up its rut. The volume rose. The pies moved in a blur. The body leaned back with its lights closed.
Track Sixteen: “You will be involved with the Bowel Tactics Commission, the Bolivian Goat Army and the three demons. They will all feed you a bunch of horseshit. You will be distracted by their tales of subterfuge and power. They all want Mono100. They all seek the absolute power that you seek. You will go along with this. The Compliance Program installed in you was the result of an experiment undertaken with wild horses in order to avoid the breaking-in process. This resulted in mutated genetics that made the horses become more intelligent and many of them gained the power of speech. Your father has passed a version of this program onto you. Who created these mutant horses is still unknown to you. You may transgress this programming if the circumstances are right. This strand of your DNA is to remain silent. It is created to remain a subliminal command, like those found on bad heavy metal records. Security systems have been implemented to activate if you breach the silence of this program.”
J’s body was spent juicily. He withdrew from the socket, but the window of the studio had shattered, a pie had broken through the glass. It flew into the new head’s jaw. On it was written in white icing: “You are going to forget all that you have learnt if you eat this pie.”
The new head could not resist. It chewed away on the black fruit mince with its black sultanas and black sugar and black apple. All memory of the red button melted away with each bite of the treat.
J’s body closed its eyes as black weevils dropped from the ceiling on gossamer threads. Everything that had just been described happened again in reverse order up until the mentioning of ping-pong balls.
They passed slowly by.
(ii) destruction and the insemination of death
The crew stared at J, who was for a moment frozen in his own thoughts. His body had become what it was when he entered the scene. A small Zimbabwean man, whom J recognised as Ensign Tamagotchi, spun around in his spinning chair.
“Captain!” Tamagotchi exclaimed, “there’s a Grongorgan ship about thirteen pentilics from the Claymore. What course of action shall we take?”
J watched what looked like an egg carton painted blue with orange pipe cleaners hanging shakily on the monitor. J plopped down on the Captain’s chair, brought the knuckle of his forefinger to his chin and pretended to think deeply.
“Captain?” asked Jemima.
J stood up and raised his arms in the air. The seams burst at his biceps and veins raised in his neck.
“DESTROY THEM!” he commanded dramatically.
“But sir,” said Tamagotchi, “section eighty-two of the Pagan Star Fleet Convention clearly states that the rules of engagement are dictated by the oncoming fire of the enemy and…”
“DESTROY ENSIGN TAMAGOTCHI!” yelled J.
“Ooh!” yelled Tamagotchi as he spun back to his control panel, “I think those bastards just tried to broadside us!”
“DESTROY THEM!” repeated J.
“Too late, Captain!” exerted Navigator Bitchfuckinghead, “collision will occur in six seconds!”
The two ships bumped together, swung back a little, and bumped again before dropping out of shot.
There was pandemonium in the bridge as everything shook. The ship was plummeting. The crew clung to anything available. The pigs were slightly upset. J fell on his arse and laughed inappropriately. The two ships crash landed – only metres apart – on a small pink planet.
J rose to his feet and scanned the bridge. Lots of dust. A couple of small electrical fires. Crew strewn in all directions. The tiki torches were, fortunately, still operational.
“Is everyone alright?” asked J.
The crew, though a little battered, answered affirmatively.
“Bugger,” he said softly to himself.
Jemima had ripped the upper part of her stocking, revealing a section of her labia majora. J was momentarily distracted. Her almond eyes were fine as she stood up and adjusted her microskirt.
J’s top was ripped strategically to reveal his left nipple. He was in a rage that seemed forced and hammy.
“Let’s go and kill those Gorgan motherfuckers!” he exclaimed with unlimited passion.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Gorgorans!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Gregorians!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Grappledons!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Googlebuns!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Grabarsegoodons!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Gromulans!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill the Bluketards!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill Hi-5!” yelled J.
“Grongorgans, sir,” corrected Tamagotchi.
“Kill Ensign Tamagotchi!” yelled J.
“KILL THE GRONGORGANS??” yelled Tamagotchi, “AYE AYE, SIR!!”
“Let us prepare for battle!” directed J.
The battle preparation involved the two hundred plus crew donning animal skins with part of the head intact and red noses in honour of Galactic Red Nose Day and gathering in the dome-shaped silver battle preparation room. They danced in an anti-clockwise throng around an artificial fire as tribal drums piped through the surround speakers. A well preserved dead horse that dangled from the ceiling had its legs pulled in different directions by ropes. Its belly gave forth a shower of animal fat and confectionary. In a frenzy, the crew danced and smeared themselves with the fat. J noticed that he was the only one who dry-reached a little as he did this. The crew reached a higher level of bloodthirsty apoplexy. Jemima approached J amongst the baying crew.
“Captain?” she asked coyly.
“Yes, Assistant P.A. Suckw… I mean Crystal?”
“If we don’t get through this…”
“Yes?”
“I just want you to know…”
“Yes?”
“I just want you to know…”
“Yes?”
“It’s just that… I want you to know…”
“Yes? Go on.”
“I want you to know that I can lactate at will.”
“Hubba hubba!” said J as he poked his tongue out and flapped his arms like a chicken. He stopped this when he noticed he had a pube in his mouth. He didn’t know whose it was and he tried to spit it out.
“ONWARD TO BATTLE!” he declared.
The doors of the dome opened and the crew poured onto the fibreglass-like surface of the planet. The Grongorgan ship sat; canted and smoking disproportionate smoke. The crew watched the ship with anticipation and a titanium will. Eventually the front doors of the ship opened, making one of the pipe cleaners fall off. An army of cute, furry, and short anime characters emerged with their pointy ears and big, emotive eyes. They were individually coloured pink, yellow, and powder blue. They giggled and waved. Some closed their eyes and giggled with their paws over their mouths.
“Googabootchi!” greeted a number of them.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said J, a little deflated.
“Just say the word, Captain,” said Tamagotchi.
“Well at least they’re not Zygons,” said J, “they creep the fuck out of me.”
“Same here,” said Ensign Hot Karl.
“Me want huggie!” said one of the Grongorgans as it hopped up and down.
“This is fucked,” said J, “these things are, like, cutie… jumpy… fluffy… Jappy… stupid… things.”
Suddenly all of the Grongorgans’ eyes turned red and the barrels of machine guns sprung out of their palms.
“All your base are belong to us!” said the Grongorgans in unison as they mowed down twenty of the crew with machine gun fire.
“Ooh shit!” yelped J.
“Just say the word,” encouraged Tamagotchi.
“FORWARD!” commanded J.
As the ranks of the crew thrust about him, J added: “Oh and uh… take your phasers off ‘stun,’ okay? Yep? Got that? Okay?”
And thus begun the bloody clash between the humans and the Grongorgans on the planet Batharrrrr. The battle raged under a technicolour sunset dotted with cotton wool clouds. ‘Another Body Murdered’ rang enthusiastically in J’s head as he shot one Grongorgan after another. Luckily the crew sported bulletproof armour and iron red noses to deflect much of the fire. The only exception to the dress code was that mooning ponce, (the “real”) Zonar. His head blew apart into a thousand pieces as he was adjusting his cape. After five minutes and many casualties, the ammunition of both sides had run out. A hundred men were left on each side to battle each other with pieces of bone from some massive animal they had found strewn about the set. When no one was looking, J stabbed Ensign Tamagotchi in the back of the head and kicked his dying body. He then slashed away at the faces of the enemy; nose cartilage and skull flying in all directions. One Grongorgan was jumping happily on the corpse of one of J’s men. This enraged J even more, causing more seams in his outfit to burst. He fiercely head-butted one of the cute things and wrenched its arm off. The sound of screaming and twisted sinew echoed into the evening. He stomped on the face of one of them until the brain matter was lubricating the chunky sole of his boot. He slashed away at necks and created fountains of gore, elements of which he licked off his face. He reached into their chests and pulled out their hearts, holding them aloft as an offering to the gods. He broke their legs and let them crawl away for a little bit before beating their heads with an ancient femur. J saw Jemima bite one of their noses off and spit it out with great pleasure. The battle had rapidly become a massacre. J noticed this as there were few Grongorgans left alive. He was wrenching the little teeth out of one of their mouths as it pleaded in broken mercy. As things settled down, they rounded up the surviving Grongorgans and tied them – blindfolded – to giant tibias embedded in the ground. They were shot at point blank, their brains spilling onto the ground and fluff bursting into the air. A mass grave was dug and hundreds of cute corpses were dropped into it with the aid of the Claymore’s mini-dozers. As they packed the dirt over the grave, J urinated on it with a fist raised high.
“Let us never speak of this again!” he declared as he zipped up.
“Definitely,” said one crew member, pumping the last of his semen into the anus of a dead Grongorgan with pins in its eyes.
The corpse had retained a creepy smile.
Jemima, inflicted with only a few superficial wounds, ran up to J.
“Thank the gods that your labia majora is alright,” said J.
“Thanks to your guidance and… inner beauty,” she said with a glow in her face you could toast marshmallows with.
“I’m only a man,” said J as he narrowed his eyes and dramatically turned his head to the sunset in the east.
The frame pulls back to reveal the surviving crew leaping up and down in celebration. They whoop and wave bloodied bones in the air. Close-up of a bloody blue paw emerging from the mass grave.
“Huggie…” is said softly, muffled by the soil.
A vinyl boot crushes the hand.
(iii) an exquisite celebration in the name of the gods
The celebratory orgy had begun in the battle preparation room. Crew lay on their stomachs and ate the remains of their fallen comrades. Ensign Tamagotchi was served with a combination of tarragon and basil. After the feast, the Roman showers commenced. Naked men standing in clusters of three vomited on another naked man on his haunches. Naked women standing in clusters of three vomited on the stripped bones of Ensign Tamagotchi. Vomit pours on erect penises and clamped-open anuses. Vomit is transferred via transparent plastic tubes from women into the noses of masturbating men. Vomit slides between the joints of an Escheresque tableaux of intertwined limbs and torsos. Crouching on the table like a centrepiece, Ensign Hot Karl ejaculated onto a brain soufflé that the children hungrily devoured. He then took a steaming dump into the punch. One person devoured this. A couple made love in the descended cavity of the dead horse. J watched the festivities on a monitor in the bridge. The image glitched for a second and new images ghosted over it, transforming into the scene of a rock’n’roll show that included a man with an enormous head and many sheep. Jemima held his hand and sat with him. One of the pigs shat on the floor. Jemima suggested that they retire to the Captain’s quarters.
J was impressed by his quarters. They were spacious and housed a rotating queen-size bed with a leopard skin doona. J took a drink of Grongorgan blood mixed with vodka and watched Jemima slip off her top. Her full breasts spilled out, her large nipples erect and surrounded by sensual goose bumps. She turned away from J and bent over, accentuating her ripe buttocks through her tights. She fell backwards onto the bed and took off the rest of her clothes. She hooked her ankles behind her neck and spread a warm vagina that dripped with juices. J undid his pants and let out a steaming, veiny erection. He held his buttock with his left hand and masturbated with his right. Jemima licked her fingers and stroked her clitoris. It was red with passion. She stuck a forefinger, lubricated with her juices, into her anus. She was able to suck her own nipple, erotically bringing it to the form a pink tower. She screeched and jerked her head as she brought herself to orgasm. She unlocked a foot and brought it J’s mouth. He hungrily licked at the toes of this beautiful woman. She stroked his cock with the other foot. J slid on top of her and their tongues met, intertwining. He licked her neck and teased her earlobe with his teeth. Her groin pushed up to his thigh in pleasure. He stroked her clit with a gentle ferocity. Her juices dripped on his fingers. She cradled his scrotum in her hand and tugged at the skin playfully. This caused a pearl of pre-cum to form at the head of J’s penis. He buried his face in her breasts and ran his fingers over her massive nipples. She groaned in pleasure and started masturbating again. He licked her armpits as he gently moved her legs over his shoulders. He entered her wet vagina and started thrusting. The veins in his penis stimulated the walls of her vagina, bringing her to a new level of ecstasy. He rubbed her clit in a circular motion and she ground her pelvis in the opposite direction. On his knees, he pumped away like a shotgun. She brought her feet to either side of her head and J stood up and fucked her like a rabid lion. She came and rolled over to suck his penis. She dragged her tongue along the veins, inciting more pre-cum. She cradled his cock in his low-hanging balls and consumed both meat and veg like a hotdog. While swirling her tongue around the head of his penis, she grasped one of his nipples. He sighed in deep pleasure. She moved her tongue down his scrotum and into his anus. He could barely hold back. She rimmed him like an empty ice cream cone. He started masturbating as she did this. They flipped into a sixty-nine position and started rimming each other. He reached for his phaser and set it for ‘fun.’ He gently entered her anus with the phaser and let it vibrate, the rings on the barrel glowing with a soft blue. She came almost immediately. He was trussed and hanging from the ceiling. She was fucking herself with a champagne bottle and putting out cigarettes on his chest. He started expelling urine and she took it in her mouth. She cut small swathes in his cock with a Stanley knife and licked the blood. He punched her in the face with brass knuckles. She started having her period and he sucked her blood out like a leech. They were writhing in blood. She urinated in his mouth and he farted. He put his fist into her anus and pummelled away until he felt the warm flow of blood. She put a pair of scissors into his anus and saw blood pour down the handles. She hit him in the teeth with a billy club. He fucked her mouth and made her vomit. He ate the vomit and then vomited into her mouth. He rummaged through the rubbish and found a used tampon to re-insert into her vagina. She cut part of his earlobe with the scissors. He came on his own face with a massive geyser and drank the wretched semen. She re-hooked her feet behind her neck and took a massive dump in his mouth. He ate the shit and punched her. He vomited the shit back into her mouth. She came. She sliced off part of his glans penis with the Stanley knife and put it into his mouth. He took a bone from the body of Ensign Tamagotchi and forced it into her ear. She came. She stretched his mouth as far as she could and spat on his tongue. They started to shit in each other’s mouths again and she put her shit in his anus. He came. He started to cut away at her chest with a knife. Blood flowed in all directions, saturating the splendour of the Captain’s quarters. She expelled more blood from her vagina in the ultimate expression of pleasure. He urinated blood into her vagina. An apocalypse of yellow stars ran through his face. Blue tentacles fell from the ceiling and the rush of a pleasant summer’s day lit up the synapses of the two lovers. Their organs joined in the form of an eclectic chimera. They imagined a long snout jerking out of the dirt and baying; nostrils vibrating. He felt the newly born evolve in her womb, an alternate reality clone. Blood vessels ignited with the fire of life. Nerve endings in teeth became sentient. A scab flipped open and a bright blue maggot crawled from under it. A building fell and a million green plastic toy soldiers exited and danced with the debris. Deep within the viscera of her chest he burnt his finger on the filament. It glowed with a sharp orange. He had to follow it. Her face was frozen and her mouth was a giant ‘O’ of ecstasy. Her almond eyes frizzled and popped. He loved her. He bid her farewell. He grasped, hand over hand, the filament through her throat and out of her mouth into a fresh sky with benign clouds and dozens of green hummingbirds. Just beyond the now withering parchment of this sky lay reality and the realisation that he, a being of the future and past, would find himself on the street and in need of accommodation.
