Hole Punch by Simmons, Garth (the dot read aloud TXT) 📕

dad was unemployed and overweight. The working class children at school said Steven's dad stood outside the bakery every day and drooled at the pies through the window.

Steven's dad was fat you see?

Fat and unemployed.

The working class children didn't like poor or overweight people.

Steven said that his dad used to be a world class runner.

Steven carried his school books and deodorant in a plastic carrier bag. I was Steven's friend because I had been nice to him one time and the headteacher had told me to spend time with Steven because no one else would.

Steven was beaten up every day, I would just stand there and watch it happen. There was no point getting involved.

Steven's house was fire bombed. I didn't see him at school after that. A few days later everyone at school laughed about me being his friend. I told them that I never really liked him either.

Survival method.

Fifteen years later, I looked up Steven on social media. He was married, happy and worked as a coach driver. I didn't add him as a friend on anything.

VRRRRR

The lizard people scampered and played benignly in their automated city, completely at peace with their feline co-inhabitants, the cat people, who lounged relaxed and curled. After thirty thousand years of war, the planet Vrrrrr was finally at peace.

“Today,” said the prime minister of the cat people. “I would like to declare that marriage is legal between cat and lizard.”

“Today,” said the prime minister of the lizard people. “I would like to declare that marriage is legal between lizard and cat.”

“We are equal,” they said together.

They shook paw and claw.

The crowd's cheering was cut short with the arrival of a sky sized, levitating War Brick burning into their existences from beyond the stratosphere.

“YOUR PLANET HAS THE HONOUR OF BEING VISITED BY THE EARTH EMPIRE!” shouted the War Brick from its massive speakers. “PREPARE TO BE EXPLOITED.”

The War Brick shot a plasma bolt at the two ministers on their podiums, reducing them into puddles of bubbling charcoal gloop. The cats and lizards all ran about in panic. The automated city tried to activate its protective domes but it was too late, the Earth Empire War Brick had already fired plasma bolts into their activation centres.

* * *

In the void white control suite of the Earth Empire War Brick, the Earth Empire's perfect, plastic diplomat, Mixelle, stared at her reflection in the mirror with gleaming marble eyes.

Her genetically stunted wart dwarf slave, Dike5, polished Mixelle's pointy, plastic, diplomatic suit.

“I look pretty,” said Mixelle. “Do I not always look pretty?”

“Yes Mistress,” croaked Dike5. “You always look so pretty, smooth and clean.”

“I wasn't asking you,” said Mixelle.

The handsome, cigar chomping pilot turned his head and smiled.

“I'm sure that those ugly, alien freaks will think you're pretty.”

“I wasn't asking you either,” said Mixelle.

Mixelle stared at her reflection.

“You look majestic,” said the mirror. “MAJESTIC!”

* * *

Mixelle stepped down the ramp of the assault shuttle onto the surface of Vrrrrr. Mixelle was flanked by a battalion of black-clad soldiers with big guns.

“We congratulate your planet for discovering peace,” said Mixelle to the cowering cats and lizards. “Like all peaceful civilisations you have earned the sneer of the Human Empire. We have come to your world to open a trade deal. We take everything, you receive nothing.”

SEE

The Mistake ambles uncertain across the world of nothing.

“No voice to keep me company anymore,” said the Mistake. “Just my own voice. I am inadequate. I am weak. I am empty. I am a mistake. A mistake isn't good for anything.”

Up ahead is a different sort of thing. It is a big, blue, moving something that stretches off into the nowhere.

The Mistake decides to call this new, blue something: the See. This was because the See is a something that can be seen.

“The big, moving, strange See that I can see,” said the Mistake. “I wonder if it will have me. Hello See. You big, blue, something See. Will you have a Mistake like me?”

The cold tide covers the Mistake's feet. The Mistake tenses. A new sensation.

The Mistake sits down and feels the cold and wet See.

“Do I belong here? With these cold and wet feelings? In this cold and wet See?”

The next wave covers the Mistake’s face and fills the Mistake's lungs with water.

BUMFACE

Bumface McGinty leant back in his leather upholstery and puffed his cigar with wet anus lips. He blew smoke at the Vadlarian Delegate who sat on the other side of Bumface’s oak desk.

"Mr McGinty," began the nervous Delegate, nervously.

"Call me Bumface," said Bumface.

Bumface pulled the cigar from his anus face lips and offered it to the Delegate. The cigar was sodden in poo, mucus and lube.

"Fancy a drag?" asked Bumface. "Finest tobacco in this entire quadrant."

"Sorry Mr McGinty but-"

"Call me Bumface."

"Sorry Bumface. The people of Vadlaria can't get your organisation the money until our sixth lunar cycle."

Bumface banged his velvet clad fist on his oak desk.

"What?! Pay me my money or I'll level your entire system into a sex nebula of cosmic toilet dust!"

"Please Mr McGinty, don't-”

"Call me Bumface."

"Please Bumface, don't destroy Vadlaria! We have other resources to give you instead of money."

Bumface's round-cheeked, dimple-eyed head angled to the side with polite interest.

"What could the Vadlarians possibly offer me? There's nothing on your gruel splat of a planet that I need."

"We've given you all the money we can! People on my world are dying from economic collapse."

"Peasant problems! Bring me my money in five nano-cycles or your atoms will be shitting protons across fifteen thousand light years!"

The phone rang on Bumface McGinty's desk. Bumface grabbed it and placed it against his face hole.

"Bumface speaking, what do you want?"

"Bumface! Me and Cockhead are gonna take you down!"

"I've heard this before Clitlip! You and Cockhead are a waste of my space-time continuum."

Bumface listened to the predictable sound of Cockhead wrestling the phone from Clitlip. Cockhead won the battle and was next to