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

“I don't believe you! You are nothing but a wanker!”

The Hand Vagina took dominance over his body, leading him round the streets. She needed satisfaction but she also needed an equal.

Ian's hand was made pregnant by a Japanese business man called Akira Otoro. Ian was so sick that he didn’t notice being flown to Japan. Ian didn't notice that the Hand Vagina had grown a womb. Ian was too busy vomiting radioactive waste.

Akira Otoro paid Ian’s parents a considerable sum to marry the Hand Vagina. Akira Otoro was a good and honourable man, with an ethical business in pharmaceuticals.

Ian's hospital bed was pushed up the church aisle by his parents and the Hand Vagina wore a wedding dress..

Ian and the Hand Vagina died during childbirth. This child was little more than a squashed up ball of tumour. It had no discernible organs, limbs or life to speak of, at least, not any life that we could understand.

Typical.

COLUMBO

"I have a photograph of your car driving through the bus lane," he told the old woman on the telephone.

"It can't have been me, not on the time and date you suggest. Can you zoom in on the driver and see who is inside my car?"

"When I zoom in the image becomes dark and pixilated. It’s not like one of those television shows like Crime Scene Investigation or Columbo."

"Put me through to Lieutenant Columbo then!"

FLUFFY

I first saw Fluffy at the Local Community Easter Market.

“Look at her!” I said to my Nana.

She was the nicest soft toy cat ever, sat on a sales stall, smiling and happy with her curly, grey fur.

“She is really nice and fluffy.”

Father Willis came in and put a box of sweetcorn on a table for the Harvest Festival display.

I smiled and looked at Fluffy. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

“What a lovely stuffed cat!” I said to my Nana.

I walked away to look at all the other Easter Market items, but I kept looking over my shoulder at Fluffy.

“Would you like me to buy you that stuffed cat?” asked my Nana.

“She looks very expensive!” I said.

“You’ve done very well at school recently and you've managed to catch up with all the other children,” said Nana.

I didn’t know why that would have any bearing on why I suddenly deserved such a lovely stuffed cat?

My Nana went and bought Fluffy for me.

Father Willis straightened a tin of sweetcorn on the Harvest Festival display.

* * *

I sat with Fluffy on the living room floor. I looked into her big, blue eyes and stroked her grey, tussled fur. Such an adorable smile she had between her whiskers.

“You are so wonderful Fluffy!”

My dad was trying to watch something on television about the boring old miners' strike.

“For crying out loud!” he said.

* * *

Fluffy was a good friend to me and would always let me cuddle her. We built a sky machine under the duvet. The sky machine stopped the angry, blue, dead people in cardboard boxes from visiting me in my sleep.

THE TROUBLING CASE OF THE MARTIAN NIGHT PROWLER

Pearl the cat skittered agile across the inner support beams of Habitation Dome B57. She paused to lick her left paw, her white fur turned red in the light of the Martian sky. A protective camouflage unless you are hunted by someone with heat vision goggles.

Pearl the cat fell from the rafters of the glass domed roof and hit the ground bent, blackened and smoking after being electrocuted by the Night Prowler’s shock gun.

"Shock! Shock! Shock!" said the Night Prowler, who laughed as he swished into an alleyway with a swoosh of his black cloak.

"Shock! Shock! Shock!" he laughed and fired a bolt at a random street lamp.

He heard the sound of police sirens.

“They will never catch the Night Prowler! The Night Prowler is much too clever and crafty. Shock! Shock! Shock!”

He pulled an old mannequin from a department store bin and threw his dark robes on it. He drizzled his naked body with a tube of oil imported from the Slog Pools of Zeta Minor. He squeezed himself, slim and lubricated, up a tight, smelly drain pipe and out from a toilet in one of the residences.

He skulked through the bathroom. Outside he could hear the police. A few seconds later he heard them shooting the mannequin.

"Shock! Shock! Shock! They can't catch me! No one can catch the Martian Night Prowler."

He crept naked and dripping into the living room. A large cat and her kittens slept on a gingham rug. The Night Prowler pulled the trigger of his shock gun.

“Shock! Shock! Shock!”

The shocks rebounded on the Night Prowler due to him being wet. Water and electricity don't mix.

Frazzled and disorientated, the Night Prowler stumbled into a bedroom and woke up a sleeping old lady.

The old lady screamed.

"Quiet Grandma," threatened the Night Prowler, putting his peeling hand over her mouth. "You are the only one who understands me so don't cry! Mummy didn't cuddle me as much as she did her kitties! How many I've killed because of her abuse! No one has family problems like mine! I blame my upbringing! I blame society! I’ve never met a girl that loved me! Women are like cats! Except for you, Grandma!"

The Night Prowler fell to his knees and vomited blood marred stomach lining.

“I'm sorry Grandma!” said the Night Prowler.

He looked at the old lady and his eyes began to clear.

"You are NOT Grandma."

She wasn't his Grandma.

He lifted his shock gun to her face.

"Shock! Shock! Shock!"

He fired the shock gun. It rebounded on him again. He lay on the floor. A sick, burnt and shit-battered fillet of spasmodically gyrating electro-meat.

* * *

Twelve hours later, at the Saint Bowie Hospital, he woke up in the way that you would if you had no eyelids.

The blurry moustache of Sheriff Den Apparti leant over him.

"We've got you now Night