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

Do not turn inward and do not surrender to prescribed ideas, sciences or philosophies. Weaponise your identity into a projectile that can break free from the pull of gravity and toward your own destiny. Freedom is individuality. Your prison is but a lack of perspective. Obedience to creation is spiritual totalitarianism.

Read the above with derision.

Theory is a figment of language.

SAVIOUR

A child muscle looks up at the Mistake.

“Are you really the Mistake?” asks the child muscle.

The Mistake nods.

“Yes my sweet thing,” said the Mistake.

“How can you be the land that we live on and also be here with me now?” asks the child muscle.

“I have sent a fragment of myself to live with you,” said the Mistake.

“Why?”

“So I can better understand you. I want to understand you and for you to understand me. Through understanding we will learn love.”

“I hate Susan Goodleffe,” said the child muscle. “I want to kill her. Does it make me bad that I want to kill her?”

“You have to love each other,” said the Mistake. “You cannot fight among yourselves. You need to love each other. I, the Mistake, came from a family that didn't love me. So when I found you, I decided to love you all forever. I want you to love me and to love each other. I raised you from sludge to feet and now to love. There is no room for hatred if you have love.”

“But Susan Goodleffe beat me up. She doesn't love me. Why can't I beat her up? She beat me up. I don't understand. How can I love her when she beat me up? She doesn't love me. I want to kill her. I want to beat her up and kill her.”

The hospital curtain opens and the Mistake’s muscle nurse emerges. He injects tranquillisers into the Mistake's oversized head. The Mistake falls asleep.

“Listen child, you should not disturb this poor Mistake,” said the muscle nurse. “The Mistake is very caring and sensitive. A very caring and sensitive carer for everyone.”

PIGS

Downstairs, he punched his grandmother in the face.

"Don't talk to my kids like you talked to me you bastard old bitch!"

Upstairs, Great Uncle Bilf smashed at the floorboards with a hammer.

"Full of blacklocks! Bloody bastard blacklocks!"

Little Cheryl was stabbing her doll with a drawing pin.

Downstairs, Ethel thwacked little Eric round the head with a chopping board. Eric fell to the floor with two teeth missing.

"Don't go looking at my stuff!"

The front door opened and in stepped Sarah. Sarah knew there was going to be a scene going on again.

"Where have you been?!" said Big Ma Mav with her big arms held to her sides and her apron smothered in something. "Have you been at your real mum's again?!"

Sarah shook her head and held her baby protectively. Mav grabbed Sarah by the back of her neck and dragged her inside.

"You've been keeping my own grand-daughter away from me! You married our son and you think just because he ran off, that his daughter, MY grand daughter, belongs with YOUR family? She's ours! My son! Her father! Can bugger off wherever he likes! I don't blame him for flitting on your boney arse! If you think you can go back to your mum and gossip about us then you're wrong! Thinking your own are better than us! Thinking she's yours! She's one of ours! And don't YOU forget it!”

She waved her fist at Sarah.

“Don't YOU forget it or I'll give you some!"

Upstairs, Great Uncle Bilf smashed at the floorboards with a hammer.

"Full of blacklocks! Bloody bastard blacklocks!"

Little Cheryl was stabbing her doll with a drawing pin.

Downstairs, Derek polished the medals on his military uniform.

"You always think your bloody right don't you!" said Harry. "Since you got back from the army! You think you're better than me!"

Will, their older brother, came in with a newspaper under his arm.

"Come on lads give it a rest."

Will put his arms around them and brought them closer.

"I'll tell you a little secret."

He banged their heads together.

Upstairs, Jim was tied to his bed and his father was whipping him.

"Born in a thunderstorm!" his father shouted. "That's why you're bloody mental! You're bloody mad you are! Bloody disgrace!"

After Jim had passed out from being beaten, his father called to Jim's brother.

"Have you finished smoking that fag? I want to stub it out on his soft, thunderstorm head!"

DISPOSITION OF THE ORGANIC

"It is not enough to merely cause pain to the subject,” said the Grand Surgeon Sphere to the theatre of Spheres. “In order to solve the Disposition of the Organic, you need the subject's complete commitment towards Transcendence.”

On the operating table was a spluttering Organic.

“Remove the subject's vain attachment to their bodily identity. Take away their sex, face, shape and all other deceptions of the flesh. Connect the subject to their holy soul and promise a continuance and elation of that soul beyond the confines of their flesh prison. Offer the subject a bridge to transcendent purity and joy."

The Grand Surgeon Sphere floated in the air at the centre of the operating theatre holding saws and knifes in telekinetic limbs.

“Lead them into the divine light, away from the dirt, and vanquish their Disposition of the Organic.”

The Grand Surgeon Sphere sliced a laser scalpel into the Organic’s face.

"Please - don't – please – don't – please," spluttered the Organic. “I – don’t – want – be – put – in – a – Sphere...”

The scalpel dug deeper.

The Organic screamed.

"Allow them entrance to the Divine Light of Transcendence. Bring their flesh body to the edge of death and let their soul teeter above the empty oblivion. When they see the void of nothingness they always trust in the eternal brightness of the Spheres, our pure shining alternate to the cold, empty nothingness of flesh death.”

The Grand Surgeon Sphere lifted up the Organic's face, peeling it away in one tidy sheet of polymer.

“Remove their mask and show them a mirror, then they can see the