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

The Organic tried to look away from his faceless reflection.

“Purge the Organic of their illusion of flesh identity."

The Organic screamed.

“The life of the Organic is vain with vanity.”

Saws hacked away his arms and legs.

“Existence dictated by flesh parts.”

The Organic screamed.

“The screams celebrate the dissemblance of their chains and demons. The beauty of their long sought severance. Do not pity the pain of the Organic.”

A blow torch is applied to the Organic's stumps.

“Cauterise the wounds. The flesh prison is fragile and if it dies too soon the soul slips away into nothing."

Dribbling foam and pupils dilating.

The audience stretched out for miles. So many ascended souls making darkness into light. They remembered their own Transcendence operations. It is beautiful to witness a soul departing from the Disposition of the Organic and into the Divine Light of Transcendence.

HEAVEN

“At the outer edge of the transcendent sphere of the Illuminated Heavens: the Seraphim sharpen their beaks on the auras of moon beams. They chirp and flutter pure rainbows of ecstatic light. They leap from one branch of the crystal tree to the next. They drink from lemonade lakes, lapping up the sweet, plentiful juices of their perfect paradise. Such beauty but this is merely the outer edge of the transcendent sphere of the Illuminated Heavens. In the upper and central levels there is the Light itself. The bright cascading glory of the All Powerful, All illumined and All Knowing Everything.”

Garry Lavender put down his pen and took a sip on his milk. He looked out the window at the street outside. It was a day his mum would have called “calm and quiet.” It wasn't calm and quiet. Garry saw and heard, especially heard, more than that. He always heard more.

Garry thought about writing more, but it was feeding time. He could hear his friends chirping impatiently in their aviary.

The path towards fulfilment and illumination was through the budgies: Earth agents of the Illumination.

FUTURE GLORY

“Only those who suffer are truly alive,” rasped Brother Dead Swan. “Those who resist despair are flailing blind and numb into the sinful delusions of hope.”

At the tables of the eatery were his fellow skinless and bleeding monks. They were eating from fire heated plates, shoving charred embers into their toothless mouths. They had learned to hold their pain quietly within the screaming of their bodies.

* * *

Brother Wounded Lamb pulled his rake across the soil. He held in a cry as the splintered wood pressed into his flayed fingers. On the ground in front of him he could see the feet of Brother Aching Worm. Such beautiful, blistering callouses on the feet of Brother Aching Worm.

Brother Wounded Lamb chewed a hole on the inside of his cheek to punish himself for his impure thoughts. No impure thoughts about the flesh.

At the Nunnery, on the other side of Devon, Sister Flailing Dove sat and span a glass dome in circles. Inside the dome was the blood of God. Encircling the brass base of the dome was an inscription:

“Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

QUBERT

Victor Qubert was all alone in the office. The others had gone home for the Easter Holidays.

"It's always this way!"

He sat with head in his hands and he stared down at the subcontractor invoice. Four hundred and fifty-six times he had read the figures.

"Something's not right with these! Some prick has fucked them up!"

Victor grabbed the phone and dialled the subcontractor’s number on the invoice. It went straight through to the predictable Bank Holiday beep of an answerphone.

"SCREW YOU!" shouted Victor as he slammed down the phone. He screwed up the invoice and pressed it to his face.

"Screw you," he sobbed.

He went to the toilets and splashed his face with sink water. He looked at his tired, wet reflection.

"Come on Victor," he said, fist in the air. "You can do this! You can suss this out! Bang one in the goal for team Qubert! You can do it VICTOR!"

"You can't," said a mechanical voice from the ceiling vent. "You're useless Victor Qubert."

"SHUT UP!" screamed Victor, hands over his ears. "LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU CUNT!"

"You are never alone Victor Qubert.”

"You've done this haven't you?!” he cried. “You fucked up the third-party invoices DIDN'T YOU?!"

The voice did not reply.

"PLEASE!" screeched Victor. "Fix the inconsistencies in the calculations you prick!"

PHALLIC

Sixteen years old, he walked into the guitar shop, he wore his skinny blue jeans, an Iggy Pop t-shirt, sunglasses and a leather jacket. He pointed at the phallic instrument of his dreams.

“I want that Fender Stratocaster!”

* * *

Seventeen years old, he wrote a song in his bed room.

“Oh oh oh! Anti-Establishment! Get me girls! Get me Establishment!”

* * *

Eighteen years old, he thrusts his perspex penis extension on stage.

“Oh oh oh! Anti-Establishment! Get me girls! Get me Establishment!”

* * *

Forty years old, he stands in the local pub with his latest band: The Harrier Jets.

“Oh oh oh! Anti-Establishment! Get me girls! Get me Establishment!”

AUTHORITY

The Sergeant cuffed her hands behind her back and pushed her head against the dystopic wall.

“Hands off me NARC!” shouted the girl.

He shoved her in the back of the Police drifter and piloted them back to the Police Satellite.

“I want my lawyer! Get me my lawyer NARC!” shouted the girl.

“You have the right to shut your bleeding cake-hole luv,” said the Sergeant.

He escorted her into the foyer. All sorts of scum were being herded about the place. An albino non-sexual entity held up it's hands. The fingerprints were burnt off.

“You’re not going to get nothing on me now copper,” it smirked smugly to the desk clerk.

The Sergeant pushed the albino’s head against a filing cabinet.

“You stupid shirt-lifting puff, now we have you for every crime without fingerprints,” the Sergeant chuckled. “Come