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

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

I know it’s you.

The door opened and someone new stood there.

Not another one.

The door closed.

A knock on the rain wet window.

FACE

I look at my trail of words.

Pin prick holes.

A dot to dot image.

These dots join together.

Connect the dots.

Fill the holes with questions.

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

It rolls its eyes around.

The dots connected with surface.

A reactive surface.

Divisions between coordinates.

Blotched visions.

Far beyond moisture bloated.

A questioned surface converges towards an answer.

It opens its mouth to speak.

Gloopy, pink foam along its outline.

It doesn't speak in words.

I fall.

My reflection closes its tongue.

BEATWATER

Grizzle Beatwater leant back on her talons in the sad sludge. Despite her sleepy bead eyes she cawed a loud squawk. Her school of disciplined chicks tottered to a stop, their feathers bloodied by the rain. The tree branches above stabbed down at them with dripping winter intent. The winds sang songs of cooking still clucking birds.

A spectral voice in those bad shapes said:

“Trust in me my love, I'm not wholly dead, I will always be watching over you, my Grizzle and our flock, you will live up to the name of Beatwater. Now beat water my lovelies!”

Grizzle Beatwater and her chicks trudge onwards in the sad sludge.

Someday, they would find their coop.

WINNING

I’m working on a pattern design. It's made from images of smashed skulls and sliced eyeballs.

Emmet Corcoran stands at my shoulder and looks at my work. He doesn’t understand.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Winning," I tell him.

I convert a bitmap of a crushed brain into a flat vector.

Emmett points at the paperwork at the end of my desk.

"You need to process all those work orders by the Friday."

I lift my leg and kick the paperwork on the floor. Emmett gives me one of his cow eyed stares.

I light up a cigarette and I look at my design.

“Something's missing,” I said. "Do you think it needs more spinal columns?"

* * *

Ten minutes later, I’m escorted outside by security. I walk down Burton Road and I see cosmopolitan people sat in cosmopolitan bars.

How do they all live without jobs? Maybe one day I could do that. If I could only make a success out of my creativity. If I could just do that then I could sit around in cosmopolitan bars all day. I could be just like them. Successful. Just like them. I could be just like them.

If only I had an inheritance just like them. If only I could afford one or more holiday a year, just like them. If only I could get a house and a mortgage and be one hundred feet tall on a billboard. If only the normal people, the people who reject me, would let me live and breathe in their high-priced compartments so I can suckle on the latest Neo-Liberal teat!

Can I be like them? Just like them? Please just let me sip hydroponics and dribble bay leafs. Here I am! A drooling, hungry animal. Aspiring for a life of sitting, drinking, shitting and pissing in a Cosmopolitan bar. Look at my dignity, there it goes, a stunted rodent!

Whatever my position, all I have to look forward to is a life of prescribed, corporate hospitality! Soma! Tranquillise my consciousness to the size of a pixel and kick me to my grave!

KOOMS

Eddie sprayed his graffiti tag on an a bit of wall:

“KOOMS.”

Eddie walked further down the alleyway and sprayed his graffiti tag on another bit of wall:

“KOOMS.”

Eddie walked further down the alleyway and his foot hit against something. Eddie looked down and thought it was a bin bag at first. He stepped on it. It groaned. It was a man.

“Sorry man,” said Eddie.

“Help,” said the man.

Eddie knelt down.

“You alright man?”

“Please help.”

The man was covered in blood because he'd been stabbed loads of times.

“I'm calling Nine-One-One,” said Eddie.

“No, don't, no hospitals.”

“Why?”

“They took it.”

“Took what?”

“They took the plans.”

“What plans?”

“Please take this, destroy it and don't open it.”

The man passed Eddie a USB stick.

“They can't finish the plans without this.”

“Look man,” said Eddie. “I don't want to get involved.”

“Destroy it for me. Run. They'll be back soon. They'll realise they need both USB sticks. I've hiding this one up my ass.”

* * *

Eddie got back home to his bedsit, he put the USB stick on his bedside table and threw his bloodied clothes in the bin. He looked at the USB stick. He should destroy it. He decided not to yet. He wanted to see what was on it first. He plugged it into his laptop.

“Password protected, typical.”

He threw it in the bin with his clothes.

Good thing tomorrow was the day they collected the trash.

* * *

He went to the news-stand in the morning to buy a chocolate bar. He saw a headline about the man in the alleyway.

“DEAD CIA AGENT FOUND KILLED IN ALLEYWAY.”

Eddie got a call from some girl he was seeing.

“Did you know about this?” said the girl.

“What?