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

ROPER

Jim Phil-Bin-Roper walked crooked, slow and old into the Goat and Duck.

“Another bitter Jim?” asked Dave the Landlord.

“Aye,” said Jim Phil-Bin-Roper. “Another bitter day it is.”

Jim liked that joke and said it everyday.

Dave pulled Jim Phil-Bin-Roper a pint of bitter and plonked it over a serviette.

“What’s this?” asked Jim Phil-Bin-Roper, pointing at the soggy serviette.

“The girls love them hankies,” answered Dave.

“Is it Curry Night tonight?” asked Jim Phil-Bin-Roper.

Jim Phil-Bin-Roper didn't like any of that foreign muck.

“Yeah it is,” said Dave. “Don't worry mate, I’ve got a steak and chips ready for you this time.”

Jim Phil-Bin-Roper sat in his corner and stared into space. He drank his bitter and thought about his dear dead Joanne.

Dave brought out some curries for the other customers. He put a plate of steak and chips on Jim Phil-Bin-Roper’s table. Jim Phil-Bin-Roper had gone to sleep, but he'd be awake as soon as the whiff of steak hit his nostrils.

Good old Jim Phil-Bin-Roper.

They called him Roper because he used to make ropes.

Good old Roper.

He deserved his bitter and sleep.

Some youths eating curry laughed at the sleeping Jim-Phil-Bin-Roper.

“Respect the Roper!” shouted Dave.

Jim Phil-Bin-Roper woke up and he ate some steak, he thought about his dear, dead Joanne. Jim Phil-Bin-Roper fell asleep again.

At closing time the barmaid, Suze, came to take away Jim Phil-Bin-Roper’s half eaten steak.

It wasn't like him to leave a steak unfinished.

“Time get up Jim,” she said.

He didn’t respond so she lightly tapped his shoulder.

He slumped forward.

Jim-Phil-Bin-Roper was dead.

“Poor old Roper,” said Suze.

NECROPOLON

The gigantic statue of Empress Garsix III loomed naked and on all fours over the funeral city of Necropolon. Up in the nipple window of the underhanging stone udder; the Chief Butcher watched the funeral city with dry eyes.

“The grievers will be here soon,” he croaked through shitted throat. “They will want to see their dead.”

The Chief Butcher ambled hunchbacked away from the window.

“Over ten billion corpses rotting in the funeral city of Necropolon,” he stated, expositionally, to nobody in particular.

* * *

A small shuttle-craft arrived at the docking station. Grieving citizens departed the craft in their funeral red robes.

“After we visit Grandma can we go to the Wall Of Nailed Convicts?” asked the little girl to her father. “Some of them are still alive and crying.”

An old man, with tears in his eyes, waddled behind them. He had a bouquet of funeral red flowers.

“We have to make sure Grandpa is okay,” said the little girl’s father. “This will be the first time he's seen Grandma since she died.”

A wart dwarf death attendant led the family towards the catacombs.

“Hurry up!” shouted the wart dwarf. “No lingering!”

They were led to their dead one’s coffin. The wart dwarf death attendant opened up a metal manhole cover on the front. Grandma lay there with a lopsided skull.

Grandpa fell to his knees with tears in his eyes.

“You look even more beautiful in death!”

He put the flowers to the foot of her metal casket.

The father waved.

“Hi Mum.”

The little girl impatiently kicked an urn over.

“Can we go and see the Wall Of Nailed Convicts now?!”

* * *

Fat Chopper Dave stomped down the corridor in his leather, blood-splashed apron. He swung his meat cleaver at the escaping meat.

“Get back here!” he roared.

The meat stumbled away down the corridor, her body stabbed with nails and barb-wire. Despite these injuries she was much faster than Fat Chopper Dave.

“I’ve not finished decorating you yet!” he panted.

As she turned the corner, Fat Chopper Dave made one last desperate swing of his meat cleaver, throwing it after her, it clanged uselessly on the ceiling.

The Chief Butcher would be very angry at him for losing another meat.

* * *

The little girl pointed at a drooling, emaciated convict.

“Look daddy! That one has lost the will to live!”

Her father laughed at the Wall of Nailed Convicts.

Grandpa was looking distractedly at the trees and flowers.

“You really do maintain this place well,” he said to the wart dwarf gardener, who was watering some flowers.

* * *

In the dank, wet, anal sanctum of the statue of Empress Garsix III, the Chief Butcher banged his fist on his desk.

"We are over-budget!" he rasped, through shitted throat, at the vidscreen.

Liquidator Muck twiddled his pencil thin moustache and smiled.

"There's no need to shout," laughed Muck. "Budgets are your concern. My concern is the disposal of all of these cumbersome vats of melted flesh. I need more acres of wasteland."

The vidscreen beeped with another incoming call. The Chief Butcher slapped the screen to change frequency. It was Fat Chopper Dave.

"Another meat escaped," said Fat Chopper Dave.

His eyes were small and shameful.

The Chief Butcher slapped the vidscreen again and the head of Liquidator Muck reappeared. He was oiling his face with tar.

"I can't give you anymore acres of wasteland," said the Chief Butcher.

"Then these vats will eventually burst and fill the catacombs of Necropolon with a bounty of noxious ooze, your choice, no skin off my bottom gravy either way. I want more acres of wasteland. I want Ruin Rim."

"Are you blackmailing ME?" asked the Chief Butcher.

Liquidator Muck laughed under his tar.

"Oh you poor, poor fool. There is a more appropriate word than blackmail, but considering the humble range your lexicon, I'll forgive you. This is coercion, old friend, not blackmail."

* * *

The escaped meat leant against the tunnel wall. She pulled on the long, rusted nail embedded in her femur. She cried with eyes of no lids. Everything hurt everywhere.

A rat came drank from her puddle of blood.

“You’re a bonny little thing,” she said to the rat. “I think I’ll call you Roderick.”

The rat spat blood and jumped at her neck.

“Roderick… Stop… No…”

* * *

“How come all your flowers are dead?” asked the little girl.

“They're not dead,” said the wart dwarf gardener. “There is no such a thing as death. My flowers are merely entering their next stage of growth. Disease