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

His wife said sorry and his children cried.

"You’re never sorry enough!" screamed Victor. "I work so hard for you! I work so hard for the company but it's never enough! It's never enough! It's never enough!"

Victor repeatedly hit his head on the wall again.

His wife pleaded with him to stop and said that she would heat up his Christmas dinner, she had put cling film over it and stored it in the fridge.

"Screw you!" screamed Victor as he pointed at the bruise on his forehead. "See what you've done to me!?"

Victor left the house and got in his car. He turned on the radio. It was Christmas music.

"Screw you!" he shouted at the radio.

He saw some children kicking a football about, he opened the car window.

"Screw you!" he shouted.

He drove past the church, some old loves stood in a gaggle around the Vicar.

"Screw you!" he shouted.

He got back to work and reopened his session on System Accounts Processing.

He cracked his fingers.

"Right! I'm going to project this business into the next fucking century!"

* * *

The Smear feels Victor Qubert pushing and probing the Smear with his fingers; digging deep into the Smears cells and pushing them all nice and hard. The Smears zeros all multiply their formulas with excitement. Victor Qubert is the Smears special friend.

DROWNED OIL SICK

Amoeboid Acetabulum drifts unconsciously into the Spinal Illusion Coffee Shop and splodges into a chair next to some other non-substantials.

They blurt about all the latest news as it screens straight into their implantations.

“Yeah, I saw that,” said Amoeboid Acetabulum.

“Yeah, I did too,” said Jellified Ventricle.

All of them merge together.

Grease splodged water puddle.

Drowned oil sick.

QUESTIONS

I was taken to a white porcelain room filled with confused children. I noticed a smell of poo and it was because some of the children had pooed themselves. I decided to poo myself when it was my turn.

“Be normal!” shouted the soil-headed teacher.

At night, they cleaned the room with a high pressure hose.

* * *

During break times we went outside. There was a hill I used to roll down.

Did I roll down the hill or was I pushed?

It's hard to remember.

Time blurs.

* * *

After a year, or a month, or two weeks, it is difficult to tell: time blurring and all. I had begun to settle in there. I even realised that I didn’t need to poo myself to fit in.

I got into trouble when a girl told me to meet her in a cubicle. The cubicle was in the girls' toilets.

I told her that I wasn't allowed in the girls' toilets.

She said it would be okay.

So I stood in the toilet cubicle.

“There is a boy hiding in a girl’s toilet cubicle,” she told the soil faced teacher.

The teacher’s soil-head appeared over the cubicle wall.

“Be normal!”

* * *

I remember taking toys apart: pouring wordless questions into self-made cracks. Wordless answers came back, not the ones I wanted, answers based in structure and boundaries.

TOY CAR

The baby is born.

The baby is put in a toy car.

The baby drives to work.

CONTROLLED GARDENS

The summer flowers bloom in the controlled gardens. The gardens are clean. The soil is clean. It's night-time and the stars are clean and the stars are shiny.

The new house had four bedrooms. Everyone had their own bedroom now. The kids do not need bunk-beds anymore.

The summer flowers bloom in the controlled gardens. Everyone has their own controlled garden. Everyone is watching everyone else's controlled garden. Everyone is watching for dirt.

Who has the best garden?

Where did she get the money for that conservatory?

How did he afford a new car this year?

Have you seen that dog?

If I catch that dog shitting on my controlled garden there will be hell on.

I'm going to build a hot tub.

I'm going to build a hot tub in my controlled garden.

My hot tub will be nice and clean and best.

* * *

Terrance Senior was in his controlled garden again.

It was a modest and middle class controlled garden but with the help of his credit card he'd made it an upper-middle class controlled garden.

His new hot tub gleamed on its concrete platform. People said it domineered over such a small space. Terrence Senior didn't care. They were just jealous.

He had worked hard his entire life to get the credit rating to afford that hot tub and it was worth every minus. He loved to submerge his fat body into the bubbling water and play with his giant, rubber duck. He liked that his neighbours could see him sploshing and that they could hear his loud radio.

His one-eyed, nineteen year old son, Terrance Junior, poked his head out of his bedroom window.

“Thanks for the invitation!” Junior shouted sarcastically at his father.

Junior had never tried his father’s hot tub and would have liked to be invited to play.

Terrance Senior stuck his middle finger up at his son and he sloshed his bulk to the middle of the water. No one was ever going to join him. No one but his giant, rubber duck.

Junior closed the window with a slam and shook angrily, his eye twitched. Junior turned on his own radio to block out the noise of his father splashing and enjoying himself. Junior turned to his favourite station: Smooth FM.

He took a deep breath as the radio played a saxophone solo. He tried to centre his emotions. He needed to calm down. He needed to chill out.

“I need to chill the fuck out!” said Junior.

Junior danced in lazy circles under his disco ball. His arms were wrapped around an imaginary woman. She wore a sparkly dress and looked like his mum. He placed his hands on her hips and they swayed romantically.

Total Eclipse of the Heart started to play:

“Once upon a time I was falling in