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

Fuck them all.

Up ahead a group of men in stinking clothes sit on a bench, they are drinking cheap cans of cider. They turn round and stare at me with alcohol-smudged eyes.

I smile at them.

I’m in the mood for a fight.

SAFETY

There’s a wire poking out of an alarm on a house.

There’s a road where children might get killed.

There’s a wooden fence with a rusted nail.

There’s a wobbling drain cover near a wheelie bin.

* * *

At the garden centre, Mad Jessie Meadle pushes the wheelbarrow full of plant pots, soil and seeds down the concrete path. The wheelbarrow tips over. Pots smash on the paving slabs and soils and seeds spill all over. Mad Jessie looked up gape-mouthed and dribble-chinned.

“No!” shouted Mad Jessie.

“It’s okay Jessie,” said her supervisor. “We all make mistakes every now and then.”

“Not like this!” cried Mad Jessie.

She got on her hands and knees to scoop up the seeds.

“I killed them!” cried Mad Jessie.

* * *

There’s a wire poking out of an alarm on a house.

There’s a road where children might get killed.

There’s a wooden fence with a rusted nail.

There’s a wobbling drain cover near a wheelie bin.

* * *

“It’s not safe anywhere!” cried Mad Jessie. “The world is all broken and here is the only safe place! But I ruined it! I killed them!”

KEBABS

Today, our parade marches down our high street.

If you are not marching in our parade then you watch our parade march. We all take part as a community. As watchers and marchers. Then we all eat kebabs together. We enjoy our together and the benefits of together brings us together.

Each other is one and each one is every other.

Each one and every other eats kebabs.

Tomorrow, we stand and watch an important community building get demolished. If you don't have a job in that building then your husband or wife will have had one. We will stand in the car park and our children will love the demolition.

Next week, the parade is smaller and we can't afford kebabs.

BROWN AIR

Richard walked to the Organarium, coughing and spluttering in the brown air.

The Organarium was just as he had expected: lots of organs.

Richard gave them his donation slip. He wanted the full removal of his parts. He offered them everything but they didn't want any of it. They told him that he was too sick inside.

Richard walked home, coughing and spluttering in the brown air.

He opened the lid of his metal coffin and climbed inside. He cuddled the bones of his non-departed wife.

“I know,” he replied to her voice in his head. “I'll have to think of some other way to pay the off the mortgage.”

She suggested taking her remains to the glue yard.

“I don't want to be even more alone.”

She was right though. If he died without paying off the mortgage then they would upload his consciousness into the Data Pits. Then he wouldn’t be able to get out until he had mined enough Bit Coins to pay his way into oblivion.

* * *

Richard dragged his wife's old bones in a sack, careful not to drop any of her parts. He coughed and spluttered his way through the brown air.

The glue man was sympathetic at first. He gave Richard a swig of cough medicine. It didn't do much but aggravate the boils in Richard's throat.

The glue man took his wife's bones and ground them into glue. Richard cried when he heard her voice:

“Goodbye Richard. Don't blame me for not getting insurance on our air conditioning.”

He cried dry tears as her bones were crushed.

The glue man gave him twenty-five credits and a wireless dehumidifier. He pleaded for more but was told to leave.

Richard coughed and spluttered his way back home through the brown air.

Caught on the chain of the inevitable.

Precisely at nine thirty they came, like it said on their transmission, they are never late and never early. They pulled Richard out of his lonely, metal coffin and zapped him with their shock guns.

“This one thought he could outrun debt!” one of them laughed beneath a gas mask.

They threw Richard's electrified body into their collection carriage. He lay on a pile of half conscious bodies, all coughing and spluttering in the brown air.

Richard's brain was injected with liquid plastic to ready his imprint for upload into the Data Pits. Richard wished that his wife had gotten insurance on the air conditioning. Paying to fix the air conditioning is what got them into debt in the first place. He loved her but he can't forgive her. That was the greatest pain of all, that he could never forgive his one true love.

YEAH!

He smashed the pile of bricks with a sledgehammer.

“Yeah!”

He carried the rubble in his digger truck across the yard and dumped it there.

“Yeah!”

He went to the pub to celebrate with a pint of lager.

“Yeah!”

He swiped the foam from his lips and punched his fist in the air.

“Yeah!”

NEW ESTATE

They built new houses in the area where people used to work.

“The new houses will bring prosperity to the area,” they said.

“Affordable and modern accommodation,” they said.

They put an imitation colliery wheel outside the new estate as a memorial to the old mining community.

I walked past the wheel once and saw a boy of my age repeatedly kicking it. I didn't make eye contact.

The colliery wheel still stands there to this day.

MARIE

“I can't marry you anymore!” said Marie.

“Why?” said handsome Eric on his horse. “Because you're not getting your own way? I'm not going to bend to your every whim.”

“What else are you good for! I want fake tits and I'm not marrying you unless you buy them!”

She hoped this would work. She had missed