Monday 20 August 2012

Dumping Ground

A "Vice style" picture of urban decay. Dundee 2011.


The internet is a tremendously good place for dumping trash, so i am going to use this modern privilege to take a massive metaphorical dump on this blog. This following piece of writing sucks. I wrote it in December 2011 to impress a girl. Reading over it makes me wince and want to be swallowed up in an elephant's asshole. However, in the interest of artistic clarity and expressing the right to post tedious dogshit on the internet, I present you with a short work of fiction about being on the dole for so long the world ends. Fuck this bullshit and fuck the dole!

P.S. I am currently planning a new issue of Lucida Console which should hopefully be out early next year, it'll contain lots of joyous appreciation of the grotty things in life. I love a bit of muck me.

The Derelict
A post-apocalyptic dole drama in one act
By Slater Wilcox

Scene one

A shabby looking young man walks through some nuclear wastelands looking rather bemused by everything around him. This was obviously the town he lived in but it’s completely fucking destroyed and melted. He pauses for a moment and looks fondly at the smouldering remains of a chip shop, and wistfully mutters to himself “…chippy tea…” It’s hard to tell if he’s heartbroken or really, really stupid.

He stands there lost in thought for far longer than necessary. He looks from side to side, up and down the remains of the street “umming” and “ahhing” to himself. He is obviously a dreadfully confused young man. He turns and starts to walk in one direction. As soon as he has taken his first step he decides against it and turns to walk back where he came from. After walking for a short distance he abruptly turns to walk back the other way again. His face bears the signs of great mental anguish; of all his own doing, of course. He is wasting valuable time and the audience resents him already.

There is dry, bitter wind which bites at his face and eyes. It blows about the nuclear ash, dust and grit of razed buildings and cremated humans. The odd young man flips his collar up, stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets, puts his head down and strides along at a spanking rate through the derelict wastelands. From his stern countenance and determined pace it’s obvious he has somewhere fairly important to be. He draws out one hand and checks his watch. 11:20AM. He pulls out his JSA log book and double checks it. His name is David and he is due to sign on in five minutes.

“Fuck!” He yelps, like a spanked terrier. The skeleton of the town hall crumbles away to his left. He barely notices. There is a gnawing hunger in the pit of his stomach which has been there for several days.

He slips off the street and down a narrow alleyway between the remains of two houses. His strides are long and impressive, but his resemblance of a two legged spider gives him a sad air of absurdity. Suddenly a thunderous “WOOF!” cuts through the silence startling David to a halt. It’s obvious to him that this was not a friendly woof as it sounded rather like some mean CANINE FUCKERS. The terrifying “WOOF!” sounds again. Strangely, David doesn’t look scared but more like he has suffered some minor inconvenience.

Through the fence on his left we see two large, all-white dogs patrolling a dirt yard, walking in large, sweeping circles. Each of their paws rise and fall in magnificent synchronicity, not one second out of time. Their breed is quite difficult to identify but they are most certainly some well trained man-maulers whose beauty is only equalled by their blood lust. The viewer assumes them to be some freaky post-apocalyptic crossbreed with the IQ of a human. The recent nuclear fall out has scrambled their beastly dogbrains and they would like nothing more than to gnash and gnaw upon young David, reducing him to a sloppy pile of giblets. They are sadistic hounds, and in their eyes he looks like one big juicy sausage. They shoot at him piercingly cruel glances, chops salivating, and continue to march around the yard in perfect formation.

Pausing for a moment and bravely peering thru the fence, David studies them closely. Down the side of one of the hounds someone has crudely spray painted “FUK OFF” and upon the other one “HARDCORE”. The handwriting is large and uneven and David looks at them rather disapprovingly. He stares at them going around in circles for far long than he should. Have the hounds put him into an oscillating dog trance?

A noise behind him snaps him out of his canine captivation. “Fuck a horseshit!” he exclaims loudly. “Damn dogs, I’m going to miss my appointment!”

David makes the movements to leave but a man in a dirty, torn suit is blocking his way. He has also been ensnared by the terrible white dogs and stands there with his mouth open watching the hounds go round and round and round.

Slightly pissed off with the whole business, David clears his throat and asks the man to move out of the way. He doesn’t respond.

“Ahem, excuse me… I don’t suppose you could let me by. I’m late for a meeting and it’s quite essential I, ahh, get there sharpish. Now if you wouldn’t mind.”

David brushes past the man, who falls to the ground like a withered old bag of fuck. David stops and profusely apologises until he realises the poor fellow has only just regained consciousness. He stands above him and casts his eye upon this curious person. The businessman looks rather preposterous - laid down in the mud in his crumpled suit, bald head, groaning to himself about some old “end of the world” rubbish.

David looks up and sighs. “Lost his marbles…” He hastily turns to leave.

All of a sudden the man leaps up and grasps David by the collar. He has a wild look in his eye and his bald head shines in a most eye-pleasing way. His lips are trembling and his mouth is open expectantly.

“What the hell do you want?! I’m going to be late, let me go!” Gasps David, his voice full of panic.

The man lets him go and looks horrified.

“Where do you have to be?!” he asks David in wide eyed terror.

“I have to go and sign on! I won’t get my dole money if I’m late again!” All the while David gestures frantically with his hands, his face growing red. He takes a pause and speaks with a new air of resigned despair. “I’m absolutely broke, hungry, and thoroughly pissed off with all this nonsense. I just want my dole money.”

The air is still and everyone feels utter sympathy for David.

“HAHAHA!” The bald businessman’s hearty laughter shatters the sympathetic silence. He stands there holding his stomach, having a wonderful time at David’s expense. David looks rather put out and dejected.

“Oh piss off you fruitcake! Can a fellow not keep his dignity while on JSA? Why should I have to endure being laughed at by some fatcat business bastard with too much money and a fucking bald head?! Go to hell!” He starts to walk away more determined than ever.

The businessman suppresses his laughter for a moment and stops him. “Haha, hold on, wait! Are you serious?! Haha! The job centre isn’t there anymore!”

This takes David by surprise but he obviously believes the business man is insane. “What? Well, where’s it gone then?”    

“Look around you!” The business man makes a wide sweep of his arm, highlighting the nuclear devastation wrought upon the city that David had been so unaware of for the past 20 minutes.

David stands there gawping at his surrounding for a while, before attempting to construct some words that made sense in this ludicrous situation. “Does this mean I’m not getting my dole money?” he whispered feebly.

The Businessman let out another hearty laugh. “Young man, are you absolutely mental? Jobseekers allowance doesn’t exist anymore! Nothing does! You can’t receive your dole money because society has been reduced to a radioactive dust carried on a toxic wind. If you don’t believe me, how do you explain that?” With one of his fat fingers he points to a haggard old woman further down the alley. She is busying herself arranging several sheets of seethru material out on a table in front of her. A spraypainted sign hangs limply above her, “HUMAN SKIN JACKETS!” The handwriting is large and uneven.

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