Pass Me Old Mink

An Electric Crown

Paul Dirac was conceptually activated from his sober, waking life into his true existence like the pupa awakens into a beautiful moth. He began to sweat black oil that dripped down onto his hands. They felt encased in slabs of concrete, he fumbled with his phone and snapped it so that he couldn't be tracked. Pneumatic blondes revolving down an escalator, snapping jaws towards each other in communication. They descend onto white tiles and marched out of the door, only to collapse and be given bloody mouths by a low thunder storm. The lights flicker. Squashed face gurn agonizingly, eyes rolling around trying to trace brain shapes. Outside it is black and cold, the sound of a grave. People mingle in between each other, from above they looked like waterfalls meeting each other at opposite ends of a river, broken and splintered, thick. Through this he runs, black sweat dripping, leaving marks on the pavement in the shapes of Neil Armstrong's nervous system. In his skull trap he is assembling a bomb, thoughts electric and ricochetting through his head faster than he could control. Mydriasis set, he blew steam out from his thrashing mouth as he started to seizure. A hundred yards away he spotted someone he had gone to school with who was squeezing a big leather rope. He had been a spy all along. The agent had been following him all of his life waiting for this moment and been sent to kill.

The oily man panicked and ran into the shop where the series of blondes were helped up by handsome staff. Running through aisles lined in perfume, he went through another series of doors out into a plaza. He looked behind him to see the agent following him, nonchalantly tapping nearly everything he went past. Probably absorbing the potential energy of objects like the ancient warrior monks of Tibet. Dirac ran, dodging people and public furniture. A large magnet fizzed in a hidden parcel planted in a bin, the pinch crunching things around it as a large, blobby wave of radiation winked out all the lights, phones, cameras and radios. A few seconds of being in darkness, people started crying and running towards the exit. “Who turned out the lights!” yelled a wiseguy. This was the kill code. Dirac stumbled around in the pitch black. Rods and cones. Most just tried to cling onto something, a few just waited patiently. The agent paced towards him, tapping people on the back as he did so. His fingers ran along a column, danced the side of a staircase, tapping a bench. Middle and index were made to walk along the top before smacking the end. The bin with the magnet in. The oily man went through his pockets quickly and pulled out a carton of cigarettes and set them on the side of a plant pot holding a plastic fern before sprinting away. Near to the exit now. The sign above the fire door glowed green. The man hunting him meanwhile tapped a lamp-post, a hanging leaf and the oblong cigarette packet. A high chime was heard as the agent's face sagged limply off his face, he could tell he was already dead. Chunks of his body glided away from his skeleton, being over-taken by other organs and bone pushing forward new sections. Smaller and smaller chunks of his body chased each other as he faded away into a cloud of body debris, lightly hitting the wall and disappearing into a puff of smoke.

All Said And Done

One of the things I miss the most about alternative realities is that this one doesn't care much for the exploration and colonization of space, instead spending millions on a 3D film of Yogi Bear or soap that smells like Marmite. In some faraway place in space and time others will look back with eyes made from ectoplasm and wonder, what happened.

Hey Homer

An entire town that revolves around one family.

A Hobby In Burglary

As 3D printers increase in availability and cheapness, people will come home to find there front doors wide open and the insides gutted like large cubist beige chickens. The everyday housekey is first photographed the previous night and the owner of a 3D printer sets to work on creating an exact replica in which he lets himself into the house with. This has lead to an increase in swipe cards opening doors as if all the world were a hotel.

R.O.Y.G.B.P.(M)

Professor Gomez, the esoteric scientist of waning fame, has recently come out of retirement to display the new colour he had discovered. He had spent his lifetime researching the vastness of human senses, attempting to install the very best from the animal kingdom into humans such as the noses of dogs implanted into the faces of policemen and the eyes of birds grafted onto the pupils of aircraft pilots.

Gomez discovered the new colour whilst experimenting with his own paintings that critics have mostly deemed inappropriate for public consumption. Although whilst painting a landscape of the beaches of Southport, Gomez discovered that by simply mixing dead fish with oil paint that strange colours appeared that he had never recognized. He has named this new colour 'Mahrj' and it has caused rapid changes in almost every avenue of life. Mahrj is perhaps best described for somebody who hasn't seen it by first comparing colours to taste. If blue was bitter, red was sweet and yellow sour Mahrj would be umami. Of course there has been public backlash by people saying that the colour was 'bullshit' and 'didn't exist', as well as other scientists claiming that it was impossible for the human eye to see Mahrj. Nevertheless Gomez has already begun to sell buckets full of Mahrj paint to home-owners all across the country!

Pangaea

Continental drift.

Smoke Machine

Even Through Fighting You Lose

Dr. Pepper has a moustache; true, false?

The Ritual Smoking Of Drugs

Heaving the pipe upward, the group pass it to one of the newer members. A self-described druid, his beard descends onto the mouthpiece of the black bong. It takes three people to lift the device to the druids face, another to lower the torch onto the luminous green cannabis. It's trichomes are long and bulbous like strange worms. Eldritch. Taking great care the druid begins to inhale the kush, so sticky that if it came into contact with the skin it would rip it away. Through the slightly translucent glass we watch the five feet of milky smoke begin to fill the chamber, the druid can see it too as he watches the weed smoulder in front of him. And all along, a great bubbling. Through the ice and through the water, the smoke is drawn through. Upward and upward. He begins to clear the bong chamber, chugging huge lungfuls of smoke. We all begin to chant our own songs as the thick smoke is quaffed from the cauldron bong, as it is exhaled it begins to fill the cave we are sitting in. A caveman sits in the corner, the whites of his eyes as red as an eclipsing moon. He looks over to the druid then turns back to his bongo drums.

An hour, perhaps, later we exit the cave and into the industrial estate. The factories and mill shops stand as obelisks on the landscape, intense signifiers of terror. We walk along the cracked tarmac road, one of our number carrying a crucifix. Once we have reached the cul-de-sac, our terminal destination, the cross bearer sets it upside down into a small marsh. We sit around beneath the inverted symbol and pass around a pipe made from the spinal column of an accused witch who was rumoured to have been drowned at a nearby lake. The druid takes out a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch and begins to eat them solemnly.