by Paul Curran
b) Look at your phone and rub some of the buttons.
c) Press the numbers that an automated reading voice says to.
d) Watch a security guard talking to a phone counter assistant.
e) Say into the phone that you will call back later.
15.2.
a) Hear a teacher saying your only weapon is body language.
b) See the teacher loosen and then straighten up his tie.
c) Notice a student raise her hand saying she is bored.
d) Look at the teacher turning his back on the classroom.
e) Hear the teacher asking if any students want to leave.
15.3.
a) See the teacher pointing a remote control at a screen.
b) Watch the security guards pacing up and down the rows.
c) Hear the teacher saying we must choose our words carefully.
d) Listen to the teacher saying we must tame our bodies.
e) Watch the teacher standing at the front of the classroom.
15.4.
a) See a cock slipping out of a cunt on screen.
b) Notice that a different cock is fucking the cunt now.
c) Look at a contraption coming down to decapitate a girl.
d) Feel a hot flush as secretions leak from your cunt.
e) Watch the dead girl rise from the screen and disappear.
15.5.
a) Sit on a bench and look at the security manager.
b) Tap your feet in the pool of blood beneath you.
c) Wipe your face and taste the sweat on your hands.
d) Move your tongue around your mouth and notice teeth missing.
e) Stand up and find your overalls then put them on.
16.1.
a) Breathe in deeply and raise your arms above your head.
b) Breathe out deeply and roll your head to the left.
c) Breathe in deeply and move your knees to the right.
d) Breathe out deeply and touch the ground with your fingers.
e) Breathe in deeply and then breathe out just as deeply.
16.2.
a) Shake out your limbs and then sit on the floor.
b) Concentrate on the blood flowing up and down your legs.
c) Breathe in steadily and then breathe out just as steadily.
d) Feel your shins turn brittle like a piece of driftwood.
e) Notice the blood drain from your legs across the floor.
16.3.
a) Breathe in steadily and then breathe out just as steadily.
b) Feel an electrode scraping out the inside of your skull.
c) Direct the glow in your brain into a compressed ball.
d) Trickle the glowing ball along each joint down your spine.
e) Notice the ball heating up in your tailbone and pelvis.
16.4.
a) Lie on the floor and then shake out your limbs.
b) Breathe in slowly and then breathe out just as slowly.
c) Feel your internal organs collapse and slide through your body.
d) Notice that each of your ribs has turned to ash.
e) Concentrate on your lungs filling up and hear them groaning.
16.5.
a) Open your mouth and push the air from your lungs.
b) Close your mouth and suck the air through your nose.
c) Hear a noise coming from the back of your throat.
d) Open your mouth and push the air from your lungs.
e) Close your mouth and suck the air through your nose.
17.1.
a) Stand up straight and then pull your shoulders right back.
b) Breathe in deeply and then breathe out just as deeply.
c) Breathe in deeply and raise your arms above your head.
d) Breathe out deeply and lower your arms to your thighs.
e) Breathe in deeply and then breathe out just as deeply.
17.2.
a) Breathe in deeply and then roll your shoulders right back.
b) Breathe out deeply and put your hands on your knees.
c) Breathe in deeply and touch the ground with your fingers.
d) Breathe out deeply and reach up as high as possible.
e) Breathe out deeply and then you can relax after that.
17.3.
a) Cross both legs with each foot under the opposite knee.
b) Concentrate on the blood flowing up and down your legs.
c) Feel the blood drain from your legs across the floor.
d) Notice holes forming and growing bigger on both your hands.
e) Sense heat building up in your ears and your nose.
17.4.
a) Feel your internal organs collapse and slide through your body.
b) See and hear a light glowing in your brain center.
c) Direct the glow in your brain into a compressed ball.
d) Move the glowing ball to the bottom of your spine.
e) Taste the ball churning in your chest and then exploding.
17.5.
a) Open your mouth and push the air from your lungs.
b) Close your mouth and suck the air through your nose.
c) Hear a noise coming from the back of your throat.
d) Open your mouth and push the air from your lungs.
e) Close your mouth and suck the air through your nose.
18.1.
a) Feel Chris’s hand between your legs and push it away.
b) Catch his cock in your mouth and then suck it.
c) Get on your knees so he can fuck your breasts.
d) Rock back and forth moaning as he fingers your ass.
e) Collapse when he sticks his clenched fist into your ass.
18.2.
a) Tie up your bathrobe and walk out of the bathroom.
b) Snort some cocaine with Chris off the kitchen alcove bench.
c) Pour some vodka and orange and go to the lounge.
d) Show Chris the strap-on you are wearing under your bathrobe.
e) Put your leg on the couch and pretend to piss.
18.3.
a) Wank on the strap-on as Chris takes off his trousers.
b) Suck on his cock while he sucks on the strap-on.
c) Watch him wanking and angling the strap-on into your ass.
d) Fuck yourself with the strap-on while he sucks your breasts.
e) Hear the come spurt from his cock onto your face.
18.4.
a) Taste Chris’s come and then rub it on his ass.
b) Stick your fingers in his mouth until he bites them.
c) Fuck his ass with your tongue and hear him moan.
d) Lick your lips and push the strap-on against his ass.
e) Fall onto him and ram the strap-on into his ass.
18.5.
a) Watch the elevator door open and see students coming in.
b) Smell perfume as you lean forward to press a button.
c) Feel Chris easing his finger slowly along your cunt lips.
d) Clench your ass as his finger goes into your cunt.
e) Stare in the mirror grinning as he fingers your cunt.
19.1.
a) Do not look at the cameras or the sound crew.
b) Write a note to Alex asking about seeing your rooms.
c) Hear a teacher saying this induction session will be interactive.
d) Watch Alex drawing a picture of a girl being tortured.
e) Glance at students being dragged from their seats and shot.
19.2.
a) Listen to the teacher saying she will introduce the director.
b) Hear the director saying unlock your stream of hidden potentiality.
c) Show Alex the dimensions that you added to her picture.
d) Watch the director step back and ask for any questions.
e) Hear the education minister saying today’s session will transform you.
19.3.
a) Taste cold air from vents constricting your nose and throat.
b) Look at Alex talking to a boy sitting beside her.
c) Hear yourself saying to Alex that this place is amazing.
d) Watch a screen showing annual expenditure in a pie chart.
e) Feel the back of your throat sting when you swallow.
19.4.
a) Notice images of planning and construction flashing on the screen.
b) Listen to a teacher explaining the schedule for today’s training.
c) Cover your mouth and put your head on the table.
d) Hear a health and safety announcement about nuclear waste procedures.
e) Ask Alex if she can understand what they are saying.
19.5.
a) Watch the security guards pacing up and down the rows.
b) Feel your throat constrict until you are unable to breathe.
c) Notice Alex watching you as you stand by your desk.
d) Hear your blood pumping through your neck into your brain.
e) Walk down an aisle and then push open a door.
20.1.
a) Do not look at the cameras or the sound crew.
b) Stand in the sunlight in the middle of the tower.
c) Wander around a lingerie shop looking at the different mannequins.
d) Enter a jewelery shop and smash one of the counters.
e) Put on a necklace and walk out of the shop.
20.2.
a) Notice doctors moving around the edges of sharp blurred light.
b) Gag on a pipe being pushed down into your throat.
c) Hear a doctor asking if you have ever been raped.
d) Feel a different doctor inspecting your cunt with his tongue.
e) Accept some water from a nurse and swallow some pills.
20.3.
a) Stand up and then follow a doctor down a corridor.
b) See the doctor look back as she turns a corner.
c) Walk around several corners looking for where the doctor went.
d) Turn the handle on a door and shove it open.
e) Step into a room and see a pile of bodies.
20.4.
a) Lean against a wall and squat down to the floor.
b) Notice that all of the dead bodies have been amputated.
c) Look at a tower of arms and legs twisted together.
d) Realize all of the bodies have had their genitals mutilated.
e) Search the blank expressions in a row of severed heads.
20.5.
a) Step through pools of blood and run down a corridor.
b) Yell out wait when you see a white coat disappearing.
c) Slow down after you realize you are in an office.
d) Turn around and run for an exit before hitting something.
e) Feel your head fly back and collide with the ground.
21.1.
a) Hear a commercial break fade into soft jazz piano playing.
b) Find yourself a chair and then slump down in it.
c) Ask a waiter if you can have vodka and orange.
d) Pick up a fork and prod it at some salmon.
e) Open a vodka bottle and pour vodka into your glass.
21.2.
a) Watch several waiters with large plates moving between the tables.
b) Listen to people talking and eating at the same time.
c) Prod your fork at a bird’s leg on your plate.
d) Take a sip of your drink and feel the vodka.
e) See the waiters collecting plates while serving coffee and dessert.
21.3.
a) Look at me rubbing my hands together and congratulating everyone.
b) Listen to me say everything is a matter of perspective.
c) Scoop some cheesecake into your mouth and taste it melting.
d) Glance around the hall at the people staring at you.
e) Hear me saying we must all live between these spaces.
21.4.
a) Open a vodka bottle and pour vodka into your glass.
b) Watch me take out a blank envelope and unfold it.
c) Look around the hall at the people clapping and cheering.
d) Stand up when you notice me waving you onto stage.
e) Push in your chair before you walk towards the stage.
21.5.
a) Stumble against me and then take my hand for support.
b) Accept the microphone from me and cling onto the podium.
c) Look at me turning around and picking up a trophy.
d) Hear your lungs sucking in the most air they can.
e) Feel your lips moving to my voice saying thank you.
Paul thought he had suffered a fatal brain injury but felt like he had entered a new reality and was experiencing everything for the first time. He predicted what he was going to see before he opened his eyes. There would be palm trees and seagulls and the ocean swelling along the same beach he had seen a million times before. But everything would be totally different. He felt calmer and more in control than he had ever felt in his entire life. The oscillating binaries of pain and desire had gone. His head had been wiped clear. The tide seemed to be connected to his breathing in an unselfconscious way. He doubted he could move even if he wanted to. He expected to be paralyzed at least.
When Paul looked at the road, time became unstuck and hurtled back into the present. He watched the van swerving away from him before it straightened up and settled into a comfortable pace. He could just make out Robert and Lucy huddled together through the dusty curtain across the back window and he held onto that image for as long as he could. He told himself it didn’t bother him that they were together. It seemed to represent the correct order of things.
A road train coming from the mines in the desert ploughed head-on into the van. The impact ripped a hole through this new reality. The van crumpled and flipped into the air before landing on its side. A door came spinning off the van and skidded into a ditch covered with long dry grass. Everything went silent for a second after the crash then returned louder than before. Dragging sound out of every object present, the road train kept going. Paul stepped back as it lumbered past. The driver was focused straight ahead on something far beyond this plane of existence. The van was motionless. No one climbed out from the hole where the door used to be. The heat shimmered everything into a mirage.
* * *
Paul smashed a bottle on a sewerage pipe. He gripped the neck of the broken bottle in one hand and his cock in the other. He staggered along the beach, stabbing the bottle at his chest and wanking his cock until it got hard. When he was about to come he shuddered to his knees and hacked into his cock with the broken bottle. The glass went halfway through and the come spurted out along with the blood. Ecstatic under the influence of the chemicals shooting through his body, and determined to enact their conclusion, Paul hacked the glass through the rest of the flesh until the whole thing came away.
After standing up and walking a few more steps, Paul looked back at the discarded lump of flesh lying there but couldn’t comprehend that it had ever been connected to his body. It resembled a dead sea-creature washed up on the tide rather than the rare delicacy he once believed it to be, but of course those two analogies amounted to the same thing in the end. Paul felt voices somewhere in his head and realized the voices were telling him to keep going. The blood now pumping from where his cock used to be turned into flames between his fingers. He stared into the flames until he couldn’t see or feel anything. His body became pieces of cinema film, burnt up and melted as he collapsed into the sand.
* * *
A projector churned out some final images then white light against a blank wall in a mock classroom converted into a courtroom simulation. The teacher’s desk had been cleared of contraband items and pushed back for the judge. The girl playing the judge had blonde platted hair and was wearing a bed sheet like a toga. To the left of the judge was a row of empty chairs for the jury. On the right of the judge were two empty chairs for the witnesses. In the center of the stage area was another
empty chair for the accused. The rest of the chairs had been made into a semicircle to represent a public gallery.
Paul felt the heat moved around by two ceiling fans dangling precariously from their wires. One fan was missing a blade and the rest were trying to compensate. Flies popped from between floorboards and crawled the walls, looking for an exit. The windows had been blacked out. Paul walked towards the public gallery and took a seat in the same row as a young teacher scribbling notes in an exercise book. Paul asked the teacher what was happening and the teacher said, “I’m meant to be a journalist.”
Most of the kids in the public gallery were half asleep or playing with phones. After the jurors had filed into the courtroom, the judge slapped her hand on the table and cleared her throat with a fake cough that at some point turned into a real cough and required a teacher to bring water.
The judge thanked the jurors for coming and told them the vouchers their parents would receive in the mail could be used to claim one half-priced lunch in the canteen at the mine. A teacher handed the judge a script. The judge looked over the script and then told the teacher it was different from the one in rehearsals. The teacher said there had been some last minute changes.
The judge cleared her throat and drank some more water. “I know this case is unconventional,” she put on a deep voice and stumbled over the words after starting too quickly, “but the law is the law and it is our duty as citizens and human beings to see that less enlightened citizens and human beings follow the letter of the law. We do not expect a child to be able to read as soon as he or she drops from his or her mother’s cunt. Do we? No. We protect and guide our children. We catch them when they fall. We nurture them through the magic of language. There does, however, come along at certain unforeseen times individuals who refuse to learn and take it upon themselves to undermine our discipline for no other reason than perverted whims. These individuals,” she looked up and pointed to the empty chair in the middle of the stage area, “must be punished no matter whether or not they are with us in the flesh.”
Paul glanced around to the back of the classroom as a student disappeared through a green door with a sign above it that said fire escape. Paul watched the door for what felt like a few seconds but probably could have been much longer before realizing he had also stood up, walked towards the same door, and was holding the handle. The paint was so thick and recently applied he could taste it. He pushed down the handle and opened the door. He swatted away the flies coming with him. He heard the girl playing the judge ask the jury if they were ready to deliver their verdict. The voices in reply became distorted among a layer of other construction noise. Paul closed the door behind him and walked down some metal stairs that looked temporary. Piles of dismantled scaffolding and bags of concrete and garbage littered the way. Some of the steps were so loose they flipped around and their bolts popped out clanking down.
