Dan Carver - Ruin Nation

Now it takes three days for your average journalist to sober up enough to write an article – so the news is always three days out of date. And it’s now exactly three days since Ceesal’s broadcast and, coincidently, three days since shoddy maintenance work crippled one of our last power stations and plunged seventy five percent of the population into darkness.

And what’s today’s headline? Clue: It isn’t Ceesal. That’s because no one outside of London and the New Home Counties had a working television set. Everyone inside London and The New Home Counties was watching porn.

Of the few who caught the broadcast, Malmot thinks, we’ll tell them it was a propaganda transmission from mainland Europe – the snail-eating bastards. More reasons to switch off television and protect ourselves from foreign brainwashing and Orson-Wellesian mischief.

The live audience might suspect, but they’d be too drunk to remember and the makers too busy getting coked up and fucking their way up the foodchain to care. So who’s to say what happened? That’s if anything happened at all? Ceesal? Never heard of him. Certainly never swore him in as Prime Minister. No, the new Prime Minister is, well, er? Hell. This is where it falls down. Who is the new Prime Minister?

Thackory Rampton, despite being able to walk upright, looks like an oily seabird. Gerald Maxim has a good brain and totalitarian sympathies, but never goes anywhere without his rentboy. Harriet Beasley eats babies; Winona Crackleford is an addict with three legs. Winston Mokele Mbembe doesn’t exist.

Geoffrey Durham, Chief of the Police and once one of Malmot’s closest allies, makes no bones about his desire to lead the country. He knows all about the dictatorship, but is clever enough not to say anything that could hamper his chances of taking control of it. He’s the Ernst Roehm to Malmot’s Adolf and far too ambitious to be let anywhere near Number 10. He plans to combine his semi-regular thug police force with the military to create, well God knows what he wants to create, but it won’t be pretty. He also likes to dress as an insect for sex.

Well, they say keep your enemies close, but not when they’re looking at you through compound eyes and snapping their massive, dripping mandibles at you. So Harriet Beasley it is. No, Winona Crackleford; addicts are easier to control. Or, perhaps Maxim’s rentboy could have the operation? That would solve a lot of problems….Ah, damnation! It’s all too complicated. What he wouldn’t give for Bactrian back. And then it hits him – a minute tingle at the base of his brain that sweeps upward into a big, fat, wonderful thought. He will have Bactrian back. Maybe not in soul, but at least in body.

“Sincerity Discount Undertakers?” the telephone operator enquires, as the digital exchange is down again.

“That’s correct,” Malmot answers.

“Just putting you through.”

“Thank you.”

“ Sincerity Discount Undeertaakeers,” confirms the sagging answerphone tape. “We’re sorry that no one is present to take youuur call right now. We hope that you wiill try again later when one of our staff iis preseent, as no one iis preseent at preseent. Or you can leave a message after the tone. Remember, you have ouuur sinceeeere sympathieeeees at this difficuuuuuult tiiiiiiiiiime. [Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep]”

“Pick up the damn phone!” barks Malmot, his voice crackling from a stained speaker. “I know you’re in! You’re always in!”

A blood splattered apron lumbers forward through the shadows. It advances with the thud of a footstep and the scrape of the lame leg dragged behind it. Hot breath steams through black/brown rotting teeth. Piggy, onion-skinned eyes swivel in hooded sockets and a voice as stretched and strangulated as the answerphone message calls out:

“I was, eeer… buuusy. And whoooom do I have the priveliiiiege of talking tooo? Would that, perhaps, be aaa… Miiisteer Qwerty?”

Malmot pauses, remembers he chose his alias from staring too long at his keyboard and confirms: “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Aaand would thaat be the Miiister Qwerty of the deead womaan from the reeservoir; a Miiister Qwerty of the road traffic aaaccident victiim with no heeead or the Miiister Qwerty of the faaat maan?” the terrible voice oozes.

“The man,” chokes Malmot, realising he’s been stacking corpses under the same pseudonym.

“Wiith the cock?”

“Yes.”

“Well, moost meen have a cock. So doo youu mean the maan wiith the cock aaand noo heead or the maaan wiith the cock liiike a fossilised thermos flask?”

“The, urgh, thermos flask. You have such a way with words, Shuster,” says Malmot cringing with contempt.

“I haave a waay wiith the deceased, tooo,” Shuster answers worryingly.

“Well, you’re not having it away with this one. I want his body.”

“They all do!” Shuster cackles. “Your frieend’s proooving quite populaar around here!”

“I, er… I don’t get you.” Something like a chill runs up Malmot’s spine.

“Youu seee the veil betweeen the living and the deead is very thin here… Aand a strapping maan liike youur friend… We’ve goot a suiciide victiim… caan’t keeep her eyes off him! Aand theere’s a woman whoo fell out of a Ferris wheeel – little moore than a blooody pulp, I tell youu – sheees all over him like a rash!” An edge of resentment creeps into his voice. “Soo you piick hiim up tommooroow!” he snarls. “Theere’s only roooom for one Casanova heeere.”

Forget my surgical training. The sad truth is I was born to work in advertising. Give me a product name and ten minutes in the toilet with a notepad and I’ll return with armfuls of catchy, punning dog-clag. Rhymes flow through me like sewage through a tenement hallway. Don’t put me near a piano. I’ve the keyboard dexterity of a double amputee jihadist – but that doesn’t stop me tapping out note sequences of such ungodly infectiousness that you’ll be humming them in your urn.

What a cruel gift to give a man: a talent that isn’t a talent and neither the sunny disposition nor cynical superficiality to advance in his career.

And now I make puppets. It’s not an appalling job. As far as civilian employment goes, well, I’ve hauled furniture, stacked crates, operated lathes, CNC routers and a funny machine that puts the threads on bolts, I’ve worked on the bin lorries, the recycling lorries and landfill sites, I’ve picked mushrooms grown in bunk beds full of shit and sold sex to the middle-aged woman at the post office in exchange for passport application forms. I’ve also worked in a call centre and, I tell you honestly, a couple of hours spent talking to God’s greatest creations and you start to question the quality of His workmanship.

So time restrictions, terrible working conditions, no materials, broken tools, a mere four hours electricity a day and Ambler’s distinctive take on body odour and racial harmony all seem mild by comparison. But I could do without the fines and the floggings with electrical flex for poor quality work. I listed our limitations. I think it’s unfair to compare ourselves with the best of the big Hollywood Studios.

You could say I feel under-appreciated. But I’ve a slow-boiling temper and I’m still the right side of sane.

I’m faking a pleasant expression when the tannoy barks into life. Decoding it’s the problem – shards of noise through a speaker held together with electrical tape and the power of prayer, delivered by an Albanian receptionist with a harelip.

I make out my name, something about the boss and hospitals. Through to the main office I go and the facts assemble themselves in all their spittle-flecked glory. And soon I’m running home to jumpstart my car and hightail it to the infirmary.