Dan Carver - Ruin Nation

Working for the government’s great. We’ve got a vac-former; crosscut saw; all kinds of powertools. We’ve even got a welding torch. Dromedary micromanaged us to the point of madness. By contrast, Calamine’s been in once, and he just nodded and made enthusiastic noises. We haven’t seen Calamari at all – good news, really, as he scares me. He’d scare Satan himself.

We’re working long hours but it’s… it’s fun and I never thought I’d hear myself say that. Hell, I’m even getting decent wages. Poverty made a miser of me. Now I can buy Rachel the things she wants and deserves, like divorce papers.

So things are going great. It’s all… It’s all far too good to be true. And that sets my teeth on edge because, as I’ve said more times than I can remember, everything good is always taken away from me.

I’m sculpting clay bodyforms when I hear something outside the workshop. There’s a smashed window covered with cardboard, through which we hear voices – three of them initially. I recognise two at once: Calamari and Calamine. There’s something shiver-inducing about the mysterious third, something almost inhuman. The way it switches from robotic monotone to venomous, nasal gnashing in the flick of a diphthong. The peculiar stresses on certain words, like an actor emoting in his second or third language. Only this man is clearly English. And it’s this same voice that mentions my name. I start thinking in swearwords.

Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves goes the saying. Forewarned is forearmed goes another. I want to know what’s going on here and who the Hell we’ve got ourselves involved with. I press my ear against the chilly corrugated cardboard and, from the word in five I catch, I don’t like the conversation one bit. It’s not the topic – I can’t make that out – it’s the frigid, mechanical way they communicate.

You can tell from the tone there’s a difference of opinion. It’s clear that Calamine and the strangulated voice disagree on some pretty fundamental points. Calamari finds this funny. I hear a large vehicle crunch to a halt on the gravel outside. I strain my ears, but it’s at this point that Elton starts to talk at me in a loud self-pitying monologue.

I bawl some furious rebuke his way and the weird voice stops sharp. I hear the command for “quiet” and then the crunch of footsteps on the frosty ground. I hear the cocking of firearms and more sinister whispers and I can tell they’re heading for the door. I could cheerfully throttle Elton right now. But there’s nothing to do but sit tight and wait. We’re all on the same side after all. Aren’t we?

The door flies open, propelled by Calamari’s heavy boot. He enters, mouth frothing, clutching one of our cat-heads in his tightly clenched mitt.

“ This!” he cries, “Is not fucking inconspicuous! What were you told to be?!” He looks me straight in the eye. “That’s right! Fucking inconspicuous!” And he’s screaming right in my face by now.

“Don’t let our friend upset you,” says a smiling Calamine, although his tone is less than conciliatory. “He takes it very seriously. And we did ask you not to draw attention to yourself, didn’t we?”

It’s a plastic cat-head, I think to myself. People find weirder body parts in the gutter after police raids. But I say nothing as the rabid ape unleashes his next salvo. I sit impassive as he talks himself out. It’s an old trick of mine. I stay silent until he’s used up all his A material and starts weakening his point blustering crap. I then tell him his argument makes no sense and call him ‘Cockface’. This does not go down well .

Whilst he screams, projecting hot air and spittle my way, I tune out. I’m remembering a snatch of something I heard through the broken window, the freakish third voice: “…motivation through fear. That’s what we want to see. Start as we mean to go on, so to speak.”

There’s swearing, shouting and much gun brandishing. It’s all scenery-chewing, cartoon villain bullshit. Then Calamine walks over, blanks my enquiry as to ‘what this is all about’, and starts smashing things on my desk – although with hindsight, I must say just the inexpensive, easily replaceable items. And then he’s dragging me around the floor by my collar.

“If you beat a dog with a piece of rope,” he whispers cryptically, “it blames the rope. Now clutch your left hand.”

“What?” I say.

“Clutch your left hand,” he repeats. “ No , your left hand. I have orders not to break your right. Now, when I slam the desk drawer, you’re going to scream like merry Hell.”

“Eh?”

“Just do it!” He kicks the desk. The legs buckle and the whole structure collapses to the floor, scattering papers and stationery. I wail unconvincingly and then with slightly more conviction when he grabs my hand and whacks it with a steel ruler, leaving a ferocious purple welt. “We need a mark,” he explains. “You,” he points at Elton, “cry like a girl.” Elton, staring wild-eyed, doesn’t need any prompting. He explodes into genuine tears. Calamari sees none of this. He’s too busy daubing the national flag on the wall with a tin of house paint. He salutes it.

Now you’ll think I’m being over dramatic but I swear this is true: the electricity spikes, the lights pop and the dark that was outside is inside. More tame trolls trickle in, like liquid night, and a monstrous thing twists toward us, blocking our escape. Wrapped nose to ankle in a flapping, leather greatcoat surges something… Well, at this point, I can’t tell what it is. Is it even human? I hear there are some weird things evolving up in Northumberland.

It’s a scene redolent of cheap horror, where the head vampire, flanked by his gurning familiars, reveals himself to the disbelieving hero and heroine. Well, substitute me for the hero and our cowering cockney Neanderthal for the heroine and you’re closer to the truth. I’m expecting the cape-like greatcoat to creak open and belch bats – such is the theatrical feel to proceedings. And then they ramp up the camp some more with the dimming of torches and the lighting of the room with a signal flare. I watch with a sensation of half fear, half fascination as the red glow reveals something very nasty indeed. And it’s smiling.

Now, when I say ‘smiling’, I mean a kind of pulling of the mouth into a tight, rigid circle with brown teeth jutting behind, giving the overall effect of a bashed radiator grill playing hide and seek in a swollen anus. Framing this foul orifice is a grotesque, grey golem, too tall by far and seemingly made out of right angles.

He strides up to me, his legs so long that each forward step is a swoop. He speaks, and that weird cat’s-mewl of a voice curdles my soul like fingernails down a blackboard. I stand silent as the vile entity introduces himself. As Malmot.

There’s a whipping-branch strength in his wiry frame as he cuffs me across the face with a leather glove.

“Ow,” I say, my cheek burning. “Now where’s the need for that?”

“Pig skin,” he says smugly. “It makes such a rewarding slap.” And he pivots on his paws, prowling the workshop, poking, prodding and pouring scorn on things he clearly doesn’t understand. I can’t say I’m listening too intently. No, my attention’s focussed on those gloves of his, and where he got them. Pig products are the preserve of the profligate and powerful. The sinister , even. Once more, it’s the little things that set my nerves a-jangling.

He issues some unrealistic demands: Bactrian is to walk and talk and to do so, ‘Convincingly’. Well, we can do talking, but it’ll look like a bulldog chewing a wasp. Walking? Well, the Japanese manage it but they have computers, twenty-four hour electricity and millions of dollars. And still their robots move like ducks taking a shit. So what chance does a third world nation stand? ‘Convincing’ just isn’t going to happen.