Dan Carver - Ruin Nation

“What’s the first best way?” I ask dumbly.

“Just watch,” he tells me.

“Watch what?”

“Watch this!”

Okay. I realise that for someone who claims to have no feelings, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about them. That was a mistake. I don’t want your sympathy. I certainly don’t want your empathy. You start empathising with me and you might start acting like me. And then you try moving into my territory and I have to kill you. Horribly.

But I would like to think you could share in my malicious pleasures. And, as far as things-that-shouldn’t-be-fun-but-are go, this is a pretty special moment.

Now, I never got to be a proper father. I’ve never had a child reach adulthood thanks to the CIA. So this is as close to seeing one of my kids in a school play as I get. (Bactrian in Knightsbridge doesn’t count; I had the delirium tremens at the time.)

I watch as my three undead children ascend the stage, resplendent in their shiny electric wheelchairs: Davenport; Churchill and the woman I now find is called Laeticia Veetabycs.

Cheers and jeers rend the air and my heart swells with pride knowing that something I’ve created should be having such a profound influence on complete strangers.

“I’m finally having an effect on the world,” I whisper to myself.

“You’ve scribbled your first penis in the wet cement of History,” says Malmot, eyes aglow. “This is the dawning of the Death of Democracy!”

“Sounds like a song,” I say, and we drawl our way through a few cynical refrains, sung to the tune of ‘Age of Aquarius’. You could almost call it ‘teambuilding’. But our disillusioned speechwriter wants none of it.

“Poor boy,” Malmot teases. “What a terrible thing it must be to have political convictions.”

Laeticia Veetabycs rolls up to the specially lowered podium. Our sound technician presses play on his laptop and, by the time an unconvincing female voice has finished renouncing all her previous beliefs and advocated rearmament as a means of boosting the economy, we know we’re on for a riot.

“Face it,” she says. “Guns create job vacancies….In all sorts of ways.”

Nelson Churchill does nothing to calm the waters. I don’t recall what he says, but I remember Speechwriter crossing himself and asking the Lord for His forgiveness.

“If you’re worrying what God thinks of your script,” says I, ever the sermonising atheist, “you should have asked him to proofread it. Then it’s His own damn fault if he’s too busy killing children in a famine, somewhere, to give it the once-over.” And damn the little pen-pushing bastard if he doesn’t curse me for a son of Satan.

Back to the stage and Davenport’s vainglorious entrance – all blaring fanfares and electricity-guzzling lighting effects to drive the environmentally-minded audience into a state of apoplexy. Lasers shoot party logos across the ceiling. A back-projected screen shows Opposition propaganda, intercut with our own split-second subliminal calls for violence, public nudity and spontaneous defecation. You don’t want to know what we’ve put in the smoke machines.

“My friends…” Davenport crackles over ear-rending levels of profanity.

“Tread water,” Malmot tells the sound technician.

“My friends, if we could just have a moment’s quiet…” says Davenport.

Malmot signals with a cigarette lighter and black security helmets seep into the crowd like rogue cells in a bloodstream. Short bursts of violence secure an uncertain silence punctuated only by the weeping of children. The technician gets the go ahead and we’re back in business with some affable preamble and a few lame jokes. You know the deal.

“Raise the pace,” says Malmot and the technician nods.

“Reedon Gifford!” Davenport growls. “Whilst Gifford’s end was terrible and extremely regrettable – let us make no bones about that – his part in our nation’s decline extends far beyond the explosive tangerine he rammed up his rectum. Like so many right-wingers before him, he galvanised support by uniting the populace in a shared hatred. He planted the seeds of endemic, institutionalised xenophobia. It was a crop that his successors harvested and saw our complete and total ostracism from the European Union.”

Murmurs of support from the audience.

“See,” says Malmot, “all good lefty stuff.”

“We were thrown a lifeline,” Davenport continues. “Unfortunately, the test of our loyalty to the common European cause, to assist with the economic rehabilitation of Hungary, was something of a poisoned chalice. It is a regrettable fact that a country’s most marketable export may not be to everyone’s taste. And, whilst I abhor the exploitation of women, whilst I wholly support the rights of the individual to practice faiths with doctrines of a more stringent nature, I suspect that we would have been best served steering away from the moral high ground and extending a helping hand to our Hungarian pornographer friends. We’re all born naked, after all. If by ensuring the job security of people who choose to remain naked, we can keep bread on the table and food in our children’s mouths, isn’t that a good thing?”

This doesn’t please the politically correct factions, but Davenport ploughs on. As much as a dead man can be said to plough, that is.

“And so we found ourselves in a situation that even meaningless sexual intercourse couldn’t save. And then, of course, came The Great Separation – with starvation and war as an afterthought.”

“I like it!” Malmot enthuses to the shamefaced Speechwriter.

“Our children grow up – and I use the term loosely – malnourished and physically and intellectually stunted. Poor nutrition claims increasing lives year on year – more so this decade than the last two put together. This is intolerable.”

Somebody claps. Half-heartedly.

“It is a government’s duty to provide for the electorate,” says Davenport, to which Malmot shakes his head.

“Hah! Well, no , it’s the public’s duty to work for the furtherance of the State.”

“It’s our role to provide solutions to problems that the general public are ill-equipped to deal with,” says Davenport. “But, to provide a solution, we must find it first. And to do that, we must be prepared to think the unthinkable and turn it into an unthinkable reality. Because politics is not a popularity contest. Because it’s the bitter pill and not the sugar bullet that cures the illness!

“Now, I hope I’ve impressed upon you the severity of our predicament. We’ve no more options open; no lifelines left. It’s time we took that bitter pill. It’s time we take our medicine!

“Now, contrary to speculation and misinformation the solution is not donkey meat. No matter what the government may think, there simply isn’t enough! Extincting a species is a short-term fix that leaves us more desperate than before. The donkey is our last untainted resource. It must be nurtured and protected. Anything we harvest from it must be replenishable. Yes, ‘replenishable’ is the key word here!”

What’s that phrase? The one about the silence at the centre of the storm? Well, Davenport’s sitting in it.

“Milk…” he says, which is enough for the vegans, who start the first big push for the stage. Little do they know…

“Yes, milk is replenishable,” Davenport continues, “it contains calcium and it’s very good for you. But we’re also going to need protein, and a ready source of protein is… is Semen!”

Malmot collapses into hysterical laughter and Speechwriter was right to damn me for a devil because I’m deriving yet more enjoyment. The sight of an auditorium of furious little fuckwits, fuming over our malicious concoction – it fills me with something that could be joy.