Dan Carver: Ruin Nation

The Twentieth Century slunk off in disgrace, its knickers in a bag and a carpet burn on its chin.

The promised apocalypse stayed home. Jesus was a no-show and, most disappointingly, the Y2K bug failed to detonate Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

The Twenty-first Century fared no better, arriving in an expensive dress then passing out in a pool of its own urine midway through the festivities. The misquoted Mayans stayed silent as 2012 came and went and the Aztec Antichrist stayed hidden in his South American hidey hole. The sun kept shining through American carbon dioxide, the sea remained wet and blue around Japanese whaling ships and the Earth kept on spinning in a universe God didn’t create. The great nations faltered, the not-so-great nations fell and the United Kingdom dismembered itself.

CJD, BSE, RQP, Foot and Mouth, Bird Flu, Swine Flu and Ostrich Pox – burning animal carcasses turned our skies black. What wasn’t cremated went into feed-mix, rendering poultry inedible. Attempts to factory farm domestic pets resulted in a plague of distemper and saw an end to cats and dogs. Mink spread from the countryside to the cities, wiping out every small animal species that couldn’t out-breed them. Pigs got lucky, – reserved for organ transplants – horses didn’t, whinnying their way out of the stable and into our staple protein and a nation of little girls wept into their microwave lasagnes. The public proved reluctant to eat donkeys, but it was clearly on the cards.

Our industries collapsed and pundits noted that the only thing we seemed to export was vomit to European beaches. Oh, and Islamist terrorists.

With our good name tarnished by numerous ill-conceived and illegal middle-Eastern conflicts, a ridiculous hyper-inflated currency and the politically correct assimilation of every God-bothering lunatic going, the European Union dropped us like a hot brick. Inspired by Ireland’s example, Scotland declared independence and blockaded itself in. The Welsh disappeared into the mountains, where they may or may not have become extinct.

The French, fearing waves of English asylum seekers, mined the shipping lanes and filled the Channel Tunnel with raw sewage. We were isolated. Quarantined, if you like. The Great Separation had begun.

We were starving. Paralysed by its own incompetence and, politicians being politicians, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, parliamentary process descended into a caustic cocktail of feudalism, nepotism and behind the scenes beatings.

Criminals ran riot. Gypsy warlords pillaged the streets and everything metal was stolen and melted down for bullets. An attempt to impose martial law foundered when the black-market failed to deliver the crack cocaine necessary to keep the troops motivated.

Starving refugees sought shelter in the surviving supermarkets who, sensing the change in the consumer climate, took advantage of their international supply chains and restructured themselves as private armies. Civil war raged, fuelled by arms airdropped by Tesco and the Walmart group.

With all our coal, gas and nuclear resources stripped and shifted, the supermarkets upped-sticks and shipped out, leaving nothing but shell-shocked former-soldiers shivering in rubble.

An irregular militia composed of disgraced military commanders and God-knows-whoever marched upon the capital. They took it, and some kind of peace ensued.

The semi-official police force imposed curfews enforced by carnivorous animals. The release of leopards onto the streets had the knock-on effect of reducing the homeless population and boosting the re-legalised handgun economy.

Ostracised from the rest of the world, we salvaged what we could and rebuilt from wreckage – Frankenstein buildings and mongrel motor vehicles powered by our own shit. Juvenile delinquents took to the air in home-made zeppelins filled with suspect gases. Defecating on foreign air traffic became the new extreme sport.

Finally and incontrovertibly, a gene was discovered that proved a cast iron link between political ambition and sexual perversion. But we all expected that anyway.

Welcome to my world. It’s fucked.

Bullets bounce off the ‘ New Downing Street’ sign. Mortar chunks spring from the brickwork and concrete atomises in small, grey puffs as rebounds and ricochets tear chunks out of ministerial buildings. Security Guard One waves his rifle in authoritarian protest, to be met by a wayward bullet glancing off pockmarked paving stone and finding lodgings in his leg. Security Guard Two surveys the scene from the safety of a reinforced hut.

And whilst One lies prone on bloodstained tarmac, screaming for assistance, Two takes up a pistol and shoots him cleanly through the head thus making proceedings much easier for all involved. He returns to his magazine.

The airship spins on its axis, pointing its nose and four machineguns toward the main building. A cuddly donkey nailed to the door bears the legend: ‘One Ass Too Many! Bring Back Our Mules,’ and a palm print of human skin sizzles on the electrified doorknob. Welcome, my friends… to Number Ten .

Spraying bullets as it descends, the makeshift zeppelin lowers itself to the window, aiming for the sturdy figure pacing, cigar in hand, behind the Plexiglas. But the Plexiglas is bullet-proof. The man turns, unhitches his trousers and exposes his backside to the attackers; his buttocks glowing like two pale moons in the half-light of the office.

Inside the cockpit, a masked figure loads spherical capsules into a paintball gun. He leans out of the side door and spells the word ‘Twat’ across the wall in thirty-seven smeary shots. Mission accomplished, the airship turns to make its retreat, the occupants congratulating each other on how ‘anti-establishment’ they are. The sturdy man – his arse re-holstered – unlatches the window. His features stay set as he slides up the sash and pokes out a rusty service revolver. A few lazy pot shots and the airship explodes in a ball of flame.

“So glad we made these things legal again,” he laughs and turns with an affirming, masculine grunt.

This rambunctious bugger with a penchant for posterial exposure is a Mr Humboldt Bactrian – seventeen stone of personal hygiene issues crammed into a snug-fitting, charcoal grey suit and coated with a permanent film of enthusiastic moisture. He isn’t what you’d call handsome, being redder than a baboon’s backside – but, then, neither is his companion, the bag of knees and elbows they call Benedict Malmot. The bat-like Mr Malmot is tombstone grey with the venal stare of a geography teacher waiting for a student to turn sixteen. He isn’t what you’d call pleasant. Or trustworthy. In fact, some hesitate to call him human. And the joke is that these two run the country.

It seems everyone loses something they love and mourns its loss for the rest of their existence.

‘Dubious Freddy Welcomes you! ’ flashes the sign in tart’s-knicker pink, as its crepitating electrics transform every insect within a twenty-centimetre radius into a charcoal pellet. Crack! Ping! And our insect plummets down toward a waiting tin lid, brimful of little cremated bodies. The tin’s stuck to the floor with some kind of cigarette ash and beer paste, much like Freddy, who’s staring over his large nose and even larger moustache, evaluating which customers he can short change without getting a pool cue in his already misshapen face. But avert your eyes from Freddy. He’s not photogenic. Amputee dwarves seldom are. No, focus your attention on the twenty-six years of angst congealing opposite the sign, counting his blessings on one hand and listing his curses in cramped handwriting on an A4 sheet. His curses are many and varied. And I know. Because I’m him.