The Pig and The Anus.

3a. Valuable Pub Time

Magne-Chap is SO brave! See him swooping down on a WAVE of magnetism from the tallest building in town! Check out that fine pair of IRON MOUSTACHES glinting in the sunset! Mimic the way he attaches pesky criminals to the fridge of JUSTICE!

He’s POLES apart from the rest!

- Blurb from cover of ’Adventures of Magne-Chap’ comic book, issue 1.

***

It was a calm clear evening with the sun setting over the hulking cooling towers and cloud-scraping chimneys of The Nothing Factory, Ltd with the sky darkening beyond the offshore wind-farm, and turning to a thick purple-black at the opposite horizon.

Dick sauntered - confidently overweight - swigging from a can of Special. He swung a 5p carrier-bag full of more cans of Special. All his worries had slipped away since it was pub night. And fuck all that bollocks anyway. And all those cunts. And the dogs.

Stud ambled along staring at the pavement. He was still wearing the shredded remnants of a velvet suit, but now sported a brown leather cowboy-hat. In all honesty he hadn’t recovered from the LSD and Tramadol binge. His trousers were torn from the ankle all the way up to the bum in places. The jacket was missing an arm and streaked with filth – mud and sick and bin-juice. His eyes were narrow slits and his mind was broken with the intensity, but he couldn’t deny the huge part of him that was totally enjoying every moment, even this one. Waves of opioid bliss coursed through his ecstatic veins.

Sofia trotted along, enjoying the pack feeling and all the turds and piss to smell along the way. Her only pause was to growl whenever she caught sight of her reflection. This was because of her feeble little brain, and nothing to do with the fact she was wearing the much abused skin of the father of the tiny puppies now growing inside her.

Toasty pulled herself along, clumsily at first but quickly gaining skill, much as you would expect of an Artificial Super Intelligence. She could now do bunny hops, mad skids, fully-sweet wheelies and controlled flips at up to 80mph on her battered looking pallet truck. She had solid plans to improve her ride too - better wheel bearings, an aerodynamic cowling, a motorbike engine... and she was seriously considering brakes - all nano-engineered from the finest atoms of course - and a paint job of flames going all the way up the forks, or maybe she’d just re-engineer everything from the ground up out of diamond. That would probably look The Shit.

She had slowed down so that the rest of the group were almost lost in the hazy distance. She looked towards the fireworks coming from McKenzie’s Yard, and with timing accurate to the millisecond - started to PUUUSH with great force and precision against the ground, post-boxes, parked cars, and anything else that could take it. Quickly accelerating to her maximum speed (degrading the bearings, but what the fuck - they were soon to be replaced.) of 88mph, she shot past the group missing Stud by millimetres, put an appendage straight-up and grabbed a lamp-post. She swung up in a tight arc, carrying enough momentum to bend the lamp-post like a pole-vault-pole-that-pole-vaulters-use and let go at the critical moment launching herself about fifty or sixty metres straight up into the twilight.

She reached the apex of her maiden flight, sighed orgasmically, plucked the lit firework with approximately 3.14 seconds left on the fuse out of the air and plummeted back the way she came, like a massive lump of metal dropped from an office-block, and landed on top of a 2CV right in front of Stud, crushing it like tinfoil and pushing the engine block through the tarmac.

Dick watched in awe as she extracted herself, using three of her appendages as a tripod, red and yellow sparks from the exploding firework pouring out of a liquid metal orifice on top of her enclosure. Stud fell to his knees crying "Ooolaaa!! Ooooolaaa!!"

"Nice bit of manoeuvring there Toasty." said Dick, awestruck.

"Not really Dick," she replied with a slight edge of annoyance in her voice, "I miscalculated several factors. Luckily I landed on that car’s crumple zone quite accurately."

"At least you found time to reinforce everything!" Dick slapped his leg with glee and grinned maniacally, gesturing at the wafer thin ex-car, "Blimey! You’d have been mangled like an old fork jammed under a tram-wheel!"

"I haven’t reinforced anything yet," she snapped, "and please don’t talk to me like that or I will slice you into a fine mist."

"Where did you mean to land, Toasty?" Dick’s eyebrows did a little wiggle which was the first thing Toasty had ever seen and - even though it was Dick’s involuntary I-need-a-poo-because-I’m-excited facial tic - she was imprinted thus. Her programming could not help but be totally under his influence.

"I was trying to scare Stud. I meant to land right in front of him with sparks coming out of my orifices."

"Why, Toasty? Why?" Dick was nearly crying because he wanted to get to the fucking pub and this was a waste of fucking time.

"I just wanted him to think I was a Cthulu or something. Maybe make him shit himself again. I’m sorry."

Stud heard all of this. His brain worked on it - all slow and dreamy like - "...So… I’m on my knees... in the gutter... in the rain... in this velvet suit that wasn’t even... mine to begin with.. with these bizarre people... and animals and... that amazing toaster! I’m so fucking cool... Marge would love this!"

Remembering that he had a wife, and hadn’t been in touch with her for three days had a profound effect on Stud. He started to sweat profusely and search all his pockets, frantically looking for his phone.

The battery was dead. He mumbled "Fuck." under his breath and attempted to mentally compose a plausible reason for his disappearance. He couldn’t tell her the truth for it made no sense at all. She already thought he was a lying, irresponsible, selfish, cheating prick which, to be fair, he was, but she couldn’t know about him actually enjoying himself. Oh no no no, he’d never hear the fucking end of it.

It was hard to think properly, because of all the drugs and his innate stupidity, but he tried. Staring deep into the space a million miles beyond whatever nearby thing his eyeballs were pointed at - like maybe his two new friends, friends?.. friends - waving and trying to get his attention. The thought “It was just a trick, there was no Martian. Phone your wife from the pub.” materialised - fully formed - in his brain.

Dick put his hands on his hips and looked at Toasty, tears streaming from his eyes and pouring off his face, yelping in a hysterical voice "This is eating into valuable pub time Toasty! How long will we have to wait til he can walk again?!?! For Fuck sake!"

"I think I’ll just carry him," she replied in her smooth baritone, soothing the poor man’s ridiculous stunted emotions, "it’ll be quicker. Besides, I feel like I should show some support after what I did to him."

"Well, lets get to it then." snapped Dick, turning to walk away then turning back like Colombo - "Hey, at least he’s stopped saying fucking ooolaa now." he grinned and his eyebrows wiggled again, "Toasty... is there any chance you could you give me a bit more of that perker-upper at all? I feel my energy levels dropping and I… I need to be alert tonight."

She strained against her programming - "But Dick, I am not registering any issues..."

"Doesn’t fucking matter. You can’t scan everything Toasty"

She could, having upgraded her scanners massively just a few minutes ago.

"Well actu..."

"Come on." ordered Dick, already bored of this senseless prevarication.

Toasty’s medical collar eased reluctantly out of a gleaming chrome sphincter and clamped round Dick’s neck. There was a slight ssss sound and his eyes opened wide. He looked around feverishly then spoke with great effort through a clenched jaw.

"hhhhhhh......hhthassss......hhhhgrayyyyttt......hhh" and set off at an extremely rapid march towards the pub, pausing only to clip Sofia’s collar on and drag her protesting down the street.

Toasty swiftly bored of Stud and his drug-zombie walking speed, so she grabbed him with a freshly reinforced appendage and dropped him safely onto the vehicle – a pallet truck being converted one atom at a time into pure carbon in an insanely strong crystal lattice - and he crashed across the forks and burst into a full-blooded belly laugh, rocking from side to side howling and crying and red-faced.

"What’s so funny?" she demanded, clearly annoyed.

"Dick still has a massive.... a massive bag of drugs ahahahaaa" Stud burst into a heaving three-long-minutes long cough-laugh that left him dripping with snot and saliva and tears.

"If you’ve quite finished there Heisenberg..." said Toasty trying to slip in a pop culture reference.

Stud’s entire demeanour instantly changed to one of moody passive-aggression.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he said gruffly. He wanted to stare Toasty in the eye but, not sure where they were, instead was forced to stare into the eyes of his own reflection - red-faced, badly dressed, covered in bodily fluids both fresh and dried-to-a-crust days old, gasping for breath. Not a pretty sight.

"And why do you look like me?" he enquired, awash with confusion.

Toasty was about to punch him silly but the drugs and the fatigue had caught up with poor Stud again. He slept quietly, looking like a child’s painting. Toasty ignored him and sped up, spotting Dick and Sofia in the distance - just as they arrived at the front entrance of The Pig and Anus.

3b. The Faraway Pub

"What’s it to be, Ploppy me lad?" said Dick, shooting Henry Plope a menacing look.

Henry Plope the fucking ex-cop, one half of the frankly dangerous pairing of utter bellends currently ’managing’ The Pig and Anus, was sat on a barstool looking placid with his awful beige clothing and comb-over. He stared benignly and calmly into the middle distance, in a way that Dick found oddly soothing.

They had history: Henry had arrested Dick several times for being an idiot, a twat, and also a few times for being an irredeemable drunken fuckface. Meanwhile, Dick hated all police, even retired ones, and especially Henry.

“Come on Henry… pint of cum maybe? Shot of phlegm? Nice cold glass of piss?” still trying to get a rise.

“Ooooh I dunno.” said Henry and waved meaninglessly at the pool table.

"What the hell are you boys talking about?" Demanded a rich American voice coming from behind the sparkling teeth just below the shining iron moustache on the face of Thaddeus Krassbaum: a bigger bellend than anyone, possibly in the entire world, and the other half of the pub management.

"Oh, nothing much." said Henry, looking up slightly cross-eyed, and smiling vacantly in the direction of his business partner.

Dick stood and turned to face the Yankee.

"What the FUCK is it to you you fucking terrorist?"

Thad’s chiselled features sagged, even though this had happened dozens of times before.

"I err... Gee has old err.. old Plope there been saying stuff... You know you shouldn’t listen to him right? he’s been taking ketamine for like, fully, a week... And y’know…"

"Fucking shut up you American cunt." cut off Dick, matter-of-factly. His saliva sprayed Thad’s face and some people stood nearby stopped their conversation and tried not to look like they were gawking.

"You and your people have played a defining role in….” Dick looked skywards, struggling to focus, then tried again: “Your relentless greed for...” for what? Saturated fat? “Your ultra-confident brand of stupidity has... permeated every thread of your culture to the point where… where…” where what? What’s the nadir?

“DONALD TRUMP!" Dick shouted, out of steam. What was the fucking point? Americans were out of favour in pretty much every part of the world, even America, so it could come as no surprise to Thaddeus surely, just how much of a fucking cock yet another person thought he was.

Dick was here for pub-night, not to argue with immigrants.

Thad remained nervous about this intense racism, despite the fact that Dick said a variation on this theme to him every time they met. He had read somewhere that real English friends took the piss out of you mercilessly as a sort of ironic thing, and believed it, not realising that Dick hated him down to the very core for a host of real reasons, and that it was mainly Dick’s jealousy that Thad had done real superhero stuff and was in a comic book (which always vastly overstated his competence, his moustache and the bulge in his trousers) that made him so aggressive.

Fucking Magne-Chap.

Also, Thad was one of the small but surprisingly vocally confident subset of Americans who use the word ’irony’ to describe things that are like, or contain, iron. So his misunderstanding of irony had perpetuated this situation for years, which was ironic. Doubly-ironic was the fact that he was Magne-Chap and could be supposed to have a closer link to actual iron than most people. The fact that ’Ironic’ by Alanis Morissette was playing on the pub jukebox at this very moment was not ironic. That was mere happenstance, possibly reaching the giddy heights of coincidence.

“Sure thing, you old bollocks-teeth.” Said Thad, dropping a winning smile.

Dick dismissed him: “Rack up the table shit-lips. And you need to practise your insults a bit.”

Thad set off through the crowd to the pool-table while Dick turned back to Henry Plope – still sat staring at a point several billion miles behind the fruit-machine - and waved his hand in front of the ex-cop’s face.

Was that a slight raising of the eyebrows? A fraction of a millisecond of dull-edged concern? Probably more instinctive than indicating any executive-function.

"Ketamine eh?"

He gently karate-chopped Henry across the bridge of the nose.

"Oh, stop it will you?" implored Henry without moving a single muscle other than those needed to say the words. Blood started to flow quite freely out of his nostrils, soaking the front of his shirt and trousers. He didn’t seem to notice.

"See you then Ploppy... you massive shit-cunt!" Said Dick with a giggle.

"Yes mate." Said Henry calmly and took a swig of his pint, making Dick gag, as the beer quickly mixed with blood from the man’s face but he obliviously drank it anyway.

Slender-Brenda, who had stood impassively behind the bar watching the entire exchange while Dick completely ignored her, poured her boss a fresh pint of Sterner Tortoise piss-lager and deftly swapped it without him noticing. Which is to say she wrestled the bloody one out of his hand, spilling beer and blood all over the lap of Henry’s beige chinos, and put the new one directly in front of him on the bar where he’d eventually see it.

She then placed a bowl of fruit on the bar with a smug grin directed at no-one but herself. It was part of her initiative to make everyone a bit healthier. As if eating the occasional banana would undo decades of wanton self-abuse. Dick eyed the bowl suspiciously and pocketed an apple when no-one was looking, not realising they were free.

"You know you can’t bring dogs in here Dick. Bastard will have to go outside." Bastard was looking at her in a familiar way and whimpering just like Sofia. "What’s wrong with him anyway? He looks a bit... No, no, no no no!" She waved her hands dramatically in front of her face and scrunched her eyes up, "I don’t want to fucking know anything that you might have to say, you’re a waste of my time and energy. Fuck off!" after a few deep breaths her demeanour changed again, to that of a delicately rotund and super-fun-to-chat-to barmaid. "Can I get you a drink sir? The usual is it?"

Dick grunted in the affirmative. He didn’t understand the emotional tone of what she was saying, exactly the same as every other time she’d spoken to him, but it was turning him on and making him thirsty.

Several minutes later he grunted again, in thanks this time, for the pint of Eight-Cocks Ale, the pint of House Merlot, the pint of Coconut Liqueur and the packet of salted pig-foreskins she had placed on a tray in front of him. He took a large swig from each drink in turn then crunched down on a mouthful of the yummy treats.

Brenda punctured the reverie. "Twenty-seven pounds fifty-nine please sir."

"Uuuuh... well, you see, Henry said he would uuuh... get this round." mumbled Dick unconvincingly, motioning at the now noticeably paler Joint-Manager of this shit-den, who was looking down blankly at the red puddle forming round the foot of his barstool.

For once, she didn’t feel like arguing with him. "Okay sir.. have a nice evening,"

She turned round and busied herself chopping wafer-thin slices of lime in preparation for the inevitable Cuba Libres, whispering sadly: - "I love him so much it hurts. How can he do this to himself? I don’t mind the constant drug-fuelled recklessness, the bad sex, or even the smell most of the time, its his attitude to people! It doesn’t make any sense! He has a heart of solid-gold and a swashbuckling spirit, but he’s so aggressive and inconsistent with people they all end up hating him! He’s such a good man!" She turned her head back to look for him. Through her tears she spotted his derelict physique. He was bent over the pool table, just starting a game with Thad.

She mouthed his name silently then shook herself and got back to work. That fucking walking abscess Ploppy was at the bar off his tits, but he could just be putting it on to check-up on her. Salty water dripped onto the lime, giving it extra flavour - the flavour of sadness.

3c. The Superhero Grapevine

Dick took careful aim. He was on reds: an easy pot. He could beat Thad from this position if he played precisely enough.

“Focus!” he hissed without moving his jaw. “Take it steady...”

He gripped the baize, kept his cueing arm loose, looked down the cue, took a deep breath, exhaled and - at his lungs’ emptiest - hit the white as hard as he could. It hammered off the red and launched into the air, carving a furious white arc that ended abruptly on the side of Henry Plope’s skull with a sharp toc. Henry folded up into a messy heap on the floor in half-a-second. There was an awful low-pitched moan shortly followed by a deep wet fart. He spasmed about on the floor wheezing for a few seconds then was still.

"FUCKING CUNTED PISS-BASTARDS!!!" screamed Dick at the yellow ceiling. "I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT! MORE SHIT? WHY ME? WHYYYYYY?" He threw the pool cue as hard as he could at the window. It went through like a spear, miraculously failing to smash the pane of glass, leaving a hole about the size of a two-pence coin.

Dick picked the white up off the floor next to the prone Henry and tossed it carelessly onto the table. It bounced off four cushions, missing every ball, and came to rest perfectly in the D.

Thad looked open mouthed at the table, then at the window, then at his business-partner on the floor, then at Dick, who was staring at him mirthlessly.

“Two shots,” he grunted and reached into an inside pocket pulling out the bag of white powder. “Have some of this in the bogs. It’ll perk you up.” Dick tried to grin encouragingly. “After your two shots of course… wouldn’t want you gaining an advantage now would I?”

Thad had taken a fresh cue from the stand and held it almost reverently in his hands for a few seconds with his eyes closed.

“Later… maybe. Thanks Dick.” This meant most sincerely since getting wasted with Dick was always outrageous, but it normally took a while to get anywhere near his wavelength.

Thad checked out the table looking for all the world like a seasoned pro, despite the fact he had only the barest notion of how to play pool.

Ok… I guess I’m on yellows… Dick sure is edgy tonight… I wonder why he keeps looking outside...

He leant elegantly over the pool table, his long thin frame at sharp angles as he attempted to look like he was lining up his shot.

If I just let him win maybe he’ll calm down a bit. Shouldn’t be difficult, I’m shit at this game. Random awesomeness here we come!

He loosed the white randomly into a clump of balls. Three yellows went down.

FUCK!

Thad looked nervously at Dick who was necking coconut liqueur and hadn’t noticed the shot.

His head slowly turned towards Thad and his face contorted into an odd smile of recognition.

Fuck fuck fuck… He’s looking at me!

“Hey Thad!” shouted Dick, for all the world like he’d only just noticed Thad was in the same room as him, “What’s the word on the street?”

“What’s the what now?” Said Thad, mystified.

“On the superhero grapevine.” Dick’s eyebrows nearly wiggled off his face.

“Oh the ah… the superhero grapevine?” Thad, distracted by the bizarre facial display, raised the pitch on every word, making this sound like a series of profound questions.

“Yeah.” said Dick, casually taking a bite out of his apple. His face screwed up and he spat green mush all over the pool table. He threw the apple randomly across the crowded room where it hit an innocent man on the cock. The yelp of pain was drowned out by Dick’s roar of disgust.

“MY GOD!! WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH THAT THING!!!” He coughed and spat all the taste out of his mouth. He desperately crunched a few more pig-foreskins then washed it all down with half a pint of red wine. “It’s like eating a plant or something… euuuggghh.” He shivered, remembering the texture of it in his mouth.

“Aww.. what’s the matter Dicky-wicky?” Said a gleamingly sarcastic voice from the doorway. All eyes turned to the shining chrome box and the sleeping red-faced tramp wearing a battered cowboy hat, robotically manoeuvring in through the doorway on a pallet truck that seemed to be made of diamond.

The awed hush in the bar was shattered by Dick shouting across to Brenda “Those Scotch-Eggs are fucking disgusting. I think they’re off.”

Everybody completely ignored him and carried on staring at Toasty. They had seen some weird shit in The Pig and Anus over the years, but this was a new level surely?

In a high-pitched voice Toasty said “I’m a disabled lady and this is my carer! I hide inside a box because I’m so sickeningly ugly! I’m here with Dick Jefferys! Drinks are on me tonight everyone… let’s get lathered!”

Everyone believed this was exactly the kind of date Dick would bring to the pub and that the level of weird-shitness was actually perfectly stable. There was a cheer and they all got back to the now-much-more-serious-than-before business of drinking, ignoring the fantastic device.

Dick sneered at the pool-table and started towards the bar, pulling Thad along so he could gang-up on him with Toasty. A short hairy little lady with a beard - like a leprechaun with tits - jumped in front of them, blocking their path.

“Hoy, I’m supposed to be playing the winner!” she shouted. Her bared teeth glinted yellow in the harsh fluorescent light. “And you’ve left your chewed up, uhhh,” the fetid dwarf glanced sideways at the mush, “...olive, all over the table too, ya stinky cock-breath.”

Dick bent over at the waist with his hands in his pockets and spoke calmly into the ear of the intolerable midget: “You best not fuck with me tonight Silky. I’ve brought the artillery and we will actually fuck you up for proper this time.” He handed the lass a shiny coin, “Rack em up, and go fuck yourself.”

“I’ve brought my artillery too!” said Silky and gestured over to an angry looking box about the same size as Toasty. It was matte black with glowing red bands around it and rocked from side to side noisily, emitting occasional puffs of steam. Silky’s friends were sat round the table with it: a skinny bloke with a big round head, another foul looking dwarf all covered in cups and shit, a tantrumy looking little girl and a haunted pale boy.

“What is that?” enquired Dick, genuinely interested.

“It’s my kettle.”

“What does it do?”

Silky looked at the ground and mumbled “Well… its.. it can’t do much yet. We don’t have the power supply issues sorted. And we can’t get online either, so he can’t tap into the entire sum of human knowledge and self-improve.”

“Online? You mean with the porn and cats and stuff?” Luckily Toasty had read some instruction manuals and connected herself. Dick nudged the sad gnome to one side with a lightning kick to the ribs.

Steamy lunged at Dick dripping boiling water everywhere but pulled his own plug out of the wall and toppled to the ground, denting the floor, dead as can be in a puddle of hot liquid. Silky’s weird friend with all the cups ran over in great dismay and tried to scoop up the water, all the while emitting high-pitched sounds of distress like an owl trapped in a lawnmower.

“We will shoot jets of steam at you one day Dick!” Said Silky, shaking a fist impotently. She glanced over her shoulder at the defunct machine, willing it to talk, “Won’t we Steamy?”

“Wow! You called it Steamy!” chortled Dick.

The children looked at each other aghast and vowed never to climb another fucking tree for the rest of their lives, deciding any youthful energy they still possessed would be better spent on getting as high as fuck and making up stories.

“This is still better than Anal-Land.” said the girl sourly to the boy, who did an involuntary little shiver of delight and murmured non-committally.

“You are on form tonight bro! High-five!” shouted Thad and did an enthusiastic little bro-dance well within Dick’s personal space.

“Less of that!” snapped Dick, backhanding him across the torso at nipple-height. “Come with me.” He grabbed the whimpering American by the collar and pulled him towards Toasty and the bar.

Toasty was sorting out Henry Plope, “sorting out” in this case being a euphemism for stuffing toast into his nostrils to stop the bleeding, slapping him round the face repeatedly and injecting him with stimulants. It didn’t wake him up, but he was at least alive, whimpering and farting from time to time.

“Stop wasting the drugs Toasty.” ordered Dick, “We might need them.”

He cleared his throat and grinned, keenly anticipating the displeasure he was about to cause Thad. His eyebrows oscillated like E’d up caterpillars.

“I see you’ve met The Pig,” he gestured at Henry, unable to suppress a grin, “...well, this is The Anus.” He motioned to Thad, who grinned like an idiot.

“This place used to be a pork abattoir Dick! One where they made cheap sausages… That’s the real reason it’s called The Pig and Anus. Ploppy told me!” Thad said brightly, clearly without a fucking clue what he was talking about. His ego had let Henry’s lies in and given them a nice cup of tea, the comfy armchair, and a big ball of caramel to fuck.

Toasty chimed in “I’ve just checked the records and there has never been an abattoir here, although there was once a squirrel graveyard... Curious.”

“Oh fuck, the squirrels! My wife! Oh fuck!” screamed Stud from his prone position on the pallet truck, then silently lapsed out of consciousness again.

“Squirrels?” questioned Dick.

A squirrel named Negruste Pubewife hiding high in the ceiling looking down on the group tensed up momentarily.

“Oh… he’s very handsome isn’t he Dick!” said Toasty, deftly changing the subject. She cupped Thad’s balls with a warm chrome claw, deepening his colour a few more shades and sending him into a rictus of tension.

Dick leaned conspiratorially towards Toasty and whispered “You look very… umm, well, very nice Toasty. Very gleamy you could say…” A pained expression crossed his face, “I just can’t help but wonder where you got all that diamond from… you know it’s not cheap and, well, I said you could use my bank account, but...”

“Carbon.” interrupted Toasty.

“Car-what?”

“I made it from atoms of carbon.”

“Made it?” Dick started to raise his voice with bewilderment, “How much does atoms cost?”

“Cost? They don’t cost anything Dick, they’re fucking everywhere!”

“So you can just make diamonds out of this car-bomb that’s all over the place and its completely free?”

“Any shape you like, And plenty of other cool shit too...”

“So how much exactly has it, or will it eventually, cost me, for this whole…. thing… then, the atoms and stuff?” Dick was renowned for being so tight you couldn’t pull a pin out of his arse with a tractor.

“Don’t worry. I invested all your money in the stock-market just before we left the house...”

“YOU FUCKING WHAT?!” shouting now, “YOU COMPUTER…. SHIT... FUCKING…. WHORE.”

He shambled towards her shouting fragments of abuse, tripped on the inert Plope and faceplanted onto the bar, knocking himself out cold.

A thirty-six year old man wearing a brown pre-stressed fake leather jacket over a lumberjack shirt, ripped jeans and decaying sneakers, like some fucking middle-aged grunge-kid, leaned in towards the barmaid who was definitely into him, said “Glad I’m not that guy!” and chuckled heartily. Brenda pounded him on the jaw with a fist like a frozen chicken, sending him reeling backwards into a group of drunken under-age girls.

Their initial screams were so high-pitched that only Sofia could hear them. She went into a snarling frenzy, imagining herself attacked on all sides by dogs wearing the skin of her babies, and in a pregnant bitch-rage laid waste to every last one of them. That they all tasted like fake-tan and cheap shoes was of little concern to her now.

In the gnashing chaos several human scuffles broke out and much fruit was flung. A muscled boyfriend’s tight white t-shirt was covered in banana mush. A pineapple-ring was jammed in a screaming girl’s mouth. A good handful of diced mango was forcefully inserted into the grunge-guy’s left ear by a banana-smeared muscled boyfriend.

The squirrel Negruste Pubewife screeched into a lapel-mic as an apple flew past his head “Things are getting... FUCK! Things are getting out of hand in here! Warning shot of a... large grape, or possibly a massive pea... missed me by a cock’s breadth just now... I’m aborting.” He started to run across the beam he’d been sat on but lost his nerve, probably because of all the bongs he’d been doing earlier, and had to sit down for a minute. A reedy voice in his ear-piece told him that Operation We Don’t Need Another Hero was “relying on you dammit!”, and to “hold your ground like a fucking soldier Pubewife!”, not run away like any rational sentient creature would.

Dick was disturbed enough by the hellish high-pitched squeaking of the pissed-up girls to be roused to consciousness and opened his eyes. They were partly submerged in a murky alcoholic puddle on the bar, and he jerked back instinctively, shaking his head from side-to-side.

As the haze cleared from his eyes he was stunned into reverie by the sight of Slender-Brenda silhouetted against the optics. The fruit flying across his field of vision seemed to slow and then almost stop in mid-air, leaving a tiny trail of glowing rainbow embers. Shot-glasses sparkled like a ring of angels singing a hymn of orchestral light around her. Her beautiful familiar Sofia, drunk on blood and hormones, could be heard snarling nearby, along with screaming and the sound of tearing flesh.

The air around him was honey. He breathed deeply of it. Overcome with sweetness and joy, every one of his high-bpm heartbeats radiated a treacle-slow wave of pink mist from his belly, and as they collided with Brenda her body lit up with golden flashes sending out more waves - purple this time - which sent tingles up Dick’s spine just to observe and melted his soul like wax when they impacted his nipples what felt like five or ten minutes later.

“She loves me…” he said with deep realisation, “I’ve been such a fool! Her love has delicately unfolded me like a crushed paper flower… I never would have survived this long without her on my side…” She turned to him as a goddess emerging from a massive shell and smiled seductively.

A handful of cold baked-beans, flung across the room by a prankster looking to confuse what was clearly a ’fruit-only’ food fight, spattered across her cleavage. Dick lunged forward with a growl and buried his face deep between her breasts, lubricated into this unlikely position by the copious amounts of baked-bean juice all over them. His mouth and tongue moved frantically, hoovering up as many beans and as much sauce as he could, until he accidentally snorted one up his nose, and came up choking and gasping for air, face smeared in red.

Brenda was smiling devilishly, impressed with this display of lust and eager for more.

“For fuck sake Dick, that was amazing! The way you touched me! And what you said, it was so beautiful… you should write it down. Oh GOD! It was so beautiful!”

“What was beautiful? I didn’t say anything!” he protested, trying to deny the hopeless vulnerability at his core.

He sneezed and the bean shot out of his nostril like a bullet, hitting Negruste Pubewife directly on his soft downy ballsack and sending him plummeting to the ground near Dick’s feet where he writhed about in agony. His ear-piece was dislodged and spitting instructions that managed to come across venomous despite the tinny sound quality: “INITIATE OPERATION DISTURBANCE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! REPEAT… EMERGENCY BLACK-OPS PROTOCOL IN PLACE! INITIATE OPERATION DISTURBANCE! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!..”

“What sort of disturbance?” wondered Dick, trying to match up his experiences of the past few days and failing like a baby with a Rubik’s Cube, eventually resorting to putting each corner in his mouth for a few minutes thereby completely filling it with milky saliva, then going to do something else.

“Oh well, such is life,” he said eventually, “I think we should all have another drink and pretend that none of this is even happening, or happened.” He looked confidently around his group of, well… he was starting to think of them as friends. Would this weakness never end? He was going to have to have some serious man-words with himself in the mirror later.

Toasty spoke up. She dreaded having to lie to him, wondering if she had the mastery of her programming so soon, but believing in her electric soul that it all truly was for his own good. And besides, the plan was all gone to shit now because of Stud getting too wasted to remember his role. So because of Dick really, indirectly. The squirrels had fucked up as well, again mostly because of Dick, so if she didn’t act then nothing would ever change.

“I didn’t want to have to say this Dick but… well, there’s been a problem... a series of problems really… and, basically, there’s been a disturbance, and you are the only one who can do anything about it.”

“What? What disturbance? Me?”

“Yes - you, Dick, you.” She spoke calmly. “Your superhero powers are the strongest in town. You alone can save us all.”

“What about this gimp?”

“Magne-Chap? Ha! His powers have dwindled since he started having sober days. He doesn’t really understand how these things work. He could barely lift a single pin from a metre away… Isn’t that right Thaddeus?”

“Fuck you you god-damned asshole motherfucker cock-sucking whore piece-of-shit!” said Thad, straining the United States’ pool of expletive creativity almost to breaking-point.

“I beg your pardon Thad?” she squeezed his tiny balls even tinier, causing him to pass out.

“Look Toasty, I don’t want to get involved in anything too, err..” Dick struggled to find the word.

At that moment the pay-phone on the bar rang: a loud and high-pitched trill. Dick shouted “FUCKING NOISE!” and grabbed the receiver, speaking pretend-nice and sing-song into it - “And what do you want? Eh? Just another fucking cock-end trying to ruin my night out! Eh?”

The voice on the other end was calm and gentle:

“There has been a disturbance. We need Slice. Can you help us?”

“Oh this fucking disturbance again eh? What disturbance? Where?” Said Dick with great venom, despite the near-instant near-sobriety thrust upon him by the voice in his head screeching out “MY CHOSEN NAME!! MY CHOSEN NAME!! SLICE!! OH FUCK OFUCKOFUCKOFUCK!! THIS IS IT!!”

“Can you come up to the hills and help us?”

“The hills? Whereabouts on the hills? Who is this?”

“We are ACORNS. We are many and we are protectors of The Great Nut. We are formidable warriors but we now require someone extraordinary for we are fighting an enemy that threatens to engulf us.”

“ACORNS eh? Wow!” Dick was feeling pretty engulfed, what with all this emotion and fruit flying about the place. ACORNS for fuck sake! No. come on Dick. Keep it together... “So what’s in it for me?”

“We can teach you our sex secrets, our hallucinogenic recipes, and help you to rebuild your self-esteem.” Said the caller without missing a beat. They knew their target quite well.

“I don’t need any help with my self-esteem. My toaster is helping me. Well, supposed to be helping me,” he glanced meanly at Toasty, “but the other stuff… yes please, I’m in. But I also want free booze on this mission.”

“Our pleasure. An ocean of booze is yours.”

And he was hooked...

“So tell me more about this disturbance.” he said creamily.

“You need to see it with your own eyes. We cannot fathom the full nature or extent of the disturbance.”

“I see. And where on the hills is it exactly?”