SHORT: Consider That a Divorce [2011]

CONSIDER THAT A DIVORCE

Midway between junctions 12 and 13 on the M42, something finally snapped. Perhaps it was the soulless grey wash of the Annie Lennox CD cranked to high heaven on the car stereo, or the thought of having to suffer another inconsequential ‘management social’ in their characterless Kensington abode that evening. It may even have been the onslaught of mind-numbing middle-class trivia they’d endured at Simon and Mel’s that weekend but, in that split-second, all the petty grievances once prepared to be written off in the spirit of camaraderie, decorum or kinship finally came bubbling to the surface in a teeming Fahrenheit rage. The bristly shavings of leg hair lingering in the soap-scum after another two-hour candlelit soak. The yellowed toenail clippings rudely besmirching the Batik. The perpetual, maddening inability to squeeze the toothpaste from the fucking bottom…

And then there were those seething über-resentments too trying to remain unspoken a single minute longer. The smugness on her face as she announced her promotion just days after he’d been passed over for some philandering young hot-shot ten years his junior. The look of pathetic, schoolboy lust on his reddening phizog as he flirted desperately with Sonya from Corporate at the annual Xmas shindig (“She’s not going to sleep with you…!” she’d thought, in equal parts mocking, superiority and resentment; she did though, of course, the slut). The fake hand-holdings and forced joviality of endless arse-licking dinners, scrabbling pitifully up the greasy ladder of success one rung at a time, snivelling like a weasel in heat at the prospect of another immaterial pay-bump…

No more. The trap was set the moment they clunk-clicked their last inside that interminable, overpriced people-carrier and began a leisurely cruise at 70 down the highway to hell. The brats were in tow, of course; no sense in leaving such a poignant reminder of their matrimonial devotion rotting at home while the decadence of bourgeois glory beckoned. Ever the tiresome, whinging instigator, it was Tabitha who dealt the deciding hand -

“Mummy, tell Philip to stop it!”

“She started it…!”

“Did not…”

“Did too…”

“Oh, quiet the fuck down, the pair of you…!”

“Don’t you swear at them…!”

“Well, someone’s got to show a bit of fucking backbone around here…!”

“Don’t you tell me how to raise my children…!”

“Don’t you tell me how to run my own family…!”

Tyres squealing, horns flailing manically either side, the nostril-scorching sear of burnt rubber rising from the tarmac. Wordlessly, they exited their respective doors of the cold, mechanical coffin and climbed the neighbouring verge to its grassy summit. Snarling like rabid bears, they began to circle one another, enacting the movement of vultures in a holding pattern as their feet stomped purposefully to an insistent, tribal rhythm.

“You…”

She struggled to find the words, bile frothing at the corners of her mouth as she spat out vitriol like a venomous cobra.

“…Conceited… presumptuous… contemptible… ARSEHOLE…!”

His cheek muscles twitched and his eyeballs bulged, revealing bloodshot tributaries leading straight to a dark well of hatred.

“You… you… YOU…”

He faltered momentarily as steam poured from his flaring muzzle: a bull ready to take charge

“…BITCH…!”

Reckoning. With the release of a violent, surging orgasm, they exploded towards one another, screaming and mauling as they locked horns and began the process of sadistic deconstruction. The grubby brass wedding bands were the inaugural casualty as fingers were crudely wrenched from their sockets to produce a slackening effect conducive to the rings’ unholy plummet.

Always the leeching bloodsucker, she was the first to bite, clamping her jaws around the flat of his knuckles and pressing down with animalistic force until she felt her molars grind satisfyingly against the bone. He roared in simultaneous aggro and delight as he clubbed her loathsome face with the back of his free hand, sending her loping sideways into the mud. Laughing maniacally, she raised both hands in mock invitation, quivering with fury as she willed him to the slaughter through pulsing, psychotic eyes.

“ - COME ON…!”

As he barracked towards her, she ruptured the tender of his groin with one piercing swoop of her stiletto, the triangular toeline gashing through the base of his scrotum and sending one testicle oozing down his trouser leg. Howling like a stuck jackal, he wailed and gnashed for her lopsided breast, latching his teeth around the join and thrashing his head from side to side, a marauding Velociraptor at prey. She heard the fabric of her £140 cotton shirt tear loudly as the white-hot spasm took hold, fangs tattering her undergarments as he chomped hungrily at her wobbling, fleshy teat. The sad, child-ruined breast sagged propitiously through the schism in her blouse, a lustreless parody of allure.

Throwing his flaccid frame to one side in a ferocious display of strength, she snapped the Gucci belt from around his waistline and lashed the gleaming buckle square into his eye, emitting a thick gush of vitreous humour which smattered back to earth like mottled rain. He hooted in amusement as he reached for the vacant socket and found only a hollow cavity where once had sat the orb which admired her long-faded beauty. She whirled the metal fastening around her head like a dominatrix, sending the squashy globule spinning to the roadside as it clumsily dislodged from the belt’s spiny clasp. As he stumbled towards her like a crippled zombie, she dropped to one knee and plunged her manicured talons deep into the flesh of his pubis, raking a troika of gruesome etches upon the worthless maggot she had once so desperately craved. Taking firm hold of his flopping, bloodied manhood through the breach in his zipper, she tugged like a bell-ringer at mass and cackled gleefully at his tortured squall as she ripped away the foreskin, bringing justice to bear for all the woefully unsatisfying intercourse she’d endured over the years. Sonya from Corporate my arse, you prick!

Philip and Tabitha - the wretched, ungrateful devil-spawn deemed widely responsible for their present ruin - watched in bemusement from the family’s air-conditioned Volvo, fogging up the Perspex with each dim breath from their snot-encrusted snouts. It never used to be like this. When did the elation of those excitable early encounters give way to such disillusion, resentment and strife? When did their children, those once-adorable products of their youthful passion, become such mewling, bedwetting embarrassments? Had they, in fact, ever really known each other…?

Carelessly distracted by her own display of righteous valediction, she never saw his rebuttal coming. One thunderous jolt of his thick skull was all it took to catapult his cranium onto her nose; she felt the bone splinter and cartilage splay in every direction as it was truncheoned to a mushy pulp in one brutal, crushing blow. Staggering backwards in a bid to stifle the hosing expulsion, she was defenceless against the well-buffed leather bootpoint as it rocketed up and kicked her firmly in the cunt. His clumpy Size 10 wedged neatly in her slackened cleft as she screeched in duress; removing the appendage with a relishing squodge, he yanked the beige tweed skirt from around her waistline and revelled in the sight of her wilted labia flapping uselessly in the breeze. That one’s for the drunken spit-roasting she took from those two Rugby lads back in college while they were “on a break”; no, despite his noble entreaties of forgiveness over the years, he never, ever forgot.

Undeterred, she pitched herself like a carnivorous banshee and tore his ear away with one magnificent cleave. Claret flowed with the rush of a waterfall, coagulating in a sticky pall around her thirsty lips as she savoured the succulent taste of vampirish lust. As he reeled in shock and awe, she used the rugged engagement diamond still banded to her forefinger to carve a thick layer of gore through the soft flesh of his nipples, drenching his torso in delicious red plasma as she brought his pendulous man-tits clattering down against his stomach. Sensing the thrill of impending victory, she Rocky-punched the bastard once more for good measure, sending him spitting acidic fountains of rouge into the air before one cruel, fatal slip on her M&S heels saw the ankle snap away beneath her.

Who fell first, and who brought who down, remains the subject of bitter dispute to this very day. Torn limb-from-limb, a mangled caricature of their former selves, they collapsed in a disorderly heap before clambering weakly towards one another. They fucked, perfunctorily and without emotion, before being granted a speedy divorce.

C.C. 11/12/11

LYRICS: Again, Again [2011]

AGAIN, AGAIN

We will spiral down, where we both are bound
in our lifetimes

But when we spiral now to where we both are found
There’s a lifeline; a lifeline -

And I’ll see you
in our next life

And I’ll see you
in our next life

Now you pull me down to where we both are crowned
without emotion

How you pull me now, to where we both are drowned
in the ocean, the ocean

And I’ll see you
in our next life

And I’ll see you
in our next life, our next life

Again, again, again, my love.
Again, again, again, my love.

It’s gone again, it’s gone again, it’s gone again, it’s gone again
She’s gone again, she’s gone again, she’s gone again, she’s gone again

It’s gone
She’s gone…

C.C. 13/12/11

SHORT: Missing Pieces [2011]

MISSING PIECES
A detective story in three stupid acts.

ACT I: PREAMBLE

Der-dum, der-dummm (clinnng… clannng… clonnng…)

- Sliding bassoon, hint of clarinet, musical bottle clings; saxophone passes, monochromatic lighting and all that crap. I’d been chasing down hopheads running numbers at the racetrack all afternoon and just wanted a quiet snooze over a glass of hard liquor when the intercom rudely interrupts my prospective slumber.

“A lady to see you”, chirps my secretary, Susan, from the adjoining office. “Says it’s urgent.”

“Send her in”, I growl, slapping the amber liquid down on my grandfather’s old oak desk and watching its contents slosh woozily against the tumbler’s glossy sides.

She enters the room packing the kind of figure that could make a grown man weep. A flowing dress of shimmering pink satin, blonde hair curled to shoulder-length in perfect, whirling spirals. Elegance personified. Want on two legs. Jeopardy incarnate.

“I’m looking for a man”, she tells me, and don’t I know it. Her voice is a smoky, sultry husk, delivering the kind of sensory overload usually reserved for the fleeting scent of cask-aged whiskey.

“You have my attention”, I tell her. “Miss…?”

“Rapprocher. But please. Call me Lola.”

Lola. The very sound is like liquid caramel lolling on my tongue, summoning images of milkshakes, bubblegum and a tall, cool glass of summer Cola (ice cubes in the top, thin red straw, cherry bobbing seductively on the side).

“Call me flattered”, I tell her. “It’s not every day a man gets the chance to meet destiny head-on.”

She surveys the premises while digesting my words, but doesn’t flinch. She’s cool as a glacier, but beneath her studied exterior I sense a hint of breathlessness in her next pronouncement.

“Who are you…?” she enquires. I want to tell her I’m a fucking magician, baby, a conjurer; I make things vanish and reappear at will. I’m whoever or whatever you want me to be. I’m the motherfucker with his hand in yours as we watch the atoll detonate at the end of the world. “ - Detective…?”

“Avarice”, I tell her. “It means covetousness, avidity, craving and greed. Because when I see something I want, I must have it at any cost.”

“In my experience”, she counters, “No man could ever want this something badly enough. Tell me, Detective - how much action do you think you can handle?”

“All the action you can give me, baby”, I flub in an unconvincing attempt at casual rapport, but I’m lying through my teeth. She instinctively senses there’s been a panic on these last few months, and I’m knocked for six: comedy boxing glove, tweeting cartoon birds, the whole nine yards. All I’m seeing now is a glittering night vista - a skyline of stars in our own private Hollywood. I don’t believe in Jesus or the Saints, just the purest of chemical reactions: one part sulphuric acid to three of nitroglycerine.

She reaches into her purse and extracts a golden cigarette case, playfully teasing the pristine cylinder of tobacco with slender fingers. I move to light it for her, trying hard not to knock over a free-standing desk-lamp with the raging stonk-on chafing manfully inside me kecks. I am, by this stage, totally gaga, and would honestly struggle to locate tits in a bra. I want to tell her I’m in love with the sound of her voice, but think better of it.

“What are you doing for the rest of your life?” I ask, making idle small talk.

“Please, Detective – one step at a time.” She offers the faintest hint of a smile as smoke winds steadily into the air. “I’m looking for something which I was hoping you might be able to help me find.”

The devil rides a hot-rod. She’s ten moves ahead of me and I’m struggling to keep pace, but I continue shuffling pieces round the board, waiting to be ensnared in her trap.

“What is it?” I half-whimper, knowing full well by now that there’s absolutely no turning back.

“Come closer”, she says, and whispers in my ear. It feels like swimming. The only thing I’m aware of is blood pounding, rushing, gushing, cascading in torrents; Niagara fucking Falls.

“An urn”, she tells me. “A precious family heirloom. It was stolen from my mantelpiece last week. It contains something very valuable to me.”

She pulls away and sits back down, sloping on her chair in chic repose. I’m momentarily distracted by the cut of her shoes, and wonder what it would take to get her to slide them onto the floor for an impromptu foot massage. I can already feel danger buzzing round me like an irate wasp, but she’s sucked me in faster than a tropical cyclone. I feel the wave churn inside: the depth of the swell is staggering. I’m floating dumbly in a laudanum stupor, ready to take on anything she can throw at me: greasers, rebels, hoodlums in a knife-fight. My desire is paramount.

“I’ll take that action”, I tender, staking my claim for whatever measly pittance it commands.

“It’s settled, then”, she replies, snapping shut the golden clasp on her purse and stubbing the cigarette in a vacant ashtray. She hadn’t taken one drag the entire time; she literally just let the damn thing burn in an act of wilful attrition. “Two-hundred a day, plus expenses; payment of an extra thousand on delivery.”

I’ll waiver the charges, but she needn’t know that just yet. As she rises from her seat and smoothes the dress against the curves of her body, we share a look of recognition: a sudden impulse from a past life. I feel her senses zero in on the frantic thump of my heartbeat. She is all things to heaven, my dancing honeybee, and she instinctively knows my cardinal weakness.

“We’ve met before”, I tell her, with thinned eyes and a rapidly diminishing sense of equilibrium.

“And we’ll meet again”, she purrs, slinking out of the door in an aromatic haze so engorging that I can feel her perfume seep through my pores into the very bloodstream I depend upon for life.

* * *

ACT II: PROCESS

Tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss…

- Languorous jazz cymbals, popping double bass, occasional stabs of brass for emphasis. I’m on a drumroll, screeching down the I5 towards what I know full well may turn out to be the final bridge between this life and the next. Initial enquiries were a piece of cake. Johnny the Shiner put me on to some small-time junk trader operating out the back-alley of Sam’s on 49th; when the mug didn’t show for business, I slapped a few bums around to get the inside dope. The hapless pusher got himself caught up in a racket involving stolen artefacts from the homes of wealthy property-owners over on the South side; when he tried to strike out on his own with a piece of the catch, his buddies got the jump and put him on the first train to Palookaville. The killing got written up as a suicide, but I knew better: the slash marks on the wrists had all the panache of a professional slice-artist. That meant only one name in this town: Ricardo ‘Ratface’ Rizzini.

From that point on, it was all plain sailing. I tracked Rizzini and his gang of wiseguys to a beachfront shack where they’re holed up with the stash of antiques. As I sidle cautiously along the shore, I see a light on in the back room and hear the sound of muffled chatter: no doubt another fixed card game where no-one ever gets to hit 21.

Easing across the sand towards the slatted villa, I should be paying attention to the nagging sense of fear gnawing away at my gut, but I find myself preoccupied with the sound of the ocean as it drifts gently back and forth in a soothing rhythm quite at odds with my own immediate peril. There seem to be voices alive in the waves, rushing to and fro, all whispering a hushed sigh of…

Lola. That name again. It contains the promise of illicit thrills; of words like ‘lust’, ‘lascivious’, ‘licentiousness”. All those delirious, lazy ‘L’s - well, all the decent ones, anyway. I daren’t mention the other trip in the lexicon, the main event; that can come later. For now, I’m edging along the shack’s wooden panelling like it was the last wall in a prison shower, piece cocked and ready for action. A moth bangs its wings against the case of a humming fluorescent lampshade as I sneak a glance through the open doorway and take a peek inside.

Blackjack. The urn is sitting dead-centre on a glass coffee table in the middle of the room. It’s surrounded by gleaming antiquities of infinitely greater value, but I know immediately that this is the item I’m looking for: a curious glow seems to envelope its harsh ceramic outline, as if calling out to me in the shadowy half-light.

As I inch precariously towards the pile of treasure, I hear a dismal, howling squeal as a rogue floorboard creaks beneath me. What an absolute shitter.

Voices, startled, firing in rapid succession:

“What the - ?”

“Hey!”

“Get him, boys…!”

I reach out and grab the prize in my greedy hands before hurtling back out through the swinging panel door, stumbling down the porch steps and reeling away on pure instinct. Bullets are flying overhead, strafing every side, and I’m right in the bastard middle of it. I take one in the shoulder but barely feel the sting as I catch a glimpse of spinning stars overhead and am reminded of the sparkle in her eyes. I hoof it away from the chalet flacked by gunfire, clutching the urn to my chest as if it contains the elusive first draft of the Dead Sea Scrolls, running like a massive girl while attempting to not get my arse shot off.

* * *

ACT III: PROVIDENCE

Waaaaah… wah-wah; waaaaaaah…

- Crappy muted trumpet, faintly melancholic overtones, broken-looking brother pouring his last reserves of breath into improvised jazz figures in a bid to transport his wounded soul. I’m back in the office, sweltering in 48-degree heat, teasing the sweat from my brow as I hear the rumble of an engine skip into earshot.

Daylight scorches my retinas as I lift one sliver of the metallic window-blinds. I hear the sound of heels clicking on the sidewalk as she descends from the winged door of a jet-black Cadillac. She has returned to me, my unknown temptress, the great unanswered question. She sashays towards the rundown building on 34th Street I deign to call my place of toil, and I find myself mesmerised by the metronomic clunk of her shoes on the wooden staircase as she ventures inside. Moments later, the compact desk-speaker buzzes.

“Miss Rapprocher to see you, sir.”

“Send her in, Susan.”

This time, it’s personal rather than business. Black, velveteen dress sweeping against her ankles, white satin gloves, dark violet hat with a widow’s veil: a vengeful kitty-kat with every kind of sin on her mind. She pulls up a chair, flips it around and positions her legs either side of the taut leather backing. The slice in her skirt reveals stockings that are netted like a spider’s web, and I’m instantly caught in her maze of attraction once again. She takes a liquorice twist from the jar on my desk and toys with it a while.

“Well, Detective – did you find what I was looking for?”

I raise the brim of my fedora to meet her gaze with mine.

“Yeah, I found it”, I proffer, feigning nonchalance. “And I damn near bought the farm in the process.”

I stoop down and pick up the urn, wincing slightly as I place it on the desk in front of me. She observes my haemorrhaging shoulder with evident concern.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s not critical.” Truth be told, I’m aching for her to apply the band-aid, to make it all better with one soft brush of her mouth. “But what, pray tell, is so important that it was worth risking my hide for?”

I know she won’t give up an answer that easily, but I throw the question out there all the same. She responds with predictable cunning.

“…You tell me.”

From the suggestive look in her eyes as she glances up from beneath the perimeter of her oversized hat, I understand exactly what is inside. I pause for emphasis before delivering the killer blow.

“It’s the ashes of every man you’ve ever loved.”

“Very good, Detective.” She smirks softly, her silky, dew-laden voice dripping like sweet nectar. “I’m impressed. And now, Mr Avarice, will you do me the favour of placing the jar on that ledge over there?”

I humour her and zip the blinds out of play, forcing open the window and balancing the urn on the peeling surface of its grimy sill. She reaches inside the dark mesh of her stocking and coolly extracts a small silver revolver. I should’ve known all along the broad was packing heat, but I don’t sweat it; I’m too far down the road now to care. A ray of intense Florida sunlight reflects in the piercing glint of the barrel as she takes aim, squinting for accuracy before squeezing the trigger.

- Puh-taaaaowww…!

I thought they only made noises like that in Western bar-rooms. The urn shatters on impact and the dust of her former lovers showers through the window, surrendering to the wind as it dances away on a warm breeze. The air hums with electricity for a single, jolting moment as the sonic ricochet continues to reverberate.

“Thankyou, Detective”, she says, blowing a snaky flicker of smoke from the pistol before sliding it back inside her inner thigh. “You see now that what was past is merely prologue.”

She stands. Swishing her skirt back into place and angling her ridiculous headgear to the appropriate slant, she spins on a dime, about to exit my world forever; by this point though she has a hook in me like the spike on a dope fiend, and I know exactly what I have to do.

“Wait”, I blurt almost desperately as her gloved fingers touch the shining brass doorknob. She turns back towards me, places one hand against her voluptuous hipline and arches her eyebrows.

“What is it that you want from me, Detective?” she enquires, invitingly.

I want to tell her there ain’t a damn thing good in this world, sister; that there ain’t no surfing the shit-tide or rigging the drag race. You get what you pay for in this life, with just one lousy shot at making it mean something. I give it to her straight.

“I’m just looking for the missing piece”, I tell her.

She takes three crossed-steps forward, revealing her plunging neckline in all its glory as she stoops across the desk and grabs hold of my tie. I feel the slipknot in my own noose tighten, but am powerless to resist as she sweeps back the net of her weeping black veil.

“Kiss me you fool”, she smoulders through glistening, ruby-red lips - and as she draws me near, I am completely, utterly helpless.

C.C. Nov 2011

SHORT: Dance of the Bureaucrats [2011]

DANCE OF THE BUREAUCRATS

Dateline: December 23^rd, the Mackenzie-Potter office party - one last blowout on the company nickel before the familial festivities commence in earnest. It’s been another bumper year for the leeches in Mac P’s Regional Collections Team - if there’s one thing you can count on to provide a steady stream of revenue in even the toughest recession, it’s accumulated personal debt. With record annual profits having been announced earlier in the week for the fifth year running, this calls for a celebration. “Work hard, play hard”… it’s set to be a wild one.

After several hours’ warm-up, the room is pumping harder than a fuck-flick as the booze-sodden gang of banal fortysomethings and listless graduate recruits mingle aimlessly in shitfaced revelry. Roger from Senior Management models a ‘wacky’ balloon hat while perspiration teems from his receding hairline; frankly, he’s old enough to know better, and is defiantly not bringing “sexy back”. Nevertheless, he makes the best of his shabby lot by having a token seasonal crack at Maureen from Reception: a flabby, overweight grotesque with a face like dripping wax.

Up in the DJ booth, ‘Punter Knows Best’ is the name of the game. “Now, what it is, right, we’re on a night out...” witters some inane crone who looks like she’s stepped straight out of the puppet reject-closet on Spitting Image. Oh, fuck off and die, will you. You can tell from the defeated look in the DJ’s eyes that he’s already lost the will to live. He lowers his head in feigned absorption, barely able to summon the energy for a lone bout of withering sarcasm on the mic; frankly, it must be difficult to generate even the faintest modicum of enthusiasm when you hold your audience in such contempt. Going to have to sleepwalk his way through this one.

Sure enough, it’s the dregs. Plumbing heretofore-unchallenged new depths of pointlessness, some dreary no-mark from I.T. asks repeatedly for Put Your Hands Up by Reef – he only likes the one song, and didn’t even bother to learn its proper title. Make no mistake, this is the living end. The assembled masses don’t have an ounce of personality between them, but let that never stand in the way of the clappy bit from the Grease Megamix. Dancing Queen up next, is it? Fuck me. Looking at the request sheet, they’re all there: all the greats. Brimful of Cocking Asha. Don’t Stop Believin’. The Rockafeller Skank (included especially for the “old-skool” massive). Eric the office japester’s even asked for Piano Sonata in B Minor by Liszt. What a fucking card...!

“Oh, this one’s a banga!” comes an audible squawk as another retro classic drops like shit from the arse of a distended gull. It sounds suspiciously like Hall & Oates. Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up…

Like moths to the flame, they descend from all corners. Some lardy fuck no-one seems to recognise starts doing his ‘thing’ in the middle of the floor - presumably Julie from Accounts’ latest squeeze. He’s exhibiting all the co-ordination of a pissed-up Weeble from the 1970s, but let it never be said that he doesn’t know how to rinse one out good and proper as he lets fly with a thoroughly solid display to another camp disco classic.

“ - Waaah-hoooo…!”

There’s two old slappers bumping arses to Kool & The Gang: first time they’ve been let out in, ooh, a good fifteen years or so. A quick burst of the Bee Gees sets any daft fucker in flares sprinting to the tiles for a bit of Tony Manero action; frankly, Travolta would be proud. Alan’s made sure he’s picked out his best jumper for the occasion: still looks like a gift from his Mum, even at the tender age of 37. He should care, of course - in his plonk-addled mind, he’s Courtney-flippin’-Cox from the Dancing in the Dark video. Side-claps!

“Ohhhhh, we're halfway there... whoah-oh! We're livin' on a prayer...”

- Ooh, look out… here comes Jim! He’s man of the hour for bringing home the Soho account: 27 unpaid penalty notices lobbied in protest at the local borough council’s new restrictions on residential parking. “We don’t make the rules I’m afraid, sir; we just enforce them…” The stuff of fucking hero worship round these parts - Employee of the Month plaque and name in the quarterly newsletter a dead cert. Last month’s winner, Keith, unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight, but sends his regards.

- CONGA LINE…! “O-lé, o-lé, o-lé, o-lé… feelin’ hot, hot, hot…!”

Unmoved by this raucous parade of frivolity, company stalwart Ted Justice – a heaving, rotund doctrinaire with damp-encircled armpits waggishly dubbed ‘The Judge’ by his cohorts – rudely harasses the DJ for what he insists will be a surefire crowd-pleaser. He’s put in the hours this year, and is determined to see his late request for Donna Summer brought to fruition. The sullen mixmaster attempts to fob him off with a motioned whirl of ‘Later…’, but The Judge Won’t Budge. He’s lookin’ for some hot stuff baby tonight, and is up for the craic like the last four decades of popular music never happened. It certainly doesn’t appear to have done for the anonymous disorderly paralytic sloping listlessly against the bar, doing the Macarena with his top two buttons undone and rocking that Davey Van Day Dollar mullet as if it ever chanced its way into style.

“ – Aaaahhh’m horny! Horny, horny, horny…”

- Oop…! Dave’s up. So’s Sharon. Rachel’s shaking her booty like part of a Macaque’s mating ritual. This is off the fucking chain...!

“Apple-bottom jeans (jeans)… boots with the furrr (furrr)…”

- Literally no-one here is black. It’s all getting a bit too much for Alice and Gordo by this stage anyway, having knocked back a couple of sherries with a few cheeky vol-au-vents on the side. Best head out early – they’ve got the grandkids tomorrow. Meanwhile, Callum does his legendary David Brent impersonation - funny, really, he needn’t have bothered, since they’re his actual moves. Ooh, wait, is he gonna breakdance…? HE IS…!

Check out Marcus, the beady-eyed, porcine mouth-breather from Data Entry. The sweat that’s pouring off the sweltering cunt could probably power a small third-world nation for six months, and he’s absolutely murdering that dancefloor. Jerking awkwardly from side-to-side like a demented wind-up toy, it can surely only be a matter of time before his Himmler specs and Führer haircut – a flapping monstrosity partway between a Bobby Charlton sweep and a makeshift pubic wig - becomes dangerously, hideously unkempt. It’s clear that things are heading straight for the very darkest abyss, with no discernible way back.

Over by the punch bowl, Derek’s about to bust loose as his song kicks into life. “Turn-me-on, turn-me-on, turn-me-on... Sex bomb, sex bomb; you’re my sex bomb…” Throwing down his plastic cup in a truly audacious announcement of intent, he attempts an improvised Michael Jackson manoeuvre and promptly pulls a groin muscle. That’s him benched for the next half-hour at least: time for another Stella. Undeterred, Jane from Customer Services leaps up and does the splits, emitting a searing, unambiguous rip as her crotch is roundly demolished. Unsurprisingly, she can’t get back up again, and cheers gormlessly at her howling colleagues as if seeking some vague form of approval. She gets it. Receiving a gentlemanly hand up from Barry in Maintenance, she proceeds to teeter precariously on hopeless, unwieldy heels before losing all remaining semblance of balance and stacking it arse-over-tit into the buffet table. A delighted roar of “Waheeeyyy!” goes up as she cheerfully re-emerges with a faceful of trifle and a dress now piss-soaked in some indeterminate liqueur.

“Do you be-li-e-e-e-ve in life after love...?”

Unbeknownst to the feral horde, Karen’s getting royally cocked by Steve from Marketing in the gents’ toilets to the distant sound of Cher’s eternal masterwork. "I need ti-i-i-ime, to move on... I need lo-o-o-ove, to feel strong..." emotes the ageless, marble-faced battle-axe as she burbles aimlessly in the background like a fucked robot. A true picture of poise and refinement, Karen has one leg angled upwards on the bog seat, scrunts dangling gracelessly round her ankles, barking and screeching like a rutting chimera as Steve cudgels his blathering jabberwock into her rampaging steamcunt. That’s going to be one for the water-cooler on their first day back… BANTER!

Back in the main room, Gaz tells the one about the Paedophile, the Nun, the Rabbi and the Welshman. The set-up is majestic; the execution, sublime. What a fucking legend. It’s McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow all the way for him. After being informed for what must be the dozenth time in just under an hour that he’s a “bit of a one”, he goes back to macking on some tottering twat with a visible commotion bubbling away in her undercrackers. This should prove a nice easy prospect at the end of the night, but he slips one in her Breezer anyway just to make sure. Never can be too careful with these Gen-Z interns; they might turn out to be a feisty one and press charges after the fact.

True to perennial precedent, the evening reaches a tawdry culmination when Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 makes its inevitable appearance. Some do the Twist. Some do the Mess-Around. Mostly though, a series of ill-rehearsed custom routines are unleashed as the rowdy revellers form a large circle and all do the Irony Deficit. Whooping hollers go up as Tony does a quick bit in the middle – it’s funny, ’cos he never dances! And then…

“IT’S THE FIIIIIIINAL COUNTDOWWWWWWN…!!!”

- To what, exactly? The end of the night? The end of humanity? God only knows by this stage, but as Kirsty & The Pogues make ersatz Irishmen out of even the most devout Essexfolk, the doom-bell signals last orders and clear-out time looms large. “Whack it off, mate; the night is still young!” bawls a newly-recovered Derek, always the life and soul of these odious shebangs. Before long, it’s outside into a chunnering unlicensed Uber and off down the nearest ’Spoon’s for a riotous late lock-in and Round Fucking Two. What an absolute corker. Same time next year then, yeah...?

Forgive them, Lord. They’re idiots, one and all, and they know not what they do.

C.C. 21/11/11

SHORT: Standard [2011]

STANDARD

"Carter, you're drunk."
"Yes, Madam; yes, indeed."

C.C. 01/12/11