You Enter

You enter a supermarket, any supermarket. Chris Isaak's Wicked Game begins to play over the tannoy. The aged lady behind the tobacco counter wistfully winds a single moustache hair over her ring finger. A spotty teenager trails his hands over the melons as he walks down the fruit aisle. He pauses, places a tip against his nose and shoots mucus from his left nostril onto a banana. He rubs it into the yellow flesh and winks at you. Chris Isaak's Wicked Game continues to play. Your mother dances in the corner, eyes closed. A Spanish man winds her between his arms, stretching her out and folding her back in. She's dressed in red and entirely nude. She spots you and looks into your eyes. "What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you"

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You spot an unassuming café on the corner of Killigrew Street. Must be new, don't recognise it. You step towards it and pass underneath the striped, cloth awning pitched above the entrance. A droplet slips over the edge and lands on your outstretched tongue. Tastes sweet, thick like syrup. You enter. A bell chimes once as you enter and the door closes behind you. A man in a long, brass coloured overcoat glances across at you beneath his tartan trilby from the table in the corner. His mouth stretches out and upwards. Chet Baker's My Funny Valentine begins to play from above you. Tinny, distant. You ask the dwarf behind the counter for "one baguette of gammon and emmental". The dwarf sashays away behind the beads click clacking, leading to a room behind. The air becomes thick with the scent of copper. "Sweet comic valentine". You drum your nails on the milky glass countertop and look over at the aged and wrinkled female stood next to a pile of what must be nearly 70 cafetières. She doesn't notice you and continues to chew on her hair and wipe the mugs clean using her long, sagging breast. "Your looks are laughable." A cough comes from behind the beads and they vibrate before you. Need gammon. Brush fingers through beads and step through. Nothing but darkness for a while. Then intense light, so bright you squint and see naught but white. Colours fall into place like tetris pieces before you. A blue horizon, a high sun ball, a verdant hillside you stand upon. The dwarf from behind the counter stands atop a marble arch entirely nude, balanced on one foot and holding a bow and arrow (a heart at the arrrows length). Your uncle stands before him and holds a paintbrush between his teeth. His hands are up and with both thumbs and index fingers he's making a square shape in the direction of the dwarf. The dwarf shits and green pus runs down his back leg. Your uncle turns to you, sadness seeping through his stern expression of ambivalence. "Is your figure less than Greek?" You return to the front room of the café. The interior is different. A bar now stands where the countertop was. A throng of lingerie-clad women wind over each other in place of the cafetières. A man wearing a suit, head swollen by bow tie, lifts up his large moustache to ask you. "Would you like anything to drink, sir?" "I'd like some gammon." The man melts before your eyes until a hot, bubbling pool of pink stew lies before you underneath the black fabric of the waistcoat and dress trousers. Sigh. You turn to leave. "Stay little valentine stay." Three fingers on the handle you turn back into the store. The room is empty. No. Beyond that. The room is void. There is nothing. No space. No light. But there is one thing. A pig before you. It holds a fork in its trotter. Gazing at you and unceasingly maintaining eye contact it reaches a trotter back and sticks the fork into the side of its swollen pink flesh. It tears out a chunk of its gut and proffers the trotter in your direction, fork and flesh aloft between its toes. It seems to smile. "Each day is Valentines day."

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You enter a HMV. You immediately ejaculate into your trousers as you take in the expanse of multimedia before you. Ed Sheeran's Shape of You plays over the loudspeakers. Three pre-teen goths sway in time with the guitar strums in the merchandise corner. The tallest one picks up a funko pop of Drake and tears its head off with their teeth. Blood appears to spurt from the lifeless toy. Clearly a Sigma goth. "I may be crazy, don't mind me". You advance towards the vinyl section that lies at the back of the store. You pass an aisle of DVDs stacked so high that they disappear into the ceiling beyond your sight. Each one of the DVDs is a different Family Guy series. Something brushes past your foot. You look down and you see a Seinfeld blu ray collection that has developed limbs running frantically. It turns so it's front cover is facing you and Jerry Seinfeld's face (which encompasses the entire casing) screams at you, shattering your spectacles. It turns and continues running. A hole opens up in the wall and a laser shoots out from it, shattering the Seinfeld DVD boxset into pieces. "Grab my waist and put that body on me". You carry on and find yourself in the video games section. A formless lump motions towards you. Vaguely flesh tone, this 3 metre wide and 1 metre tall creature looks to be melting in viscous layers of fat. It hops towards you another foot and you notice as a flap lifts up that there is a face underneath. In the brief glimpse of its eyes you receive unutterable sadness. The casual gamer. You reach your hand into the moist mass of flesh until you hit upon something solid. You wrench your hand back out and vaguely gaze down at the beating heart oozing blood over your fingers before letting it roll to the floor and moving on. "And now my bedsheets smell like you". You reach the vinyl section at last. You flick through 30 copies of Joy Division's Control before reaching a Drake record that is on sale. You carry on flicking through past more copies of Control. 'The 2001 remaster'. 'The 2005 remaster'. 'The 2008 remaster'. And so on. Sigh deep. You look up at the 4 posters of Ed Sheeran surrounding you on each wall. Wait a minute. There is a fourth wall now in the way of the entrance you came in from. Doesn't matter. Knew this day would come eventually. Does for everyone. Ed looks down, grinning viciously. Your erection throbs as his eyes roll around in their paper sockets. "Oh-I-oh-I-oh-I-oh-I". You fall to your knees and vomit blood onto the sticky, gum soaked floor. The rubber flooring starts to bubble and your hands become enveloped, unmoveable. You glance back up at the Sheerans. They're nodding in unison, looking down at you. You feel your asshole dilate. "I'm in love with your body."

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You enter your old college building for the first time in 20 years. Army Dreamers begins playing over the loudspeakers lining the corridors and placed in the corners of every classroom and meeting hall. You're greeted by an 8 inch tall, cadaverous looking fossil the width of a pepperami. He wraps a long winding arm around you and scoops you in through the entrance and in one swift motion to the other side of the corridor. You're standing in front of your old English classroom now. 'Our little army boy is coming home from B.F.P.O.'. You reach out to knock and the door simply falls at your touch. Inside is a large, writhing serpent hissing and salivating everywhere. It makes eye contact with you and locked in its gaze you slide forward despite moving no limbs. It embraces you in its mouth and you realise that this serpent represents the late Mr. Beasley who would hold you back in class after all the other students left at the end of the day. 'Morning in the aerodrome. The weather warmer, he is colder.'. You're shat out of the serpent's anus amongst the crushed egg shells of ambiguous birds and flop stenchily into the gymnasium. The walls are lined with 14 year olds. Despite their entirely black faces (they look like they have been scratched out of reality?!) you recognise each and every one as your former year 9 classmates. There is a monotonous buzzing, quiet first but slowly growing in intensity and suddenly it overtakes your senses and you reach up to claw at your ears. As you do this the distorted figures come bounding towards you in jété form. You try to lift your legs to run but you see your feet have been replaced by onions and the curvature of these means you slip around and fall face forward, nose heading treacherously towards the parquet floor. 'Four men in uniform to carry home my little soldier'. You glide straight through the floor and in a vertical 180° find yourself standing upside down on the underside of the room. You are in the headmaster's office. A thickly lacquered oak desk sits in the middle of the room, a disorder of papers covering its surface. A stool with a vertical dildo screwed upright in the centre of it sits behind. An owl perched atop an empty coat rack watches you from the corner. It gestures its head towards the stool. You shake your head in response. It lets out a horrendous screech, shitting all the while. You cry. Sitting down on the stool the wall beyond the desk opens up and behind it are clouds and an endless blue. A trombone falls from above and slips through the sky below you, vomit stretching out from its bell. 'But he didn't have the money for a guitar'. You feel wind all around you. Gold bars begin raining down from above, pummeling your head, making your skull all concave like. 'But he never had a proper education'. Your high school sweetheart appears in the sky, a large disembodied face. She winks at you, her eye twinkling and sending shimmers shooting through the sky around you. She melts like red wax. 'But he never even made it to his twenties'. You feel the stool beneath you drop away and you begin to fall. As you look down you see an eternity of white and blue. You drift for hours. Hours become days. Days become years. 'Oh, what a waste of Army Dreamers'.

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You enter a Halfords. Need a windscreen wiper. On your first step into the store you find yourself being propelled forward on a moving belt. Master of Puppets by Metallica is playing all around you. You pass the reception where a necrotic, cadaverous flesh being stands. It's skin slightly translucent and milky white, you can see veins throbbing on their skull and bone pulls at the skin stretched across their cheekbones to the point of incision. Blood trickles over their jawbone. They reach out a withered arm towards you but the belt carries you past them before they stretch far enough to touch you. They look after you as you carry on forwards. "Veins that pump with fear sucking darkness clear". You approach a maintenance section. Huge tools the size of horses painted in blue with a cartoon thumbs up emblazoned on their handles float through the air. A bulging mass of muscles rests between them in a white tank top and denim jeans. You can just about make out two comically small legs protruding from beneath it, arranged in a cross-legged position. An eye pushes itself through the muscles and focuses on your face. A voice from within your mind says, "How can I help you, beta?". You wince and do a fart. The muscles contract and expand. Two huge arms break from either side of the pulsing flesh and land palm-down on the floor. The tools crash down from the air around. The muscles lurch towards you and as each hand slaps against the floor its pace increases. It gets closer and closer, the belt isn't quick enough. Suddenly a klaxon pierces through Metallica and red lights flash all around. A voice booms through the store, "A female is requesting a bicycle setup". The muscles skid on their knuckles and bound off in the opposite direction. "Come crawling faster". Satan falls from the sky and lands on a metal pole. It slides through his diaper and enters his body, erecting his posture straight. He's bawling like a baby with the intonation of a little girly. His horns spin manically. An alarming breeze blows past your face with a whistle and metal poles come flying in, attaching to the pole satan is stuck on. Satan begins sucking all three thumbs. Wheels come rolling in from either side and attach to the poles. Oh look! He's cycling. Yay satan, go satan! He seems uneasy and continues to bawl. Four smaller wheels appear on either side of both of the wheels. Satan's expression solidifies and his nappy evaporates, revealing his bare naked hips. Another four wheels appear, attaching to the four fresh wheels making a descending trail. This seems to embolden satan who is now grinning maniacally, gesticulating at you entirely through brow movements. You respond by bowel movements. Lightning descends from the sky and each shockwave sends babies scattering across the floor. You understand and nod slowly. "Obey your master". You lurch upwards into the sky, pulled by strings attached to your shoulders and limbs, and fly through the air before crashing down in the centre of a circle of chairs. In each of the chairs is a man named Grant with a very slick hair cut and a well fitting Halfords work uniform. His polo shirt is tucked into his trousers and his belt is clean. They tilt their head at you and ask, "How can I help you, sigma?" You open your lips to say, "I need to buy windscreen wipers for my transport modem" but instead of those words written there your bottom lip bounces up and down like a door stopper that a retarded child has flicked. It's okay, the Grants stand up and do a fortnite dance then start a conga in a circle and bounce their heads rhythmically, occasionally looking over to you for approval. You sigh and the strings above you pull you into a standing position. "Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings". You begin to dance though you play no active part in your movement. You're entirely at the whim of the strings extending up into pure reality. It's thrusting your hands and sliding your legs. You jive and jig and slam and slip. You go wild under the disco lights. Crowds cheer from beyond the big red curtain. You wished you'd taken that offer to build schools for children in Zambia but you felt that becoming an IT technician would be a more secure for your hypothetical wife. Your head jerks back and rolls forward. Your hands press to your hips, themselves gyrating all crazy like. Margaret seemed nice; the grey widow from that speed dating event. Your feet do the two step. Even your toes bop up and down. You could have just kissed Emily when she was staring into your eyes that night at Graham's when everyone had gone to bed and the two of you sat on the sofa discussing jazz records but you were only 17 and you didn't believe girls would ever like you like that. Your knees bend and you leap around the stage like a ballet dancer. "Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams". Your shoulders wriggle and your arms wave like worms. Your chest pulls in then shoots out. Now everyone is booing. Now everyone hates you and they wish you'd just go away. Now everyone is sick of having to look at your disgusting face and hear your miserable jokes about the weather at the water cooler. Tears fall from your eyes like gushing waterfalls. You dance through the pool collecting at your feet. "Blinded by me, you can't see a thing". Two cherubs fly in from the far corners of your vision and nakedly approach you. They attach two miniature windscreen wipers to both of your eyes which squeak and scrape against your moist eyeball, splashing the tears off to the side. You dance and you dance and you dance and you have no control at all. "Just call my name 'cause I'll hear you scream". You tune back into Metallica and realise what's happening to you. You scream into the darkness. Master, you cry. Master, you bellow. Master, you whimper. Far away an object comes into sight, so small it appears as just a dot in your vision. It comes closer and takes form. It's a human. No, it's not just a human. It's everything you aren't. It is better than you in every way. It is smarter. It is richer. It is more attractive. It is more successful. It is a better lay. It has a better body. It is happy. It is your boss at the computer technology company. He has come close enough now that his face is pressed against yours, the cartilage in your nose snapping from the pressure. He opens his mouth and extends a tongue to lap at your lips and penetrate your nostrils before saying, "Just call my name 'cause I'll hear you scream: Master. Master."

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You enter your local Chicken Buckets store on a misty Thursday eve. The door tinkles a bell-y well as you pass through it and three 6-foot tall cocks adorned in bright red aprons rapidly turn to face you from behind the counter, their dangling red wattles floating through the air beneath their chin. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 reverberates around the store. You slide gracefully along a stream of gravy that takes you up until the counter. "I can't believe the news today". The central cock opens its beak and a scream so immense stretches from it that you see the air between you and the cock shatter and sprinkle onto the floor. You tell it that: that'll do just nicely. You hear a slapping sound and look beyond the cocks to see a small plastic square flapping in the wall and realise that a small naked man has emerged from it and is crawling like a spider towards you. "I can't close my eyes and make it go away". You do a poo from fear and a giant sweat bubble floats out of your eye hole. The greasy humanoid creature climbs up the back of the cock and starts to chew into its neck. The cock shudders and lets out a quack of pleasure. "Broken bottles under children's feet". The manthing looks up and your eyes connect for a brief moment, it remains still like a brick in the wind as you explore each others existence. Then it resumes chewing. Meanwhile the other two cocks slide along back into the kitchen. You see they have roller blades on their paws. Oh okay that's why they glide like that. They skate from either side of the kitchen at astonishing speed into each other, meeting perfectly in the middle and both seemingly disappearing in a flurry of feathers. "Bodies strewn across the dead-end street". An alarm sounds and a haughty pig snorting erupts from speakers in every corner of the establishment. A metal bucket falls from the sky and lands in front of you on the counter. The sliming man pustule wriggles his eyebrows a bit and then leans forward, vomiting acidic chicken flesh into the bucket. The creature pulls the chain and flushes himself and the half-eaten and erotically ecstatic cock down the plug. They spin and spin away and down and wheeeee bye bye chicken and gremlin friends. "But I won't heed the battle call". You press your face deep inside the bile and allow your nostrils to fill with noxious, stinging food grime. A bean emerges from your ear, jumps onto the counter, gives you a thumbs up, then runs quickly into a nearby fire pit that children are dancing around. Upon rising from the chicken rot you feel incredible power and your chest inflates with muscles. "It puts my back up..." Your high-school crush passes the window and for a moment you exchange glances. She sees you there: trousers around your ankles, puke trickling down your pathetic t-shirt that your mum obviously bought you, your toupee is placed awkwardly on your head revealing your genetic shortcomings, your fingers are tiny and look like nik-naks, your shoes are comically huge and swell up where the toes should be, you entirely lack a chin, your thick rimmed glasses bounce atop your round, swollen nose, you don't even have any facial hair you failure. Your newly swollen chest floods with oestrogen and big man boobies emerge. You see her cringe and quickly jump inside a convertible car being man-handled by Jason Mamoa, that guy who got famous for on-screen rape that turned your momma on. "... puts my back up against the wall".

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You enter your ancient place of work. Mortar crumbles atop your pate as you swing the #3366f hex code blue door open. Jamie Chown faces you, mouth agape, Return of the Mack coming from deep inside his throat in high fidelity. "Well I tried to tell you so". Apes swing from the ceiling, hooting and flinging their muck as they avoid eye contact with you. A miserable smell emanates from the toilets to your right (the east). "But I guess you didn't know". Your old line manager comes skidding towards you from the far end of the office, feet and legs completely motionless. Carpet scrapes beneath his heels as he comes to a stop before you. Good for us, not for you - he says. His beard now engulfs his entire face and you struggle to look into his eyes but then he evaporates anyway with a high pitched ping. "As the saddest story goes". Your old boss, the CEO, sits in the far corner. You begin to make your way towards him but find yourself confronted with alien arms slapping and pushing you away. A man yells NO and it echoes through the vocal cords of everyone in the room. You look again and your old boss is gone, only dust remains where he sat. "Baby now I got the flow". You're shown to your seat and presented technology by faceless mannequins. As you open your laptop a clapping erupts from everyone in the room. Balloons appear from the abyss. Confetti manifests before your eyes and then rots halfway to the ground into a putrid slop. "Cause I knew it from the start". You look out of the great window at the end of the room. It's dark today. You realise you can't remember the smell of the old woods. The tread of soil is forgotten by your heel, a sore callous there instead from Doc Marten boots a size too large pushed into the concrete. "Baby, when you broke my heart". An old subordinate of yours floats down from the ceiling and leads you into a meeting room. It's your appraisal now, though you've been in the office for just 30 seconds. A screen flashes up with the title: Performance Review. You see your life's memories appear in conceptual form upon the screen. Images of you bawling on the floor of a bathroom in Berlin. Videos of you running naked through a field, forgotten dogs in tow, a summer child. Audio of every time you've made love plays on top of the other. Faces appear: old friends, family you've lost, women you've conquered and the men who've conquered you. It all falls away and you realise you can no longer feel your corpus. You turn to face your manager. He tells you you're fired. "I had to come again".

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