The country hick he waits and smiles and waits with his cat waiting and smiling there behind him. “Hey Jessie!” he says to the cat, “There’s people watching us from through the internets.” Jessie can’t believe it. You’re not supposed to acknowledge the people from the internets. You’re supposed to wait and smile and develop your own personal essence and let it radiate.

“Look at them funny people” he says, this funny beardy man Jack in his blue dungarees. Can he really see out from his suffocating box of reality, out into the next dimension where his own reality isn’t really a reality but just a dream instead? Can he make you think that maybe you’re a story too and maybe that cat behind you isn’t real and maybe some person somewhere is reading about you on a thing like a webpage or a book or a story for children?

No, you’re way too stuck for that. You keep on insisting that it’s the Jessie cat that isn’t real but he wonders just like you. He has feelings and cat-nature just as much as you do. He doesn’t sit there with a funny look on his face while he’s reading the internets. He doesn’t have a fit of cynicism to cover an existential crisis.

Or does he?

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She sits there and waits. What’s happening? Nothing. Life is dull and useless. Just the wind and the sand blowing over and around same old dreary life here. What’s the point? Don’t tell her she should vote, there’s no point.

What could possibly happen? It’s not as if some pink-striped creature is gonna fall on your head in chicken-shit town here where nothing happens. Sun beats down and no-one gives a shit. Not even the people who give a shit that no-one gives a shit give a shit.

It’s all just a pile of words and what does that even mean? Words don’t even mean anything any more and you can’t even tell what I’m saying. It’s like a big waste of time and even that doesn’t make any sense. You don’t know what I mean and how could you? You don’t even know what the phrase “don’t know” means and here we are, all just floating in space and sitting on a girder waiting for something that won’t happen because it never happens. Not here.

I think we can be pretty sure about that, if we’re sure of anything.

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“One day all of this will be fields” says the managing director, dressing down in orange sweater as a way to connect with the odious cretins that work for him. “Fields… everywhere.. ” he repeats, over and over again until his voice wears thin and silent. Simon stands by, at ease like his best soldier-son impersonation.

“Erm.. will be fields?” asks Simon. He looks for at the boss for a second and then back straight ahead and arms resting false casual like a police officer. “Aren’t they fields now?” he says and then winces at his mistake.

The boss laughs, coughing at the boy. “What’s that?” he asks in mock surprise, but he smiles and emits an aroma like boiled potatoes and sausages, the smell of disdain and superiority. “So much to learn..” he says and shakes his head before continuing.

“In my day, thinks made sense like that.  Bridges went from one side of the river to the other. Cats chased mice and Dogs chased cats. Grass was greener on the other side and a stitch in time always save nine.” He paused and sniffed the air and licked his lips, as if trying to taste the flavour of the moment. “But things are different know, can’t you see? The old ways are gone and now black is white and night is day. Nothing is what you think it is anymore.”

A silence hung between them and Simon blinked with an expression of ignorant stupidity all over his fluffy, moronic face. “Yes, I think I see…” he said hesitantly. “No!” barked the chief officer right back at him, all paternal chumminess hidden now behind a sargeant-major’s red and pimpled bursting grimace. “It’s exactly the opposite now!”

“What?”

“Yes, now it really means that you don’t think that you don’t see. It’s not like you thought at all but in fact that means that you do see but you don’t realise it, which also means the opposite. See?”

“No”

“Good boy. Well done. You’ll go a long way.”

With that, Simon knew it was best to shut up right away and just stand there alongside the old nincompoop with his brain slowly turning to jelly and all the wet sheets and embarrasment that it promised for the weekend. Indeed, the old ways lay shrivelled around them like so much detritus of a collapsing society or last night’s discarded kebab wrappers.

And everything was exactly how it should be.

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“So, Mr Custard Head” says the doctor, the doctor of brains to the man with his hair shaped like a custard trifle. “We understand that your psyche has escaped”. Doctor waits for a second with his smug grin and hands in white coat pockets and a wealth of knowledge and fascist learning stuffed inside his fetid skull.

The silence hangs like a blanket waiting to suffocate them both. The goofy man fixes his goofy teeth over his bottom lip and makes gurgle noises softly. The game is set and the first one to speak is the loser. Can’t hold out against a doctor with his hands and pockets and rock solid knowledge of fascist mind games and confirmed Superiority of Science and how it can break the spirit.

“You can’t break me” he says and maybe he loses just like that.  Shit he thinks now and realises he messed up and gave in to the glasses and the icy stare, the iron will of the Scientist and his doctor face and stuffy, dusty learning. Damn, I’m in for it now and it’s back to the hospital once more.

“There’s an escaped psyche on the loose” says the doctor and suddenly the game is back on an even keel. Now they both spoke, now no-one  has the upper hand. Now no-one’s gonna drag him kicking and screaming back down the shiny, disinfected wards into the smooth linen bedroom again.

Two psyches on the loose. Shit, no. A million, billion psyches on the loose. Ain’t no walls no more. No, there never were and don’t you forget it, not even once.

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Windy days come in the foothills, on the edge of the farm, way down the track and by where the grass tussocks spring tall from the damp earth. Wendy stands there and lets her hair blow like she doesn’t even think at all.  She pulls her striped jumper up to her mouth, her favourite green and white woollen jumper up around her neck and feels the wind blowing through her hair.

The way it whistles in her ears, she can hear a song whispered to her. “Once more, ignore. As I wrap me around we. I’m never quite there at all.” and for sure she feels the same. Icy cold blasts of air whip up her orange hair but she doesn’t feel real anymore.  All that died inside.

If it were only so easy just to stand here and feel the wind and let the thinking just stop and not be there at all. But it doesn’t stop. She’s caught in a whirl. She’s several girls or no girls at all. So she just sighs quietly into her green and white jumper top, tastes the smell of damp wool and feels her feet cold now in converse boots.

“Oh my wet feet, where did it all go?” she sighs. All the whirl and excitement stopped one day and dropped her and now she stands sad in the wind and trying to not think so much. The orange hair blows, the feet grow cold and she knows it can’t last. It has to go.  She has to go inside and not let it blow on and on like this no more.

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Funky walkers are out walking in the springtime. Ernest here has his very best shades on and his favourite red boots. Ok, so they belong to Margaret but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t need stupid stuff like footwear to go out walking. Not when she loves Ernest so much anyway, and doesn’t he look so cool in those funky shades of his?

“Hey Ernest! Look at the people! Say hello to the people” she says, but Ernest is too cool to acknowledge fools like you and me. He’s too busy funking in his shades and the sexy red boots. He’s checking out a squirrel and exchanging glances with a fox. Badger’s nowhere but hey that’s cool. We’ll hang out some other time. Let’s all just chill out here and look cool in our shades and our boots in the forest.

“Did you bring any food?” asks Margaret. “Did you bring the sandwiches that were on the kitchen table?” she says but Ernest doesn’t lose his cool though. Cool guys don’t need food, don’t need them stupid sandwiches and the little boxes of salad and the napkins and stuff. All that nonsense with the spoons and the plastic forks is for old people and squares.  How can you scrape a bit of cheesecake from a cardboard plate and still be funky? No, you can’t so you don’t even try.

But damn that because a cheese and pickle sandwich would be so good right now. What good are red boots when your stomach grumbles and all you can think of is cheesecake and biscuits and crisps? Your mind floats off in a dream of light refreshment and all the funk is gone.

“Let’s go back to that cafe” she says and Ernest breaks his silence. “Yeah babe” is all he says. He’s still cool. He’s still funky and now sandwiches are back on the menu.

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Yes, the only thing is to stand and salute. The one thing you can count upon in times of trouble is obedience and Knowing Your Place. If only people would stand and salute more often, there wouldn’t be room for all this confusion and disorder. There wouldn’t be time to snivel and cry and question your superiors for you’d be standing smart and sharp, looking good and not descending into the filth and anarchy.

Yes, if anything it’s like a kind of brainstorming where you summon up order and sense rather than creativity and new ideas. Simply by standing to attention and saluting, you can feel the world of scout halls and parade grounds and church services coming back once again. No more hunger. No more frostbite. No more sleeping in a muddle and crying for mummy. All that stupid weakness is a distant memory.

Damn, maybe we should listen to the little twerp and look at the map. He says it’s easy with a compass and looking at the landmarks but it’s all so confusing. I’d have to let him do it and then the integrity of the hierarchical system would be compromised irretrievably. Damn that for a fashion. Can’t be done. Can’t give in to this kind of communism and see all the small people chipping in and contributing to the confusion. That’s how we get lost, not this map reading bullshit. It’s because we listen to them that say we’re lost.

It’s okay. Keep on saluting until the ideas come. Just you see if they don’t.

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The wild pig is very pleased with himself. Centuries of human dictatorship have failed to enslave him and he still wanders free like a happy little pig, just like when he was young and pigletty.

If he wants to stop and sniff a flower, there’s no-one to tell him not to. He can even do a poo if he wants and no-one’s gonna shout at him and chase him away or beat him with a piglet stick. No, that’s in the past. All that stuff with the farm and the chickens is someone else’s crazy story, not this wild pig.

But when you’re really wild, what can you do? It gets kind of boring after a while and then you have to notch it up some. You have to start putting a few noses out of joint, just to get a reaction. Being wild don’t mean nothing if you can’t cause a bit of a fuss now and then.

Just you wait, you’ll see. He’s no piglet.

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After taking a left at the ice-cream van, Ellie and Jack found themselves lost in a desert. “I told you so”, said Jack. “The banana flavour was a big mistake”. And Ellie was too bored to respond, too overwhelmed by the endless, pointless expanse of dryness that had surrounded their sarcastic existence.

All she had for company was a blue spotted dog, a pocket full of magic beans and an unreliable narrator.

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