Predictable

Written by Matthew Shute

In the bombed-out city, three hundred old women lined up in the car park outside a long-abandoned chemical factory.

Some young soldiers, wearing protective masks and suits, pointed their assault rifles at the old women. There were fifty soldiers in all, including the general.

The old women were all wearing long dresses; some pink, some yellow, some blue. Most of these dresses had white spots woven into them, as part of the design.

The suits that the soldiers wore happened to be made from dark green plastic. The general wore a suit of black plastic.

Through a very powerful loudspeaker, the general said, "You lazy old women are all incontinent. I do not blame you for having inadequate bowels, but this is your first rite of passage. Now walk forward and approach the brown hillock."

The "brown hillock" was in fact a miniature mountain composed of over a billion turds.

The outermost turds were fresh, some of them liquid. The inner turds were older, and had solidified with age to give the structure a real foundation of strength.

There were some skeletons buried in the excrement, but only a few.

Many insects occupied the brown hillock, and two vultures circled overhead. The insects "scurried", as if afraid of the overhead birds, but the vultures were not interested in such insect prey or the skeletons which were bereft of meat. The airborne vermin were not desperate enough to gulp down human faeces.

One old woman thought that the vultures seemed bored, judging by their body-language and composure, but the vultures were not bored at all. Boredom is reserved for certain humans, especially those who can't read.

Another old woman knew something about this type of bird that the first woman was too stupid to have learned. Vultures are mean, narrow-minded scavengers who only cogitate about rending carrion with their frightening beaks, the second woman knew.

The word ravenous sprang to mind, instantly.

"Ravenous," an old woman mumbled.

Boredom aside, vultures DO feel pain. One of these particular vultures was in considerable pain.

The agonised vulture was unfortunate enough to have a bloated left testicle. The testicle was bloated because there was a malignant tumour inside it. Around the central core of the vein-meshed testicle (which was now eighty three percent pure cancerous rot) was a thin, outer membrane of congealing puss.

After the general had spoken about rites of passage and approaching things, the old women walked (slowly because of their age) towards the brown hillock of shit.

When the women (eventually) reached the foul-smelling dump-mountain, they all started to climb.

Climbing involved using hands. The shit "smooshed" through many fingers and thumbs as the women did their arthritic climbing.

The climbing was almost as slow as grazing cows because the women were very old. The average age among the old women was eighty three point four years of age. That's old.

"Now start shitting," the general said into the loudspeaker.

Inside his protective mask, one of the soldiers smirked. He loved this part.

The vultures circled, perhaps in anticipation.

The vulture with the bloated ball accidentally ejaculated, not out of any pleasure, but because his genital area was not exactly in full working order. Call it a malfunction, brought on (in part) by the sight of the people "smooshing" below.

The vulture-cum streamed down to earth, splattering six of the old women with bird-sperm. One of the splattered women even got some of the sperm in her mouth because she had been breathing heavily.

The old women ignored the brief torrent of spunk. Some of the ladies were now pulling down their underwear.

The soldier who had been smirking now got his cock out and started to masturbate. The general saw this, however, and told the other soldiers to shoot the smirking soldier's cock off. The other forty eight soldiers DID blast off the offending cock, but -due to the inaccuracy of many shots- they also riddled the offending soldier's guts and legs with bullets. One bullet even buried itself into the mask that hid the smirk.

The soldier with the missing cock fell forward. The vultures saw the death, but it was too close to the other soldiers. Too risky.

The cock, cleanly blasted off, lay in a brown puddle. Blood seeped out, turning the mud burgundy in places.

Unnoticed, a female rat scampered from her hiding place under a burned-out minibus, dashed over to the puddle, snatched up the bleeding penis, and ran away with it. The cock would make a nutritious meal for the rat's young litter who were waiting in a sewer system below the car park.

Also, regarding the wildlife, another two vultures arrived at the site. These, too, began circling above the mighty monument of human digestive waste.

Meanwhile, some of the old women had heard the shooting (not all old people are deaf), and were by now very afraid.

This new dose of extra fear caused many of the old women to spray liquid excrement from their rectal apertures.

One woman died of a cardiac arrest. She fell, face down, into a predictable pile of dung.

What a waste of time.


...


Eighty eight years earlier...

In another country, in another time, there stood many average, greasy houses.

Inside one of these houses was a boy and a girl who lived with their parents.

Mostly, the boy and the girl liked to watch television. There was a television in each room.

The boy and the girl learned many things at school so that they could go to work one day as a cog in the machine.

Every second, inevitably, the boy and the girl got older.

Eventually, the boy and the girl got jobs as cogs in the machine.

The boy managed to get a job pulling things out from the inside of cows. After pulling the things from the cows, his job was to file a report about what he'd pulled from each cow. Each report had it's own serial number. His job also involved placing crosses in certain square boxes with a blue pen. The job gave him money to buy porn with.

The girl managed to get a job dissecting pigeons and putting the bits into jars full of chemicals. After putting the bits into the jars, her job was to get a key and open a filing cabinet. Each chemical in each jar was green. Her job also involved bending over. The job gave her money to buy hair-care products with.

The boy and the girl... Their fate was the fate of everyone.

Everyone everywhere including youyouyou.

Boy. Girl. Gradually, their lives slipped away, second by wasted second; hour by wasted hour.

Watching television. Sitting in offices. Sitting on toilets. Eating food in aeroplanes. Sitting on toilets in aeroplanes. Sitting in airports, sniffing. Tying shoe laces while listening to a television show about flying to foreign places. Watching aeroplanes rain down like so many useless pebbles as the world shakes itself around it's orbit.

Drinking. Laughing. Breathing. Looking under fingernails.

Coughing. Having a bath. Seeing an unusual beetle.

Reading a letter. Filling in a tax-form. Throwing a pipe-bomb.

Getting older. Second by wrinkled second. A face, once so pure and flawless, now gnarled by age and wasted time. Getting older.

Dying.

Seconds into minutes. Minutes into hours. Hours into days. Days into months.

Months into years.

Years into decades.

Next comes layer after layer of grey, folded flesh and yellowing, faded eyes.

Aged sixty six, the boy who'd now become an old man got shot in the face for no reason. He died, drizzling piss into his stupid-smelling sofa.

Aged sixty six, the girl who'd now become an old woman knew that she had been "ravaged by the withered claw of time". She knew that God was a steaming lump of useless fish that had long ago flopped out of a rusty pipe, onto the open mouth of a lightness cave.

Aged eighty eight, the old woman pulled down her underwear and let the flow of excrement issue from her trembling anus.

The brown hillock grew bigger.


...


Me?

I'm the vulture with the swollen testicle.