She goes back to the Central Hotel. And back in the bathroom, ostensibly to get her stuff but really for something else like ‘appointment with destiny’ ©.

With the door locked and there in the hotel bathroom Kelly cuts her wrists to see if there are rings inside the human body like there are in those great great redwood trees in Movie America.

Kelly looking for the rings, looking to see how old she really is.

But when she cuts there’s only blood, bone and wires.

Like that scene in DARK HOUSE (X), where nothing real is really real.

Morton & Kermit

Morton & Kermit

Morton’s main problem was that he could not control his mouth. His brother Kermit was also a bit of a wanker. The town* where they both lived in Endland (sic) chanced to come beneath emergency military rule of the British Army and the two of them were soon executed by a firing squad.

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* Liverpool

Crash Family Robinson

Crash Family Robinson

Crash Family Robinson lived in a wood shack at the edge of town and heated water for their pot noodles etc on a stove. By day they chopped dumb wood, hunted slow bears © and caught dead fish in the poison river. When there was time off from their chores they went under the big bridge through the cold and onto Main Street to rent videos.

A picture of Crash Family Robinson shows them all in the half light. The youngest kids naked and suckling at their momas tits, the elder ones playing with gameboys, the daughters washing up, with their hands in rubber gloves and Palmolive suds. Dad Robinson stands by the doorway to their cabin, looking proud. He is wearing a suit of sequins and carries in his hands a book to prove that he can read.

Meet the kids. There are nine of them in all – Ellen (1) Grace (3), Paul (5), Radioactive Boy (13), Blood Head (15) Particle Girl (17), Alistair (23), Violetta (21) and Shaun (25).

Some nights when the videos are finished and Dad Robinson has stopped his jackanory from whatever dumb-ass book he’s reading the teenagers sneak out the cabin and get up to their pranks.

Particle Girl makes nuisance calls to lonely women, waking them up, making their hearts tremble and their nights long. Blood Head walks by the canal brooding over the bodies that float there and the gun-men, narcs and whores that haunt the tow paths. Radioactive Boy rearranges the stars in the sky over Manchester to say rude messages, terrorising the whole town. At least in their dreams.

At breakfast the teenagers are tired and ugly, rat-arsed with lack of sleep while the rest of the bairns are bright eyed and bushy tailed. Dad Robinson reads the newspaper aloud full of GEORGE DAVIS IS INNOCENT and KILL THE FUCKING PIGS, mom serves gruel from a big pan, a baby still stuck to each tit.