Sat by the well in cool November breeze © and waiting J talked a lot of shit like how he was a difficult person to befriend and he was always moving on, from one war to another etc and blah blah. J’s hair smelt of ambulances in the moonlight ©, he talked about death, taxes and the devil and how he’d once seen Arthur Scargill’s Blue Movie Cameo.

Each night when he slept, at least if you believed J, he dreamed that someone was trying to bar-code scan his eyes. This kind of talk made Frank feel stupid.

*

Round midnight the well-vandal came – a mysterious figure who looked from a distance like an old Hindu woman in full ghunghta veil but who turned out to be a gangly white teenager in a snorkel parka.

The kid was called POORLY APPOINTMENT HEALTH INSURANCE KASMER and Frank took a shot at him as he walked toward the well. Frank shot and he kept shooting but the kid KASMER kept coming, like the bullets couldn’t stop him (i.e. drugs). J panicked and ran for cover in a nearby house.

*

Time is always and only Timex.

As KASMER got closer Frank kept shooting (wow, like, maybe 36 shots from a pistol!) until just then of course his gun ran out and the kid still wasn’t dead. KASMER got right up to Frank and then sunk a knife in him, going right thru his check shirt and his lucky nude-woman playing cards right into his heart.

With Frank dead on the paving slabs KASMER walked off and dropped his last curse tablet in the well.

BEATLES RE-FORM IN YOUR GARDEN it said.

PISS ON THE FLAG.

*

At home that night KASMER watched TV. Atom bombs had been dropped on some cities but the news was confusing. RANK XEROX had bought up all the legal rights to the words GROUND ZERO and now whenever anyone said them they had to say GROUND XEROX © instead or else face prosecution, persecution and jail.

“GROUND XEROX © for the explosion was at such and such a place . . .” the newsreaders kept saying and “Now, here’s a report from Martin Banham at GROUND XEROX © . . .” etc.

KASMER poored himself a beer and sneered -

people made money out of anything these days.

*

Across town some cops were lounging around shooting their guns at an old canister of POPCRASH. These cops were in a cushy squad whose job it was to turn up late, just after all the action was over, sirens blaring and screeching brakes. If they did well on this squad they sometimes got transferred to another squad where they dint even have to turn up at all – only turn the sirens on in the distance to let people know they were around.

These cops were arseholes.