“Haha,” he was saying. “Wo-o-o-oah!” It was a rollercoaster, he was on a rollercoaster. He was having the time of his life on a rollercoaster. “Ha, hahaha!” he said. Then there was a cracking noise and a blinding pain and a whole mess of blood and the next few hours were intermittent horror.

“You kicked a man’s head off his body,” said the policeman, later. “You kicked a man in the head so hard his neck split in two and he died.” What had happened was this: the previous cycle of rollercoastees had including a high-functioning idiot called Alan who, over the course of having thirty-to-thirty-five seconds of rollercoaster fun, had lost his hat. “Aw, shoot,” he said. “My hat.” His hat said ‘ASS LIKER’ on it. He hopped a fence and tried to get it and got kicked so hard in the face that his head came off his neck.

“I don’t think they should call it a ‘kick’,” said his wife, as he sat in an upstairs room in a wheelchair – his leg was left spectacularly broken by the force of being propelled into a man’s head – just staring out of the window all sad. “You know, in the inquest. A ‘kick’ suggests intent.” And she was right, in a way. He did not mean to kick a man in the head so hard he had died. He was fired into the man’s head at high speed while locked in to a machine designed for pleasure, and the man had instantly died of having his head kicked off. It was definitely unavoidable, yes. But that did not stop him being ‘really sad’ about it. After a few weeks of moping, his wife had had enough. “I’m going to stay with my sister,” she said, gathering the kids up and ushering them into a people carrier. “I’m not coming back, Charlie.”

When the hearing was over and the theme park had banked his damages – they did not pay for the damage to his leg, but did pay out over the emotional hurt of sending him a mid-ride photograph of the exact moment of the accident in error – he had about had enough. He knew what he had to do. He hopped the fence, with difficulty, with trick-leg difficulty. He held the ‘ASS LIKER’ hat in his hand. “Take me, Nemesis,” he whispered, his arms outstretched, the rollercoaster oncoming. “Take me home.”

“How did they find him, doctor?” she said. She was the daughter, old herself, holding a hanky but not using it. It was not unexpected, this death. This was not a young man who had died.

“Uh,” said the doctor. “Um.” He had been a doctor for thirty years. He had told people their ears had stopped working and their heart was a ticking timebomb and that their leg was not a leg at all but was actually just a huge and insane tumour (‘cancer-leg’), and that they only had one leg and actual seconds to live. “Uh.” He had died in front of Countdown. He had died in front of a Carol Vorderman repeat of Countdown, with his dick out, with his old old chap standing halfway to attention.

“Uhh,” he said. “They… they found him in front of the TV.” Technically, this was not a lie. She smiled. “He always loved watching TV,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “I’m glad he went doing what he loved.” “What he loved, yes,” said the doctor, sweating now, having anxieties. “Yes.”

“What… what was the cause of death?” she said. “Was it… quick?” He looked at his clipboard and took a deep breath. Because of doctor rules he had to tell her. “He, um. He died of erection failure. Your father died of erection failure.” ‘Erection failure’ is an erection that makes your entire body fail. Essentially he would have had five more years if it wasn’t for Carol Vorderman’s flirty laugh. “They found him still warm with half a teacake on.” It was the worst day that anyone had ever died. His daughter cried and cried and cried. 

Time Of My Life came on in the club and he looked at his girlfriend like “yes”, like “just do it baby!” and she knew, she knew what to do, she flew at his with all of his might and he lifted her up like Patrick Swayze in that one Patrick Swayze film. “Ah had,” said whoever even sang it, no one famous. “The time of my li–i–ife.” He lifted her up into the air in one perfect moment, and she held there for a second, the club flashing black and white and blue all around them, everyone open mouthed in awe, and their eyes met and she started to mouth “I love,” she started to mouth “I love you,” but then gravity happened and he caught her all wrong and three of his vertebrae rammed into each other like Japanese cars. “Irrepairable,” said the doctor, shaking his head, playing idly with the controls on his wheelchair. “Ir–re–pairable.”

You can buy all sorts at car boot sales. You can buy board games and furnishings and onion-y hotdogs, and all of these transactions are made in the early hours of the morning between unhappy people wearing fingerless gloves. He ignored all the weird stuff, though, and instead bought a lighty soiled mannequin.

WHY HE WAS BUYING A LIGHTLY SOILED MANNEQUIN AT A CAR BOOT SALE

He was 16 and, like, nobody would touch his dick for him, but he knew that dating would soon be a thing if he kept spending each evening praying for it, just praying super hard to God, so he thought he’d get the jump on things by practising bra unhooking moves on this here mannequin. He called her Melissa and he hid her in his wardrobe and he spent each evening when he knew his Moms had gone to sleep furtively hooking and unhooking a bra from on and off of her (Melissa), until he could about do it with one hand, until he could about do it in under three minutes. And, one night, when the moonlight hit her and her casing sort of minorly collapsed so she shuffled into him, he looked at her and he knew that he loved her. He knew completely that he loved her.

That next week was a blur. Every day at school he would tap his pencil on his desk until the clock struck three and then tear on home in a hurry ready to put a bra on Melissa and then take it off again, ready to slowly work his hand to the sort of eerie legless base, ready to whisper sweet nothings into her featureless cloth face. But then he checked his wardrobe and with horror found she wasn’t there.

“She isn’t there,” said his Moms, at the door, holding her own bra up, spinning it on her finger. “And she ain’t coming back.” He ran to the woodchipper (his Moms had put Melissa in the woodchipper), and held the fragments of her up to his face while sobbing. “I’ll n-e-v-e-r for-get yo-hoo-hoo,” he said, as his Pa walked towards him while taking his belt off, his butt girding itself for a whupping. “Wah-ha-ha-ha-haaa.”

Science has not found a definitive answer as to when exactly it is okay to ‘blow a bum trumpet’ in front of someone to you do a sex both around and to, but it’s classically thought to be somewhere between ‘two years into a relationship’ and ‘fucking never’, which, for this guy on his third ever date with a girl, was about a vast and infinite abyss too soon.

“Ho boy,” he thought. “Gotta toot.” He had had taquitos earlier, which are, like, little tiny tacos? Like bread and spicy meat. He had eaten so many of those he thought he might cry, and then he put on trousers and a lounge jacket and came out on this date. “I made a mistake today,” he thought, holding his breath, clenching his buttocks. “I made a series of mistakes.”

“Shall we go dancing?” she said. She was exactly the kind of girl who walked three paces ahead, bouncing from one mad idea to another, all ‘let’s have an ice cream!’ and ‘let’s do roller skating!’ and ‘let’s clap our hands with glee!’. “Let’s go dance!” she said, and he knew he’d never make it through a rumba or whatever entirely tootless. He knew he had to do something. He made a human decision.

Silently, carefully, he released a tiny parpo in the street. Like, um: [y/h/n SQUEEZES BUTTS, TILTS HEAD, LIFTS ONE CHEEK, DOES NOT DO AN ACTUAL TOOT BUT MIMICKS IT]. Like that. He did it and it was soundless and he’d almost gotten away with it. Almost.

You know in London, how kids go around on those scooters all the time? Like, those little scooter things. They are like two wheels and a pole and have a child on them and some Batman stickers, and they are stupid. Anyway some stupid dumb idiot kid came around the corner and smacked face first into this like blastwall of toot juice. “Ugh,” he said. He licked his tongue against the roof of his mouth to try and get the taste out. “Ugh, jeez.” He looked at the man. He looked at the man with all the perception of youth, and extended one tiny finger at him. “You,” he said, trembling, pale. “You did this. You did a horrible toot cloud.” He looked at his date. “This guy is a criminal.” He coughed, he skittered roughshod away. They did not have sex that night, or any night. They didn’t even dance. Next day he filled his lonely flat with parpos and thought “when will I stop making mistakes with my butt?” 

“K-k-, k-k-k-k-kids,” she had said. She was old, now, and made of paper, an old-ass lady with set grey hair and milk-white eyes and final hours delirium. “Save your strength, Mama,” they said. The entire family was by her bedside, holding back the tears, not wanting her to go away in pain. “We are here for you, Mama. We are strong for you.”

She ushered her youngest daughter closer. “Your father,” she said. Her breath was but a whisper, now, the abyss climbing through her body, freezing the blood in her veins. “You’ll be with him soon, Mama,” she said. The old lady stirred, she nodded. “Your father, kids.” She looked up, with one final moment of absolute clarity. “Your Pa could REALLY eat a pussy.” And then, she was gone.

The year is 2070 and it is possible to fuck a robot. It is possible to fuck a robot. With your dick or whatever ladies have, it is possible to fuck a robot. And so the scene is set.

Here’s the thing with fuckbots: everybody in the future is kind of over them. Everybody in 2070 has had a go on a fuckbot and gone like ‘yes’ and ‘well, isn’t that a thrill’ and then sort of moved on to something else. Think of it like sticking your dick or whatever ladies have into a Betamax player: you wouldn’t, would you? You’d stick your junk in a Blu-Ray player instead. It’s kind of like that but with robots, with legs and eyes and tits and synthetic robot hair. And they are called fuckbots.

He had had a fuckbot once, back in the 2050s. She was tall and pneumatic and had over 20 dishwasherproof attachments, and she was perfect, she was perfect. Her name was SHEILA 1000 and she was perfect. But then he realised he could get a DONNA 2050 on his company health insurance so he did, trading SHEILA in on future eBay, moving DONNA 2050 in to his spare room. “Aw yiss,” he said. “Gonna get some crazy robot fucking done.”

That was long ago, now. He was old, he was wizened, his hands all gnarled like soft wood. DONNA 2050 had long become sentient and jetted off to Cuba with a robolord called LORENZO–P99, and he was alone now, he was old and he was alone. He was wheezing down the road on his hoverzimmer to whatever the future version of the Post Office is – I am going to go out on a limb here and say ‘e-mail house’? – and he saw her, shimmering, in the distance. “SHEILA?” he said. “SHEILA 1000?” SHEILA turned. “TROY?!” she said, robotically, obviously. “TROY, IS THAT YOU?”

There was a five-minute pause while he old man-walked over to her.

“SHEILA, you haven’t aged a day!” he said. And she hadn’t, she hadn’t at all. While other SHEILA 1000 models lost their togglable nipples and interchangeable butt-cheeks with age, SHEILA was still perfectly preserved, manufacturer labels and all. “HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?” she said, metallically. “TWENTY? THIRTY YEARS?”

“SHEILA,” he said. “How about we go grab a coffee and whatever it is that robots drink? For old times’ sake?” She looked at him with LED eyes. “Why, Troy,” she said, but right then another old man ambled up to her, all holding her arm with his clawed old man-hand, all flickering his old man-tongue through what was left of his teeth. “Now now, SHEILA, what’s this?” he said, looking at him with sharpened eyes. “Who is your friend?”

“Why, this is Troy,” she said. “Troy?” he said. “TROY? You mean, eBay user TROY_1987?” He looked at him, and smiled. “HA HA HA,” he said. “Ha ha ha ha HA!” Then he lit a cigar and then flicked the cigar at Troy and got onto a hover motorcycle. “You lose, idiot,” he said. “Come on SHEILA 1000, let’s go home at try that new magnetic lingerie I got you and fuck.” They peeled away in a cloud of future-smoke, and the old man just stood there, all old. “I should never have sold my robot wife on eBay and bought a younger model,” he thought. “I should not have done that thing.”

Storm clouds, castles on a hill. “Ha ha ha ha ha,” he said. “Mwah ha ha ha ha!” He was a doctor, he was an evil doctor. It was olden times and he was an evil doctor. He pulled a lever and harnessed a lightening bolt and drove life into the clammy selection of lady corpse bits in front of him. “Arise!” he said. “Arise, arise, arise! Ha ha ha ha ha!” Kind of like a Frankenstein thing, is what I’m getting at.

The monster looked at him with cold, lifeless eyes, opening her slack dead jaw to speak. “Hurr,” she wheezed, lifeless lungs through an unfamiliar voicebox. “Hurr-urr-hgh oh cool you have Netflix? Oh my go–osh!”

And so that’s how it went. For the first week of their union, he would endeavour to work out the kinks — one of her titties emitted a high, electric hum, like ‘eeeeeee’, while one arm just straight up did not work — while the monster caught up on The Sopranos. At night he would paw at her reanimated wubs and dry-hump her undead butt-cheeks but all to no avail. “Shh, not tonight, baby,” she would say. “Christophuh is all fuck up on heroin again.”

It all came to a head that Sunday night, while Tony was balls-deep in a dream sequence and the evil doctor was doing the yawn-and-arm-round-the-back-of-the-sofa routine and all raising his eyebrows. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, turning to him with those beautiful, mildly cloudy eyes. “I have to make my sandwiches for work tomorrow.” She snuggled down towards him, tried to arrange her collage of features into doing the doe eyes. “Would you do it for me?” She pouted out what ended lip. “Pwease?”

He was putting spread onto a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and looking out of the kitchen window when he first noticed the inevitable torch-wielding mob, all forks and shouts and mutton-chops. “You know what, fuck it,” he thought. “Good.” Then they murdered him and raized his castle to the ground pulled him apart with their bare hands because watching Netflix with a reanimated corpse is not cool. Do not do this thing. 

She was young and she was teenaged and she had a crush on French Stewart. She had a crush on French Stewart. French Stewart, for those who are not fellow members of the French Stewart Fan Club (F. S. F. C., twice-yearly meetings, weekly newsletter): French Stewart is that squinty-eyed one out of 3rd Rock From The Sun who is not Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and she loved him. While her friends screamed themselves blue at One Direction concerts and had fleeting little thoughts about Justin Bieber unpeeling his single leather glove and making hot little love to them, she thought solely of French. She spent evenings cuddling up to her live-sized French Stewart cushion. She doodled ‘FS 4 EVA’ on and in all of her highschool notebooks. “Where in the fuck did she even get a 2013 French Stewart calendar?” her Pa said. “The man is 49 years old! He was in Home Alone 4!” It was late at night, and then were fighting with whispers in the kitchen. “I didn’t even know there was a Home Alone 4!”

Her grades were down and her college placement was in jeopardy so they sat her down and gave her an ultimatum. “No more French Stewart,” they said. It wasn’t actually an ultimatum, it was more of a command. “No more 3rd Rock DVDs.” As if to make a point, her Pa picked up a single disc and snapped it in half, like ‘what’, like ‘what now’. “What now?” he said. “Huh?” She ran to her room and peeled down all of her French Stewart posters and folded them into a clump and pushed her French Stewart bobblehead into the bin and ripped the collar of her French Stewart t-shirt. “I hate you, Dad,” she said. “I hate you I hate you I hate you.” Then she got realised French Stewart’s last professional credit was in 2010 and got over it, basically. 

“Argh!” he was saying. “Argh! Argh! Argh!” They were ushering him through the ER ward, screaming on a gurney. “Arrrrgh!” he was saying. “ARRRR–ARGH!”

His major malfunction was this: he could not stop jizzing. He could not stop jizzing. He had started jizzing earlier that day, while his wife was out buying a pair of scissors, experimenting for the first time with a dild. He tried it and it was fine and all but then he found himself kneeling on the floor and unable to stop. He could not ebb the flow. The carpet in front of the fireplace was basically a sponge, it was ruined. The duvet had been fetched off the bed to help mop up proceedings was a sodden mess, too. The ‘inspirational man pamphlet’ he had been using at the time was so wet the paper fell apart until it flaked.

“He’s losing vital fluids, doctor!” said the nurse. “What do we do?” The doctor did not really know. He had never seen a case of profound ejaculation before. He clicked his pen and rolled up his sleeves and thought on his feet. “He needs a transplant,” he said. “THIS MAN NEEDS A JIZZ TRANSPLANT.”

Yeah, no. Like, they did it, but it didn’t work. He died a husk with someone else’s jizz in him and they had to incinerate his ambulance. Do not let this happen to you. 

He was 17 years of age and made of that same weird sinewy stuff Iggy Pop is made of, only young. He was holding hands with his first ever girlfriend in the front room of her parents house and touching her on the bra strap, and oh yeah, you know. It’s hand-holding time. It’s hand-holding time and you know. You know.

“Heh,” he said, pointing to his t-shirt. “Have you seen my t-shirt?” His t-shirt said, in huge black capitals, in impactful script: ‘YOUR MUM’. She looked at him, big eyes and braces. “Heh,” she said. “Yeah.”

“Oh Lisa oh Jesus,” her Mum said, running into the front room, tiny little footsteps, wearing oven gloves. “Oh gosh it’s your Grandma, she’s died.” Lisa deflated like a pierced balloon into shrieking grief, and after a few minutes of her bawling clotted mascara onto his shirt front, he solemnly turned off MTV. The house was suddenly an upheaval of mourning; phones were ringing, dogs unfed, brother-in-laws were pulling seven-seater vehicles up into the driveway. “Lisa,” her Mum said, eventually, warningly. “Your Dad’s here.”

“Jane,” her Da said, coming through the door, his fine scalp flushed pink with misery. “She’s… she’s gone, Jane.” He held out his open arms to his daughter, too, but not before spying The T-Shirt. “What does that say?” he said, hollering, a maniac. He was taking his belt off and screaming and crying at the same time. “WHAAAAAAAAT DOES THAT SAAAAA–”

Lipstick, stilettos and not a lot else, all wrapped up in a mackintosh. “Oh man,” she thought, pouting in the mirror, pinning her hair. “I am going to surprise him. He is going to be so surprised.” Only, but, no.

Here Is The Deal About That: Yes, turning up to a dude’s work (or a ladies’ work, that is also okay. Your handsome narrator will concede that ladies do work.) all trussed up in a mackintosh and lipstick and flashing them the goods and saying “hello” and saying “let’s do a sex now” are and is a classic power move, but also this: you ever sat down in a Tube carriage in nothing but a mackintosh? Have you? Have you personally done that thing? Do not do that thing. Her sexy feelings melted like ice in her palm, her business got all brushed up the wrong way with the texture of the seats. She held a copy of Metro between her clenched thighs for modestly. By the time she had gotten off the Tube (two changes, sexlessly clammy, walking to his office in a rush) she was whatever the opposite of Down To Fuck is, and hard. She’d rather change a bin liner than do a little fuck on the top of a photocopying machine. That’s where she was at.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What are you even doing at my work?” It was late, she was sorry. She started to cry. She weakly showed him her naked body, the insane arrangement of pubic hair she had gotten especially. He gave her a hug. “Hey,” he shushed. “Hey.” He held her face up to his, looked her in the eye. “Hey,” he said, “hey,” he whispered. “Do you want to go to Nando’s for our tea?” She nodded. She sat in Nando’s and ate a chicken burger, and idly Basic Instinct’d a passing sixth former so hard he fainted.

“You two get on so well together!” people said. “You should totally ruin it!”

So they did, so they moved in together. What were previously cute and goofy tics became intolerable behaviours. “FUCK THE PLATES,” he said. “FUCK THEM. THEY ARE JUST PLATES.” He broke a plate, with feeling. “FUCK THESE PLATES.” It was Day Two. “WHY WOULD YOU USE MY LADYSHAVE,” she said, holding up a ladyshave, only wrong, somehow, only hairy. “TO DO THAT TO YOUR BUTTHOLE.” He walked sandily over to her. “I DON’T KNOW,” he said, through clenched teeth. “I DON’T KNOW.”

Flo Rida walks the scorched earth, the unrelenting abyss. “Where them girls at?” he says, weakly. “Where them girls at?” He drags David Guetta’s desiccated body behind him like a twig.  The cities are dust, now, the fields burned down into dirt. Nothing is left but the wind. Flo Rida lifts his shades, surveys the battered vista. He is weak, now, in need of water. He barely has the strength to lift the heavy gold chains around his neck. “Where them girls at,” he says, drawing one final, heavy breath. “Where them girls… at?”

Hayley Campbell is a lady, but tall. “I have opinions on tall ladies,” she says. “I have things to say about where to buy jeans.” Nobody cares, skyscraper! Nobody cares, you fucking monster!

–

Michael Smythe learned the fine art of ‘fingering’ off of Stephen Hoarsley in the year above. You remember fingering, right? It was new to Smythe. “Stick your index finger up her,” said Hoarsley, a 15-year-old man who ate chips in the park with girls on a semi-regular basis, “and then you get to eat chips in the park with girls on a semi-regular basis.”

The rules set out by self-proclaimed “ladies’ dude” Hoarsley gave no room for creativity: no substitutions were allowed, finger-wise. Dexterity was not The Thing, here. “Do not go off-road, little man,” he said, hitting Smythe on the back of his school blazer, upsetting his orange Tango. “Do not do that thing, little buddo.”

Two hours later Smythe pricked his index finger on a palm frond during a school excursion to a botanically weird garden. As the nurse bandaged it up all horrifying and ET Phone Home, all Smythe could do was stare near catatonically at this totally unfair turn of events, finger-wise. A week later he lost both God and his finger to sepsis and gangrene and the 14-year-old amputee was now pointlessly at a school dance amidst a miasma of Lynx. He was sans fingering finger and basically, and let us put this delicately, had no clue whatsoever w/r/t vaginas nor the humans they came attached to.

Despite this, Elizabeth Ainsley and her glitter lipgloss were inexplicably all up against him, armfuls of thigh bursting out of £3.99 H&M hotpants, while Smythe’s tiny erection cowered in the band of his Spider-Man boxer shorts. His medically delicate hand was held awkwardly aloft. Bored and desperate she later got off with the digitally complete Jeremy Coughlin, and our hero Smythe – never able to skip bases in order to hit his home run, nor apparently physically able to do a perfunctory Google – died resolutely unlaid at the age of 48. Local obituarists deleted the line about choking on a chip in the park, citing “a bit Mama Cass” in their internal memos.