Pandora’s Casket
A story… and other scribblings
Neil Stuart Morton
Copyright 2014 Neil Stuart Morton
Copyright and Disclaimer
Copyright Neil Stuart Morton All rights reserved © 2014
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author
This story is fiction and any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) or events is entirely coincidental
Neil Stuart Morton may be contacted at
[email protected] Cover art by the mighty www.a4ps.com
All rights reserved © 2014
Dedication
For Jocky,
A brilliant mate during brutal times
‘
Pandora’s Casket
Penance
Devotion performed voluntarily in sorrow for a sin
Rite of Passage
To mark transition from one status to another... via ritual
Elpis
The personification and spirit of hope... the only thing left inside Pandora’s Box
Pandora’s Casket
Inside
The interior of the booth is padded
Industrial
Purple and compressed with the odd orange fleck
It deadens
Soaks it all up
I talk out loud… a lot
Always have done… although this is in my head
I think
They tell me the voters like it… the talking out loud
Inside it’s low-lit
Like the warm glow of an ember
Against outside through the window
Just like staring at the sun
The padding stops ricochets
Bullets fragmenting and sheaving us in two
Deemed to be unfair
Viewers didn’t like it… voted with their digits
The pirate channels started it
At the top of the dial between the porn
Semi-automatics
And screaming bids to control the crosshairs
Contestants all crammed inside one carton
Just splatter fests to get you off
If shooting fish in a barrel was your thing
And before all the worms and bees were dead
But this is the re-invention
One shot a day and shooter’s prerogative
Quick and clean
Killed or kept
What’s not to like
I think of him… or her, as the Doctor
Hiding out there with his panacea
The answer to all our ills
I limber up to do my thing
To step into the light again
Another prayer to the god of medicine
To miss this shot of Vitamin B
Bumblers
All the bees are dead
So gods bless Monsanto and their robotic polinizers
Over island sized fields of industrialised wheat
Just any port in a storm
And for now… we must still ride with the devils we know
The amber light comes on and counts me down
I pull myself together
And wait for the hatch at the back to open
Then follow the curve of the tunnel out
Don’t want to miss my break
Overshoot my slot
Did everyone get the pun
Sponge Bob
Back inside my pod
The familiar soak of sponge
And the white-out through the window
Wonder if Dad’s watching
Whether it’s day or night
Do I make them proud
Do they count the others down
Who’s gone while I’ve been away
‘You’ll never know it’s happened… ’
The last line of our briefing for our company of twelve
The answer to one of life’s great conundrums
‘Will it hurt?’
Perhaps a tad
Or maybe not
Perhaps even synapses struggle at 3,000 feet a second
Because that’s shifting
Even in old money
Scran Van
The feeding slide opens
Always the slide at the other end
I think they do it on purpose
So you have to pass the window
Sarcasm
Come on down
Viewers will like this
Get extra votes for my cojones
And if the Doctor isn’t otherwise engaged…
Then none of this will matter anymore
I bite down and stroll across
Don’t hold your breath
Oxygen debt
Vacuum
History
‘You’ll poison the worms man!’
‘You’ll poison the soil!’
Placard waving pussies
Hippies!
Only good for gunning down
So they did
Sorted
But they were right
Boy were they right
Booo!
But seriously
How the fuck do you kill all the worms
How the fuck do you poison all the soil
I’ll tell you Man! I’ll tell you
Then tell me
Hippie
You drill through the aquifer to fracture the sub-strata
But the chemicals leach back
Really?
Gallons of toxins into the arteries of your host
Into the venal system of your one and only little blue ball
Even parasites aren’t that fucking stupid
Even parasites don’t consciously decide to kill their fucking...
But cancer does
Whatever
We got frack-gas Baby!
Means we kept on trucking
For a while
Bottle Top Tricks
All anything ever was back then… before the shift
All just black magicians’ tricks
All just where you chose to look
The mis-direction you bought into
Knowingly… and willfully credulous
In the hope the true reveals would never come
And who needed worms and bumblers anyway
When it all could taste soooo good
High fructosed to the max
Monsantoed to the Max!
Barry
Survived another day… another round
Played my part and gave a show
That you can watch when you come home
And consider at leisure my worth
And where to place your vote
They play Barry Manilow for this
I Made It Through The Rain
We aint so different
You and I
In the end it’s all the same
In the end we all play games
Swap Shop
Started with boxes on some shitty game show
In those slow years before the shift
When life was tasty
And good
As if…
For these are relative terms
And who remembers anyway
Or cares
Apathy… or Nihilism
I forget
And prove my point
Just in our nature to look back
To some frozen past that never was
Cast out and coloured by the cold
But yeah
Boxes
Apparently
The o
riginal inspiration for our game… of sorts
Just a player and a box
Filled with an unknown quantity of the bartering chip of the day
Played off against a load of others
Containing more (or maybe less) of that beautiful, notional moolah
That now means fuck all since the shift
Whittled down and swapped at random
And at every turn an offer to cash out
To take the shekels and run…
Against playing for the big one
Must have been riveting
Sarcasm
Pull up a chair
And the twists that led us here
Eventually
If you’ll forgive my abridged account
As I skip the vaccine and water wars
And endeavour to keep my point
Yeah… so this bollocks game that led to this
You win some… you lose some… and yadda, yadda, yadda
But ratings dropped
Less sales of product between the guesses
Soooooo
Spice it up Baby!
Increase reward
Notch up the jeopardy
Leave with all you’ve ever dreamed of
Providing you had the balls
Ooooh!
The irony is everywhere
Play that baby till the end
Down until the Wire
Two final boxes left to choose
Providing you weren’t some Pussy who’d cashed out
Or the jeopardy box had gone
But I’m rambling
You still there
Still with me in my head
Yes?
Only teasing Baby
You know I love you
But yeah
Soooo
Yes!
You are right
You are correct-amundo my friend
What was in the jeopardy box
Cheese wire Baby!
Cheese wire for a cheeeeeeesy show
Either hand
It mattered not
All they wanted was a pinky
Ooooh!
Unlucky sobbing fat girl
Guess Gramps won’t be going on that cruise…
Or adding a seventh to her blues
Guitar joke
And before the pleading cow can fold
The host is grinning like a loon
And slipping on the cutting coat
And the ratings went through the roof
For a while
And then began to fall… again
Because now the viewers smelt the blood
And as ever… wanted more
And who needs both balls anyway
And finally we’re here
After the shift has brought us back
To wherever here is
And whatever we are now
The premise of said game show utilised for something more
For the last thing left worth winning
And I know you love it Baby
And you know I love you too
Stop Buying Beans
In the end… or should that now be the beginning…
It was as simple as that
In that metaphor of slogan we brought about the shift
As figurative and as literal as that
Stop Buying Beans
And the prices will come down
Stop Buying Beans
And they can’t sell us SHIT no more
The groundswell…
Of some collective last-gasp grasp of realisation
That there were more of us than them
Just we’d never thought to count
Been too busy watching game shows
Until all the worms and bees were dead
But the shift did come
That much is true
The shift did come… and brought us here
Eventually
Collectively
The shift did come
That much is true
After the vaccine and water wars
And with almost no air left to sell
The shift did come
And we stopped buying beans
Realised that there was more of us than them
And that even God was dead
That even that was all just bullshit running up a hill from different sides
And all there ever was on top
Was just staring at the sun
That we now couldn’t see for shit
Because we’d set the hill on fire
The only fucking hill we ever had
Man I’m having a bad day
Whatever today might be
They say it happens
When you’re a few days in and the adrenalin drops
The pseudo Zen kicks in
And you start talking bollocks…
Or screaming like number three
And of course the breaks take their toll
And how could they not
For these are terrible things we do
Caskets
Pandora is an unforgiving BITCH!
Exacting penance until she smiles upon the chosen
Behold our rim of effigies
Who bend and break upon her wheel
A sacrifice for all that went before… for what we did
Until only one remains
To be
Ah!
But I’m getting ahead of myself
It’s still too early for reveals
Jeremy
The Panopticon
Bentham’s ‘mill to grind rogues honest’
Our pods arranged via Jeremy’s institutional design…
Around the rim of a wheel
Facing in
Towards the tower… where the Doctor sits
With his rifle
The concept
That Bentham’s lone guard might observe every cell
Impossible
But that every cell would believe itself observed
The nature of our game
We present daily at our windows
Praying…
That the Doctor’s crosshairs are fixed upon another
The Doctor is Panoptes
Greek giant of one hundred eyes
Former poster boy of surveillance state
In the Land of Buying Beans
Before the vaccine and water wars
And all the worms and bees were dead
And before the shift that brought us back
Quid Pro Quo
It means, this for that
The breaks take their toll
And how could they not
For these are terrible things we do
Amber One Last Time
Only two of us now
As the final votes are counted
And I don’t want to talk anymore
Give this the reverence it deserves
Instructed to stand
And move once more towards the sun
I wait for the amber glow
As the other will be waiting
Ever knowing that only one exit hatch will open
To sprint the curved walk to the tower
Into the hub of Bentham’s wheel
To sight the crosshairs on the other
And become the Doctor… one last time
I think of Elpis as the music begins to play
And if Dad…
Zzzzzt