There was nothing on TV – except, of course, Captain Spaceface, commander of the USS Enterprise. He’d already killed half of the race of Gellows and was engaged in wiping out the other half, the sadistic bastard.
Barry of course was leering all over tight-clothed, large breasted, low-cut-topped sex machine Lieutenant Commander Troy. Obscene slanders fell from his lips each time the lustworthy telepath appeared on screen. Emmett paid Barry no attention. He was in one of his less alert, more introspective, more bitter and displeased and taciturn frames of mind. He didn’t even like this Captain Spaceface. It was too long, and everyone knew that they’d solve the problem in the end especially since it was just a rerun. He couldn’t quite remember how it ended but it was crap. He hated it; dark hatred came out of his eyes and beamed into the TV. His eyes weren’t quite focused on the centre of the screen. There was a dark cloud in the room.
The house was clean. The house was clean now.
That wasn’t the reason he was in a dark frame of mind. That was for some other reason, a reason he didn’t understand, to do with the cycles, the ups and downs of existence, anomalies and mental phenomena that were beyond him. All he knew was that it was a total piece of shite and that he HATED it. Maybe he hadn’t got enough sleep.
Barry fucking started talking about Troy’s gee and how to increase it and then have sex with Commander Troy in various unusual positions. Emmett became darker and his introspection descended deeper into the deep caverns from which few venture and fewer return. The deep underwater squids. He wanted to catch one and stop its inky blackness upsetting his internal and carefully maintained personal chemistry. Wring its neck.
‘… it is like the finest sauce you put between two baps and then eat it, but of course you need something to put between the two baps …’
This mind-raking statement was enough to wrench Emmett from his introspective reverie. He looked at Barry and clutched his head. Barry laughed at him with half-bashful, half-intoxicated vigour and spite. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ he laughed.
‘Ugh,’ said Emmett, disgusted by the world. His attention was brought back to the programme, however. Captain Spaceface was examining the ruins of an ancient world he had helped partially annihilate. He was overcome by remorse and suffering. Commander Troy was squinting into the middle-ground.
‘Captain, I feel unhappiness and danger … danger near by … feel …’ she was saying, between gritted sexy teeth.
‘Feel my big bone sandwich you delicious fucking sexual whorebag mothering fucking mother’s daughter yee-ess!’ sang Barry in response. Emmett slapped himself in the face. He wanted a cheese-grater to grate out his ears.
‘No, Barry, stop …’ he moaned, writhing. To distract himself he listened to Captain Spaceface.
‘Who knows what great things lie out there, in the stars, that we have not yet discovered, what wonderful future might lie ahead for humanity, in our continuing mission. Riker?’
‘Yes Captain?’ said the beard.
‘Make it so.’
The Enterprise promptly blasted a hole in space so big that several nearby planets shattered and sent shards spinning into their erstwhile (presently nova) twin suns. The theme music came up.
‘That was shit,’ said Emmett accurately.
Barry stretched and sighed contentedly; though he seemed to be at a loss now that his favourite show was over for another day. Emmett didn’t care. He didn’t care what programme came on next. He switched channel. There was some news on.
WorldCom chiefs refuse to testify. Plans for Pentagon propaganda war. ‘Palindrome Day’: 20 02 2002. Police shoot man on M6.
‘Fuck,’ said Emmett, entering another dark and shadowed abyss. ‘Fuck. That is fucked up.’
Images of pain and suffering rolled endlessly over the screen. A calm voiceover made statements of fact in the background. More suffering. A bomb. Poverty. Politicos making bland, pointless statements about nothing that actually helped make any difference in this fucked, fucked stupid, badly-run and always suffering world.
Emmett wondered why any step made in any direction always seemed to just make things more grim and eternally awful. Why all the forces of nature and artifice in the world seemed geared to one result and one aim only, that of the misery and increasing unhappiness of the weakest and most miserable and most down-trodden-upon. The leaches of humanity whose swamps were drained to provide the westerners with their stinking penthouse apartments in the sun.
That’s how it was, he guessed.
‘Want a jam man?’ asked Emmett, looking up. (Dark rings lay under his words). His tone was pessimistically hopeful – in other words, like a dirge.
‘Hmm. No, man, sorry. I think I’m just giving up on the guitar.’
‘Ah fuck sake man,’ said Emmett, but his spirit wasn’t in the reproach. He expected this.
‘No point. Can’t do anything with it!’
‘Aye, no bother,’ said Emmett, gazing at the TV screen, flicking the channels. He sighed heavily. He flicked between the channels rapidly, regularly, just as the sound tuned in, so that the TV made a noise like brh – goh – ste – fzh – crk – sps –
Barry left the room.
Emmett continued cycling through the channels before idly tossing the remote to one side and stretching out on the sofa. Soon he fell into a doze. He woke up some time later. He went to bed.