SHORT: Shelley [2011]

SHELLEY

Shelley was a retard; the other children knew. They told her so at recess, ’most every day in school. They danced around in circles, chanting sweet malign; she smiled as they baited her, too dumb to reconcile…

Shelley’s mind was simple. She liked it when her classmates sang to her; it instilled a pleasant feeling of warmth beneath the prickle of her alabaster skin. Though too mentally ill-equipped to accurately identify the sensation, she knew that it felt like love. And while she didn’t know much else, she knew that she loved only two things in this world: Mummy and Daniel.

Daniel was her everything: her swoon, her starlight clinch, her lasting kiss goodnight. She observed him every day through thick, unbecoming lenses, quietly willing his reciprocation in each casual twinge of distraction. When eventually his soft chestnut eyes met hers over a stolen game of Knuckles in the teacher’s absence, she grinned sweetly at him, revealing the rows of ugly metallic braces clamped to her teeth. Startled and appalled, he quickly turned away in loathing and embarrassment, simultaneously revolted and intrigued by her ardent gaze.

Later that day, he followed her after school. Making sure no-one was around to witness his moment of weakness, he took firm hold of her plump, fleshy arms and pinned her roughly to the nearest wall. Shelley quickly felt her initial panic melt into docile acceptance as she realised that finally he had come for her. He fumbled the lumpen contours of her half-formed breasts as they tussled gracelessly against the unforgiving façade; through the fine padding of her sweater she felt the bricks’ craggy rivets digging harshly into her back, grinding like seashells beneath the feet of an infant.

Overcome with happiness at this surprising development, Shelley felt her soul in ascension for the first time in thirteen lonely years. She breathed in the slivery smell of his adrenaline and tried to pin down his clumsy tongue with hers as he groped beneath her skirt and slid his finger inside her, feeling it wriggle like an arctic worm for a moment of stifled euphoria before being crudely extracted and smeared against her pasty thigh. As their lips parted, he sniffed himself inquisitively before grimacing in disgust; she moaned in uncomprehending enquiry while studying his look of rising dismay. Buoyed by the rhapsody of their correlation, she reached out to touch his face, only to find her hand brusquely slapped away; when her yawning, deaf mouth uttered a hollow, probing sound, he roared some unspecified command before cruelly shoving her aside. She slumped against the base of the wall and watched his footsteps pound silently along the pavement, drifting in gratified reverie while idly contemplating her next move.

That night, Shelley pressed flowers for him; she glued them to the pages of her embossed, pastel-coloured scrapbook, spelling out his name in dry rose-petals. She showed it to her mother, who smiled warmly and stroked her hair as she whispered expressions of unconditional affection into her daughter’s muffled eardrums. Her little girl was growing up, but she wasn’t sad – she was so, so proud.

The next day, Shelley found Daniel at break-time and trailed him to the quad; she wished only to run her fingers through the wisping strands of his auburn hair and relinquish her offering. She held her arms out expectantly, inviting his embrace as her mute expression tried to articulate all that she could never say in words. The look of abhorrence on his stupefied visage conveyed an altogether different sentiment: he would never understand or even begin to abide her intolerable attentions. When she presented him with the hand-made token, he screwed the offering into a tenacious ball and threw it right back at her; when she pressed further, he pulled at her hair, exposing frail q-tips of soft white tissue as the earth of her scalp lingered like chalk on the uprooted sheaves.

Immune to the implications of his violence, Shelley skipped home that evening and made him stout, crumbling stick-men of ginger. Mommy helped her bake them. They bustled joyously around the kitchen, icing the beaming faces together. Later that night when Shelley had retired, her mother placed a ribbon around the precious Tuppaware container before sliding it tenderly into her school bag. How could anyone fail to love her little girl?

Shelley presented her gift during lunch-hour the next day, shuffling shyly towards him while he sat amongst friends. When Daniel observed the horror of her greeting, he picked up the remnants of a thick-set mass of concrete and pitched it squarely at her mouth. She span like an unhinged dreidel, clattering to the floor as the pulverising force of the collision took away her jaw-line; inside her facile mind, Shelley swelled with pride at her new-found communal regard as she observed the other children shrieking with laughter. Loose teeth rattled like fruit-flavoured Skittles inside her throbbing maw, and she dribbled loosely into the dirt while the mob swarmed around her like a pack of ravenous wolves.

Before long, he was upon her, chiselling her face with the unforgiving rock until it could sustain no more damage. Shelley blinked in innocent wonderment as he wrought brutal vengeance upon her ripening features; her skin bloomed to dazzling shades of crimson while he feverishly bludgeoned her obtuse skull into submission. By the time he’d finished, the chanting had all but subsided; the other children stared at her worthless, twitching body with goggle-eyes as he dropped the blood-encrusted slab onto the ground. The filaments of his hairline swayed coolly in the breeze as he knelt gasping above her; in her acquiescent stupor, Shelley noticed that if she squinted hard enough into the sunlight behind him, he looked just like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

The crowd began to waver slightly as the other children jostled one another before silently breaking ranks. Shelley stared vacantly up at the sky and caught a glimpse of the underside of a passing fly as it casually hovered down onto the ruins of her once-discernible face. The insect crawled over the ravages of her lesioned forehead and she blinked in cavernous disconnection before it tired of the weltered terrain and took off, leaving her alone once more.

Daniel panted in exhaustion as blood poured freely from the warped slump of her contorted lips. As saliva ran down her face and joined the shattered remains of her mouth on the ground, Shelley tightened her aching facial muscles and smiled grotesquely at him with wide, hopeful eyes. She held out her arms in unquestioning acceptance as he sauntered away, before wilting onto the cold stone floor and watching the clouds above her revolve into a whirling ball of cotton-candy. The last thing she remembered was the strobing flicker of sirens.

Later that night, the fly returned to her and they made friends once and for all. ‘Patrick’, she named him, after the handsome star of Dirty Dancing. He buzzed absent-mindedly around the room, humming sweet nothings as she lay still in her metallic crib. Impervious to his impotent drone, Shelley sighed contentedly as she began to dream of a time when she and Daniel would be as one again; she felt her heartbeat synchronise with his across vast chasms of time and space as her puffy, swollen eyes charted its dull blip on the cardiomonitor from the warmth of her hospital bed.

C.C. 26/11/11

SHORT FILM: At the Tosche Station [2011]

AT THE TOSCHE STATION

FADE UP:

EXT. LARS HOMESTEAD (TATOOINE) – DAY

Footage from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope begins to play:

1) LUKE SKYWALKER and UNCLE OWEN standing with their new purchases from the JAWAS’ SANDCRAWLER -

UNCLE OWEN
“Luke, take these two over to the garage, will you?
I want you to have both of them cleaned up before dinner.”

LUKE

“But I was going to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters...!”

UNCLE OWEN
“You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done.
Now come on, get to it.”

LUKE
(motioning to droids)
“Alright, come on...”

2) Mournful orchestral music swells as LUKE gazes out on the twin suns of his home planet, before turning away and venturing back to his workshop.

FADE TO:

EXT. TOSCHE STATION – NEXT DAY

Brief establishing shot of the locale: a run-down fuelling garage in the middle of the desert with a large painted sign above it which reads, “TOSCHE STATION”.

INT. TOSCHE STATION – SAME TIME

We observe a bored-looking attendant in his early 30s stood idly flicking through a magazine while leaning over the service counter. He is wearing a light blue work-shirt emblazoned with a sew-on patch stating his name. This is KLASH RENDARK, the station’s proprietor.

From his perspective, we see a close-up of the station’s APPOINTMENT DIARY. The current day is marked by a ringed note which reads: “LUKE S – pick up power converters”.

Noting this, KLASH picks up the phone and dials a number. We hear the sound of the ANSWERING MACHINE on the other end as a clock ticks impassively in the background.

ANSWERING MACHINE
(V.O.)
“Hi, this is Beru and Owen Lars. We’re not home right now,
but please leave a message after the beep.”

SFX (OVER PHONE): sound of an R2 unit chirping.

KLASH
- Uh, hey there Luke, this is Klash Rendark calling from
the Tosche Station at Anchorhead.

As he speaks, he eyes two large, unwieldy round metal objects taking up a considerable amount of space on one side of the room.

KLASH
I’ve got those two power converters here that you ordered in last week – they’re pretty big and are kind of in the way here, so if you could swing by and pick them up whenever you get the chance, that’d be great. Alright, see you later, buddy – ’bye...

He hangs up the phone and continues reading his magazine.


CUT TO:

EXT. TATOOINE – SAME TIME

More footage from A New Hope, intercut quickly:

1) A TUSKEN RAIDER attacking LUKE before startling at the sound of BEN KENOBI approaching;

2) LUKE sparking up his father’s lightsaber in BEN’S DWELLING –

BEN
“Not as clumsy or random as a blaster;
an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age...”

3) LUKE running to his speeder as he and BEN observe the damage wrought upon the JAWAS’ SANDCRAWLER -

BEN
“Wait, Luke! It’s too dangerous...!”

4) LUKE lowering his head sadly as he observes the burning LARS HOMESTEAD.


CUT TO:

INT. TOSCHE STATION - LATER

From KLASH’s point-of-view, we see a distant billow of black smoke wisping over the horizon as he listens to the telephone’s dial-tone.

At the sound of the R2 unit, he leaves another message.

KLASH
- Uh, yeah, Luke, buddy, Klash again here from over at the Tosche Station. Listen, I know you’re probably tied up reprogramming those moisture vaporators at the moment, but I could really do with you giving me a hand and grabbing these power converters when you get the chance.

From the adjacent room, we hear the voice of his nagging WIFE.

WIFE
(O.S.)
“KLASH! Did you get rid of those friggin’ eyesores yet...?!”

KLASH
(shielding receiver)
- Just a couple of parsecs, honey...!
(back into phone)
- I mean, I wouldn’t normally badger you about it, but it was quite an expensive item to order in, you know – not the king of thing I can really afford to have lying around, especially since the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems came into effect. I’ve really put a lot on the line here buddy, so just give me a call, yeah? See ya later...

He hangs up.

CUT TO:

More footage from A New Hope:

1) HAN SOLO joining BEN, LUKE and CHEWBACCA in a darkened booth of the MOS EISLEY CANTINA –

HAN
“Han Solo. I’m captain of the Millennium Falcon.
Chewie here tells me you’re looking for passage to
the Alderaan system...”

2) The MILLENNIUM FALCON hurtling away from DOCKING BAY 94 while being blasted by STORMTROOPERS;

3) HAN, CHEWBACCA, BEN and LUKE in the cockpit of the MILLENNIUM FALCON as it is rocked by laser fire -

LUKE
“Why are we still moving towards it?!”

HAN
“We’re caught in a tractor beam, it’s pulling us in!”

4) The MILLENNIUM FALCON being drawn into an open port of the DEATH STAR.

CUT TO:

INT. TOSCHE STATION – SAME TIME

From inside the main service room, we hear the sound of an argument taking place off-screen. Though the door to the adjoining room is closed, we are able to make out the dialogue through the wall:

KLASH
(O.S.)
“I told you, I’ve been calling him but he hasn’t picked up yet!”

WIFE
(O.S.)
“Well that’s just not good enough! It’s almost a week now those things have been hanging round, and I’ve told you before about ordering in expensive parts that never get collected!”

KLASH
(O.S.)
“Honey, I’m trying...!”

WIFE
“How are we going to balance the books again this season with a massive outlay like that lying around? And have you even begun to think about paying the Hutts back for that loan we took out last summer? You know I hate that Rodian bugging me at home...”

CUT TO:

More footage from A New Hope:

1) LUKE bursting into a DEATH STAR DETENTION CELL in his Stormtrooper outfit to greet PRINCESS LEIA –

LEIA
“Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper...?”

LUKE
“Huh? Oh, the uniform!”
(removing helmet)
”I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you!”

LEIA
“You’re who...?”

2) LUKE and LEIA on the broken EXTENSION BRIDGE of a Death Star tunnel as LUKE hooks his utility belt cord onto an outcropping of pipes.

LEIA
(kissing his cheek)
“For luck!”

They swing across the abyss and land safely on the other side.

3) HAN and CHEWBACCA in the cockpit of the MILLENNIUM FALCON -

HAN
“Okay, hit it!”

The FALCON rockets away from the Death Star.

CUT TO:

INT. TOSCHE STATION – LATER

We hear the sound of the clock ticking again as KLASH leans over the service counter boredly thumbing through another magazine. The power converters are still taking up a disproportionate amount of space in the room.

CUT TO:

Footage from A New Hope:

1) LUKE and HAN in gun turrets of the MILLENNIUM FALCON as TIE-FIGHTERS approach –

LEIA
“Here they come!”

HAN hits a fighter with his laser-cannon and laughs victoriously.

LEIA
“There are still two more of them out there!”

LUKE blasts an incoming TIE-FIGHTER as it approaches front and centre.

CUT TO:

INT. TOSCHE STATION – LATER

KLASH enters the main service room through the residence door, and observes a hand-written note left for him on the counter. It reads: “I’M LEAVING YOU. x ”

The clock ticks impassively in the background as his face slumps in dejection.

CUT TO:

Footage from A New Hope:

1) X-WING PILOTS beginning their assault on the DEATH STAR –

RED LEADER
“All wings report in.”

RED TEN
“Red Ten standing by...”

RED SEVEN
“Red Seven standing by...”

LUKE
“Red Five standing by...”

RED LEADER
“Lock S-foils in attack position...”

The X-WING FIGHTERS descend into the trench of the DEATH STAR.

2) TIE-FIGHTERS pursuing the various REBEL FIGHTERS through the
DEATH STAR TRENCH -

GOLD LEADER
“I can’t manoeuvre!”

GOLD FIVE
“Stay on target...”

GOLD LEADER
“We’re too close!”

GOLD FIVE
“Stay on target...”

GOLD LEADER
“Loosen up!"

He is blasted to smithereens by a pursuing TIE-FIGHTER.

CUT TO:

INT. TOSCHE STATION – KLASH’S KITCHEN

The kitchen is an unholy mess, with dirty dishes and empty food containers strewn around at random. An unshaven, dishevelled-looking KLASH sits at the dining table in his vest and pants, dejectedly sipping from a glass of blue milk.

A large WOMP RAT scurries through the room, stopping to nibble at some discarded food on the floor.

KLASH
- GET...!

CUT TO:

Footage from A New Hope:

1) DARTH VADER ricocheting in his TIE-FIGHTER cockpit as he is spun off course by HAN in the MILLENNIUM FALCON -

VADER
“What - ?!”

HAN
“Yeeeeeeaaah-hooo! You’re all clear, kid,
now let’s blow this thing and go home!”

LUKE concentrates on the advancing exhaust port and fires his torpedoes.

2) The DEATH STAR explodes in a blistering supernova as the remaining REBEL FIGHTERS pull away.


CUT TO:

EXT. TOSCHE STATION – SAME TIME

A broken-looking KLASH locks the dilapidated station behind him as he wanders outside. He hangs a sign on the door which says “OUT OF BUSINESS” and begins to mope away.

As he passes the two large power converters – bundled haphazardly outside the main station window with a sign next to them which reads “PLEASE HELP YOURSELF” - he is distracted by the faint sound of a muffled commotion off-screen.

He looks up at the sky, observes the remnants of a large explosion somewhere off in the distance, and dejectedly trudges away.

FIN.

C.C. 23/11/11

SHORT: Televised Nazi Sex Orgy [2011]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

DISCLAIMER: The following is a work of fiction created solely for artistic purposes, though clearly this term should be applied only in its very loosest form. To the best of my knowledge, Nadine Dorries is not a Nazi in any literal sense of the word, nor has she ever publicly fucked or sucked Michael Gove. The events portrayed herein should therefore not be taken as any kind of accurate interpretation of our immediate physical reality, unless you are in fact a complete idiot with no discernible self-awareness. Nevertheless, since the underlying truth of the matter remains intact, all names have been left unchanged to incriminate the guilty.

You will know that it is time to turn the page when you hear R2-D2 beep, like this. Let’s begin now.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

TELEVISED NAZI SEX ORGY

“ACHTUNG!!!” Across rolling hillsides they descended to some green, daisy-strewn crevasse embedded deep in the Bavarian heartland. They flocked like pilgrims from hundreds of miles around; the stampede was unstoppable. Paparazzi swarm like flies round the arse of a dysenteric horse while onlookers gawp in wonderment, camera-phones at the ready. It all kicks off with the shrill honk of a rampaging air-horn.

- HNNNYYYYARRRR…! Right on cue, a cavalcade of screaming obscenity emerges before our very eyes in gaudy, nightmarish technicolour. The inevitable first casualty is Lady GaGa, who’s quickly caught in the crossfire of some anonymous backing dancer’s power-wank and takes a propulsive shot of toss-wad straight to the cornea. Sensing their golden opportunity, the rest of her troupe piles in to dish out a rogue facial while she vainly attempts to hand out awards to a group of underprivileged children last seen rescuing kittens from a burning house-fire. These are the true Heroes of Britain. “RUIN HER, MATE! RUIN HER!!!” rages the fevered bark of director Leni Riefenstahl as she weaves in and out of the proceedings with a 16mm camera purchased for a Deutschmark-fünfzig on eBay. Her interest in all this is strictly professional. Ever the stickler for accuracy, Goebbels watches intently from the Royal Box, giving a stern nod of approval while idly caressing his bum leg: “Gut. Gut.” 

Here’s The Hoff now, resplendent in a gimp-mask, ready to bludgeon his throbbing wang deep into SuBo’s bilious mudflaps. Gibbering excitedly at the prospect, Fearne Cotton grabs an MP3 recorder for an exclusive report on the first public sighting of Knight Rider slopping out the pigpen. Meanwhile, Duncan from Blue sniffs desperately round the sidelines, visibly aroused by the rancorous smell of filth emanating from the spot where Brucie ‘Good Game’ Forsyth has just had his arse turned inside-out by a rubber fist-wielding Piers Morgan.

Unfolding front und centre is an emergency cabinet meeting, the once-pious ministers chanting like baying public schoolboys at the sight of Nadine Dorries and Michael Gove sixty-nining and pissing while gargling “Thatcher! Thatcher!” through mouthfuls of acidic urea. It’s all too much for the gruesome twosome to quaff home in one go, and they’re ultimately left slathering like infants, splashing their acrid accumulation around like Chanel Number fucking Five. The horror. The horror. The whole thing goes out live on BBC simulcast, augmented by expert opinion from a panel consisting of Nigel Farage, Janet Street-Porter and this week’s Apprentice firee. David Dimbleby chairs impassively, taking questions from assorted quasimodos gathered in the audience: “You, sir. Yes, you. The cyclops in the back there, foaming at the mouth. No, not you…” Be sure to include the appropriate hash-tag, and don’t forget to Have Your Say on all relevant forums after the show.

Just when it feels like we might not be getting the full gory picture, the ever-dependable staff of Heat magazine arrive to dish out the inside scoop. Davina’s also on standby, yelping into a radio mic like an over-zealous hyena. It’s a clusterfuck, alright – cascading panoramas of endlessly creative copulation all scored to a seemingly inescapable soundtrack of violent techno produced by David Guetta. Unst, unst, unst, unst. The rabid onlookers throw their hands in the air, happily sublimating the grinding minutiae of their own pitiful existence into a moment’s vicarious glee. Wobwobwobwobwobwobwobwobwobwobwobwob belches the inevitable obnoxious dubstep remix. The beat goes on.

Luncheon is served: a shit-sandwich washed down with a lukewarm glass of piss, all lovingly prepared by an unlikely alliance between Gordon Ramsay and the Two Fat Bastards. Meanwhile, out on the battlefield, it’s STI roulette. Who gets syphilis? Who gets AIDS? The Pope stumbles through the carnage handing out free condoms in an abortive attempt at subversion, all the while presiding over the ritual debasement of a dozen weeping altar-boys via the miracle of Google Pixel 7. As you were, Cardinal…!

We’re really on a roll now. There’s Katie Price, hungrily wolfing down a troika of tumescent cocks and demanding she be paid handsomely for the privilege, gumpfing back throatfuls of viscous, glowing jism which are swiftly regurgitated, bottled and marketed back to the masses as designer body lotion. On a self-anointed precipice somewhere above, Amanda Holden swans by dressed in swathes of unbecoming lingerie straight from the Ann Summers Winter Collection, stuffing a lubricated dildo in the shape of a Disney Princess up her slovenly, shaft-slackened arse while merrily sucking off Christ straight from the cross. The masses lap it up, clamouring for more. But is it art…?

With the timely advent of social networking, things start ramping up a notch. iPhones chatter in blithering displays of citizen journalism while Stephen Fry tweets the living shit out of it all. Before long, the press are weighing in. Jeremy Clarkson’s no doubt got something to say on the issue, but he’s couched it in such inflammatory rhetoric that even the frothing chops of the Mail On Sunday faithful are struggling to digest the fucker. Luckily, Melanie Phillips is on-hand to mop up the overspill, cheerlessly lamenting the degradation of good, old-fashioned Christian values in an increasingly secular society.

As predicted, the much-vaunted arrival of Josef Fritzl and Amanda Knox provides a truly show-stopping climax, whipping up a tempest of fervour from the thronging hordes as they joyfully have their way with the bloated corpse of Steve Jobs. After a few minutes of soulless, incendiary intercourse, the head comes off, but they carry on fucking all the same, absorbing shrill cries of encouragement from this week’s Nuts cover stunner, the sexiest virgin in all of Palestine. The editors are rueing their misfortune, of course: where the chuff is Mother Theresa when you need her most?

The inexorable zenith is prolonged, spasmodic and merciless. Voluminous fountains of pearly white lava begin to spew uncontrollably from a thousand rupturing urethras. The collective moan becomes nigh-on unbearable as the wailing reaches fever pitch, flashbulbs bursting like incandescent zits as they flicker and strobe to a state of epileptic apoplexy. Before long the entire scene is immortalised for posterity on the cover of countless glossy weeklies, before the reproductive rights are snapped up by an enterprising Simon Cowell - himself soon lost to history when he is swallowed wholesale by the roaring cunt of Britney Spears.

* * *

The porn star gave birth at the exact moment the Obersturmführer shot his bounteous load. They both screamed bloody murder, gave praise to the Fatherland for its innumerable blessings, and were promptly done with the whole tawdry affair.

C.C. 20/11/11

SKETCH: "And Justice For All" [2011]

AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Scene: a COURTROOM.

A JUDGE presides over the sentencing of a defendant, GARY GLITTER, who is dressed in full spangly 70s regalia.

JUDGE
Mr Glitter, you forced yourself onto literally hundreds of underage girls.
Do you deny this?

GLITTER
No, your honour. But, in my defence, I did write Rock & Roll Part II,
which was an absolute choon.

JUDGE
I see. Not guilty.
(hammering gavel, to BAILIFF)
Next case, schmucko!

FIN.

C.C. 19/11/11