Wildlife by Joe Stretch Page B

got bronze wires in my head. I’m techno. I don’t care.
    I’ll be off out tonight. Spying on the lagery losers. Probably meet up with one of my fuck buddies and fuck her and fuck her and fuck her. It doesn’t matter.
    People say that just because it’s windy, the Wild World’s coming. Bullshit.
    SUBMIT.
    On the screen, a pop-up pops up: THE N-PRANG IS COMING. HOW TOTALLY INSANE WILL YOU SEEM WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES?
    â€˜. . . hiccup . . .’ A painful hiccup. Roger feels vomit in his neck. He screams. He falls from his chair screaming and clutching his backside. His glasses fall off his face and his world blurs.
    Roger’s rolling on the carpet. His massive head with its messy hair, closed eyes and screaming mouth is turning red. Read carefully. On the desk, above Roger, the computer crashes and the screen goes dark. Roger screams again. The focus of his hands alternates between his stomach and his arse. Life is an ache. Roger doesn’t understand. He tries to lose himself in the
Les Misérables
soundtrack but he doesn’t succeed. His pain is suddenly too great.
    Crawling slowly in the direction of the bathroom, he wonders whether he has, of late, eaten too many crisps. Perhaps I have, he thinks. Lately, I have stuffed my face with little but corn snacks. I can’t remember the last time I drank liquid. This is pretty serious, thinks Roger, through the pain. It feels like fat people with sharp feet are angry in my pelvis. If you just eat crisps, thinks Roger, and you don’t drink water, then maybe your innards become as dry as technology. I’m as dry as crisps and full of electricity.
    Roger gets to the bathroom and pulls himself across thesmooth black-and-white tiles towards the toilet. He arrives. He almost wants to embrace the base of his toilet. The cold porcelain. It probably isn’t porcelain. He hoists himself up onto the seat, pulling down his trousers and pants as he does so. He says, ‘Ouch.’ The pain is constant. He bends forward extremely until his face is hanging over his kneecaps, staring into his trousers, his boxers and at his bare feet. All smell. Roger hasn’t seen soapy water in a while. His left foot is blacker than ever. Is it bruising? The blackness rises as high as his calf. He feels his big toe. It is impossibly smooth.
    Thinking about it, thinks Roger. I’m thinking about it. A diet of nothing but crisps is naturally going to result in a succession of fairly agonising farts and shits. I’m just dehydrated. I shall pass a few very dry turds and be blogging about them in a matter of minutes. The pain will subside. I need a beaker of water. Roger is considering reaching into the toilet to wet his hand when his arsehole opens fire with such force and ceremony that he finds himself fast-whimpering, straight-backed, gripping the toilet seat tightly with both hands.
    Drip. A liquid drips from Roger after the initial revolting torrent. Where did I find all that water? he thinks, more worried and slightly upset. Where do I get my tears from? They should be bogey-like, squirming like hung-over worms from the corners of my eyes. He peers between his legs. A penis. And through the darkness, past the penis, colourless liquid. A few drops of dark blood. I’m abnormal, he thinks; my droppings aren’t brown. In the living room,
Les Misérables
ends. I should have played it from the beginning. A glorious orchestral crescendo rises like a church roof in a storm, then goes quiet. Roger isseized again by pain. His bottom exhales. It gurgles. It is starting to expel an object.
    This is disgusting. And it smells. It smells as horrible as the new smells heavenly. It smells like a rotten dream; a cream dream abandoned for decades in a switched-off fridge. The expression on Roger’s face is a lip-curling, blinking one. He realises this isn’t a matter of a few very dry turds. He’s going to crap an object.