Squid Ink Incorporated

I couldn’t help but notice that the subject of editing has cropped up a lot on tw*tter this last couple of weeks. This might be a result of the nanowrimo (if I have that right), lots of tidying up going on. In a timely coincidence I have been listening to Burroughs tape cut-ups and indulging in some cutting up of my own, on my (virtual) ‘wheels of steel’.

All of this cutting and mixing has me thinking about that old chestnut – editing. For my Friday Flash this week, in a painful and time consuming experiment, I have taken all of my previous #FF(es), pasted them into a word file, mixed them up, shook them about and remixed into a new flash. Hopefully it stands up on its own and if you’ve been kind enough to read my past posts it might raise a flicker of recognition and perhaps a chuckle.

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‘We are in midst of a universal recession’, so they keep telling me. This is not the most reassuring phrase a girl can hear having drunkenly caned her inheritance on worthless deep space real estate. To be specific the ‘guppy’ shaped Mars moon – Phobos.

I figured there was two ways to resolve this knotty problem:

1) Slowly hemorrhage the last of my cash and settle back into a dope inspired agoraphobia and daytime TV addiction.

Alternatively,

2) Take the last of said funds, hire a rocket ship, some terraforming machines and reconfigure the landscape of said real estate in to prime, radiation free habitat.

Despite the initial urge, to take the personal oblivion option, I plumped for the latter. In times like these one has to adapt ones practices, shit happens.

I found my ideal business colleague in Captain Tomaso, who I had met in a chance encounter in the bar of a cheap hotel in Kings Cross. The Captain had found himself in dire straits, having blown his deep space pioneering profits on a number of risky investments, sponsored celebrity breast augmentations and arms deals. He was my kind of guy.

Hastily putting together a cut-throat team of corporate astronauts, we took to the skies in Tomaso’s bright yellow spaceship with go faster stripes – jet engines engaged, flame on!

Space travel, as it turns out, is tedious as fuck! Off we boldly went through light years of tedium and copious amounts of fags. To pass the time Captain Tomaso and I liaised frequently and intimately, which ultimately resulted in our two kids Polly and Max. Deep space travel it seems has a strange effect on childbirth and our offspring grew at an accelerated rate. It was around this time that I stopped sleeping.

Some insomnia induced blackouts later , we reached my own little patch of the milky-way, Phobos.

Phase 1 of my business plan was to come in, remove any unwanted residue, unstable tectonics and former inhabitants, then get busy with the terraforming. The only spanner in the works was the mystical diagrams we found carved into the Phobian regiloth, no biggie.

Phase 1 started well, on program, on budget; so some of the crew disappeared, also no biggie, I could deal with that in Phase 2.

We first ran into real problems when Tomaso failed to co-ordinate properly with the crew in regard to their share scheme. Phobos is a long way for a contractor to go without getting paid, but you can’t do everything right?

After the crews first pop at a bloody mutiny, Tomaso requested that he return home to Bavaria in one of the escape pods. For services rendered, the corporation (me) promised to ‘make full redundancy payment at the statutory rate’. Yeah right.

Polly and Max were so very distraught to see their Mother upset at losing her colleague, business partner and lover. Maybe I shouldn’t have given the kids guns.

Following the sad demise of my former colleague; came that whole thing with the Great Gak, leader of the native critters, who, as it turned out, were the artists behind those mystical diagrams. I would of never have thought they could cause so much trouble, wrecking the machines, even killing the armed squad I sent in, I mean, seriously no-one could of seen that coming, I was in no way liable.

With the crew now dead, the machines destroyed, I guess the kids saw my business plan and their inheritance pissing away at a rate of knots. Not standing on ceremony they took off in the yellow space ship with the go faster stripes. I couldn’t blame them, if I hadn’t been detained at the wrong end of a spear, I would have done the same.

My internment consisted of many, repetitive, Phobian length days, constructing pyramids in honor of the Great Gak. The odds of my being rescued rapidly deteriorated 6:1, 13:1, 23:1, 100:1.

It was in this pit of despair that I had my epiphany, realising, in a moment of insufferable boredom and unrelenting fatigue, that the last moments of your life are no time for cowardice; I tore my right eye out. Holding the bleeding orb up to my captors’ cephalic eye, I screamed in defiance ‘no-one fucks with this bitch, on my patch!’

It seems the Great Gak responds well to self-harm in the face of adversity, after some physically agonising Phobian bonding sessions, Phase 2 of my business plan was enabled.

Phase 2 involves my private army of Phobian natives armed to the teeth and set to work on key strategic points across the United States of Mars. A few governmental takeovers later and bam! The subsequent inter-galatic wars that I have programmed will ensure that, what was once a worthless rugby ball-shaped rock; will become some prime-ass intergalactic investment.

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This flash was brought to you by sentences, words and general steez from these previous posts:

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/12/03/cause-and-effect/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/09/24/shit-happens/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/09/03/human-resources/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/10/07/a-story-of-my-early-days/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/08/26/undo/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/07/02/snagging/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/05/13/doctor-mckenzies-dipswitches-scratchy-flash-wip/

http://squidinkinc.com/2010/06/04/the-house-of-math/

Plus some words to fill in the gaps.

If you’ve read all/any of these then you have my sincere thanks and, when I see you, the drinks are most definitely on me.

 

 

 

X flicks a disposable lighter in front of his eyes obscuring the starlight with a bright orange flame. The echo of ignition leaves a visual echo of light across his retinas.

‘Stars’

Flick

‘No stars’

‘Stars’

Flick

‘No stars’

X’s girl D joins him in the garden she wears heavy plastic clogs and drags her feet in a way that her mother would have hated. D watches X repeat his star blanking ritual several times before interrupting, ‘got a light?’ she asks, planting a cigarette between her thin lips.

X lights her cigarette, then pulls a cigarette from behind his ear like a cut-price conjurer palming a coin, ‘ta-da!’

‘Your full of tricks tonight’ D mumbles from behind her cigarette.

‘It’s a magical night’ smiles X, he traces a figure of eight in the air with his finger, ‘behold’, a small spaceship appears on the palm of his hand. The ship is bright yellow with white go-faster stripes, the ships jets glow with a warm red light, illuminating his handsome face.

‘Cool ship, where’s it going?’ asks D.

‘The Cephalic region’ X asserts, pulling the car back as if primed to launch from an invisible catapult.

‘What’s Cephalic?’ D asks.

‘It means on or near the head!’ exclaims X launching the ship toward D’s head.

‘Hey!’ squeals D, the little ship bounces off of her head and ricochets off into the night sky.

‘That wasn’t very nice’ she said rubbing the side of her head, ‘no nookie for you tonight’.

On board the DSS Cephalic Rover warning sirens blare and red lights flash, plumes of smoke fill the bridge.

‘Damage report’ Captain Tomaso coughs into the comms mic.

‘Lost port engines in the collision sir, we can’t maintain containment stability’ Petro the ship’s engineer yells back through crackles of radio static.

‘Initiate emergency landing procedures’ the Captain cries, sweat pouring down his face. All Captains undertake emergency scenarios in training, but on such a cushy routine flyer, he had never expected to put his training into practice.

‘Emergency landing procedures!!’ Petro barked his orders across the engine room, ‘all crew to positions’.

‘All crew to positions’ the Captain re-affirmed, the crew stopped running chaotically around the bridge and braced for an emergency landing.

Duck tentatively slid his hand across the frost-stiffened grass toward the small of Karen’s back. This had been the first time they had been alone together, and where better than to be smoking dope on Perry hill. The hill he had always thought of as his special place away from the world.

Karen breathed a contented sigh, expelling a vast cloud of hash smoke into the cold air, this is the moment Duck thought, it’s now or never.

‘Captain, it’s Petro, the landing gear is blown, it’s going to be an uncontrolled land…’ Petro’s last words were snatched away by the roar of the ships engines exploding. The comm cut to a deathly silence.

‘Petro… Petro?’ The Captain strapped himself in, he had to be brave for his crew and for himself. The last seconds of your life are no time for cowardice. Taking a deep breath, he activated the comm. ‘Ladies and Gentleman, our engines and landing gear have failed, we are going to crash, may I say it’s been a pleasure serving with all of you… may the Gods help us’.

The explosion that had begun in the engine room shot up through the engineering ducts of the DSS Cephalic, engulfing the ship in a brilliant white fireball.

‘Karen…’ Duck edged closer to her, the alcohol and dope had fuelled him with an inflated sense of bravado and optimism. The voice of his consciousness had lost all sense of polite inhibition and now screamed at him ‘DO IT NOW, NOW MAN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!’

Duck drew his arm back in preparation, poised to swoop around Karen’s shoulders in a grandiose romantic gesture. He would draw her to him in one swift and passionate movement, they would look into each other’s eyes, smile at each other and then…

‘Fuckin’ hell! Duck look at that!’ Karen shot to her feet excitedly pointing at a bright white light trailing across the night sky.

The light shot across the inky blackness and disappeared beyond the horizon of Perry hill.

‘Duck a shooting star, did you see? You have to make a wish Duck’. Karen waved her spliff maniacally in the air, showering the pair of them in glowing orange hot rocks.

Duck had already made his wish, but it hadn’t come true. It was in that moment that he knew their relationship would forever be platonic.

‘Buck up Duck!’ Karen laughed, thumping him on the arm, she passed him the joint and grinned, in the way only Karen could.

Perhaps, thought Duck, nursing the bruise forming on his arm, that’s a good thing.