Hole
Punch
by
Garth Simmons
Genre:
SciFi, Fantasy, Humor Anthology
HOLE
PUNCH is:
The
height of the Earth Empire – where War Bricks flatten alien
civilisations.
Yorkshire 1985 – where a child's mind is patched
together with trauma.
Ancient Greece – where Socrates discovers
a carnal method of time-travel.
Mars 2348 – where crime and
terror haunt the Martian Habitation Domes.
The Mistake's skull –
where Muscle Society achieves self-destruction.
Delaware Dost –
where mindfulness prevails and hierarchy is understood.
The End of
Everything – where convert concepts welcome refugees into the folds
of theory.
All
these places (and many more!) reside within the tangled text of Hole
Punch.
BROWN AIR_ by Garth Simmons
Richard walked to the Organarium, coughing and spluttering in the brown air.
The Organarium was just as he had expected: lots of organs.
Richard gave them his donation slip. He wanted the full removal of his parts. He offered them everything but they didn't want any of it. They told him that he was too sick inside.
Richard walked home, coughing and spluttering in the brown air. He opened the lid of his metal coffin and climbed inside. He cuddled the bones of his non-departed wife.
“I know,” he replied to her voice in his head. “I'll have to think of some other way to pay the off the mortgage.”
She suggested taking her remains to the glue yard.
“I don't want to be even more alone.”
She was right though. If he died without paying off the mortgage then they would upload his consciousness into the Data Pits. Then he wouldn’t be able to get out until he had mined enough Bit Coins to pay his way into oblivion.
Richard dragged his wife's old bones in a sack, careful not to drop any of her parts. He coughed and spluttered his way through the brown air.
The glue man was sympathetic at first. He gave Richard a swig of cough medicine. It didn't do much but aggravate the boils in Richard's throat. The glue man took his wife's bones and ground them into glue.
Richard cried when he heard her voice: “Goodbye Richard. Don't blame me for not getting insurance on our air conditioning.”
He cried dry tears as her bones were crushed.
The glue man gave him twenty-five credits and a wireless dehumidifier. He pleaded for more but was told to leave.
Richard coughed and spluttered his way back home through the brown air. Caught on the chain of the inevitable.
Precisely at nine thirty they came, like it said on their transmission, they are never late and never early. They pulled Richard out of his lonely, metal coffin and zapped him with their shock guns.
“This one thought he could outrun debt!” one of them laughed beneath a gas mask.
They threw Richard's electrified body into their collection carriage. He lay on a pile of half conscious bodies, all coughing and spluttering in the brown air.
Richard's brain was injected with liquid plastic to ready his imprint for upload into the Data Pits. Richard wished that his wife had gotten insurance on the air conditioning. Paying to fix the air conditioning is what got them into debt in the first place. He loved her but he can't forgive her. That
“Every turning towards a screen assimilates me back into the new world theatre of technology. Every image and word produced through me only reaffirms the projection that circum-chance continues to create."
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” asked CounsellBot C0N1.
"I am plugged into a network of controlled information: an illusion of choice. All choices are false choices. Puppet strings held by a dictatorship of facts."
"Do you ever hear voices?"
“Only the tones of reason. Beeping measurements and statistics. Quoted and misquoted into a storm of vapid opinions. The lies we choose to advertise and the lies that form our shapes."
"Did your parents ever lie to you?"
"Everything I say is said better elsewhere."
"Did you socialise much this weekend?"
"After crushing my paradigm identity, I watched it spring back into shape. It forgave and affirmed me. I chose to get on with things. I must follow my fiction."
“Working in an office. Pah! How am I supposed to be creative while working in an office?”
Most offices have a stationary cupboard fulls of essential art supplies. Who needs arts funding when you have an office stationary cupboard?
“But what if I'm a writer rather than a visual artist?”
That's even easier, you simply have to write your writing in an email and send it to yourself. This is one suggestion. You have to find a way to write subtly. 95% of my book, Hole Punch, was written while working in a data entry position. The office is the best place for writers to write.
“But what would my manager think if s/he found out?”
Don't tell your manager. Writing is even more potent when it begins as an act of stealth. If you look busy in the office then you'll be seen as a good worker. Also, you won't get any extra work; which means you get more time to work on your writing. It gets even easier once you've written your first draft. By then you should have picked up all the necessary skills of evasion.
“I followed your advice and now I've been sacked.”
That's your fault. I told you before that it's up to you to do this properly. I'm demostrable proof that this works! I spent an entire year writing Hole Punch in my spare time in the office.
“Spare time? I thought you said you wrote instead of working?”
No I didn't.
Yes you did, you said that you did at work.
Yes, I said I did it at work not instead of work. You still need to complete your actual work duties.
Oh.
If you want to try it again then my advice would be that once you get a new job then you work hard at the actual job for a month. Establish trust and get a feel of the job. Then, once you have management's trust, you can spend at least half an hour a day writing.
Because of the virus most of the jobs are working from home now.
That should make it even easier to write while working an office job. Unfortunately, there are no more stationary cupboards for visual artists to steal their art supplies from.
Garth
Simmons was born in 1981 in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK in 1981.
He’s a visual artist who’s made paintings, installations,
animations and pattern designs. He has had exhibits everywhere from
Scarborough to Los Angeles. His pattern designs were in the Golden
Globes and Fashion Times and he likes to remind people of this.
Writing has always been a feature of his artwork. He would write
directly onto his artwork, or by collaging “stream of
consciousness” notes.
In
2015, whilst working in a data entry position for Siemens, he began
writing short stories as Facebook posts. At first they were daydreams
of outrageous acts he could commit whilst at work (if he were
professionally or ethically allowed). Later they were stories in
other settings. Some dark memoirs of times in various school settings
and learning programmes (for those who are “not on the right
level”).
These
stories resonated with his social media followers. He was encouraged
to put them into a collection and seek out publication. While putting
these stories into a contextual order he realised they formed a
larger narrative. A tapestry of recurring themes, settings and
characters. They made up a larger biographical webwork and subjective
statement on the world. A hole punched through this fabric, hence the
title Hole Punch.
Since
completing Hole Punch, he has been working on three long-form novels.
Also he has an actual short story collection comprised of several
10’000 word stories. He also does a podcast called Slanderhour and
has an EP in the works. His philosophy is that “the
more things you make, the more you enjoy your own company”.
Apart
from creativity, he loves cats, mochas, wearing blazers, arthouse
films and many ropey science fiction series.
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$15 Amazon giftcard, Signed Art Print – 1 winner each
#holepunch #scifi #fantasy #garthsimmons
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