Best British Short Stories 2020

^{TIM ETCHELLS} MAXINE

In the year of Asbestos, country of Endland (sic), Maxine gets a job to read words to a blind man called Casper, what lives alone outside the peripheral ring-road, in a district beyond all forces of yuppification.

Maxine don’t know too much bout ‘geo-demographic dynamics’ etc that is talked about on TV but she knows very well that a powerful permanent hex-ring of dog shit, broke glass and partly crushed up Strongbow cans is keeping the Stasis in that neighbourhood.

On her journey that morning by olde tram she chews gum forever, her jaw a machinery, eyes bright. Kids in prams nearby look from M to their mothers what have ‘long since forgotten how to cry’ ©. Tram passes through the city (S______). Getting off at the stop right near Casper’s place M. takes the gum out + sticks it to a poster for some new Bangla movie, kneading residue deep in the pixelated faces of stars, their transfigured appearance what she hopes will be an omen for the day. Something has to change.

Casper’s place, a shithole on 33rd floor.

As a startup for reading he asks Maxine to take 3 chapters from a closed-down airport novel called A Romance of Sadie. The book is just a turgid paste of words that knots up in her brain and mouth and M. finds it boring, wishing there was something less predictable – a story about robots and consciousness, a story about a new kind of sunlight – anything but reading porn to old blokes.

When the reading is all done Casper pays her (£4.50 the hour) and she goes home.

Other jobs of Maxine involve reading to:

– hyperactive children

– persons/animals in a coma

– voice recognition software

– dying persons/animals

– prisoners

– the dead

etc

One night there is a bombing in centre of town. Front of shops are hanging all off again and main entrance of the shopping mall is a cliché debris of twisted metal, filthy trashed consumer items and limbs/body parts all motherfuckered into dust. Pundits arrive and set up to start filming segments, rearranging debris and other aspects of the carnage. All around taxis and private cars double-up as improvised ambulances, every single bystander a temporary trauma nurse, every driver an unqualified maniac of urgency, every victim screaming blood out all over upholstery and no one knows what’s on the radio.

On the pavement near the bomb scene, a spray paint graffiti makes a promise or prediction that nobody reads: THE THOUGHTS OF THE LIVING REPLACED WITH THOSE OF THE DEAD.

Rescue workers are going back and forth w the wounded, shaking their heads at the dead deceased that lie carelessly anywhere. All the while sniffer dogs and assorted looters emboldened by breakdown of lawlessness freely walk the rubble, attentive to strange vibrations from down below fallen masonry and looking for stuff to ‘purloin’.

The air in all directions is ‘alive with distant sirens’ when Maxine gets there to scene of explosion – reporting for reading duties. A Doctor on all day and all night shift sends her Immediately to the commandeered Gymnasium of a nearby school what has been turned into a temporary hospital/morgue. The whole place is stuffed with the wounded/dead pulled out and then carried from their wannabe graves under the waste-scape that used to be Primark or possibly Lidl, no one seems to remember or care.

Later, in the Hillsborough classroom with a frieze done by kids depicting the naïve evolution of quadrupeds, Maxine cleans wounds with Amateur knowledge and bulk-buy disinfectant, comforting persons in distress and isolating those in danger to others or themselves. When electric power predictably fails she wanders in the Great Hall and reads in whispers by candlelight to those wounded still capable of listening.

She reads from her favourite stories like Kick-Boxer by Andrej Rublev and Corrosive Surface of a Pessimist Malefactor by Samira Shapiro Sustenance. She reads from A History of Starvation and Advent Adventures of the Anal Adventurers #5. She reads from Soil Stealers and Full Power Harry Goes Back Underwater in London Paris. She reads from Long Tuesday and A Manual for the Strict Correction of Boys (Revised Edition).

In half-light of the hall people are dying, wounds bleeding out all about, as the poets say, and ‘ketchup all over the screen’ ©. Some of the dying have real faces, others just faces from AI. M. tries her best to focus on real ones but sometimes gets confused. Over time the AI gets easier to spot cos those figures in particular seem to lose interest in her reading the more it goes on – their composite faces a mesh of glitch inattention, eyes wandering, artefacting earnestness, then wandering again.

As the night wears down further to the bones M. finds herself with a small group of badly injured schoolgirls, their bodies hidden deep down under swaddling of bandages. She reads from All New Nature Boy, Sally Knew Best, Blunt Instrument and Peter Leper Jones. She reads from Hirashima!, Forgotten Moments and Gogolo Ultima Gogolo Poveraa. She reads and reads until the dawn light is creeping in around her unannounced and all the wounded and all the dead and all the murals what the schoolkids have drawn up there on the wall and everything is all touched by the very 1st and very fine and very golden rays of early mourning sun.

After the episode with the bombing there is a global slowdown and in accordance all around Endland (sic) things get slower and slower. Cars go slow on the roads, people shuffle slow and then slower on pavements and everyone – human and animal – takes a long time to make decisions about anything or do anything at all.

Scientists of Endland mount a huge competition to see what the cause and solution to the slowdown is, with New Universities and olden think-tanks etc competing to demonstrate they profound understanding and business acumen. But on the day comes to announce winner of the competition it is rapidly uncovered that there has been a terrible fraud and the ‘Prise Money’ stolen slowly cent by cent and siphoned/sent off to the Canary Islands in a unreachable Offshore Account.

For reasons that make no sense Maxine is selected to investigate the fraud. She has to journey to another city where she is given lodging in a squatted shop unit with some guys that speak only English and who are apparently running a startup sweatshop to assemble illegal umbrellas. Maxine takes a mattress in the disconnecting corridor but can’t sleep after work at the Fraud Squad cos the constant hammering, bending of metal and sweating of fabric. At intervals above the din come squeals of delight by the children (of the guys), who are from time to time sent outside for random testing of the umbrellas in the test-rain that falls from a hose-pipe, each test session a metaphysical whirlwind of childish unruly footwork, splashing and twirling in all directionz and all of it is watched by Maxine as she peeps out of a spy hole in her ‘living space’ while the kids, unaware of any audience, move across the concrete of the forecourt like a cut-price 3rd-rate Gene Kelly routine badly motion-captured by drunks.

Maxine’s investigation gets off badly after very shaky start. She interviews key suspects who will not let her into their apartment or apartments and only talk to her thru a keyhole. Her head is filled more and more with lies, disinformation, false information, counter-intelligence and generalised nonsense.

Months pass. Investigation founders (sic) and the globalised slowdown continues. War comes along also, long rumoured but always anyway ‘something of a surprise’ and the Agency that Maxine works for – providing ‘professional services in vicinity of reading’ – goes bust cos most of their workers in Endland are swiftly conscripted on a precarious contract and shipped off to the front line of wherever. Even that army needs people that can read.

Not wanting to be any part of the war and sacked from her incompetent investigation into the corrupt competition as already mentioned Maxine doesn’t know what to do. She loses faith in the free market, then loses faith in religion and patriarchy but not necessarily in that order. Before long she ends up down on her luck and on her knees, alienated and sleeping in a bed made with unhappy vibes down the Food Bank along with rest of the scruffs and n’er do wells of that era and area, hungry, and indeed just like totally demoralised.

There is a long complicated induction process where M. is explained the methods of checking food in and out of Food Bank, application of Compound Interest etc, system of E-Numbers and Additives and fines for overdue returns etc. After that she gets to work chatting w disgruntled other paupers and also roped into helping people w their increasingly lunatic Tax forms, Psych Assessments and curse of Pharaoh’s Nightclub. The work is hard and morale all set to general low, also not helped by the slowdown which is still substantive in effect or daily operation.

One day when she hits rock bottom eating a cold re-heated tinned soup and starving to her own bones, Maxine resolves to leave town alone, setting off w/out appropriate clothing or footwear.

Outside City Limits she pass first through a rocky wilderness, then through a green pasture, then through another rocky wilderness etc in which (i.e. the latter, second wilderness, after the pasture) she gets total lost. Without water and without a map or workable sense of direction M. becomes dehydrated and in deep trouble of her life.

Come night fall, in the thrall of her starvation delirium Maxine finds wreckage of a vehicle from a convoy that was probably burned up very long time back. On the bonnet or windscreen dirt and/or dust someone has written the words DIE FOREIGN DIE and below it in another hand, PAY ATTENTION MOTHERFUCKERS. She crawls inside to shelter the night and soon listens to howl of wolves from darkness beyond. At night when the temperature drops below zero (0) and there is no functional WiFi, Maxine is hallucinating, shivering and experience what the pessimist scientists call signs of upcoming extinction.

She hears

– more sound of animals outside

– echo song from childhood

– shimmering ‘eye movement sound’

– unsettled nautical skin hallucination of radio waves

Sometime she think she is really /gonna die/ dead hidden in the /bus/ vehicle in the deep of /somewhere in/ the cold night when she feels a ghost hand on her shoulder. That ghost is ghost of Casper, a so-called ex-Boxer ex-Para and part-time ex-‘Jazz’ Promoter, the self-same dead man who in first part of story she was reading to when he actually went and died. Casper (ghost) takes her by shoulder and beckons her towards him, leading her out of the wreckaged /bus/ vehicle and down the embankment of /earth/ sand, across the /field/ desert to an oasis.

Time passes.

In the Oasis (actually a Premier Inn) Maxine recuperates strength and orientation. Ghost Casper lingers in the room also while she is sleeping, listening to audiodescribed movies on demand to while away the time. When Maxine wakes up she reads him some of the books left in room by previous incumbent.

She reads him AtomKraft by Jon Slither, Solitary Confinement Dancer by Maisie Wahacha, A Ray of Light by Ash Diameter, The Rat Catcher’s Racist Rollodex by Riannon Gruel-Hindenberg (?) and Perspex Advantage by Claustrophobia Shanti.

When it comes time to leave they skip reception, go out the firescape down into the car park behind the building and off into the night without paying the bill.

Arriving back in S______ large parts of the city is now burning and on fire, initially as part of a simulation possibly for television but possibly for the firebrigade training video. The value of the money they have reduces daily because shifts in the currency exchange. Most days are taken up trailing round the city looking for advantageous currency transactions, searching ‘a different rate’ etc or arguing with blokes that have problematic Cholesterol count or unhealthy body mass index in pubs that look like the Jubilee is probably still happening.

M. plays the fruit machines and ghost Casper stands with her, invisible to other customers, watching the internal workings of the machine and trying to help M. to win big cash payouts. The plan doesn’t work. There are no lines of three Apples. Only lines of hand grenades, lines of transplant organs, lines of bottled tears. No Win.

In the rage of the ongoing fire and lacking any other place to shelter the make they way back to Casper apartment on 33rd floor. They sit together in silents at the UPVC window that will not open more than a crack for health and safety reasons and the blind man listens to the faint sound of distant asbestos removal and wild fires ‘beyond’ meanwhile Maxine vapes furiously, blowing scented exaggerated fumes from out of the window crack and out to the city, watching the starlings flocking and watching the cars moving on the road down below them wide and white eyed sea monsters in the fog and watching the drones hovering invisible above them in the smoke fumes etc and dream of escape.

In the year of Carpark.

Bereft of income and purpose Maxine hitchhikes in another direction city of Endland (9 letters beginning with B) but before she can even get there the cops pick her up, give her a warning, look at her papers, beat her black and blue, give her another warning then tell her to go back on her way in a reversed direction, pointing back down the M1. If they ever catch her around there again they will confiscate her shoes etc.

/She gets back to S______ in the middle of night and retreats to a flat she was squatting before. Some other folks have moved in – family with kids in one room and another with some guys that are trying to get into movies playing Jihadists. All night they are practising prayers and making strange moves in front of a broken mirror in the hallway. One morning car pulls up outside/

In the year of Dark Matter. Maxine gives up on living in the squat again, gets drunk in a Micro-pub what used to be an abattoir (Crown and Whippet) and the bar fills up w soldiers psychologically scarred and damaged goods from previous war as mentioned and grotesque undercover cops.

Another war starts. There is a blackout.

In the year of Erasure.

Maxine reads to Casper (ghost) a book about a Liar crucified all lol lo-fi DIY on rollershutter door for his part in a gangland rivalry. She reads him about a Sandwich Maker’s apprentice who was incorrectly exiled by the Home Office. She reads him about a child or someone older working in a Children’s Prison it is not exactly clear. She reads about Windrush brain drain, new Gun Laws and military chic. She reads Curse of Brexit, armed struggle and Shameful Secrets of Past. About trees felled by Securicor. About cash injection to subliminal brain. About girls making out under OfficeMax surveillance cameras to earn extra £££ from guys on nightshift security. About Bonus for Boners in Dachshund Fashion Trousers. About a rave in a shit field long years ago, about rain and arrival of dawn, Ecstasy and rusted cars or rusted smiles. About a nightclub called Sudden Fall. About deliberate vandals strung up on the chain link fencing, about deep scars and closed pits and minefield on new build community football pitch. About Internet search history of a destitute bachelor. Special Offer Nine for the Actual Price of Five. About rewiring electrics of Juvenile Delinquents and electrification of train wrecks. About train delayed by morning suicides. About drones that haunt the Emerald forest. About liars in uniforms and polyester slacks. About reskilled ex-offenders in onesies and telesales. About council kickbacks and late night kickabouts on wastegrounds the way to the match. About stairwell or stairwells to heaven. About kids that tagged shelters along the way into Pitsmoor with cursive LAYABOUT or block capital UNHEIMLICH and GAYDAR ROBOTNICK. About shit-talking videos on your Whatsapp group and about a dream of a new alternative to Whatsapp called Mishapp. About shame. About UKIP idiots topped off with razor wire and Gazza on bail again. About Twin Blondes in single Fat Suit. About The Savile will come back and get you. About home-neutered cats and Dangerous Dogs act. Bad standup in Student Union. Cineplex firealarm and firearm and Nachos microwaved in kitchen-joke with fake sauce of spermicide. Quality Metrics of a Desolate State. Lone drunk nites in AE. Corbynista cabaret. Tommy fucking Robinson. Punching underwater and punch-drunk pillocks in privatised taxi rank tell jokes that punch down. Force-fed red faces with German Meat in Xmas Market chatting crusty fuckers sure to be or soon to be Undercover cops. Immigrant narrative you strove to forget. Playing hard to regret. Tourist Branding Car Park under parliament. Unlock King-corpse in Multistory Hidden Zones. About nightly shitting in underpass by terrible light and Angry on Internet Megabyte Rage. Crisis kids all drowning in lorries all stuffed inside boats all trapped inside trains then stuffed down blind and endless tunnels. Closed shoppes and Chemotherapy. Chemtrail conspiracies. Rental cars. Lost Souls argue in Nail Salon of Year. Frozen landscapes. Diaspora. Third generation. Stolen election w Heavy Metal soundscape. Cardi B Looks Depressed While Out With Her Dog After Controversial Breakup. Investment or Missed Opportunity. Emotherapy. Dogging in car parks all over at midnight. £500 ASOS shell suits and planking at night before cinnamon challenge. Drink your mental age in pints. YouTube clips that only last 8 seconds. YouTube clips that will not load. Last gasp of Endland (sic). Rapeseed virgins. Asbestos. Strewn contents of diaper waste. Spewed fog. Dogs set loose in elaborate traffic. Last Exit from Narrative. Class System and Life Expectancy. Dream of paralysis and dream of ruins or the dream that you run into ruin of Shopping Mall Foodcourt. Reggae version of that old song Nightmare Faces. Living Large. The Vape Escape. About Bowie dead and the dead dead blue between channels that some people say is haunted by no voice. Buildings clusterfucked with satellite dishes. L.S. Lowry postcard with captions in Arabic. Your dad. Dementia. People yelling about gender wars. A glittering whirlpool of insults boasts and falsehoods. The Spread of M.E. or imaginary Parkinsons. Hotspot Cancer. Sound of Epic Laughter from flat downstairs. Last gig you saw M.E.S. he was more or less hiding behind the speakers. Encore WHITE LIGHTNING as crowd exits the room. Hate speech and hate crime. Viral ads for Vans Chequered Pumps. Vitamin Supplements. School exclusions to keep the audit clean. How to Develop the Habits of Successful, Happy People. Empty shops w water features closed now tho still illuminated. Anti-Vaxxers with Terminal Whooping Cough. Hand-me-down handbags from Coats De Rohan. Fake-ass fake ass implants and spray tan kids teeth rotten with bad debt. Uber to your surgical appointments. Content will not load in your country. Vault the fence and jump the ditch and vault the low wall and jump the rusted stream, walk up filth hill, the low rise getting steeper to the treeline and clamber over barbed wire and walk on deep and into the forest where the trees are older than time itself.

Medley of old hits from any era no matter who or no matter why.

Take a look at what you missed.

Take time and Take it to the Max.

The last pub closes when the money runs out.

History Will Not Be Kind to You.

Last words she reads to him are these.

Last song on the JukeBox is Goodbye Felicia.