Before I begin, let me make one thing clear: this opening sentence is the legal property of Lucy Biatch's Postmodern Stories (LDPS) Inc., and any attempt to plagiarise or borrow this sentence is strictly prohibited by Article II, Bracket 90 of the Lucy-Biatch-Owns-Yer-Ass Code.
Yes, there was a time, beautiful reader, when the written word was sacred. If a gruesome rape scene between a tri-horned transvestite and hobo plumber was integral to the story, then by Gad, you'd better write it in. Ho-ho-ho-ho. Oh... I've just been handed a note from Lucy Biatch's lawyers stating that if the subsequent paragraph isn't entertaining enough, she's taking my pimply arse to court.
So... I was working as a hobo plumber at the Liars Unite Convention -- the country retreat for high court judges and MPs (ha-ha-ha-ha, was that satire?) -- when this tri-horned transvestite scooted past, flirting hisher feathers at me in that come-hither way some creatures do when they want to be raped. I followed himher into the kitchen -- shakin' that purple ass o' hishers -- and forced himher up against the fridge, ripping off hisher polka-dot pantaloons and... oh, I've just been handed a summons from Lucy Biatch -- I have to appear in court in the fourth paragraph of this story.
The best thing for me to do now would be to phone a lawyer. Greg Romoslu's Legal Buns looks like a good company, I suppose. I'll phone them now, see if one of their lawyers is able to take the case. Hang on a sec... OK, beautiful reader -- Greg himself is willing to do it. Apparently, all he wants in lieu of payment is a cabbage and memorabilia from the film Lorenzo's Oil -- the suction machine, the IV drips, whatever. I'm nervous, reader! The last time I was in court was my divorce from Alan Alda's secretary -- she got three-fourths of my pancreas. Oh... I've just been handed a notice from Alan Alda's lawyers warning me never to mention his name ever again in this story. Sorry, Mr. Arse.
My trial begins. I walk into the room, air-kissing the thousands of fans who want to lick chocolate ice-cream off my bum, ignoring the thoroughly depressed and ungrateful contingent of the reading public who want to see me chewed apart by mangy mutts. Sitting opposite me is Lucy Biatch -- man, what a grinchess! Honestly, you should see this broad, man -- you'd freak your pants and --
"Silence, Nigel! Stop narrating!"
Sorry, judge.
"You have been called to this court for your failure to obey LDPS Inc Rule Four: Your second paragraph must be somewhat entertaining. Likewise, the content in your second paragraph is unacceptable. It contains offensive, deeply unfunny and horribly inappropriate material!"
Sorry, judge.
"Shut up, Nigel! Now, I invite Lucy Biatch to explain to Nigel why his narrative has been inappropriate and idiotic so far. Miss Biatch?"
"Thank you, Judge. Yes, Nigel... you've surpassed yourself this time with the false starts and the ludicrous slurs. How do you think real hobo plumbers feel when they read your unamusing garbage? Do you think the tri-horned transvestite population titter and chuckle at your twisted rape scenes?"
You bore me, wench. Oh, corporate harlot! Take thee to the cleaners and be gone with you!
"Judge -- take this ogre to prison, would you?"
"With pleasure. Custody of the story is hereby handed over to you, Miss Biatch. And may I say, you look ravishing in that George of the Jungle commemorative singlet."
"Don't push it, Judgey."
A few things I want to make clear before this story begins -- you are under no obligation to read the antics that ensue, right? But those of you who do have a responsibility to LDPS Inc. to not only read, but to donate to the organisation. Not just money -- property, children and organs. The more you donate, the more you are permitted to read. Understand? Now enjoy.
FREE PORTION
There was a wuss-puss named Nigel.
£100 DEPOSIT
In his bathroom, the skins of balding snooker champions were draped along the dado rail. Steve Davis was drying out under the shower unit while Steven Hendry lounged elegantly along the curtain. Two pipes had been inserted into his anus, and a special expansion gas was inflating his buttocks to the size of marquees.
£200 [1st PAYMENT]
The insides of Steven's buttocks were meticulously emptied of excreta, snooker cues, and photos of John Virgo. The entire population of Somalia had been invited for a conference within the first marquee on the Progress of Postmodern Fiction within the Somali Republic and further into Northwest Africa. Guest speakers included Greg Huttle, Greg Gruttle and Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Grog Greg Greg Greg Greg Grug Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Greg Wilson (also known as the Daily Plangent).
The conference schedule ran thusly:
- 9 a.m. Guest Speaker: Grog Rummie -- Your place in the Somalian postmodern uprising. Is your writing vital? What can you contribute that is new?
- 11 a.m. Writing Exercise -- Write a postmodern novel in an hour! Pencils and paper NOT provided.
- 12 p.m. Lunch -- One cup of water per attendee.
- 13 p.m. Guest Speaker: Lucy Mullet -- Selling your postmodern novel. Who is your target audience? Which obscure niche of the market best suits your work? Can you turn your manuscript into an acceptable broth for the 4th Somalian summer?
- 14.43 p.m. Pregnant pause.
- 14.44 p.m. Tutorial: Dr. Nomab Bamon -- How to manage your time between tilling the field, walking 40 miles to the neighbouring village for water, fighting feral tribesmen with leftover Martin Amises, and writing that postmodern spectacular!
- 20.00 p.m. Get out.
Grog Rummie worked for thirty-two years in the Lucy Biatch Anticipatory PoMo Publishing Press (a place erected for my inevitable election as the She-Queen of the Postmodern movement). His opening speech was brilliant (not as brilliant as me, but then again, few things are -- correction: nothing is) and he really got through to these Somalian slackers in the marquee:
"So. You want to be a Somalian postmodern superstar? Well, oh-me-oh-my! Aren't you clever Trevors? Before you even begin, there are two things you need to annihilate. One: sincerity. Postmodernism is about artifice and the pursuit of the sui generis. That's a Latin phrase meaning shut-up-and-listen-to-me. Two: love. Smash and bang and kill and slaughter and wallop this. You don't love nuttin' and nuttin' loves you. Hate should be expressed in thick balls of gravy. Questions? No? Exactly. Next: make your pages into pie. Sentences should remain incomplete. Chapters should be started and farted away. You understand?"
The Somalians nodded meekly. They understood all right -- oh yes, they understood everything.
£40,000 [2nd PAYMENT]
The Somalians were content to listen to Grog giving them a fuzzball of static, shovin' their snouts into the pulped oeuvres of passé postmodernists John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut and Willam Burroughs, and his eight-hour lectures on the best way to fold a bathtowel after soaking a seal, but I wazknot. In fact, I was beginning to find this quick-witted fast-talking Übermensch a clucking irritation, dear reader.
I say 'dear reader,' dear reader, what I really mean is ass-annexed, bugger-bummed, cock-conquered, doughnut-dicked, ear-eaten, funnel-fucked, gum-grogged, helix-horned, idiot-imbecliced, jizz-jackassed, knob-knickered, lump-lumped, mothafukka-motherfukkaed, nincompoop-nitted, ostrich-osteoporosisized, piss-pilched, queer-quacked, rum-rogered, sick-spunked, tit-tormented, underpant-undercracked, vulva-voltaged, wanker-wankered, x-cockdickfuckhead-x-cockdickfuckheaded, yoghurt-yurted, zebra-zapped BUMFACE. OK?
It was evident from his late-night, whispered phone messages -- "I'm gonna whisk yo' whelk, Biatch!" -- that he wanted WAR and wanted my MONEY and my EMPIRE (and my CAPS lock).
Oh, hop-skip-suck-fuckie-nono, you hideous pug! I would not kowtow or tow cows for this wannabe ME, this wanna-steal-the-Biatch-empire upstart with the cheeseboard chest and the lickable lumps of evil-usurping-bastard-manliness! I would be having a word with this soon-to-be-dead-after-I-stuck-an-axe-in-his-arse gent, posthaste, hastepost.
*
I walked into his office, arsebackfacing the laws of physics with my space-age leotard, and plopped me bum down on a bolted blue chair, uninvited. He was preoccupied by the Somalian serf nibbling on his nethers beneath the desk, gobbling down cockfuls of western eel-slither.
"Once a jizz-guzzler, always a jizz-guzzler, right, Groggy boy?" I asked. He opened his eyes, didn't flinch, and let the Somalian conclude the fellatory humiliation.
"Men like me eat volcanoes for breakfast. Puffed-up horrorbints like you pussystrut through pathetic modes of moribund fiction. I mean, postmodernism is hardly cutting edge now, is it, tootsie-pie-and-half-a-pint-of-cream? Have you even heard of hypertext, titnips? Have you ever sucked down three gallons of HTML action and spewed up the future in binary, baby?"
"Your cock is fucking teensy, Groggy. Surely a man in your position wouldn't be overcompensating for his penislessness with florid powertrips, would he? No! That wouldn't be the clichéiest cliché pie I've ever sucked down in the world, would it, Grubby Groggy Gobshite? By the way, how would one go about quantifying your smalldickedness? Start at one trillion trillionth the size of an atom and then work down from there?"
He pushed aside the Somalian. Flexing his back and heaving a gallant heave, he blew up his cock to the size of small Spanish village Córdoba, using leftover anti-supervention gases from Neptune to prevent a sudden snap-back incident.
"Fucking hell, Grogster. Where did you learn to do that? The Somalian School For Sucking Off? The Island of Inflating Dicks? What's that inside your Jap's eye? Are those your ladyboys?"
Groggy had stopped talking but he hadn't stopped inflating. His enormous überstretchy wang was engulfing me: the foreskin enveloping Lady Lucy like a crap stinky penis-based shroud. Soon I found myself sucked inside, trapped in the gollygodawful tunnels of his cockconquery. Therein, I found the Oslo Postmodern Belch HQ, along with the Jakarta, Denver and Eastbourne HQs, all tied together with a ribbon of Grog grog.
"I see what you're up to, you filth-peasant. You're slurping up my empire with your blow-up mini-Grog. I won't let you get your slimyballs on anymore of my buildings, you sickspunkslutsombitch."
"Lucy! There is no future in what you do! People care not one whit for postmodernism! You think the future lies in metacommentaries, horrible typographical quirks, clever-arsed references to lit-theorists, and milking the same theme and characters ad nauseam until the reader explodes his udders? You are choking on an economical snuffball, my mimsy-minged ex-queen. There is no future in the postmodern! The future lies in e-readers, in commerical tie-in books, in mass-market appreciation! There is no point writing a novel unless there is a tie-in movie, album, magazine, sweatshirt, pappymeal, action figure, celebrity endorsement, and massive THUMBS-UP from the moneyspinners, from the corporate backers! Are you so small and sweaty that you can't see this? O, crystalline harlot, I lament thee!"
I was so choked with chunder, I could barely breathe.
This was NOT over.
£678,891 [3rd PAYMENT]
It was NOT over, because I had John Barth's mobile number. I gave the wizened wizard-of-the-weird a dial.
"Yeah?" came a grumble.
"Barthie, baby -- problemino here at Biatch HQ. I've been ram-a-lammed into some Corporate Cock. I need rescuing. Grog Rummie's one-man smarmy army is alive: it's the Rise of the Wangs all over again. Get here now, sweetnips," I said.
"On it."
Barth was Grandpa of the PoMo Protection Police (PPP), but as he attempted an infiltration using his non-linear hobnail flip-flops, the elasticity of Grog's Corporate Cock bounced him back home to his fireside chair. Which was a problemino. If Grandpa Barth himself couldn't penetrate even the foreskin, what chance had other PoMo agents at chiselling through the nib-of-the-knob?
Grog wanted WAR. He wanted to prove that postmodern fiction was croaking towards a terminal epilogue in favour of homogenised mass-market pap to be peddled in soulless corporate crapholes.
This was an affront to the Biatch empire. How dare this swaggering dick assert that the future lies in regurgitated watercooler bullshit spawned in lifeless offices by marketing boards? How dare he suggest that fiction which dares to do different things such as
or
or
A DIAGRAM SHOWING THE GENITALS OF A VAMOOSE ELK
or
partswith no punctation or speling cheks whatsoevah
or
1. Lists
2. Of
3. Endless
4. Mediocrity
5. That
6. Go
7. On
8. Forever
have no place in the homes of Ordinary Joes, Jacks, Janes, Jeremiahs, Jessops, Julians, Jezebels and Jongleurs?
The future of fiction is NOT five smug business marketers sitting around one giant fuckoff piechart of the GLOBE deciding which parts of the world in which to peddle their UNDIGNIFIED CRAP to weak-brained SHEEP who keep themselves entrenched so deep in the mire of a culture obsessed with settling for MEDIOCRE BOLLOCKS when talent is desperate to shoot from an infinite series of PIPES that we might well SELF-IMMOLATE like Chinese schoolgirls!
Grog was everythng I stood against: the smirking devilface of consumerist blandness. That's when I knew. Grog was George. Grog was my former whipping bitchette, the former director of Watercooler Books (a sickening hawker of child abuse pap and mass-market arse). He had gone feral and was lashing out at me with his feeble anti-Biatch campaign!
Oh yes, this was WAR, all right -- War Against Retards.
I made a move that was so unprecedented that I had to reinvent the meaning of the word unprecedented to mean 'when Lucy fucking Biatch does something uncharacteristic to save the globe from corporate shitsacks like George Grog and his team of robo-slags'. I phoned Nigel.
As readers of the soon-to-not-ever-be-published novel A Postmodern Belch will know, Nigel owns the largest recorded wang in the history of the entire (un)printed word: a penis some one-hundred feet in height and some fifteen metres in width. I first sneaked a shufti at this super-schlong at the School For Superabundant S Alliteration, when I caught him tugging himself off over me in the audience, flooding the lecture theatre. He cornered me with it, said "does that move you, baby?" and I punched him in the sac.
When I went to ring Nigel I realised I didn't have his phone number. I had never had cause to get in touch with him seeing he was an inconsequential peewit with the understanding of a sloth, but now his über-knob was required for my rescue. For the sake of this narrative's progress, however, I was able to reach him by hitting three random numbers. Don't you love how clever that narrative manoeuvre was, O Sponge-Tits Wank-Dog?
"Hello says the Nigel man, 'tis I, Nigel the Great!" a (retarded) voice boomed.
"Shut your yams, Nigel. It's Biatch here and I need you to get your supersize stick to wherever I am pronto. I have a situation that can only be rectified with a penis of your protean whoppitude. Get a move on."
"Why should I help you, Biatchie? You stole MY narrative, remember? You took me to court, remember? If I was narrating now you wouldn't be in this mess," he said, his accent the same timbre of unbearable tittishness that has made him such a slug in these stories.
"Nigel, if you wrote this, you'd be phoning me right now and I'd be telling you to shove off and drink a goat."
"I'm not helping."
"Think carefully about this, Nigel. If you don't get down here with your freakfunk rod right now, the future is brown. The future is Dan Brown. The future is sitting in IKEA loft apartments sipping coffee and reading the bestseller list while the world's artists sit in a field in Somalia choking on various proximities of bile and bilge."
"Nope. Not coming."
"There's no place for you in the books of others, Nigel! Do you think anyone wants a speccy loner with a schlong so large you need a JCB to uncork the mother? D'you think anyone wants you, with your permastink skin and your talcum touche, your rectal gases and your predilection for boogie-woogie piano? No one has any use for you elsewhere, Nigel. Grog is raping the postmodern as we speak. Get down here now!"
"Do you really think it's over? The realm of Biatch? How can I stop him?"
"Your knob is bigger than his knob, Nigel. You can puncture his foreskin and wallop his limp meat into next week with your PoMo prick. The experimental shall always trounce the conventional! You can't lose, honeysuckle. If you win, I'll let you mingle with the Clitoratti!" (This was a lie: Nigel would never enter the Clitoratti -- the group of artists who lived in my vagina, among them Martin Amis, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith and Bryan Burnett).
"OK. I'll do it!"
"Attabooger, Nigekins! Bring the Somalians, too. If they learn their tutor is fleecing them, they'll revolt. They like revolting. Bring the Judge too. I'm gonna put this fleabagger to sleep forever."
"Yeah, OK! Give me a few days to round them all up. Can you cover travel expenses for all of them? Where are you, anyway?"
"Nigel -- these details are hardly important, are they?"
THE SHOWDOWN
As the southeastern portion of Grog's foreskin set for the night, the fight was on between mainstream and experimental literature. It was up to Nigel to keep the torch of experimental lit burning so I had already given up: this was Nigel we were talking about. His name comes from the Latin dickwaddo, meaning 'fucking useless bag of human shit flavoured with weasel and octopus shit (with a large cock).'
And yet, as the blood coagulated in Grog's tip, no doubt from the suckjob the albino retard was giving him beneath his desk, I heard Nigel burst in through the door with the Somalians, armed with Lucy Biatch action figures (hey -- girl's gotta milk consumer capitalism to bring it down, ain't she?), charging upon George-Grog-whomthefuckever.
"You spineless... um, pooper," Nigel began. "You are attempting to put an end to the most vital and creative form of writing at large in the world now and want to replace it with airport books and cheap trash. Your world is built around dollars and cents, yens and scrota... I mean, groats... and you... you... you..."
"Yes, Colonel Dickteeth?" asked Grog.
"You're a flipping ninnybum! Boys!"
A flat shitcake of a speech, granted, but the Somalians were sufficiently impressed enough to seize Grog as he attempted to consume the Harry Army with his bulbous penis. Nigel whipped out his marvellous pecker -- it truly was marvellous: the way the pink veins surged like sparks of thrusting übercock glorification, oh my! -- and launched helmet-first into Grog.
Nigel whirligigged his manhood around the office, walloping Grog's expanding dickbubble until he could no longer control the inflation, at which point it snapped back, spitting me out, along with the HQs, which transported back to their original locations, as this is fiction and I reserve the right to make ludicrous logical leaps that you have no business interfering with, you pig-nosed cretinous tosscake brainbum shitflan useless wiener-in-waiting motherflum--
"ENOUGH! That's quite enough insults from your, Mz. Biatch! I am the Judge and I am taking charge here. Right. All three of you: Lucy, Nigel, George -- against the wall! Go on, push the Somalians out the way and stand against the wall."
"Judgey, thanks for..."
"QUIET BIATCH! I am FED UP of this insolence, this insulting drivel! Do you have any idea who I am? I am Postmodernism. Yes, I am this whole genre! It wasn't coined in the 1930s by anyone. I am the man responsible for all postmodern works, and you are my bitches. I have let you run rampant until now, merely since your plotless, formless, brainless antics have been amusing to me. But enough is enough. Here are your fates. And shut up while I administer them!"
"Nigel! You are a weakling with a good heart. Your unfortunate appendage makes you egotistic and arrogant. To neutralise this arrogance, I am sending you to work in middle management for DHS Furnishings. You will work on a board deciding the fabric, size and prices of household sofas, will wed a sweet-natured but dim woman from accounts, and have a subpar child. BE GONE!"
"No, please not sofas! Pleeeeeeeeeease!"
"He is gone. Rest assured that is the right place for him. Now... George. You are a strong entrepreneur, but your heart does not lie in the arts. I am sending you to a work as a cleaner in the London Stock Exchange building. If you are truly ambitious, you will work your way to the top. Goodbye."
"Oh, please don't. I'm 43, I don't have the stamina for..."
"He is gone."
"Ouch. You're a mean bastard, ain't cha?"
"SILENCE LUCY! You are a foul-mouthed, vitriolic fiend. You swagger through this world bossing people around, exploiting weak-willed writers to write this tiresome nonsense you call Postmodern Fiction. You charge the reader unspeakable amounts to read your narratives and devote entire paragraphs to insulting them with too much alliteration. You are an odious, sick-minded, hateful little boil and a curse upon the good name of Postmodernism!"
"Well, thank you very much."
"SHUT IT, BIATCH! I have had quite enough of your tyrannous bullying and your unpleasant witchery. That's why I am sending you to... I am sending you to... oh, what's happening?"
"Oh... I'm sorry, Judgey. You haven't paid the final installment, so I'm afraid you aren't entitled to do the ending. See, the last payment, one lumpsum of £340,038,092,829,029 should have been paid into my account by now. So no ending for you, I'm afraid. I'll take that Postmodernism crown, if you don't mind. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an empire to run. Kindly do us all a favour and fuck off into Mt. Vesuvius while I take over the world."
"But I..."
Reader: I murdered him. But you don't care about that, do you? No, of course you don't. You are all my obedient little slut-whore babies. Don't worry, you confused lumps, the future is LUCY, not Brown. As long as I'm here, booting the boneless bums of talentless chancers and cash-seeking cocks, there can be no doubt that the future of literature is safe. You are safe from those evil corporate tools in suits. I will protect you from those snakes.
Now, why not come work for me at the Lucy Biatch Postmodern Inc.? We are looking for fresh talent to work for us at this thriving organisation. Apply to one of our 200,000 HQs worldwide:
LUCY BIATCH POSTMODERN INC.
Vacancy: Zombie Hack
We are seeking semi-talented writers to sit in a small cubicle churning out versions of the novel A Postmodern Belch. This is the one and only postmodern novel that need exist on the planet, and we will soon replace all other so-called postmodern efforts with Lucy Biatch's singular artistic vision. You must have a typing speed of 200 words per minute, be able to process and run with unconventional ideas at a high speed, and be prepared to go uncredited for your work for the rest of your life. Rate: ?£0.10 a month (inc. tips). Apply within. (Note that once you enter the building you are not entitled to leave).
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