1. In a far-reaching plan to establish the greatest epic ever put on film, David O. Selznick’s great, great grandfather orchestrated the Civil War to maximum dramatic effect from within the Confederacy to provide the basis for Gone with the Wind.

2. The call for the abolishment of slavery stemmed from Abraham Lincoln’s reaction to an early Hey Hey It’s Saturday blackface skit.

3. Many young men joined the Union with the assumption there would be free tickets to Def Leppard given out after the war. There were no tickets. Those men died for nothing.

4. Before serving as President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis played flute alongside Lincoln’s sax in an up-and-coming two-piece jazz outfit. After the secession, Lincoln replaced Davis with Pan, the flute-playing god from Greek mythology. The new duo charted a number-one hit with the song Instrumental Viking Rush before separating due to creative differences.

5. The Great Gazoo, the little green alien in The Flintstones that only Fred and Barney could see, was actually inspired by a passage in the memoirs of Major General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside blamed his defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg on the advice of a small green man that only he could see. Curiously, many historians believe this battle to be the same point at which the war jumped the shark.

6. The colours of the North and South would later be adopted by the Bloods and Crips to stage Civil War re-enactments which ultimately got a little out of hand.

7. Ulysses S. Grant was not birthed from a woman. Grant originally entered the world as an effigy made of tampons, but came to life Pinocchio-style with the help of a magical elk who suffered from down-syndrome. After Grant’s wholly unselfish donation of all his chocolate and peanut butter rations towards the end of war, the magical elk decided to turn Grant into a real man, albeit with laughably-sized genitalia.

8. Grant’s military knowledge was founded on both Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Bobby Flay’s Burgers, Fries and Shakes. Flay’s critically-acclaimed book from the future proved instrumental in teaching the troops the psychology of the Southern Man. Upon learning of Grant’s literary assistance, General Thomas Jackson of the Confederates attempted to utilise the knowledge gained from one of his father’s old copies of Juggs. The results were mixed.

9. Recently unearthed historical photos of John Wilkes Booth bear more than a passing resemblance to the T-1000’s default facial features.

10. Robert E. Lee once ate a flamethrower when his favourite bar was out of chilli.

11. Contrary to popular belief, Marvel Comics’ Civil War series was not based on the American Civil War. The inspiration for the Marvel Civil War came from the classic Disney cartoon ‘The New Neighbor’, in which Donald Duck and his neighbour Pete mounted a campaign of malicious pranks against each other. Key elements of this cartoon can be seen in Marvel’s adaptation, significantly the scene where Goofy assassinates Donald Duck on the steps of a federal courthouse using his expert sniper skills.

12. The tide of the war was turned by William Sherman’s famous Naked Kill Squad. These soldiers disobeyed a strict rule of engagement at the time: never shoot a man who isn’t wearing pants.

13. Every 10th solider killed earned a trooper 20 Achievement points for their XBox 360 Gamerscore.

14. The American Civil War has provided the backdrop for some of the greatest Hollywood movies of all time: Glory, Gettysburg, The Patriot and Timecop.

15. Approximately 46,000 soldiers fell at the Battle of Antietam. Half of them got back up again.

Christmas at Hostel

After delivering his presents across Eastern Europe, Santa decides to end Christmas Eve by visiting a prostitute. Unfortunately, evil doesn’t take a holiday. Santa is drugged with Rohypnol, waking on Christmas morning in a dungeon handcuffed to a chair. He’s just been dragged into an underground ring of human torture, but Santa refuses to play the part of a helpless victim…
 
Merry Christmas with a Vengeance

When terrorists gain control of his workshop, Santa and his close friend Samuel L. Jackson take back the North Pole using nothing but their razor-sharp wits and unlimited supply of ammunition. An escape from overwhelming terrorist forces by running barefoot across broken Christmas lights may not leave Santa feeling very jolly, but once he gets a machine gun? HO HO HO.

2 Merry 2 Christmas

After a string of high-speed sleigh hijackings, the FBI tasks Santa with infiltrating an illegal sled-racing circuit in the hopes of uncovering the perpetrators. As he becomes more deeply entwined in this world of tight-knit brotherhood and bitter rivalries, Santa’s loyalties (and his 10-second sled) are pushed to their very limit.

Rujo

After eating an expired box of Corn Flakes, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer contracts rabies and terrorises the inhabitants of Santa’s workshop. Trapped inside her absent husband’s malfunctioning old sleigh, an adulterous Mrs. Claus and her elven lover watch on helplessly as the rabid reindeer patrols outside. With temperatures dropping and no sign of help on the way, this psychological horror movie proves to be one of the tensest Christmas tales of all time.

Cannonball Christmas

With the bank threatening to foreclose on his workshop loan, Santa (Dom DeLuise) teams up with has-been race car driver JJ McScrooge (Burt Reynolds) to win the $200,000 prize in a wild and illegal cross-country race against a wide variety of eccentric competitors. Featuring cameo performances from Phil Collins, Bob Geldof, Simon Le Bon, Bono, George Michael, David Bowie, Sting, Boy George and Paul McCartney.

Jingle all the Slay

A retired soldier and harried father, Colonel John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is determined to secure this season’s must-have gift in order to fulfil his daughter’s ultimate Christmas wish. But Matrix has a problem: stocks of the toy are dwindling across the city as parents engage in a cutthroat battle to obtain the precious few remaining toys. In a last-minute race to obtain the prize, Matrix shoots, stabs, punches and explodes his way through hordes of consumers, leaving a trail of one-liners in his wake.

Leaving the North Pole

After being laid off from the production line at Santa’s workshop due to his rampant alcoholism, a depressed elf sets out into the frozen wastes with a mission of drinking himself to death. In this most unlikely of locations, he meets a beautiful hooker with a heart of gold, and the two begin an uneasy friendship, forming a bond of unconditional acceptance that will change Christmas forever.

White Velvet

David Lynch brings us a cinematic masterpiece that exposes the hidden underbelly of modern suburbia during one snowy Christmas. While strolling through a derelict park, Santa finds a severed finger. Then a lot of mundane stuff happens, none of which entirely makes sense. And then Dennis Hopper is filmed complaining about Heineken and it’s incorporated into the movie for some reason.

These two made unlikely lovers. Doc was pushing sixty. Grey hair cut short in the same fashion he’d worn over the last three decades. He was dressed in a neat suit and tie despite the oppressive heat. Lila was just easing into her early twenties. She wore a T-shirt and jeans. No bra, no shoes, no underpants.

She yawned. ‘I’m bored, man. How long til we get there?’

‘You need to quit smoking that weed, honey.’

‘Huh? I’ve been smoking cigarettes this whole ride!’

‘I noticed,’ Doc said, ‘but I told you twice already how far we gotta travel today. Remember?’

‘Yeah, but the distance til we get there always changes.’

‘Aw, c’mon. Now you’re being difficult on purpose, Lila.’

‘I’m just bored. Can’t we play a game to pass the time?’

‘You mean something like ‘I Spy’ or ‘Count the Yellow Cars’? Because in case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t a little kid no more.’

‘No, I mean a different game. Ever played ‘You Are’?’

‘I got no idea what you’re talking about, honey.’

‘Okay,’ Lila said. ‘I’ll go first and that way I can show you how the game works. I make a statement about you based on intimate knowledge or simple observation, right? Like, you’re the kind of guy who loves old westerns. Not the gung-ho John Wayne bullshit, either. I’ll bet your idols are, like, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson.’

‘Not bad. I reckon I get the hang o’ this one. So… you’d be the kinda girl who likes riding with her feet on the dash.’

Lila pulled her feet off the dashboard, sitting up straight. ‘How astute of you, Doc.’

‘You’re the kinda girl who uses complicated words a simple old fella like me just don’t understand.’

She laughed. ‘You’re the kind of guy who doesn’t even know what astute means!’

‘How fuckin’ astute of you, Lila.’

‘You’re losing focus here. Let’s try again, start over.’ She paused, thinking about what came next: ‘You’re that old-school kinda guy who takes a real lot of pride in his skills behind the wheel. How many years you been packing a license, Doc?’

‘Um… thirty-seven? No, no – thirty-eight. Fuck, this ain’t twenty questions, is it? Now you’re the one who’s losing focus. Let’s put it another way, honey: you’re the kind of girl who shacks up with men twice her age.’

‘You’re the kind of guy who secretly listens to The Eagles.’

‘Don’t you fuckin’ tell nobody!’ Doc snapped. He self-consciously switched off the radio. ‘You’re the kind of girl who knows when to keep her big mouth shut.’

‘You’re the kind of guy who never played football in high school. I’ll bet that you boxed instead. Am I right?’

‘Wrong. I did ‘em both. Got some trophies what can prove it, too. And I reckon you’re the kind of girl who fucked the football players under the bleachers after training.’

‘Oh, yeah? Well, you’re the kind of guy whose first wife filed for divorce with two black eyes.’

‘The part about keeping your mouth shut? I take it back.’

‘You’re the kind of guy who knows how to give shit but can’t take it, you know that?’

‘You’re the kind of girl my mother would’ve hated. I mean – she would have really fucking loathed you, sweetheart.’

Lila said, ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

Doc said, ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

‘Didn’t take very long for this to get nasty, did it?’

‘Never does, honey. It never does.’

Lila sparked another cigarette. ‘How long til we get there, again?’

‘We got us a little ways to go just yet.’

‘And what happens when we get there?’

‘I told you already: we’re gonna pay somebody a visit.’

‘And things will get nasty?’

Doc spoke with a world-weary tone. ‘They usually do when you gotta fix another man’s problem.’

‘Is that what you do?’ Lila asked. ‘Fix problems?’

‘Yeah. I’m the kinda guy who’s good at fixin’ things.’

There was a protracted silence. Lila switched the radio back on, fiddling with the dials until she found a satisfactory station.

‘So what’d this guy do, anyway?

‘Which guy?’ Doc asked.

‘The one we’re going to see.’

‘I got no idea what he done.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How come?’

‘How come what?’

‘How come you don’t know what this guy did?’

‘I don’t ask. It ain’t none of my concern what he’s done.’

‘So you’ll just go right ahead and fix him up, anyway? It doesn’t matter whether this guy actually deserves it or not?’

‘You askin’ if I’ve got a moral code or something?’

‘Pretty much. I figure every man in your line of work has gotta have a code, right?’

Doc thought it over. ‘Well… I never fixed a woman before.’

‘How chivalrous of you, Doc.’

‘There you go talkin’ like a dictionary again.’ He paused, thinking about it some more. ‘I won’t do children, neither. So, I guess that’s my code.’

‘What if this guy has kids?’

‘Doing a family man ain’t the same as fixin’ his kids, too. But this guy don’t got any family. I checked him out first, see. Always research your target, Lila. You don’t wanna pay somebody a visit at their home if there’s gonna be a whole mess o’ witnesses. You can’t never leave witnesses.’

‘Wait – are you bringing me along for a lesson?’

‘Figured you could learn a thing or two, yeah.’

Lila asked, ‘Is that what you thought the night we first met?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You can’t remember the night we first met?’

‘I may be old, sweetheart, but I ain’t fuckin’ senile. It’s only been, what, two weeks? And you think I can’t remember?’

‘You just told me that you can’t remember!’

‘No,’ Doc corrected. ‘What I said is that I don’t remember whether I thought you needed some extracurricular learnin’ back then.’

‘Extracurricular, huh? That’s a bit of a complicated word for a simple old fella like you, isn’t it?’

‘Must’ve picked it up somewhere along my travels.’

‘Wanna know what I thought of you?’

‘You still talkin’ bout the night we first met?’

‘Of course, you silly geriatric.’

‘Hey, watch it! I know what geriatric means.’

She laughed. ‘You wanna hear what I thought or not?’

Doc said, ‘Even if I didn’t wanna know, I figure you’re still gonna tell me, anyways. Am I right?’

She took a long draw on her cigarette, ignoring the question.

‘I was sitting in a booth over by the corner. I’m sure you didn’t even notice me there. I was dealing with some boring, drunk college student trying to flirt with me. For some reason I seem to attract these losers who believe there’s a chance I’ll actually wind up going home with them. And if I actually did end up going home with these pathetic dullards, I’m sure they’d only try fucking me like they learned from watching porn flicks.

‘Anyway, I was looking for an excuse to get away from this guy and I saw you sitting alone at the bar. I thought: “Now there’s a real man. I’ll bet this one has led an exciting life. He’s probably seen and done things I can’t even imagine.” And I thought: “Yeah, he’ll have stories worth telling. And I’ll bet he really knows how to fuck a girl proper, too.”’

‘How astute of you, Lila.’

‘I told this guy that you were my uncle. Hadn’t seen you in a couple years and then I find you in this shithole bar in the back-end of nowhere. What are the chances of that?’

‘So then later that night he sees you sittin’ on your so-called uncle’s lap performing an incestuous act, huh?’

‘That’s what makes it a story worth telling, Doc.’ She paused. ‘Should I be surprised you know what incestuous means?’

‘My old man liked to diddle my kid sister. Guess that’s one complicated word I learned pretty early on.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Don’t worry – I fixed him in the end.’

‘Bastard sure deserved it, too.’

‘Yeah, the old man got what he was owed, that’s for sure.’

‘What happened to your sister after?’

‘She killed herself.’

‘Fuck. I’m sorry, man.’

Doc was unfazed. ‘That’s just how this cruel world works, sweetheart.’

Lila didn’t respond. The turn of the conversation had visibly affected her.  She was staring at the passing landscape in deep thought. The desert roadside was rife with cactus. The plants were lined up like rows of hitchhikers.

They rode in silence a while longer. Lila finished her cigarette and pitched it outside the car. She watched it tumble from view in the side mirror.

Doc said, ‘There’s an ashtray right here, you know.’

Lila got moody like an unexpected thunderstorm. ‘You got a problem with littering? Turn the car around if you like. I’ll go back there and put it in the damn ashtray for you.’

‘Christ. What got stuck in your craw all of a sudden?’

‘That thing about your sister,’ she said. ‘I really wish you hadn’t told me that.’

‘Well, I’m sorry if that one hit close to home. Forget it, okay? Doesn’t matter now. She’s gone.’

‘It’s that attitude I don’t like. She was your sister, Doc.’

He wasn’t comfortable with the turn of the conversation. ‘You didn’t know her – and I don’t wanna talk about her anymore. Let’s just forget it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’

They were stuck with another protracted – and increasingly uncomfortable – silence. Lila didn’t like it. She shifted in her seat and tried getting things back on track. ‘Tell me what you thought about me that night.’

Doc was hesitant. ‘We going back to the night we first met?’

‘Yeah. I’m curious.’

‘Well, I do remember thinking: “Why’s a pretty young dame like this one showin’ any interest in chattin’ with me?”’

‘I always had a thing for older men.’

‘Yeah, I figured as much.’

‘How astute of you, Doc.’ She paused. ‘What were you doing in that bar, anyway?’

‘Workin’.’

‘Looked more like drowning your sorrows to me.’

‘I’d been tailin’ somebody.’

‘And I interrupted?’

‘Nah, he left. I just chose to stay on a while.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘So am I, honey.’

She leaned over to kiss him. The tension was gone. She felt cheeky. ‘You wanna pull over and fuck on the roadside?’

‘It’s tempting,’ Doc said, ‘but we’re almost there now.’

‘And you wanna stay focused, huh? What about a blowjob, then? Might clear your head before things get really nasty.’

‘Quit teasin’. I need to put my game face on. You shouldn’t be distracted, neither. You wanna learn something or not?’

‘You looking to hire a partner?’ Lila asked.

‘I never worked with a partner before. Maybe I’m just looking for a student, like Bronson in The Mechanic. I ain’t got no kids or nobody else I can pass these skills onto. Maybe I’m just a lonely old man takin’ stock of his life and realisin’ he left nothing behind but a trail of bodies he’ll never lay claim to.’

‘What makes you think I have any interest in killing people?’

‘First of all,’ Doc said, ‘never, and I mean never, ever use that word.’

‘What word? Killing?’

‘Yeah. It ain’t killin’. It’s fixin’.’

‘Huh. You worried the car might be bugged?’

‘Nah, it ain’t even my car. This baby’s hot.’

‘So you’re a car thief and a hitman?’

‘I don’t hit nobody – I just fix ‘em.’ He gave her a look to make sure that she understood this emphatic statement. She got it. He continued:

‘Never take your own vehicle on a gig, Lila. That’s careless, just askin’ to be caught. You don’t wanna have a vehicle registered in your name gettin’ picked up later on traffic cameras near the scene. You don’t wanna leave any tyre prints for analysis, neither. You don’t wanna leave anything what can be traced right back to your doorstep. So borrow a car instead. And always dump it after the job, too. Burn it.’

‘I meant to ask about those jerry cans in the back.’

‘Now you don’t gotta.’

‘So, how do we get back home? Steal another car?’

‘Take a bus. Always pay for your ticket in cash. Wear a cap and sunglasses in the terminal. They got cameras there, too.’

‘You never answered my other question.’

‘Which question?’

‘What makes you think I’m interested in fixing people?’

‘You ain’t told me to pull over so’s you can get out.’

‘Maybe I’m afraid that you’ll have to fix me, too. I know too much now, right? You couldn’t just let me go free.’

‘I told you – I never done a woman before.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘That’s why I brought you along for the ride, kiddo. You got that look about you. Whadda they calls ‘em? A femme fatale? I picked that one up from watchin’ old detective movies. I wager you’re the kinda girl who’s curious enough to watch a man get fixed. Maybe you’ll like it or maybe you won’t, but I’ll reckon you’re keen to find out anyways.’

She was feeling bold. ‘How do you know I haven’t seen it all before?

The question threw Doc off. ‘Well… I don’t, really. For all I knows you’re a stone-cold fixer already – only you’re just playing cute with me.’

She laughed. ‘I guess you’ll find out soon enough.’

‘You’re the kinda girl who likes to live hard and fast on the edge, ain’tcha? Yeah, I reckon you wouldn’t mind seein’ how a professional does things. After some of the stuff you told me about your own daddy, I reckon maybe you wouldn’t mind fixin’ him up right, too. Tell me I’m wrong, honey. I’ll stop the car right here and you can get out.’

She didn’t correct him.

The landscape had shifted: hardpan gave way to rolling dunes and scrubland. The highway ran a straight line to a horizon obscured by waves of heat. It was still nowhere country. Inhospitable, empty and endless.

‘We’re gettin’ close now,’ Doc said.

‘Out here?’

‘Yeah, out here.’

He pulled the car off the highway and followed an unmarked side road that was barely visible. The ride got bumpy. They dipped and jumped with the car.

‘What if this guy isn’t home?’

‘We’ll pull up a ways from his shack, take shifts with the binoculars and wait him out. I hear patience is supposed to be a virtue. But I don’t reckon we’ll be stuck waitin’ long, anyway. I already done the recon. Gotta scope out your target, Lila. Learn their routine. This fella lives out here in the middle o’ nowhere, hits up the nearest liquor store every morn – a forty-five minute drive, too – then he comes back home to drink his self blind. He’s got no place else to go. Probably half-tanked by now, too. He won’t even see it comin’.’

‘You ever worry that maybe you’re walking into a trap?’

‘Why? Your spider-sense tingling?’

‘My what?’

‘You never watched Spider-Man cartoons? He’s got like a sixth sense what tells him whenever something’s wrong.    I reckon we all got some kinda spider-sense.’

Lila said, ‘I’m inclined to agree.’

Doc said, ‘You got a bad feeling about this one?’

‘Maybe. I dunno. It’s spooky out here, though. This whole damn place is just one bad feeling.’

‘A little paranoia don’t hurt in this business.’

Doc turned the wheel, pulling the car off the road before easing to a stop.

Lila glanced around. She saw nothing but lonely hills. ‘Why are we stopping here?’

‘He don’t live so far away,’ Doc said. ‘You got a bad feeling, right? We’ll scope out the place from here, put your mind at ease.’

‘My, my. Aren’t you just the sweetest thing?’

‘What’s the word? Chivalrous?’

‘Like a knight in shining armour.’

‘Yeah, that’s me. Do me a favour, honey. Binoculars are right there in the glove compartment. Grab ‘em for me, will you?’

Doc opened his door. He climbed from the vehicle to stretch his legs while Lila retrieved the binoculars. He massaged the small of his back. He was getting too old for long drives.

Lila got out and came around to meet Doc at the car’s front. She offered him the binoculars. He shook his head.

‘You hold onto ‘em. Take a peep over that way.’

Doc indicated off to the right. Lila moved a short distance away from him in that direction. She looked through the binoculars. She stood with her back to him. Doc scanned the landscape in all directions, shielding his eyes from the sun with one palm. He reached inside his suit jacket with the other hand.

Lila said, ‘Who the hell wants to live all the way out here?’

‘People what don’t wanna get bothered, I s’pose.’

Doc removed the handgun from its holster inside his jacket.

Lila was oblivious.

‘I don’t see a car down there,’ she said. ‘Unless he parks around the back? And that shack – what a pathetic old shithole. I can’t believe anybody lives in that place. It’s, like, completely rundown. You sure it’s the right place? Looks abandoned.’

Doc looked around one final time. He knew the shack was abandoned. He was satisfied there were no witnesses. He pointed the gun at the back of Lila’s head. He cocked the trigger.

Lila heard that ominous sound – and then she understood. She dropped the binoculars but didn’t turn around.

‘Son of a bitch,’ she said.

‘Your spider-sense was right, sweetheart.’

She turned to face him. She was seething at his betrayal.

‘Don’t you dare call me sweetheart!’

Doc stayed calm. ‘Turn back around, sweetheart.’

She did the opposite: she came forward.

‘What – you can’t look me in the eye when you do it? You too much of a coward to face your own handiwork, Doc?’

He got frustrated. ‘Either you turn around right now, then get down on your knees – or I put a bullet in your gut instead. One to the back of your head makes it quick and painless. I were you, Lila, I’d take that first option. Otherwise things’ll get nasty, slow and very, very painful. You want me to leave you here bleeding out while you watch the vultures circling above?’

Lila glanced warily at the sky. She sighed, accepting defeat, taking the first option and slowly turning around. She knelt, trembling. Fighting back tears.

Doc came forward, staying just out of reach. The gun was still trained on her head.

‘So everything was a lie,’ she said.

‘Not everything.’

‘Just the part about not doing women.’

‘I told you I’d never fixed a woman before. That part weren’t a lie, either. I just didn’t say I never would.’

Lila spoke bitterly. ‘There’s a first time for everything, right?’

‘That’s why I brought you along for the ride.’

‘I can’t believe I fucked you.’

‘Neither could I, honey.’

‘Guess I pissed off the wrong kinda people, huh?’

Doc said, ‘It ain’t my concern what you done. That much was true. I don’t ask questions. All’s I know is that you need fixin’ and it’s my job to do it.’

‘I never meant for anybody to get hurt.’

‘I’m guessing that means somebody did.’

Lila tried to explain fast, almost stumbling over the words: ‘It was supposed to be just like any other robbery. In and out, real quick. The only reason I ever put bullets in that gun was for warning shots! Sometimes you have to scare ‘em, you know? But this fucking kid walks in the door-’

‘Save it. You don’t gotta justify nothin’ to me.’

‘He was just a kid. It was a split-second reaction. I didn’t even realise until he was bleeding out on the floor.’ Lila wiped away tears. ‘Guess I deserve this after what I did. I’m not going to beg.’

‘Good – because that never makes any difference. It’s nothin’ personal, kitten.’

She was done with self-pity. She got feisty again. ‘Enough with the fucking pet names, Doc.’

‘Alright, Lila. I really did like you, if it makes any difference.’

She got real feisty. ‘Oh, I’m so fucking happy to hear that. Now I can go to my grave knowing that a pathetic, lying old loser actually felt something for me. Yeah, I’m just tickled fucking pink.’ She started crying all over again, but she never choked on the words. ‘Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Want to spend a little while longer getting sentimental? Or can’t you do i-’

Doc pulled the trigger. She went forward with the force of the bullet. She fell face-first in the dirt. He stepped forward and put another two in her spine for good measure. He stood over the body. He looked for signs of life.

There was only blood and sand.

He loosened his tie. Sweat tickled his ears.

Lila never moved. Doc felt a little wistful.

She was the best ride he ever had, but he always figured she was the kinda girl who’d die before she was done asking questions.

It begins in feudal Japan. Except it’s not really the feudal Japan that we know from history. It has the same design aesthetic in terms of architecture and costumes, but there are robots ninjas. Everything else looks exactly like feudal Japan, though. And the samurais are human so they bleed. Anyway, the audience isn’t going to need a history lesson. It’s just feudal Japan. But with armies of evil robots. And the samurais ride elephants and have chariots pulled by lions.

We zoom in from the upper atmosphere until we’re smack bang in the middle of this epic twelve-minute battle sequence where it’s ninjas and samurais and elephants and rhinos and AT-AT walkers just going at each other, throwing ninjas stars, hacking off limbs, decapitations, gouts of blood and sparks, explosions. Think of every battle scene in Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings and condense them into twelve minutes. That’s how crazy it needs to be. And the music is like the Indiana Jones theme song done by Metallica, but if Metallica were more like a wandering troupe of musicians in feudal Japan.

Suddenly there’s this noise. Kind of like the TARDIS makes, but more like if the TARDIS was a Mack Truck going 700 mph. And the whole sky turns red as this massive sword comes down from outer space like a meteor. It impacts like a couple of planes hitting the World Trade Center, scattering the combatants as giant clouds of dust roll away from ground zero. In the wake of this crash the whole place is deathly silent, the surviving ninjas and samurais no longer fighting, just staring in bewilderment at this fuck-off huge sword impaled in the middle of the battlefield. Except it’s not really a giant sword. It’s actually a spaceship from another dimension that just happens to be shaped like a medieval weapon.

Anyway, this door slides opens in the blade’s handle, weird red gas escaping from within, and a ramp descends to the ground. Big suspense building moment as the audience waits to see who – or what – is going to emerge. The music goes all like an Ennio Morricone western soundtrack with heaps of trumpets and clanging cymbals as the atmosphere of tension just grows until we almost can’t bear it anymore. And then, as the gas finally dissipates, we can see the curvy silhouette of a woman. She comes forward.

It’s revealed to be a female elf. (Ideally she would be played by Scarlett Johannson because she’s smoking hot and this role includes lots of nude scenes.) Her costume is almost the same as the gold bikini Leia wore in Return of the Jedi but it shows way more flesh. She surveys the battlefield with her brilliant pink eyes and then removes a laser pistol from the holster on her G-string.

“So,” she says. “Which one of you is God?”

The occupants of the swordship are elves who’ve been travelling across the universe and jumping between dimensions on a mission to find God. They look kind of like the Blood Elves in World of Warcraft but also kind of like Night Elves, too, combined with those other elves in Hellboy II and The Lord of the Rings. And they have an arsenal of sweet elf moves like that one Legolas used when he jumped on the shield to slide down that staircase while simultaneously firing arrows in The Two Towers. Except these elves also have laser guns that make you age in a microsecond until you’re just a skeleton turning to dust. They still use swords, too, but they are laser swords (like lightsabers). And the elves move so fast that we’ll have to use bullet-time in every action sequence just to understand what the fuck is actually happening onscreen, otherwise it’d just be continuous blurs.

The evil robot ninjas and the samurai team up to defeat this new threat from another world, but they are practically all slaughtered by the superior technology and fighting skills displayed by the horde of attractive elves pouring down the ramp onto the battlefield. There are male elves too, but they wear full-bodied outfits that are similar to the uniforms in Star Trek except they’re made from black leather, so they look more like the X-Men (the movie versions, not the spandex comic versions). In real-time it would be a fifty-second battle, but in bullet-time it actually takes fifteen minutes onscreen. The music should be some kind of hardcore techno with sixteen million beats per second. The elves do summersaults and roundhouse kicks and can jump fifty feet into the air, combining their awesome physical attacks with both laser swords and guns in a level of action choreography we’ve never seen before onscreen. Like the moves in Equilibrium mixed with The Matrix and Blade and Jet Li-style kung fu and shit. It’s crazy, but there’s none of that rapid-cut editing stuff where we can hardly make out what’s happening. When the elves shoot the robot ninjas they go all rusty and then crumple into dust. Their kicks are so powerful that samurai heads go flying off, and punches go right through chests.

When the battle is over the elves are just hanging out surrounded by the dust and severed limbs of their enemies. To regain their strength the elves have to make out with each other. No guy-on-guy action but the elf chicks make out with other elf chicks, too. And while she’s got like a harem of other elf chicks licking blood off her thighs we find out the Scarlett Johannson chick is actually the elf princess. Her name is DESTINY.

The reason the elves are looking for God is because Destiny wants to kill Him, but we don’t learn exactly why. That’s a mystery to be revealed later. The swordship was damaged in the crash and they can’t leave the planet until they find a new jump drive, so the elves send out parties to scout the countryside.

The elves manage to capture a robot ninja by freezing him with ice lasers. It turns out the robot ninjas come from the future so they all have jump drives built into them which are compatible with elf technology. This seemingly-convenient plot device will be explained later when the audience learns that the elves’ ancestors actually created the robot ninjas and sent them out into the universe as the first scouting parties looking for God, but that happened so many years ago the current generation of elves don’t know about it yet.

In the meantime: Destiny is bathing in a nearby river, washing off the remaining dust and blood of her victims while the rest of her people fix the swordship. And then a samurai, RONIN, wanders out of the bushes. He’s got epic sideburns and should probably be played by Vin Diesel – but only after he has plastic surgery to make him look Japanese. The sword hanging in a sheath over his shoulder is actually bigger than he is – and Ronin is a very big, muscular fellow – but this weapon doesn’t even weigh him down. He watches Destiny erotically splashing water over her naked skin for several minutes before she notices him there.

When Destiny reaches for her gun on the riverbank, Ronin leaps through the air super-fast and lands with his feet on the gun so she can’t actually shoot him. So instead she fights him bare-handed and naked, but Ronin is like awesome strong so it’s a fair battle that ends with him grabbing her by the hair and pulling her toward him.

Destiny is amazed. “Are you God?”

He says, “No, I am Ronin.”

She says, “I love you, Ronin.”

They have sex on the riverbank. It’s like a half-hour scene, because this is the first time we’ve ever seen an elf and human mate, so it deserves some respect. It’s also really tastefully filmed: we get to see all of her bits, but we don’t have to see any of his. And Destiny knows all these kinky new moves that you won’t even find in the Kama Sutra (don’t worry, I’ve made diagrams). The music is like a 70s jazz/funk soundtrack with chicka-wah-wah guitar that builds into this epic climax as they both orgasm massively. She rakes her long fingernails over Ronin’s flesh but he just heals like Wolverine.

She says, “If you aren’t God, what are you?”

Ronin says, “I am the son of God.”

Destiny says, “Wow, I’m looking for God! Will you be my guide?”

“Yes, all the way to the end of the universe.”

So, enlisting Ronin’s help, they both return to the repaired sword-spaceship. Some of the elves aren’t happy about teaming up with Ronin, but Destiny just decapitates them in front of everybody.

“This man is our key to finding God! Any who oppose my rule shall die. Who else wants to challenge me?”

The surviving elves agree to bring Ronin along, so they board the ship and fire up the jump drives. The swordship extracts itself from the earth like King Arthur removing Excalibur from the stone, and then it swings around and points to the heavens, blasting off into outer space.

The ship, flying at lightspeed, harmlessly passes through an asteroid field, deflecting the massive rocks like they are mere insects in its path. We hear an expository voiceover…

Destiny: “So, Ronin, where are we going?”

Ronin: “In order to find God, one must first consult with the Intergalactic Oracle at Delphi 9.”

Destiny: “But the Oracle is just a myth! Nobody has ever found Delphi 9… or at least they’ve never lived to speak of it.”

Ronin: “Luckily, I was born with a map to its location tattooed on my inner thigh.”

Destiny: “Hmm. As the best navigator on this ship, I will be required to make a thorough inspection.”

The ship emerges from the asteroid field into clear space. We hold this view as it disappears into the far reaches of the galaxy.

Later, on the ship’s bridge, Ronin is whittling a piece of rock with his own bare hands. Destiny controls the flight of the spacecraft by riding an ultra-high-tech Sybian whilst upside down. For added cyberpunk appeal, she is also wearing those large biker goggles Trent Reznor donned in the film clip to Closer. Various other elves are scattered around the command centre, which is an exact replica of the bridge from the Starship Enterprise. Each male elf controls a station featuring illuminated panels we’d like to see explode.

As Ronin puts the finishing touches on his perfectly-whittled shuriken, red lights and sirens bathe the cockpit. A nearby elf dives at Ronin, knocking him to the ground as several wrecking ball-sized orbs smash through the walls of the room. Ronin turns to witness the balls impacting with several elves, causing their bodies to explode like overripe tomatoes, sending fragments of humanoid remains across the room. This is some heavy shit, considering only moments ago we assumed these elves were practically invincible. In mid-flight, many of these giant balls unfold to reveal the projectiles are in fact tightly-contorted lizard creatures, fully-armed with laser whips and flamethrower cocks. These imposing beasts stand 12-feet tall with arms the size of a regular man’s torso. The ship’s interior alert system begins to repeat the words “SPACE PIRATE BREACH” as Destiny seamlessly flips from her masturbation-controlled steering device and lands, kneeling next to Ronin.

“I hate these cunts,” she announces, pulling a small baton from her belt. With the single press of a button, the baton extends and inflates to form a 7-foot long adamantium axe. Destiny quickly turns to Ronin.

“Their scales are made from diamonds which deflect any laser weapons. Only physical attacks can destroy them!”

She leaps forward, cutting one space pirate in half vertically. She then leaps back into the air, kicking both halves of the space pirate apart by doing the splits midair Once Upon a Time in China-style.

Ronin dives forward and tears off the arms of an unprepared space pirate. In a single motion, he then ties the arms together with loose space pirate muscle sinew and uses the arms as a huge nunchuck. A space pirate’s torso is knocked off its body while Ronin spins around and swings both nuckchuck arms into either side of another space pirate’s head, vaporizing it upon contact. (This particular fight sequence has to go slower than bullet-time, so it looks like the awesome combos you can rack up in Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox 360. There should even be a hit counter in the corner so you can get a precise indication of just how hard Ronin is fighting.)

After an intense 627-hit combo, the fight is over. Gore drips from every surface of the bridge. The structural integrity of the ship is at critical mass as the remaining elves tend to the injured and dying.

Destiny says, “We need to initiate emergency healing protocols!”

Because the elves heal through sexual activity, the following sequence is a prolonged full-crew orgy in zero gravity. (I don’t need to describe this scene because I have drawn a hundred pages of very detailed storyboards for producers. However, it is important to note the elf ship is bonded to their own health, so as the orgy begins to reach frenzied proportions the structural damage around the ship begins to mend like a regenerating Cylon Basestar.)

Later, the fully-repaired ship hovers in orbit above Delphi 9, a seemingly-inhospitable ice planet like Hoth. Destiny’s voiceover explains that she and Ronin will be descending to the planet alone, because the mission is too dangerous to risk further casualties.

On the planet’s frozen surface we see a herd of omnivorous reptomammals. Imagine a velociraptor mating with a kangaroo – these creatures are exactly what the offspring would resemble. They have both scales and fur, standing tall on hind legs with a long tail and small forelimbs. They’re doing whatever omnivorous reptomammals do while they’re herding around a barren ice planet. That part doesn’t really matter, because we’re only watching them for twenty seconds before Destiny and Ronin materialise in the middle of the herd after getting beamed down to the planet’s surface.

The creatures are startled – except for the largest male, which confidently strides up to the intruders and lets out a menacing bellow in Ronin’s face, coating him with gelatinous spittle while revealing rows of very sharp teeth. Ronin doesn’t flinch. When the creature has finished asserting its dominance, they are standing with their faces only a few inches apart, glaring at each other. Then Ronin abruptly headbutts the beast and it falls dead. The herd scatters. Destiny looks at Ronin with an expression that clearly matches what the audience is thinking: “This guy is so awesome!”

Of course, like any good hero, Ronin is actually oblivious to his awesomeness. He is instead single-mindedly focused on the task at hand. He says, “The Oracle lives beneath the planet’s surface. We must break through the ice to reach him.”

“But this ice must be at least 100,000 feet thick!”

Ronin looks down, using his x-ray vision. “The Oracle’s cavern is 123,597 feet below us.”

“It’ll be freezing down there!” Destiny says. To emphasise how cold these conditions are, we see a close-up of her rock-hard nipples protruding through the solid gold bikini.

This next sequence is a deliberate nod to that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Han cuts open the dead tauntaun and places Luke inside to keep him warm. Now, you may be thinking that Ronin will cut open the dead creature nearby… but that would be ripping off George Lucas and it would totally defeat the purpose of displaying Ronin’s self-sacrificing nature. Instead, Ronin cuts open his own chest with a lightsaber, opening his body vertically from the collarbone down to his waist. And unlike a tauntaun, all of his internal organs remain fixed in place. Steam wafts from his innards.

“Hurry,” he tells Destiny. “Climb inside me before I heal. My body heat will prevent you from getting hypothermia.”

Because Destiny has a considerably smaller frame than Ronin, she easily fits inside his chest cavity. His healing factor kicks in and seals the wound around her, leaving only Destiny’s head emerging from Ronin’s chest to form a brilliant two-headed amalgamation of beauty and muscular toughness.

Destiny says, “And I thought you felt good on the outside!”

“Close your eyes,” Ronin says. “You may get dizzy.”

He begins to spin around on the spot like a human power drill, burrowing through the ice at tremendous speed, descending far beneath the planet’s surface until he breaks through to a massive ice cavern. Ronin drops a clear thousand feet to the floor below, landing in a deft crouch. It’s very dark in here, but Ronin stands in the lonely shaft of light coming down through his self-created tunnel above. There is the sound of something gigantic moving in the shadows nearby. The music should build forebodingly, a drumbeat played upon percussion instruments that are sculpted entirely from ice. Ronin clicks his fingers and the area is suddenly illuminated by hundreds of torches mounted upon the walls of the cavern.

The Oracle looms before them. It will be depicted via 2D animation that interacts with live performers like the technology they used to make Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It’s an overweight slug-like creature drawn anime-style; a mixture between Jabba the Hutt, an octopus and Martin Lawrence in a fat suit. Hundreds of tentacles slither across the floor, propping its fat body high above our heroes.

“Who dares enter my abode?!”

(The Oracle should be voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait.)

Destiny emerges from Ronin’s body like a chestburster in Alien, covered in gore. Her momentum doesn’t even budge Ronin – he is like a terracotta warrior that heals from all wounds.

Destiny kneels before the massive creature. “Oh, wise one. We humble intruders have come to seek your infinite knowledge.”

“You should be aware that my knowledge comes with a price.”

“I am willing to pay any price for an audience with God.”

“You seek the location of God? The cost of such privileged information will be… extremely hefty.”

“Whatever it takes.”

The Oracle considers the unlimited possibilities, running one greasy tentacle across its drooling mouth. “Then you shall gratify me sexually in exchange for this information. Do we have a deal?”

Destiny says, “Okay.”

Ronin steps forward. “No.”

“We have no other choice,” Destiny tells him. “And it’s my choice, Ronin.”

She does not allow him to protest any further, shedding her bikini and standing before the Oracle, a willing sacrifice. “My body is yours.”

“Excellent.”

Tentacles snake forward across the ice, encircling her ankles and wrists, pulling her arms and legs until they’re spread wide apart. The Oracle raises Destiny high into the air, sampling her crotch with its forked tongue as more tentacles writhe across her exposed flesh. She shudders with revulsion as tentacles gently penetrate her orifices, but she doesn’t fight it even when the sexual activity grows more disturbingly relentless. Ronin helplessly watches as the Oracle defiles her. This uncomfortable (yet oddly titillating) scene is designed to showcase the resolve both characters have to find God.

Once Destiny is brought to her torturous climax, she passes out with relief. The Oracle holds her upside down with a single tentacle wrapped around both legs, bellowing laughter at Ronin.

“God can be found in the outer Theta Quadrant of the Proplaxia Nebula in the Phasia Galaxy. You will know when He is close, for you will begin to smell a strong odour of diamonds.”

Ronin outstretches a hand, performing a single gesture to indicate that he wants Destiny back now. The Oracle remains motionless.

“No. The female remains with me. This is the price one pays for a session with the Almighty.”

The Oracle begins to laugh again, the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. Ronin is silent, narrowing his eyes. The soundtrack is a lonely shamisen being plucked – the eerie stringed instrument from the Lone Wolf and Cub films. It’s the classic ambience that serves as prelude to a technically-flawless samurai battle.

Ronin delicately unsheathes his blade. “You have made a grave mistake, Oracle.”

The Oracle screeches more laughter. “Do you seriously hope to defeat me alone?”

“Not alone,” Ronin says. He clasps the sword in both hands, raising it above his head, pointing the blade toward the heavens like Prince Adam calling upon the power of Grayskull. He shouts: “SUMMON WILDCAT!”

Lightning springs from the blade, creating a whirlwind of electricity around Ronin as the wildcat materialises underneath him. It’s about the size of triceratops, green fur with yellow stripes, wearing an armoured red saddle that Ronin now sits upon. The wildcat roars, displaying razor-sharp fangs made of pure silver.

“Noooo!” The Oracle screams in terror. “I’m allergic to cats!”

While the Oracle is distracted, Ronin throws his shuriken. We track the spinning blades through the air in bullet-time as the shuriken arcs toward the tentacle Destiny is hanging from, speeding up as the blades slice clean through the creature’s flesh, severing the appendage. She begins to fall, but the wildcat leaps into the air where Ronin catches her with one strong arm, laying her carefully across his waist, hacking at more tentacles with the sword in his other hand. The wildcat runs across the ice walls of the chamber, shredding any tentacles in its path, ripping and tearing with its teeth and claws. The Oracle howls with pain, flailing uselessly.

The massacre is finished quickly: the Oracle is left with no tentacles, a blubbering mess heaped upon the icy floor of the chamber. Ronin dismounts the wildcat, approaching his enemy.

“You’ve won,” the Oracle cries. “Kill me and be done with it.”

“No,” Ronin says nobly. “You must live on, knowing that your greed and your hubris are responsible for the injuries that have been inflicted upon you.”

“I can’t live like this! Please, kill me. I beg you, Ronin. Show mercy and end my horrible life.”

“No. You must suffer for your crimes. I have left you with no tentacles, so you are incapable of killing yourself. You will remain here forever in a prison of your own making.”

Ronin turns away, replacing his sword in its sheath before walking back to the wildcat. “You may go now, my old friend. I will not call upon you again. Your debt has been repaid in full.”

The wildcat growls in response. Its dialogue is subtitled: “Thankyou, Ronin. I will return to my family now, free of shame.”

The wildcat fades away. Ronin picks up the unconscious Destiny, carrying her over his shoulder. He leaps up through the ice tunnel above, leaving the Oracle to its miserable fate below.

Later, in the medical bay of the elf ship, Destiny lies naked in a healing pool – like those tubs Angelina Jolie used in Wanted, but more technologically advanced, like a Cylon rebirthing tank. Ronin has been waiting dutifully by her side the whole time, meditating in the classic Lotus position. When Destiny wakes, Ronin also rouses. Their eyes meet; they share a brief, silent moment in which she instantly understands that he defeated the Oracle in her defense.

“I can smell diamonds,” she says.

“Yes,” Ronin says. “God is nearby.”

“You got his location?”

“We have just arrived.”

Outside, we can see the ship hovering in the golden haze that surrounds a massive planet below. Its surface appears to be composed of diamonds, the bright core shining through with the power of a thousand burning suns. On the ship’s bridge, Destiny – now wearing a silver bikini and matching thigh-high boots – gazes out at heaven. They have finally reached the end of their quest.

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

The voice of God booms out through space. He sounds like a computer-synthesized combination of Skeletor, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and Morgan Freeman. He says, “Thankyou. But I know you have come to destroy me. And I know that you plan on deploying my son as a weapon against me. So, in turn, I must use your own creations against you.”

An armada of robot ninjas flies out from the planet. These are similar models to the robot ninjas encountered in the beginning of the movie, but with God’s help they have evolved over the centuries. They have missile launchers on their backs and wear the exact same masks as the guys from Daft Punk. These Daft Punk robots surround the swordship like a swarm of angry hornets.

Destiny turns to Ronin. “What is He talking about? We didn’t create the robot ninjas!”

“But your ancestors did,” Ronin explains. “They sent the robot ninjas out into the universe as the first scouting parties looking for God.”

“Nothing will stand in our way,” Destiny says. “Everyone, get to your battle stations!”

Ronin, Destiny and the other elite warriors climb into torpedo tubes before they are launched into outer space. Elf gunners mount laser turrets which protrude from the swordship’s exterior along the length of the blade, taking aim at the horde of Daft Punk robots.

Now, before I even begin describing the epic action scene that follows, it’s important that we address the issue of robot blood. Typically in film and television, robots are used as a more family-friendly recipient of violence. This is FAIL – and it will not be the case in my movie. The Daft Punk robots will have cybernetic muscle and veins under their plated exterior. Fluorescent blue blood and chunks explode from the robots when they are hacked, slashed and detonated. Imagine that each robot is a bit like Mary Poppins’ bag. Just replace ‘bag’ with ‘ninja robot’ and ‘spoonful of sugar’ with ‘Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with cybernetic gore’ and you should understand the level of carnage we’re about to deal with.

Spinning her sword in front of her like a helicopter blade, Destiny’s rocket boots ignite and she flies through space like Iron Man with Ronin straddling her back. This epic dogfight sequence will last around ten minutes, with lasers firing everywhere, robots exploding and missiles flying all over the place as the elves zoom around space, ducking and weaving and hacking away. We see occasional missiles impacting with the swordship. The soundtrack is Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ played by a 164-piece orchestra conducted by John Williamson and featuring special guest appearances by Slash on guitars, Flea on bass, Tommy Lee on drums and Prince on vocals.

Ronin yanks a missile launcher away from a passing Daft Punk robot. As Destiny propels through space obliterating robots, Ronin throws missiles at the incoming opposition with the practiced arm of a javelin champion. Once the missiles run out, Ronin leaps from Destiny’s back as another projectile streaks overhead, grabbing onto it. He’s hanging underneath while the missile flies toward the swordship, but before it can impact he swings around to stand upon the missile like a surfboard, steering it away from the target. While riding the missile he punches through oncoming robots, his fists going right through their torsos. After just a few seconds he has three robots impaled on each arm, bunched up around his biceps like crumpled metal sleeves. He steers the missile toward a cluster of robots and leaps off just before impact. The force of the explosion tears the robot sleeves from his arms, burning away layers of his flesh until we can see his muscle tissue underneath, shrapnel peppering his body like an eruption of metal acne.

But Ronin’s healing factor just knits his skin back together, forcing the shrapnel back out until it drifts away through space. He lands on Destiny’s back again, sitting comfortably like he’d never left.

Most of the other elves are eventually hit by missiles, exploding in buckets of gore while God’s booming laughter fills the void of space. Soon, only Destiny and Ronin remain alive, vastly outnumbered.

The Daft Punk robots swarm together, forming a giant hollow sphere around them, blocking escape in every direction. Simultaneously, the robots all fire their missiles. It’s like that scene in Hero where Jet Li faces all of those arrows raining down like a thick cloud, but instead the arrows are replaced with missiles here.

Ronin enters Super Saiyan mode, energy exploding from within his doubling body mass, growing vertical hair that is brilliantly white and moving like flames upon his scalp. Now he’s even more badass simply for being a fiery blonde. Ronin only needs to whip his hands around pointing at incoming missiles and they explode from the sheer force of his telekinetic energy. We’re talking stylish jive-pointing here, like the way Fonzie would point slickly at Potsie when Potsie finally grasped the Fonz’s point. Only, in this situation, Potsie would vaporise and the Fonz would fly through the roof to score some space poon.

Ronin sends out a massive blast of energy that disintegrates all of the remaining Daft Punk robots, leaving our heroes with clear access to the planet beyond… or so they think. God booms supercilious laughter; it sounds like an intergalactic hyena with a superiority complex.

“Your transformative energy is no match for my own, Ronin.”

Like Unicron in the 1986 Transformers movie, the diamond planet begins to transform. It morphs from diamonds to organic matter, sprouting six tentacles while the core opens to reveal an enormous, glowing eyeball. The whole planet mutates in much the same manner as the creatures in John Carpenter’s The Thing. The music here is the soundtrack to the final boss battle against Andross in Star Fox on Super Nintendo. And to prove this really is the final boss battle, God’s health bar appears at the top of the screen. 

God has only one basic attack for the moment. He will try smashing Destiny and Ronin with one of his tentacles. They’ll know He’s about to attack whenever a tentacle pulls back like God is preparing to throw a devastating punch, so they dodge the incoming attack by flying to one side as the tentacle lashes forward. He repeats this process six times before roaring in frustration, briefly leaving Himself open to attack. Whenever God takes a break, glowing rings appear on the middle of each tentacle, indicating His weak spots.

After the first round of attacks, Destiny says, “I’ve figured out his pattern and identified his weak spots! We have to wait until after every sixth attack, then hit those glowing rings on his tentacles.”

God launches another round of attacks, which they skilfully dodge until he leaves himself open again. “Now!” Destiny shouts. She fires her laser gun at the weak points on God’s tentacles while Ronin thrusts both palms forward, sending a burst of Super Sayain energy forth in the form of blue fireballs that explode like Molotovs as they impact with the tentacles. They manage to sever one tentacle, decreasing God’s health bar by a corresponding sixth, before he resumes his attack. This dodge-and-attack process is repeated until only three tentacles and half of God’s health bar remain intact.

Now God changes his pattern, lashing out with all tentacles simultaneously. This three-pronged attack is much harder to avoid: Destiny is unprepared, knocked unconscious. The sheer force of this blow sends her rapidly drifting away through space. Ronin is distracted, turning to fly after her - “Nooo!” – when another tentacle encircles him, pulling him back toward the giant eyeball.

Ronin grabs onto God’s health bar at the top of the screen, holding on with all his might while the tentacle attempts to pull him down. This struggle ensues for several minutes until the tension is just unbearable, but Ronin is awesomely strong and won’t give in, even when God’s remaining tentacles wrap around the central one to form thicker, stronger binding like a giant rope made from octopus flesh. Eventually all of the tentacles just snap at the weak points in the middle, reducing God’s health bar to nothing. Ronin lets go and pries himself loose from the dead tentacles. He looks frantically around the void of space, but Destiny is nowhere to be seen amongst the cloud of debris, corpses and robot parts. The swordship is billowing smoke in the distance, badly damaged.

God says, “You may have defeated me, Ronin, but at what cost?”

Ronin turns back to face the giant eyeball. “I won’t make the mistake of thinking you have been defeated just yet, Father.”

Ronin uses his remaining Super Saiyan energy and turns into a human fireball that flies into the centre of the giant eyeball like a guided missile. After breaking through the eyeball crust and penetrating deep layers of gore, Ronin finds himself in the planet’s core. The screen goes white. Everything is silent. Then we fade back to witness a surprisingly tranquil scene.

Here, the view is a pristine beach at sunrise. The sky has a powerful orange hue, casting its light upon the endless white shoreline where a single wooden bench faces the horizon. The music is sweet and soft strings, like the theme to Forrest Gump, celebrating the beauty of both the scene and what Ronin has accomplished.

Ronin, having returned to his normal form, slowly descends from the sky and sits down upon the bench to look at the sunrise. Here the music grows louder and more magnificent; we’ve reached the climax. From over Ronin’s shoulder, we are able to see that the horizon is not actually where the sky meets the ocean, but where the ocean meets a giant vagina the colour of the sunrise. The sun itself is the blazing light emanating from the clitoris. It is hauntingly beautiful, like a Salvador Dali painting if he’d decided to paint female genitalia instead of constantly painting his own.

God speaks. His voice is carried on the wind from the horizon, now sounding far more composed, relaxed. It’s like Patrick Stewart on Vicodin.

“Hello, Ronin.”

“Hello, Father.”

The wind caresses Ronin’s face, like God’s queef measuring its own creation.

“Do you know the sound of one hand clapping, my son?”

Ronin claps with one hand.

“Ah, very good. Very good. I knew you would have the answer. There have been many who tried locating me over the past ten thousand millennia, but none have been successful. Oh, sure, there were some who came near. Like the ninja robots. I adopted them, of course. I loved them, as I love all things. I made them harder, better, stronger, faster; sharing the music of Daft Punk with them. But there are none I have allowed to come this close, my son. You are the first, the last and the only. You are the finest of my creations, Ronin.”

Ronin says nothing.

“You know how proud I am of you, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You know I was hoping you’d win, don’t you?”

“I suspected.”

“Why is it you wish to destroy me, Ronin?”

“Because you are the cause of all bloodshed across the universe.”

God has to think about this for a moment. “Yes, I suppose that I am. Perhaps, because I have never felt true pain, I have never respected the suffering of my creations.”

Ronin gets up from the bench, walking forward into ankle-deep water. There, he kneels, scooping up sand with both hands to make a tightly-packed ball. He stands like a baseball pitcher and throws the ball of sand across the ocean into God’s vagina.

“Now I have sand in my vagina. The sensation is quite irritating.”

“Now you understand suffering.”

God cries with both happiness and pain. His vagina begins to secrete tears which amass in a tsunami that builds upon the horizon.

“Thankyou, Ronin. I finally understand.”

“The only hope of ending the bloodshed comes with your own demise, Father. You know this to be true.”

“Yes. You are right. It’s all my fault.”

“You know what you have to do.”

“Yes, now I finally know. Thankyou for imparting the wisdom that I was lacking, Ronin. Thankyou for giving me true pain. You have shown me the error of my ways. You must go now, my son.”

An alarm system begins to sound. The sky flashes red as the tsunami builds, a towering wave that rushes toward the shore, blotting out the sunlight. A robotic female voice says: “SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. THIRTY SECONDS UNTIL SELF-DESTRUCT.”

Ronin says, “Goodbye, Father.”

He flies away just as the tsunami violently erodes the beach, obliterating the bench and filling the screen with bubbling vaginal secretions.

In outer space we can see Ronin flying away from the giant eyeball planet, which grows brighter and brighter in the background until it goes supernova, exploding like a billion Death Stars.

Later, Ronin sits upon an asteroid in the depths of space. He is alone now, stricken with grief and depression. It’s the most emotion we’ve ever seen him display. He has succeeded in his mission to kill God, but he failed to protect Destiny. He doesn’t know where she is or how to find her. In a situation like this, samurai custom dictates that he commit seppuku (suicide). He contemplates the blade in his hands. He’s just preparing to disembowel himself when suddenly-

A DeLorean DMC-12 pulls up alongside the asteroid in a screech of brakes. It hovers there for a moment before the passenger door opens with a pneumatic hiss. We can see the driver is actually none other than Doc Brown (special guest star Christopher Lloyd)!

“Ronin!” Doc Brown says urgently. “I’ve been to the future and figured out how to save Destiny! Now we have to go back in time!”

Ronin’s face lights up with joy. He dives inside the vehicle and the door closes behind him. The DeLorean flies off through space, leaving fiery trails in its wake as Doc Brown and Ronin embark on their mission to save Destiny, travelling through time at 88mph…

TO BE CONTINUED.

The highest classification available at present for videogames in Australia is the MA15+ rating. If the Classification Board finds that a game exceeds the criterion for this maximum rating, the game will then be refused classification. Games which have been refused classification are banned from release… while the mature content which typically results in the banning of a game remains available for adults to view in R18+ classified movies. The National Classification Code states that adults should be able to read, hear and see what they want – but when it comes to videogames the lack of an R18+ category denies adults this freedom of choice.

The Attorney-General’s Department, which is responsible for the Classification Board’s guidelines, is aware of research into game-playing trends which found the average age of Australian gamers to be significantly higher than eighteen – yet they have still failed to introduce a new classification scheme providing for adult videogames. Last year, the Standing Committee of Attorneys General began to develop a discussion paper in order to seek community views on the issue of an R18+ classification for videogames. Of course, as is generally the case in the world of politics, the parties involved could not reach a unanimous decision even when it came to developing a discussion paper for public release. The task of releasing this much-needed paper has instead been taken up by the office of the Commonwealth Minister of Home Affairs, but a cabinet reshuffle appears to have left the entire matter in political limbo. You could write to the Minister’s office asking when the paper will be released, but you’ll likely receive only this standard response: “The content of the paper and the timing of its release are under consideration by the Australian Government.”

In other words: “Don’t hold your breath.”

Many gamers have blamed the original delay on the South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, a staunch opponent to the introduction of an R18+ classification for videogames. For adult gamers, Atkinson has become a political roadblock to progress. To implement change, the Commonwealth requires the unanimous agreement of State and Territory Censorship Ministers – and so far Atkinson doesn’t seem willing to budge. Now, he may not be the only Attorney-General opposed to an R18+ classification for games, but he’s definitely the most vocal, which makes him a reviled figure by many in the Australian gaming community. Atkinson believes that a restriction of adult choice is actually justifiable for the sake of the more vulnerable members of our society, referring to the Classification Code’s statement that minors should be protected from material that is likely to harm or disturb them. Of course, the purpose of an R18+ classification would be to restrict minors from accessing unsuitable material, but Atkinson has publicly admitted that he doesn’t even trust the Classification Board to apply the correct guidelines as they stand, anyway. He believes the limits of the MA15+ category are already being stretched to accommodate more extreme material…

…and he’s right.

Games that are typically restricted to adults in other countries are instead made available in Australia under the MA15+ category. Admittedly, the local versions have often been censored to accommodate our MA15+ requirements, but game developers can only tone down the onscreen impact of the material – they can’t drastically alter the overall tone of a product without producing an entirely different game. So the content gets watered-down to meet our guidelines… while the mature themes remain largely intact.

Atkinson claims that he doesn’t agree with this system, but his opposition to a category that would restrict such material to adults can only be seen as support for a system that currently provides it to fifteen year-olds. He may want to protect the children, but his refusal to support a new system with better regulations is instead giving children access to the very material he opposes. It obviously makes perfect sense to oppose an R18+ classification for videogames when fifteen year-olds can pick up a copy of Prototype and leave a trail of mutilated corpses in their wake as they literally carve their way through crowded metropolitan streets, doesn’t it?

Two days ago, the Australian Classification Board approved a modified version of Left 4 Dead 2 by giving it an MA15+ rating, but the decision only further highlights inconsistencies in the board’s approach. The board were satisfied “that the game no longer contains depictions of decapitation, dismemberment, wound detail or piles of dead bodies lying about the environment.”

The board reports that, in this edited version, dead bodies and blood spatter quickly disappear – but this was certainly not the case in the original Left 4 Dead, which the board approved with an MA15+ classification despite the piles of bodies players could leave behind.

But I’m not the first person to point out the board’s inconsistencies, and the question we should really be asking is: how do these edits make the game any more suitable for minors to experience? The core nature of the gameplay hasn’t changed – it’s still a relentless killing spree, only now the impact and consequences have been toned down. A dead body and the blood spatter disappearing will not change the fact that a fifteen year-old just shot somebody in the face.

Inconsistencies and providing minors with access to mature content aside, there’s another issue that should be factored into the R18+ games classification debate. You see, when games are refused classification they cannot be legally imported, sold or advertised in Australia – which damages the retail gaming industry. Left 4 Dead 2 is anticipated as being one of the highest-selling games of 2009. A modified version may have been approved for sale here, but that’s not going to satisfy a significant portion of the gaming community who expressed no problem with resorting to illegal avenues during the three weeks in which they were denied a lawful opportunity to access the game. There will be imports and there will be piracy – because some people have already ordered copies from compatible regions that did approve the game, while others simply won’t accept a watered-down version when they can access an unedited one.

The people in charge of the R18+ decision can’t just think of the children – they need to consider our economy by thinking of the retailers, too. Right now, there are people in this country with copies of other banned games obtained through illegal means. They have chosen to either rip off the game developers entirely or send their money overseas (because Customs officials aren’t renowned for checking items like videogames). These are people who believe that petitions, letter-writing campaigns and blogs won’t make a difference.

And maybe they’re right. Maybe nobody is listening.

Maybe nobody else cares.

For those of us determined to implement change, we can only continue along this well-trod path. We can only express our arguments to those who supposedly represent our best interests. We can only say:

“Part of the National Classification Code addresses the need to take account of community concerns about the depiction of material which condones or incites violence. As a member of the community, I do not feel the interactive nature of violence depicted in videogames makes their content any more unacceptable than material I can readily access through watching an R18+ classified film. However, I do feel that my freedom of choice as a responsible and mature Australian citizen is being restricted by unfair regulations. I would like to see the introduction of better regulations and an R18+ classification for videogames so that I can exercise my freedom to access material the present classification scheme denies me from choosing. I would like to feel the pride of living in a country that does not unfairly restrict my liberties. I would like to know that a better system is in place. Please, give adult gamers their freedom of choice while helping to reduce illegal activity and further restricting the unsuitable material that minors currently have access to.”

But, sadly, so long as people like Michael Atkinson remain in office, we’ll probably be repeating ourselves for a very long time.

There’s a giant syringe protruding from my chest. Buttons popped loose from my shirt down to the stomach. Spots of blood stain the white fabric when I pull the needle loose. I can feel every inch of its metallic length withdrawing from my flesh. Blood washes down my chest in a messy trail. I throw the syringe across the room and it shatters. What was in the needle? Who stabbed me with that thing?

I can’t remember who I am. I don’t even know how I got here.

A narrow bathroom stall: light reflects off the tiles in bright points that pierce my fragile eyes. I’m slumped on the toilet with my pants on. The pounding in my head is amplified by the surrounding silence. It seems like a public bathroom. Nothing but dripping water, there’s nobody else around.

I struggle to my feet, listening to the echo of my weak grunts, my footsteps approaching the mirror above the row of sinks. The face staring back at me is weirdly unfamiliar. I look like the sketch of a mug artist, drawn in shades of grey. A pale face that’s gaunt and unshaven, an explosion of scarred and blistered flesh around the right temple. Christ, I’m going bald.

At least I’m respectably dressed. Halfway through buttoning my shirt – blood immediately soaking the front – somebody comes into the bathroom. The man is dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. I can hear the bustle of activity outside before the door falls shut behind him. The man stares awkwardly.

‘Nosebleed,’ I tell him.

He looks down at the broken needle on the tiles.

‘Junkies,’ I tell him.

Something tells me to get the fuck out of here. The man smiles politely through the look of unease on his face, edging toward one of the stalls. He goes inside and I hear the bolt slide home. OCCUPIED.

There’s a jacket on the countertop. I presume it belongs to me, putting it on over the bloodstained shirt, doing up the buttons. A perfect fit. There’s a wallet in the front pocket. Expensive leather; three hundred dollars and some credit cards inside. The driver’s license doesn’t resemble the man in the mirror.

‘Joseph Lawrence,’ I read out loud.

I don’t recognise him, but that’s no surprise. This guy Joseph Lawrence could be the one who stuck that needle in my chest, but I wouldn’t know him from the man currently using the bathroom stall.

Leaving the bathroom I’m surprised to find a great open space filled with people and lined with stores. There’s faint music beneath the cacophony of voices. This could almost be a shopping mall, but I see luggage on trolleys and flight attendants in their neat little uniforms. There’s an announcement coming over the loudspeakers while a plane rumbles overhead. So… it’s an airport.

Which airport? What city am I in?

How did I get here? Who am I?

I discover a set of keys in my pocket and a crumpled parking stub with a number printed on the side. I can’t remember what kind of car I drive, but at least I know where it’s parked. I can remember how to drive. I don’t remember where I learned, or what kind of car it was in, or who taught me. I can’t remember my father’s name or the girl I first kissed, but I can still drive.

I know the names of old movies, politicians, historical figures. I know bands and music, summoning tunes in my head. But I don’t remember who I am.

I don’t remember what happened to get me here. The memories of my life have been wiped clean like a chalkboard. I don’t even know where to find the parking lot.

People jostle around me. Another confused tourist in the crowd: that’s me. Ten minutes ago I might have been standing in this exact spot, but I wouldn’t remember that. Nothing comes. I trawl for memories and the murky depths of my brain turn out empty. There’s naught coming to the surface.

I take a seat near the orange juice stand. Gotta figure this out. No rings, no watch. There’s something else in my pocket: another key attached to a little plastic tag. 334B. I check the lockers nearby for a corresponding number. There are hundreds of them. Aha! I find the right one. The key fits in the hole.

Inside the locker there’s a handgun, uncovered and plain as day. It’s just sitting there for the world to see. I quickly shut the door. Why do I have the key to a locker containing a gun? I don’t need a gun. Do I need a gun?

Am I in danger? Could I have known that somebody would stick a needle in my chest and erase all of my memories?

A sensation of déjà vu comes over me. I have no memories to associate this feeling with – but I know what déjà vu is. It’s not unreasonable to assume that I’ve previously stood right here with the same key in my hand. What was I thinking back then? Why did I feel the need to leave a gun at the airport?

I look around, feeling paranoid. Nobody here even seems to care; they obviously didn’t notice the gun. There’s a newsvendor further along. I can read the headlines from here: 12 DEAD IN AIRPORT MASSACRE.

I leave the locker and buy a newspaper with the loose change in my pants. One of the coins strikes me as light and foreign, newly polished. I don’t hand this one over, comparing the date on the coin to the date on the paper. The coin was pressed in 2010. The newspaper says today is October 23^rd, 2009.

2009. What year was I expecting?

The coin – I can’t explain it. 2010? It has to be fake, right?

There are plenty of familiar stories in the news: ceasefires in the Middle East, political scandals, natural disasters and foiled terrorist plots. I feel like I’ve read all of this before now. I’ve been reading it for most of my life.

The newspaper ends up in the trash receptacle.

Around me the airport drones. I follow the signs past ARRIVALS and find EXIT, walking with a noticeable limp. There’s a dull ache in my left ankle that I didn’t notice earlier. Some of these people stare like I’m a hunchback dragging a corpse. The blood on my shirt isn’t showing – I just look awful.

Outside it’s night, the air windless and thick with high temperature. Yellow cabs wait in a line beyond the exit. There’s a roar of traffic from the surrounding freeways, an array of headlights blurring with motion as cars speed along the overpass. The parking lot is laid out underneath, the size of several city blocks, dozens of exit ramps, a maze of vehicles between the pylons. Nothing here is familiar.

It’s gloomy and difficult to read the numbers. After searching a long time for my car it’s a surprise to discover a BMW parked in the numbered slot. Am I the kind of person that drives a BMW? The key fits, so maybe I am.

There’s a parking meter at the head of every slot. I feed it with notes from the wallet of Joseph Lawrence, surprised to find the machine greedily expecting more, more, more. It spits out a receipt for one month’s parking.

I get in the car and smell the stale odour of cigarettes. Do my lungs feel heavy? The ashtray is overflowing and there’s half a pack sitting on the dashboard. There are some maps in the glove compartment, but no form of registration or identification. The car offers no clues to my identity.

It’s clean. The clothes I’m wearing aren’t cheap and they don’t smell like old smoke. There’s a wallet belonging to a man named Joseph Lawrence in my jacket. Hot, drying blood sticks the shirt against my chest.

There are flashing lights and sirens when I turn the key in the ignition.

A moment later I realise that it’s not a fancy car alarm. I’m surrounded by cops wearing helmets and vests, wielding brand-new submachine guns. They’ve been waiting for me in the shadows. Why exactly? I don’t know.

I don’t know who I am.

‘Put your hands on the wheel!’

‘Put your hands on the fucking wheel!’

I put my hands on the wheel.

‘Pop the trunk!’

‘Do it! Pop the trunk now!’

Jesus, do they want my hands on this wheel or not?

I pop the trunk, listening to the latch come undone in the rear. I’m watching in the rear view mirror as two SWAT members move around and slowly raise the lid, staring at whatever’s inside. I can hear them gasping in shock.

‘You sick bastard…’

HARTFORD FEDERAL PENITENTIARY is written in big white letters against a blue background on the sign located outside the first chain-link fence. From the back of the check-in van you can’t see this sign. It’s pretty much there for staff, visitors and photographs in government brochures. Most inmates will only ever see it on the way out, though I doubt that many are tempted to look back at this place.

Few men actually make it out of here: a quarter of the inmates are serving life sentences. Over a thousand of them are murderers. Seventeen hundred have committed assault with a deadly weapon.

Some have called this the most frightening place on earth.

Hartford Federal Penitentiary has been operating at over three times its capacity since late in the last century. It is a prison built upon a prison built upon a prison. They continually expand the facility to keep up with the intake of convicts. In some blocks the cells are now stacked ten stories high. In a good week two or three people will die from stabbings. In a bad week the morgue gets overcrowded.

Due to extraneous costs, one out of twelve inmates receives the serious drug treatment that over two-thirds of them actually require. Along with drug problems a quarter of the population suffers some form of mental illness. Most remain untreated – or even undiagnosed – due to understaffed mental-health facilities. This is the criminal justice system. It’s clearly not rehabilitation. Vocational training and education programs are virtually non-existent at Hartford. Even the priests might say that God has abandoned this place.

Half of the few prisoners released will end up back here within two years.

Until recently the penitentiary was run by a government-subsidised privately-owned prison company named Lockdown Operations. Such deals have become common practice with ultramodern prisons. The private sector can operate with more efficiency than a government body while maintaining a lower cost. For example, a correctional officer working for Lockdown Operations would be a non-union worker on a reduced salary with no benefits or pension. The prison is run like any other business: entirely for profit. This means that profits are at their highest when the population is over its peak.

‘Keeping minor drug offenders in the system raises profit margins for shareholders,’ the Angry Young Black Man tells me during our trip up to Hartford. He says, ‘Most of the inmates in GP come from minority groups.’

GP, that’s General Population.

The Angry Young Black Man is shackled across from me in the back of the van. He wears glasses and a goatee. When he raises his voice spittle flies out from his mouth. He says, ‘Recent studies have shown that the same percentage of people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds use drugs. But somebody from a minority group is far more likely to be arrested and charged for such a crime. And a black man is going to be given a sentence twice as long as a white for the same crime.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat. ‘Isn’t that what you want to hear?’

He scowls and says nothing. We ride the rest of the way up to Hartford in silence, him with a three-year possession charge and me with a life sentence for the murder of a man I’ve never actually met: Joseph Lawrence.

In GP inmates are to wake at 0600 hours, dress, make their beds and clean their cells. Those who neglect this duty will miss breakfast. Cell doors are opened twenty-five minutes later and all inmates line quietly outside their cages. A headcount is taken and prisoners are subsequently marched in line to the mess hall. Privileged inmates operate the kitchen, relieved of work detail for the remaining day.

In the mess hall the tables are arranged in long rows. There are eight seats to a table, four on each side, and the prisoners who eat here are lined in accordance with cell numbers. When they’ve finished eating, all inmates are to place their cutlery neatly on the table. When the designated meal time is over the corrections officers count each set of plastic forks and spoons to make sure that none have gone missing. There are a dozen armed guards walking down the aisles, leaning over the prisoners to count their cutlery.

One time a fork went missing. This happened before my tenure at Hartford, but somehow I know the story regardless. A guard placed his hand on the shoulder of the prisoner with the missing fork. He leaned in close, politely asking to see it. The prisoner didn’t turn at first, but when he did it came out swiftly, one arm upraised. The guard saw the fork. And then it was stuck firmly in his neck, violently twisted, and then he was gagging on his own blood, too shocked to do anything else but reach up and try to pull it out.

The prisoner’s name was William Wilson. Cell number 55D. Prisoner number 287119. Convicted for armed robbery and attempted murder, serving ten to fifteen years. The nameless guard died in the infirmary before he could be transferred to a proper hospital. The other guards clubbed Wilson so hard that he suffered a mild form of retardation and got shipped over to county lock-up. A security videotape of the guards beating the prisoner made it to somebody in a state department. It was decided they had acted too harshly.

Lockdown Operations’ contract for running the prison was not renewed.

At the conclusion of breakfast inmates are to line up for their work detail. Those inmates with no work detail will be returned to their cells. Some have the privilege of old televisions. When a riot starts the prisoners who have already been returned to their cells will be subject to automatic lockdown.

Meals are hand-delivered to the prisoners in Protective Custody, Maximum Security, Solitary Confinement and the Hole. Those on the PC block have access to the gymnasium at differing hours to Gen Pop. Protective Custody is where you go when the boys in GP are a danger to your long-term health. The inmates on the PC block might be guilty of killing a black kid, or maybe they’re a paedophile, or a police informant, or maybe they’re an actor or a rock star who got busted on a possession rap one too many time.

The doors in GP are computer-operated from the guard stations. In PC, Maximum, Solitary and the Hole, individual cells are manually locked and unlocked. The same goes for the mess hall, the gymnasium and the machine shop. Access between each block is barred with two gates. In newer sections of the prison these hallways are controlled electronically, but others remain old-school.

You can see where new additions branch off from the original structure. They have different paintjobs and noticeably less scuffs on the cold, hard floor. The construction is never-ending at Hartford. On the first day I see more contractors in white overalls than I see guards. I study these transitory men while I’m waiting at check-in for somebody to consult with the Warden and clear up the confusion about where to place me.

The identification on my uniform is 64018. I’ve been reduced to a mere number. That’s my new identity. I can’t even remember the previous one.

Day one some guy hits me in the face.

He just walks right up with this smug grin on his unsightly mug and says, ‘You don’t look so tough.’

Obviously this guy has followed my appearances in the media. He’s flanked by two goons on either side, their shirtsleeves torn to display gang tattoos across their arms. Their deference suggests the guy in the middle is somebody of importance here at Hartford. He carries himself with earned authority.

I look him square in the eyes, saying nothing.

This guy looks from one goon to the other and says, ‘The papers are calling him The Amnesiac. We better give him a welcome he won’t forget, huh?’

That’s when he punches me in the face. This guy is big, but I know I’ve suffered worse – even though I can’t remember the specific occasions.

He doesn’t get the chance for a second punch.

I catch his wrist with one hand and snap the bone before ramming a blow into his nose with my free hand. The guy is screaming, bubbles of blood popping between his shattered nostrils. I jerk the broken arm behind his back and push him to the floor with one foot (clad in a flimsy prison-issue slipper).

I don’t know who I am – but I’m obviously a fighter.

The goons on either side move in, wrestling me away. Two against one is no fair fight, but I manage to chop one of them in the throat with the flat of my hand. I must have ninja training. I can hear him gagging as the other goon rams my head into the wall. It cracks my skull and I see violent stars.

The guards move in and break up the fracas.

Turns out I broke one man’s windpipe, another’s wrist and nose. The third guy came away unharmed, but he went to the Hole while the rest of us were taken to the infirmary and strapped against our cots for individual safety.

The Hole is exactly what it sounds like: bare walls, no furnishings, just a hole in the floor that you’re supposed to shit and piss into. But it’s not the highest level of punishment here at Hartford. They’re inventive bastards.

Four stitches in my head, some bruising and concussion. Like I said: I’ve had worse. The doctor is at my side a total of four minutes. He moves on to other sick convicts, some of them recovering from severe injuries. Beds are lined underneath the barred windows, white sheets spotted with blood.

The two men I’ve hurt are kept overnight.

I’m discharged from the infirmary and taken to meet the Warden. Two guards escort me through the halls on either side. I’m chained at the wrists and ankles, hands cuffed behind my back. You try walking like that.

The guards march me through the door to the warden’s office. It’s the kind of room you’d expect: bookshelf and diplomas on the walls, barred window overlooking the yard, a wide oak desk as the centrepiece. An older bald man is seated before me, wearing his spectacles and looking at my file on the desk.

The Warden and I are twins: they already shaved my head as part of the delousing process. The scarring and burns on my face stand out more this way. People are pretty much forced to stare. I hate when people stare.

The Warden is staring. He leaves my file open on the desk and motions to the empty chair on my side. ‘Sit down, 64018.’

I tell him, ‘It’s a little hard to sit with these hands behind my back, boss.’

He says, ‘You’ll just have to lean forward then, 64018.’

I give that a try.

The guards stand rigid beside the door. The Warden tells them, ‘You can wait outside. I’ll call if you’re needed.’

The guards leave. I keep my head bowed and keep the Warden staring at my bald scalp. Eventually he says, ‘Look at me, 64018.’

He’s staring again, at the scar. He asks, ‘How’d you get that? Not the stitches, I mean. The scarring there on your temple.’

‘I don’t remember, boss.’

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘The Amnesiac. You asked for clemency because you can’t even remember the crimes you’ve committed. There’s no point keeping up this act now that you’ve been convicted, is there?’

‘It’s no act, boss.’

‘You really don’t remember what you did to that poor man?’

‘I can’t even say that I done it, boss.’

The Warden’s stare suggests that he doesn’t give a fuck. ‘Either way we’re stuck with each other. I don’t like long-term problems, 64018. You’re starting to resemble one after only six hours. I hear that you assaulted several other inmates in General Population this morning. One of them was Wade Jenkins, a man who’s known to run G Block. Is there a history between the two of you?’

‘I never met the man before – least so far as I can recall.’

‘Yet my guards say that you threw the first punch.’

That probably means they’re easy to bribe, though I don’t say as much to the Warden. He’s looking at me for some kind of explanation, but I have little to offer him. All I say is: ‘He was discourteous toward me.’

‘Is that so?’

‘It is, sir.’

‘They’re suggesting to me, 64018, that you’re a troublemaker.’

‘Is that so?’

‘It is. And I’m inclined to agree. That’s why I have decided to place you in solitary confinement for the time being. For the protection of other inmates, and ultimately for your own.’

‘Oh, right.’ I shrug. ‘Whatever you have to do.’

‘This doesn’t concern you?’

Another shrug, chains rattling lightly. ‘Not really, no. You can’t do much worse to me. It’s not like you can extend a life sentence.’

‘We could keep you in solitary for the duration. Take away any privileges.’

‘That doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, sir.’

‘We’ll see how much it means after a month, 64018.’

So here I am in Solitary Confinement a month later.

It’s a narrow room, no window. The ceiling is high above. There’s a single bulb that never shuts off glowing brightly behind a grate up there. For hours on end I watch the motes of dust that dance like tiny life forms in my barren cell. There’s a bunk, a toilet, a basin, a drainage pipe in the floor, a narrow vent and the door. All of these are metallic and cold. It gets awful cold down here.

There isn’t much to do in these confines but listen as you draw in deep trembling breaths. You shiver and try to stay warm, huddled on the bunk and wondering if the walls are closing in on you. There are plenty of cockroaches down here. You can hear their tiny legs scraping against the concrete walls, listening to their wings buzz as their antennae twitch from side to side. They are the only company in here – apart from the voice in your head. You lay with the sheets pulled up high, smothering yourself, hoping that the bugs don’t crawl into your ear and become another voice, whispering and taunting.

When you’re alone you have nothing but memories, haunted by things that were and things that might have been in another lifetime. Contemplating the wrong paths taken and the inevitability of your final destination.

Except I have no memories. I cannot imagine anything beyond this.

And I thought boredom was the enemy in general prison life. Here, in the isolation, it’s even worse. I understand now how putting a man in the box can be such torture. Boredom and monotony are enemies, but the idea behind solitary confinement is that your mind is truly your own worst enemy.

You replay things inside your head, go over memories, conversations, situations … and eventually you wonder if any of that actually happened. You begin to question what was real or what your mind just perverted out of another reality. You become entirely unsure of everything in your head. You talk to yourself in whispers just for some assurance that you still have a voice in here. But then you wonder if that voice is even your own. Who’s talking to me? Why did they say that? Am I going mad in here? Am I already mad?

You remember seeing a catfish washed up on the shore of a river once, a long time ago. It was big and ugly and stinking under the heat of the midday sun. Yet it was somehow still alive, drawing slow breath. And you perceive this memory as being real, but you’re actually not sure if you read it in a book somewhere or saw it on the television. It gets so hard when you don’t even trust your own memories anymore. It’s even harder when you have none.

I can’t remember who I was before this happened.

It’s difficult keeping track of time when all you have is these bland cell walls and the endless, buzzing light. Every minute feels like an eternity. I might be a little crazy now, but when I wake up I’ve started hearing things. Somewhere out there in the hall, beyond the locked door, there’s a dull sound of grating metal. And maybe I hear approaching footsteps. And murmured voices.

But I could be wrong.

No, no.

There’s somebody at the door. I’m thinking it’s about fucking time because I’m starving here. I’m stumbling to my feet so I can grab at the styrofoam tray when they slide it through the door. But there’s no food coming just yet.

It’s only temporary respite. After this month of solitary confinement I’m taken for a psychiatric evaluation. Some people go mad down here. I listen to them howling, echoing off the walls. Their voices haunt these corridors.

The doctor says, ‘I apologise for the shackles.’

I shrug, rattling my chains. ‘It’s part and parcel, Doc.’

‘I read about you in the papers,’ he says, reclining in his chair. ‘Your case is very interesting for a man in my field.’

‘Cool.’

‘I’d like to talk about the murder.’

‘Everything about the case I learned at the trial. It should be on file.’

‘I’d like to hear you talk about it.’

‘I don’t remember it.’

The Doc frowns. He stands. He says, ‘I’d like you to take a walk with me, if you will.’

I remain sitting. ‘Where we going?’

‘I’d like to take you on a little tour of the facility. Come.’

The two guards follow at a distance. The Doc slows his pace in order for my shackled legs to keep up. He has the access key to the elevator, which saves the guards carrying me down the stairs. We descend to B1. There’s no natural light at this depth of the facility. The walls are painted a dull green. It smells like a hospital but I’ve seen the infirmary and this is something different.

They conduct shock therapy in the basement.

I watch from a viewing window as the patient on display is strapped into a chair, fastened at the wrists and ankles. They use old-fashion leather belts. There’s another belt strapped across his forehead, binding him to the headboard. The pressure tugs his eyes wide open. Beads of sweat drip over the belt and into his eyes. They clamp his tongue. They fasten electrodes to his temples. They flick the switch. He convulses. The lights in the hall flicker.

The Doc watches it all without emotion. He says, ‘The human rights campaigners don’t know about this part of the facility. Most who find out about this place will leave with nothing but the most basic memories.’

In the room next door they perform lobotomies.

The patient is strapped to a table. They fasten him about the neck, chest and ankles. They use belts again. There’s a belt strapped over his forehead, binding him to the headboard. His eyes are pinned open. He’s conscious under only a mild dose of anaesthetic. He can see the icepick coming down. It’s inserted beneath the left eyelid and over the globe of his terrified eye. He tries to blink but the lid is obstructed. It’s the most awful thing I’ve ever seen.

I want to turn away but I can show no sign of weakness.

The Doc has seen this all before, completely unfazed by the horror. They gently tap the icepick with a hammer. The icepick penetrates the layer of bone above the eye. They draw the icepick back and forth over the frontal lobe. The patient passes out during the procedure. The orderlies unstrap him, hauling the lifeless form off the table. They open the door and drag him past us into the hall, a thin line of drool hanging from the lobotomised patient’s lip.

I stand outside the open doorway and face the Doc. ‘Why’d you bring me down here?’

The Doc says, ‘To educate you. There are worse things that can happen to a prisoner if you don’t tow the line in this place.’

In the lobotomy room the operating doctor sighs. He wipes blood from the icepick. He removes his gloves. He wipes his hands on his coat. The assistant hands him a towel. The assistant says, ‘Thirty-five seconds. That has to be some kind of record.’

The lights in the hall flicker again.

I ask the Doc, ‘Didn’t they outlaw lobotomy?’

He dismisses the question with a wave of his hand. ‘There was a recent bill passed, though I don’t believe it’s been given much publicity.’

In the room across the hall an autopsy has been prepped. I stare through the viewing window and wonder if this is a two-way mirror. The administering doctor has entered but pays us no attention outside. He straightens his facemask. He pulls on a new pair of gloves. He stares at the body.

The Doc says, ‘It isn’t necessary we watch this one.’

He tries to lead me away down the hall. I resist his grip on my arm. The guards move in. I keep staring at the autopsy.

The assistant takes photographs of the wounds with a Polaroid camera. He pins them to a board on the wall. The assistant takes measurements of the wounds. They’re stab wounds. Five punctures in quick succession; I can tell even from here. The wounds are in all of the right places for an efficient kill.

The guards have me gripped under the arms.

The Doc says, ‘Let him go. He can watch if he likes.’

Finally I turn away and meet the Doc’s eye.

‘That man was knifed in the yard this morning,’ he tells me. ‘We do not have the inmate responsible for the crime. And if past experience is anything to judge by, we’ll probably never find the man who did this, either.’

I say nothing.

The Doc says, ‘There’s something else I’d like to show you. We’re currently trialling a new pharmaceutical treatment aimed at rehabilitating violent offenders.’

‘Rehabilitating them with drugs?’

‘The chemical affects their memories. We’ve been testing on subjects in Maximum Security.’

The Doc leads me back to the elevator and we descend to B2. He continues: ‘The drug puts the subject in a trance-like state. Mentally it takes them back to the moment of their crimes – like a kind of non-physical time travel – essentially allowing them to relive the experience, but with the knowledge of their present selves intact. They can choose to re-offend, or possibly learn from their experience and choose not to commit the crimes all over again. We can monitor their cerebral cortex through state-of-the-art technologies, processing their varied reactions within these new simulated memories.’

‘This is science-fiction.’

‘It’s a new reality,’ the Doc says.

The doors slide open. This here is serious Silence of the Lambs shit. If I thought I’d seen the bowels of this facility before, the sight of Maximum Security corrects me. We’re so deep I can feel the pressure on my ears. There are rats here, more cockroaches emerging between the fissures. The walls are green with slime and mildew. I imagine there are sewer lines running alongside us here, or right beneath our feet. I can almost smell it, but maybe that’s just the stench of isolated men shitting in their own deranged pants.

These halls have gone long without the grace of natural light.

Everything here is securely bolted. Thick metal gates seem to block the halls every twenty-five feet. The hallway lights can never die. They are dim, firmly secured in the ceiling, covered by grates. The cells are evenly spaced and line one wall, facing the opposite wall of bland mossy brick. As it is, the inmates cannot see one another but they can verbally communicate. In their time here these men have not once left their cells without full restraints. There is good reason for this. We aren’t dealing with human beings anymore, not when we’ve come this deep. They are demons dwelling in these cells.

‘These prisoners are beyond rehabilitation,’ the Doc tells me. ‘Presented with a choice to change the sins of their pasts, none have taken that option. In fact, some have opted to worsen the nature of their crimes. It isn’t real, of course, but within their minds it might as well be. These are killers without remorse. Our experiments have, unfortunately, furthered the delusions of some. A few more have never returned from the trance. This, I believe, is entirely voluntary on their part. They have retreated from this prison into their own memories; a fantasy world concocted entirely within their own heads.’

I look into the first cell. Even though it’s dark I see the man sitting there rigidly on the bunk against the far wall. He doesn’t move, just staring at us, and I wonder if he even knows what’s happening.

‘What does any of this have to do with me?’

‘Your memory problem, ah, presents us with a unique… condition… for the experiment.’

‘I’m not a lab rat, Doc.’

The occupant of the second cell reaches between the bars. He’s speaking in a low hurried tone, and he’s saying, ‘Hey, hey you, over here, hey, take me back. C’mon, just send me back one more time!’

We ignore him.

The Doc turns to me. ‘You can either play the game or go back to solitary, 64018.’

Without a lifetime of memories it’s easy to consider the cold, the isolation, the false memories and the cloud hanging over my past.

‘How about we flip a coin and decide?’

The way they’ve strapped me against the operating table resembles Christ’s pose on the cross. I’m shirtless and squinting under the bright lab lights. There are several electrodes attached to the contours of my skull, tiny barbs under my flesh, tubes and wires snaking away like I’m now part-machine.

The Amnesiac Machine.

Computers monitor my brainwaves and vital signs, manned by nameless operators. I can hear the constant beep that signals my heartbeat. It’s a nice reminder that I’m still alive despite this fresh hell.

‘Doc?’

‘Yes, 64018.’

‘You still got that lucky coin?’

‘I do.’

‘Can I have it?’

‘It’s not like you can take it with you, 64018.’

‘I know, but it just feels… right.’

‘Whatever placates you,’ the Doc says.

The sensation of his warm hand slips into the pocket of my prison slacks. I can feel the slight weight of the coin when his fingers recede.

The Doc leans in above me. The tip of the needle catches the light. ‘This might sting just a little bit…’

I’m not sure… who I am.

There’s a huge syringe protruding from my chest. The buttons of my shirt have been undone down to the stomach. Spots of blood stain the white fabric when I yank the needle free. I can feel every inch of its metallic length sliding out from my flesh. Blood runs down my chest in muddled trails. I throw the syringe across the room. It shatters. What was in that thing? Who stabbed me with a needle?

I can’t remember how I even got here, but it feels strange to be… free. That doesn’t even make sense to me. There are marks on both wrists like I’ve been shackled. Was I a prisoner? How did I escape?

I stumble from the bathroom stall, finding an empty public restroom. I assess myself in the mirror above the row of sinks. The face staring back at me is like a mugshot I remember from the news. This unfamiliar man resembles a wartime refugee, gaunt yellow skin, unshaven. Scarred and blistered flesh explodes around my right temple. It’s accentuated by the fact that I’m completely, thuggishly bald.

At least I’m respectably dressed. There’s a nice jacket folded on the countertop. I presume it either belongs to me or was left behind for this purpose, so I put it on over the bloodstained shirt, doing up the buttons. There’s a leather wallet in the front pocket. Three hundred dollars and some credit cards inside. The driver’s license doesn’t resemble the man in the mirror. It’s not me.

‘Joseph Lawrence,’ I read out loud. ‘Where do I know you from, Joseph Lawrence?’

The echo of my words is the closest I get to an answer.

Leaving the bathroom I bump into a familiar-looking man dressed in a suit. This guy drops his briefcase, which comes open when it clatters to the floor, spilling hundreds of photographic enlargements across the tiles. When I bend over to pick them up I notice these are graphic crime scene images: an unidentifiable body inside the trunk of a car, wrapped in plastic smeared with blood.

When I look up the man in the suit is running away. The constant bustle of this airport swallows him whole. Nobody cares about the violent photos scattered on the floor. I choose to leave them behind.

Fingers trace newly-discovered objects in the various pockets of my pants. I take a seat near the orange juice stand and empty these unfamiliar contents upon the table in front of me. Car keys, a wrinkled parking stub, loose change, another key attached to a little plastic tag that reads 334B.

The nearby lockers have a corresponding number. The key fits the lock. The jacket I found in the bathroom was exactly my size, too. It’s like this entire situation has been somehow preordained.

I hesitate before dragging the locker open. Inside, sitting on the thin metallic shelf, I can see a handgun plain as day. An M9 9mm Beretta pistol. I have no idea where this knowledge of firearms comes from, though.

A sensation of déjà vu washes over me. I have no memories to associate the feeling with – but I know déjà vu. It’s not unreasonable to assume that I’ve previously stood right here with this same key in my hand. What was I thinking back then? Why did I feel the need to leave a gun at the airport?

I furtively look around the crowd, suffering a stab of paranoia. A woman on a payphone seems to be staring directly at me. She abruptly looks away. There’s a big man glancing my way over the top of his newspaper. I can read the headline from here: GUNMAN KILLED IN AIRPORT MASSACRE.

I look at the Beretta. Maybe I need this gun, I don’t know. There’s nothing I can be certain about anymore. I feel violated in the most unsettling way.

The gun feels cold beneath my outstretched palm.

‘Stop!’ the payphone woman screams.

She’s left the phone swinging by the cord. People turn and stare at her. The big man’s newspaper flutters in the air. He’s drawing a gun from inside his jacket. The police badge sparkles on his belt.

‘Freeze!’ the big man shouts.

I take the icy metal in my hand before I can even think twice about holding a gun while I’m surrounded by police officers. They’ve obviously been following me, watching my every move and waiting. Why? I have no idea.

People are screaming and running for cover. The cops – both uniformed and undercover – are shouting conflicting orders. Without any thought I’ve landed myself in a situation I can’t escape from.

Escape…

Something – some dim spark of memory flaring deep within my skull – tells me that I really don’t want to end up in prison. No, sir.  And so I put the gun to my head, settling the muzzle against the scar on my temple. And I pull the –

There is no room for identity between the reinforced walls of Hartford Penitentiary. These days I have been reduced to a mere number. Prisoner #64018. Just another cog in the system. I can’t remember who I used to be.

I was given a chance to avoid serving time back at the trial. There was plenty of coverage on the news channels and I even watched it from my holding cell some nights. At that stage a conviction was unavoidable unless I gave evidence indicting my employers on the supposed ‘contract’ killing. But I have only the prosecution’s word that I was paid to kill a man I can’t actually remember killing. The evidence brought forth at trial was pretty convincing. In the end the prosecution made me an offer better than the devil’s, but I couldn’t even provide what they’d asked for if I’d wanted to. I can’t remember…

Anything.

I have no choice but to keep my mouth shut and do the time that I’ve allegedly earned. There are no memories of my life outside this endless nightmare. I go through the motions: delousing, cavities probed, putting on the orange jumpsuit. Shackled at my feet and wrists I’m led through the facility.

The combined voices of a thousand caged men echo through the halls in a horrendous cacophony. It sounds like cries from beyond the grave.

The Warden lives high atop this tower of the damned. His office belongs to a king: bookshelves, diplomas and portraits on the walls, a window surveying the kingdom far below, fine rug across the floor, a spotless great oak desk spread out before his throne.

He’s standing in the middle of the room waiting to meet me. In the Warden’s presence I keep my head bowed, leaving him to stare at his reflection in my bald scalp.

I can’t remember what my father looks like. This unfamiliar man gives me that paternal vibe – only it’s not the good kind. Guess I’ve never known the experience of having a loving authority figure, huh?

‘Lift your head,’ he orders, looking appreciatively at the scar. ‘How’d you get this? These burns here on the temple.’ Like a fetishist he runs two fingers across the scar tissue on my head.

I say, ‘I’m sure it specifies in my file, boss.’

The Warden grins. His teeth seem lopsided. ‘But I’d prefer you told me, 64018. An informal getting-to-know-you chit-chat, if you’d entertain.’

‘Suppose you know I can’t remember much of it, boss.’

‘I read your file. I want to hear it, prisoner. Tell me what you did to yourself.’

I tell him, ‘It’s from muzzle flash, sir.’

He gives a curt nod. ‘Gunshot wound to the right temple. Self-inflicted. They tell me there’s a bullet lodged in your brain.’

‘So say the doctors, boss.’

The police officers wouldn’t have hesitated to gun me down right there if I’d made even the slightest move toward them. I guess I’m not the kind of man who’d take out a bunch of cops along with me. So I turned the gun on myself instead, putting a bullet in my brain.

‘Couldn’t operate to get it out. Can’t be removed without killing you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t remember a thing apart from what you been told, eh?’

‘Pretty much, boss.’

‘But the bullet will kill you eventually.’

‘So I been told. Like lead poisoning, I guess.’

The Warden laughs and clutches his belly under his starched white shirt. He moves around behind the desk, staring at his polished shoes. ‘Lead poisoning. I like that. Do you want to die, 64018?’

‘Wanna see me executed, boss?’

He reclines in his throne, motioning for the guards on either side of me. The smile on his face is like that of a demon’s living in the skin of a man. ‘I’ll drive you mad before I finally kill you, son.’

The inmate in the cell across from mine hanged himself with a bed sheet the previous night.

The Doc asks how I feel about this.

‘It’s a sign of weakness. I guess he cracked.’

‘Cracked?’

‘Killed himself.’

‘You see that as a sign of weakness?’

‘Thinking about how I shot myself in the head, Doc?’

He’s staring at my face, at the scar tissue that ripples across the flesh of my temple. Picturing the bullet lodged somewhere inside my brain.

‘Did you crack when they had you surrounded?’ he asks.

I shrug. ‘Guess it seemed like the only chance I had of escaping.’

‘You should have tried running.’

‘I’ll remember that next time.’

The Doc smiles benevolently. ‘Yes, do. I’d like you to take a walk with me, if you will.’

I remain sitting. ‘Where would we be going?’

‘The basement. For one more chance, 64018.’

He motions for the two guards, who each produce a key: one man for the ankles and the other for the wrists. The shackles fall away from my limbs. Free of weight. I can remember freedom. The Doc dismisses the guards, waiting until they’re gone. He has the access key to the secret elevator. We descend to B3.

‘Some people will do anything to escape the inevitable madness of imprisonment,’ the Doc explains as we descend to the bowels of the facility. ‘Do you understand, 64018? You can’t escape, but you can always run from this insanity. I’m taking a big chance on you this time, so remember my advice and run.’

‘Run,’ I repeat.

‘Here,’ he says, urgently pressing something into my hand. ‘Keep this in your pocket. For later, understand?’

I don’t understand but I put the object in my pocket without looking. The elevator comes to a jolting stop around us. The doors slide open and I’m hit with a bright white light and then I – I…

I can’t remember… who I am.

There’s a syringe planted like a flag in my chest. I pull it out and drop it in the toilet, buttoning my shirt. Blood soaks the fabric across my chest. I don’t remember who I am, who stabbed me…

I can’t remember how I even got here, but it feels strange to be… free.

That doesn’t even make sense… to me. There are marks on both wrists like I’ve been shackled. Was I a prisoner? How did I escape?

I stumble from the bathroom stall, finding an empty public restroom. I assess myself in the mirror above the row of sinks. The face staring back at me is like a mugshot I remember from the news. The scar on the side of my face is glowing and white. I might have been poisoned… I can’t even…

There’s a jacket on the countertop. Does it belong to me? I empty the pockets, turning out my pants and spreading everything across the counter. These are the objects that define a man’s identity: car keys, a nice wallet, a wrinkled parking stub, loose change, another key attached to a little plastic tag, a passport and a one-way ticket to Panama.

The name on the ticket is Joseph Lawrence.

‘Run,’ I repeat.

I put on the jacket. It fits like I was born to wear it. I take the ticket and the passport, leaving everything else behind. The airport is waiting for me outside, a gateway to a hundred different worlds.

Passing through the metal detectors I set off the alarm. I wait patiently for the guard to scan me with the wand. It goes off when he moves it around my skull.

‘Metal plate?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘From the war.’

He waves me through to the flight.

I’m greeted by an attractive stewardess.

I have no baggage and I can get comfortably seated right away, reclining in first class, closing my eyes to dream of the future.

Dreaming of freedom.

Stella loves the ol cathode ray tube box, God bless her. She enjoys watchin her stories so darn much that we decided to sell our prized vintage bust of Uncle Remus’ Zip-ah-Dee-Doo-Dah’n phallus to get ourselves the cable installed, just so’s she could experience a live transmission from the comfort of her buffalo-hide Lay-Z-Boy. But my good ol self? Aw, hell, I’m a simple fella. As long as there’s coffee in the pot, sirloin in the fridge and dynomight on the porch what I can throws at em tourists drive by our place, ol Red’s just happy to sit back and take nary a glance at the boob-tube. Real world’s plenty interestin enough, aint it?

The other day, however, curiosity got the better o my Dixie heart an I figured what I’d plug myself in to sample me some 2009 pop culture. No faster n my finger hit the ‘GO’ button did a curious documentary appear on HBO bout vampires what’re livin large as un-life in the sweet ol South. I’m talking bout a show’s called True Blood.

Bein a documentary an all, them creators are showin the world how swift we been overtaken. It’s a known fact what vampires are growin round the South faster n my neighbor Wayne can pleasure a screamin hog. At first I was only seein em when I ventured home from the tavern at night. All pale skin an dark eyeliner, dressed head n toe in black pitch as a bottomless outhouse, gathered in packs on street corners listenin to awful music on them boom boxes, lookin all mopey with them lopsided fringes hangin down in their eyes, wearin spiked collars like a pit bull terrier. In my neck o the woods, them vampires initially seemed to be convertin teenagers exclusively. Least that’s where it started, anyways. But I just find myself aksin, “What kinda moron reckons it’s a good idea trappin anyone inside a sullen teenage body for an eternity? What kinda fool vampire wants to be stuck with the company of a whiny brat for the rest o their endless days?”

It don’t make no sense to me, but I ain’t no expert on vampire psychology, neither. Before them vampires come to town, the only bloodsuckers we knew of round here was the Crockford Sisters, who frequent the Confederate Tavern most nights lookin for another soul to drain. Many a poor young sap hopped up on moonshine has taken one a these succubi home only to wake up in the mornin with every cigarette in the house stolen and a hellfire burnin of the johnson.

Now we got this younger breed to contend with – and they’s started to infect the rest o the population. It’s gettin harder to pick a vampire by appearance alone, too. Not all vampires is flamboyantly dressed blowhards anymore. Many of the local vamps are just unfortunate souls makin the best with whats they got. My buddy O’Delle Chemp got himself bit and turned a few months back, but he’s takin it on the chin like the best of us Southern Boys. Says he gets by fine, long as he wears sunscreen and sticks to drinkin from heathens such as Buddhists and Mormons. He also says, due to his newfound regenerative abilities, what he’s even become the state’s largest donator of body organs for the sick and needy. Now that’s a right Christian act indeed.

So I has to say them vampires ain’t all bad – even though Jackson Stonewall has gotta watch over his cattle with a shotgun every night to ensures them bovines don’t get drained. Ain’t much different to chasin negroes off the plantation, though. Sure, them bloodsuckers move fast, but most a the folk round here been masterin the quick-draw since the day God invented the Smith ‘n Wesson and passed it down to Abraham ter shoot Isaac. Hell, I been shootin lead even since fore I knew how to consciously pass wind. Scored my very first Bald Eagle kill at the age o nine months. You give Stella a strong whiskey tonic, she could shoot the nuts off a duck from six hunnert feet away with a .44 Colt. And she has done, too. I’ll tell you right now, nuthin beats a nice glass of home brewed ciantie with some beans n duck gonads. So, basically, we got no problem chasin them undesirable vampire types away round here. Procuring silver bullets ain’t no biggie nowadays, either. I hear they come free with every sloppy joe you buy from Good Burger. Even get yerself a stake with every steak, too.

I can’t right say where them True Blood creators get this vampire “glamourin” business from, though. See, them bloodsuckers on TV can hypnotize mortals with their eyes or somethin. They calls it glamourin for some reason. Jed Jepkins is bout as close as we come to havin a man bein able to glamour someone round here. Poor sumabitch had a problem few years back with a bottle o whiskey and a gator in heat. Now he’s got an intact bottle o Jack embedded in the right side a his face. On special occasion ol Jed’ll pour you a nip from his head-bottle, and, for those brief seconds, the man has every single atom of your attention. Still, even he ain’t never charmed me against my will like them TV vampires does to ordinary folks.

Them True Blood creators seem to be takin liberties with this shapeshifter business, too. They gots a fella what can turn himself into a dog. Not some mean-ass Cujo, neither. He turns into a cute lil doggie instead. Sure, Cousin Bo turns into a complete jerk after couple dozen drinks, but I ain’t never seen him literally turn into a pig. It just don’t make sense to this ol timer why the makers of this here program would twist the truth so virulently. Just when you reckon they’s sharin the awful truth with the rest o America, they throws in all this other shit what doesn’t make sense. HBO must be run by Democrats, squeezing propaganda into every frame. Such a lack of journalistic integrity makes a man pine for William O’Reilly and the Fox Force Five.

It’s true what the vampire plague is rampant across my beloved South right now, but none a y’all should assume True Blood represents the actual facts. On Sunday nights, instead o watchin lies purportin as truths on the boob tube, you’ll find ol’ Red out on the porch instead, sittin in my comfy rocker with a loaded shotgun, just waitin to pump several rounds a buckshot into my very first werewolf.

They’re all over the fucking media like herpes on a hooker’s cunt and we’re being made to feel sorry for these victims purely because they’re Australian. In the August 13th edition of The Courier-Mail this tragic plane crash was occupying at least five pages throughout the paper – including full-page spreads. I know you’re thinking that I’m a heartless prick right now, but I do have a moral basis for an argument here. You see, two pages before the entertainment section in the paper there was a tiny little paragraph – about the size of your thumb – which dutifully covered Typhoon Morakot. But I’ll bet you didn’t know about Typhoon Morakot, did you?

Well, here’s how it is: Typhoon Morakot just shot his wad all over Taiwan’s face and consequently scores of people are dead, hundreds are missing and thousands are stranded. And we’re meant to give a fuck about nine Australians who got into a man-made contraption that runs on a highly-combustible chemical and launched themselves into dangerous airspace with the expectation that it would all pan out. You better believe that dog isn’t going to hunt.

But sadly that dog will hunt for many people. They buy into the bullshit expecting them to care about those stupid fucks just because they’re fellow Australians. And that’s what’s wrong with our society. Fundamentally, we’re a pack of racist cunts. We care about those ignorant fools who got into a mechanical bird that runs on firewater, and we care about stupid bitches who smuggle eight kilos of weed into Bali, but we really shouldn’t. It’s not our fault, though. It’s a fault in our DNA. We’re animals, and like animals we generally care more about people from our immediate social network or strangers we can at least relate to. We don’t care about anybody half the globe away that eats with their right hand because they wipe their arse with their left. Our public communication networks don’t help the cause, either. They tap into that inherent racism like vampires to a chick on her rag.

An Australian tragedy thus becomes a marketing goldmine. Do you have any idea how much it costs to have an advertisement run on a page with a headline like “Nine Australians Dead in Horrible Plane Crash”? More money than some of us will ever see in our lifetimes. That’s how much dirty money is involved in these things. When nine Aussies die in a plane crash, the value of advertising space in those news segments skyrockets. Hell, when there’s a large-scale tragedy (the Victorian bushfires, for example) these vultures will even put relentless status updates on television featuring interviews with the surviving victims simply to milk the event for another opportunity to place an advertisement next to a sobbing child standing in front of a burning homestead.

You’re probably thinking: “Wait a second. When the World Trade Center got it’s arse raped by one of those mechanical birds that was busting at the rim full of fire jizz, it was all over the news for weeks. So the media isn’t responsible for perpetuating our inherent animalistic racism. We do care about other countries, man.”

But once again, bubba, you are dead fucking wrong. You see, the Americans are our fuck-buddies. We don’t see them all the time, but we know they’ll always be there for us whenever we need to fire one off or need somebody to intervene in the event that someone tries to rip off our ball sack (and that would be Tasmania, if you really look at it). So when a tragedy happens to America or another of our close fuck-buddies, we almost care as much as if they were Australians. So it floods our media excessively. If you need further proof, just check out the last time a country we don’t really like – such as good old Zimbabwe – received any decent coverage. There’s shit going down over there that’ll make your worst nightmares look like a wet dream, but it just gets swept under the rug like the dirt we don’t want our friends to see.

Our biased media system is slowly destroying they key to our ultimate global survival. It’s obvious this planet ain’t going to last very long and we’ll all need to fight together against the ALFs, E.T.s, Predators, Morks, Giger Aliens, Transformers, Space Lizards, Wookies, Daleks, giant man-eating amoebas and those calamari-looking freaks like Admiral Ackbar if we really want a ticket to survival in the harsh star ocean.

Out there it’s a quantum clusterfuck of biblical proportions. They make the shit stuck in our global pipes (North Korea) look like having sex with Megan Fox. So if we want a chance at surviving out there, we’ve gotta break from this trend of not giving a shit what happens halfway across the globe and all start banding together. Because I guarantee that if we don’t, our kids are going to lose the galactic war and become slaves. History has proven that we make pretty good slaves, too.

So next time there’s an Australian tragedy, for the love of God bombard every media outlet available about how self-centred they really are. I have given you the tools to back your argument. Only together can we accomplish this.

‘Wait a second… what’s that about a hospital crisis and your nuts being ripped off?’

Well, think about it. What happens when a nation’s highest population demographic begins to get old, sick, frail and unable to wipe their own arses? Who pays for that kind of stuff? Well, generally the sick person should pay for it, but since many of those old planet rapers lost all of their money in the Global Financial Crisis (henceforth known as the GFC… it has a ring to it, don’t you think?) the taxpayers will have to foot the bill… and pay the ridiculous retirement packages of politicians. I mean fucking seriously, have you seen their flight allowance? That dog should not fucking hunt.

A dog that CAN hunt.

But do you see the ball-ripping yet? When all these old fuckers are about to die in the arse, we’re going to be paying their medical expenses… and considering how many of those zombies there are it isn’t going to be cheap. Plus, we’re going to need way more doctors, and it won’t be easy for us, either, because we prefer the greater things in life (alcohol, music, spreading STDs, pot and iPhones) over doing medical study. The funny thing is, right when those old bastards are about to need our help they’re starting to turn on us.

Ever since Ma and Pa lost their wads of dough to the GFC, countless youths and students are being kicked out of home because their parents are no longer able to financially support them. How they think their child can support themselves when they can’t even support themselves is a complete loss to me, but I think nonetheless it’s fucking awesome. Now, when the shit hits the fan and they’re jonesing for a hospital bed, we can turn around and say ‘Fuck you’ right back at them. Need a bed because you’re old and suffering from Alzheimer’s? Well, remember how we had to rough it out when we were young and got kicked out of home? And now we have to fork over another 30% tax to undo the damage you zombies have done to our planet and economy? That’s right. No bed. Now go die in the cold.

Okay… maybe I’m just bitter at old people. Especially politicians. But working in the liquor industry does that to you. Especially with politicians and dealing hands-on with the effects of their stupid decisions. Each time a new government takes over the country they always seem to have a certain campaign in mind when they take office. Most campaigns have been actual problems of a legal nature that affect the country like speed, ecstasy, marijuana, fighting, speeding (funnily enough never cocaine) and terrorism. The Rudd Government, on the other hand, had a different topic in mind: they decided to attack two of the things that make Australia what it is. Binge drinking and cigarettes. But why would a fine Aussie cobber do such reprehensible things to their beloved citizens? Well, the answer is obvious: Kevin Rudd fucking despises young people and his own country.

If you need further proof just check out his policies. They’re pretty clear on where Rudd’s loyalties lie. Why else would he only increase a tax on drinks that are designed for youth consumption? My guess, as to why he hates the younger generation and his country, is that his youth must have sucked balls. And anyone thinking, ‘Well, maybe Kevin Rudd doesn’t hate young people, maybe he doesn’t suck balls and he’s doing this for the protection of the Australian population?’

You’re dead wrong.

There is further evidence of Kevin Rudd hating children. Back when he was a little tacker Mr. Rudd was actually part of the Chinese Youth Communist Party. And I don’t think I need to tell anyone how much the Chinese hate freedom, love and children. With the birth restrictions and refusing to recognise children if they’re from a family of more than one child, that shit’s just self explanatory, bubba.

The cigarettes, though? That’s a completely different beast to the whole binge drinking thing. You see the Chinese don’t have anything against cigarettes. The Chinese are some of the most avid smokers on the planet – even babies smoke over there (but that’s also because they’re trying to kill them). So why would Kevin Rudd turn his back on his old fuck-buddy China and go against something that they love so much? It’s because Kevin Rudd has an addiction to war, and, since actual war isn’t fashionable nowdays, he has to grieve his petty personal wars on the country. Smoking has been a thorn in Rudd’s side ever since he was born as it represents the one thing he’ll never have. Coolness. And as everyone knows coolness is generally derived from smoking. Even Obama smokes.

Ruddiger Whalewolf’s ‘Vigo the Carpathian and the River of Slime No. 2′

The war on cigarettes also serves another motive, however. Once Rudd’s campaign against pre-mixed drinks backfired, he needed another way to fall back into the favour of the public. And since he’d just burnt every single bridge he’d strived to build with the population under 25, he had to find a new demographic to dig his vulture claws into. That demographic was the very crowd he’d turned his back on in the ‘07 electoral campaign: the conservatives.

Conservatives hate only one thing more than rash spending and impulsive actions, and that’s free will. I mean cigarettes. Don’t ask why, but every conservative person you ever meet will have an absolute hatred for smoking, smokers and anything to do with the carcinogenic by-products created by smokers. It’s eternal law, and if you ever meet a conservative that does smoke you’ve met one of the undercover hippies attempting to infiltrate the ranks of the conservative union in order to bring down their society and re-grass every road and pavement mankind has ever made. 

The Hippy Liberation Leader celebrating as a city is demolished in order to become a bird sanctuary.

There’s really nothing to fear, though. The hippies will never win that war, and in less than twenty-five years the country will belong to Generation Y. And we’ll be able to do what we choose with it. Personally, I think that we should dig up the bodies of every Baby Boomer and desecrate their corpses like they desecrated our free will. And by free will, I mean not being able to drink in public and smoke in a pub. I mean, seriously, not being able to smoke in a fucking pub? Are you kidding me? The baby boomers lived during the height of the asbestos days, were allowed to drink and drive, and meanwhile we aren’t even allowed a little smoke in a pub because some conservative codger is afraid that the tiny amounts of second-hand smoke is going to instantly infect them with lung cancer.

The point is: the Baby Boomers need to watch their fucking backs. They’ve been nipping away at the hand that’s going to feed them, and that’s never a good idea.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This article was supposed to be ‘a bit of a laugh’. It’s complete fiction and should not be taken seriously under any circumstances as no formal research was undertaken. Failure to view this article as nonsense will result in prosecution and probably a serious beat down for taking me seriously. Also, Buckshot Sundae does not hate baby boomers or the Chinese.

We do, however, hate conservatives.

It’s been a while since I last stopped in round these parts, but I’m sure that we still remember how this works. Let’s get right to it, shall we? 

Dear Guru,

My partner and I had been dating for seven months before we decided to move in together. He was practically living at my place, anyway. But it’s like he’s become a whole different person now! He never used to leave piles of dirty laundry on my floor when he stayed over he cooked his own meals the couple of times when I came over to his place for dinner, but now I do all the cooking. He moved in his giant television and just wants to play videogames all the time. And I think maybe he’s an alcoholic. He drinks two six-packs of beer EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.

Help me!

-Distressed

Dear Distressed,

This advice column is for people with serious problems. What you have is a boyfriend. You wanted to live with a man, right? Sounds like you got one. I’ll bet he even likes watching the football, too. You got off easy. He doesn’t beat you or host orgies in the bedroom, does he?

I suspect that you were shopping in the wrong aisle, honey. The sculpting clay is never kept with the available men.

Dear Guru,

I can’t pee standing up.

Just in case you’re wondering: I’m a guy.

Hey guy,

This sounds like a more advanced symptom of the male medical condition known as ‘stage fright’. Early signs of stage fright include the inability to pee while using public urinals, and a mild genital rash. This disease can lead to dementia and even death. You should take a diuretic six times a day for the rest of your life. If you begin to sweat and suffer heart palpitations while attempting to pee, or your pee goes red, do not see a trained medical professional, even if your kidneys shut down. You are a man, and men do not seek the advice of doctors. That would be an admission of weakness. Suck it up, buddy.

And good luck.

Dear Guru,

A few weeks ago my son returned to my doorsteps after 6 years with no contact. He looked quite different with full-body tattoos I think he hasn’t slept since I last seen him. He asked me to let him move into the basement. His only posession was a high school chemistry set. My son was never the same after we bought him that chemistry set. But we’re getting along great – I just don’t get to see him now that he’s changed the locks on the basement door. I don’t know what he’s doing down there, but the house is beginning to reek like sulphur. At first I worried that he might be worshipping the devil, but then he gave me a gas mask to wear for my own safety, which seems like a Christian gesture. But if hes not worshipping Satan down there what else could he possibly be doing?

Might my son be gay? How can I tell?

Ted Stevenson

Ted,

Does your son smoke a dick-shaped pipe? Does he make crepes while dressed in Rocky Horror Picture Show attire? No? He’s probably just cooking meth. Regardless of your son’s sexual orientation, you can always be proud in the knowledge that he’s providing an invaluable resource to society. Legions of politicians, police officers and child surgeons would not be able to perform their jobs without your son’s product. As a father, it’s your job to ensure that he’s flooding the streets with high-quality crystal and not the typical brown crap that passes for an 8-ball these days. Sampling the product would also be a great way to bond with your son. Drugs have a tendency to force people apart, so it’s always nice to find some way to be together.

Dear Guru,

I fear that my son has an internet addiction. He seems to be spending all of his time on the computer. Surely he’s seen everything by now, right? I know he hasn’t seen any sunlight for weeks now. What can I do?

- Concerned Mother

Word to the Mother,

You should invest in a reverse Internet Nanny programme. Typically these block undesirable content for concerned parents, but what your son needs in this situation is more depraved content. Hours of watching grown men insert Coke bottles into their anus will surely cure him of this affliction. When taboo is all that’s available, he’ll soon grow bored and seek the outside world again.

Guru,

I think my daughter might be a slut. She wears very revealing clothing and always seems to be sucking on a lollipop. She also seems to be with a different guy every week. Sometimes she even leaves the house with a car packed FULL of guys. Like a whole football team. She does not seem to have any female friends, either. I fear that she’s just being used by every single boy at her school. What can I do?

- Anonymous

Hey Anonymous,

I’ll hit you with a scientifically proven fact: some chicks just love dick. Hell, some chicks actually need a cock to start the day. They can’t survive without it. And if you try changing your daughter’s slutty ways… she could actually die. It’s like cutting off the blood source to a vampire. Without dick she’ll explode when exposed to sunlight. If you want your daughter to live, encourage regular gangbangs so that she doesn’t go through cock withdrawal (which can be very difficult for parents to witness). You might also consider prostitution. Many prostitutes earn enough money to make investment bankers look like gas station attendants, so this could turn into a lucrative deal for you. If you encourage prostitution with all of your daughters you could live like a queen on all of that cooze-cash. Think about it.

That’s it for now, but if any readers need advice just e-mail your questions to the Guru via buckshotsundae@hotmail.com