Falling Through the Windows of Madness - Leo Vine-Knight (top books of all time TXT) 📗

Falling Through the Windows of Madness
A Short Sequel


2020

The world came back in gasps and wheezes, shivers of pain and flashes of unwanted light. I seemed to be snared in a cobweb of tubes and cables which hung around the room in fascinating loops and swags. A giant computer screen flickered and died in the distance, as those around me coughed, trembled and began to move……

***

Outside the clinic, a group of zombies gazed at the spiralling brown cloud, shooting stars and choking smoke which hung above the jagged teeth of a sacked city.
“Is this a nuclear winter?” I croaked..
“Nah. Just the usual shit British weather” replied a passing clown in Sunday best ensemble.
“It’s a lot worse than I remember.”
“Oh, you’ve probably been out of town for a while.”
“Yes, that’s true….but what are those bright lights over the mountains?”
“Aliens.”
“Aliens!”
“Sure. Once they discovered we had nothing left, they simply revealed themselves and started clapping. We’re just a dog pit for the tourists now.”
“Oh.”

* * *

Well, it was obviously a surprise to discover that my suicide hadn’t been final after all. Shortly after my demise the government had passed a law banning death, ostensibly because this was a contravention of human rights, but actually a last throw of the dice to retain power. Ergo, all intact bodies had been kept in various cryogenic or vegetative states while they awaited medical advances, rebirth and population of alien planets. Fortunately, my fatal blood loss and oxygen deprivation had somehow been reversed by the interim experimental therapies and I was now free.

Free.

Free to chew my mouldy sandwich in the street corner barter café, a hundred miles away from home, with no travel pass, wondering what had happened during the last fifteen years - and how I could find my wife, my children……and Kate. I had no idea where to start, but it was clear that a lot of things had finished. There were no gas burners on the streets, for example, because petrol had abruptly run out five years before, while scavenging and looting had replaced benefits and profiteering as the primary means of income. Middle class taxpayers had become an endangered species by 2015, leading to rapid meltdown.

There were a few ageing mobility scooters on the duel carriageway, but the most common mode of transport seemed to be BMX bikes and skateboards, typically ridden by grunting muscle-bound bruisers with brown armbands. These were the so-called ‘citizens’ who ran a sort of unofficial police force, handing out summary street justice to any unfortunate they came across.
“Are these people paramilitaries?” I asked a man in tattered business suit and water wings.
“They used to be drunk all the time” he agreed, “but booze is so scarce now, they’re usually psychopathically sober. These days they tend to get their kicks out of…..well….kicking.”
“Ugh” said one of the citizens, approaching the counter with a severed human head, which he exchanged for a burger.
“What possible use will that head be to the café owner” I enquired.
“Recycling” was the response.
“Ha ha ha…..ha…..er…..”
The citizen had eaten his burger in one explosive bite and he was now sharpening his knife on a razor strop hanging from his flies. Doing a theatrical double take, I realised that the razor strop was actually a large flaccid penis and that the citizen’s red eyes were firmly focused on my neck. I picked up the skirts of my surgical gown and fled.

Nowadays the air was always thick with wood smoke as people used cut down trees and pillaged rafters for fuel, but a few coal burning power stations remained open around the country, generating energy for The Big Man and his machines…..

The Big Man
The identity of The Big Man was a closely guarded secret. He had emerged into the power vacuum created by the 2012 pogrom of criminal politicians, where hundreds of elite embezzlers were stripped of their assets and relocated within specialist training camps or hung from fairy-lit lampposts. As politics and economics had become obsolete, The Big Man had cleverly repositioned his global media empire as the pre-eminent government institution.

His genius was the management of images.
He had short hair and very large trousers.

Having said that, The Big Man was rumoured to be a small man (if you know what I mean) and there were unofficial stories circulating of dissidents fighting brave guerrilla actions around the planet. But my first priority was to get home, so I joined a dozen others raking through the festering remains of Tescos looking for provisions, and filled my haversack.
“Ugh!Ugh!” came the battle cry, as twenty citizens charged towards us, waving razor strops.
“Bloody Hell, they don’t have much of a vocabulary” I commented.
“Well, what do you expect?” replied a nearby Mr. Blobby look-a-like, ”They only average 5 GCSE’s each.”
“But I thought all pupils were guaranteed 10 passes in 2011 as a further worthy extension of human rights?”
“Yes, but a highly influential pinko think tank complained that there weren’t enough lefts in society to counterbalance all the new rights. This led to a bloodbath of semantic infighting. It was the beginning of the end”.

With this, my journey began.

* * *

Two days later and I was trudging along a cracked cart track called the A1, when an ancient hippy hailed me heartily from the hedgerow.
“Do you be going to the big city boss?”
“I do.”
“Well, there’s trouble looming up North. Why don’t you rest here awhile?”
“Thanks, I will.”
“Only two tins of beans, or the exchange rate equivalent, per night.”
“What? Oh…er…..I suppose so. Here you are then.”
With no further conversation we set off towards a mass of colourful tepees which encircled a large wooden stage-like structure in the distance, and then passed through a heavily fortified gateway. A glittering barbed wire fence surrounded the site and this was guarded by a platoon of Frankenstein’s monster clones; each supplemented with a slavering hellhound in spiked collar.
“Welcome to our fee festival” the hippy said “We’ve got somebody with sunglasses and a banjo performing at 2 o’clock. He even plays the banjo sometimes.”
“Thank you.”
“If you’ve got another tin of beans, that is.”
“Oh. Will rice pudding do?”
“God no! That stuff reminds me of the ruined sperm bank I once rifled through in the summer of ’14. There’s an ex-TV presenter doing magic tricks with his willy in the beer tent, if that’s any use.”
“No thanks.”
“He can stretch it around his neck and juggle his own balls.”
“No thanks.”
“He can play a medley of Lois Armstrong tunes with it.”
“No thanks.”
“He can hit a target 200 yards away.”
“No wanks…..er….thanks.”
That reminded me. Was good old Sidney still alive? Was the hospital still there? In a few days, I would find out.
“And after the show he’s going to give a presentation.”
“A presentation! Wow! Count me in” I ejaculated.

That night the ancient hippy gathered people around a huge bonfire and told far-etched stories about his youth. Strange yarns about people who could make things, and others who brought precious materials out of the earth. Fantastic fables about large groups of people called ‘nations’, who followed dreams. What a romancer he was. As if.

* * *

I was almost there.
The sky had darkened again and below it lay a Romanesque scene of carnage, disgrace and decrepitude. Buildings sagged at strange angles, roads disappeared into bottomless pits, people hobbled about in stained costumes, shrieking and laughing in equal measure. Although curiously reminiscent of the hospital where I once worked, it was obviously an entirely new order of decadence, depravity and vile Saturday evening TV. Could there possibly be order within this chaos?
Just outside the city gates a group of war-painted children straight out of ‘Lord of the Flies’ were using pointed sticks to prod a poor fellow strung up by his genitals from a climbing frame. Rushing towards this obscene tableau, I proceeded to wave my arms about, remonstrating with the culprits.
“What on earth has this man done to deserve such a gruesome fate?”
“He’s the designer of the impossible-to-open supermarket plastic bag, mate.”
“Ah! Well why are you being so ridiculously lenient with him?”
“It’s his birthday.”
Inside the gates, all hell had broken out. Everyone seemed to have a strap on karaoke machine, with the amplifier, speaker and mike apparently powered by rapid leg and arm movements. Thousands of people were dashing around the streets torturing their favourite songs, bouncing off one another and grinning inanely at the numerous surveillance cameras which tracked their every movement.
“Are they all mad?” I asked the nearest figure.
“Welcome to my turd…er….world” he crooned.
“Are you all mad?” I repeated.
“Welcome to my fart….er…heart.”
“S-Sidney! It’s you isn’t it?”
“My God! Y-y-you look just like that prattling nutcase I used to work with at the hospital.”
“I am the prattling nutcase you used to work with at the hospital.”
“But that’s not possible….”
“I was frozen and stored for future research. When the electricity failed my repaired body started to function again. …and here I am.”
“Fact is certainly stranger than fiction. What can I say…..welcome back Steve.”
“Nice to be back Sid…”
“Sssssh. I’m on the run Steve. There was a bit of a misunderstanding after you died. Now I call myself Llewelyn. You can call me Loo.”
“Sure, but don’t let the world shit on you, Loo. Now, tell me, why is everyone using those karaoke machines?”
“We’re the ‘aspirants’ Steve. The Big Man is kind and good. Every fifteen hours a new group of ministers is elected to replace those who have gone before. He has decreed that every aspirant will hold government office at least once in his or her lifetime. It is our fifteen hours of fame.”
“Didn’t it used to be fifteen minutes of fame?”
“Yes, so it is said around the log fires, but The Big Man is kind and good. He has been benevolent to his children.”
“So, you’re trying to attract the attention of The Big Man by continually auditioning?”
“Yes. The Big Man is kind and good. He is constantly searching for talent. He is the guardian of human shites…er….rights. ”
Just then a large maroon exploded in the sky and everybody stopped singing, freezing in mid-stride, eyes agape. A tumbrel trundled around the corner and ten heavily armed citizens loaded five dribbling aspirants on board.
“The winners of the competition in this section of the city” announced Sid (Loo), in a hushed reverential voice.
“Oh” said I.

“You’d better stay with me tonight” said Loo “The Big Man is kind and good. I have been allocated a large cupboard on the tenth floor of a condemned building.”
“Lucky you.”
It was only a five-mile walk to Loo’s pad and this gave me time to take in some of the changes in my hometown. There were apparently no new buildings, but some of the less damaged blocks were now flying garish flags and banners, their doorways flanked by menacing citizens, with sinister black mobility scooters parked outside. Some were evidently receiving power from The Big Man’s coal generators and in the larger tenements we could clearly see rows of hideously obese people in white smocks playing computer games. They appeared to be fixed in position by a spaghetti junction of catheters which maintained their day to day biological functions.
“Who are those people Loo?”
“They’re the ‘boffins’ Steve.