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

It is said around the log fires that they were once very intelligent, creative individuals who somehow went completely mad. Because The Big Man is kind and good he has continued to provide them with the entertainment and occupation they were accustomed to before the illness struck them down.”
“Bang!”
One of the windows was suddenly covered in a red mass of wiggling maggots.
“Good Lord! What’s happened?”
“Oh, sometimes one of the catheters gets blocked up and the corresponding boffin explodes. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“wnju ijndin mlsyh lmsuu annn ojsi98” said a green nine-foot monster with several waving tentacles, a cluster of bloodshot eyes and a penis resembling a Medieval mace.
“palbx” said Loo.
“One of the visiting aliens I assume? What did he say?”
“The Big Man is kind and good.”

On we tramped, across a wasteland of split walls, sagging roofs, cracked paving and weed-infested parks, watching the rats running freely about the streets, big as fat spoilt cats, eating the cockroaches.
“How on earth was all this damage done?”
“A combination of blocked drains, crumbling sewers, flooding, subsidence, a chronic skills shortage - and twenty million people knocking their heads against brick walls in 2013, because they couldn’t get through the Hex-Factor auditions.”
“So it is said around the log fires?”
“So it is said.”
Finally we arrived and Loo immediately retired to his bed; an old chest freezer stuffed with fish and chip papers in the corner. Loo’s dog observed me from the rag rug, his tail wagging happily, looking just like the black hound I used to see on my way to work. I stretched across to pat his proud, shapely head…..
“Eeeeeach!!
He’d bitten me of course.
I found a tiny space amongst the bowls of cold soup and coils of poo, and I slept.

* * *

The following day Loo and I set of early back towards the city centre. He was keen to audition for parliament and I was looking for any clues which might help me locate Carol and the children. There was no point in revisiting my old house, because all the suburbs built after 1950 were now entirely derelict; the three-inch nails and gardening twine which held them all together having failed around 2014. Perhaps I would try the hospitals.

We had reached the inner city area when the chilling sound of drums, shrieks and groans began to echo down the streets. Within minutes a mass of grubby half-naked men and women snaked around the corner, chained together with heavy manacles, sweating like pigs, wild-eyed and desperate. Alongside, packs of blaspheming citizens kept the prisoners in line with brutal staves and ugly cudgels while, behind, a massive shaven-headed beast cracked his bullwhip above the heads of the whimpering rabble. A trail of bubbling urine and loose stools was left in their wake.
“Good God, who are those poor wretches?”
“They be the ‘payers’. Many years ago they were the mindless slaves who did all the work and paid taxes, but by 2015 their numbers had dwindled to about 10% of the population because they had no time left each day to copulate and therefore reproduce. They failed the majority of society, and now they pay.”
“The Big Man is kind and good.”
“So it said around the log fires.”
“How exactly do the payers pay?”
“Some of them gather food from the distant fields and woods, others chop down trees for fuel, and the chosen few become ARSE lickers.”
“ARSE lickers?”
“Yes. The chosen few attend members of the Ageing Rockers Special Executive in their private quarters.”
“Oh. Are those guys still around?”
“They are our spiritual leaders Steve. They are ‘the bishops’. You will have to worship them at noon. It is the Law.”

At noon, a loud klaxon droned above the city and members of every caste moved mechanically towards the ruins of the Town Hall. A primitive dais had been constructed with salvaged half-bricks and bleached bones, now encircled by a group of blond-headed brutes with black armbands and catapults. At the sound of an ancient serpent and bongo drums, the doors at the rear of the stage were thrown open, revealing a number of sepulchral forms, dressed from head to foot in white sheets, the eye holes covered in impenetrable sunglasses.
“Behold the ARSE holy ones” boomed the klaxon.
“Praise be” whispered Loo.
Slowly, the white forms floated onto the dais, separating into two files which turned to salute one another; a ritual that involved each member joining their first finger and thumb of their right hands into a circle, and then moving the circle rapidly up and down near the groin. After this solemn ceremony, the leader of group moved to centre stage, where his head swelled to twice its original size and his tongue was seen to dart right and left towards the ears of nearby females. There was something awfully familiar about him and when he turned his back and lifted his sheet there was no room for further doubt.
“Woody (Rock God) Willy!”
“Ssshh” hissed the devoted brethren.
“The Big Man is kind and good, - he thinks, and the rest are wood” chanted Woody in his best bass/falsetto warble.
“The Big Man is kind and good - he thinks, and the rest are wood” replied the spittle-spraying host.
After twenty minutes of these incantations and one public execution (an old, bearded professor condemned for having principles) we were considered spiritually refreshed, and allowed a half-hour lunch break, during which the P.A. system broadcast a series of enlightening news bites.
“The temperature is 17 degrees centigrade. This is the highest temperature since yesterday.”
“A new world record has been set for eating bluebottles.”
“20,000 people in Yorkshire now have the common cold. Pandemic just around the corner says ecstatic expert.”
“Power output increases at National Wind Farm…..”
“Where is the wind farm?” I asked Loo.
“Those around the log fires say it located in a big gothic building in London, next to the brown river. The ‘pigs’ work there.”
“Pigs?”
“Yes. It is said that those who once misgoverned the country have now been put to good use. They are strapped to long oak benches designed by Pugin, their heads are inserted in troughs of baked beans, and their fart gas is channelled into machines which generate more power for The Big Man.”
“Electricity?”
“No. It is in London city.”
“These people are very experienced in the subjects of feeding troughs and wind, I imagine?”
“The word ‘imagine’ is now banned Steve.”
Over the road, the painted children had returned. This time they were pouring a mixture of giant red ants and treacle over the bald pate of a man buried up to his neck in donkey dung.
“What was his crime?” I asked one of the children.
“He was in charge of children’s TV in the late 20th century.”
“Oh……so you didn’t want 30 year-old presenters in garish clothes laughing endlessly at their own lame jokes?”
“No.”
“You didn’t want crowds of kids shrieking like banshees in response to a director waving a cue card.”
“No.”
“You didn’t want the volume turned up automatically.”
“Not particularly. We just wanted something that didn’t insult the intelligence of a chimpanzee.”
“Well, I empathise with you. I think it’s only right that you express your feelings in unstructured play situations. I’m glad you’re owning the problem. Carry on with my blessing - and don’t forget to put the cherry on top.”

After a hard day scavenging and karaoki singing, we were glad to set off for Loo’s flat again. We’d reached the first corner when out of an alleyway popped what appeared to be an anorexic monk, hood pulled well up to disguise his acne and atavism.
“I need coke an’ speed an’ crack an’ skunk an’ dope man. Gimme all you’ve got or I’ll cut yer wiv me blade, so help me.”
“Crack! Crunch!”
Instantly, the ground opened up and swallowed the miscreant whole.
“Wow! There really is a God after all” said Loo.
“It was certainly the best example of evolution you’re ever likely to see.”
About a mile up the road I noticed a metal lamppost resting at 45degress against the remains of a church and when I cocked my ear I could just about make out some music coming from it. It was unusual seeing a lamppost anyway, because most of them had been converted into spears by the larger citizens. It was a hobby they pursued in between producing armies of children they subsequently ignored.
“I think I can hear some music coming from that lamppost, Loo. The metal must be acting like an aerial.”
“It will be the bishops practising, Steve.”
“No it isn’t. I can make out a single voice speaking.”
“May Day! May Day! Can anybody here me? It’s Professor R----- here. I’ve completed the ascent of Mont Blanc on a pogo stick at last, and now I require rescuing. I need to spread the news and bask in glory. I need to plan my next unnecessary expedition. I need……..”
“Oh…..it’s a smug overgrown schoolboy who needs rescuing from a mountaintop.”
We grabbed a fat rat for tea and walked on, whistling.

I was still no further forward with my search for Carol and the kids, but Loo suggested that I try the main Library and Information Centre. Although this seemed to be an unlikely survivor of the mayhem, Loo reassured me that the place was still operating as a government sponsored drop-in centre for noisy unemployable people, as before.
“There aren’t any housing benefits to be claimed any more, of course, but there’s a useful needle exchange unit, free nappies for single mothers, plenty of play stations for boffins, soup kitchens and some old porn to browse through. There aren’t any books left thankfully – The Big Man donated all of them to the bonfire fund, to make sure we all kept nice and warm.”
“How generous.”
“Yes The Big Man is kind and good, although there were only three books left in the library anyway by 2014.”
“That many?”
“Yes, ‘How to Claim Your Full Entitlement of Benefits – An Odyssey’, ‘My Benefits – An Autobiography’ and ‘How to Get a Literary Agent if You Aren’t Already Famous and Don’t Copy Other Writers’ (out of print).”
“Anyway, it’s a starting point, so I’ll get myself over there now. See you later Loo.”
“Okay, I think I could be on a roll today. The small hairs covering my scrotal area are bristling with intuitive power. ”
“’Bye.”
The library wasn’t far away and at first sight little different – the usual scrum of broken, once intellectual alcoholics, professional tax recipients, pram fillers and gesticulating foreign nationals demanding their rights a la mode. It had in fact gone a bit further than I recalled, with the main room now devoid of shelves and serving as a bombed out tea room for itinerants. A hundred or so sprawled about the place slowly stirring their drinks, stinking in harmony, gazing vacantly at the doorway and dreaming of the good old giro days of yore. The nearest one to me was stirring his coffee with his penis.
“Don’t you know what that’s really for?” I enquired.
“Of course I do you sarcastic twat. I’m just bored that’s all.”
“You can’t think of anything to do in this razed post-Apocalyptic world?”
“Well, I could add two sugars I suppose.”
Perhaps the Help Desk could help; I’d always been amazed how completely unflappable the library assistants were, even when faced with a squad of crack-addicted suicide bombers asking for directions to the Town Hall they would carry on smiling through, giving answers, posing no questions. Information so tightly sewn into its ideology, that it had lost all sense.
“Excuse me, I’m trying to trace a missing person. Her