inadmissible

I meet my agent in the lobby. It is the first time I have seen him in a year. He grins as I walk over, waves at me from where he has been talking to the maitre ‘d. He has said something awful to her, I can tell, because she is looking into the distance and crying very quietly. We get the best table in the restaurant, of course.
My agent gets to pitching just as the quinoa summer salad arrives for me, and just as the steak tartare arrives for him. I can’t feel my hands, so I don’t reach for the fork, or the mineral water sparkling in its crystal glass. I listen to him reel off what sound like the same old stunts (The Nut Master, Paintball Hangman, Ski Jump Slip ‘n’ Slide, Grand Canyon Birdman, Fish Slap, Atomic Nut Master), and when I don’t say anything he asks if I’m awake. He can’t see my eyes because I am wearing shades. I tell him no and he tells me he thought I’d be interested because these stunts are not from the studio.
what?
they’re not from the studio.
you got steve back? Steve used to write with us. When we needed a new season we would take two weeks off, me and Steve, and we’d get good and fucked and drive out to pick up the guys from wherever they were living or hiding or partying at that time, from their wives’ or girlfriends’ or from their parents’ place, or from hotels or motels or like as not a prison, or a ditch. One time we found Jay and Ryan in the same lay-by, back before cottaging had gone mainstream, and they didn’t believe they’d both been there until the next afternoon when we showed them the photos while they sat next to each other on the floor of a hotel room, cooling their asses with layers of ice poured into the hollows of inflatable pool chairs. And that was when Steve and I invented Blind Man’s Buttplug, which is in our All-Time Family Favourites compilation DVD, and was allegedly used in Abu Ghraib.
My agent shakes his head.
people voted. on the internet. He takes a forkful of the pink steak, and he puddles it around in the yolk and makes sure he has enough shallots and shovels it into his mouth.
it’s what they want, he says.
I take this as a sign from God that it is time at last for me to die.
i’ll do them, I say.
really? he says.
all at once.
He spits out the steak tartare - it rains over the table, flecking the white tablecloth and the silver cutlery, but he must not have got it all out because now he’s choking, turning red as tears roll and his face wrinkles. I sit there. Maybe this is a sign from God. Maybe this is a punishment.
YOU DON’T GET TO CHOOSE, God says. AND JUST FOR THINKING YOU COULD, I’M GOING TO KILL YOUR AGENT WHO HASN’T GOT YOU WORK IN FIFTEEN MONTHS, AND I’LL LEAVE YOU HERE ON EARTH WITH YOUR HORRIBLE KIDS WHILE RYAN AND JAY AND C-BOM AND DANGER AND DUSTIN AND LITTLE BURRITO AND TONY HAWK LIVE IT UP WITH ME IN VALHALLA.
God is a dick.
Ryan died in a car crash. Jay hung himself - he had his pants down, so they ruled it accidental, but I think he meant it. We were always tripping him up over his outsized jeans and boxers.
C-BOM and Danger died together. They were at Danger’s parents house when it caught fire, and they were probably too stoned to notice the smoke.
Dustin and Little Burrito both got cancer: brain and heart. Dustin was in a coma for a week. He asked my wife to pull the plug, because they had dated in high school. I hadn’t known. Little Burrito wasn’t diagnosed until the autopsy; he dropped dead during Celebrity Apprentice.
Tony Hawk isn’t actually dead, but we named a toy bear that we all fucked on the Scrapes tour Tony Hawk - we cut a little asshole for him, and everyone who stepped on the bus had to fuck him. He fell to pieces, but he’d be partying hard in Valhalla.
The maitre ‘d runs from the front of the restaurant, cutting a line towards my agent through the waiters and waitresses, and she comes at him from behind and, I swear, rabbit-punches him straight in the spine. No pat, no Heimlich - Kung fu rabbit punch. His eyes pop and the rest of the steak flies from his mouth and he goes limp and slides off his seat, slamming his face off the table.
She stands behind his chair with her chest heaving and her fist clenched and held tight to her armpit like she’s post-tournament Bruce Lee. She is looking at me. She is not looking at him. Everybody is looking at me. It takes me a moment to realise that I’m still laughing, and that I can’t stop. I have an extraordinary laugh, I know, especially when I am high. I sound like a chicken, or a squeaky old couch. Beak, beak-beak-beak. Beak, beak-beak-beak.
Somebody asks if I am alright. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and it feels good, but I’ve been wanting to get close to that restaurant carpet all week, so I let the hand push me gently off my chair and onto the floor.
My agent is down there, and I think he’s ok now. I’m looking at him through the legs of the table. He is smiling. I think I am smiling too. The carpet feels very nice on my face.
live?
The last show I had done live was the Dancing With The Stars finale. I had just shown up to be seen watching my wife, and my agent had somehow planned for me to ‘surprise’ her with a slow dance in front of the judges. When we got offstage and she went to her dressing room I let one of the runners give me a blowjob.
My testicle hurts. My nine fingers hurt. The metal pins in my leg and hip hurt, and the plate under my cheek hurts, and all of my scars, every single one hurts, and I think it will be good to die before I lose my other nut to this shit.
live. beak beak-beak-beak.

And he could have children. And he could show me pictures of his children.

And did he seem more or less sad than the last time you spoke?
Less. I mean he barely cried at all.

Grinning for the mirror, he can see his gums throbbing a bright and puffy pink, like a bloated sea sponge. He brushes hard, and blood trickles between his close-fitting teeth. He cleans away the blood with mouthwash, and then he showers. When he is dry, he can still smell the sweat, so he showers again.
On his way out of the flat, he presses one hand to the mattress. It squelches, and seeps. Downstairs, the woman screams ‘thank you very much!’ Their door slams loudly shut.

He wakes up choking. Something lodges in his throat, and he scrambles over to the side of the bed and leans over the edge, but the wet sheets slide under his hands and he tips and falls hard. Curled up on the floor, swaddled in the sodden grey bedding, he coughs and retches, blinded by tears and the sweat seeping out from his hair and down into his eyes.
He feels the thing dislodge and shoot out of his windpipe; it skitters across the floor, but he can’t see where it goes. His eyes sting. He tastes salt and iron, and his throat is a dry and raspy mineshaft.

Patrick dreams of finding an octopus.
Utterly alone in the clear and infinite sea, the little mollusc is far from home and shelter. He swims in ragged, panicked circles as Patrick looms, and spins and spasms and spits his ink in fear.
But there is no hiding place, no short distance to race, no convenient nook or sandy hollow, so Patrick waits and watches the black cloud grow, and shrink, and split and fade until the young octopus is clear again. Spent, exposed, his suckers seem to shiver in the oily water.
They are both suspended then, all tensed, hanging just away from each other, both afraid. Two tentacles curl twitchily up, covering his eyes. One drags apart. Patrick shears it off, and quickly swims away, the severed limb dancing in his massive gullet.

She turns sharply to see his face, but he twists above her and powers down upon the tuna, slamming her body against the coral wall and scraping it down to the sea bed. He feels something in her snap and she goes limp before the impact; after, in the billow of sandy motes and torn seaweed he can see that her eyes are fixed and dead.
He waits a moment, as she bobs stupidly on the floor. Then he tears a messy hole in the flesh of her neck and burrows his snout deep. He pushes and wriggles himself into her rib cage, and jerks until he has her wrenched open. He sees her, butterflied, rotate slowly in the dark cloud, her scraps floating freely upwards, and he noses closer, and neatly nips out her rich and tiny heart.