9. CB’s flesh is punctuated by a series of small pin holes in a neat geometric formation over

entire his body. These contusions have caused his feet to swell considerably – taking on the

unmistakable appearance of two suffocated tuna heads. We sit on a sofa together, he is

embarrassed.

1. Baby is sat on my left shoulder. Her fleshy stomach hangs over my skeletal shoulder, soft

legs like epaulets in the backseat of an old American green Lincoln. Seatbelt-less & passively being

driven. I hear her voice for the first time – coarse, husky – and strangely high pitched. She gives me

advice. I’m paying close attention to the specifics of the instructions – her gravel-words make

immediate sense and then tragically evaporate, like fog lifting under a rising sun.

8. 30mg Codeine & 2mg Paracetamol.

13. Sat on a bed facing the wall in L’s Paddington basement flat. A hand strokes my back – I

recognise the face of Claudia who tattooed a suspender clip onto my right thigh on Saturday

morning. Her French accent rests barefoot on my thigh. Toes painted a fleshy magnolia, with wide

half-circles for each cuticle. She hands me some paperwork in a brown envelope and talks softly into

my left ear. Her words excite – stern instruction laid out without hesitation. Our meeting is an

introduction for what is to come.

A door opens upstairs and I can hear two people enter, walking on the floorboards. L’s

laughing voice with that of a man I assume is her husband. Claudia instructs me to dress – I wasn’t

aware of my nakedness. I pull on my jeans and lace into my boots. Claudia tells me to hide – I

prepare my body to slither under the bed & notice a sliding door that opens out into a rose-garden. I

point towards the door and she nods quickly.

It is night and I am briefly disorientated – finding myself in a reverse alleyway, running

counter to the main entrance. It is dirty. Fast-food decaying in neat pockets of the dimly lit street. I

count the numbers backwards – 49, 48, 47, 46, 45 and so on, until I reach 0 where I find myself in a

cul-de-sac and return back to 50. I walk towards the opposing side of the road to see only, the warm

glow of L’s apartment through an immaculately painted bay window. I need to return home, but I

miss the train as I am unable to work out how to operate the ticket machine. In my bag, I retain the

paperwork Claudia gave me, knowing it to hold an unforeseen potential.

5a. (2043). All in full non-petroleum-based rubber suits. (Outside) second skins. Once a subculture

now becomes biological necessity. Fear from contamination. Cold war catastrophe replaying

again through germ-drama. Germ warfare. Civilian issue. Full body rubber suits.

5b. Tightly sealed, full facial obscuration. Outer skin customised, freshly traced red lipstick over

elastic rubber. No smiles – or tears – new modes of communication based upon pre-determined

algorithmic behavioural patterns. Human interaction, liberated to resemble a plethora of aeroplanes

in the night sky, conducted by an invisible and maniacal air traffic controller.

4b. The nubs of pleasure condensed into a biological button. Secondary sexual features

becoming antennas of connectivity – swollen flesh-like beacons of a faceless joy, naked in the

becoming fire of sunlight. Latent potentiality maximised by technological progress. The summit of an

areola liberated through evolution – the firm grip of imagination is essentially tender – and helps to

shape new patterns of longing.

3b. The list of authors on the Catholic Churches’ Index Librorum Prohibitorum include Galileo

and Descartes. To treat the mind like a walnut – to shrink and then crack it. M. told me she was

given a sweet in the choir at Catholic convent boarding school to stop her singing – she was told to

mime. Each week forced to take confession, regardless of whether she had anything to confess. Her

imagination deployed to fuck the priest.

3a. Virulent anxieties spread themselves through an inner cortex of desire. Tissue migrates like

boiled meat from a bone. Twisted realities lay at the foundation of terminal dreams. Stitching

patterns together, like a seamstress sewing the skin of mannequins. Invisible codes offer the logic of

spray-painted numerical figures, laid down by road workers, electrical automatons and agents of

broadband – delineating an obscure hieroglyphic onto pavements, bus stations and terminals of the

mind.

The lingering of flesh over hardened industrial landscapes become new lesions of wild

obedience and longed for abandon. The throbbing of cranes and piledrivers – the extension of

Moloch – tentacled, sensuous, intuitive – the industrial mind covers ground with ever increasing

gains. Two inches of bare flesh behind a knee – the soft creases of the plantar fascia in a summer

shoe – an elasticated bra offers the firm leather of a shoulder-holster – drawing new forms in a

profound congregation. Moloch continues to feed from a cauldron of boiled flesh – itself The Chief

Industrial agent. Mechanical, precise, cold. Movement conditioned to lateral goals – an accountant’s

clean fingernails’ sacrificing pawns to gain bishops and rooks.

7. 4 grams of amphetamine administered over 48-hour periods, weekly between 1998-2000.

4a. In juvenile male subjects’ regular amphetamine use has the potential to stunt bone growth,

leaving the subject with a slender, more traditionally feminine frame and the ability to concentrate

on recuring tasks in new meaningful ways.

11. The Sadean imagination is repetitive in nature.

2. K’s chains of labour – a yoke that throttles this intelligent young man from the inside out.

The steel girders of the warehouse flash like a twisted concertina – unfolding through a vaudeville

routine of lifting, carrying and scanning. His large domed head balances precariously on a body,

contorted by previous hernias and spinal contusions. Repetitive work strips skin.

12. St Dominic’s Convent Boarding School (1963). Kneeling on the stone floor of a basement

cellar. A white collared priest stands gently behind, warming an iron crucifix under the magnificent

red arc of a paraffin torch. Silver lines run through the creases of the priests’ boots – a trail of saliva follows the stiff contours of the thick leather. Drying, it leaves a crystalline imprint, much like the nomadic wonderings of a slug on a wet summers’ day. The Priests’ breathing is laboured, his inhalations become frantic alerts. Gripping a left ankle, the soles of a bare foot are upturned and opened into his palm – with his right hand he places a white-hot iron directly onto the plantar fascia, trembling with delight, hearing it hiss. The body is re-calibrated, reforming within the four poles of the cross. Coins fall from a darkened alcove in the ceiling. Carefully the priest sets about picking each gold coin from the floor to place inside his leather purse. The subject lays writhing on the floor – the boundaries between pleasure and pain transgressed, again.

12. As a butterfly can liberate itself from a chrysalis body, hallucinations are a penetration of the

screen.

9. In an attempt to steal patients’ spectacles, General Harrocks walks the hospital with a gait

that mimics the hind legs of a bull. Once successful, he places them over his exposed member –

creating a vaudeville elephant trunk. The patients notice his flayed testicles like untethered helium

balloons cut free from a Bacchanalian feast – and vomit.

M.’s operation goes well, and they manage to remove the spine and plant in in the hospital

grounds. It seems to grow quickly there, merging with the concrete and trimmed public-shrubbery.

People stand around to smoke, noticing small ceramic ashtrays placed carefully within the crevices

of each vertebrae.

10. Hands behind your back

Mouth Open

“I’m feeling

A little better Doctor”

Look into the camera

Do as you’re told.