Mr Two Fucks

That in itself is bad enough, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that Mr Two Fucks’ cack-handed sabotage shenanigans have brought me the kind of attention I could do without. Because I am not here to do the work I am purportedly employed to do, I am in fact here to spy on my boss, my boss being a person of interest to my real employer, that employer being a criminal organisation headed up by a psycho drug kingpin, who happens to also be a cousin of mine. In other words, if he carries on in this amateurish fashion, Mr Two Fucks is going to blow my cover (or get me the sack), and if my cover is blown (or I am sacked), any chance of securing the release of my wife will have been voided. My cousin was clear enough about this. You blow your cover or get sacked and it’s curtains for Matilda, got it? he’d said whilst doing a slit-of-the-throat motion. Got it, I’d said, because I had, it was simple enough to get after all. Furthermore, my cousin had said, if you don’t get the intel I need on your soon-to-be boss –. But rather than finishing the sentence, he’d done the slitting-of-the-throat motion again: slowly, a malicious grin strung like a clothesline across that war-torn face of his. After that, my crime baron cousin handed me a contract setting out the terms and conditions of my employment. I’d signed there and then. What choice did I have? What choice does anyone have about anything in reality?

The training was carried out by a square-shaped man with microdot eyes and a shrill, trumpet-like voice. It was hard going. So hard that not a few of my fellow new recruits failed to make it to the end of the programme (or out of there alive). By dint of my innate tenacity and determination to preserve Matilda’s life, however, I managed not only to make it to the end, but to receive a special merit from the human trumpet, who rarely, if ever, gave out special merits, his words. I couldn’t help but be happy about that. Much as I hated my cousin (and the whole diseased side of the family he came from), much as I didn’t want to spy on some guy whilst pretending to do a job I didn’t want to have to pretend to do (or actually do), much as I detested myself for it, it made me feel good to have excelled at something. It was an entirely new experience for me. Of course, like all new experiences it lost its lustre pretty quickly. After that, I reverted to being my normal depressed self, which wasn’t an issue. Truth be told I am never happier than when depressed.

To fast forward back to the beginning: as I say, I have a problem. My boss keeps taking me to one side to have what he refers to as little chats. Your work isn’t up to scratch, is the gist of what these so-called little chats are about. What can I do, other than to hold my hands up, admit culpability, promise to do better? That Mr Two Fucks has a lot to answer for all right.

On the spying side of the ledger, I am doing quite well. I know pretty much everything there is to know about my boss. His sexual proclivities (deviant), where he lives (a gated compound), who his friends are (there are two of them, fair-weather types), his hobbies (he makes model aeroplanes and collects stamps, believe it or not), his ideological leanings (rabidly right-wing), what he dreams about (being the Messiah mainly), his insecurities (too numerous to mention). I pass this information along to my cousin via a flunkey who is another cousin as it happens, but it’s never enough. Keep at it, is the feedback I get, keep probing.

So, the obvious question. Why is Mr Two Fucks sabotaging my work and making me look bad in front of my boss? My hunch is that he is jealous. Not of my looks, they’re nothing to write home about, but of my nonchalance (French accent). Unlike him, I can take things or leave them, even the whole Matilda situation, as much as it pains me to think of her held captive like some sort of Rapunzel, I have pretty much just taken in my stride. Mr Two Fucks, on the other hand, is the diametric opposite of nonchalant, hence why he took exception to me and hence why, as far as I can ascertain, he took it upon himself to start sabotaging my work.

I need to have it out with him, I think. Or eliminate him. One or the other. Probably the other. I am not a murderous person by inclination, but I am pragmatic by inclination and therefore I am quite capable of carrying out a cold-blooded murder. If life had not dealt me a Mr Two Fucks, and if I didn’t have a drug kingpin psychopath cousin, more than likely I would have gone a whole lifetime, maybe even several lifetimes, without so much as a whiff of murderous intent, just as 99% of the German population would not have gone along with the mass extermination of the Jews if Hitler had not been quite so insistent on the matter. Which is kind of crazy if you think about it, crazy in the abhorrent sense of crazy.

---

I am in a sauna sweating profusely. I go to saunas a lot as it happens. I find them relaxing. I like to be hot, I guess. I like to sweat. It feels good for some reason. I am in this particular sauna because I am meeting an acquaintance of mine, who arrives a few minutes after I do. He has put on a few pounds, lost a few more strands of hair, but is otherwise exactly as I remember him. We greet each other with a raised eyebrow (me) and a nod (him). I tell my acquaintance that I have a problem. Of course you do, he says, why else would you have got in touch. I tell my acquaintance that that isn’t fair, even though it patently is. He’s an acquaintance, after all, not a friend. He maybe wants to be a friend, but I don’t do friendships. Never have done. Friends, I think, are nothing but trouble. Acquaintances, on the other hand, come with discernible benefits and little in the way of downside. I wait for my acquaintance to lay down his towel and plunk his ample hairy arse on it, then I get straight down to brass tacks. When I’ve finished explaining the whole Mr Two Fucks thing and the enormous pressure I am under vis-à-vis my cousin, my acquaintance sighs, says he’ll see what he can do. It’ll cost, he says. Of course, I say, consider yourself to be in the possession of a blank cheque. Whatever it takes, I add. Whatever it takes? he says. Whatever, I confirm. Which is when my acquaintance asks me if I’d consider being his plus-one for a gay black-tie event. I didn’t know my acquaintance was gay and I say as much. My acquaintance says he isn’t, that it's an undercover thing. I think about it. How difficult could it be to pretend to be gay for a night? Done, I say declaratively. Good, says my acquaintance.

So I go to the gay black-tie event, which turns out to be a lot of fun, perhaps too much fun. My acquaintance plays the part of a gay man really well and I do too, if I don’t say so myself. Maybe I even ‘am’ gay, I find myself thinking at one point. Anyway, at the end of the evening my acquaintance slips me a package, which I tuck into the inside pocket of my jacket. Thanks, I say. Don’t mention it, says my acquaintance, and with that he disappears into the gay maelstrom. I watch him cavorting for a bit and then I slope off.

When I get home, I switch the telly on and watch an episode of Knight Rider, which calms me down a bit. Then, tentatively, I retrieve the package. It takes me a while to undo the fastenings, but in the end I manage to get at what’s inside, which turns out to be a tiny gun, so tiny I can barely get my finger over the trigger. I load the mice-dropping bullets into the cylinder, walk over to the hallway mirror and mime shooting the gun at myself. I look preposterous, I think. As I’m trying to remove my finger from whatever you call that bit of a gun that houses the trigger, I accidentally fire the gun. The bullet leaves a big aperture in the plasterboard wall, big enough for me to see that this gun, ridiculously proportioned as it may be, is more than ample for my needs. Mr Two Fucks, I either think or say out loud, your days are numbered my friend. Then the doorbell goes. It’s a llama-spitting sound that I used to find hilarious, but these days it’s just plain annoying. I put the gun in the top drawer of the walnut credenza by the moss-art wall. The llama spits again. All right, all right, I say, I’m coming! I open the front door to find my cousin on my doorstep, plus two puce-faced henchmen, hardened drinker types, bookended either side of him. I have an urge to shut the door in their faces, but I suppress that urge. I invite them in, offer coffee. What kind of coffee have you got? says my cousin. Instant, I say. My cousin shakes his head, looks disgusted. No thanks, he says. I’d forgotten he was a coffee snob. I say I’ll just pop to the convenience store (which is so convenient it’s in my neighbour’s living room, my neighbour being of an entrepreneurial bent) and get us the real stuff and my cousin’s face brightens like a Caribbean sky after a midday squall. Make yourself at home, I say gesturing with an angled palm, I won’t be long. When I get back my cousin is slouched on the sofa. The henchmen are standing statue-like a few feet behind him. Their eyeballs swivel in my direction. I whip up a cafetiere, wait a few minutes for percolation purposes and then I pour my cousin a coffee into a pond-green mug. I hand it to him. I ask the henchmen if they’d like one, but they don’t respond, so I figure they’re fine. I pour myself a cup and go sit on the wingchair opposite the sofa. How’s things? I say to my cousin. Not good, he says. Oh? I say. Yeah, having some personnel issues as it happens. Can’t find reliable workers these days. Fucking Gen Zers, he adds, think the world owes them a living in exchange for doing precisely nothing. You got that right, I say, because he has, everyone knows that Gen Z is the absolute pits of a generation. My cousin laughs, then immediately a serious look sets into his blancmange of a face. Thing is, he says, we’re gonna need you to step up. Step up? I say. Yeah, he says. Then he explains that there’s a mole, someone from a rival clan embedded in the organisation I am pretending to work for. We’re gonna need you to eliminate that mole. I see, I say. And who is that mole, might I enquire? To my surprise he tells me it’s Mr Two Fucks. He doesn’t call him that because that’s not his real name (obviously). Without thinking, I say that’s fine. My cousin looks surprised. No doubt he was ready to apply strong-arm tactics, remind me about Matilda, mime slitting his throat to imply the actual slitting of mine. My cousin says naturally he’ll supply me with something to get the job done. I am about to say that won’t be necessary, when I stop myself. I don’t need my cousin knowing about the infinitesimal gun. Besides, I’m interested to see what he has in mind. My cousin nods at henchman number one, who nods at henchman number two, who pulls a magnum revolver out of his coat pocket, who hands it to henchman number one, who hands it to my cousin, who hands it to me. I feel like I should hand the gun to someone down the line but there isn’t anyone to hand it to so I don’t. I ask my cousin if the gun is loaded and he says you’d better believe it is. Good, I say. My cousin shoots me a look that suggests, strongly suggests, he is suspicious of my insouciance, which I have to admit borders on the pathological. Fuck, I contradictorily think. But then the look transmogrifies into a smile, which is the prelude to my cousin regaling me with light-hearted picaresque stories featuring his henchmen in improbable or maybe incongruous scenarios. I laugh at all the right moments, which I can tell my cousin appreciates. Fun fact about my cousin: before he became a drug kingpin he used to be a stand-up comedian. He was quite good actually, could have gone all the way, according to my mum anyway, who is no stranger to the performing arts and knows more than a thing or two about what it takes to make it.

Still, the fact is my cousin didn’t make it as a stand-up comedian. For whatever reason or maybe for no reason, he ended up running a criminal enterprise. Fate is capricious, I think, like a zig-zagging gnat or maybe a sub-atomic particle being both here and there contemporaneously is a better analogy. I double-click on that thought and find myself, inevitably perhaps, questioning the existence of free will. Things spiral from there. At some point during my reverie, my cousin finishes his stand-up routine. It catches me off guard and I continue laughing for longer than seems appropriate, as if my laughing were fake or canned, as I believe they say in the business that my mum knows only too well. The henchmen glower at me. Enough with the laughing already their facial expressions seem to me to be saying. But my cousin appears unperturbed, is perhaps even lapping it up, so I continue laughing unabatedly. What do the henchmen know? I think. Fucking statues. Only when I am good and ready do I stop laughing. At which point, my cousin gets all serious again, says I have two days to get it done. Capeesh? I nod my head emphatically so there can be no doubt of my having capeeshed. Then I see my cousin and the henchmen out (one walks in front of my cousin, the other behind), close the door and sigh out a long lament. I run a bath, light a few candles, have a soak. I try to daydream about happy things, but my mind won’t play ball. I get out of the bath and pace around my flat naked and dripping. Eventually I get tired and I curl up into a hedgehog ball on the sofa. I fall asleep. I dream that I am a stand-up comedian. I tell a long, complicated joke of the Jewish variety but when I get to the punchline I can’t remember it. Fuck, I think. My blood pressure soars, my heart skitters, my mind empties of its contents as if it were a bowel expunging effluvium. The audience assails me with llama spit. Just when I think I can’t take a single moment more of this excruciating scene, I remember the punchline, but when I deliver it I realise the joke has misfired (badly). Luckily, the dream folds into itself at that point and I become a qualia-free void for the remainder of my sleep.

The next day I am up early. I wash down a couple of century eggs with a few glugs of bubble-gum soda pop. Then I smoke the first and last cigarette of the day on the tessellated patio. There are slugs everywhere, which I could take to be a bad omen but choose not to for obvious reasons. A crow swoops down, pincers a fat slug in its beak and hops away into the hedgerow. More crows swoop down. Soon I am surrounded by crows. I could take it to be a bad omen but choose not to for obvious reasons. The crows gobble up all the slugs and then they fly away, leaving me to enjoy the last few drags of my ciggie in peace. Reflexively, a story unfolds in my mind, a tragedy masquerading as a comedy, the kind of story you could imagine being made into a movie, an indie movie in which the actors are plucked from obscurity only to be plonked right back there after the movie bombs at the box office in spite, or perhaps because, of the critical acclaim it receives. I make a note to write this story down when, not if, I return to my life’s calling, aka being an unemployed writer with zero chance of making it (according to my mum anyway, who is no stranger to the life of letters, and knows a thing or two, I hate but have to admit, about what it takes to make it as a writer). I flick the cigarette butt over the fence into my neighbour’s garden, where I imagine it nestling on top of a veritable mountain of fag butts. I go inside and make a beeline for the bathroom where I scrub my genitals vigorously with a stainless-steel scourer, spray my armpits with aftershave, gargle with meths. I put on yesterday’s clothes, which smell just about tolerable, and slip the magnum revolver into my underpants. Right, I say to myself in the hallway mirror, let’s do this.

When I get to work, I am immediately accosted by my boss. He wants to know why the sales figures in a report I prepared don’t reconcile to the management accounts. This can’t keep happening, he says. I apologise. I say it won’t. I say I will endeavour to be more careful in the future. Behind my boss’s shoulder I see Mr Two Fucks smirking in that irritating way of his. Smile fucker smile, I think whilst eliciting a smile of my own, a sickly sweet one that makes my boss more than a little uncomfortable, hence why (I suppose) he toddles off muttering something about not being able to get the staff these days.

I send Mr Two Fucks a meeting request. I see a look of pure bafflement on his face when the request pops up on his screen – I’ve never invited him to a meeting before and he is obviously unsure of the protocol. He declines the meeting with the simple message: sorry, busy. I immediately email Mr Two Fucks and say he doesn’t look busy from where I’m sitting. This time his face registers anger with hints of alarm. He walks over to my desk, saunters really, asks me whether we have a situation. I play dumb. I say not as far as I am concerned. Mr Two Fucks frowns, this isn’t in his playbook that much is quite clear. He goes back to his desk and kind of shrivels up in his chair like a timelapse of a grape morphing into a raisin. For the rest of the day, he just sits there scowling, tip-tapping on his keyboard, no doubt trying his best to sabotage more of my work, which is just fine by me. I keep a close eye, bide my time, wait for him to up and leave, but he doesn’t budge from his chair. Even when everyone else has scarpered for the day – apart from my boss of course, who makes a religion out of staying late – he remains in situ. Stubborn fuck, I think. Eventually, my need for a bowel movement overcomes me and I repair to the toilet, where I am forced to use a cubicle that I will refrain from describing. When I get back, Mr Two Fucks is gone. I grab my coat and hotfoot it out of there. My boss shouts after me about something, but I pretend like I haven’t heard. I can deal with that schlub tomorrow, I think.

I exit the building and run to the bus stop, where I find Mr Two Fucks boarding his bus. I make a leap for it, but the doors shut in my face. I shoot the driver a desperate pleading look, but I can tell immediately that he’s one of those officious types who weaponises pettifogging rules for sadistic pleasure. I run to the next bus that’s just pulled in, push my way to the front of the queue, clamber up the steps. Follow that bus! I implore, jabbing an index finger in the direction of the receding rear-end of Mr Two Fucks’ bus. Come again? says the bus driver. I said, I say, follow that bus. Again I gesticulate which bus I mean. The bus driver thinks for a moment, as if he is pondering a matter of the utmost metaphysical importance, before telling me to sling my fucking hook. Oh yeah? I say. Make me! Naturally, I have retrieved the revolver from my underpants and I am now blithely pointing it at the bus driver’s TipEx-white face. Right you are, he says. The doors hiss shut and we lurch off. The bus driver was, I soon realise, born for this precise moment. He weaves in and out of traffic like a seamstress threading a needle, runs the lights, hoots like a maniac at cyclists who have the temerity to cross our path. In next to no time we have caught the other bus up. I tell the bus driver to tail the other bus from here, covertly, no dramatics. The bus driver mutters something about it being hard to be covert when you’re driving a bus. He has a point, I think, a good one, but I keep this to myself. Fourteen stops later, Mr Two Fucks alights from his bus. I get my bus driver to pull over. Nice work, I say. Thanks, he says and I can see he means it more than he has ever meant anything in his life. Then I hop off the bus and follow Mr Two Fucks as he wends his way through a maze of alleyways until finally he comes to a stop outside a sumo-squat building with grilled windows and thick veins of ivy snaking their way up the dun concrete walls. He makes as if to enter that building, but then he decides against it for some reason and carries on walking, only now at a much brisker pace, bordering on a gallop in fact. Fit as I am (a genetic quirk rather than the result of exercise, which I loathe with a singular passion), I struggle to keep up. At some point, I fall far enough behind that I lose sight of Mr Two Fucks. I keep going, trying to guess which alleyway he may have gone down, but it’s no use. I’ve lost him, I think. Handily enough, I find myself outside a wine bar. I decide there and then to have a glass of wine, gather my wits, plan my next move vis-à-vis Mr Two Fucks.

The barman is keen to impress upon me the eclectic variety of wines on offer. I let him spout his soporific spiel until I can take no more and I hold a hand up. House white, I say, make it a large one, I’ve had quite the day. House white? the barman says with such derision I am almost tempted to whip my gun out. But I don’t do that. Instead, I take his derision like a man and I go sip my wine (which tastes delectable) standing by the window. It doesn’t take me long to realise that no amount of wine sipping is going to lead to my locating Mr Two Fucks anytime soon. So I figure I might as well make the best of a bad situation. I gulp the wine, order another one. This time, to make amends with the barman, I choose a wine he recommends, which isn’t cheap or palatable, but I make out to the barman that it’s the finest wine I’ve tasted in yonks and I hide my disgust at the swingeing cost of a glass of it behind a veneer of insouciance (predictably enough). Turns out once you get the barman off the subject of the wine list that he’s an interesting guy, the kind of guy who knows how to tell a joke and doesn’t forget punchlines. If I wasn’t so wedded to my principle of spurning friendships, I could even see him panning out as a friend. At the end of his shift, he asks me if I fancy going on to a place he knows around the corner. That is, if you fancy another drink? he says. I purse my lips and inhale ostentatiously through my nose to signal deliberation, even if I am in fact only simulating deliberation, which is something I do from time to time. Yep, why not, I say after a while, you only live once and all that. Of course, it is entirely a matter of conjecture as to whether one lives one life or not, but it seems pedantic to add this qualifier to what is, after all, a well-known idiom. The barman, who will henceforth be known as Colin, says great, that he’ll just go freshen up. When he reappears he is attired in what I suppose you would call a clubbing outfit. His face is all glittery and he’s wearing a ludicrously thick-rimmed pair of sunglasses. Ready? he says. Uh-huh, I say.

We walk to this so-called place around the corner, which turns out to be miles away. I join the back of the queue intending to do my queuing duty with the stoicism inculcated in me by the so-called culture of the nation I am a (notional) citizen of, even though deep down I am in fact the sort of person who likes nothing better than to jump a queue. Like Colin, it turns out, who yanks me out of the queue and indicates for me to follow. He marches to the entrance, high-fives the burly brute of a bouncer, who undoes the rope for the VIP entrance and waves us through with a little penguin-like gesture. Another bouncer pats us down. When he pats my nether regions he asks me whether I have a gun down there. Or are you just pleased to see me? he adds. The bouncer cracks up at his own joke. He laughs so hard he kind of has a mini seizure, which I take to be my cue to slip into the nightclub, which by the way is in a disused abattoir, or so says the highly tattooed coat attendant.

The music (unvarnished techno if I am not mistaken) is too loud for conversation, so we slam a few Sambucas and then head over to the dancefloor, which is a writhing mass of jerking limbs. Colin shuffles his feet languidly, nods his head in a syncopated fashion. I try my best to follow his lead, but I just can’t dance that badly, so in the end I let my body make the shapes it wants to. I know I shouldn’t give into my body’s demands, last thing I need is to draw attention to myself, but I just can’t help it. Before I know quite what’s happening, I am on the floor breakdancing as if it’s 1985 all over again. A crowd forms around me, starts clapping, eggs me on. Fuck yeah, I think. I tick off a list of moves, in ascending order of difficulty, culminating of course in an airflare, which I am pleasantly surprised I am still a master of. When I flip back onto my feet, I look up to the DJ pulpit intending to pay my respects with a hand gesture, a thumbs up or something of that ilk. And that is when I realise the DJ is none other than Mr Two Fucks (or his doppelganger, I suppose I can’t rule that out). For a moment, we stare at each other, trying to process what our visual cortices are saying is true but can’t be. Then the moment, like the countless others that preceded it, is over and I am rushing towards Mr Two Fucks with a wolf-like intensity and he is fleeing the scene with gazelle-like rapidity. I chase him through the club and out the exit and down the road, but in next to no time he manages to give me the slip again. Sneaky fuck, I say. Sorry pal? says a guy who just happens to be walking past me, what was that you just said? The guy is wider than he is tall and has a face like pummelled pizza dough. I didn’t say anything, I say, shaking my head for emphasis. (I hate to gaslight people but sometimes you just have to.) Pizza-dough guy, who I can now clearly see is heavily intoxicated and on the verge of committing some sort of violent act, takes a faltering step towards me. I’ll give you sneaky fuck! he slurs, pulling out a flick-knife, which he duly flicks. The blade gleams in the light cascading down from the sodium lamp that hangs above us as if suspended from the neck of a giraffe. I am about to retrieve my gun from my (potentially soiled) underpants, when I hear someone calling my name. My eyes follow the sound. It’s Colin, who else. I wave at him. Everything all right? he shouts from across the street. Is it? I ask pizza-dough man, who looks at me, then looks at Colin, then me again, before saying, yeah we’re good. I cross the road to join Colin, who immediately wants to know what my beef was with the DJ. My beef? I say. Yes, he says, I mean why did he leg it out of the club and why did you chase after him? I tell Colin it’s a private matter and I can’t go into it. Is that right? he says. Afraid so, I say. He seems to accept that or if he doesn’t he does a good job of pretending to accept that. We go back to the club but I’m just not feeling it, so I tell Colin I’m gonna skedaddle. He tries to persuade me to go to another place he knows, apparently just around the corner, but I am not in the mood to be persuaded to change my mind (which, in any case, is the kind of mind that once it is made up stays that way regardless). I say my goodbyes and then I grab my coat and leave. Actually, first I go to the toilet and relieve my bladder, which has been nagging at me for a while I belatedly realise, and then I leave.

I summon a robotaxi to take me home. The robotaxi relentlessly tries to cross-sell various unnecessary products and services as it glides though the city like an ice skate and I pretend to be asleep (not that that deters the verbally incontinent robotaxi in the slightest). Back at the ranch, I watch an episode of Prisoner Cell Block H to calm me down. But it doesn’t calm me down, so I resort to dabbing the hash concentrate I’ve been saving for the right moment, which is now. After three or four chugs on the alien-skull dab rig I watch an episode of Minder and suddenly all is right with the world, notwithstanding the Matilda situation obviously, that and the inextricably entwined Mr Two Fucks situation.

I repose in a state of monged-out bliss until I pass out part-way through an episode of The Krypton Factor.

The next day I get into the office before anyone else, not including my boss who makes a religion out of starting early. I crack my knuckles Charlie Sheen-style as I wait sat¹ at my desk for Mr Two Fucks to show up. Minutes tick after tock without any sign of him. By the time lunchtime has swung around, I have given up all hope of ever seeing him again. Not knowing what else to do I turn to ChatGPT for guidance. It goes without saying that first of all I use ChatGPT to frame a suitably contextualised prompt based on the facts as I see them. Then I feed that prompt right back into ChatGPT and wait for it to do its thing. But the response I receive is totally generic and so ingratiating I can barely stand to read it. I tell ChatGPT the response is no good, that I need actual actionable advice here, not some vapid simulacrum of actionable advice. I explain it is a matter of life and death, not just for me, but Matilda. This time the response I get is totally cogent and, dare I say it, ingenious. The cloying tone still lurks behind the words, but I dismiss that for what it is: a distraction. I immediately create an anonymous account on Facebook using the AI hackware that ChatGPT has graciously coded into existence. Then I post the following on some Facebook group for rave afficionados (as selected by ChatGPT of course) underneath an image of a bug-eyed raver with sallow skin and a Cheshire-cat grin (created by ChatGPT naturally): SOS! Owing to a last-minute cancellation, bona fide techno DJ needed for sell-out gig tonight. Top dollar paid for the right person, money no object etc! Only genuine inquiries please. I don’t know why I added that last bit about inquiries needing to be genuine, it is kind of implied after all, but it just seems like the right thing to say. I probably should have just used the ChatGPT script, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to. With that done, I nip to my favourite coffee shop – which is in the bowels of a book shop that never seems to have any customers, unlike the coffee shop which is always heaving – and order a cappuccino. Heavy on the froth, I say to the barista, and none of that fake milk malarkey either. The barista smiles knowingly, as if we go way back and we’re sharing an in-joke, which is fine by me, just as long as I get an adequately frothy cappuccino made with milk that has been extruded from a cow’s udder. I take my coffee back to the office and immediately log on to see if any fish have taken the bait. Have they ever! I am blown away by the sheer volume of DMs. How can there be this many techno DJs available at the drop of a hat? I think. I trawl through the prolix self-aggrandising messages, assiduously clicking on the links to one SoundCloud mix after another (having slipped my AirPods in of course), none of which sound like techno, trance maybe at a push, even deep house with industrial elements, but techno no. I am about to log off and reformulate my ChatGPT prompt (or have ChatGPT reformulate it) to make it even more context specific and parlay this into a new, improved plan (courtesy of ChatGPT), when a DM whooshes right on in to my inbox. The message, from a certain @terrence_tec35, is as laconic as it is cryptic. I know straight away it’s Mr Two Fucks. I click on the proffered SoundCloud link and sure enough the mix identifies him as the DJ from last night. Game on, I think. I get ChatGPT to spin up a fake website for the gig and a fake influencer to peddle some fake teasers on TikTok and Instagram. Then I DM @terrence_tec35 as follows: Rocking mix, you’re totally hired! What’s your fee? I also provide him with the links to the website and the teaser videos. I get a response instantaneously, like a nano second after I hit send on my DM, informing me his fee is £5,000 for a two-hour set, 30% upfront, and outlining a list of equipment essentials I’ll need to provide. I am about to haggle over the deposit, but then I realise it’s fine, that I’ll be getting my money back soon enough. So I wire him the funds to the bank account he’s provided me the details of and then DM him with precise instructions on how to get to the venue and what time to arrive. I tell him we’re all good re: equipment and that I’ve wired him the deposit. He replies, almost before I’ve even sent my message, as follows: good, thanks, hasta noche. I tell my boss I’m not feeling very well and although I can see he thinks I am faking it, he nods when I ask if I can go home early, the faintest of nods it has to be said, but a nod is a nod at the end of the day.

As soon as I get in, I put on my security guard costume, which I sometimes use for kinky purposes with Matilda. Seeing as I have a bit of time on my hands, I write a short poem, which doesn’t rhyme, make any sense or sound at all poetic. In other words, it’s a decent poem, one for the chapbook that I am intending to release posthumously.

I take a robotaxi to the disused iron works. It drops me off at the entrance and wishes me a pleasant evening. I say thanks and shut the door before it asks me if I want to buy anything before I go. I wait inside the abandoned security hut. At some point, a Waymo pulls up. Mr Two Fucks gets out and walks over. I pull my coat collars up, peaked cap down low over my forehead. He knocks on the window and I open the hatch. He asks me to confirm whether this is the venue for the techno extravaganza. I’m one of the DJs, he clarifies. With a roving nod I gesticulate that he is free to enter the grounds. He looks at the disused iron works, which are as lifeless as a corpse, frowns, rubs his chin, looks at me, whereupon I poke my gun through the hatch. With my free hand, I take my cap off, smooth down my collars. Mr Two Fucks blanches. He tries to speak but it comes out in spurts of mangled syntax that I can’t make head or tail of. I interject. I say I know all about his shenanigans and who he works for. I say I have no choice in the matter, and that I am very sorry, but I’m afraid I am going to have to – . But I can’t finish the sentence. Why, I think, why can’t I finish the sentence? And then it hits me. The sheer ludicrousness of the situation. Me, a failed writer, acting like a trope of a gangster from one of my own derivative gangster stories. I say I’m sorry. I say I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately and I assure him the last thing I am is a cold-blooded murderer. The gin blossoms return to Mr Two Fucks’ cheeks. He asks if he can join me in the hut and I shrug in such a way it implies I am the right side of indifferent as to whether he joins me in the hut. So he does. He sits down on the swivel chair, swivels a few times, then whips out a tartan hip flask, takes a swig, passes it to me. I deliberate for a moment before saying: sure. Because why the fuck not. I take a pull and some sort of potato-based spirit hits me at the back of my throat and then dribbles a fire down my oesophagus where it coalesces in a firepit in my stomach. I smack my lips and return the flask. You know, says Mr Two Fucks, I’ve been under a lot of pressure myself. Contrary to what you might think, I am not an out-and-out criminal, a petty criminal sure, but who isn’t these days? I nod my concurrence. No doubt you’ve been extorted into this sordid line of work, just as I have been extorted into it, I say. Got it in one, says Mr Two Fucks. He is about to say something else, but he stops himself, as if unsure whether he should say something that cannot subsequently be unsaid. Then he tries again and this time after a barely perceptible stutter, the words gush forth as if from a geyser, words that hack a pathway through the tangled thicket of his life story². He starts from his first memory, which he claims was formed the precise moment he entered the world (through the mummy chute as he somewhat cringingly puts it), and finishes with the present moment. It’s a classic tale, a hero’s journey kind of a thing, with undercurrents of a dark inversion, full of pathos, absurd interludes and dramatic intrigue. When he’s finished, he goes limp, as if the recounting of his life story has taken so much out of him it has almost brought an end to that story. But then he has a few glugs of whatever is in the hip flask and he seems much more like himself again, i.e., the gin blossoms are back to their scarlet best. Wow, that’s quite a tale! I say. You got that right, says Mr Two Fucks, smiling in such a way that it suddenly becomes clear to me what I need to do next. What we need to do next. And when I say we I mean me and Mr Two Fucks, not me and the other dissociative alters that rent real estate in my so-called mind. I lay out my plan for Mr Two Fucks as if it’s a red carpet and he walks right along it like a vainglorious VIP. Which is to say he shares my belief that this is precisely what we need to do next.

The plan – which naturally I get ChatGPT to hone, and then implement using agentic features that have only just been released – works like a charm. The end result? My cousin’s clan and the clan that put Mr Two Fucks up to no good cancel each other out in a hail of retributive bullets. My cousin survives, but barely. (His destiny is to spend the rest of his days in a special home for people with locked-in syndrome.) I am reunited with Matilda. We make up for lost time by copulating frequently, sometimes even three times in the one day. I quit my job, as does Mr Two Fucks. I take great pleasure in explaining to my boss that he can stick his sorry excuse for a job up his anus. He takes it in his stride and wishes me the very best and I wind up feeling guilty. I say I’m sorry for being rude and he says it’s fine, that he knows he’s a dick and impossible to work for and that I have nothing to apologise for. Which is touching, rejuvenates my faith in humanity, makes me realise I need to not judge people so readily. We hug it out and I promise to stay in touch, which strikes a bum note I fear, but my boss, sorry ex-boss, is good enough to promise to stay in touch too.

For a while, I continue where I left off, namely writing without any hope or intention of ever being published. Mr Two Fucks takes a job as an autoglass technician. He pretends to enjoy it, but I can tell he is miserable. I confront him and he confesses that he is struggling to find meaning in his work. I mean I totally get that I provide an important service, he says, that people will always need their broken windscreens replaced, or preferably repaired since this is the cheaper and more environmentally sensitive option, but on a sliding scale of societal good, I just don’t see this as mattering all that much, you know? I say I do. I say I am not surprised he feels this way. You’re not? he says. No, I say, it’s pretty obvious to me that you are not an autoglass repair guy kind of a guy. And I mean that, I say, in a good way. Thanks bud, he says, sighing, if only I had a calling like you. Like me? I say. You know, being a writer and shit, he says. I tell him it’s less of a calling and more of a path of least resistance kind of a thing. But at least you find meaning in what you write, right? he says. Right, I say whilst thinking he couldn’t be more wrong, that it’s been fifteen years since I wrote a meaningful sentence, maybe even longer than that, that my writing gets more leaden (and trite) by the day. I decide then and there that enough is enough of this ridiculous pipe dream. My mum had been right all along, I think, I was wasting my time pursuing a career I was temperamentally ill-suited to. And then I think: what the hell else had my mother been right about? It scares me to countenance that thought, so I immediately banish it to my unconscious, where it will no doubt fester and lead to complex behavioural issues over time.

----

Anyhow, fast forward from there and you arrive here. The set-up is as follows: Mr Two Fucks, Mrs Two Fucks, myself, Matilda and Colin are living in a palm-fringed nudist colony somewhere in the tropics. How Mr Two Fucks ended up getting married is a convoluted story, the summary version of which is he falls in love with, and then has his heart lacerated (or is it macerated?) by, a woman he meets not long after we move to the nudist colony, he is comforted by that woman’s sister who over time insinuates herself into his affections until he comes to realise that she is the one true love of his life, hence why he marries her (after she proposes), in a gunshot ceremony on the beach officiated by a stark-naked priest (save for the dog collar). It turns out, of course, that she isn’t the one true love of his life, but this story has to draw the line somewhere when it comes to backfilling details, otherwise it will never end and, as everyone knows, a story, like life itself, must come to an end sooner or later. But the time is not propitious because this misbegotten story has not yet reached its so-called denouement.

To wit.

Besides getting married, Mr Two Fucks sets up a tiki bar using his share of the funds we purloined from my cousin’s clan. He installs Colin as the head (and only) barman and himself as the resident DJ. After a slow start, the bar starts to get some traction with the middle-aged nudist crowd, who are attracted I suppose to the banging techno, that and the reasonably priced cocktails (all made from some potato-based spirit that Mr Two Fucks brews himself). Matilda starts a support group for victims of abduction, but it turns out that nudists tend not to have been victims of abduction, so she pivots to starting a support group for victims of gymnophobia, which needless to say works a treat. For my part, I decide to give up on writing, which is surprisingly easy to do. For a while, I drift aimlessly around the nudist colony in search of a purpose, a reason to exist, as they say or I think they say. But I pretty soon realise that this is no way to go about things and that, furthermore, there is no such thing as purpose, which is in fact a delusion, a widespread one that yokes the populace to the economic system, the vitality of which is the ultimate desideratum of human existence (another delusion of course). Once that is clear in my mind, life becomes easy. I start getting up late, eating lunch for breakfast, watching iconic television programmes from my youth. Matilda is too busy helping nudists process the trauma inflicted by societal gymnophobia (which is widespread and deeply entrenched), to notice my abrupt change in behaviour. Which suits me just fine, last thing I need is Matilda on my case.

One day, just after opening my first beer of the day, I decide to not watch Seinfeld for a change (I’ve been bingeing it for weeks). But what can I watch? I wonder. My mind trundles through a rolodex of options languidly to no avail. Then I scroll through the thumbnails on YouTube, but it’s no good, ennui it seems has me by the throat. I am about to give up and shotgun my beer when I stumble across a video entitled ‘Top 5 Breakdancing Movies of All Time’. Hm, I think, this might just be worth watching. I tell my so-called smart television to play the video, which is narrated by an ersatz AI voice that reminds me of a former colleague of mine who thought he was God’s gift to presentations (he wasn’t, needless to say). After watching the video, I watch it again to be sure. That confirms it, I say. Confirms what? says Matilda who I had forgotten was sat on the saffron sofa next to me. Confirms, I say, what my purpose is. I thought you said, she says, purpose is a made-up concept used by those who own the means of production to mollify those who don’t. I did, I say. So what gives? she asks. I guess (and here I pause), I was wrong? I say. Wrong? she says incredulously. Wrong, I confirm. Matilda takes a selfie with me to capture the moment for posterity.

So I start a breakdancing school, which is an immediate hit. Nudists right across the spectrum of nudist society turn up in their droves eager to learn the art form. Some of them have a lot of potential and go on to scale heights that surpass anything I am capable of. Others not so much. Eventually, I realise that my work here is done and it’s time to hand the running of the school over to my protégés. Who will no doubt take it to the next level, I say to Mr Two Fucks. He sips his highball thoughtfully. Makes sense, he says, but how will you fill the breakdancing-school-sized hole in your life? That, my friend (and in case you hadn’t realised he is a friend), is the million-dollar question, I say. Hm, says Mr Two Fucks. You know, I am in a bit of a hiatus myself. Maybe we can solve each other’s problem? I take a fulsome swig of the highball, burp, wipe my goatee reflexively. Go on, I say. And so over several more highballs we hash out a plan that both of us agree is ludicrous in the extreme and for that very reason precisely the right thing to do next with our lives.

Mr Two Fucks hands the running of his bar over to Colin, who loses no time in introducing an extremely eclectic wine list and replacing the tacky tiki décor with the refined accoutrements of a Parisian wine bar. Then, using funds secured against the collateral of my cousin’s flamingo-pink mansion, we lease a modular office and have it craned onto a bluff overlooking the turquoise bay. We install a Starlink Mini, buy a couple of svelte MacBooks, lease a fuck load of compute from a nuke-powered server farm. What we lack in coding smarts we more than make up for in bloody-minded doggedness. Within a month we have developed artificial general intelligence, which we release to the world via a UI that is so minimalist it consists solely of a blinking cursor. The world shrugs with indifference. We try our best to drum up some interest on the podcast circuit, but it’s soon clear we’re wasting our time. Undeterred, we move onto the next phase of our plan, which (high-level summary) involves using artificial general intelligence to engender artificial superintelligence. From there, things spiral pretty quickly into ontological mayhem, the precursor it turns out, to an internecine global conflict in which a vast locust swarm of drones blots the sun out of the sky, shrouding humanity in an all-encompassing darkness.