• • • THIS NOVEL WAS WRITTEN AND SET IN FORTHXE H ILL AUSTRALIA DERISION A SOCIAL JUSTICE NIGHTMARE GENE HEAD COPYRIGHT Derision is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, businesses, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental . Copyright © 2021 by Gene Head All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval systems, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law . PRINT B UTTON PRESS ® Mooloolaba QLD 4557 , Australia Paperback ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 0-4 Paperback - Special Edition ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 5-9 Kindle ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 1-1 ePub ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 2-8 iBook ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 3-5 pdf. ISBN: 978-0-6452504- 4-2 info@ printbuttonpress.com www. Read- Free- Books.com First edition July 2021 published by Print Button Press® Australia CONTENTS • • • 1 1. Fireball 15 2. Awaken 17 3. Pollen 19 4. Training 22 5. 1030 Hours 27 6. 1130 Hours 30 7. 1215 Hours 32 8. 1450 Hours 34 9. 1655 Hours 38 10. Stalking 41 11. Pillory 43 12. Olde Worlde 45 13. Peanut 49 14. Scrutiny 53 15. The Smartest Men In The Bar 58 16. Mandate 67 17. Confounded 74 18. Big Boobs 85 19. Notorious 87 20. Ain't nothin' but mammals 89 21. Eye Spy 93 22. Japan Man 96 23. Borax 100 24. Forum 107 25. Absolution 120 26. Order 122 27. Essential Cloth Cap 123 28. Pitchfork 128 29. Monkey Wagon 134 30. Winner Winner Chicken Dinner 141 31. Goofballs 151 32. Wrecking Ball 154 33. Doctors 156 34. Nurses 157 35. Dejection 158 36. Boot 159 37. Superannuated-Man 166 38. If it’s to be, it’s up to me 170 39. Pound • Kilo • Stone 174 40. Big Manboobs 177 41. Balloon 180 42. Mob 182 43. Brief • Fake • Temporary 191 44. Kamahl’s Return 193 Acknowledgments 195 About the Writer 197 Also by Gene Head 199 For Leonie If it’s not a stingray, it’s some other damned thing, and you still play in the water braver than me You are free, and that is why you are lost . —F RANZ KAFKA 1 FIREBALL itrus tang moves off pines east of our cricket C pitch and a windbreak caused by the forest, strong and tall, warms us on the grass. A slow tide of townies walks on taupe stones that dot the grass, and the field is trodden and brownish and bankrupt. Forthxe Hill’s officials have whipped my friend Kamahl and set him on fire, blazing orange on the horizon and he’s slapping his flames. He runs toward the mouth of a spinning abyss fifty yards away in a pink, purple sunset. Kamahl’s writhing doesn’t awaken pity in the crowd who record his death on palm-sized screens. I wonder if he’ll collapse before he gets to the whirlpool in the 16 | GENE HEAD sky. We’ll need to spade up his flesh and wash the grass so kids can play without coming up grubby in blood stained shirts. Sunlight dims and we are red in Kamahl’s fireball flicker. Faces are blue behind phones . He enters the vortex and I consider leaving with him. The mouth closes and steals my buddy from his kingdom. People upload to their cursed broadcast channels and don’t talk as they leave . I am afraid . 2 A W A K E N barely recall Kamahl now. It’s been a year, and I I muse on a fuzzy echo and scratch my head over it. Twelve months without him. My claw marks down their sides. I wind the crown of my watch in reverse, wishing for his return. Searching for cassette tapes and pocket organizers. Tech before it was terror. Before it listened to our secrets and sex—and sold them back to us . There’s pain under a left rib. I drink too much . Waves pound sand and beach a liver by jellyfish — 18 | GENE HEAD fat and sad and sun-beaten and stranded there in the sun . It’s mine , it’s turned black . A D ANVERS C ARROT , tall as a broom stick, is in the room. He says livers grow on the right hand side and that I have fish lips and calls me a boring prat. Mr. Carrot is commonplace and unremarkable with plain-Jane orange skin flicking back the usual green hair. He doesn’t have ears . The carrot is soaked in convention and strides with an undeserved self worth. He says I’m inflaming a ruptured spleen rubbing here . He spins on my desk chair and it’s annoying . Death creeps nearby, but he’s noiseless and easier to suffer. He’s lollygagging in a corner of the room and I don’t watch . Rose turns next to me under sheets. She has a clubfoot and is skinny and ugly, and I am ugly too. I’m midlife, and that’s old, and a beer belly grew on me this year. I need to sleep with landmines like Rose now . She’s a gimp, but she’s spry. Inside of her eyes are velvet curtains blazing in a house falling to stumps and ash . I don’t love Rose . Dead petals of clothing strew the carpet. She needs help to pay her rent. A third of my nest egg blooms from her handbag like a gerbera daisy . 3 P O L L E N walk on Valerian Avenue which will take me to I Forthxe Hill’s business district. The air is soupy with yellow pollen, and I cannot see far through it. The pollen is going in my mouth. I’m walking to a college, breathing the clag, covered and crusty like a dry lemon. Forthxe Hill swarms with bees and is exquisite. A four-wheel drive is passing me, and the passenger hangs from his window and pollen cakes on his face . “Gay shoes,” he says . I’m examining my shoes that are red and wondering if it was a mistake to use fashion to fit in. They drive further and their laughter fades. I 20 | GENE HEAD see the college and it’s an orange building shaped like a sphere, just as Miss Peanut had described. Peanut works Saturdays as the college receptionist. I’d flirted with her on my enrolment phone call . “It’s round and orange .” “What is, darling ?” “The building. Like a piece of fruit !” “Is that so?” I’d asked. “You mean like the ones I eat for lunch, only really big ?” “Right— exactly !” She was an excitable teenager. The hallmark was the way she’d leap in her seat when I bounced conversation. Enjoying her Minnie Mouse voice, I’d imagined her puffy face pushed like dough from a cookie cutter . “There’s a dress code, Mr. Brenner,” she’d told me. “No shirts with mary-ja-wanna leaves on them. Covered shoes, and no football shorts. Guys’ balls fall out of those when they sit .” “That’s a terrible thing to witness,” I’d said . “Okie-dokie, you’re registered. The class is on Monday .” “Thanks, sweetie—Miss or Missus ?” “Miss . I’m not married. I’m Porsha .” “That’s a pretty name .” “Gee, thanks, but call me Peanut. Everyone does .” “You haven’t got peanuts in your head, have you, Porsha ?” She was laughing like I was a first-class stud . DERISION | 21 “No, silly. I guess I just make people think of a peanut sometimes .” “Are you sure, Porsha? I can look in your ears for peanuts .” She was in a giggle fit when our chat finished . “I have to go. My mum’s calling .” She ended the scandal with a click. I felt blue after that. I wished her cheer would tow along with me any place I went . The college is on the opposite side of the road. Cars drive dangerously because they cannot see in the pollen. I’ve got a green light, but no one notices. I dodge traffic and hop-skip. The street sign says Rubicon Lane and I laugh as I cross it . 4 TRAINING nside the orange at the door to classroom B-12, a I janitor drags a dust buster across me, hoovering pollen from my shirt. He tells me to enter. Pollen- covered homo sapiens wait in a pen near me, resembling cinnamon doughnuts in a gift parcel . When B-12 fills, security ops training begins. We’re told guards speak in military time. It’s 0830 hours now, and lunch will be at 1300. Men have questions . “It’s not rocket science, boys,” says the instructor, whose name is Ms. Gronald. “Thirteen hundred is one o’clock,” she says . I like her big tits. She’s fat but firm. Gronald DERISION | 23 wears a corporate outfit that’s too small, and the tits want to split the blouse and fly apart like a blown gasket . She’s older than me . “So, if it’s got a one at the front, it means one o’clock, Ms.?” asks Adam . “Twelve hundred has a one at the front,” she says. “Is twelve the same as one, Adam ?” She has the men in knots reading time, and we’ve only just started . A man-sized turnip has walked in late. Gronald doesn’t like him, and it’s on her face.