Best British Short Stories 2020 Nicholas Royle (best way to read ebooks txt) 📖

darkness beyond. At night when the temperature drops below zero (0) and there is no functional WiFi, Maxine is hallucinating, shivering and experience what the pessimist scientists call signs of upcoming extinction.

She hears

– more sound of animals outside

– echo song from childhood

– shimmering ‘eye movement sound’

– unsettled nautical skin hallucination of radio waves

Sometime she think she is really gonna die dead hidden in the bus vehicle in the deep of somewhere in the cold night when she feels a ghost hand on her shoulder. That ghost is ghost of Casper, a so-called ex-Boxer ex-Para and part-time ex-’Jazz’ Promoter, the self-same dead man who in first part of story she was reading to when he actually went and died. Casper (ghost) takes her by shoulder and beckons her towards him, leading her out of the wreckaged bus vehicle and down the embankment of earth sand, across the field desert to an oasis.

Time passes.

In the Oasis (actually a Premier Inn) Maxine recuperates strength and orientation. Ghost Casper lingers in the room also while she is sleeping, listening to audiodescribed movies on demand to while away the time. When Maxine wakes up she reads him some of the books left in room by previous incumbent.

She reads him AtomKraft by Jon Slither, Solitary Confinement Dancer by Maisie Wahacha, A Ray of Light by Ash Diameter, The Rat Catcher’s Racist Rollodex by Riannon Gruel-Hindenberg (?) and Perspex Advantage by Claustrophobia Shanti.

When it comes time to leave they skip reception, go out the firescape down into the car park behind the building and off into the night without paying the bill.

Arriving back in S______ large parts of the city is now burning and on fire, initially as part of a simulation possibly for television but possibly for the firebrigade training video. The value of the money they have reduces daily because shifts in the currency exchange. Most days are taken up trailing round the city looking for advantageous currency transactions, searching ‘a different rate’ etc or arguing with blokes that have problematic Cholesterol count or unhealthy body mass index in pubs that look like the Jubilee is probably still happening.

M. plays the fruit machines and ghost Casper stands with her, invisible to other customers, watching the internal workings of the machine and trying to help M. to win big cash payouts. The plan doesn’t work. There are no lines of three Apples. Only lines of hand grenades, lines of transplant organs, lines of bottled tears. No Win.

In the rage of the ongoing fire and lacking any other place to shelter the make they way back to Casper apartment on 33rd floor. They sit together in silents at the UPVC window that will not open more than a crack for health and safety reasons and the blind man listens to the faint sound of distant asbestos removal and wild fires ‘beyond’ meanwhile Maxine vapes furiously, blowing scented exaggerated fumes from out of the window crack and out to the city, watching the starlings flocking and watching the cars moving on the road down below them wide and white eyed sea monsters in the fog and watching the drones hovering invisible above them in the smoke fumes etc and dream of escape.

In the year of Carpark.

Bereft of income and purpose Maxine hitchhikes in another direction city of Endland (9 letters beginning with B) but before she can even get there the cops pick her up, give her a warning, look at her papers, beat her black and blue, give her another warning then tell her to go back on her way in a reversed direction, pointing back down the M1. If they ever catch her around there again they will confiscate her shoes etc.

She gets back to S______ in the middle of night and retreats to a flat she was squatting before. Some other folks have moved in – family with kids in one room and another with some guys that are trying to get into movies playing Jihadists. All night they are practising prayers and making strange moves in front of a broken mirror in the hallway. One morning car pulls up outside

In the year of Dark Matter. Maxine gives up on living in the squat again, gets drunk in a Micro-pub what used to be an abattoir (Crown and Whippet) and the bar fills up w soldiers psychologically scarred and damaged goods from previous war as mentioned and grotesque undercover cops.

Another war starts. There is a blackout.

In the year of Erasure.

Maxine reads to Casper (ghost) a book about a Liar crucified all lol lo-fi DIY on rollershutter door for his part in a gangland rivalry. She reads him about a Sandwich Maker’s apprentice who was incorrectly exiled by the Home Office. She reads him about a child or someone older working in a Children’s Prison it is not exactly clear. She reads about Windrush brain drain, new Gun Laws and military chic. She reads Curse of Brexit, armed struggle and Shameful Secrets of Past. About trees felled by Securicor. About cash injection to subliminal brain. About girls making out under OfficeMax surveillance cameras to earn extra £££ from guys on nightshift security. About Bonus for Boners in Dachshund Fashion Trousers. About a rave in a shit field long years ago, about rain and arrival of dawn, Ecstasy and rusted cars or rusted smiles. About a nightclub called Sudden Fall. About deliberate vandals strung up on the chain link fencing, about deep scars and closed pits and minefield on new build community football pitch. About Internet search history of a destitute bachelor. Special Offer Nine for the Actual Price of Five. About rewiring electrics of Juvenile Delinquents and electrification of train wrecks. About train delayed by morning suicides. About drones that haunt the Emerald forest. About liars in uniforms and polyester slacks. About reskilled ex-offenders in onesies and telesales. About council kickbacks and late night kickabouts on wastegrounds the way to the match. About stairwell or stairwells to heaven. About kids that tagged shelters along