Fiction: ELECTROSHOCK IS NOT ACCEPTED BY THE LIBRARY STAFF.

Writes on a post-it note, his cursive in unique form. Burton goes to his job. 3 p.m. on a weekday. Burton makes clumsily fashioned small-scale models of the United States. He constructs models using old cigarette packets. He cuts the packets using a pair of shears. He balances the models on rivers of jelly, configuring shy damsels from the rubbish bin, on clear cold windless afternoons (if you’re interested). Translated famine. Burton never thought he’d be employed like this. He never thought he’d have a contingency of assistants helping him. He sees caterpillars turning into crows. Burton doesn’t know much. Burton doesn’t stay on the internet very long. GIF cleaned smoothly, systematically. GIF living in an upstairs place containing a soft drink dispenser, a coffee table, a double bed in the corner, a refrigerator filled with foodstuffs and amphetamines. GIF as wax effigy / molten centre. Burton blots out the elemental residue caused by GIF melting. Earl C splices the mainframe with a dead community. The dating website now has a decorative outline. Half-deliberate cocaine deals with those who believe in dating websites. Laughing fits. Language with a small moustache and keen eyes. Burton Tribes of Amazonians. Bloodied hearts on the jungle floor. GIFs rendered as sentences backed with marvellous intellect. Girls as women, dark-complexions. It’s a fine day and the sun is sparkling. Inside the hotel, Burton logs onto dating websites. Description as infantile attempt. Laughing fits and Pepsi-Cola on the laptop screen. Burton is staggered. He has no idea how to describe himself. He’s all at sea. Would marriage be beneath him? Something like that. Does he excuse himself from the table once he finishes corn soup? That sort of thing. Image assistants uploading glamour shots of themselves. Burton describing his time on the planet. How Several minutes later, sweat forms on Earl C’s brow. Constantly unfolding elements, Burton notices the disgust. Earl C presses demands onto Burton. Vermouth in a trough. Television light projectiles in the night. Vibrant against Burton’s skin. Some talk about nurses. Faces gleaming through the Manhattan haze. One old man altogether on bench in Washington Square. He turns to his daughter’s books, her fashion magazines all tangled. He picks up a piece of wood, inspecting it. Daughter’s hair the shade of the icy background. Her money purse rolling down Broadway like tumbleweed. Burton can’t be bothered. Burton looks at the statue of the child. Jetsam falls away from a dead man. The dying art of breath. Earl C disappears under his wife’s cotton dress. This nightmare of a giant man, his red mouth moves, disposing of him, let alone murdering him. Burton stares madly at Earl C’s wife. Downtown in the South end of the city, a mist-hung gun whips up the mob. BWAP BWAP. Earl C sobs in the pale dawn. Someone else screams. The strange assignment of lace doused over Earl C’s wife. Dinner chairs burring in a Pizza Hut car park. Burton opens the window, calling out swiftly to his interior voice. Drinks at four. Money. Polluted lobsters with identification bracelets around pincers. Burton takes a swig of synthetic water. Wife wields her hips over Earl C. The dawn on a projection screen. Nothing brings my attention to it. The sun rises. Xerox of a Xerox over Manhattan. Bubbling fat on Burton’s skin. Bright lights, loud music, young kids. Earl C’s wife is a cardboard cut-out. She’s in the doorway. She turns the music off. She’s doused in blonde mechanisms. A torn genus of deadly moth. The wife lurking in the good values of degeneracy. She tears Burton’s clothes off, actions recorded in unpublished histogram. Unfamiliar people are irritating. GIF GIF GIF GIF. Burton lays flat on the ground. He completes his work inside the company’s holiday villa. He reads the instruction manual several times. There is more than one narrative in the instruction manual. Burton works besides vacuum gauges under hot sweat steam and pressure overhead. He is alone – once more – working. Track suits / brand name. Billboard’s advertising TV documentaries that outline the beauty and savagery of the human contribution. The process of strengthening and integrating CPU into plastic brain moulds. Earl C slides into midnight. Crimson-stained. Emotional signs include sighs and deep breaths. The door opens. Take that.

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