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Why wasn’t the hand in the cloud enough to stop the car from diving into the canal? Perhaps it just wasn’t seen; people are in such a rush these days. The car dived head first, its chassis submerging in the goo of a midsummer swell, swirling and sucking it down.
[private]Now ducks bob by, a coot flippers on the windscreen wipers and a couple of geese try the horn. Fish, luminous pollution scalies, nip in and out of the open windows and lie teasingly on the seats, smiling as if they’re on ice-display at the fishmonger’s.
From the boot, the back-end of the car not yet submerged, comes a furious tapping. Inside, a local snarlface scrapmerchant by the name of Big Biggies has woken up to find he has been claustrophobed in a Cortina tomb wrap by a pickie local gang known as the NosePick Boys.
‘Those pesky nosepickers have picked on the wrong guy!’ exclaims Big Biggies.
Just then he senses the car slip further down, and smells pongwater seeping into the boot.
‘What the feck am I going to do?’ he shouts.
Then there is a scraping and compression against the sides of the car. He feels the car being jerked up at high speed from the canal and his head bangs against the rim of a spare tyre.
When he comes to, he can hear the sound of shouting machinery and shrieking metal. He senses the car being held like a conker at the end of a giant string; underneath lying only destruction and bigtime squashing.
‘I’m in me fecking scrappers. Oi, John, let me out!’ yells Big Biggies.
But John can’t hear, and the coffin-cask-Cortina drops and is mangled, shaped and dwarfised into a slim sardine-style can.
When John jumps out of the control cabin on his crane he sees the squashed car-can and thinks he’ll have it for his tea. He is surprised when he unravels the key on the can lid to find it’s full of Biggies.
‘I was wondering where you got to,’ he says to his miniature flatpack boss.
Despite a tiny hand waving him away, John opens his mouth and consumes the contents of the can in one mouthful. For he has secretly been in league with the NosePick Boys, and feels this might be the best way to dispose of any unwanted evidence.[/private]
Alan McCormick’s fiction has received an Arts Council Writers’ Award and has appeared widely in print and online. His short fiction is regularly performed with the Liars’ League and Decongested.
Jonny Voss is an illustrator working in London who studied at Brighton University and the RCA – see www.jonnyvoss.com. Examples of Alan and Jonny’s collaborative illustrated writing can be found on their site www.scumsters.co.uk and at www.3ammagazine.com and www.deaddrunkdublin.com.
