A man lies in his bedroom. The door is locked. Behind it lays his past life: unanswered phone messages, unopened post, a carton of milk with a worm in it. The world beyond the door is one he has left behind. It sits neglected and silent. Its worktops are dusty.

Windows. A memory long since shrouded by curtains. The land beyond them is all but forgotten now. He tries to remember leaves, he tries to remember asphalt, he attempts to picture a bus. All he can see is her.

The curtains are heavy and black. They weigh the room down, both trapping and protecting him. His eyes couldn’t handle the sunlight now, it has been too long. The breeze would peel his skin away, the air would break his lungs. She would never hurt him.

A Daewoo television/VCR player sits at the end of his bed. It is the room’s only light source. The colours and shapes of Channel 4 dance in his jaundiced eyes. The pallid white of the screen flickers across his sunken skin. An advert for shampoo is on. His eyes move down to the duvet, it is covered in hair. Hair that once grew on his head. Now no longer, his follicles clogged with grease and puss, it started falling out months ago. She has such nice hair.  

A giant number four flashes across the screen. A woman with a non-specific regional accent announces it is eight thirty. She announces it is time for the man in the bed to be happy. It is time for him to forget the pain. To forget mortality. To forget himself. It is time for New Girl.

‘Zooey Deschanel bursts into a contrived domestic situation. She glides around a coffee table doing something spontaneous with one hand, and endearing with the other. A flatmate walks in with a baby he has found as the result of a hilarious misunderstanding. She throws a Molotov at his feet because she is quirky and does not know any better.’

The man watches from his bed. He is crying. His brain throbs sorely, his heart moans. Her eyes, so wide and blue, reflecting the sun and burning continents in their wake. Her voice, echoing with the whispered nothings of a thousand angel lovers. Her motions, soft but deliberate, doused with the grace of a million angels who are good at dancing. Her skin, like sheets of melted angel.    

No man was meant to see perfection. No man, nor woman, nor child was meant to see Zooey Deschanel in an accessible situation. 

Now she is all that can please him. All that gives him purpose. He has so much to teach her, if only she’d let him. He could buy her ice cream and she’d giggle and try to balance on a curb. She wouldn’t care about his hair. They’d be best friends. 

‘James’

The voice behind him is a man’s. It is not Zooey Deschanel’s voice. It is irrelevant.

‘She’s not real, James.’

James ignores the voice. On television Zooey is pointing whimsically at a bath filled with baby tigers.

A figure walks round the bed. He wears a rugged cowboy hat and a long leather jacket. His face has stubble. He stops beside the television. James doesn’t blink. 

‘You think she’s perfect don’t you? You think she’d be your friend. She’s not like all those other nasty female celebrities. She wears pastel colours and jumps when she’s happy.’

The figure steps in front of the television. Zooey vanishes and so does the validity of life. James coughs tragically.

‘The other nasty female celebrities who use sex to sell their music, sex to sell their names.’

James nods, his spine creaking. Celebrity women are corrupt and evil. Only Zooey is true.

The figure shakes his head. 

‘Zooey Deschanel is worse than all of them, James.’

James glares at the figure, eye-crust falling from his face as he tenses.

‘Zooey Deschanel may not use sex to sell her produce, James, but do you want to know what she does use?’

James tries to get out of the bed. He cannot hear this. 

‘Do you want to know, James?’

James clutches at the bed sheets, fingers breaking.

‘Zooey Deschanel uses love.’

The unhappy bed-ridden man slumps back into the covers, panting hard, his rib-cage trembling. 

‘She’s a lie, James. She uses the love of vulnerable and insane people like you to make money.’

James shakes his head half-heartedly, eyes closed, grimacing with pain.

‘It’s true, James, it’s true and you’ve known it all along.’

James’ mouth cracks open, dust rising from his withered tonsils. With a slow and painful moan he wheezes:

‘She… Zooey Deschanel is… everything… what else? what else do I have but… her…’

The figure stares at James, stony-faced.

‘I am about to show you something, James. But before I do you must promise to stay with me. No matter what happens. You must stay with me, James.’

James does not listen. He sighs, closes his eyes and waits for death. 

‘I’m trying to save you, James! Look at me! I can still help you!’

James opens one eye tiredly. The figure nods supportively.

‘Okay. I want you to look at this, James, I want you to look at this and tell me what you see.’

The figure goes into his really cool leather jacket and takes out a piece of paper. He lifts it up to James. It is a picture. 

James starts to shake.

‘Stay with me, James! What’s in the picture? Do you remember what this is?’

James closes his eyes and looks away. He is not ready for this.

‘James! James, look at the picture! James you need to look at the picture!!’

James groans, head turned away as far as his fraying neck tissue will allow.

‘James! Okay. Okay, James. You don’t have to look at the picture. Just look at me. Can you do that? Just look at me, look at my face, James.’

Slowly James peers hesitantly back to the figure. The figure smiles at him encouragingly. Then quickly he raises the picture in front of his face. James lets out a strangled gasp but cannot look away, caught in the headlights. His eyes widen as his brain struggles to process the shape in front of him. At first he thinks it is Zooey Deschanel, his brain unused to interpreting something other than her face. But then, slowly, emerging like a saturated tennis ball floating in a dark but relatively translucent pond, a word takes form in his mind. He hiccups.

The figure grins, he knows James has remembered. 

‘That’s right, James! You’ve got it!’

James is transfixed to the image. It is a bus. He knows it’s a bus. And with the word come memories…

The figure shoves his hand back into his coat and pulls out a dozen more images, throwing them at James, shouting.

‘BUSES, JAMES!! REMEMBER THE BUSES!!!’

‘BUSES ARE FROM THE REAL WORLD, JAMES!!’                      

‘THEY ARE FILLED WITH REAL PEOPLE, WITH REAL JOBS AND DRIVE TO REAL PLACES!!!’

‘ZOOEY DESCHANEL HATES BUSES, JAMES! SHE WANTS TO KILL THEM!!!’

‘YOU REMEMBER THOUGH, JAMES, YOU REMEMBER BUSES! AND FOR AS LONG AS YOU DO THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE!’

‘YOU ARE FROM THE REAL WORLD, JAMES, A REAL WORLD WITH LEAVES AND ASPHALT AND BUSES! ZOOEY CAN NEVER BE PART OF THAT.’

James did remember, James remembered everything. Every bus ride he’d ever taken came flooding back. His life before Zooey Deschanel… he’d had fun before her, he’d been happy…

The figure throws the rest of the pictures down and rips open the dark black curtains. Sunlight explodes into the room, casting radiance into every corner. James inhales sharply as the rays hit him. He fears he will disintegrate instantly but, as he comes to the end of his inhale, slowly he finds himself… warm.  

Continuing the frenzy, the figure runs to the Daewoo, still playing New Girl, picks it up and tosses it through the window. The glass shatters and the Daewoo plummets to the flower beds below. 

James lays, staring in shock. The man in the cowboy hat stands panting for a moment. Then, brushing down his jacket and straightening his hat, he walks over to the broken window. He turns to James and says:

‘I called an ambulance before I came, they’re on their way. You’re going to be alright, James, everything is going to be alright.’

He turns back to the window and prepares to exit.

‘W-wait’, James coughs.

The figure turns back around.

‘What is it?’ he replies.

Slowly and carefully James sits himself up in the bed. Once settled, he looks at the figure, mystified, and asks:

‘Why… why did you help me?’

The figure looks at the floor, thinking. Almost unconsciously he lifts his hand up to the back of his neck, tracing the bullet scar left behind by his failed suicide.

‘Lets just say I used to be like you, James. I killed the love in me. Now I liberate others. Zooey Deschanel only wins if we let her, James. Just remember that.’

Then, with a wink and a nod, he leaps from the building, gliding on his really cool leather jacket off into the distance, back to his home, back to Channel 4 +1, back to New Girl. Soon he will be the only man who loves Zooey Deschanel. Soon he will be her only option for a viable partner. Soon, she shall be his.

Declan Donnelly is standing on a hill. He is waving a red flag at the sky. He checks his phone, he’s been missing for three weeks. Ant hasn’t called him once. He grips the flag and keeps on waving. A cloud darkens in the distance. An ITV studio pass hangs from his neck on a wooden chain. He holds it to his lips and kisses it. Somewhere, the crash of a rock slide echoes through the valley. Below him, a river bubbles unnaturally. A forest on the horizon shrinks, as if hiding from what is about to happen. The stones beneath him begin to tremble.

Behind him, far away, a cloud of dust is making its way towards the hill. Declan doesn’t notice, transfixed to the sky, focussed on his mission. The dust races down the same lonely dirt track Dec had traversed just an hour ago. As it nears, something solid becomes visible. A silhouette, rising from it, gaining speed. It is a car. It is Ant’s car.

He will be too late.

Late at night Nick Clegg is trying to make a paper aeroplane. He has never made one before. He is struggling.

It takes 40 minutes but finally, bleeding heavily and caked in sweat, he realises he is finished. Out of breath but proud, he holds it up to the lamplight. It is a good paper aeroplane. Nick Clegg smiles. He will draw windows on it later, with people waving out of them. That will be nice, he nods.

Something creaks. Nick jumps, eyes darting to a bunk bed behind him. Trembling slightly, he peers up at the top bunk, searching for movement- fearing the worst. 

All is still. Nick Clegg exhales. George Osborn is still asleep.

Nick Clegg turns back to the desk, placing down his paper aeroplane carefully. He watches it fondly for a moment, then stands tentatively. Creeping over to the bottom bunk, he crouches slowly, never fully looking away from the slumbering Osborn above. Cautiously and quietly, Nick Clegg eases a small wooden box out from under the bunk. On the lid, a bright blue elephant is flying a kite. Below it, an inscription reads ‘To Nicholas. Keep dreaming, Tiger. Love Sarkozy xxx’.

Nick wants to giggle at the silly elephant, but knows he must be quiet. 

Nick Clegg opens the box delicately and begins to search its contents. After a moments rustling, he finds what he is looking for: an opened packet of Rolos. Replacing the box, Nick Clegg returns to his desk. Peeling back the crumpled tin-foil, he removes the only remaining Rolo. His last Rolo.

Picking up his paper aeroplane he tucks his last Rolo between its wings. He looks out of the window in front of him: London snores in the moonlight. He checks his compass once more. Oh Europe, he sighs. He lifts open the window, the temperate London breeze tugs at his pyjamas. Looking passed the city, across the channel, he imagines the continent before him. That endless coastline… outstretched… ready to embrace him. His eyes moisten. 

‘One day…’ he whispers, throwing his paper aeroplane out the window. It rides the wind, sailing above the rooftops effortlessly. He watches it with wonder, leaning forwards on his desk to get a better view. It glides through the night. It is free, free from judgement, free from the rules, policies and protocols of the land. Nick Clegg is sending his last Rolo to Europe. No one can veto that. 

Nick Clegg watches his paper aeroplane land in a tree in the garden. 

He will ask David to get it down for him in the morning. 

Somewhere inside me there is a cottage pie. I feel it throbbing, like a baby or an ulcer. I try to digest it but my body is scared. My enzymes cower from it, hiding in the corners of my gut. The cottage pie slouches in malcontent. It is vexed. It wants more than my lower stomach. Its will is strong. It wants to govern. The cottage pie see’s Europe before it and trembles with ambition. I am scared of the cottage pie inside me. Aren’t you? 

I am at a bus stop. I stare at a wall on the opposite side of the road. A manhole slides open. There is a nurse shark inside. The nurse shark climbs onto the pavement. It finds a lamp post and rubs its head against it, purring gently. It has reached its destination.  

there are eight types of people in the world. they are all dead. only giant sand worms remain. 

There are no auditions. Every show is a live show and every live show is ‘Lynch Night’.

The only contestant is David Lynch and the only judge is David Lynch as well. He would have an army of editors to maintain this illusion, sealed beneath the earth’s crust. They would gasp for air in the sweltering heat. Many of them ill. Many of them dying. The cramped conditions aiding the spread of disease, the limited resources assuring the presence of famine. 

At home, though, the baying crowds, gathered in Piccadilly Circus, gazing up at the tired video display, would not be disappointed. They would see him, David Lynch, singing upon the stage, and then, trembling with pure, carnal desire, they would watch the camera pan slowly around to the judges table, where David Lynch would again stand alone, clapping, dribbling, ruling.

Despite the shows continued success across the world, there would be no studio audience. The seats, where a large demographic of the British public once sat, would now remain empty, mouldy and worn. Home to rats, owls and small dogs. The great lights that once burned their messages into the eyes of a generation now hang, sterile, flickering or broken. 

Dermot is nailed to a cross at the back of the studio, long dead.

HEY, LONELY HEARTS! HAVING TROUBLE GETTING WITH WOMENS?! WELL THEN THIS IS THE TECHNIQUE FOR YOU!

‘The Beached Whale’ technique is simple: find where a woman is heading to, and lie across it.

For example, if a woman is in a supermarket and wishes to pay for her shopping, lie face-down across the till, blocking her path. This will anger her and she will protest but at no point must you respond to her criticism. Remember, remain motionless for as long as it takes her to recover from the initial shock of your charming ingenuity. 

Eventually the woman’s expression will soften and she will begin to throw buckets of cold water over you in a vain attempt to keep you alive. The fire brigade will be called and numerous school children will begin poking your blubbery underside with morbid curiosity. Unfortunately, as is the case with almost all whale beaching’s, due to your immense body mass and the increased strain of gravity on land, your lungs will eventually be crushed under your own body weight. This will be followed by asphyxiation and death.

HUGS AND KISSES!!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXOX