BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

Joe Dalston grabbed his bag, scribbled an illegible scrawl across his release form, and made for the door of the youth detention centre. "Don't forget your appointment with the social worker, you filthy guttersnipe!" one of the screws taunted. "And I'll tell you what," the middle-aged pig snorted, bearing down on Dalston's malnourished frame, "You touch one more towerblock balcony lightbulb and I'll rearrange your fucking face, savvy?."

Dalston scampered past and burst out laughing. His lungs sucked in the fresh taste of freedom. A whole city spread out before his eyes - a million things to vandalise and destroy!!

Within minutes, he'd jemmied open a phonebox, and had collected 60p towards his bus fare. Fucking mobile phones! In the old days, he could have made 50 quid from such a raid, easy. Joe was fucked if he was wasting his afternoon with his social worker. He didn't object so much to the pathetic whining and pleas for him to grass his mates up. It was the twat's attempts to impress him by trying to be down with the kids, maaan, that got Joe's goat. Joe hated all R&B with a vengeance. Fancy listening to a load of songs about licking, sucking and fucking when you could be damaging telephone poles or setting mosques and churches on fire! So, instead, he set off to meet his old partner in crime - Charlton Dave!

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It was a fairly typical bus ride to Dave's flat. Joe had ripped out six seats and slashed another 8 before the driver threw him off. Frustrated at having to walk, Dalston had vented his anger on several hundred parked cars, cracking their windscreens, keying their sides and shoving some satsumas he'd just liberated from a supermarket up their exhaust pipes. Joe had a fanatical hatred of fruit. This stemmed back to his childhood, as the son of a greengrocer. Despite his father's occupation, the fruitbowl in the living room had only ever contained plastic apples, oranges and bananas - confusing and psychologically scarring Joe immeasurably.

Joe sprayed a swastika on Dave's neighbour's front door as he waited for his old mucker to answer. He was horrified to see Dave in an Aran jumper, corduroy trousers and slippers - with a proper haircut!

"What's happened to yer barnet?" Joe screamed. "The Bobby Sands cut not good enuff fer yer?"

"Things have changed," Dave muttered, a look of shame engulfing his mug.

"What chew on about?" Joe sneered. "Me and you are the World Class Wrecking Crew, the best vandals in London! We were born to fuck this city over!"

"Were", grimaced Dave. "Things have changed since you went inside. I'm into the Comfortable Rock scene nowadays. I'm more into hanging around with Martyn Normal and the Responsible Youth Posse . Oh, and I'm getting married in a couple of weeks' time. To Miriam - she's very meek and needy. We're going to have a baby - I really love her and would die for her," he sobbed.

"You fuckin' sell-out!" Joe ullulated. "I've only been banged up for a week! Fuck ya - I'll smash your newfound domestic utopia to a pulp of broken glass, twisted metal and splintered wood - on me own!"

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Joe was speeding at 100mph in a stolen Lada through Kilburn. His eyes streaked with the tears of the agony of betrayal, he was blasting out his favourite queercore band, Antisocial Insecurity, and their 1999 hit, "Break Everything"

Smashing things gives me a hard-on
Trashing the Blue Peter Garden
Taking out my teenage hate
On the public utilities of the state!
I love to stick syringes
In the filters in swimming pools
And demolish park benches
With stolen power tools.....BREAK EVERYTHING!

Joe swerved the car and parked it into the wall of a Chinese restaurant. Turning over a row of wheeliebins, the angry youngster made his way towards Cricklewood Station. He fancied throwing something on the rail tracks! The fatalities and injuries sustained by hundreds of passengers would be a mere trifle compared to Joe's compulsive urge to turn Britain into one big bloody mess!

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"No, he hasn't turned up", Winston Snaresbrook told the two cops. "He was meant to come at 3pm. He's an extremely sociopathic youth - we've tried to get him interested in activities with people of his own age, such as rollerdiscos, painting and camping. We even invited him to a CND charity barbecue. But he just wants to vandalise anything that doesn't move - and a few things that do!"

"Softy-feely liberal measures aren't the answer," the younger cop told the social worker. "The only language that animals like Dalston comprehend is the bee-like buzz'n'drone of the electro convulsive therapy unit!"

"Now, now", said the older cop, waving a gloved hand in his colleague's face. "Mr Snaresbrook, can you think where Joe Dalston may be right now?"

"No," Snaresbrook said. "I haven't a clue"

"Well, we found this under his bed in the detention centre," the cop retorted, pulling out a scrap of paper and passing it to the social worker. Snaresbrook peered at the scribble on the scrap -

FINGS TO DO
1) MEET UP WITH DAVE
2) DERAIL THE 19.52 TO ST ORLBANS

"Christ!" shouted Snaresbrook. "I'll bet he's at the Thameslink station in Cricklewood with his crony, Dave Fiction!"

"So....Charlton Dave Fiction's in on this too!" smiled the younger cop, putting on a knuckle duster. "Me and that dirty little chav have scores to settle. Right, there's a 'copter outside, come along ganjaman, we're heading straight there!"

**********************************
Joe was shagging a bird in the grass, by the edge of the tracks. Although the disco dolly was gasping in ecstasy, Dalston was bored. This whole act was merely a sex magick ritual, and the sooner he shot his bolt, the better.

"Oh, Joe, I've only known you 30 seconds but I think I love you!" the girl squealed

"Little Pan...I summon thee...force the hand of chance!" Joe burped as he came.

The train was coming too. Joe zipped up, and reached for the tentpole he'd hidden by the tracks. He was about to lob it in front of the train - when suddenly the whirring blades of the police helicopter distracted him! Jerking the steel pole upwards, he made contact with the overhead power lines. Dalston and the 'copter simultaneously burst into flames, the mangled wreck of the machinery descending onto the tracks, derailing the train and sending it spinning, in a deadly fireball, down the high street, obliterating Irish pubs, kebab shops and launderettes in its wake.

****************************************
"It's what he would have wanted,I suppose" Charlton Dave sighed. He was sitting with his new girlfriend, flicking through shower curtain designs and watching "Emmerdale" - a programme he had once despised, but now watched religiously.

"I don't like this design, it's too loud - why don't we go for plain green," Miriam said, squinting through a magnifying glass.

"My best friend's just died!" Dave moaned.

"Yes, but he had it coming," his wife-to-be snapped haughtily. "As responsible homeowners, we're now legitimate targets of vandals. I can't understand why people vandalise things anyway. They must be very sick. I saw a nice hoover in Argos the other day, and it's cheaper than the one in Tesco. I think we should go for cream, something that doesn't clash with the tiles. Oh, I saw a nice floral dress on the high street, it'll look good on me when we have our baby christened."

"I'm just...popping out to buy a toothbrush rack," Dave shuddered, pulling on his pac-a-mac and leaving the flat - feeling a sudden urge to take one of Miriam's knitting needles with him. Walking down the street, his head swam with images. Marriage! Babies! Pension payments! His teeth clenched as he rammed the knitting needle into the paintwork of a parked removals van, before he ran off, laughing hysterically to himself in the darkness - never to return!

THE END