Let's Not Do This
Inflatable Nation - Part 1
Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO). Now it’s time for the news:
Australia, that great southern land, was in a state of perpetual, unprecedented crisis. All at once there was a rental crisis, energy crisis, wage crisis, health crisis, overdose crisis, threatening geopolitical changes, a fire tsunami (do not ask), and much, much more...
This crisis cocktail had many wondering whether the nation was heading in the right direction. For some older Australians the answer was no, and they put forward the memory of a simpler time. To others, however, this romantic sentiment ignores the obvious barbarity and inequality of the past, of a time to which we should never return, have never really departed, and actually seem destined to repeat. Just look at the historical wrongs that still exist. How many of these injustices are now worse - more insidious and hidden - despite the progress?
It is a challenge to parse out this conflicting and fluid logic, but a consolidated projection of our future seems to be that we are free-falling upwards into a doomed yet fingers-crossed better world.
Welcome, one and all, to straightjacket paradise: Australia in 2022.
To address his nation in crisis, the brilliant prime minister convened an emergency press conference. He understood the people were demotivated, alcoholic, suicidal. He knew Australians needed to band together lest the country become America: a land of dissonant voices, endless trench warfare, fluoro cheese.
Millions tuned in to the historic address, and among them was a man named Bronson Heart.
This man did not care for the prime minister. On two occasions, in fact, Bronson had sent the prime minister letters calling him a pissant, both times borrowing the wording from his Telstra, Woolworths and Luna Park (both locations) formal complaints. But that evening, when Bronson heard the prime minister’s words while at his local fruit shop, he was so moved that he nearly saved the nation… nearly.
Before visiting the fruit shop, Bronson Heart was across the street at the automotive repair shop. His old 1995 Ford Falcon was suffering its own completely precedented crisis.
Bronson was a soft man in a fine suit and thick-lensed glasses. He was stylish but belly hairs escaped the stretched gaps between his shirt buttons. One glance and it was clear he stress-ate too much and sat all day but believed he was an active, healthy man of different proportions.
The shop, by comparison, was blue-collar, harsh. It reeked of stale oils and cigarette-infused clothing. Spare parts dangled in dim lights like shining carcasses at a mechanical butcher, and in the toilet a calendar of large-breasted Asian women from the early 2000s faced the shitter. Everything was stripped of pretension. Even the television was an old wood-panelled tube, tuned to the opening of the prime minister’s address…
My fellow Australians, I know times are tough. A giant fire tsunami is a grave threat to the 30 percent of our beautiful country that is not already desert or semi-arid land. Some are saying this is even worse than last week’s kangaroo stampede, or the bizarre deaths surrounding Ansett’s return as a rideshare app. But have no fear. We will get through this time of crisis, and I’ll tell you why: because we’re brave; we're fair dinkum; we’re bloody intelligent and kind hearted, and we’re…
“Rooted, mate,” said the mechanic. “There’s very little left to love, I’m afraid.”
“You assured my assistant it was a minor issue,” said Bronson, facing the television.
On the screen the prime minister’s face was shielded by his ceremonial Akubra cork hat which he reserved for emergencies. As he spoke, the dangling corks whipped against his cheeks.
“I did,” replied the mechanic, slowly. He was annoyed because he had previously explained the brake issue to his own wife and expected his customer to already understand.
“I have money,” replied Bronson. He paused for a few seconds then continued. “Is it a question of money? It is, I’m sure. If it is, I have money. If it’s not, well… I believe it is.”
The mechanic was so solid he looked like he could bend metal drive shafts with his bare hands and there were scars on his bald head from a lifetime ago. He towered behind Bronson, and in his vice grip he strangled an oily rag until it squealed under tension.
“No,” he snapped. “It’s not money. As I told my wife: ‘This car is finished.’”
At the mention of the wife, Bronson twirled to face the mechanic. The wife was leaning against the front desk with a landline phone wedged between her gaunt cheeks.
Bronson grimaced, then removed his glasses to wipe the lenses. “She’s not at all like the women in your lewd bathroom calendar, is she?” he said, quiet enough so the wife could not hear.
“Excuse me.”
Elevated on the hoist beside them was the old 1995 Ford Falcon. The burgundy chassis was dented and peeling. A side mirror was fastened with blue electrical tape.
Bronson smacked the Ford’s suspended tyre. His hand was now caked with wheel rubber which he traced all over the jacket lapels and his chubby face.
“Listen,” he said. “If you’re attempting to fleece me, just say it. I will pay. I have money.”
The mechanic’s leather face creased into a wide smile as he marvelled at the investment banker’s stained face. This humorous sight was undoubtedly what stopped him punching Bronson for his previous comments.
“Oh, I was unaware you had money,” said the mechanic, facing his wife.
In response, his wife shook her head. She hated taking on these clients, hated how they sucked the joy from her husband, how they soured a boy who once just loved cars. The mechanic, however, dismissed her with a wave.
“Let me have another look,” he said and hunched under the Ford.
He thrust his fists into the car’s innards, and as he tore at its guts the prime minister warned young people not to surf the fire tsunami.
“Hang on,” he said after a minute. “If I was to fix the… yes… that might… but it would require significant…” He ran the calculations in his mind. “Perhaps around seven thousand we could get her roadworthy again.”
Half shaded by the car, he smiled at Bronson, who stared back in silence. Then after a long pause, Bronson matched the mechanic’s smile and reached for his wallet.
“See,” said Bronson, “I knew you were trying to fleece me.”
Bronson presented the wallet with both hands like a Japanese executive offering a business card.
“Here, take my wallet,” he said. “Go on, take it. And how about this: if you want to fuck me, then spare the lube. Make it twelve thousand. Go on, make it twelve thousand, you ugly pissant. I have money.”
Across the street, the fruit shop initially held a more collegiate atmosphere. Colourful produce lined the bright aisles, and in the air hung the scent of flowers and damp coats. Heavy rain drummed in the dark outside so, instead of rushing home, the afterwork crowd milled around the store’s televisions and together watched the ongoing press conference.
Bronson, however, ignored the warm chatter of the strangers. Instead he stalked the aisles alone, having just stormed out of the automotive repair shop following a heated exchange.
In summary: he offered his wallet, then his kidneys and his niece. The mechanic’s wife had finally had enough and suggested he visit another mechanic… in hell. So Bronson demanded his car be taken off the hoist before wagering that, due to their ineptitude, he could complete his fruit and veg shopping prior to the car’s bald tyres touching the ground. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about hoists; his basket was empty except for three apples when the car was already waiting in the open roller doors like an embarrassed friend.
Maybe he should have accepted defeat. No doubt events would have been different if he had. For one thing, the nation would not have nearly been saved. But those cretins had tried to rob him - to fleece him - so Bronson would make them pay.
His plan was to inconvenience them by going slow. He intended to inspect every item, every leaf, and the plan was working until the prime minister announced on the television that the unprecedented winter fire tsunami had cut supply lines to Melbourne for most goods, including fresh food.
In response, the fruit shop owner instructed all check-out staff except one to re-price produce, and the army of teenagers traced the aisles like a SWAT team shooting up prices. Lettuce rocketed to twenty dollars a head. Blueberries became seventeen a punnet. Customers who thought they were holding eighty dollars worth of groceries were now holding three hundred.
Bronson noticed something had changed when an elderly woman shoulder-charged him on her way to the register. He turned and there a queue was already sprouting as desperate people piled into the one available register, hoping to beat the price hikes.
To figure out what was happening, Bronson looked for someone to ask.
He found an employee, but when he approached them another appeared and tore the avocado from Bronson’s grip. The giant child then clicked the price gun and handed the avocado back: it was now eleven dollars.
How was the child supposed to know that Bronson was already riding a wave of indignation not dissimilar to the fire tsunami itself? He could not know of course, so without fear the price-gun shooter snatched Bronson’s entire basket and sprayed tags seemingly at random.
That made it twice in one night that someone had tried to fleece him - twice too many.
“You overgrown pissant,” scolded Bronson, tearing back the basket. “If your boss intends to fuck me,” - he lost his breath - “tell him to… spare the lube,” - he gasped - ”for this avocado… I shall pay fifty-”
Stumbling backwards, Bronson collapsed on a rack of now-squashed tomatoes and slid to the lino floor. He searched frantically for his asthma puffer and gasped for air as each pocket turned up empty.
The vicious boy knelt down and price-tagged Bronson’s already stained forehead. Humiliated, Bronson turned away and there, out in the dark, was a tow truck reversing toward the nose of his old Ford.
“Pissants…” he managed, choosing insult over breath. “You ugly, overgrown pissants.”
Bronson worked as a senior executive at a blockchain investment firm on Collins Street. His days were spent in an abstract world trading, hoarding and discussing assets no one can touch, assets that did not exist before the last decade.
As an aside, the firm’s head of legal was kidnapped that week. The police believe the kidnappers were after the passwords, codes and locations of the firm’s holdings. They wanted non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital coins and other abstractions, and the police were hunting them online through email and Slack, and Bronson’s ex-girlfriend was a catfish, and his sister and IT support exist to him only through Zoom...
It was all a little: unprecedented.
Then there was the tsunami bushfire burning in the shape of a devil’s horns. The nuclear and biological weapons, the biblical floods, the increasing rates of teen suicide. The slowing birth rates, Marvel Stadium. Social media brain-rot, bimodal thought. 1971, all the crises, and the Taurid meteor stream dangling in the sky like an infant’s mobile, prepped to wipe us out with a planet killer, leaving only the refuse of this digital age for our descendants to decode:
Why did the ancients build Marvel Stadium? What does this abandoned object stuck under the Montague Street bridge signify? Who was Gene Hackman and when did he rule Earth? What is the sideways double-humped symbol with the attached lines?
In the fruit shop, the initial panic at the price hikes was trending towards anarchy.
The rowdy queue now stretched to the storage room doors and was full of irate customers. There was yelling at the employees, arguments and accusations of line cutting. Abandoned baskets littered the aisles like burned out vehicles on a bombed highway.
Bronson had survived the asthma attack through sheer stubbornness, and was now in the slow-moving queue behind a sweaty gym enthusiast. The man’s cotton shorts had a wet patch down his arsecrack, which Bronson took as a personal attack, and he shook with concealed rage at the entire corrupt world and all the signs of its downfall.
Due to the store’s pillars and narrow doorway, Bronson had lost sight of his car until he was next in line. Then the Ford came back into view: the beat-up chassis waiting on the tray, the truck driver sharing a cigarette with the mechanic and his wife.
The last time Bronson saw his Ford on a tray like that he was only twenty-one. It was a sweltering summer’s afternoon, and he was crossing the West Gate Bridge when, without warning, the steering wheel jammed and the car came to a halt on the eastbound middle lane.
This was one of those forty degree days, so hot the CDs in his car melted.
By the time help arrived Bronson was dehydrated and delirious. He had spread himself on the frying pan bonnet and was listening to the fading shouts from passing cars sing a coordinated song of woe: you… should… give up… nothing… will ever… work... go Saints!
When the paramedics arrived, they wrestled Bronson to the ground. There he wailed and cried and begged for his mother, but right when all seemed lost for the young man - his car, his ego, his sanity - an early evening breeze touched his burnt cheek. Respite from the heat arrived, and he was given some water. Calmed, he was allowed for a moment to rest his head against the bonnet of that old Ford and watch the golden sun begin to set. Time stood still for once.
Back in the fruit shop, Bronson snapped out of the memory. On the television, the prime minister was still ranting about how he loved this country because of the it’s bravery, kindness, and intelligence, and Bronson studied the politician for a moment before shaking his head.
That’s not why you love something, he thought, and he smiled at that old, beat-up car.
Bronson did not love the old Ford because of its speed or power. There were few, if any, positive adjectives he could ascribe. The Ford was a lemon, but he loved it no less than if it was the fastest, meanest car at Bathurst, so what does that say about love?
Maybe what the prime minister was describing then was admiration, approval, endorsement: political terms, the stuff of sycophants and investors, not the words of love, not even the correct language. Love, whatever it is, precedes adjectives. One needs neither understanding nor reason. Love is nothing but the most obvious mystery.
“Excuse me,” called the woman behind Bronson in the queue. “You’re up.”
Bronson ignored her and gazed across the street. There the mechanic was huddled under the covering now smoking alone.
Does the prime minister love this man when he jacks off to the bathroom calendar? If so, what adjective does he use - frenetic, determined, efficient? What about when he steals his neighbour’s paper each morning? But equally, what would Bronson say if he knew the mechanic also fixed that same neighbour’s car for free?
“Hey, move it,” said the woman behind. “I have to get home. My kids are waiting.”
Yelling grew toward the rear of the queue and a basket flew across the store. Across the street the mechanic is smoking in the unrepeated night - now of all times, here of all places.
Now he’s laughing with an apprentice. He’s sneaking a look at the naked Asian women. He’s six years old in Melton. He’s staring in the mirror crying. He’s consoling his wife; their dog was just hit by a car. Now they’re slow-dancing at their boy’s wedding. He’s trying to fleece an investment banker. Now he’s dropping a dollar in the same homeless man’s cup every morning for twenty years - that’s seven thousand dollars - and he’s stopping to chat every single day.
Now he’s doing it all at once, his entire life played like a single-beat symphony of near-infinite scale, and what adjective stands clear in the white noise? What word in the list, in the source code of that shallow, politician love, rings true? If the word turns up negative, then delete him - blip - and he’s gone.
Think your mechanic is a pissant - there’s always another. Don’t like your girlfriend - there’s a million online. Don’t like your fruit shop - get delivery. Waiter is rude - try UberEats, tell yourself you deserve it. A colleague said something critical - expedite their LinkedIn search.
A hand tugged at Bronson’s sleeve and he turned to the squat-bodied woman with a puffy face. She resembled mashed potatoes in colour and form. She’s wearing a t-shirt of a cartoon cat yet she’s fifty years old. She’s raising two kids alone. She has these hateful thoughts that make her sick. She lost five years to laziness. She held her sister’s hand through it all.
Bronson looked beyond her to the entire queue.
There’s the close-minded university lecturer with the turtleneck. There’s the two police officers on break. There’s the junior cricket coach with a criminal record. George the TV repair man. The warehouse boys eating sausage rolls and farting. The sarcastic HR woman who secretly loves to sing. The surfer bums, burning on a wave of fire. The Indian men playing cricket in July. The Jewish community in Balaclava, the Greeks in Oakleigh. The smug private school boys and the locals near Cape Arnhem. The brunch girls, the miners, the politicians…
“Move,” cracked the woman. “Now, you fuckwit.”
Bronson felt a heaviness not at all like anger, and ran his hands over his tired face.
Perhaps one of the more insidious aspects of our unprecedented age is the ability to select who occupies your life. Because in a world of near-infinite supply, maybe we still lack the wisdom to cultivate relationships that once blossomed from necessity, and if given the choice, maybe we select the wrong things, the wrong people. Perhaps it is also true that when confronted with this ostensible over-supply of options, it is our generosity and forgiveness that become the true scarce resources.
“Listen,” said Bronson to the ugly woman, to the woman whom minutes ago he would have considered a pissant. “Let’s not do this, please...”
From the line, a barrel-chested man stepped forward. He’s telling homophobic jokes to his friends. He’s lending money to the footy club charity. He’s saying don’t worry about paying it back.
“She told you to move, mate,” said the man.
Bronson’s face crowded with pain and he turned up his palms. “I know. I know,” he said, “It’s just… please, mate. Let’s not do this.”
“Roger that. Just fucking move, pal.”
“Hurry up,” shouted someone in the back.
“I haven’t got all night,” called another.
A third man pushed Bronson’s soft chest and he fell into a rack of impulse buy items. When he climbed to his feet, the two police officers were upon him. One held his left arm so tight it hurt while the other fetched Bronson’s fallen groceries from the floor.
“Let’s not do this, please,” said Bronson to the officer holding his arm.
“I know, mate,” said the officer. “I understand. It’s just-”
A can of tomatoes whizzed by like a Vortex. To the irritated crowd, it was just late that night, not late for all nights, and besides, the prime minister was still telling them how brilliant they all were so why shouldn’t they expect ubiquitous brilliance?
To the general assembly, Bronson made one last plea.
“Please, everyone listen, let’s not do this,” he yelled, tears in his eyes, a life at his back.
But they continued hurling abuse until, atop the cacophony of indignation and the flying groceries, Bronson’s phone dinged. The notification rang crisp above all else - a boxer’s bell - and without thought Bronson tore free from the officer’s grip and drove his bespectacled head into the man’s nose.
On the checkout worker behind them, blood sprayed in the pattern of a shattered windscreen. She screamed, the officer fell, and during the man’s descent Bronson ripped the gun from the holster and again struck the officer in the face.
Then he smacked the gun grip on the other officer’s crown, and the young officer - a man who plays checkers with the commission housing kids, a man who cheated on his partner - hit the floor like mud.
Bronson then fired two bullets into the plate ceiling and a third into the television. Fragments of ceiling covered his shoulders like dandruff and the queue fell quiet. With the only sound now the falling rain, Bronson fanned the gun across the terrified bagholders.
There’s Bronson Heart on the news holding a gun. There’s Bronson Heart driving down Warrigal Road with his father to buy his first ever car, an old Ford Falcon.
With his free hand, Bronson smacked his own forehead. He was berating himself, desperately trying to recall something, some important notion that had just escaped his mind, something no one would buy… He was red in the face, sobbing through cracked lenses, but whatever the thought was, it was gone.
The next night, the prime minister was again on the television. He was asked what he thought of the fruit shop fanatic. The brilliant prime minister took the opportunity to scold the man for his violence, his frustration, his bad manners, his anger, his stupidity, his short-temper. In a word, the prime minister surmised, the fanatic was not like us at all: he was ‘un-Australian’.
During the news segment there was crime scene footage. There were shots of the bullet holes in the ceiling, a few frames on the dead fanatic under a bedsheet. Then the footage cut outside, to the Ford atop the truck bed. The next morning the car would be taken to the wreckers. There it would be ripped apart, sold, and the chicken carcass remains crushed into a cube and melted. Then, and only then, would there be little left to love.
Thank you for reading. Check me out on Twitter for more brilliant spelling errors.
Follow me on Instagram to see the #breakthesentence game and other updates.
Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.
Great story . In particular I liked how you described the characters using their traits and life story rather than just what you see ❤️ a good read
Eh