For the purposes of authenticity, the year is 1984.

In the dreaded room 101 within the Ministry of Love stands a lone, imposing silhouette. This man is The Inquisitor, beneficiary of prisoner agony, orchestrator of shattered minds and depleted dreams. He runs his hand over his facial hair (and other body parts) in anticipation. Today is the day, perhaps the most illustrious case of his career, for today he is to break the veneer of depravity known as HERTZAN CHIMERA.

A black-haired man is forced into the painfully bright room, The Criminal, the most infamous literary assassin of all times, and he does seem to bathe in the blood-curdling screams issuing from down the corridor, like Lecter listening to Liszt.

JOHN LAWSON: You're a tough cookie to crack, Mr Chimera. I've never seen a man so enjoy being tortured. But first things first; our informants in the Absinthe Literary Review have accused you of having a "shoot-for-the-stars moxie." If this is true I'd like you to hand over said moxie before you fire it off and hurt yourself.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Interesting, you are the good cop and the bad cop all at once, like sweet and sour. What happens to me, should I return said Moxie? Where am I then--at that point of return? When all there's left to strip from a man is his moxie, what then? The best way is to totally bypass all this politeness and rewrite the history books--it has been done before.

JL: Why, history is just as solid as my good intentions. And don't be ludicrous, what is a moxie's worth compared to any of these? (hands The Criminal a copy of Bridget Jones' Diary, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Princess Di's brassiere, and a signed photo of Ronald Reagan with George Bush).

HC: You are 2 kind. Respectively; something to discard, something to vomit, something to cherish and something with which to wipe my torn arse.

JL: Wouldn't you like to come into the fold, join Big Brother, turn your writing talents toward something more helpful and productive; you know, write a best-selling feel-good story?

HC: Ah, I see--your intent is to break the good writer in me like a wild stallion is ridden into a life of subservience. Maybe it's possible--every wild horse has their bails of hay, their nice warm blanket, their caring retirement years to be tempted by. Every writer has [potentially] his mass market waiting to reap his wicked crop--I don't know, it's sorta tempting in a "why don't I just shoot my brains out right now?" fascination way.

JL: You are charged with turning William Burroughs into a social realist and reducing Dali to cannibalising his own heart. Don't deny it! Informant Paul Kane is never wrong! (snaps his fingers; lackies expose a cage full of rats)

HC: I deny all charges. Kane is fabricating evidence in a smear campaign.

JL: I don't want to stick your head into this cage full of rats. Simply confess and I'll dunk your conspirator Alex Severin into these rats instead.

HC: Oh, lummy! Do it, rat-chomp her first--but televise it to the slavering millions on Prime Time corporate America--let us see Justice in Action.

The rats skin each other and fornicate with anticipation; Severin, radiantly jubilant/frothing, descends into the cage before the all-seeing cameras. The rats penetrate her flesh like priests at an orphanage.

HC: Severin wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

JL: (Dr Fanny Bradburg walks in and examines The Criminal) Explain the secret workings of this Wordhunger coterie.

HC: Des Lewis, inventor of NEMONYMOUS magazine and writing dynamo, invited one or two writer friends to collaborate on a series of stories. The form is very free, the narrative structures grow (and some die), they are edited, restarted, reorganised. Everyone has a go and everyone has a right to dictate--thinking about it, it could never work. But the evidence is all there for folks to see. There is talk of a paperback version of WORDHUNGER but Des isn't saying who the publisher might be.

JL: Hmm...maybe I can get it out of him...(the lackies, quaking with glee, wheel out a pole with a naked female midget hanging from a noose) We have ways of making naked female midgets of men like you! Now explain your writing process.

HC: (recognizes the midget is Stephen King) I sit in front of the keyboard and type...what is this? Some sort of interview? Are you my buddy? I was under the contractual impression that I would be ridiculed in front of the masses, shown the error of my ways and then dispatched in a vainglorious fountain of televisual highlight. Supernova one page of the historical big book. It was never to be, I see. Just some bit of filler to erase when the Summer blockbuster comes along.

Posters of the next Britney Spears/Tom Cruise epic are being plastered on the walls by naked niggers. Now accepting pre-order of tickets. Long hours of gratuitous slapping and manhandling of The Criminal follow.

JL: Honestly, you can't think art which defies logic is something worth dying for. (puts a gun down on the table in front of The Criminal, next to hungry alligator clips) It's yours to do with as you see fit......

HC: (briefly puts the pistol to his mouth, tongues the barrel opening) Let me tell you one thing before I use this pistol on you. Art is the living embodiment of egotistical non-logic. The artist, no matter how socially aware or politically correct his vision, has only one focal point, his asshole. The stinking pucker mouth from whence his darkest strokes come. Ass-fucking his own integrity with every REM-ing movement of his third eye butterfly. Sometimes, the greasiest horror thoughts make it to the frothy cumm-surface of the cappuccino Jacuzzi, you know. What do you do, censor or prosper?

JL: (scraping leeches from the criminal's groin with a razor) I really think sex and death should be separate entities. Don't you agree, deep down inside?

HC: Deep down inside. You must admit that sex is nothing more than commercialism turning your natural urge to fuck into some stupid romantic dance. You create bawling progeny which perish by your paternal act. Sex is death by definition. Only the fool doesn't realise that!

Startled by this outburst The Inquisitor--hands now covered by leeches--steps back into the Naked Female Dwarf Stephen King, who reanimates and firmly leg-locks his head.

JL: (trying to ignore stream of steaming midget urine down his neck) Among the many charges against you are literary onanism and misdeeds in a bloody hot tub of authors and whores. How do you plead?

HC: Of course, I am a wanker. And it is time to slaughter you.

Hertzan Chimera pulls back the trigger of the pistol and shoots The Inquisitor dead, continuing to empty the clip into his nemesis. Only when the tall dark stranger walks into the room does he realise there is no escape from the Clones of Interrogation. The New Inquisitor looks just like the last and his questions have a similar tang of twisted intrigue.

JL: You didn't think it would be this simple to win.

Dusky-skinned Aborigines of all shapes and sizes scamper madly in the background putting up new advertisements, some arming themselves, some playing with their own waste product, some eating it.

JL: (disembowelling the first Inquisitor with a Stanley knife) But first I should like to tempt our viewers at home with savoury products from a few of our sponsors. For the children out there, don't you wish mommy and daddy would buy you a new kind of toy? That's right, now you can get yours hands on the BabySoft uterine dilator. They're fun, fun, fun! Just ask Mr. Chimera here, he's had the chance to try them all during his stay with us. Purchase now and get a free bag of chocolates!

HC: As always, this shit will not live up to the hype.....

JL: (wrapping Inquistor #1's viscera, etcerera, around The Criminal’s neck; begins buffing his neck as if it were fine leather) Don't you think you've caused enough emotional distress with books such as Szmonhfu? Why do you persist and create such a monstrosity as United States?! And how dare you undermine the sanctity of such a fine nation by attaching its name to your work!

HC: (having difficulty talking through the throatly constriction of viscera) Szmonhfu was nothing more than a pen-ultimate blast of flatulence from a wasted youth that destroyed the artist in me and condemned me to eternal mediocrity among my more financially astute peers. Money is not why I do this. It used to be therapy, but now, I fear, it is fetishistic necessity--a disgusting habit that is impossible to break. Only death will be my salvation. United States--how you guys fought for that all-consuming nomme de guerre. How you are still fighting, in so many ways, for your success as a precocious nation.

JL: I interpreted United States as a buddy novel about the narrator and Mr Whysilage, kind of a road trip story where two guys overcome midlife challenges in the classic tradition of Visions of Cody and other Kerouac classics. Or--now that I think of it--Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Or that other wonderful Tom Cruise film Rain Man!

HC: (beginning to go blue and slurring his words now, fading) I adore that anal-ogy. Rain Man is what it is. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. United States is altogether something more. Aside from its blatantly apolitical titular message, it is about the thrill of community and how we can all be dragged along by the judicial system to commit acts of Sin so atrocious as to perjure ourselves in the eyes of whatever beast we believe God to be. Whichever form, whether man-sized or galaxy-heavy. It is about 'fitting in.' Anyone who has watched Brian Yuzna's Society will understand the central theme of togetherness and anyone who has lost everything in life only to find it wasn't important anyway will get the denouement.

JL: (strangles Chimera until he is dead) Spouting such anti-establishment rubbish will only reap you the harvest you deserve to choke on. Ha ha! That was quite good, eh? (nudges corpse) Ah well, he put up quite a struggle indeed, but who can resist the love that is Big Brother?

Intercom: Job well done, my son. Please come to room 799 without delay so that we may congratulate you in person!

Beside himself with joy The Inquisitor speeds to his destination; only the most esteemed are allowed entry to room 799! On arrival he notices the room is unfashionably dark. While trying to discern the features of Big Brother--sitting rather cockily behind a desk--two muscular henchmen grab The Inquisitor and strap him into an all-too-familiar chair.

BIG BROTHER: You should be commended for your service. It is sad, though, that the best and brightest sometimes harbor the worst thoughts of all.

Big Brother steps into the light, yet he is not the man pictured on the posters and other propoganda. Standing before The Inquisitor is Hertzan Chimera, preparing to conduct a lengthy interrogation. And so it goes...

The End