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wheezing when the film comes on.
    Once the credits have finished twitching and jittering around the screen—names nobody except their families and friends are likely to have heard of—a girl starts cunting about while she waits for the story, such as it is, to finish her off. Cunting about is how only women behave, not like wanking about or cuntishness, which anyone can get up to and usually does. Women like to call it multitasking, but cuntery's a better word. As a shambling creature that reminds me of some of the audience pulls off the top of the girl's head and grabs her brain, which at least proves she's supposed to have one despite the lack of any other evidence, a latecomer thunders down the aisle, spilling popcorn from a tub to squeak beneath his boots, and drops himself on a seat along from Eegore's. "What's happened?" he wants to be told.
    "He scrunched her head," Eegore brays, "and he squoze her brains out and I expect he et them."
    "Right." More forcefully the newcomer demands "What're they saying?" He's asking about the dialogue he and Eegore just blotted out by talking. When Eegore sticks his hands up and wriggles his limp fingers to indicate how little use he is, Deafskull raises his droning voice. "What'd they say?"
    "Try shutting the fuck up," a girl advises him, "and maybe we'd all hear." Her protest might mean more if she weren't waving her illuminated phone, and now she returns to texting or playing a game or maybe even reading about the film she paid to watch. That's how it goes for the rest of the show. Deafskull keeps asking what someone on the screen said and then what they were saying while he was, and Ratbag carries on scrabbling for sweets, and the girls dig in their tubs for popcorn that squeaks like polystyrene; maybe that's how it feels between their teeth. Quite a few people seem to prefer their personal screens to the one that's showing the film. As for Bladderblob—he's the fellow in my row, who puts me in mind of a balloon full of water—he makes a trip that must be to the Gents at least four times an hour. He comes back every time up the other aisle and sidles past me as if he's being dragged along the row. "What's that?" he complains when he almost stumbles over my feet, and "What the hell's that?" the next time. It wouldn't take much to trip him—just lifting my leg. Once he sprawls in the dark I could trample on his head and crush his face into the carpet. The only trouble is that someone might notice before I could finish.
    The creature on the screen turns out to be collecting brains so that it can benefit from all their wisdom and become more human. I laugh at that and some of the audience do, though it doesn't prove they've any brains themselves—none worth a monster's effort to get to know them. The monster hunters are unimpressed too, and they blow it to bits. As the credits bring the lights on I linger in the darkest corner of the cinema to watch the audience. They've hardly started to straggle out of the screen, leaving sweet papers and bags and plastic tubs and trails of popcorn, when I make my choice.
    There's an extra scene after the credits. A chunk of blown-up brain comes back to life and sets about growing into a monster. Eegore and Deafskull might appreciate this in their own morose ways, but they've gone. Just Bladderblob is left, waiting to be certain he doesn't miss even a scrap of what he's paid for, unless he's having to gather himself to heave his bulk out of the seat. The screen turns blank, and he lurches so abruptly into the aisle that his innards must be urging him.
    The corridor outside the screens is deserted, but someone's in the Gents. He's touching the front of a hand dryer on the wall and then fingering its underside in case this sets it off. That doesn't work, and holding his prayerful hands underneath the white box is no help, any more than moving them away and bringing them back or skimming them beneath the length of it, first slowly and then slower