naecuntcinenturthihutexseptfuruz – Rudy Civello
August 22, 2026
We built the hut when we were twenty. It took forever. We covered the walls with dead rappers, fictional gangsters, photos of me and Billy in the bath as toddlers with big santa beards made out of bubbles taken by our dads to show our first girlfriends to try and embarrass us, and a calendar with the lovely ladies from the cast of Hollyoaks in an assortment of uniforms recent storylines had suggested them unfit to bear. We stabbed holes all over the walls so people could come and watch us but the only people that showed up were our mums and/or girlfriends telling us to get up the fuckin road. So we added soundproofing.
We used to let Roach sit with us sometimes. She was always a cool wee lassie. She used to sit at a table in the middle of us and chop lines on DVD cases with the wrong discs in them then lie back and stretch her legs and make these weird symbols that only she and I could see. She used to remove her limbs from her body and blood would pour out of her sockets and she’d create these otherworldly installations that looked something like cubist paintings that, don’t ask me how I knew, were directly connected to the cogs of the universe. But whenever I’d try and talk to her about it she’d pretend she couldn’t hear.
I begged her to kiss me once. We’d been in the hut in weirdo mode for days and I was beyond the stage of just feeling horny. I got on my knees, looked up at her with my hands pressed together and she pulled me in close, ran her fingers through my hair and whispered something but I don’t know what then started laughing. She walked over to Billy who’d been watching us the full time, grabbed his hand and led him to the door. I sniffed another line, popped another pill, dropped another acid and when I looked up Roach was gone but Billy was standing there watching me. He pulled me in close, put his hand on the back of my head and said from now on nae cunt enters this hut except for us.
We decided to create a hundred rules for ourselves after we saw a quote that said something like true creative genius comes not from absolute freedom but from how one responds to the restrictions put in place by society or oneself. We wrote never tell them what you’re really thinking in a hundred different languages then never said a word to one another again. People asked us why we were even pals, but we just laughed in their faces. The last thing Billy ever said to me was after he put pictures of daffodils all over the walls.
Ah like lookin at them when am trippin, he said. But only the white ones. The yellow ones make me sick.
He started writing on the walls instead. QUANTITY OVER QUALITY. STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. SEX OVER LOVE. FRIENDS OVER FAMILY. VIOLENCE OVER PEACE. PISSUPS OVER POLITICS. THEFT OVER FAVOURS. FUCK ORIGINALITY. I started hurting myself. EXTREMITY OVER COMFORT. PAIN OVER PLEASURE. BUT BOTH AT THE SAME TIME IF YOU DON’T MIND/PLEASE/IF POSSIBLE. We started taking more drugs. Not different drugs, just more. Like when you get the munchies and try and put as many maltesers in your mouth at the one time as possible. To be able to breathe through one’s nose was a mark of shame.
We attached four units to each of the four walls on which sat four cd decks, four mixers, four pairs of speakers playing four different tracks giving me four different headaches keeping me awake for four days at a time crying, scratching at myself, wanking myself stupid, eating so much sugar I was making myself sleepy, tingling and ringing and writhing and shouting/groaning/moaning/singing. I tried talking to Billy about it but he pretended he couldn’t hear. It was always a fuckin competition with him. I feel worse than you/I’ve took more drugs than you/my music’s louder than yours/I’ve shagged more burds than you I’m taller stronger fatter thinner smarter cooler listening to different versions of the same song over and over and over and over again too busy sucking on my ding dong etc etc etc etc.
But fuck it. You can’t choose who you end up being pals with.