The following morning Britney woke with a slight dampness between her legs. This was usual and she thought nothing of it. Then she noticed she was in the middle of a park. The surroundings seemed faintly familiar, yet Britney struggled to remember whether she’d been here before. Instinctively she got to her feet and begun walking towards the playground - the soft green grass springing up between her petite unpainted toes. At the bottom of the hill she could make out a set of swings and some sort of novelty roundabout. See could also see numerous children happily playing, romping, and generally developing their motor-sensory abilities. The gleeful yelps of innocent frolicking wafted towards her like an unsolicited odour. The smell of spring and childhood and innocence and spring and childhood. Suddenly Mickey Mouse appeared from behind a bush and started screaming.

Strangely, Britney was not frightened. In fact she rather liked the screaming, as it reminded her of an old pop song she’d heard once. Mickey Mouse then began to dance, spewing incandescent puffs of technicolour glitter into the air about him. Britney started dancing too, twirling enchanted beneath the shimmering shower of Mickey’s silver chaff-dust. This went on for a while until the creature ran off into a bush. Poised on the edge of a thick forest the garish animated rodent began waving and beckoning. The bastard cartoon spawn of Walt Disney’s diseased loins now started screaming more sweetly than ever, and Britney was compelled to follow.

The playground noises of children playing - still wafting like an unsolicited odour - met Britney’s ears like an old friend meeting another old friend who they hadn’t seen for ages. Britney was suddenly webbed with indecision. She yearned to have a go on the novelty roundabout and frolic with the other children, but she was also desperate to follow Mickey Mouse into the woods. Her wavering ceased only when Mickey produced a bag of Bon Bon’s and proceeded to proffer them tantalisingly. Britney pursued like a rat bewitched by the Pied Piper, but in this case it was a Pied Piper dressed like a giant mouse. The old friends passed each other in the street, indifferently, knowing they would never meet again.

The Giant Mouse, still screaming, ran on ahead, leading Britney through a beautiful brush of dense plastic shrubbery. Britney now joined in, introducing a pleasant counter-melody which made birds fall out of trees. Soon, however, she fell behind. Her petite lower limbs could not keep pace with Mickey’s rubber stick legs, which seemed to move at a much greater frame-rate than was possible for 1930’s animation techniques. She saw his wobbly spherical head duck beneath a large fibre-glass onion plant, and he was gone. Britney halted and felt a chill sweep through the undergrowth. The screaming, nevertheless, continued. (As did Britney’s attempts to underpin the harmonic movement with an inverted cadence.) The sound grew steadily clearer, and all at once Britney stopped singing. She then realised what she was hearing: her latest single.

Just as the trees began to sprout arms and advance menacingly towards her, a voice called out in the distance, imploringly. “Britty? Hello? Britty dear, it’s me!” Britney spun round but could see no one - except the belligerent and ominous tree-folk. “Time to wake up, Britty! Oh, Britty…” At this point she realised the whole episode had (rather tediously) been a dream. So she decided to wake up.

Upon returning to consciousness Britney opened her eyes to find a huge smiling face peering back at her. Upon readjusting to the spatial logic of consciousness she realised the face was actually a normal sized face, pressed up against hers. Britney could tell by the vulva-red lips and crater-grey eyes that it belonged to Madonna. “Hello Britty!” she beamed, “how are you feeling? I heard you had another attack, so I rushed by quick as I could…” Britney groaned. “Madonna flew over from London just to see you”, said Elsa, “she’s brought you some more teddy bears.”

“Where’s Kevin?” murmured Britney, “Where’s my husband?” Madonna withdrew, whispered a few words into Elsa’s ear, and assumed a condescending expression. “We’ve told you this many, many times before”, warned Elsa sternly, “Kevin doesn’t exist. You don’t have a husband, okay?” Britney raised her bottom lip and prepared to do a tantrum. In a flash Elsa drew a rifle, aimed at Britney’s forehead, and let off a round of minute self-dissolving darts containing small quantities of untested amnesiac fluid developed in secrecy by the US military during the Korean War. “Look, Britty, teddy bears!”

“I’ve been having the dreams again”, confessed Britney once Elsa had left and Madonna had arranged the bears in provocative positions upon the mantelpiece. “The Mickey Mouse ones?” asked Madonna seating herself on the foot of the bed. “Yeah, they always start that way…” “You’ve never told me how they end”, probed Madonna readjusting her position slightly. “Well, Elsa told me never to tell anyone, but I guess I can tell you, can’t I?” “Of course, you can Britty”, urged Madonna crossing her legs. “Um, well, they end with me waking up usually - but before that it goes horrible, very, very horrible, er, and violent.” “Is it just violence, or is it something more?” quizzed Madonna reclining somewhat. “No. The violence is, er, sort of sexy, you know, like those strange films you showed me once…”. “Yeah, don’t mention them to Elsa, will you Britty?” interrupted Madonna lying flat out on the bedspread. “Ok, not if you don’t want me to. But the dreams are like that… you know, with all these men and doing horrible things.” “What sort of horrible things?” demanded Madonna slipping underneath the covers with Britney. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

Madonna instantly resumed her original position at the foot of the bed. The door opened and Zelta entered brandishing a mobile: “Good morning Britney. George Bush is on the phone”. Zelta handed the phone to Britney, cast a furtive glance at Madonna and left, shutting the door carefully behind her.

“Howdy, this is the president of the United States of America speaking. Now, tell me Britney, my men have told me that you’re been suffering from illness, is that right? Now, I hope this is nothing too serious - after all we need strong, goodly citizens like yourselves if we are to remain a strong and goodly nation, especially in these trying times, it is necessary to stand strong and prosperous in the west against our enemies. Now, before I say anymore, and I think the folks of the nation are with me when I say this, as I speak for the nation of America as a whole, and for myself, that we are greatly concerned for your health and wish, as the people of this great nation all do, that you will soon be on your feet again, providing the people of this land with the entertainment they deserve for being such a great people. Now, having said that, I wish I didn’t have to say this but I have to - for reasons of national security - for we must not, in any small detail, defer to our enemies. Now, what I want to ask you, if I may, and I hope you understand the importance of this upon the nation as it stands and falls, for our enemies are great, and are numerous and great. Now, some of my people have been doing some figuring that as you are a fine role-model of our great free land, we figured that what the current problems might be with your illnesses suffered at present, might be related to our enemies at large, that is those who threaten us all in this free land. Now, with your permission, I would like to act to strike back at those enemies of America that threaten the people of this fine nation so we can strike them so that the goodly citizens of the country such as yourself can rest and be safe that the enemies of our great free land cannot strike this great nation, which is at present currently threatened by the enemies of the United States of America…”

Madonna had been frantic throughout this conversation, waving and gesturing impatiently for Britney to pass on her greetings to the president. She could restrain herself no longer. “Hello George, Madonna here…” she chirped as she snatched the receiver. “How you doing? We should get together sometime, you know? I got some great ideas for you… Remember my agents sent you those plans for a benefit gig for the troops out in Iraq? With that tie-in concept album?” Madonna continued to fawn for several minutes, but the President had already been patched back to Zelta in the ‘Comm-partment Room’.

He never got to hear her ideas for a warhead-shaped dildo, or even her ideas for a dildo-shaped warhead, as he was busy finalising a ‘National Britney Defence Program’ with Zelta. The president’s speech was a mere formality; the plans had been in the pipeline for months. Once the details were confirmed, the orders were given and a preliminary campaign was mounted. That very afternoon a small tribe of primitives on a remote island off the coast of Jamaica were napalmed so heavily the surrounding sea evaporated. Intelligence had linked them to a minor skin blemish on Britney’s knee.

Madonna eventually hung up when she realised the president wasn’t listening anymore. “Fuck you!” she snarled, revelling in her rebelliousness. Britney jumped. “Don’t swear, I don’t like it…” she whimpered lamely. A change had come over her, and Madonna became attentive. “What you have to realise”, she begun with gusto, “is that all this comes with the job. These nightmares you’ve been having are simply the flipside of the pop-star dream”. She paused briefly to admire the aphorism she had stumbled upon. Once she’d committed it to memory (and planned to recycle it in some form, possibly as an album name), she continued: “You’re a pretty girl, Britty, that’s why you’re famous. Okay, you’ve got some nice songs, but so has Tina Turner. I do know what I’m talking about. I used to have those same dreams too, you know…” Britney looked up, startled: “Really, when? Wh..what…?” Madonna smiled, sidled up next to Britney and put a comforting, affectatious hand around her petite shoulders. “Back in the day”, she explained, “I used to get them all the time! Every night, more or less…”

Madonna trailed off into a sigh. Her weary eyes softened, and she drifted into a sweet reverie of nostalgia. She rekindled fond memories of her youth, only to feel the cynical teeth of time gnaw at her naïvity. She was past her prime - this she had known for over a decade. Yet it seemed like only yesterday she was riding the glorious crest of synthetic 80s chart pop, only an hour ago when she was hailed as the undisputed queen of gratuitous sexual provocation and apathetic consumer nihilism. Oh, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be endowed with cone-shaped mammary glands was very heaven!

“Yes I had those dreams too, Britty, but I never took sedatives to blot them out. I liked the dreams… I fucking loved them! To me it was proof that I had made it. It was proof that I was..…..an icon.” “But you were only a singer weren’t you?” asked Britney timidly. “No, Britney, no. I was so much more. I was an icon. I am an icon!” Madonna paused to check whether this was worth noting down. It wasn’t. “You know what makes an icon, Britty, don’t you?” “What?” responded Britney mechanically. “Sex, of course”, replied Madonna triumphantly. “The offer of it… the promise of it… the shameless flaunting of it. And never the goods!” Madonna sensed she was on a roll: “that’s the beauty of it you see - keep ‘em keen! That’s what I say. You know what, Britty? It thrills me to think of all the men I have turned on over the years, and none of them were ever allowed to touch me. That’s like feminist isn’t it? Girl power!”

Britney was becoming distinctly uncomfortable, not least because Madonna’s affectatious comforting hand had started wandering. Suddenly there was another knock at the door. This time it was Elsa. “You’ve got some more guests Britney”, she said cautiously eyeing Madonna, who was sitting inconspicuously at the foot of the bed. Elsa quietly slipped away as the two girls from tATu came skipping through the door. They were both very petite and wore identical matching tennis skirts. “Hello Britney”, they sung in unison whilst slightly tilting their heads. They skipped onto the bed, ignoring Madonna completely, and began to bounce around annoyingly. “Hello”, said the submissive ginger one, “we hope you are feeling betteeerrrr”. She hung onto the last syllable as if she were clutching a piece of rotten driftwood whilst drowning in a sea of insincerity. The dominant, black-haired one repeated the sentence verbatim, in exactly the same tone, to ensure no genuine sentiment was inferred. “We are much sad for you”, they said in unison, deliberately displaying an inadequate grasp of the English language in order to convey an endearing sense of kitsch stupidity. “What have you been ill for”, asked the dominant black-haired one while the ginger submissive one tenderly stroked her hair. Britney told them about the dreams. “Only icons get them”, added Madonna sourly. The tATu girls giggled raucously and then toyed with each others navels. “Yes, those dreams are fun, no?” tittered the dominant black haired one while her friend playfully caressed her thighs. Madonna glowered. “We love them”, snickered the submissive ginger one as she playfully tugged at her friend’s nipple. Suddenly, in a whirl of bouncing and giggling, the tATu girls leapt about on the bed, throwing pillows at Britney and pulling her hair, tickling her arm-pits, and rubbing her labia.

Madonna watched sullenly as the girls played. She felt like a haggard school teacher. Like an under-10’s crèche-supervisor. Like a washed-up, highly-strung single mum whose life has effectively ended because they’ve spawned too many little fuckwits. She felt old.