Stranger perspectives across a coffee house (a vignette of ages)

I close my eyes but for a moment, I am tired now and need to sleep.

I see his head droop and his eyes close for it is clear now that he needs to sleep. 

The years weigh heavy on my shoulders and my eyes now tend to weep. 

Although slumped as though broken backed, his moistened eyes still brightly flash. 

My finger tips smooth wrinkles out upon my furrowed brow

His facial exploration creeps as though seeking something out

But something seeps into my bones forcing marrow out

There's a facial tick as though, as if, life still squirms about

Life has filled me to the brim, and nothing, nothing, nothing more can ever be packed in 

But for all his wrinkled aged skin he radiates a simple grin

Laughter used to free me but now I feel a chill

This old man must has the answers for his tongue is never still

And I am not so much complete, as completely through

I hope one day to meet myself as thoroughly fulfilled

I can't believe I've found myself at the end so damned confused

A life well lived so beautiful, I hope one day I could be you

I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish for my lost youth

Vignette: Rescue Dog

Sometimes you need a magic wardrobe, a flying carpet or a secret garden. A means to step out of this immediate, ugly, threatening world into some other place. A place where evils banished stay banished, rather than suffering a resurrection every time the sun returns to the sky and draws you back to their clutches from the comfort of sleep. Mark had read more than enough to understand this, but although he could easily let his mind fall into the pages of any book, his body was altogether unco-operative in this matter. Sleep was a help when it came, but always he'd awake to the same dismal nightmare he was encouraged to call home.

Some homes are castles, or palaces, Mark presumed; for he knew not all fiction was lies. It came from somewhere. Some grain. Somebody must be happy. Most homes were somewhat more modest of course.  Like those of his teachers who grew beans in their gardens that he'd steal whenever he could. Or quite shabby like the one on the corner with the crumbling coal shed that sprouted wild rhubarb, which he'd never stolen. But from things he overheard or read in his books he'd come to believe that all these different buildings shared a thing in common that transformed them from bricks and mortar into actual fairy tale homes; the adults called it love, but to Mark such a small word seemed utterly inadequate to properly describe what made a house a home. Such a small word couldn't possibly account for the vastness of the emptiness he felt he was stepping into whenever he slipped the key into the latch. He was encouraged to call it home, but he knew something big was missing from within. He retrieved the key from under the bin and momentarily allowing the hallway gloom to seep out into the bright late afternoon, he let himself in once again to the eery silence.

Pausing for a moment he imagined he could hear the gentle pad of Lady's paws as she trotted over to briefly yap and welcome him home, as she used to do. He couldn't of course, she was no longer with him, but Mark had an impressive ability to project his memories if he didn't think too hard. For a moment he conjured the ghost of his dog, a golden labrador, to take away the depressing edge he felt whenever he arrived home. He missed her so badly, even though she'd only survived a few short months.

The house was damp, condensation drops continually dribbled down the vinyl paper that in places was held in place by yellowed sellotape. Cold stone clad uncovered floors sucked the heat from any lifeforms that shuffled across it. A threadbare blanket covered the window with none of the modern convenience of draw pull curtains. A little used electric bar fire sat crookedly on the brown tiles of the hearth, in front of a hardboard sheet that attempted to block the sooty gale incessantly twisting down the flue. The single room was stuck in a permanent winter. Once, it had seemed jolly, happy even. Warmed by the packing of familial bodies cohabiting in confinement. But they were gone now. It was just Mark left living here. With her.

He was glad that today she occupied the upper room. He needed the space. Dropping his knapsack onto the permanently erected drop leaf table in the centre of the room he turned his attention to the sideboard. Gingerly pulling open the wood wormed door hanging from its single hinge he squatted down and peered into the compartment. He scowled and peered harder still, as though force of concentration alone could somehow magically fill it with goods. Tinned pear halves in syrup. Perhaps a four pack of wagon wheels. An uncut loaf and a pat of butter. A tin of beans or even just a packet of rice. Anything! Anything other than the mouldy slice of Mother's Pride he'd found there that morning. As though in protest, his stomach grumbled.

"Is that my Marky there?"

He jumped, startled. Surprisingly he hadn't heard her stumble out of bed. He hadn't expected she would. Or could.

"Yes mum", he called back dutifully and moved to the foot of the stair to see her at the landing.

She stood, swaying, wrapped in once fine silken pyjamas now frayed and bursting at the seams. She didn't stir from the bedroom very often. Either she would be semi lucid and he'd be trapped into an evening of grotesque make believe listening to her tales of the happy life they'd had because she was such a good, and loving mother. Or she had some errand or chore for him to snap to. He hoped the latter. At least it would be quick, and he had his homework to get through.

"Nip down the shop and get me some some ciggies, love"

"Is there any money? We've got no bread", he inquired quietly but she was already heading back to the comfort of her bed, so he supposed not.

Gladys screwed up her face and looked down at him as she would a dog turd spoiling a lawn. It was a pokey shop carrying the minimum of provisions at the fanciest of prices. It wasn't much of a business, especially since the Co-Op had opened up the road. But since the shop was basically her own front room overheads were low and so she was able to struggle on. The Co-Op of course would never offer 'the tick', that line of credit that meant the difference between making a sale or not, whatever the prices. Of course there was no real certainty her customers would ever pay their bill, but mostly they did. And although the Co-Op did well on a payday, they inevitably came crawling back by the week's end. And besides, they were mostly her neighbours; an outsider may have been fooled into thinking, her friends. Gladys preyed on their wanton needs and to ensure they understood the service she was offering, she would always meet their requests with contempt.

"You know she hasn't paid for three weeks?" Gladys snapped, thoughtfully fingering the golden packet of twenty B&H in her claws.

Mark scowled down at the floor chewing on his lip. There wasn't anything to be said. He just hoped he could get the cigarettes and get out of there fast. It was never a certainty. He remembered bitterly the last time she had refused. She'd let him take a small bag of Winalot Shapes for Lady but had refused him the cigarettes. That had been bad. The dusty atmosphere was clogging his throat. The thought of going back empty handed, having to explain, and then, and then... Tears almost welled up.

"Please", he whispered again in case he hadn't said it right before. He understood words had a kind of power and hoped he was invoking it correctly - with fingers and toes crossed.

Gladys sneered somewhat. Happy that she had him in his place. That he knew the power she had over his life and that he felt suitably indebted to her. She slapped the shiny box down on the counter. Mark snatched it up and with force of will gushed out a 'thank you' before bolting out the door. Running down the street gulping in the fresh air, all of a sudden the loose flapping toe sole of his shoe snagged on a raised paving stone and brought him crashing down. He hit shoulder first and his momentum tumbled him over in a graceful somersault, the kind of fall he imagined James Bond would take. He was instantly on his feet totally unscathed standing outside the shabby house on the corner. Again his stomach complained with a mild rumble and he regarded the unappealing wild rhubarb.

Gingerly Mark lifted the rotted wooden gate which, like the sideboard door in his own house, rested on a single hinge. His feet slid about on the mossy flags of the yard as he crept over to the rhubarb. It was growing in a slimy puddle of overflowed drainage water which flooded into his shoe through the yawn of his loose sole and spread unctuously between his toes. Grimacing he leaned forward and snapped off an enormous stem that was almost as long as he was tall.

"YOU, you boy. What are you doing there", the old man yelled from his window.

Mark jumped and almost fell over into the fetid pool at his feet.

"Come here boy. No not right here. Come inside."

Mark was familiar with trouble and knew he was in it now. His experience of adults had taught him that silence compliance was usually the best course of action, so he approached the door.

With the lightest touch it swung easily open. Stepping across the freshold Mark almost felt his body jolt, as though it were falling into another world this time dragging his slightly sluggish and resistant mind with it. Not at all like the many times he'd felt himself falling into the pages of a book.

He'd expected the place to be shabby and dingy like his own, but it most certainly was not. There were an almost impossible number of lamps and light shades, all shining brightly with slightly different but universally warm hues. All around he cast a crowd of shadows and he had an uneasy feeling that each belonged to somebody else. Some other version of himself from some other world. There was one with his long wavy locks and another, taller with a short spiky crop. Spectres of himself from other lives he could have, should have lived. The old man was sat at a grand solid wood table that was covered. With foods. Foods of all kinds. All colours. Much of which Mark had never even seen before. But he surely recognised the cakes and the trifles, and the biscuits, and even the wagon wheels. His stomach demanded attention.

"Help yourself boy. Just don't be sick", the old man chuckled.

Mark, a sensible boy, hesitated but it seemed his shadows were less reticent and as if led by them he found himself tucking in, heartily. In almost no time it seemed as though Mark and his host of shadowy spectres had all but cleared the enormous banquet. He ate until his stomach was packed like a drum and grumbled that it could take no more. He ate in a way he had never eaten before. He felt a sense of contentment he didn't know people could feel. Mixed with a wistful longing for other feelings he suddenly expected might exist. His very understanding of what it meant to be alive had suddenly, and fundamentally, shifted.

The old man was rummaging for something in a cupboard. Questions were welling up in Mark's mind whilst all his many shadows dozed. But he didn't have the energy, or focus, to organise them. He sat back and let his confusion mingle with his pleasure while he waited to see what might happen next.

"You see the thing about magic is not to ask how, or why, or what or wherefore", the old man was muttering as his search continued, "but rather Who. Who needs it? Whom should it serve." He stopped his rummaging for a moment and turned his wizened countenance on to Mark, his fierce eyes blazing for a moment. "THAT'S why all faith was lost. That's why magic retreated from the minds of men. Because we turned our backs on each other, it turned its back on us". His face softened and he turned back to his search. "Heh, but for me of course. And you boy. And you... Ah! There you are."

The old man extricated himself from the cupboard he'd half disappeared into holding aloft a very dusty, very, very old camera.

"This is for you my boy", he said.

"What is it?", Mark replied quizzically.

"Why it's a camera of course! Perhaps not the best of marques being a 1970s Russian model, but this one is rather special", he enthused.

"But why?"

"Oh you'll see when you use it"

"No, I mean why are you giving it to me?"

"But that's obvious! Now run along before you're missed"

And before anything more could be said Mark found he was quite alone, in the dingy and scruffy small downstairs room of the tumble down house on the corner clutching a thing he knew nothing about and had never even imagined he might own. He instantly loved it.

Mark crept upstairs with her begged for cigarettes and was thankful to find that she'd returned to her normal comatose state of sleep. Gently he dropped the packet on her bedside table, eliciting no more than a single snort. Back on the landing he breathed again. The atmosphere in the bedroom had almost been enough to make him baulk on top of the rich heavy meal he had recently so enjoyed.

The camera was emblazoned with the tag 'Zorki 4K' which Mark pronounced 'Zorky Forky', although he quickly adopted 'Zork' as a pet name. Sat back at the table in the downstairs room he turned it over in his hands. It felt solid, dependable, in a way nothing else in his life ever had. Of course, he knew it was an old film camera. He knew what it was. But he'd never before handled such a thing, and he certainly wasn't sure where to get film from or what to do with it if he did get his hands on some.  Nevertheless it had an irresistible draw, and he slowly explored all of its moving parts.

He refused to immediately lift it up to his eye and gawk uncomprehendingly through its viewfinder. That seemed disrespectful. He twisted the rings on the lens barrel to get a feel for their degree of travel. The one marked off in old imperial distances had a gritty feel halfway through as though, he supposed, there was grit trapped inside, grinding away at the soft metal of the lens barrel. The other had a number sequence inscribed on it and there was a positive 'click' at each point. Examining the lens closely it was apparent this ring controlled a diaphragm. He wanted to understand the camera from first principles before he read anything about it, so he was concentrating hard and he came to the conclusion that here he could control the distance and the brightness of the scene.

Turning his attention to the body of the camera there was an obvious priming lever, but again he would not allow himself to immediately and clumsily yank at it. On the other end what could only be the reverse function, a knob that rotated in the opposite direction. Clearly between them this knob and lever provided the film transport mechanism.

On the outside of the camera that left one more control, aside from a button which would obviously take a picture. A spiked cog like affair also marked off in a number sequence. It didn't seem to want to turn, until he realised it had to be pulled up to release its locked position. The spikes dug deeply into the pads of his finger and thumb until he'd rotated it enough for one of the numbers to align with a mark and allow the cog to drop back into place. He quickly found his fingers hurt after a few goes with this, but he still wasn't sure what it was for. Satisfied exploration alone would reveal nothing more, he decided it was time to fire it.

He set the top dial to the largest number (1000) and the lens ring to the smallest (2) before activating the cocking mechanism. Taking a firm, two handed grip with elbows on the table he pointed Zork at the open, still empty, sideboard cupboard. He twisted the lens to its closest distance setting and raised the viewfinder to his left eye. He saw the cupboard clearly. He twisted the distance setting but nothing seemed to happen. He'd expected some kind of focusing effect, and was a little worried the old man had only given him the camera because it was broken. Old people did weird shit like that.

But he didn't really believe it. Everything about Zork felt good. It must just be that he wasn't getting something about it. Yet. He tripped the shutter release. It made a solid, satisfying clunk and for a brief, barely discernible, moment something about the room shifted and Mark was overcome with a strong sense of déjà vu.

It was quite unsettling. He put the camera down and thought he should get on with his homework. For the next two hours Mark immersed himself in maths problems, working through two chapters ahead of the assignment because he basically loved maths. He did though find, his eye was constantly drawn back to Zork and much to his personal embarrassment he couldn't resist occasionally reaching out to touch it's cool metal casing and feel the ridges of its body. He just wasn't that tactile, as a rule. The physical world had just never particularly interested him before. It was dark, and late when he finished.

Although tired, he picked up Zork one more time. The top plate control he noted wasn't just marked in numbers, at one end of the range was a capital 'B'. He twisted the awkward dial all the way round and re-cocked the shutter mechanism. Leaving the distance scale at just a few feet (he still wasn't sure if that worked) he gently pressed down on the shutter release...

The room was filled with light. He felt that strange sensation of his body falling into another world dragging his reluctant mind with it again. Squinting against the sudden brightness he looked around. He was still in the same room, stood in the same place, but instead of being almost bedtime a cool morning light was flooding in. Catching sight of the sideboard, with its rickety door hanging open he saw a single slice of mouldy Mother's Pride. The very one he'd disposed of that morning. While all this registered with him, he released the shutter mechanism and with the 'clack' of the closing shutter everything suddenly reverted to how it had been; almost bedtime, if he were not already dreaming.

But he hadn't been dreaming. Somehow the awkward little camera had taken him a short distance back in time. Thanks to the peculiar natures of  time and magic he found that within only a few minutes he'd managed to fully explain the operation of Zork to himself based on the years of experience he would eventually acquire. Zork could take him to any time of day on any day he liked, past or future with the correct careful adjustment. So a few minutes later he found himself sitting down quite exhausted. 'I'd better get some sleep,' he thought, 'seems I'll be busy tomorrow'.

It was the worst kind of day. Once in a blue moon something would shift in his mother, like a grinding gear box had suddenly found its bite. All of the disconnected slow doziness was gone, as though it were woven into the fabric of her pyjamas so that when she was actually dressed in day clothes she was transformed into a cruel, hard creature. He feared the creature that lived in his mother. She snatched the bag of Winalot Shapes from him, tearing it open in the process, and flung it across the room in fury. The little shapes exploded everywhere, any other puppy's dream scenario. Lady cowered behind Mark's Legs. She lifted her booted foot high, ready to lash out, to kick or stamp, inflict an injury beyond that she felt herself. As though it was Mark's or Lady's fault he could not get the cigarettes. He should have tried harder. He should have made sure he said please properly. He was truly scared now. Terrified that...

But then something shifted, some subtle tiny change. He felt himself impelled to take a step forward, slipping his hand in his pocket and say

"But mum, I've got your cigarettes here".

Holding out the shiny golden packet he had no idea how he came to have them but he felt perhaps that things were going to be okay.

For many people photography can become their reason for seeing, for delighting in all that light can reveal. For Mark and Zork and Lady, photography became their very reason for being; between them they transformed this ugly nightmare world into a place of beauty - and in due course, Mark even came to learn that 'Love' was not quite as small a word as once he thought.

Uncle Fester's Fidgety Fingers

Uncle Fester spent his days sitting at the beaten up drop leave table in the corner of our kitchen constantly a tip tap tapping his fingers in a rhythm alien to the sensibilities of those around him. At first it had been menacing. Then maudlin. And finally maddening. The pastor who lived at number six stopped stopping by for his harvest festival donation demands and his inglorious attempts to save Ma's soul (ever since dad had walked over those furnace hot plates and burned his feet right off the pastor had taken an increased interest in Ma's soul). None of us missed the pastor very much, least of all Ma's ample soul. Less happily the constant drumming had driven Mitch, Lizzie's handsome young suitor, to self harming such that his face and arms looked somewhat akin to a bloodied scarecrow. The house was often filled with the horrified shrieks of the young 'uns, should they chance upon him blundering out of the lavvy or weeping in a corner. Uncle Fester had a profound effect on the house, and the village, when first he had arrived.

"Stick another fag in Uncle Fester's fingers would you love?" Ma asked.

We'd tried everything to still his beating fingertips. Soft cloths would get knotted round the knuckles until we were a feared he'd snap his fingers off and they'd go parading about the place causing eleven times the trouble. Weighty books on the back of his hands would routinely skitter off to drop open on the floor where the dog would worry, with a loud and long howling, that it couldn't read a word (we had a particularly stupid dog). Buckets of water and bowls of thick viscous soup would equally just splash about leaving a right royal mess. The only thing that would give a moment's reprieve was a Lambert & Butler Superking on each juddery in-draw. The cacophony of the pursuant coughing was  an angelic chorus in comparison to the otherwise incessant drumming. We fed Uncle Fester's pleurisy to excess for the relief it bought.

In the momentary almost peace Ma sank wearily onto the high stool she kept in the corner for reaching up into the small pans cupboard and lit up a Superking of her own.

"It's time you sorted your Uncle Fester's little problem out Robbie" she said with the unquestionable authority of the matriarch.

"Aww Ma," I started.

"There's no 'Aw Ma' about it. It's been six months now and I don't want your Lizzie's fella looking like a surgeon's swab at the altar. It has to be sorted, and soon"

I looked over at the peculiarly blunted finger tips on Uncle Fester's quivering left hand as its clawed grip raised the cigarette, tatters of skin plastered to the butt.

"Whatchya want me to do Ma?"

I thought about the little holes I'd dug in the back garden over the years. Various outlived mice, hamsters and cats. And of course the remnants of dad's feet. The hospital hadn't wanted us to take them, but Ma was adamant that dad's feet, all be them stumpy and charred, were the feet of a champion tap dancer and not the feet to be left on a dusty shelf of some coroner or sheriff. So we'd brought them home. And I'd buried them in the garden. With decorum and ceremony. And a drop of fine ale. I'd chosen a spot by the outhouse, where dad could see from the window reflected in the mirrors of the fitted double wardrobe doors in his bedroom when he was sat up, taking his tea. I'd dug many a small hole. And I could readily imagine  digging two more.

Just then one of the young 'uns let loose a piercing banshee squeal.

"Ah, it must be Lizzie's Mitch's mid-morning shite", Ma declared nipping her Superking for later and bustling off to tend the child's nerves; Uncle Fester wheezing on a toke.

Long before the affliction had set in, Uncle Fester had been justly famed for his digital dexterity, his six fingered picking perplexing folk across the land. He'd also been a significant hit with the ladies, although he didn't talk about that so very much.

Sex in fact was pretty much a taboo topic of conversation, despite that everyone was up to it all hours of the night and day. Hopping over fences and creeping around the out houses for illicit assignations everyone knew about but nobody mentioned. In the summer the streets would be awash with rivers of semen and tears of regret. Young 'uns were popping out all over the place, and yet sex was never discussed. It was perfectly acceptable to get your sister up the duff, providing everyone pretended she'd caught it off a toilet seat. The ladies of the village would all loiter in our street when they first heard that Uncle Fester was back with his additional finger, but the perpetual drumming and the creepy sight of Mitch soon scared them off. Except Mary.

Mary had always been a brave and tenacious girl. She would confront any fear when others would flee. She had single handedly twisted the heads off the bodies of 39 snakes the previous year, when we'd had that infestation. More even than Big Dumb Jimmy. But to be fair he'd died horribly, all bloated and twisted, halfway through the enterprise from a surprising bite to the buttocks. In fact, if it weren't for Mary we'd probably all still be throttling snakes instead of creeping around pretending not to have sex. We had sung her praises for three days and five nights that midsummer. It's only a shame she's as deaf as a doorpost and couldn't hear the hearty chants.

Just then Ma returned, arms laden with wet and bloodied towels.

"We should marry 'im off" I declared emphatically.

"Who dear?"

"Ole uncle Frank. We should marry ole uncle Frank off to poor deaf Mary."

And just like that, that's how it happened. Uncle Frank with his extra finger married poor deaf Mary with her exceptional snake throttling skills. And they really did live happily ever after. Or so we heard. The village made them live in the old oak tree tree-house on the top of the hill, on account of Uncle Frank's interminably fidgety fingers but they had two dozen  or more young 'uns, dropping like acorns, on account of all the sex they didn't have to pretend to not be having.

Lizzie never married Mitch. He got to be kind of ugly, what with all the cutting and all, so we sent him over the water to live in London. I think he got a job as a tour guide on the open topped buses but only in the rain.

We never did find out what made Uncle Franks fingers so fidgety, but I'm wondering if Uncle Willy will know when he turns up next week. The ladies of the village are already queuing up on the street. Something to do with his wonderful wandering wang. I wonder if he'll get along with Wanda - she's kinda armless since we had to deal with all those wolves this last winter.

And me? Well I'm still a family man because, to be honest, I find the real world just a little bit weird.

In Shadows

It's a congenital condition. Perhaps easiest to think of it as albinism in reverse. I can not leave the light. They tell me. I suppose I know it to be true. Those singular moments. That feeling of a heart not stilled but ripped apart. When the light died, and my shadow was lost. I was born you see with my heart in my shadow, and a shadow in my chest. Sharing this vital part of me with a malformed twin conjoined by the light. I call him Judas. I don't like him so very much.

Judas likes to skulk in corners. Always trying to slip under the bed or cosying up with the thuggish pools of Ikea furniture umbras. The darkest part of any shadow will call him and have him creeping off with scant regard for what it means to me. What it means to us. For if I lose my shadow I lose my heart and slip into the deepest darkness that is death. Twice they've resuscitated me back into this life of eternal light. And both times I could feel the repugnant joy Judas felt in the boundless freedom the consuming dark brought him. I could feel that part of him in my chest swelling to hideous proportion. Bursting against fragile cracking ribs. Oozing out along the fine lines of veins and capillaries. Lattice working my skin with a web of nothingness, of anti-being. Twisting flesh and muscle into a paroxysm of pleasure and pain. It hurts to let him free.

Sometimes we play chess. He's rubbish and often loses. He says its my fault, that I don't move his pieces right. We bicker and often abandon the game. But then the frigid boredom of our shared prison of this controlled environment grips us both and I see him languidly reaching out for some new slither of shadow cast by a carelessly positioned bottle of sauce or library book. He can be a right bastard.

Sometimes if I fall asleep by the window the setting sun will give him arms that can stretch from floor to ceiling. I will wake with a start and a shudder when his grasping fingers scratch at the edges of my defensive pools of artificial flood lights. He screams like a banshee when I leap back to the centre of my safety zone leaving him a but a spot on the floor. A pinprick of red at the centre, my beating heart. Sometimes he doesn't talk for days when I've had to treat him that way.

Then he will take to imploring me. Begging. Pleading. In a slippery slithering tongue. Cajoling. Promising. 'Please. Just a little touch. Just a little taste. We'll like it so much. Together. Just you and me. Free in the darkness. Together in the darkness.' Stirring up the bile in my gut. I hate this light. This constant optimistic flood. This will of technology conquering nature. And I know I want to pull the plug. I know I want to give in to what he asks. I yearn to buy umbrellas.

We play chess. We read. We pluck sullenly at guitar strings. Inside a focused pool of light. A hint of infinity skirting the edges. An under current. A single shared beating heart. A shadow in my chest.

And then we hear the news.

Shadows it seems, shadows can be killed. A case like ours, in Calcutta. Less extreme. A girl with a shadow breast. A shadow with a girl's breast.  Conjoined by the light. Lactating the finest Indian ink. Separated. Torn apart. The shadow self swallowed by a close proximity macro-field black hole. The girl survived. As did the discorporate gland, albeit as little more than a momento mori.

Judas wasn't happy.

"It's the very darkness you've always longed for", I beseech him.

"It's all fish and porcelain" was the only sense I could get from him.

He'd always had a weird way of talking. Somehow using metaphors that to any right mind just weren't. But I could just about get along in a normal conversation. Which this wasn't.

"Mackerel, bream, cod and tuna."

"Stop listing extinct fish and listen"

He was very effectively conjuring images of heaps of dead stinking fish in my mind, with fine china cups and sauces wobbling atop. The whole scene was making me feel queasy and uneasy. I guess that's what he meant.

The darkness he was being offered made him feel queasy and uneasy. And not just himself. Since it had arrived it was as though he had been excommunicated. I no longer had to continually be on my guard against his slipping off into a huddle of darker indistinct shadows. They would come nowhere near him. You could almost see the other shadows twisting out of his way. That at least was a relief. But I couldn't feel comfortable with the sense of apparent danger that hung in the air.

The device was small, like an old fashioned wrist watch, but once activated it wouldn't stop hoovering up shadows until I sealed it. In comparison, the retro-fitting of our one shared heart into the space from where my shadow emanates would be, routine. Dull. Mundane.

So why prevaricate? Judas had shaped and defined my entire life and I had a deep rooted bitter hatred of him. Like a junky hates a needle. Like a blasphemer hates a tongue. Like a father hates a son. I shall be glad to be rid of him. To sleep in peace with the dark. To be the master of my own heart.

I fasten the clasp. It's the last thing I have to do. Judas, a mere shadow speck right now had stopped his chatter. He was behaving more like the shadow of a puppy dog than the shadow of a man now. Big baleful black circles where his big baleful eyes would be. I never came to conclusion if I was acting rightfully of wrongfully. I was just following the steps. Charging the nano bots. Scrubbing the theatre area. Adjusting the lights. Ticking the instructions off in their numbered sequence. I fasten the clasp.

Judas screams as though all of his remaining allotted screams were being ripped out of his body at once. A scream so chilling and piercing that I see his fingernails fall off. His toenails too. And from his uncapped extremities his essence begins to leak; to turn about upon itself; in a slow helical pirouette. Gathering speed and momentum. Discorporating only to reform as a dark matter dust devil tornado. With a heart of red at the very eye. Before blacking out, I came to understand what it means not to die but to be ripped from existence. The last thing I felt was a knot of anti space forming in my chest, given chase by the scuttle of a dozen tiny robotic feet.

I don't now sleep in the dark. Or buy umbrellas. All of a sudden I find, that which had been denied me, holds no sway. For although I hate this life of eternal light, I do not particularly care for the loneliness that I find in the night.

The Locksmith and the Empath

“Give me the Gods”

Shiv saw the dull glint of gunmetal in the shabby alley mouth and stopped dead. He hadn’t heard the words but he understood immediately what was happening. You only pointed a gun at someone for two reasons and since he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to spoil his pretty good looks he assumed the second. He knew he was unarmed, and he knew he had a pocket full of life force. Death force. Everything contains the seed of its opposite. Life force, gun, death force. He holds a handful of God coins out.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Nico asks.

“He’s got a gun”

“So?”

“So I'm giving him the goddam Gods”

The coins slip from his slender hand in to the rough grasping palm and the encounter melts away as if it had been nothing more than a five fingered back alley shuffle. Then Shiv feels Nico slap him.

“He had a gun”

“He had a gun”, she mimics.

They trudge on. Him miserable, smarting cheek. Her smarting at his stupidity, wondering if she should slap him again. Short walk. Should have taken a car. Nobody walks.

“Who the fuck walks?” she asks no one in particular.

And no one answered. Simple enough job. Walk down round the block. Turn a few tricks. Hustle a few Gods. Trot home and settle in to it. Lose themselves in the misty light glow from the game screen. Drinking more than they ought. Wanting more than they ought. Gambling. Winning. Gambling. Losing. Together. Heady night. Heady Friday night. Panting. Through it, together. Siblings touching. Nearing. Drawn close. Feeling ready. For the Big Game. The big win. This week. Got to be in it. One god, just one would do them. Why didn’t he keep that back? Goddam it. Goddam it. Goddam.

Weary steel door confronts them.

“Insert credit please”, chirpy steel voice.

Slender hand tickles the slot with short spike. Maybe he falls to pieces when people point guns at him but Shiv was proud of his lock cracking skills. NIco was not impressed, she hardly notices his deft motion. Ordinary. Everyday. The door notices. It knows no credit was supplied but still it springs ajar with a creaking huff. All the way up the stairs it chirps after them

“Insert credit please”

But it had been doing that for months now. Friends and neighbours constantly complaining about the racket it makes. Shiv and Nico as oblivious to it as to the dawn chorus.

“Insert credit please”

Shiv was glad to sit down. He’d been knotted up inside since the hold-up, not even the pleasure of Nico’s slap had unwound him. Normally he’d have revelled in that, but guns made him nervous. Now he slumped in an old upholstered grotesquery of a chair. He knew it was alive with bugs but the feel of a material weft pleased him.  He said he liked the organics of it. Others said the organics of it liked him. He absently picked an armoured scurrying thing from his forearm. He wondered what kind of creature ate this. Everything gets eaten.

Nico preferred the floor.

She shuckled her jacket from her slender frame and allowed it to languidly slip to her feet. Languid shuckling, one of the many benefits of engineered materials. Any girl can strip as though she had the grace and favour of Monroe. Not that Nico needs such gross tactics, she just likes the way the cloth folds itself neatly beneath her as she sits.

And as she sits she sighs. And as she sighs she weeps. Shiv looks up.

“Hey, Nique...” using her junior nick, the name they only use between themselves.  It works. It always does.

“Oh Shiv”, she replies. “what’s to be done with you... giving the whole lot away like that”

“I know but he –“

“– had a gun that probably wasn’t even loaded”, she finishes for him.

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that”.

But Shiv knew that she could, and in all likelihood did. She didn’t waste further words on the matter. Although she did look. In that way people do. When they feel very reasonably let down by you. The game was due and with no Gods they were sure to get creamed.  One way or another.

The game had provenance. In the earliest days of pre-organic computing multi-user gaming had been born. From EssexMUD, through Zork. Nobody had understood how to capitalise on the draw. Gaming had grown more readily down the graphic individual action path, the quintessential PacMan™. Many millionaires had made their quick buck. The mass player game came into its own once mass connectivity had taken a hold, once it was realised you could charge by the experience not the artefact. All the trouble and expense that physical product meant evaporated. The Game simply let you move in a city of 50 million plus, without the attendant physical danger of moving in a city of 50 million plus. In a world where people trusted less, spoke less, knew less, cared less the population had been dying of boredom. Of a loneliness of the spirit. The Game had changed that. The game had made it possible to once again, feel a part. Be a part. Not apart. A whole community working in concert. A whole community of 50 million plus. Less two. This night. Less Shiv and Nico.

They sat in their accustomed places. Godless. Still staring mechanically at The Game screen, as it sprang into life. A fine mesh of interconnected points starting to glow stronger and stronger as the city came on-line. As millions jacked in. Nico shivers. She can feel the minds winking out as the city consciousness shifts from the streets and the buildings into the Game Space. Ordinarily she would be one of the first. If only to avoid this sensation. This awareness. This deep unsettling feeling of grief. Life upon life winking out of real space. The night growing quieter, colder, emptier. Nico Shivers.

Shiv kneels. He has seen her like this before. When they were late. The curse of her gift. On the one hand she knows people. She knows what they feel. She knows what he feels. She can read. She can read him. It hurts her. Death. It touches her, deeply.

Shiv wraps his arms around her. She falls into him. His mind slips back to that time before. He closes his eyes and floats with it for a moment. Letting the memory, the dream, transport him. How easily he slips from the here and the now. How easily the toils are obliterated and replaced by an inner heat. But his guilt, his doubt, his fear lingered. He had to do something in the here and in the now. He couldn't let go. He couldn't let her down. His hands slipped across her back. Leaving smears of blood. Every life lost to the game cuts her. Her pores open and bleed. This is no damn good. He’s losing her and he knows it. He has to get her into the game, and soon.

Tobbacco. Television. Lotto. Buprenorphine. The Game. The long line of socially sanctioned drugs. Always stepping  up. As the lethal nature of each is revealed. As people come to learn social living is social dying. Another silver bullet. Another way out.  The Game. Where falling down is standing up. Where you can live the dream, whatever it may be. Visit Columbine or Dachau. Be a space hero. Face fuck the eye sockets of a puppy. Live the life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Game. All for the price of a single God coin. But God coins don’t come cheap.

God coins can’t be bought. They have to be won, one way or another. Shiv and Nico hustled them. Her unique talent and his untouchable hands. The empath and the locksmith. He can dip into any space. She can smell the unwary. It had been a fine haul this night. Until the gun. The gun she said had not even been loaded. Shiv curses himself as Nico slips into a trance.

Gently, he lays her back upon the floor. Briefly his lips brush her cheek. He stands and he exits. He has a God to win.

Outside Chance

...he changed his mind. Again. Stopped in his tracks, turned around and headed for the place that he had just left. That special place. That place called home.

- I'm leaving.

He had wanted to say. But it came out as

- I'm going.

Going? Going where?

In a little observed corner of room, near the floor, behind the frontier of the television set, beyond which only the seldom half-asleep-gaze can stretch itself, amongst the dust and a slight mildew,  there is a gentle peeling of the wall paper, and it is fractionally torn. They had papered only the year before. A little less than fourteen months. And it doesn't have to do anything. It just has to sit there, and stick. It isn't in direct sunlight. It hasn't been washed with excessively soapy water. It has been given the best of care. And still it petulantly curls, and breaks the veneer of a 'good' home. A cared for nest. An Englishman's castle.

- I'm going

Going? Going Where?

- Out

Out?

- Yes. Out.

Out where?

- Outside.

Out there?

- Yes. Out.

Going out.

- Yes. Going out.

One of those blank moments. A moment where everybody in the world takes a timeout in order to register and reaffirm the fact that you simply don't exist.

He had decided to leave. So he stood up and said it

- I'm going

Once, in nineteen seventy nine, driving back from somebody's parents, somebody's in-laws in Todmorden, they'd had to pull over because he had accidentally run over somebody else's cat. These things happen. It had been dark and there was a slight drizzle, making him glad that the cause of the delay wasn't a puncture or a blowout   which would have meant kneeling on the damp ground in his best suit. To be honest, he had hardly noticed the incident except for a slight bump - and the delightful way in which she screeched, almost squealed, his name. He'd had to free the body from the axle by the tail, which had almost come loose in the effort. He let the smashed, almost lifeless, form fall into the gutter and backed off for a cigarette. These things happen. She hadn't got out of the car immediately. She had watched him light his cigarette on the third attempt. She had turned the radio off. She had pulled her gloves on first. He watched her walk around the car, pause for a moment at the tail light blinking in a sedate mechanical rhythm oblivious to whatever hazard it may have signalled in the past or present. At first he thought she was stroking it. But after awhile he realised that she was carefully plucking the shards of gravel from the matted fur. He watched for a lifetime. Until the body had stopped moving and they had both started to cry. She for the life that had been extinguished. He for the fear that he might love. Might just, be in love. They didn't talk for a long time. Then, still cold with fear, he quietly asked her to marry him and she had quietly whispered 'yes'.

Twenty seven years later he found himself standing in a shell of a building about whose walls were draped the detritus of fifty four combined years of human effort - over half a century of calendars, clocks, crystal bells, ashtrays, and porcelain horses with plastic drays. He found himself standing and saying

- I'm going

Going?

 Where was there to go?

Going where?

She didn't like him to think that she smoked. Not that she did. Not in the way that smokers smoke. In car parks outside of offices, in a hurry before getting out of bed, after breakfast or before lunch, in forced moments between the minutes that make up a day. No, she would, very occasionally smoke a cigarette because she was alone, and because she could. She would sit on one of the units in the kitchen, next to the sink, by the window that didn't open but with the Xpelair running. Looking out at the garden in what she imagined was a classic Garbo or Monroe pose. At the back of the steel draw beneath the oven, amongst the baking trays, she kept a small ashtray that she had secretly acquired from the Cancer Research shop in town - perpetually clean except for the very occasional moments when she would smoke a cigarette because she could. The butts she would bury in the garden, with a small trowel that could have been made for the job. And always, she would wear rubber gloves. She never considered that anyone may think it ridiculous. These were her moments. One thing she would never share. Her own private affair. It was only recently that she had come to realise that nobody cared if she smoked or not; and that realisation had cheated her of her own individuality. So she had taken to playing Jim Reeves in the afternoons and entering competitions to win a weekend in Paris for two. She planned to give the tickets to her parents, who were not quite dead.

Somebody had once told her that 'It's the people that you know, you know that you know, you know'. It had struck her as instant gibberish. But it was a sentence that she had instantly memorised. Like a bad refrain from a popular song, she would sometimes wake up in the morning with the words going around in her mind, and they would stay there all day; spinning around relentlessly until it was impossible to tell where it may have began or finished. Sometimes she believed it profoundly. Sometimes she wondered if she could ever comprehend it at all. Sometimes she smoked a cigarette in order to attempt to forget it. Sometimes she would live without it for months. Sometimes it would dog her by the minute, by the hour, by the day. Sometimes she wondered if she were going mad. Sometimes she knew that she certainly had. Today she felt she had smelt its essence. It's the people that you know, you know that you know, you know. So she thought she knew what he meant when he said

- I'm going

Or rather, she felt immediately the effect of his simple words - a slight intake of breath; hands that in a gritty northern drama might have flown involuntarily to her breast to wring pensively, but rather in the twilight of an English autumn's evening continued to leaf through the pages of the radio times with no discernible agitation; a fleeting impulse to catch a train to Barcelona. Three short beats. Rat-a-tat-tat. She knew him. She knew that she knew him. She knew it. For sure.

Going? Going where?

Curiously, she didn't know that he knew her. Or at least it had never occurred to her that he might.

- I'm leaving.

He had wanted to say. To be clear. To be firm. To be fair. He had thought. Then she would have asked him why. And then perhaps there could have been an understanding. He had thought. As there had been. As before. As things were as he remembered them. As if things were as he remembered them. As if the woodwork in the hall didn't need painting. As if the boxes in the loft weren't rotting. As if. As if. Even though he said he was going he stood by the brass and glass coffee table, for once not banging his shins, and she asked him

...Where?

Not how or when or why but where. She asked him if he thought she believed him or even if he thought she cared, she asked him where. Where could he go? Where do you think you can go. Away from within. Out. Not burning. Not conscious. Not right. But out. Going out.

They live in a place called Phantasmagoria, a small town in the East of England with a booming population of some twenty million plus. He wants out. She wants out. The roof of the house needs turning.

- Out

Out?

- Yes. Out.

There had been no bitter struggle. No years of hardship. No domestic abuse. No emotional stress. No throwing of the eggshell lamps that gather in the corners of the cupboards they put under stairs. No histrionics - on her part or his. No definitive incompatibilities. No precise moment in time. No then. No now. No future.

Out where?

- Outside.

Out there?

- Yes. Out.

Outside. Outside chance. Nothing happened on the day it all happened.

Going out.

- Yes. Going out.

She turns to the crossword. He closes the door. She crosses her legs. He crosses the street.  She chews the end of her pen. He takes a few steps. She fills in the answers in numerical order...

Bellow

She had never thought that she would have tried to change her man. His habits, his appearance, his essential nature. She had considered herself to be in love. And she had believed that had meant, for better or for worse. But nevertheless, here she was, sneaking around like a thief while he slept.

There were things she would need. A towel certainly, and that was easy – she would use the little pink fluffy one that he complained looked ‘gay’. She liked it. It was nice. It was one of the few feminine touches in their home. She liked to luxuriate in its soft pile after a shower. It caressed her in exactly the same way his light-fingered touch would when first they had met, surprising the crevices she forgot that she had. On the other hand he would often stomp out of the bathroom, holding it aloft like a dead thing, and Bellow

“What in the hell am I supposed to do with this? Dry myself or dance like a midget gay matador?”

She would giggle at that. It isn’t that she minded that he complained. And she found him funny and ultimately sexual. Thinking of him prancing like that now still made her smile. She loved him in so many ways.

But, for the way that he bellows.

Then she would need something with which to cut, and something with which to scoop. The ice-cream scoop had a loose handle and she was forever having to ply her fingers deep into the gooey semi-frozen mess to retrieve it, licking them clean and inevitably ending up with a little blob of raspberry ripple transferred from her thumb to the tip of her nose, which she would leave - as she knew he would kiss it from her. That would not do. Not in this case. She wouldn’t be struggling with frozen desserts here, and the thought of poshing about with her fingers almost made her stomach churn. She would have to use the long handled salad spoon.

The cutting would be the worst bit and she had decided at the outset that she would not take a ham-fisted DIY approach to that. When she had ordered the scalpels she had surprised herself. This was to be no heat of the moment affair. It isn’t that she wanted to punish him in any way; the thought of hurting him was far, far from her mind. She believed that. But to have to plan so assiduously was terribly, terribly difficult. She never knew she had it in her. The scalpels had been hidden beneath the moulded tray that held the knives and forks and all of the strange twisted and inevitably interlocked kitchen thingamajigs. Corkscrews and skewers, spatulas and whisks.  She pulled them out gingerly, her heart pounding at what seemed like a terrible clatter afraid he would awaken and bellow out something like

“For god’s sake woman what are you doing, attacking the walls of Jericho like a bastard thalidomide?” He’d never understood ‘political correctness’. She didn't mind that. She knew he didn't have a bad bone in his body. His words would shock for sure, but he had a colour to his language like no other. You were never left uncertain of what he meant, and he often gave cause for an involuntary gasp or giggle of shock. She would never censure him. If only he could have learned to whisper.

But he did not wake up. The web site she had found had proven most useful. Most complete in its instruction. It had come from ‘The Society for Cutting Up Men’. Mostly, quite horrific and of course majoring on neutering and home castration. When ‘SCUM’ had shown up on the bank statement, she had told him that they were suppliers of kitchen cleaning products. She did not like to lie, but she didn’t want to be causing him any concern. She loved him very much.

She had thought she could not delve all of the way through its vast archive; the pictures alone had lead to several weeks of disturbed nights. But buried very deeply was just one article that held the answer to all of her prayers. The years of running out of shops in embarrassment, of leaving parties early and often alone, of smiling demurely at people wearing looks that said “and you married that?” after he had bellowed some new obscenity… And after all it was not actually such a very big thing. Just the one article, “On how to remove a man’s natural bellow”. Apparently there’s a condition. Medically proven but little known. Some men, it seems, are cursed with a “natural bellow”. She would be fixing him. It isn’t like ‘changing’ him at all. She just had to cure his bellow. For the both of them. She was sure he would be much, much happier. The article had said so.

She gathered all of her things together and crept into the bedroom. He was snoring like a baby, a baby troll that is. One of the symptoms of his condition she now understood. The dread and the fear, the panic and the doubt melted from her as she watched his troubled and fitful sleep – the poor thing. She lays out the towel next to just the right spot and takes a careful hold of the treacherous blade hoping she had used just enough of the narcotic she prepares to make the change.

The scooping was definitely the worst. There seemed to be just so much of it. That had surprised her, perhaps given the extreme nature of his condition it should not have. She just wished that she had not managed to get a globule of it on the end of her nose. That moment had caused her to vomit. But she had it, the once believed mythical Mugio furari – the Bellow Sac. And then they both slept soundly.

And the morning brought a great transformation. He did not leap from bed bellowing “Hands off cocks on socks” rather a simple, if somewhat meek, “Morning dear” at which she smiled to herself. All was good. All was as it should be. As he limps slightly from the room to put on a pot of hot coffee she reclined in a relief that was only momentarily interrupted by a single thought. ‘Surely, a penis isn't meant to be quite as big as all of that?’

Tenacity

Suddenly, if not unexpectedly, the clock chimed and he lit his cigarette. Electric bells. Whereas the original may have been a feat of precision Swiss engineering, this particular model was a circa 1970 cheap mock-up; made from a cheap tin alloy, with a cheap plastic moulded face and a cheap battery powered mechanism. It was a small heap of sordid pretension, sat under a grimy plastic dome that had an irritatingly unnecessary loud false tick. Batteries don't tick. Some chip. Some tick-chip. Tick-Tock chip. Electronic flip-flop. A weekend invention of some Cambridge physicist, perhaps. Keeping suprisingly accurate time. One.

The clock chimed and he took a long toke on the cigarette in the corner of his mouth whilst scartching another tally line with the stub of an HB pencil on the back of an old envelope that once held a letter from somebody he could no longer remember. Two.

The clock chimed and he exhaled the smoke that would linger in the room longer than he cared it to. He hadn't removed it from his mouth in the process. He didn't care to. He would only have to put it back. It hung loosely between his cracked lips, and it would stay there either until it went out or became too hot to handle. In either case, he would spit it into the pail eventually. Which also stank. Three.

Another chime, and another mark; another stroke, another moment. Four so far. And counting. He didn't keep count of the cigarettes that he smoked. He didn't care to. He smoked them until they were dead, and he would do so until he was dead. And he would stop only then because of  the impracticalities of the situation. In the bed next to his in the hospital there had been a man of ninety who would smoke two cigarettes at the same time; because he could, because he was recovering from  a tracheotomy, because he had had some kind of cancer of the throat. You can get cancers anywhere it seemed, even in the butt.

He was ready for the next chime, it was one of his favourites. He crossed the previous four marks with a long bold diagonal cross bar, and then shuffled slightly in his chair; gently rearranging all of his relationships so that he felt presented with a fresh clean area of the envelope on which to continue. He felt momentarily refreshed and put memories of his stay in the hospital behind him once more. 

But he was a little too eager, and consequently the next stroke - by virtue of having started too soon - was slightly longer and more pronounced than those in the previous group. He allowed a slight frown because it hadn't meant to be so. But, not all the moments were the same, when he took them one at a time.

At the seventh stroke he had regained the rhythm and executed his task perfectly. An all too uncommon event of late. But he wouldn't allow his mind to wander. Sometimes it seemed as if the last few would come faster. Sometimes it seemed as if time had sped up a little bit, but that he had remained stationary. Unable to even consider trying to catch up. He could see the days run off ahead, and leaving him sitting at his desk with ash falling into his lap from the  loosely hanging cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His father had been able to blow smoke out of his ears.

Eight. Sometimes he would count along. Sometimes he would count up at the end. Sometimes he just scratched the marks, one after the other in a long line so that the day hardly seemed to have been measured out at all. But those would be the blacker days and today the sun had shone continually. People had died in the heat in Athens on a day like this his he had heard.

Chime. Stroke. Nine. A stitch in time saves. What did people mean by that? Jesus saves, they say. A stitch in time. It was possible. It was possible somebody was patching it all up. That would explain all the peculiarities. The opportunities you never even knew had been missed. The being caught in unusual traffic the very moment that a loved one dies in a stuffy room just around the corner. With nobody to close the curtains and all the double-decker buses filling past the window taking shoppers into the town, or out to the mall.

His next bar went from top left to bottom right, in opposition to the fifth. Creating a vague chevron pointing to the top of the envelope or beyond to where his morning cup of tea had scorched a white ring into the varnish of the desk top. It would be almost impossible to remove. Whichever of his children decided to inherit that particular stick of furniture would certainly be cursing him for his slovenly habits. But he didn't feel quite as tired as that just yet.

Five and ten. Good times. There were bad times as well. Seven and one. But now, he was inbetween times and he somewhat haphazardly made the eleventh stroke too far to the right. Perhaps he would put the next on the far left. Or perhaps he wouldn't. Perhaps he would let it stand. Stand out. 

But he did. Twelve, on the left. A balanced day all in all.

He put the date at the top of the envelope and let it rest on the desk. If he had been a richer man he could have employed somebody else to do this. But there had been many 'ifs' along the way. He settled back and awaited the death of his cigarette. Afterwards he might take a short nap. He would still have a little time left, he reasoned.

Resilience

I could paint you a picture of a room damp and cold, that stank in the corners of dog piss and stale food. Where the curtains had the same nicotine stained hue as the walls as the ceiling as the carpets as the furniture. Where there was never more than two bare electric bulbs in good working order at any one time - and frequently less than that. And where the pram in the corner was perilously close to both the electric fire and the draft from the crack in the window, at one and the same time.

But this was a room with a view.

And not just any view, but a view of Sam's star. Sometimes it was difficult to see, overshadowed, outclassed, by the braggarts of the sky, Sirius, Polaris, or... She didn't know much about astronomy. She had bought the only star she could afford at the time. It had come with a chart that detailed the dates and times that it would be visible in the night sky, and a small certificate proclaming it to be Sam's star which she didn't have any more. Depite the fact that Sam's star was most certainly a genuine heavenly body, it seemed to exhibit a terribly dissapointing streak of shyness. Of the usual 365 days in the year the chart indicated that the star may be visible from Sam's cracked window on only eleven of them. Not in precisely those terms of course, but one of Sam's friends - a student in fact - had owned a scientific calculator. Between it, the chart, and three bottles of wine one winter's night in the not too distant past, they had calculated the days when it may be possible to see the star through the window from the exact spot where they had may love on the carpet, perilously close to the electric fire. On some of those nights it was cloudy, even raining - seven nights so far this year. On others she was unavoidably pre-occupied elsewhere. Once Kieran had been ill and she had to stay overnight in the hospital where, typically, the children's ward faced entirely the opposite direction.

Kieran had been so young at the time that she still had his birth certificate carefully folded into the back pocket of her jeans. It hadn't been until some weeks later that she had lost that too. It had been through her mother's washing machine along with a crisp ten pound note, and  they had both come out as soggy balls of worthless pulp with what seemed like a million disintegrating satellite pellets of mush caught up in the folds of her sweaters, shirts, bras and pants. Sam had been distraught and she blamed her mother, who was understandably equally distraut to find what she thought had been a kindness turned against her at the slightest provocation. They had fought terribly. Whenever they fought it was terrible. Sam knew that she had never been her mother's favourite; and her mother knew that Sam had always wanted, or would have preffered, to live with her father. Sam's mouth had run away with her again, and that had proven to be the last time she'd spoken to her mother. Her step-father had brought the clothes over the next day, but she pretended to be out. So the stupid man left them on the landing, still damp. When she collected them later they stank, and for two weeks after she couldn't wear anything without first spraying it with body-mist deoderant.


The next occassion that Sam's star would have been visible was November fifth, which had been impossible since she spent most of the night looking after Spoot. Spoot was the dopey, ageing, and largely incontinent labradour-poodle mut she had inherited from Kieran's father before he found out that he was to be a father but after he'd decided he wasn't going to be a husband. Not Sam's husband anyway. He had gone back to college in his trench-coat and scarf, with his scientific calculator in his pocket and his head full of promises to write. Which he did, once; to tell her that he had caught scabbies of the scrotum and that he held her personally responsible, and to ask if she could forward his diary which he had accidently left behind. The diary that they had marked the eleven nights in. The first of which they had spent together, perilously close to the electric fire. Smoking Marlboro cigarettes and drinking red wine, though they both admitted to prefering lager. Despite the typical dissapointment she felt in him, she would still remember him with some fondness; not that she had liked him very much.

Her last two chances to see the star in the year following Kieran's conception came very close together. One was only a few nights ago. And so now she sat on the rug with a full pot of tea, a packet of chocolate digestives, and her last chance to see. It wasn't raining, it wasn't cloudy, the street-lamp outside still wasn't working, she hadn't been detained, and there was only a few moments of daylight left. She needed to go to the toilet.

....

Sam had a name for her star. She called it Resilience.

My Day Out

It's getting harder and harder to find a parking spot, even on the outskirts of the city. This morning I saw a space that was barely large enough to squeeze a Metro into, I had to leave my car jutting out from the kerb at an obscene angle. I shall have to find a station further out to travel from. Anyway this is how I find myself running down the escalator at Moor Park, safe in the knowledge that I shall miss the train, but trying all the same, out of loyalty to the company. I find it hard to believe now that I actually arranged a meeting for nine o'clock. If I have to catch the next tube I wont arrive until at least five past. At this moment I hear the immortal words 'MIND THE GAP' as my transport arrives, perhaps if a pram gets stuck in the doors I might still make it. I put on an extra burst of speed, only to be brought to a complete standstill as I collide with another person. I hadn't seen him, perhaps I had been distracted by the sound of the train. However, without a shadow of a doubt he was in the wrong, he should have been standing to one side. Probably a shopper, or a tourist that doesn't understand the importance of convention. They're rare at this time of day, but that's the most likely explanation, a fellow traveller would surely have been running for the train himself. As all this plays through my mind I hear the train speed off, damn. If I hadn't ran into that person I would surely have caught it. I look around for the culprit, hoping to be able to vent some of my frustration, but he already seems to have moved on. There's no way he could have caught the train, so I should be able to catch up with him on the platform.

I appear to take my time getting to the platform now that the train has left, but inside I am frustrated and angry. Stuck here miles from the office, not yet late but condemned not to arrive on time. It is beyond all human power now to get into work before nine o'clock. All because of one, thoughtless, dago tourist. Arriving at the platform I am somewhat surprised to see the instrument of my down fall has already gone. Surprised because the escalator out was within my full view all of the way down, and he could not have caught the train. I struggle with this dilemma for a while but feel that it's bringing on a headache. I shake my head, it's not important. The ache refuses to be shook out, it has a small but firm hold now. It shall sit there all day, growing malignantly. I look forward to this evening's gin and tonic, a hard day lies ahead.

The escalators continue to grind in their anti phase, the one plodding continually upwards, the other slithering always down, I wonder if a man from the council has to rewind them at nights when the station is closed. There are people beginning to assemble on the platform. I shuffle nervously away from the edge, well you just don't know. These are the people that come after the early morning commuters. This network was intended for me, and people like me. So that we can move efficiently and quickly in and out of the city, England's nerve centre. These people are shoppers and tourists, unemployed yobs, leeches that suck onto the underground, leaving a slimy trail of litter behind them. Then when they go home at night they laugh with each other about men in white collars running everywhere in such a hurry and getting heart attacks. These are the people that have no concept of the conventions, and so cause me to hurry as a direct result of their slovenly and lax behaviour. My frustration is building, they can probably see that I'm blushing. Looking around, it's obvious that some of them have been staring, it's time for one of those icy cool gazes that only a professional man, such as myself, can employ effectively. I catch the eye of a rather large man in jeans and black boots with the words 'DEF BY DEPRAVITY' tattooed on his head. I smile thinly, I hate myself for it, but what else can I do ?

The train arrives, over thirty seconds late. I step aboard. Unfortunately so does my friend with the tattoos. Ten stops, perhaps I can avoid looking at him in that time. The air on the train must be quite dry because my ears have started to itch. They always used to do that in summer at the old school, earned me the rather dull nick name of 'itchy'. Anne, my wife, still calls me that sometimes. The itch has become quite intolerable, it's odd that it should start again after all this time, and with such ferocity. Nervously I take an experimental scratch. Nobody seems to notice. I become a little bit more vigorous in the ecstasy of relief that the scratching brings. Did that woman notice then ? No, surely not. My ear feels odd, it seems to have lost the tightness around the top to which I have become accustomed. It feels almost, flaky. I look at my fingers, sticking to the ends of them are fine particles of dry white skin, my shoulders are covered with the stuff. For a moment I think it must be dandruff, but I'm forced to draw the connection between it and the feel of my ears. Some form of rash that's new to me. Another of the hazards of travelling by public transport. I look with suspicion at the large fat lady sat on the adjoining seat, but her ears appear normal. I shall have to stop off at the chemist on the way home to get something for it.

The yob and the fat woman both get off at Finchley Road. Before arriving at my own stop, Baker Street, I have time to wonder if they have some secret liaison arranged. A morning of sordid entertainment whilst I work to keep the country running. My office is just around the corner from the station, I arrive at exactly six minutes past nine, late. The meeting has started without me, I hang my jacket up and join it, making my apologies on the way.

Ordinarily arriving late would make the morning travel must faster. Today however this meeting runs slowly, at half past eleven the clock starts to run backwards, and all the time I am conscious of the state of my ears. They don't itch so much any more, in fact I have very little feeling in them now. I make a small presentation just before twelve. Nobody seems too interested in what I have to say, this makes it easy for me to slip out for lunch. Company policy dictates that I should have stayed to have lunch with the other people in the meeting, customers, but I really must find a chemist and do something about this rash.

Outside, in the anonymity of the city streets, I dare to reinvestigate my ears. They have been quiet most of the morning but it would be worth reawakening that terrible itch just to know that they are still there. I place my hands to the sides of my head and hold them there for a moment. When I bring them back away and stare into the palms I see something most odd, and a little bit disturbing. Lying in each is a rather large piece of dead meat, in the shape of a pair of human ears. I laugh convulsively, they could be a matching set of ash trays. I shudder so hard that this pile of flesh slip from my grasp and slap on the floor. The sound of them has such reality that I actually find myself checking to make sure they aren't my own ears. I find they are, on the sides of my head there are no ears, not even any holes, just a smooth continuation of my skin. I find I am not able to laugh any more.

I am stood in the shadow of an alley way. A full hour has passed since leaving the office. In that time I have been wondering down back streets and snickets, trying to avoid the constant traffic of people in the lunch time crowds of London. Fear of my new deformity being discovered driving me underground. My options seem limited, greater than previously maybe, but limited all the same. I can go back to the office and pretend nothing has happened. After all I don't seem to be experiencing any hearing difficulties, and at least I don't wear glasses. It doesn't seem likely though that I can get through the afternoon without being noticed, and to have my condition brought to the attention of my colleagues would be, in the least, intolerable. No I must take my other option, which as I see it, is my only other option. I shall have to travel down into the underground and find my way home, where hopefully Anne will be of some help.

The alley I am in, opens onto a very bright and very wide street. There is the entrance to an underground station calling like the gaping mouth of a fledgling, desperate for it's mother's morsels, and I am desperate for the comfort that its cold emptiness will bring. The way to the underworld is blocked by an impenetrable writhing mass of people, tying themselves in knots like earthworms, baking in the sun and cracking up. I am shaking and praying for courage to cross over. I'm waiting for a break in the crowds and about to make my move when I sense the cause of the lull. Coming down the street is a legless man, he is sitting in a wheel chair, being drawn by six golden labradors, he occasionally beats them with a long white stick. The knots untangle and the people move aside for him, but they do it as automatons, just as they would to avoid a ladder or a hole in the road. No conscious thought or free will is involved. As he passes by he stares at me, and I have to admit his reality. I am ashamed. This man travels at speed down the street whilst I cower in darkness. My shame seduces me into crossing the street.

The crossing is smooth, and I quickly find myself standing at the top of the escalators to the underworld. They continue in their up and down grind, I am momentarily confused as to which I should board. I take my chances and take my pick, fortunately it's the right decision and I am carried away into the darkness. As the comforting embrace of the dulled light takes a hold I start to float, feeling as though I am walking backwards up the escalator and consequently not moving. The day is but half over and I wonder where else it may lead me. The train I intend to catch could take a wrong turn into the city's sewers, from where there is no limit as to how low a person can go. My thoughts are interrupted by a sharp pain in the small of my back, throwing me a few steps forward. I look around into the bewildered face of a city commuter sat, with his umbrella sticking up, obviously the instrument of my pain. With a resigned indignation I realise that this chap has collided with me. I was standing on the right side, so I take it into my mind to remind him of the conventions, when he stands up and walks straight past. Something is happening to this city, something that makes ordinary decent folk forget our tradition of good manners. However I am learning to accept the indifference of people. The pain of the collision was considerable, and I feel tears welling up into my eyes.

The tears are dry. I feel the ducts in my eyes open wide and water is gushing forth; yet, there is no moisture on my cheeks, no salty deposits on my lips. In a bid to find where the tears are going I lift my left hand to my eye. As it reaches I do not blink and I do not flinch, for there is nothing to cause me to flinch. My eyelids are already closed, sealed fast. There are no lashes and no brows, just two folds of skin, filling with water and bulging out. I try to scream, or shout for help, but my mouth will not open more than a fraction. As I consider the tiny hole in my lips, barely large enough for a straw, my cheeks convulse and draw it tightly shut. Lip sticks to lip, tooth melts to tooth.

I wonder now about my ability to communicate. Am I blinded or is my vision simply blocked by the tears in my eyes ? Am I deafened or do I spend too long listening to myself ? Am I muted or do I have nothing to say ? I concentrate hard upon the world around me and find that it is rich in sound and colour. Colours, the fiery red glow of the escalator, the earthy umber hues of the floor tiles and the electric spark of fluorescent lights. Sounds, The constant grating of the hidden machines driving the escalator, the eternal cracking of ceramic tiles and the dangerous snicker from the lights. I am left feeling small and isolated. The things around me have been fashioned into every day objects that I had chosen, before, never to look at. Now that I stop to consider them I see that they are more than a surface service. The escalator is driven by hidden machinery. The lights are connected by miles of cable to every home in the country. The tiles, brightly painted and fashioned into squares, are crumbling of their own volition into a brown dust. These mundane elements of daily life have taken on a fresh effect, a darker depth. I am slipping into a new latitude, Have I gone through a painful rebirth ? Is life beginning at forty ? Am I on the brink of a new adventure ? I stand up to drop a metaphorical anchor. I am ready to land on this 'brave new world', to reach out to it, and feel it reach out to me. With surprising ease my lungs fill with air and I shout a long and loud hello.

'Hello'

I am winded, an orb of force smashes into my midriff and again, I find myself crumpled on the floor. The word crashes down next to me and sits there smiling. I know that it is not one of my own. It is too sharp and incisive for that. The edges glitter with a razor keenness, foreign to my own language. It rests on the floor saying HELLO, BON JOUR, GUTEN TAG, HIYA all at once. I reach out, unsure if I should smash it to pieces or smother it, only aware that it is far too persistent for what should be such an empty word. As my fingers dance onto its surface I get the tingle of flesh meeting flesh. Again I stroke the word and this time I can feel fine hairs upon its surface. I try to consider the syllables and letters that make up such a strange word but instead find myself staring at a most perfect carving of a foot. The attached leg disappears out of my angle of view, but I know that this will be a most beautiful statue. The words 'That's' and 'funny' bounce lightly off the back of my neck and come to rest some distance away. I look up to where they came from and I am confronted, not by a statue, but by a person. A person with no eyes, no ears, no discernible sex and no identity. I stand and we embrace. My hands explore the other's body, hoping that my fingers may find a contour to rest upon, a spark of individualism, a vestige of humanity, a clue to identity. There is none. As my hands slip down the other's spine I am aware that tiny steel bearings are skittering to the floor and rolling away. I have found someone here, it could easily be myself, but I found someone and I have found how to cry.

Smile after smile peels away from the other, they shoot out, some sticking to the walls and the ceiling, others just hanging mid air. The whole place is getting rather cluttered and so, without saying another word we head off together to the platform.

One escalator flight lays between myself, the other and the platform below. Above there remains a triangle of light, the frayed edges of the upper world lapping into what I have come to consider as my domain. Although we are still locked into our embrace the other is a few steps ahead, which is appropriate, for I believe that she has also taken a few steps further into this disclosed labyrinth. I believe it to be right that the other was a she for her raw sensuality is so sharp that it hurts to be closer than a few feet. I believe it to be right that the other was a she, but deliberately and disturbingly I know this to be only a belief. A thought hangs between us, 'How can I hold onto a man's love when I've failed to hold onto a man's identity.' This thought swivels on a pivot, gliding up and down my body and coming rest at my empty crotch. If the other was never a woman then was I ever a man ?

This journey is starting to confuse me when the other pulls out of nowhere a rather large sharp diamond. It crashes from the ceiling to the floor, twisting in its coloured skin. With a cry I throw myself into the arms of my companion as it shatters upon the floor. The fragments are instantly black and roughly hewn. Before they start to melt I recognize the fragments as lumps of coal. They become amorphous, splintering into layers that grate over each other, taking the form more of shale. The movement becomes so intense that it is hard to watch, to distinguish detail. Slowly the frenzy of activity becomes uniform, localized. There is a colour shift from black to brown to pink. Out of the shale forms a twisting mass of tiny sea creatures, their legs entangling in back breaking knots. Their frenzy is enforced by the time slip they have just been dragged through. In my mind the hint of an idea grows. The immortality of the mortal. These tortured creatures may die, but out of them will grow shale, coal and then diamond, and in each phase they maintain a place in the earth. These creatures feed on the earth, but also allow the earth to feed on them. There is no taking, no destruction, and no raping involved. A natural order is maintained in life and death. Through change, through mortality, we are immortal.

The other puts on a long cloak. It is a patchwork quilt of a cloak. The furthest hem is edged with coal. Following that there is an area of interwoven fire and wheat. Running down the central seam is a fresh water spring, there is probably salmon in it. On the one side of the stream stands a building site. As it sprawls up and over the shoulder blade it becomes more complete, until upon the shoulder itself there lies a forest of skyscrapers. On the other side of the stream is a group of crocodiles snapping at the feet of children, dancing at the feet of a Jazz band. The man in the cloak smiles thinly at me and says

"I have shown you an image that has travelled from the ancient to the primeval. I am wearing a cloak of my history. A man with a history is a world with a future. When you find your history spread it out before you, and see where it leads."

With these words the cloak slips and the other, man or woman, dissipates, dissolves but does not disappear. The other will never disappear, he has unlocked his future with the key of our pasts. I have a history to find, a past to cast forward. I think on this and move on to the platform. As I do so, the triangle of light above snaps off.

A couple of years ago Anne bought me a briefcase for christmas. It was a very fine briefcase, possibly too fine for a man in my position, never the less I was very pleased with it. Every morning I placed into it my morning paper and my lunch time sandwiches. Every evening I took the paper out and placed it on top of the pile in the cellar. You can see then that this case became a fixed, and important, part of my daily routine. It was of some concern to me then when I discovered that the case had become lost. So naturally I went to the lost property office at the station where I'd last seen it, and it was there ! I was so happy that I hardly noticed paying fifty pence to retrieve it. Now it seems that I am looking for something of a much greater significance than that briefcase, I am looking for a history, and unlike the briefcase, I do not know where to find it.

I am brought to a sudden standstill. Around me all I can sense is a pulsing grey flesh, nourished by rivulets of blood snaking everywhere.The flesh smells a little rotten, as if it were going off, and I am standing right in the centre of it. I feel like a micro camera injected in to the spinal column of a corpse. Convulsively I take a step forward and I am immediately relieved of the image. Looking back I am able to notice that in the exact spot where I have just been standing is an old, old woman, waiting for a tube train. It is evident to me that I have walked right through her. She has not even noticed. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. I hold up my hands, apparently I am wearing mittens. It is not possible to tell where one finger starts and another stops, or even to spread them wide, as though ready to play piano. The nature of my disease strikes me. I am loosing form and substance, just as an old photograph fades when there's nobody left to look at it. I remember some thing that was said to me earlier, 'A man with a history is a world with a future'. Does it follow then that a man with no history has no future ? Would such a man be trapped in the present ? But surely the present is only an instantaneous border between past and future. As future moments slipped over the border and into the past, as future milestones crumple under the advance of history, would such a man get left behind ? Would such a man slip out of body and out of time ? Am I such a man ?

The search for my past becomes suddenly quite urgent. Slightly ahead of me are a pair of red and green elevator doors, juxtaposing themselves amid the crowd. Above them are two lighted words that exclaim 'GOING DOWN'. I step over expecting that they will whoosh open automatically. They don't. 'Open sesame', nothing. 'Abracadabra', nothing. I am perplexed, how do such doors open ? They stand alone with not even a call button. Then it occurs to me, of course, I do not need them to open. Preparing my body for the invasion of cold steel, I step forward. The inside of the elevator is a stark zero room. The only discernible feature a small red LED readout marked 'Level meter' displaying today's date and the time two o'clock. 2:00:00, 1:59:59, 1:59:58,... as the read out starts tick I feel a gentle tremor under my feet. Something has evidently operated the elevator. I hear the crackle of a speaker and expect the traditional elevator musak to start, instead what I hear is the following,

Bathing under sun We are All one.

With that the motion within the elevator grew more noticeable, and before long I believe we, that is my self and the elevator, had reached terminal velocity. I wonder if the cage I am riding in is being driven by the machine's of man, or pulled by nature's hand. Before passing out I notice the level meter reading zero.

I am aware that the doors are open. There is no breeze, there is no air. By now I feel that it is not necessary to be breathing. First, I investigate my body, to make my self aware of any new developments. I try to lift my left leg and then I try to lift my right. I accomplish neither. Instead a small standing wave ripples around my body and I roll a few feet across the floor, towards the doors. I am a tight balloon of flesh stretched around a pocket of air. Just for the moment I try not to do any more rolling, for fear of catching myself on something and bursting. I examine my surroundings. I am about two feet from the open doors of the elevator, to their left the level read out is cracked and blank. Beyond the doors is a dark and rocky wasteland. The speaker crackles into life again and tells me that time and space have neither beginning nor end, but flow in cycles, as a menopause. In which case I believe that I have reached the moment of ovulation. Have a nice day. I roll myself out of the doors.

The ground is soft and muddy. I feel that I am sinking in, my movement is caught and I am at the mercy of fate. I wonder if it is possible to reach back into the elevator, but I know already that it has gone. My surroundings are a self contained cave. Mud flows around the floor and drips from the ceiling, occasionally splattering on my oval body. Some distance away I am aware that there is a tiny point of light. It is like looking out from a tube train tunnel. The point is a long way off, but if their is anything left to enter into my life I know that it will come from there. I settle myself in my mud bath, and prepare to wait.

I do not know how long I wait. I fill the time whistling snatches from Bolero and wobbling from side to side. I do not know why but my anticipation heightens. My fleshy skin becomes tighter. The cavern in which I reside is getting warmer, the atmosphere is sticky. The walls gently fibrillate and waves wash over me. I realize that what I am expecting is the return, the second coming, of the other, who had so rudely abandoned me in the tube station.

The point of light on the horizon is suddenly cut off. I prepare myself for the main event. The very walls around me are expanding as though to accommodate an intruder of unknown size, even so I am worried that I may be squashed. However there is no way to move. Nowhere to run nowhere to hide. Truly now, what will be will be, I settle back and decide to enjoy the ride. The expansion gives way to contraction as the pressure subsides, but I barely have time to catch an hallucinatory breath before the whole thing starts again. I am on some kind of merry go round, I am a white stallion leaping up and down while it goes around and around, faster and faster. Until the music looses the beat and becomes a constant whine.

A flood of dreams wash over me. The splattered remains of the mud on my surface is washed away, the cobwebs of my mind, the tired old cliches of my life are BLOWN away. I am left with a clean slate, not empty and untouched, but full of possibilities. I can twist and shift into any shape, as a chameleon. I can fit into life, no more waiting for life to fit me. Contented I sit and wait to be flushed out of this waiting room.

Although there are no visible signs I can feel my body reforming itself. Slowly arms and legs will appear, head, face, eyes and mind will take on a new form. I had lost all vestiges of humanity, and looking back it does not seem obvious when. The loss, inside of me, started a long time ago. I hope now that as my body grows again, I can take the spongy warmth of this place and fill myself up with it. I have gone back to the egg, and I hope now that I can grow back to reality. My horizons open up and beckon me, what lies beyond is dangerous and scary, but I am filled with anticipation. Life is so exciting, here I go again...