33 - Apparitions

“Bloody hell,” Paul says, his hands shivering in front of the car’s poxy heater. “I mean… bloody hell.”

Sandra says nothing, just stares at raindrops forming on the window. Silently, though, she agrees with Paul. Bloody hell.

“That weren’t what I were expecting,” Paul continues, needing to talk it out rather than let the thoughts coagulate in his mind. “I knew it would be violent, Hoped it would be, maybe. I never expected…” Another shudder goes through him and he turns to Sandra. “Did you think it would be like that?”

Sandra hadn’t expected anything but another cold night and five wasted hours. Ghost hunting was Paul’s thing, or had been. Now it was theirs. 

“I’m going to watch it again,” Sandra says, rearranging the camcorder and monitor on her lap. Paul nods and shuffles over to see. The screen is a modern portable LCD, while the Hi8 camcorder is vintage, some thirty years old.  Their work, which depends so much on nuance and sensitivity, cannot be captured in the unambiguous ones and zeroes of digital high definition. Fuzz and noise was so much better for selective interpretation. Each burst of static could be something supernatural if you wanted it to.

Sandra operates the camcorder’s buttons and spools tape to the timecode she  already knows by heart. When 00:42:35 comes up on the display, she presses play so Sandra and Paul can watch their previous selves. 

The camera work is shaky and flicks from point to point without any clear sense. Sandra is not a natural cinematographer and the old technology doesn’t make things any better. The low-resolution sensor is starved of light and smears whatever information it can on to tape. Paul narrates as they make their way into what once was the library of Wardley House, giving readings of ambient temperature and electromagnetic activity from the devices he keeps tethered to his belt with a karabiner. Paul isn’t a natural on-camera presence, but his enthusiasm paranormal investigation overcomes his usual taciturn nature. 

“Dropped eighteen degrees in three seconds,” Paul gasps, condensation carrying his words.

Sandra had just been about to ask what that meant when it happened. 

It.

The taped version of events doesn’t fully capture what happened. As an aide memoire, though, it is unequivocal. Both Sandra and Paul re-live each moment as it plays out on screen. Even though it will be viewed by countless other viewers, none of them will experience it in the same way. Nevertheless, even for those that did not witness it live, it is still quite the piece of cinema.

Two smeared streaks of light enter the room, one racing ahead of the other for a moment until the second, larger shape catches it up. For a moment it appears that they have merged, but their collective form falls to the floor in a tangled mess, with each half pulling and pushing in different directions. Some definition appears and there is a struggle of limbs until the larger form wrestles itself to a position of dominance, on top of the other. The camera zooms in, loses focus for a moment then swims in and out as it tries to gain a lock on something that both is and isn’t there. The video’s soundtrack has nothing but Paul and Sandra’s rapid breathing, but both of them remember the struggling noises, the shouts of protest, the cries for help. 

On screen, the larger shape takes control of the smaller. What appear to be hands reach, grabbing and smashing another form against the ground, over and over again. The audio is still almost silence, but both Paul and Sandra shiver as they re-live the sickly crunching noises they heard as the larger form beats the smaller into the ground. It is almost a full minute until the struggle is over. The smaller form remains visible on the ground, but there is no more anima. No energy. No life, if it ever had such a thing. 

Meanwhile, the larger form expands and contracts. Expands and contracts. Breathing heavily, perhaps from the exertion or perhaps from anguish as it realises what is has done. 

Sandra and Paul don’t speak, either on the tape or as viewers, until the forms evaporate into nothingness and there is nothing but ill-lit video of an empty room.

Paul takes a deep breath.

“Bloody hell,” he whispers. “Bloody hell.”

• • •

It takes about eight days for the tape to become just a piece of footage to Sandra and Paul. Once home, they go through it exhaustively, logging each and every detail contained within. Every frame is captured onto the computer, analysed and annotated. Each moment of sound is filtered, EQ’d and tweaked to expose each and every frequency contained within. Their own reactions have been written, recorded and edited together in order to transform two minutes of footage has thereby been expanded into a fifteen minute that will maximise ad revenue. After a week, they have 250,000 views. 

Sandra, while doing her best to help this process, is a little afraid of what it’s doing to Paul. It’s not the same as the pure terror she felt at Wardley House, but there is growing unease about what this is doing to Paul. He’s barely slept over the past week, constantly refreshing Youtube metrics and tweaking keywords for maximum exposure. While Sandra views what happened as a side-road on their continuing journey together, Paul believes it is a destination. For him, it the video validates a lifetime’s work, one that has been mocked and derided by people around him. It’s not just a hobby, and it’s not a diversion. It’s a calling. Sandra may not like it, but they’re together so she’s on board. If that means gently encouraging him to eat, sleep and have a bath, then that’s what she’ll do. Occasionally, Paul will even agree and for a brief spell, things are almost normal again. She starts to make plans. Once this has all died down, they can get on with their real lives. She thinks about their jobs, perhaps moving to a different area, maybe even starting a family. 

Then the email comes. The producer of an American cable show has seen the video and wants to send a crew to interview them.

“This is it,” Paul murmurs to himself as he reads the message again and again. “This is where it all starts happening.”

“That’s great, Paul,” Sandra says. “I’m pleased for you.”

Paul turns, looking quizzical but then smiling genuinely for the first time in days. 

“Pleased for us, babe. This is our thing. Yours and mine.”

It isn’t. Not really. But Sandra thinks it’s nice of him to say it.

Although Paul is worried that the “yanks will swoop in and take the blummin’ thing”, he sees a future stretching out in front of him, one as a professional paranormal investigator, rather than a part-time amateur who works at the Tyre Centre. He sees a book, a web series, maybe more stuff on telly. This segment on Unexplainable will be the springboard for a small empire bearing his name. 

The cameras come - large, pro-quality bits of kit, shooting on memory cards instead of tapes and using lenses costing tens of thousands of dollars. But while the camera sees all, it doesn’t naturally gravitate to Paul. The producers find him gruff and incomprehensible. The camera dispassionately highlights his chubbiness and his excess perspiration. But everyone loves Sandra, whose slight distance from things makes her a more natural conduit for believers and skeptics alike. Where Paul has a tendency towards long monologues of technical waffle, Sandra speaks in pithy soundbites that work well in the edit. She also takes direction better than her partner. The segment producer asks them to repeat his questions when they answer. Sandra takes to it. Paul just takes the piss. 

By the time they’ve actually got inside Wardley House, the director is talking almost exclusively to Sandra, mentioning Paul’s name only to get him out of the way. Paul responds in a series of increasingly cheery ‘Right you are’s, the timbre of which sounds affable to everyone except Sandra. She doesn’t worry too much about that, though. It’s sort of fun, pretending you’re a famous telly person. She wouldn’t mind doing a bit more of it.

• • •

“Maybe try emphasising each word at the end?” Paul says, fiddling with the new camera’s touchscreen.

Sandra knows what he means, but also knows what it will sound like. Five remote pieces for Unexplainable and another dozen or so for its sister show What Was That? means that she’s familiar with her own cadences. Even without a director - a professional director - she knows what works for her. Still, this was Paul’s video. They agreed on that. 

“OK,” she says, breezily. “Gotcha. Ready to go?”

Paul nods. Sandra waits for him to say ‘action’. When it’s clear he won’t, she says “rolling?” and Paul moves his head in a circle.

“I’m here to revisit the scene of one of the most intense paranormal experiences I’ve ever had. This is Wardley House… one year on.”

“CUT!” Paul barks and his voice echoes off the walls. “What did I say? Enunciate each word.”

“What? Like, ‘This. Is. Wardley. House. One. Year. On.’ Like that?” Sandra’s taking the piss, but Paul either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

“Yes. Like that. Exactly like that.”

“It sounds weird.:

“Just fucking do it, would you?”

Sandra bites her lip and nods. Paul starts the camera rolling again.

“Take two. Go.”

“I still think we should clear this with Steven.”

Paul lets out a long sigh. 

“For the thousandth time-“ he begins.

“I just don’t think the show would like it,” Sandra says.

“And I’m telling you it’s not a problem.”

“I signed a contract-”

“Here we go…”

“And there’s non-compete clause that specifically-“

“It’s just a bloody Youtube video!”

“But I’ve got a brand to protect,” Sandra says and it’s this, more than anything, that makes Paul stop talking.

“And how did you get your brand, eh? Why have you got a contract with a bloody ‘non-compete clause’ in it?”

Sandra opens her mouth and then closes it again. Then, calmer, she says:

“I just don’t want to lose my job.”

“Again,” Paul says, eerily calm, “why do you have that job, eh? Because of me. Because of what I spent years researching, years tracking down-“

“Look, I’m sorry that they didn’t use you more in the video. I didn’t ask them for more work, they just offered it me. I can understand you being jealous, but-”

“I’m not jealous,” says Paul.

If Sandra had offered a definite rebuttal, it could have become an argument with back-and-forth, with points being made on either side. But there’s something about the way she clucks her tongue that makes Paul snap. His hands move for her before his brain has time to think, to stop them. Sandra flinches backwards, dropping the mike and turning tail and fleeing into down the corridor. Paul’s not so angry that he flings the camera to the floor, but he shoves it roughly into its case, forgetting to stop it recording. It captures him running after her and everything that follows after that.

“Come back, for fuck’s sake!” Paul bellows, the words echoing off the walls into an indistinct roar. Sandra she tries to make her way through the decrepit rooms of the abandoned stately home, but doesn’t know the layout as well as Paul does. Perhaps if she did, she would find a way to loop round out of his way. She doesn’t decide to go back to where The Incident took place, but as soon as she’s there, she knows it’s a mistake. There’s no way out but the way she came and before she can do anything, Paul is on her. The pair of them fall to the floor. Sandra tries to wriggle out from under him, but he’s on top now. Heavier and stronger, he reaches for her. He still thinks he’s trying to calm her down, to get her to stop being ridiculous, but when he takes hold of her head and shoves the first time, he knows. They both do. She begs him to stop, but he repeats his first action over and over again, proving that it was no accident. 

As her skull fractures on the stone floor, Sandra becomes aware of the shapes in the corner of the room. Bright figures, spectral and luminous, indistinct in their details but familiar. She sees them for the witnesses they are, taking testimony for some future date which is now all too near. Sandra speaks a mush of vowels at the smaller of the two shapes, hoping to warn her about what will happen. It’s no good, though. The words are stretched by agony into a long scream that cannot be captured by electronics but will be heard in her head, where it will reverberate faintly until this very moment when it stops permanently, only to be heard and reborn again elsewhere. 

Sandra sees it now, how it all words. It all loops round and everything is a circle; perfect, continuous, never-ending, as small as an atom, as large as a star, as simple as a loop or yarn or as complex as a camera lens. 

And then it’s over. The circle now complete, goes round for another revolution. But Paul, tired from the exertion, gets his breath back. After murmurs and sobs and regret and shame, he gets up and wipes away his tears. 

Unsure what to do next, he looks around for some clue, some indication of his next action. As he does so, he thinks he sees something in the corner of the room, where he he and Sandra stood when all this began. 

But as soon as he thinks something’s there, it’s gone.

Just a trick of the light.

“Bloody hell,” Paul mutters. “I mean… bloody hell.”

31 - Three Windows

It's just a story.

Was, anyway. A small item in the court records, Sammy Jacobs, pleading not guilty but then asking for the death sentence. You wanted to know what sort of person did that. You thought there was an article in it, a think piece as it's known in the biz, perhaps for the Sunday colour supplement. There's nothing more poignant than Death Row. You knew at least three editors who would buy it sight unseen. Easy money.

You stand behind the curtain, in one of three chambers, waiting for the show to start.

Three chambers. The first for the press, the second for the victim's family and the third for the defendant's witnesses. Ordinarily, you would be in the first of those rooms, but Sammy asked you to be here, so you sit in the third, all by yourself, so you can watch him die.

He's a character. That was your first impression, what with the long whiskers and the stutter and the tourettish conflagrated thoughts. You couldn't believe your luck as you listened to him talk, grateful that you invested in that handheld recorder, the good one, so you could go back over every um and ah, every chuckle and mutter in pristine digital quality. You wondered if maybe you could use them for a podcast. That seemed to be where things were going these days.

That was the first visit, the first of many. How long did it take, how many visits was it, before you realised Sammy wasn't a character. He was a person. So obvious, but so often forgotten in our desire to make everything a narrative, with a three act structure, twists and turns, peaks and troughs, all heading to a redemptive climax.

That's not how it worked, though. Talking to Sammy, you came to believe that he was innocent of the crime for which he had been committed and knew there was no evidence that would clear him. You spoke to lawyers about finding some sort of technicality that might excuse him from death, but they all said that without his consent, they wouldn't be empowered to act. You asked him, bullied him, begged him, but he wouldn't listen. Wouldn't do what you wanted, what you needed, in order to fix this.

And you never understood why. Why would someone ask for death when they knew they hadn't committed the crime?

Everyone had a theory. Sammy was lying, Sammy was suicidal, Sammy was a martyr, Sammy was flat out dumb. All of them made sense and none of them were the truth and so none of them were what you wanted.

That's what it was supposed to be about, wasn't it? The truth. That's why you became a journalist and that's why you went to places few others did and looked at things that nobody else wanted to - because that's where the truth lay. Not in books with gilt-edged pages or in the balance sheets of a company ledger. Not even in the black and white print of the newspaper you work for.

No, the truth lay motionless in a hotel room, like the one they found Caprice Hennessey. Twenty one and already looking older than her years would ever allow, she had been raped and pistol whipped to death. A bad way to go, perhaps almost inevitable if she were a character in a James Ellroy novel, or perhaps something even more lurid that didn't have any notion of being literature. But she wasn't a character. She was a person. Was, because people stop being people when they stop breathing. You believe that, even though you perpetuate them through your words. All you're doing is making ghosts, creating phantoms with the thin images created to a deadline.

Not all ghosts have died, however. As you approach the glass in front of you, looking to the left reveals the reflection of Maurice Patterson, Caprice's father. He stares out at you and given the translucency of his image, you have to remind yourself that he's there in the flesh, standing in the chamber next to yours, waiting to see what society has deemed to be justice. You suppose that if you can see him, he can probably see you, but the look in his eyes suggests that what he's seeing is another place, another time, hopefully far away from here and with some kind of joy associated with it. You assume that he's thinking about Caprice - Monica, as was, because nobody names their daughter Caprice Hennessey unless they actually want her to be a stripper.

You remember trying to interview him, standing on his porch and trying to tell him that you weren't like all the others, you wanted to find the truth. He didn't buy it for one moment, and when he learned that you had talked to Sammy and were trying to fight for his freedom you got a concentrated dose of disgust, the likes of which you had rarely experienced in such unmetered form. His manners didn't fail, but he told you very clearly that you should leave or he would not be held accountable for his actions. You didn't have to ask press him any further, nor did you want to, not because of any kind of principles, but because sympathy for him and his dead daughter would cloud your story. Because that's all it was, then. A story.

If Mr Patterson remembers you or recognises you, he doesn't show it. You are the least of his concerns at this present time. He's not a character, either, but for convenience's sake you're willing to let him remain as something incidental. Empathy, it turns out, is a finite resource and your stocks are dry, perhaps because there is no-one in your world that replenishes you. If you were a cliche, you would have an ex that you could call, someone that you could tell that they were executing Sammy and despite all that you had been through together, they could say sorry and ask how you are. But there's no-one.

All this is distraction, though, and idle speculation falls away as the door opens and Sammy is led in by the guards. His eyes scan across the room and I've that the glass you assumed was one way is just glass and he can see everyone assembled to watch him die. You said your final goodbyes yesterday, but you wonder what happened between then and now for Sammy to look so different. Perhaps it's just the light in the room or maybe it's a night spent knowing that you are definitely going to die tomorrow. You can only imagine what that does to someone. You tell yourself that you've been vying with this reality for a long time now, but that's a lie you tell yourself to turn this into a story and to turn yourself into a character. You don't know what it's like to wait to die. At least, no more than any of us do.

You want him to see you, to concentrate on you, but that was never going to happen. Instead, Sammy's eyes go straight to Mr Patterson, as you suppose they would and maybe should, if Sammy had actually done what he was accused of. The reflection means that you can see both of them at once and you catch a moment where their eyes lock. Mr Patterson then looks at the floor and as far as you know doesn't look at Sammy again throughout the whole process.

It's then that Sammy makes eye contact with you. At first he looked in the press box and seems gratified that you are in the box for his witnesses rather than journalists. This is the only thing you could do for him, one last sign that perhaps he wasn't as alone as he thought and a final confirmation of the fact that you have absolutely no objectivity left when it comes to this case.

Case. There's another piece of obfuscation for you. Lawyers and luggage makers can talk about cases. Everyone else just sounds like an idiot.

The guards are horrifically well rehearsed as they firmly push Sammy into the chair and fasten the restraints on his arms and legs. You can't look away as they do this to him, even though the urge is strong. He needs to believe that he is not alone at this moment. You want him to believe it, even though you don't. No one in the world is more alone than he is at this very moment. You don't smile, don't nod, don't try and assure him that everything will be ok because you're not in a position to lie to him in these last moments. Truth should be basic courtesy, a fundamental precept for all human interaction, yet it's the most difficult thing to come by, the most precious resource you know of and the thing you hold most dear. At this moment, though, what you wouldn't give in order to be able to lie, just with a gesture or a glance. But you don't, because Sammy is a person and he deserves the best, even when everything is at its worst. So you just look at him, show him that you are here and he is there and even though nothing can change what's about to happen, you are in some small measure there for him.

As they strap him into the chair, the warden steps forward and begins reading the sentence. It is as you knew, that he has been found guilty of the crime of murder and in accordance with the laws of the state, he shall now be put to death.

"Do you have any last words?”

Sammy takes a breath, looks at Mr Patterson and then right back at the warden.

"I didn't kill anyone. The only murder I've seen is the one happening here today."

Nobody says anything to this. You glance at the glass to check Mr Patterson's reaction, but he's still staring at his feet.

"Y'all are murdering me."

Whether Sammy had more to say or not, the Warden decides that's enough and nods to the guards to get on with it. You glance around to see if anyone is actually noting it down, but that question is gone as the rest of the procedure continues. The hood is drawn over Sammy's head and it's this, more than anything, that confirms to him the reality of his impending. With the hood on, he is alone in dark, struggling to breathe through the black mask and given only the subtlest of clues as to when his life will be over. He can't see you, but you don't look away What would be the point of being here if you did? You're a witness - his witness - not just to an execution, but also to a crime. It's your job to record every detail, ever nuance, for the record.

And as you think that, the warden says "Roll on one" and somewhere behind a curtain a switch is thrown.

The lights don't dim, not like in the movies, but it's true that you can feel the charge in the air. Sammy tenses against his restraints and shudders with a power greater than any flesh was meant to bear. He spasms and twitches on one unified direction, away from the electrical current which is killing him. There is no refuge, however, so his efforts are for nothing. Whether they are a conscious attempt to escape or a simple bioelectrical reflex is something you'll wonder about later, but for the moment, all you can do is watch and keep watching as Sammy has the life burned out of him by his government.

For this, Mr Patterson raises his head. No longer staring at his shoes, he makes himself watch Sammy die, because this is the man convicted of killing his daughter and we as a society do this largely for the benefit of Mr Patterson and others like him. You want to know if it makes him feel better and you wonder if, perhaps, that might be some sort of consolation. Maybe in a story it would be, but in the real world, the truth is that nothing brings back a dead child.

You don't know how long they run current through Sammy's body. Your initial research says the initial shock is eight seconds, which is supposed to kill the brain almost immediately. then another twenty seconds and then another eight. Thirty six seconds to take a life. It doesn't hurt, not if it's done right. You hope it was done right.

The current stops and there is a moment of horrible expectation as the doctor checks Sammy's pulse. You've heard stories about people surviving and the process having to be repeated, but that's not the case here. The doctor confirms the time of death.

They close the curtain, as if it was the end of a play. No applause, though. Mr Patterson has already turned away, heading straight for the exit. He's seen what he came here to see and has no reason to linger. If you were here in an official capacity, you might hang around to talk to some other people. The arresting officer is probably here, maybe a lawyer or two. The wardens sometimes like to talk, a fact that you found distasteful even before you had any personal investment and which now seems positively ghoulish. But then, you don't know what it's like to be a prison warden and so who are you to judge?

Some sense of duty tells you that you should stick around, but they're not going to let you see the body (even if you wanted to), so you get out of that small room with its overlooked air. There are gates and turnstiles and buzzers to negotiate, registers to sign and bags to be checked until finally, finally, you get back out into the open air, where you can lean against your car door and just take a moment to process.

There's a momentary craving for a cigarette, just for something to do, until you remember the small and consistency of ash and it turns your stomach. You don't want to throw up, not here in the car park, not anywhere on the premises for that matter, and a few gulps of air mean that you're able to get your gut in check, at least for the time being.

A door opens and closes and another figure emerges from the same door you exited from. As he draws closer, you recognise it as Miller from The Times. He recognises you and comes over to say hello.

"Didn't see you in there," he says, as he lights a cigarette. The bastard.

You tell him that you were in the third room and he nods.

"Got close to this one, right?"

Does he know that from personal experience, you wonder, or has he just read other people's work? You're not sure you can compare notes at this point, whether from a professional or personal standpoint, so you just nod dumbly.

"Try not to dwell on it too much," he says. "It's over now."

He flicks his cigarette away, all three-quarters of it, and you watch it as it lands five metres away, still burning.

Miller says goodbye and you say the same but don't look up from his cigarette. If he drove away quickly enough, could you go and pick up the cigarette and take a drag? And if does that, will you? Probably not, but it's better than looking at Miller or his company car and waving as he pulls out in front of you. It's better than looking back at the building that Sammy died in and it's better than looking in the backseat of your Honda, where a bulging cardboard box full of papers contains everything you ever wrote, found or copied about Sammy.

If this was a story, you would take that to the dump, or the recycling centre or to a burning ashcan in your back yard and you would dispose of it all in one symbolic purging. You can see it in your mind's eye, page after page being subsumed until there was nothing left.

That would be an ending, of sorts.

If this were a story.

29 - Inevitably, Crows

In the grey light of morning, four black shapes dropped out of the sky and landed in a cornfield. They had not come to make a meal of ears alone, however, as they gathered around the cadaver laying in the crop. They were two adults and two children, descending in size from father to mother to daughter to brother. It was this one, the youngest, who made the first move, reaching towards the dead flesh with outstretched beak. "Thaddeus," his father scolded, "you know better than to take sustenance before offering thanks."

"Sorry, Paw," the young crow mumbled. "I weren't thinking."

His sister Tabitha - older, and always happy to see her younger sibling put in his place - let out a low caw, just loud enough to needle Thaddeus, but below Father’s register. If Mother was aware of their joshing, she chose not to show it. Tabitha had come to the realisation that she had seldom seen her mother talk without Father's permission and with this insight came the question of whether she would be expected to do the same when she found a mate. It was the way of crows, she knew, it seemed like a strange way to live.

"It's a big'un, ain't it paw?" the youngest crow said to his father. "I ain't never seen a feast this big. I bet we could live on this for two weeks, if we had to."

"Wouldn't last two days the way you eat, fatso," the older sibling muttered.

"Thaddeus is blessed with a healthy appetite," their mother said. She heard that all right. “It means he has to work extra hard to make sure that his needs are met."

Tabitha scowled. Thaddeus had been their mother's favourite ever since he hatched, just two minutes after Tabitha himself.

"Come now," their father said, “enough of this chitter-chatter. Let’s give thanks in the proper manner before we go any further."

The four crows bowed their heads around the carcass.

"Oh, great and plentiful provider, we thank thee for the bounty we are about to receive. We approach you as humble servants, conduits for your good grace and benevolence. We ask that you guide us, not merely to our next meal, but to guide our thoughts and actions so that that we may be servants to your message and spread the word of your almighty works to others, who have yet to receive the good grace of your mighty judgement."

The elder crow looked down at the large body before them.

"I don't know what this meal did to bring it death, oh lord, but we offer our thanks to you for bringing us to it and we are comforted by the knowledge that these sins will be absolved by the sustenance provided to us, your loyal servants. You provide flesh when we are hungry, blood when we are thirsty, but we pray for the day when the world is free of sin and that we might starve, for there is no more flesh to strip from the bone. Until that day, oh lord, we give thanks for the meat that sustains us. Amen."

"Amen," the group echoed and, when Father indicated they may proceed, started tearing at the flesh in front of them.

"Slow down, Thaddeus," Mother said to the youngest crow. "The meal isn't going to get up and run away. Take the time to chew your food."

"Yes, ma'am," Thaddeus mumbled. He had never tasted meat so succulent and sweet. His appetite, healthy at the best of times, was sent into overdrive.

"This is some fine eating," Tabitha said through a mouthful. "What kid of meat is this, paw?"

His father continued chewing for several moments, taking so long that Tabitha wondered if he had heard the question, or was just ignoring her. He did that sometimes.

"It's man. And don't talk with your mouth full."

"Yessir," Tabitha mumbled and kept her beak down for the remainder of the meal. The younger sibling was not so circumspect, however.

"Paw, how come we always pray to starve? It don't make no sense."

Everyone stopped eating and there was a long pause. Each crow was stunned by the magnitude of the blasphemy the young crow had uttered. Eventually, his mother tried to gloss over the heresy of the youngest crow.

"Thaddeus Ezekiel Moses, you hush your beak right now," she hissed.

"Now, now - no need to scold the boy," Father said. "He asked a question, plain and true, and there's no reason to fear the answer. Listen, youngest, we give thanks to the provider for every meal we receive, true?"

"Yessir," he youngest crow said.

"Do we catch our own animals to eat?"

"Naw sir."

"Do we kill the meat ourselves?"

"Naw sir. That would be a sin."

"So how does it get to us?"

"We... find it?"

"Scavenge, son. The word is scavenge."

"Stupid," Tabitha muttered.

"Right. I knew that," Thaddeus said, abashed.

“Ask yourself, in all the days that you have been alive, has their ever been a day where we have not had something to eat?"

"Naw sir."

"So, you must ask yourself: are we finding the meat or is it

being provided for us? Even the best finders of things sometimes have days where they are unable to locate what they're looking for."

“So… provided, right?"

"That's correct son. Each of these meals we receive are gifts from the provider."

"So... the provider kills things for us, so we can eat them?"

"That's right."

The young crow stared at the meat in front of him. Suddenly, it didn't taste so sweet and delicious.

“But... if killing's a sin, how come the provider can do it?"

Thaddeus's mother and older sister looked at Father to see what his reaction would be. The pious elder crow was known as a staunch defender of the old ways and had been known to peck the eyes out of impetuous birds who dared question the teachings. Indeed, a female chick in the couple's first brood had been pushed out of the nest before she could fly, simply for refusing to bow her head before receiving food.

Despite this history of harsh retribution, the elder crow did not attack his son for his enquiry.

"There's only one way that killing is not forbidden, and that's if the thing that's killed has sins so great that they don't deserve to live. That's determined by the provider. It’s his judgement and no-one else’s."

"So... if there was no meals... it would mean that there was no sin, right?"

"That's right, son. Just think about that. A world free of sin. To die there would be the best service we could ever hope to achieve. Until that day, we keep giving our thanks and we keep praying for the day when we no longer have the opportunity to eat."

The youngest crow nodded sagely. "I understand, father. I see it now."

"Well done, Thaddeus," his mother said quietly. Tabitha thought his brother was an idiot, but knew better than to say it. This was obviously just the latest opportunity to shower praise on the young male. Interrupting it wouldn't do Tabitha any favours.

"That's enough talking for now," Father said. "We have a long distance to cover."

Thaddeus nodded and used his beak to tear flesh from the body in front of him. As he did, he wondered what sins this "man" had committed in order to end up as a meal for him and his kin.

27 - Make Mine a 99

Finally, some fucking sunshine. As if things hadn't been bad enough this summer, it's been the wettest June since records began. Since records began. Un-fucking-believable. Maybe that's why it's all kicked off the past few weeks. When the sun's shining and everybody's out and about, then there's enough trade for everyone, but when it's day after day of cold, shitty grey days then the market for ice cream gets a little bit more limited. Today's good, though. Today's pukka. I've got through a box and a half of cones and it's not even two o'clock. If it carries on like this, I'll have to restock, just so I don't run out when the schools let out at 3.30.

Speaking of which, shouldn't these kids be in school? Don't get me wrong, I like the fact they're out here, but you probably don't see the Germans or the Japanese letting their kids bunk off a Strawberry Mivvi, do you? Come to think of it, I'm not even sure they've got ice cream in those places. Germans probably do, but I dunno about the Japanese. If they do, it's probably all raw fish and hot green mustard. Still, for better or worse, there's nothing more British than an ice cream cone on a sunny day. We might not have an empire any more, but you can still rely on the ice cream van to turn up and make things just a little bit brighter. It's not like driving an ambulance or raising money for charity, but I like to think I'm doing my bit in making people's lives a bit better. I mean, look at that little bleeder there. Ice cream all over his face, but he couldn't be happier. Like a pig in shit, he is. Smiles like that make it all worthwhile. I'm not one of those people who goes too soppy over kids – some of them are right little arseholes and no mistake – but selling 'em ice cream's probably the best job I've ever had. Better than working the rigs and, let me tell you, the money's almost as good. I thought Terry was exaggerating when he told me about it, but if anything he kind of understated it. Hopefully the weather'll hold for a bit and I won't have to start looking around for something else. What happened to global warming, eh? We'd better get a good summer from here on out, because otherwise me and Lisa won't be going to Florida in September. She's a fucking nut for rollercoasters, Lisa is, and I've been promising her that we'll go over to Disneyworld and Universal Studios and that. But if this weather don't pick up, I don't know whether we can afford it. It's bollocks, but what am I supposed to do? I can't control the clouds in the sky, can I? I'm doing everything I can, for fuck's sake.

Ha. Some stupid posh tart just complained that I sold her little boy a cider flavoured ice lolly, as if it had real cider in it or something. Daft cow. Felt like telling her about some of the other stuff that gets sold out of ice cream vans, but that wouldn't do no good. No-one outside the firm needs to know about that. Anyway, she was making all sorts of fuss and insisted that I swap it for an orange one. Don't nobody want orange lollies anymore, so I had to rootle around in the bottom of the chest freezer. Found one right at the bottom, just underneath the Two-Ball Screwballs and just next to Frank's head. That's been in there since last night, when me and Tel took it off Frank's shoulders with a chainsaw. It was supposed to be a negotiation, but me and Tel didn't have any intention of doing business with that fat wanker, so we did what we had to. Part of me wants to tell the stuck up mum about Frank's head, but I don't think she'd see the funny side. I do, though. I think it's fucking hilarious. Maybe that's why I'm in such a good mood. That and the sunshine. I was supposed to get rid of Frank's head yesterday, but I didn't have a chance. I'll do it when the after-school rush dies down. Won't be a problem - I'll chuck it in the incinerator in Bexleyheath. In the meantime, I've got to keep an eye out – not just for Old Bill, but also for any of those Mr Freezy cunts. We told them before – the park and everything south belongs to us, but will they listen? 'Course not, cheeky fuckers.

Mr Freezy. Honestly. What sort of name is that? It just shows them for what they are: Johnny-come-latelys who don't know the first fucking thing about the ice cream game. Whippy, Softee, even a Creamee's ok, but Freezy? It just don't sound right. Ice cream's supposed to be friendly and inviting. Freezy sounds like a brutal winter. It don't make you think of summer days, you know what I mean? But, truth be told, that crew have been a bit fucking brutal. I mean, not so bad that we can't handle, but the cocky bastards came on to our patch and have been nicking our customers for months. Another year, we might have let it go, but with the economy the way it is and all this shitty weather, well, there's only room for so many noses at the trough, you know what I mean? So, yeah, things have got a little bit out of hand, but to be honest it was them that started it. The young one, Keith, he come in The Wheatsheaf the other week and starts giving it the big 'un, saying that him and his uncle are taking over. Me and Tel were just having a quiet pint, but that mouthy sod wouldn't let it go, so Tel smacked him one. Since then, it's all been kicking off. Started off harmless enough, just slashing tyres and that, but on the Jubilee weekend it all got serious and that's how come bits of Frank ended up in my chest freezer. It’s not just his head we put in there. We’ve got fingers, toes, the bits of skin where his tattoos were - anything that could be used to identify him. It’s my job to get rid of these bits, so we can’t be tied to it, but then the sun come out this morning and, well, I’ve got to make a living, haven’t I? Maybe it's a bit of a risk, but I don’t give a fuck. I'm not letting Lisa down. Not again.

I know I've got to take Frank's bits to the incinerator,  there's part of me that really wants to take his head and leave it on his wife's doorstep. She must be wondering where he is by now and I'd love it if I could tell her. I'd drive up to that mock-tudor shithole, drop the head on her doormat and ring the bell, before hopping back in the van and driving off. I'd make sure I played the chimes, so they know who done it. (We use "Greensleeves", because we're a proper ice cream van. Those cunts use "La Cucaracha", which is just stupid.) Imagining her expression as she sees Frank's frozen head looking up at her is keeping me going through the day. Truth be told I'm kind of on autopilot as I'm handing out cones, lollies and drinks. That's one of the perks of the job, really. Even the most complicated ice cream is a simple formula. Cone, squirt, nuts, sauce, flake, £3 please. I could do it with my eyes closed, which allows me to concentrate on what the blowback's gonna be for offing Frank. I'd like it if they all got the message and fucked off back up north, but I reckon that's just wishful thinking. It took some balls to come down to an area they don't know, with no backing, and try to make a name for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I still hate the fuckers, but you've got to admire their entrepreneurial spirit. That Keith's a mouthy one, but the older one, Patrick, he's the one most likely to get nasty. I've got a feeling that if any one person gets the blowback, it'll be Tel. Don't get me wrong, he's a fucking diamond, but he's getting on and he ain't got the same fire he used to. He's got weaker since his operation and everyone knows it. If they do come for him, do I have his back? Few years ago, there wouldn't have been any doubt, but everything changes and once they've had their eye-for-an-eye, we might be able to sort out a deal. One less mouth to feed means maybe I can take on the vans single handed and that would sort out a load of my problems. Tel got me into this game, but that don't mean I've got to put up with his skimming off the top for the rest of my days.

I'm wondering what it would be like to be in business for myself when a kid in front of me starts bawling his eyes out as I hand him his ice cream. Not that unusual, but it snaps me out of my thoughts.

"What's the problem, sonny?" I ask him. "Did you drop a bit on the floor?"

He just keeps on screaming and I can see a concerned mum in the background making her way over.

"Come on," I say, not wanting to deal with another stuck-up yummy mummy who thinks every geezer around wants to lick her fanny, just cause she can get back into her yoga gear. "Don't be like that. What's the matter?"

I glance at the cornet I just handed him and I suddenly see what the problem is. Instead of a flake sticking out of the top, there's a stubby finger with hair on the knuckles and a gold sovereign ring.

Frank's ring.

Frank's finger.

Exactly where the chocolate flake's supposed to be. "Oops!" I say, reaching over and snatching the cone out of the little bleeder's hands before he has a chance to say anything. "That's for adults only."

I chuck an ice lolly at him and slide the window shut, just seconds before his mum steps up. Time to call it a day, I think. Sun or no sun.

26 - Digging A Hole (Again)

I’ve got a wicked fucking hangover and I’m trying to waiting for the Alka Seltzer to dissolve when “La Cucaracha” screams out of my phone and into my ears. Dougie set it up and now I can’t work out how to change it. As I stumble across to where my jacket’s lying, I knock over one of the beer cans from last night. Stale lager and cigarette ends spill across the kitchen table and I try to set up temporary breakwaters using an old copy of Time Out and a slice of bread. This unforseen disaster should be taking up all my attention, but that bastard song is still chirping away, so I have to deal with the phone or my head will explode.

It’s work. Bollocks. I can’t answer it, but I can’t not answer it, so I press the button and bring the squawking thing up to my ear.

“Hi Jeff,” I say, wincing pre-emptively.

“Chas, what the hell is going on?”

“Uh… I suppose I’m running a little late,” I say, still trying to mop up the beer-and-fag waves washing across my tabletop. I’ve found it’s easier to lie when you’re concentrating on something else. It gives you less time to think, so the deception flows naturally.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Jeff says, before lowering his tone urgently. “You know that I don’t want to be a ballbuster. I’ve been flexible with you with regards to your… timekeeping.”

He means drinking, but he can’t just come out and say that. 

“But I asked you to have the Havelock plot dug before you left yesterday and the funeral’s at twelve, so I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. You really let me down, Chas.”

“Hang on…” I say, having finally stemmed the tide from the spilt can. “I did do the Havelock plot. I stayed until seven to do it, because I knew-“

(that I was going on the piss last night)

-“that it needed to be done.”

“Chas…”

“I’m telling you, Jeff. I dug the plot, alright? I did it.”

And I did. I know I did. I remember finishing it off, putting away the tools in the shed and locking the door. That much is clear. The blackouts came later. 

“Look, all I know is that there’s supposed to be a hole in the ground and there isn’t one. I’ve got the funeral director on his way and the service is starting in a couple of hours-“

“I’ll have it dug by then,” I interject. “I swear I will. I mean, I’ve already dug it once, how hard can it be?”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. Jeff knows that he should probably fire me right now, but he’s in a jam and he’s certainly not going to dig the hole himself, so what choice does he have.

“You can really do it in time?” he asks eventually. “You promise?”

“Jeff, I swear on my life. I’m leaving now.”

“Alright. Get it done and we’ll talk.”

“Right.”

Every second counts, but I take a two minute shower to wash off the layer of boozy sweat that’s seeping though my pores. There will be more to come, but I need to get the first layer of muck off my skin. Also, my head is pounding and the water seems to help. I’m still damp when I leave the house, but that’s nothing compared to the brain aneurism I get when the bright sunshine first hits my eyes. Fucking horrible. I squint my way through to the minicab office and splash out fifteen quid on a taxi to work. It’s an extravagance, but a necessary one and probably nothing compared to what I spent last night. When I’m feeling a bit more brave, I might go through the receipts in my wallet and try and piece together what I spent and where. More likely, I’ll just throw them away and try to keep the figleaf of denial in place for just a little while longer.

After ten minutes in the cab and half a bottle of Lucozade Sport, I’m starting to feel a little better. By the time I pull up to the cemetery gate, I feel certain that Jeff will tell me that he mixed up the plot numbers and that he’s sorry for the misunderstanding. In fact, so confident am I of this that I make sure to get a receipt from the cabbie, so I can claim back the fare. 

But when he comes out to meet me, Jeff’s face is like thunder. The apologetic smiles are nowhere to be seen and it’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever seen the placid cemetery manager look angry. It’s difficult to tell whether his fury comes from this supposed incident or the backlog of shit I’ve put him through over the past few months. Jeff’s a nice bloke. Too nice, probably, for someone like me not to take advantage of him. Today, though, he’s almost shaking with rage. The one thing I have in my favour is that I’m trying to put it right. I know that he’s in a jam and if I can get him out of it then maybe, just maybe, I might still have a job. And the weird thing is that I do still want the job. I like being outdoors and graveyards don’t come with a lot of hassles. Digging holes and tending the shrubbery is a nice, low-stress earner for a screw-up like me. I don’t want to go back to signing on and I sure as fuck don’t want to go back to telesales.

“Jeff, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened. I can’t understand how this could have happened.”

“Really, Chas? Because I’ve got a pretty good idea of how it happened. You got drunk and fucked off without doing the job.”

“Jeff, I swear…”

What? That I didn’t get drunk at work? That would be a lie and not one that I would be able to pass off. Yeah, I had a drink at lunchtime, but it was only a couple of pints. I wasn’t drunk. And I came back to finish the plot. I know I did.

But as we approach the plot, I can see that not everything is as I left it. There’s the new headstone for Arthur Havelock, but there’s no hole in the ground.

I don’t know what to say.

“Jeff… I dug the hole. I swear I did.”

He just shakes his head in disgust, presuming that I’m trying to maintain a pointless lie in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

“Look,” I say, “the earth’s been turned and there’s no grass. Someone’s filled it in.”

“Why on earth would someone do that?”

“I don’t know. As a joke or something?”

“You’ve got just over an hour and a half. Get on with it.”

There’s nothing more I can say, so I just nod and grab a spade. On a day as hot as today, I’d usually take it easy, but I don’t have the luxury of goofing off. I unzip the top of my overalls and start digging. As I do so, I try to understand the thought processes of someone who would break into a cemetery at night and fill in a grave. My best guess is students or, more likely, a rugby club. The hot weather and bright evenings encourage alfresco drinking and even though this usually means tramps with cans, it can lead to other, more boisterous types. 

Grumbling about rugger-buggers serves as a distraction from how unspeakably rotten I feel inside. My guts are quaking and the sweat on my brow is about 40 proof. I swig from a bottle of water, but if I’m honest I could really do with a beer or a nip of vodka, just to take the shakes away and muzzle the dog that bit me. There’s an offie ten minutes away, but I can’t run the risk of sneaking off there. This is supposed to be me coming through in a pinch, not nipping off for a six pack. Body and mind are wailing, but this is just one of those times that you have to get through. The one consolation is that because the grave has been recently re-filled, I don’t have to break ground and it’s a bit easier to shovel it out and pile it on the wheelbarrow. It’s the one piece of evidence that shows that I actually dug the hole in the first place, but it takes a certain affinity with the dirt to be able to appreciate the distinction. Jeff’s an administrator, so maybe it’s expecting too much of him to understand the qualities of soil. Still, it keeps me from thinking that I’ve completely lost my marbles.

In the hour that follows, I work harder than I have done in years. Digging in this hot weather with a fuck-off hangover is torture, but it’s also cathartic. Maybe if I had to endure this sort of horror every time I got pissed, I wouldn’t drink so much. That’s a delusion, to be sure, but I appreciate the motivation it gives me and I spent a little while attacking the ground with vigour as I think about my new dour and virtuous lifestyle. So enamoured am I with my protestant work ethic that I almost don’t notice when my spade hits something hard in the ground. At first, I think it’s just a loose root or branch, but when I lean down to haul it out I realise that it has fingernails.

All feelings of moral righteousness go out of the window and I scramble to get out of the ground and away from the arm. My stomach, already under siege, cramps and spasms in disgust at the dead limb in the ground. It would be the most natural thing in the world to vomit now, but I don’t have much to bring up and just spit a line of bile into my wheelbarrow and try to get a sense of what’s happening. That’s a dead body in the ground and I’m guessing that it’s not Arthur Havelock. Even though I work around dead people all day, that hasn’t prepared me for being that close to one. I tend to think of myself as a landscaper more than a cryptkeeper. The truth is that I’m freaking the fuck out. At least, I think I am. It’s only after a couple of moments that I have a thought that chills me to my core.

What if I put him there?

I spent most of last night in blackout. I remember leaving work and going to The Crown and then somewhere else, maybe The Buckley Tavern, but there’s big chunks of last night that are missing. That’s not usual for me, but on this night more than any other total recall would be a godsend. Is it possible that somewhere between one of those pubs, my flat and any number of other places along the way, I could have killed someone, brought them to this empty plot, thrown them in and covered the grave with soil? It seems too ridiculous for words and yet I can see it in my mind, not as memory but as if it were being filmed by a Crimewatch reconstruction film-crew. The fact that I can see myself in my mind’s eye is the only thing that makes me think that I probably didn’t do it. Probably. I’m, like, 95% sure I’m not a murderer. I do stupid things when I’m drunk, but they tend to put myself in jeopardy, not other people. Everybody’s different when they drink like me. Some people weep, some fight, others strip their clothes off and run around naked. I’m boring. I tend to mind my own business. 

Maybe it’s not good enough to say that you don’t remember not killing someone, but that it doesn’t seem in character. At the moment, that’s all I’ve got and it’ll have to do.

Yeah, yeah, the sick part of my brain says, keep talking, killer.

I tell that part of my mind to shut up and take another look into the hole, thinking that maybe the hand in the ground might be some sort of alcoholic vision brought about by the DTs. I don’t know whether it’s a relief to see the hand still there. It proves that the situation is real, but it doesn’t prove that I’m not crazy.

Maybe I should just run. I know it would make me look guilty, but maybe it would be better if I just downed tools and legged it. Not noble, but I gave up on that a long time ago.

I feel my brain folding in on itself and as the horror of reality comes crashing in, my stomach finally relents and spews out a bit of sick. Not the prettiest of reactions, but somehow it snaps me back to reality.

There’s a body here. People will need to know. Jeff first, then the funeral directors and the Havelock family. Then, presumably, the police. I’m almost certain that my sense of guilt comes from being a hopeless drunk who can’t piece together what happened last night. I don’t think it’s anything more than that, but if it is, maybe I’m about to get what I deserve. 

I put down my spade and start walking towards Jeff’s office. Before I know it, my stride has turned into a jog and then a full-pelt sprint. Whether I’m running towards something or away, I really don’t know. 

All I know is I can’t stay here. 

25 - In Conversation With Albert Bassom

Excerpt from The Journal of Murder Vol. 72, Issue 2

After establishing himself as one of the foremost proponents of the classical school of poisoners, Bassom shifted direction in 1972, eschewing his previous methods and embracing what he termed the “New Brutalism”. This excursion was marked by the savage beating of Claude Bastopoule, whose body was found in Montmartre on 4th October 1972. In this excerpt from an interview held at the Annual Symposium on Premeditated Death, he talks to Peter Cohen about his dissatisfaction with traditional ideas of class, the ennui of contemporary murder and his attempts to redefine the notion of premeditation.

Peter Cohen: Up until this point you had always been known for a strong sense of artistry in your work. It wasn’t uncommon to have your murders described by critics as beautiful or touching and I think I’m right in saying that there was a very strong sense of history involved.

Albert Bassom: No-one knew more about ancient poisons than me!

PC: Well, exactly. I always felt that you were a… custodian, I suppose, of the grand tradition. I’m curious as to what led to you discarding this notion.

AB: I don’t know if there was any one moment that made me think “Oh, I need to change everything”, but there was certainly a growing sense of unease about the very notion of there being a “grand tradition”. I suppose you have to place it in the context of the time. After the student riots in Paris I think a lot of artists, writers, even murderers, were forced to evaluate the political implications of their work in a way that we had not before. It wasn’t just the Marxists who were doing it. Even those on the right or the centre, they too had to think about the implications of what we were doing. At that time it felt like the world was changing and that the old models simply wouldn’t work any more. Everything was political. Everything. Why should murder be any different? It could not. The displeasure I felt was coming through in all sorts of ways. The two pieces I did before Bastopoule were very tired. I wasn’t happy with them at all, even though to the critics raved about them. They said that they were the very embodiment of the classical tradition - perfectly constructed murders with undetectable poisons and perfect alibis - but to me, they were nothing but shit - empty gestures with no meaning. The press they were hailing them as masterpieces, but I felt dead inside, as dead as the victims.

PC: There was no satisfaction?

AB: There was no excitement! All around me, people were struggling, fighting, bleeding for something and here I was, fiddling around with chemical compounds and wealthy dowagers. I felt completely out of step with the times. I could feel a rage building up inside of me and for the first time, I thought I should explore this rage rather than control it. In my whole career, it had always been about concealing the intention, hiding the emotion so that you can avoid detection. This began, I think, because of self-preservation, but along the way it became an indulgence. I grew tired of thinking of murder as an intellectual exercise and I wanted to explore the primal savagery at it’s heart. For all the analysis and criticism writers like you generate, this is still an act of violence. Dressing it up as if it were poetry or ballet or architecture seemed fundamentally dishonest.

PC: It’s ironic, though, that this came about as a result of what you describe as a political awakening. Do you think there’s an inherent tension in making a conscious decision to act without thinking?

AB: Oh, certainly. But that tension speaks to the core of us, I think. We are all stretched between our desires and our thoughts. That is the essence of existence. But recognition of that fact doesn’t make it any less valid. And, just to go back to what you said for a moment, I take issue with the idea that politics is somehow the realm of the intellectual. It’s a venal, bloody business about domination and power, the subjugation of one life into another. So, you see, it’s a very natural fit with the business of what we do, no? 

PC: Oh, certainly. But when one thinks of political murder, one thinks of Brutus and Caesar, or Che Guevara-

AB: The classical model again. You see, it’s the notion that politics is the realm of the statesman, of these faraway gods who rarely deign to involve themselves with the petty concerns of mortals. The same thing had happened with murder. The intellectualisation of the craft made it removed from the reality. Those of us who were involved somehow thought that there was a distinction between what we did by choice and what the common man did through rage. This elitism is what first led to the establishment of the societies, journals and so forth of which we’re all familiar and by whose patronage we are sitting here today. And this is not to say that these things don’t have their place and value, but for me, at that time, I felt that what had started as a means of elevating and expanding human knowledge of death was, in fact, inhibiting it. There was such a snobbishness about murder amongst the intellectuals and I was having these crazy arguments with people. They would say things like: “Well, hitting someone over the head with a blunt object isn’t really murder” and I would get really angry. I would have these long rows, but I could tell that it wasn’t getting me anywhere. As time went on, I spent less and less time with those people. I just couldn’t take it any more. I was getting very depressed. I would start planning a new piece and I would walk away within twenty minutes. 

PC: What sort of things were you working on?

AB: I had thought my next development would be in acids. It’s difficult to recall the details, but I think I was looking for a way to slowly corrode someone from the inside. Which is an interesting idea, I suppose, but at the time it seemed to be just an extension of the same old chemistry homework I had been doing for the past twenty years. I think… actually, I’m fairly sure it was the hippies who gave me the idea for that one. It was a play on words, I suppose. Acid meaning LSD and acid meaning corrosive materials. It wasn’t very well worked out. Again, it was that intellectual exercise: playing with words, creating puns, that sort of thing.

PC: What did you think of the hippies? Were you an advocate of free love?

AB: The hippies didn’t interest me greatly. It all seemed to be about drugs and bad music.

PC: You weren’t an advocate of free love, then?

AB: No, not at all. I think there’s always a price for love. There’s always a price for everything. 

PC: So how would you describe your political allegiances at this time?

AB: I don’t think I would be able to, either now or then. I wasn’t particularly interested in factions and ideologies so much as overall sense of chaos and upheaval. I went to a few meetings of some groups and they didn’t interest me much. It seemed to be the same sort of abstract bickering I had seen in conferences such as this one. It wasn’t so much that I was drawn to any movement, but repelled from what I had already known. I didn’t want to go to rallies and hear speeches. I had heard enough oratory for a lifetime. I rejected eloquence and everything that came with it. It was only when I attended court to pay a parking fine that I found what I had been searching for. I watched the prisoners being brought through and entering their pleas and I saw the real nature of murder that I had been seeking. Here were the people who killed not through some intellectual or artistic pretension, but for other, more pertinent reasons. Money, love, sex, envy, frustration, greed… it was all so much more real. After that, I would sit in the gallery of the courthouse and listen to the trials. The expert testimony didn’t interest me, but the voices of the people on trial were fascinating to me. After all the meandering and the blah-blah-blah of the intellectuals, I found myself confronted with the authentic voice of fatal violence. Time and time again, I heard these people testify and give their reasons for killing another human being and do you know what the most frequent answer they gave was?

PC: I don’t know.

AB: Exactly! They would say: “I don’t know”. Time and time again, no matter what the circumstances, they would say that they didn’t know why they did it, they just did. And this to me, as someone who had spent years thinking about the conscious thought behind every aspect of murder, this was like a revelation. I thought then, I must explore this for myself.

PC: And this is what led you to Claude Bastopoule?

AB: Not directly. I did not run out of the courthouse to kill. While I had the inclination to do something less measured, I was aware of the fact that these men that had inspired me were in the court. For all their vitality and passion, they were idiots who could not evade capture. The question then was how to fuse what I knew with what I did not know. I had to unlearn the fripperies, but retain the core notion of killing and getting away with it. I decided then that I must start from scratch. No more poisons. No more high society murders. No more artifice and no more bullshit. The work from then on must be direct and it must be truthful. I had to cast off the mantle of artistry and instead focus on the brutality of the deed. To do anything else would be rank hypocrisy.

PC: How would one go about preparing for something like that? Did you have a plan of action, or did that run against the principle of the exercise?

AB: I had no plans. What I prepared instead were contingencies. I knew that I did not want to poison more grandmothers, but I formed no other picture of the sort of person I might murder. Instead, I went through a process of readiness, where I felt I could be ready to act impulsively when the opportunity arose. It was a very difficult thing, to work against one’s training like that. After decades of being careful and measured, trying to operate on my natural urges was not without it’s challenges. At every point, I questioned myself. With every decision, I had to ask whether it was my brutal self that was making the decision, or if it was a result of a lifetime of programming. Often, I didn’t come up with an answer, which to me, as someone who was always so controlled and measured, was a scary feeling. But with that fear came power and freedom.

PC: Did you have any notion of how your next murder would take place, or did you leave everything to chance?

AB: I knew that I would not use poisons. I had spent decades perfecting the undetectable, untraceable murder and could extemporise at length about how poisons were the purest form of murder, because the human body is made of organic matter and so on and so forth. I had grown tired of my own philosophy, so I turned to the most primal methods I could imagine. At first I thought it would have to be with my bare hands, because really that was the only pure way. I trained for a while, in wrestling and kickboxing, but I was never really that good at it. If I had been younger, I might have been able to pursue it, but by that point I didn’t really have a full grasp of the skills required. And, you know, I had tried to get myself into some situations to see how I would do, bar fights and the like, but I did not come off well from them. I got beaten up! I would have bruises and cuts and I would have to spend weeks recovering. And, you know, when I was laying in my bed I realised that it was stupid to try and enter a fair fight. Murder is not a competition, it is an act perpetrated on one person by another. If two men enter a boxing ring and fight and then one of the men dies, is that murder? The men are trying to beat each other, but it is a contest of rough equivalents. When it comes to murder, even impulsive murder, one must put the victim at a disadvantage. Now, I didn’t have the physical strength to do this with my hands, so I looked for a weapon. I chose the knife, but I didn’t want to be an expert, so I decided to use my left hand. I didn’t train with it, but I would practice getting it out of my pocket. That was the extent of it. Of course, when the time came, I couldn’t get the knife out of my pocket in time and I had to improvise.

PC: Was there just a moment when you thought “I’m ready”?

AB: No, no. It happened quite by chance, which was wonderful. As I said before, I made contingencies, but I did not plan. How it happened was that I had been visiting friends in Montmartre, just for dinner, you know, and as I left their home I was walking toward the Metro and there was this little park on one of the streets. As I was walking past it, I saw that this man was in there, all by himself. I didn’t know what he was doing, but something made me walk towards him. I had the knife in my pocket - I carried it everywhere at that time - but I didn’t take it out beforehand. As I got closer to the man, I saw that he was just taking a piss, you know, and from the way he was swaying I could tell that he was drunk. I was by this small rockery and I picked up this heavy stone and walked up towards him. I didn’t know if he was going to turn around, if he could hear me, if he knew I was there or anything. For me, who had always been so controlled and calculated, it was a liberating experience. It wasn’t calculated. I just picked up the rock and - BOP - smashed it against the back of the head.

PC: But you did a little more than that, didn’t you?

AB: Well, yes. I had to. A single blow is not brutal. It is not savage. A single blow to the back of the head that a man does not see, this is a kindness and this is not what my journey was about. After the first blow, he went to the floor and I turned him over and I struck him again and again with the rock. It is hard work, to crush a man’s skull this way. It takes persistence and brute force. In that moment, I understood what our ancestors must have felt like. I’m talking here about the neanderthals and the like. Their death dealings were not pretty. They were not elegant in any sense. Tapping into that rage was an experience of pure humanity in an unadulterated form. I found that once I started, I could not stop.

PC: I believe it took some weeks for Bastopoule to be identified?

AB: That’s correct.

PC: What was the reaction like when the news came out about the murder? How was it received? 

AB: By the general media, or within our circles?

PC: Both, I suppose. By the general public, first of all.

AB: Well, the strange thing was that it didn’t get much attention in the press. The man had been drunk and poor, so it wasn’t seen as much of a priority to the police, which I thought was very telling about French society. The fact that it was seen as no big deal brought about the political aspect that I had not intended, but that was part of the chaotic nature of events. One thing happens, sparking another thing and another. Another example - the fact that he was taking a piss at the time meant that he had his penis out. That made the police think that he was a homosexual and that it had been a gay-bash. Just another dead queer, they think, so why bother to investigate? I mean, they did, but their attempts were cursory at best. They never put much effort into it, which I thought spoke very poorly of them. It was disgusting, how little effort they put in. As for my so-called contemporaries, most of them didn’t even want to discuss it. I made a point of going to the club at the Rue Morgue for a little while after just to eavesdrop on gossip, you know, and all these snobs were pooh-poohing it, saying it was just the work of immigrants. I would talk to them, saying “don’t you think there’s something interesting here” and they would just dismiss it. “No,” they said, “this is not what we’re about.” The snobbery involved was ridiculous. 

PC: When did you reveal that you were responsible?

AB: It was at the monthly review. At that time, the club at the Rue Morgue held these little events where people could go up and present their latest works. It was all rather pompous, you know, as these things tend to be. Some people would show slides and talk about how their murders related to the symbols of the Mayans or that they were representations of the collective unconscious. It was all a lot of hogwash. Still, I knew the fellow who arranged these things and I said that I would like to speak at the next event. He seemed a little surprised, because usually we all knew each other’s business - who was killing who and how - because the homicidal intelligentsia was a relatively small crowd and rather inbred, socially speaking. I say to him that I have something new to talk about, but that I cannot give anything away. He says “Ok” and at the end of the month I stand up at the podium. Everyone there is expecting some intricate, detailed plot because I am known for this sort of thing. But I get up in front of this distinguished crowd of murderers - and these were some of the most pre-eminent murderers of the time-

PC: Like who?

AB: Oh, the usual names. De La Croix, Petit Ganache, Henri Larochelle. Gregory Hastings, I think was there. All the major names of the time and I stand up in front of all these pre-eminent murderers and critics and I say: “I killed Claude Bastopoule. I bashed his brains in with a rock.” Well, they didn’t believe me at first. “Impossible”, they said. “There’s no way that Bassom, the elegant, intelligent murderer, could do such a thing.” Eventually, I had to show them a piece of Bastopoule’s skull to convince them. It still had blood and brain matter dried on it, but they didn’t want to believe that I had done it. Larochelle had tears in his eyes when he asked why I had committed such a base crime. I told him that it was because I wanted to be free. He didn’t understand what I was talking about and I was something of an outcast after that. They were talking about forcing me to leave the club at the Rue Morgue, but then Tibor Sienkiewicz wrote an article in the Journal defending my work. That gave me a little bit of credibility, even if the chin-strokers didn’t like it, they had to grudgingly concede that it was valid. If it hadn’t been for Sienkiewicz and that article, I might have lost interest in killing entirely. 

To read more of this transcript, including Bassom’s full lecture on the use of prehistoric tools in a modern setting, please order the The Journal of Murder’s Annual Review, available from your club secretary.

24 - A Brave Face

All you need to do is keep it together. You’ve done alright so far - greeting the mourners, accepting condolences, talking to the crematorium, negotiating with the caterers, deciding on the flowers and managing all the tasks that come with organising a funeral. You’ve spoken to the in-laws and told them thet you’re doing OK and as much as you appreciate their offers of help, you’d prefer to do things on your own for a while. They nod and that “whatever you want, dear”, but you can tell that they’re put out by it. That doesn’t really mean anything, though. All that matters is making it through the funeral. After the long hours of waiting, you thought it would never come. Then, as it approached, you thought it was too soon, but now you’re sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench, wishing you’d worn thicker tights. Given that the whole building is based around an oven, you would have thought it would be warmer. Probably not what you’re supposed to be thinking about at your husband’s funeral, but anything that distracts you from the vicar’s banal eulogy. It’s peppered with inane trivialities (he was a man who loved sport and the records of Jonny Cash) and misses all the things that really defined him. It’s all so hypocritical, but you’re not supposed to to speak ill of the head, so you just keep your mouth shut. When it’s done you can find a quiet place to be by yourself and let it all out, but that will have to wait. At the moment all eyes are on you, because the number one attraction at this sideshow is Watch-The-Widow. Everyone wants to see you’re going to break down in the middle of the service and it’s up to you not to give them the satisfaction. You wish you had thought to get a veil. Too late to do anything about it now. For the moment, you just keep staring at your shoes.

You manage to keep it all together, up until the very last moment when the curtain close and your mind suddenly conjures up the image of Porky Piug saying “That’s all folks!”. A howl of laughter emerges from your throat and everyone turns and stares, but no-one hears it for what it really is. They expect a shriek of despair, so that’s how they choose to interpret your outburst. Of course they do. They don’t know about the cruelty and the torment. They don’t know about the broken ribs and the cigarette burns on your breasts. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to really understand the joy you feel at that man’s death, so you clamp your hand over your mouth and snuffle down your giggles, camouflaging them with fake anguish. It seems to be working, because you feel an arm around your shoulders. You don’t dare look up, but instead commit yourself to selling the lie. They’ll believe it because they want to. Even his parents, long suspicious of the monster they created, won’t bring themselves to admit the truth. No-one will, so long as you play your part. You squeeze a few tears to satisfy the sideway-glancing spectators and their arrival seems to satisfy everyone around you. Their reptile nature doesn’t matter. For the moment, at least, you seem to have got away with it. He is dead and you are free.

23 - Pathology

Transcript of recording. 4^th May 2012

MP: The time is 4:47 pm on 4^th of May 2012. I’m Milton Povey, medical examiner for Maynard County, conducting an autopsy on a caucasian male identified as George Withers. Subject is 170cm in height and weighs 164 pounds. I would estimate his age to be in late forties, early fifties. Hair is brown, eyes brown. There’s a small birthmark on his left patella which looks to me to be in the shape of… let’s see… a horse’s head. Uh… there’s an old scar on his abdomen, most from probably an appendectomy. From the age of the scar tissue, I would say the procedure was conducted at least twenty years ago… Moving on… there’s a series of wounds on the upper chest. I count… seven, each measuring… 3 centimetres across… and with depths from 8 to… 12 centimetres. This suggests a repeated stabbing motion. From the angle of the wounds I can tell that the blade was thrust upwards, suggesting that the assailant was shorter than the victim. Looks like a large blade and there’s tearing of the flesh at the bottom of each wound, suggesting a serrated edge such as a hunting knife. I’m taking pictures of the wounds now.

[Sound of camera]

MP: As you can see, there are small bruises at the top and bottom of wounds “A”, “C” and “F”, the shape and position of which would suggest the knife was buried to the hilt. It looks as if there was some small ornamentation on the handle, which may of use to investigators… Um… there are defensive wounds on both right and left hands, conducive to a struggle. Taking samples from under the fingernails now.

[Humming]

MP: Samples have been collected from the right hand and marked Alpha 1 through six.

[Humming]

MP: And the left are marked Beta 1 to 6. These will be shipped to the lab ASAP for DNA analysis. Ok. Right. Moving on to the internal examination, I’m beginning with the “Y” incision across the chest and down the abdomen. Making the first incision… now. And the second…. And the third. Now to break open the chest cavity. Unfortunately, it seems that someone has walked off with my bone saw and rib-spreader, so I’ll have to make do with my Black and Decker jigsaw and a tyre wrench. 

[Sounds of electric sawing and cracking bones.]

MP: Well… gosh… that’s… I mean…

[Sound of vomiting]

MP: Excuse me. I think the sandwich I had for lunch may have been off. Oh dear. Well… continuing on… There’s the heart. I mean, it’s present and there’s… holes in it… which I assume are from the knife… I mean… there are several lacerations on the cardiac tissue, consistent with the angle and position of the exterior knife wounds. The left lung is punctured and deflated and given the fact that the….six, seven, eighth rib is broken on that side, I would say that this is again a result of the knife wounds. Just checking and I would say that wound “D” is the one that punctured the lung and wounds… “B” and “C” caused the contusions on the heart itself. Well… um… I’m going to start removing the organs now, so they can be weighed and measured. I’ll start by severing the-

[Indeterminate noise]

MP: Hello? Is someone there?

Hello?

[Sound of door opening]

DC Rudolph: Police. Is there anyone else here with you?

MP: Oh, hello officer. I’m still in the middle of an examination. If you wouldn’t mind waiting, it shouldn’t be too long now.

DC Rudolph: Is there anyone else here with you?

MP: No, I gave my assistant the day off. I believe she’s gone to some sort of rock concert. You should see her, tattoos and piercings and all.

DC Rudolph: Put the knife down and back away from the table.

MP: I beg your pardon?

DC Rudolph: Put the knife down and back away from the body.

MP: Officer, I understand that you’re under pressure, but I’ve got a job to do here. I appreciate that your superiors are probably demanding answers, but please believe me when I say that I’m trying to help you. 

DC Rudolph: This is your last warning. Put the knife down and back away from the table.

MP: Very well, but I don’t see what this is going to accomplish.

DC Rudolph: Turn around.

[Sound of handcuffs]

DC Rudolph: I am arresting you for the murder of George Withers. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not say something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand?

MP: This is preposterous. I’m just doing my job.

[Sound of radio]

DC Rudolph: Echo Charlie, this is Echo 4. Arrested a suspect and need  transportation. The address is Flat B, 34 Weltree Gardens, in the basement. There’s a body at the scene. Going to need SOCOs.

[Humming]

MP: Whooooo… are you? Do do. Do do.

DC Rudolph: And maybe a psychiatrist.

22 - Local Man Gets Life

MARIETTA, GA. William Jefferies was found guilty of four counts of second-degree murder at the state court yesterday. His case received nationwide attention after Jefferies was involved in a series of bizarre incidents that saw him attempting to take his own life, but killing others in the process. The first of these failed suicides took place in 2005, when Jefferies threw himself off Chattahoochee River Bridge. Rather than fall in the water, however, Jefferies landed on Reginald Dwight, who was steering a cargo barge under the bridge at the time. The incident was ruled an accident, but Jefferies was ordered to receive  psychological counseling. Two years later, however, Jefferies again attempted to take his own life, this time by driving his car at high speed into a concrete highway median. Again, he failed to take his own life, but his car veered sharply and struck the vehicle of Kenneth and Felicity Trount, who were both killed instantly. It was at this point that investigators began to seek charges against Jefferies. “While we accept Mr Jefferies’ statement that he has no intention of hurting anyone but himself, we feel his arrest is necessary for public safety,” said Cobb County sheriff Michael Peabody at the time.

The arrest and subsequent trial was hard on Jefferies, who tried - and failed - to take his own life again in 2010, this time by asphyxiation by exhaust fumes. A neighbor noticed smoke coming from Jefferies’ garage and pulled him to safety, but neither man was aware of the fact that a homeless man, Wendall Parsons, was sleeping in Jefferies’ garage. Parsons succumbed to the fumes and his name was added to the indictment. Despite proceedings being delayed for his recuperation, Jefferies ended up pleading no contest to the charges. Any hope he might have had that the state would do for him what he himself had repeatedly failed to accomplish were dashed when Judge Randolph Hunt commuted the death sentence in favor of life imprisonment.

21 - Composite

“My name is Eileen Papadoukis. I run the shop on Halsey Road.”

“Jasper Green. 67 Halsey Road. Date of birth, 10^th October 1951.”

“Navinder Chakravarti. N-A-V-I-N-D-E-R C-H-A-K-R-A-V-A-R-T-I.”

Tell me what happened, so the spirit can find justice and there can be peace in the universe. 

“It was about quarter to twelve.”

“It was mid-day.”

“I don’t have a watch.”

Time is relative. Perhaps there is a black hole on the corner of Halsey Road and Rochester Avenue. That would account for the relative time dilation. See here, on the outer arm of the Andromeda Galaxy. It could be just like this. Do you see?

“I saw a man, young man, come walk past the shop. He was staggering, like he was drunk.”

“You could tell that there was something wrong with him, you know?”

“Yeah, I saw him, but he looked OK, far as I could tell.”

This is Terry Hollins. We know him. We know what he looks like. Now his mortal form has died, but his energy lives on in other forms. He’s here with us now, listening. Have a seat, Tel. Tell. Tell us about the other man.

“He bump into someone, just on the way past.”

“I don’t think the boy meant anything by it.”

“He started it, though, calling the guy a… y’know.”

Ah, and the timelines diverge. Reality expands and contracts as Terry Hollins minds his own business and starts some shit all at once.

“Wrong person to pick on, because he don’t take none.”

“The lad just brushed past, but straight away, he’s on him.”

“Chased after him, he did, saying ‘you f-er, what the f’ and all.”

Tell me about him. What did he look like?

“I don’t know. What do they all look like?”

“He was white.”

“Seemed like Turkish or Armenian or something.”

“Or maybe middle eastern.”

“Not Greek. I’ll tell you that.”

The suspect’s face strobes slowly through a range of colours, his features still indistinguishable as the pores of his skin buckle and pulse. The tone of his flesh changes, never settling on a single hue. That’s OK. That will come in time. Need details, other details.

“He was about my height. What? 6 foot 2.”

“I’d say… average. About 5’9”.”

“Who can say? Taller than me, but most people are.”

We’re looking for someone with a concertina for a spine. In addition to the chameleonic skin, this perpetrator is able to vary his height within a range of at least a foot. The boys down in forensics posit that this is probably due to some kind of hollow cartilage that allows him to extend his body, not unlike the ribcage of a mouse.

“Wearing one of those hood things. Black.”

“Blue t-shirt with a logo. No, I don’t know what one.”

“Dark red tracksuit. Adidas one, I think, with the stripes on the arms.”

The flickering hues of the clothes clash with the flurry of his skin. It’s difficult to keep watching, but I must. I have to get to the truth. Even though the details make no sense, they help me to get closer.

“He ran over to the other guy and grabbed him by the arm.”

“Didn’t move, just called after him and told him to come back.”

“Slapped the back of his head, he did.”

He can stand still and run at the same time. I think we might be dealing with an extra-dimensional being. A creature that exists in all aspects of the multiverse, able to cross and merge them at will. Either that, or he has very long arms, like an octopus. Which is more plausible? Multiple arms or multiple universes? I’m not sure which is more terrifying. Oh god, what if both are true?

“The drunk boy didn’t even feel it. He kept walking.”

“When they stood there, face to face, that’s when I thought ‘oh boy, here’s trouble’.”

“He was trying to get away, but the guy wouldn’t let go.”

I’ve read the autopsy report on Terry Hollins several times and nowhere - nowhere - does it say anything about him having two faces. None of his family mentioned it either, not even in a figurative sense. So where does this confusion about which way they were facing come? I’m thinking of putting out a warrant for Janus, the Roman god of transitions. Is he an accomplice. Or is he here in the room with us. He had two faces, not three, but who’s to say how many visages can hide under a hoodie? This is difficult. I can’t get sidetracked by the possibility that Hollins is a Roman god. Focus on the perpetrator. Look at the photofits. See where they match.

Eyes far apart

Flat nose.

High brow.

Beady eyes.

Beard, but a thin one.

Crooked chin.

Pointed nose. 

Clean shaven. Definitely.

And the details just don’t match up. He has more facial features than a Guess Who? board, flipping and flapping the tiles over again and again without any sort of endgame. His face pulls apart and pushes together like a print on elastic, stretching and kneading without ever settling into a defined identity. This, combined with the flickering skin tone and the rapidly changing colour and shape of his clothes make him hard to miss, but impossible to watch. Still, they try their best to relate the actions of this fitful creature and we should be grateful for that.

“And then he spin him round and hit him, woosh, right in the tummy.”

“I thought it was just a punch at first. I didn’t see the knife.”

“I thought the guy was weak, going down so easily.”

“Then I saw the blood and I knew.”

“I heard them screaming at each other, but I stayed in the shop.”

“When he fell to the floor, I realised what had happened.”

“I thought he dropped the knife.”

“I didn’t see any knife.”

“He took it with him.”

We didn’t find a knife. Now that I’m lookiing at our suspect, our terrible, multifaceted thing, I’m wondering if there really was any kind of blade, or if there’s a retractable claw in one of those many arms of his. Is this what the constant state of change is concealing - the true form of the killer, with flailing limbs to distract and then a razor sharp barb that protrudes from his form, into your flesh and then back into the hidden tendrils? I feel water all around me, the brine stinging my eyes and making it even more difficult to see. 

“He ran off towards the station.”

“He shouted something as the boy lay on the floor, then went in the direction of the park.”

“Fucking guy kicked him when he was down. Then he walked towards the estate.”

The current is strong, pulling in different directions at once. The foam crashes over me, but the worst part is the undertow. I can’t keep my head above water. The darkness is too strong. I can feel that flittering, flashing, changing thing in the waster beside me and all I want is something to hold on to, something to keep me above water, but the darkness is everywhere.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s what I saw. Definitely.”

“I’m old, but I’m not stupid, you know?”

Nothing is solid. It’s all liquid. I just want something to hang on to, something to keep me from going under. The salt water is in my mouth and up my nose. I’m not sure my heart is still beating. The darkness is all encompassing, but… I think I hear something… a bell… tolling again and again, in time with the shifting tides. A buoy, rocking back and forth on the water, offers salvation. Swim towards it. You can do this. Just a bit further…

Durban opened his eyes and stared at the coffee table in front of him. He and Carol had chosen it together, but he had never liked it. Nevertheless, it was a real thing. He leant forward and touched it, just to be sure. As his fingers grazed the surface, a chime emanated from his mobile phone. Durban stared at the illuminated screen and even though he had only the faintest notion of how to use his fingers, he answered the call.

“Hello?” he asked cautiously.

“John? It’s Pierson.”

Pierson. That name used to mean something.

“Pierson, we’re looking for an octopus,” Durban said. “He killed Terry Hollins.”

“What was that, John?”

Durban looked around at the debris scattered on the coffee table: the open case file, the glass pipe and the leftover crystals scattered on the table. This wasn’t the first time he had used Dimethyltryptamine as a means of expanding his thinking, but it might be the last time for a while. He was a firm believer in using hallucinogens to expand his thinking, and the DMT was quicker and more direct than other psychedelics, things were getting weird and he wasn’t sure he liked where the compound was taking him.

“Nothing,” Durban said, as he stopped the three dictaphones running on the table. He didn’t want them to start again and for Pierson to hear them. “I fell asleep on the sofa. What’s up? Any developments?”

“Not with Hollins, no,” Pierson said. “Something else. You remember the body in the salt bin a couple of months ago?”

“Of course.”

“Just got a call from CID in Aberdeen. They found another one.”

Durban had the sudden feeling of disassociation and was sure for a moment that he was still tripping.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Yeah. Same thing. Knife wound, body dumped in a salt bin. Don’t know for sure there’s a connection, but…”

“But it would be a hell of a coincidence.”

No such thing as coincidence, a voice from the dark whispered to Durban. Just the tendrils of the squid, moving through the water…

He pushed the voice below.

“What happens now?” Durban asked.

“Nothing, as of yet. We’re sharing information. Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah. I mean, of course.”

“We’ll talk about it more tomorrow, OK.”

“Yeah. Sure thing.”

They hung up without saying goodbye. Durban sat in silence for a while, trying to process what had happened. He stared at the walls, trying to see the patterns that had been so clear to him just moments ago.

But they weren’t there any more.

20 - A Moment or Two

What is it that distinguishes murder from manslaughter or mishap? Is it motive? Intent? Forethought? Sometimes, it’s nothing more than a moment in time - a few seconds that make the difference between life and death and, by extension, innocence and guilt.

Take, for example, the example set by the Harlow brothers, co-owners of Harlow Confectionery. Theirs was a business that had been handed down from father to son, ever since Harold Harlow began with a small sweetshop in 1896. While not as well known as some of their more famous rivals, they had carved out a modest but profitable slice of the trade, mostly providing chocolate for the catering trade, or manufacturing items for supermarkets’ own-brands. Everyone who worked at Harlow Confectionery took pride in their work and the sense of family wasn’t limited to those who shared DNA, as the company did whatever it could to improve the welfare of their employees, including subsidised childcare and opportunities for training and educational advancement. 

Unfortunately, the changing nature of the industry meant that small manufacturers like Harlow were being swallowed up by multinational conglomerates, making it difficult for the little man to retain his independence. This, coupled with the general economic downturn, meant that Harlow Confectionery lost several key contracts and the co-owners  were forced to reassess their priorities. The two key members of the board, Tim and Kevin Harlow, were suddenly faced with the prospect that they might bear witness to the death of a family enterprise that had lasted for 118 years. The difference in their responses to this grim possibility were marked. Tim vowed to do everything he could to ensure that Harlow Confectionery stayed open and that people did not lose their jobs. Kevin drank.

At a time when the family should have been pulling together to save the company, the brothers found themselves increasingly estranged, with each resenting the other. Tim disapproved of his brother’s descent into the bottle, while Kevin decried his brother as a glory-chaser who wanted to oust him from the company. In reality, Tim wanted nothing more than his older brother’s help, but  was unable to convince him of this and the festering sore of resentment quickly became an open wound. With each passing week, Kevin’s condition worsened and so too did Harlow Confectionery. Meetings were cancelled, deadlines were missed and orders were lost. 

There were mutterings in Harlow homes and offices about what was to be done. All involved knew that Kevin was in need of help, but was now in such an extreme state of paranoia that he saw any attempt at intervention as a coup d’etat and refused to relinquish his stake in the business. Tim, for his part, was reluctant to call a vote of no confidence, fearing that internal politics would further destabilise the company. Others urged him to do it, stating that a seismic change was needed in order to break the deadlock. 

The situation came to a head late one Friday night. Tim was working late, poring over projections that could lift the company out of the fire. While the rest of the employees had gone home hours ago, Tim had thought himself alone until he heard a noise on the factory floor. Going out to investigate, Tim was unsurprised to find Kevin in a state of extreme inebriation, loudly declaiming the factory and those that worked there. Tim watched his brother from the high gantry way, noting that he was even drunker than usual. He then went down to speak to Kevin, thinking that maybe it would be possible to talk some sense into him. Needless to say, this did not work. Kevin took umbrage at Tim’s nosiness and accused him of trying to usurp him. Tim took exception to this and stated that he only wanted what was best for everybody. This was treated with scorn by Kevin, who then brought up the fact that Tim had always been a  goody-goody and that this was why no-one liked him. Tim told Kevin that he was being childish and refused to engage in the conversation, preferring instead to go back to his office and complete his work for the evening. He told Kevin to go home and sleep it off. Kevin chose not to and instead followed Tim up to the office, loudly reeling off lists of his younger brother’s shortcomings, including (but not limited to) his poor sense of rhythm, the dowdiness of his clothes and the fact that he had pooed his pants on a trip to Margate in 1982.

Tim did his best to ignore Kevin’s drunken harassment, even going so far as to lock the office door behind him so that Kevin couldn’t continue. Kevin was undeterred by the locked door and continued shouting obscenities at his sibling. Tim found that the emotional barrage was making it difficult to concentrate on quarterly earnings, so instead crawled under his desk and waited for the storm to pass. While Kevin’s words were often slurred and indecipherable, there was no mistaking the vitriol they carried and Tim, who had always tried to do the best by everybody, broke down in silent tears at the hopelessness of it all.

Eventually, the hail of invective became more subdued and there was a loud howl from outside the office, which Tim took as a final non-verbal exclamation point on the long diatribe of hate.

Cautiously, Tim crawled out from under his desk, wiped away his tears and took several deep breaths. While he understood that his brother was struggling with an addiction, it didn’t alter the fact that his words had wounded him in a very real way. When Tim found his hands still shaking from the emotional trauma, he realised that he was in no fit state to do any more work and decided to go home. Having collected his coat, briefcase and company laptop, Tim switched off the light in his office and walked along the gantry way towards the exit. 

He stopped halfway along the raised platform when he saw the bottle of whisky resting on the handrail. It was the same one his brother had been carrying and Tim found its presence unsettling. It didn’t seem like Kevin to leave a bottle behind, particularly one with something in it. He looked at the bottle suspiciously and approached it with caution. 

A bottle on its own should not have provoked such feelings of dread, even after such an emotionally charged encounter, and it would be tempting to surmise that Tim already knew what had happened when he saw the half-empty bottle on the railing. When considering this hypothesis, one must also consider how familiar a person becomes with spaces they inhabit daily. By spending hours in a place, be it one’s home or place of business, knowledge of its geography becomes almost instinctive, with the mental map of its features and facets becoming ingrained on one’s psyche to the extent that one doesn’t have to consciously think about how the various parts relate. Perhaps, then, the younger Harlow’s antipathy towards the lonely bottle was because it stood directly above the main mixing vat - a container that held 50 gallons of molten cocoa beans, sugar and milk, as well as other emulsifiers and ingredients.

Tim moved cautiously to the edge of the ramp and looked into the vat. There he saw his brother flailing wildly in the thick brown liquid that had been the lifeblood of his family for seven generations. Kevin was struggling desperately against the viscosity of the molten chocolate, not to mention the high temperature required to keep it in a liquid state. It would be clear to anyone watching, even one not as intimately acquainted with the nature of chocolate as a Harlow, that Kevin was in extreme distress and without immediate assistance would not survive.

Tim knew this, but did nothing. It is impossible to say whether he ever consciously considered how much easier life would be if his older brother were dead, but sometimes such things do not need to be spelled out. It was not shock or paralysis that made him freeze, but a conscious act of will that made him stay still and not reach for the emergency shutdown control.

And those few seconds made all the difference. 

The one mercy was that Kevin never knew of his brother’s hesitation. By the time the spell was broken and the mixing vat was shut down, Harlow the elder was already dead.

In the end, the investigation into Kevin Harlow’s death turned out to be the coffin for Harlow Confectionery. Tim was never charged with a crime or found guilty of any wrongdoing, but the spectre of his dead brother followed him wherever he went. When the company was sold at well below its value, Tim chose not to stay on the board of directors.

When people told Tim that Kevin’s death was a tragic accident and that there was nothing that he could have done, Tim would not and gamely say they were right. Mostly, he did this to make them feel better. In his most private moments, Tim would reflect on those wasted seconds and know in his heart that there was no disputing the dreadful truth.

Those few moments made him a murderer.

19 - Breakdown

For technical reasons, it has to be hosted elsewhere. If you post a link to this, please use the URL of this page, as the hosting address will probably soon change.

edit: fixed some problems with broken story links. “Rewind” feature was interfering with multiple run-throughs. Use the “Restart Story” button or refresh the page if you want to try different paths.

18 - Blood Donor

It had been on Peter’s “to-do” list for some time now, so when he saw the tent at the village fete, he took it as a sign that he should stop talking and roll up his sleeve.  He  walked in and and said, quite clearly:

“I’d like to donate some blood.”

The young woman in the white uniform - presumably a nurse - didn’t say anything, but just looked at Peter with an slightly startled expression that remained fixed on her face. 

“This is the donation tent, isn’t it?” Peter asked, a little less brazenly.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the nurse said. “Please, have a seat.”

She gestured to a low pop-up bed in the corner of the tent. Peter sat down and made himself comfortable.

“Been busy today?” Peter asked.

“Not really, no.”

“Oh. Why’s that, do you think?”

“Couldn’t say,” the nurse shrugged. She turned to Peter with a needle in her hand attached to a catheter and the collection tank. “Right-“

Peter drew back from the needle instinctively and both he and the nurse laughed politely. 

“Ah… don’t you want to ask me some questions first?” Peter said.

“Questions?” the nurse asked. “What sort of questions?”

“I don’t know… medical history… whether I’ve got any diseases or anything.” 

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Have any diseases?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so…”

“Well then. Just roll up your sleeve and lie back on the bed. This won’t hurt a bit.”

That last part turned out to be a lie, as it took the nurse several attempts to insert the needle into a vein and thus making the process a lot more uncomfortable than Peter had been expecting. 

“Shit…” the nurse muttered as she dug away at Peter’s arm with the needle. “Fucking veins…”

“Everything all right?” Peter asked through gritted teeth. 

“Shh,” the nurse hissed. “I’ve almost…. got it!”

Peter gasped as the needle slid into his arm and when he looked down he could see an ugly cluster of bruises that marked the nurse’s previous attempts at entry. Not only that, but he thought the needle was sticking out at a rather strange angle. This thought soon passed, however, when he saw the blood flowing through the clear plastic tube. He was surprised that the sight of it made him feel slightly woozy.

“Well, there it goes,” he muttered.

“Yup, got there in the end,” the nurse said, puffing away a strand of hair that had fallen on her face. “Not as easy as it looks, is it?”

“What?” Peter said.

“Just relax,” the nurse said. “It’s best if you stay calm. It won’t take long.”

“How long?” Peter asked. “And will I be alright to drive afterwards?” It occurred to him that he had come to the fete by himself and there wasn’t anyone to drive him home. 

“Shhh…” the nurse soothed. “You really need to relax.”

Peter nodded and lay back on the bed. He laid his head on the thin pillow and felt the soft crunch of starched cotton as he made himself comfortable. The sensation of blood flowing out of his right arm was a little odd, but not too uncomfortable. He soon found himself relaxing into the process. Although the tent was set a little back from the rest of the fete, he could hear all the goings-on of the fair. He heard children laughing as they chased each other, weaving their way in and out of adult legs and tent poles. On the far side of the field, the brass band were tuning up and the sound of their trumpets and french horns mingled with the gossip of the women of the WRVS. Floating above all this was the flat monotone of Reverend Wellesby calling numbers from the bingo tent. Peter let himself drift in this sea of noise, ebbing and flowing with the tide of sound. Two fat ladies… talk about blancmange… while the kids… give a demonstration on fire prevention… and compare vegetables.

“I just need to change the bag,” the nurse said as she busied herself with the catheter. “Won’t be a minute.”

“Ok,” Peter said. “Whatever you need to do.” He found he was actually glad of this opportunity to lie down in the shade. The weather had turned hot a lot earlier than expected and it was nice to have this opportunity to relax. Truth be told, he felt like he could do with closing his eyes for a moment or two. He didn’t know if that was allowed or not, so looked up at the Nurse.

“Hey…” he said. “I feel sleepy. Is that normal?”

The nurse smiled and nodded. Peter smiled too.

He gave in to the weariness and closed his eyes.

The last thing he saw was the nurse hanging an empty blood bag next to the full one on the rack and switching the catheter from one to the other.

When the supervisor returned to the tent, he was surprised to see no less that eight full bags of blood in the storage container. He wasn’t quite sure how this could have happened.

“How did these get in here?” he asked the young volunteer. “Did Kevin come back and draw these?”

The volunteer looked at him, an expression frozen on her face.

“Well?” the supervisor asked.

“Yes,” the volunteer said. “He did. That’s what happened.”

“I suppose it means the day’s not a total waste…” the supervisor grumbled.

“Not a total waste. No.”

The supervisor looked at the volunteer. “Did we have a rush on or something?”

“Something like that,” she replied. 

“You didn’t take any of them, did you? Because you know that’s against the rules…”

“I remember,” the volunteer said, nodding solemnly. 

“Alright… well… maybe that’s enough for one day. Perhaps we should pack up the tent and head off.”

“OK,” the volunteer said. 

The supervisor chewed his lip as the volunteer started to pack up the posters and leaflets. He couldn’t say the fact they had been so quiet was the girl’s fault exactly, but if she put him on edge she probably wasn’t that great for the donors either. 

Perhaps he would call the asylum and tell them that he didn’t think this work-release programme was working out. 

17 - Chicken

Nando’s was neutral territory and had been ever since it opened. People needed a place to chill, talk or take their kids for birthdays without having to worry about somebody stepping up and trying to start something. So, it was understood - no matter how bad the situation, no matter how bloody the feud, you didn’t start anything in Nando’s.

The problem with drawing a line in the sand is that there’s always someone who wants to make a name for themselves by crossing it. If you didn’t have  money, muscle or numbers the only way to make an impression was to show that you were willing to do what the other man wouldn’t. Typically, such upstarts were young, impetuous and more than a little crazy. Such was the case with Marlon, a street level dealer who wanted to get ahead in the world. He was entering a crowded marketplace and had already attracted the attention of competing entrepreneurs, none of whom were that happy to see another vendor in the marketplace. The most notable opponent was Big John, who had made a forceful impression on Marlon that he should stop selling. His message was conveyed through the medium of baseball bat  and now, some weeks after the event, Marlon still walked funny and had a strange clicking in his jaw. The remedy, as he saw it, was to kill Big John. 

Marlon acquired a gun from guy he knew in Peckham. It was a reactivated deactivated army pistol and even though it didn’t look as good as he would have liked, Marlon felt pretty fucking bad with it in his hands. He admired himself in the mirror and while he didn’t quite go as far as the full ‘Taxi Driver’, he did play out scenarios of how he thought the encounter with Big John would go down. He practiced a number of cool, deadly things to say as he pulled the trigger, ranging from the poignant (“We both knew it would come to this”) to the profane (“DIE MOTHERFUCKER!”), hitting various points in between.

Sometimes, preparation is an anathema to action. When the time came to kill big John, Marlon had run through the scenario so many times that he knew it off by heart. So complete was his vision that when he found reality differing from his well-worked scenario, he felt at a loss what to do. In his mind’s eye, Nando’s was always half-empty and dark, with patrons scattered here and there on equally distant tables, eating their food and minding their own business in the shadows. As it turned out, however, the restaurant was bright and busy and there were at least two birthday parties taking place. Marlon didn’t like it at all and rather than stride confidently into the restaurant, he shuffled awkwardly, his bad leg trailing behind him. For some reason, Marlon had assumed that Big John would be sitting near the door, making it easy for him to pop a cap in him and make a quick getaway. After a minute or two of searching, it turned out that Big John was sitting in a booth at the back and Marlon had to walk past thirty other tables to get there. Marlon tried to tell himself that this was a good thing, that maybe the crowds would give him cover. He didn’t feel that convinced, though. Crowds meant witnesses and while he was trying to make a name for himself, he didn’t want to be so famous that the cops would be waiting for him when he got home. 

The gun was starting to feel heavier and heavier in his jacket pocket. He felt his breathing become laboured and his vision was starting to swim. This wasn’t how he thought it would be. Marlon felt a cold trail of fear drip it’s way down his spine as he realised he was having serious doubts about going through with it. He felt his guts gurgle and his sphincter tighten and for one awful moment, Marlon felt certain that he was about to shit his pants.

It was only when he started chewing his lip that the odd clicking sensation in his jaw reminded him of why he was doing this. Big John had messed with him, so Big John had to pay. The memory of the humiliating beat-down didn’t entirely remove Marlon’s fear, but it was enough to push it down for the moment. His vision cleared and any thoughts of self-soiling left his mind. 

Big John was sitting on a corner table, steadily working his way through several portions of Peri-Peri chicken, numerous side dishes and a diet Coke. He was so caught up in his meal that he barely noticed Marlon walking towards him. 

“Um…” Marlon said.

Big John looked up from his plate for the first time. 

“Wha the fk yu wnn?” he said, through a mouthful of food.

All Marlon’s well-practiced catchphrases left him. Without anything to say, he pulled the gun out of his pocket (hoping beyond all hope that it wouldn’t slip out of his sweat-soaked hands) and aimed it at Big John. 

Big John’s eyes widened and there was an involuntary inhalation of shock as he realised that the young man had the drop on him.

Marlon willed himself to pull the trigger. This needed to happen. The gun was out and there was no going back. There was no way Big John would ever forgive someone pulling a gun on him. From this point on, Marlon would be a dead man walking unless he killed Big John first. All he had to do was pull the trigger. Just tighten the muscles in his fingers and fire the shot. Just like that. 

The moment stretched, agonisingly and it was finally broken by Big John.

“Ack.”

Marlon was puzzled. His expression must have betrayed his confusion, because Big John repeated his earlier statement.

“Ack,” he said again and pointed to his throat to clarify matters. 

Marlon didn’t move. Big John was usually the model of calm and Marlon hadn’t expected him to become quite so unhinged at the sight of the gun. If anything, he had though Big John would call him a pussy and say that he didn’t have the balls to shoot him. That would have been OK with Marlon, because it would have made his retort easier - just pull the trigger and walk away. As it was, he just stood there and watched, the gun wavering slightly in his hand.

Big John’s eyes widened and he continued clawing at his throat. Marlon watched in horror as Big John’s face started to turn blue. Slowly it dawned on Marlon that Big John wasn’t terrified or mental, but choking on a piece of half-chewed chicken. 

He didn’t know what to do as the huge man at the table fought for breath. Marlon glanced around. Nobody in the restaurant appeared to have noticed that Big John was choking, or that Marlon had a gun in his hand.

He put the pistol back in his pocket and wondered what to do. Big John was a bastard of the highest order, but it didn’t feel right to just watch him choke to death like that. Alright, so Marlon had come here to kill him, but there was a difference…

The difference, as Marlon saw it, was that he couldn’t be blamed for this. Or charged. While the appearance of the gun had caused Big John to choke, he didn’t think he could be convicted. That worked for Marlon, so he watched for another thirty seconds as the life drained from Big John’s body. It wasn’t what he thought it would be like. Marlon didn’t like it at all. When Big John stopped gagging and shaking, Marlon leaned over to look at the body. He felt like he should say something, but none of his catchphrases seemed to apply here, to he just took a chip from Big John’s plate and ate it as he walked out. 

It wasn’t exactly what Marlon had planned, but the same could be said about almost everything that afternoon. He left Nando’s and decided that maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a badman after all.

16 - XP

Tonight we take the Obsidian Gauntlet. It’s all I’ve been able to think about all day, throughout the eight depressing hours at the office and on the train ride home, all I’ve wanted to do is log on and get started with the raid. It’s been a long time, but finally, as a guild, we’re ready to complete this, the most challenging mission in our history. We’ve been through a lot together. We  fought through the mines of Angnorr, defeated the Goblin Hordes and reclaimed the Crystal Staff for the free people of the realm. But this, this is the big one. 

We’re ready, though. Everyone’s been a level 80 player for months now, but more than that, we’re good. When we play PvP, we work as one cohesive unit, with strategy and precision. The tanks go in to soften up the enemy, the archers and mages provide ranged attacks and I’m in the heart of everything, healing those who take damage. It’s a perfect system and we’ve become very good at it. Still, the Obsidian Gauntlet is like nothing we’ve ever faced. It’s supposed to be protected by a High Warlock and I can’t wait to see what sort of crazy spells he’s going to be firing at us. This is going to be good.

The plan is to get through the door, grab a sandwich and a bottle of water and then log on to discuss strategy with the other members of my party. Everyone else is champing at the bit to do this, but a few of the guys are in Europe and they won’t get home for another hour or so. That’s ok. The rest of us can share potions and make sure that we have proper balance in our spell books. The game works on an elemental system and we don’t want to make sure we’re only carrying fire spells, when the dark mage is only vulnerable to water magic. I’m mentally arranging my codex as I put my key in the front door. I’m met by the sound of Nick Drake and the wafting scent of Coq-Au-Vin.

The lights are low and the table’s already set with two places and a candlestick. The sight of it makes me freeze in my tracks and for a brief second I wonder if I can walk back out and go to an internet cafe, but before I get a chance to do it (or even ponder what this says about me as a person) Donna comes in from the kitchen, wearing something that’s either a very short dress or a quite-long negligee. Either way, it works on her.

“Hi,” she says softly, padding across the room on bare feet and slipping her arms inside my coat and around my waist.

“Hi yourself,” I say, trying not to sound suspicious. “What’s all this about?”

“I thought it had been a long time since we did anything like this, so…” She bites her lip and looks up at me. “It’s OK, isn’t it?”

And this is the moment when I could say “actually, I have things to do” or “not tonight” or even “oh my god, what’s that behind you?!”, but she stands on tip toes and kisses me and I forget about making excuses, because all I can think about is the taste of her lips. New lipstick? Maybe just lipstick. Usually, Donna just uses Vaseline as lipbalm, giving her lips the unpleasant taste of petroleum jelly. I’ve never told her how much I dislike it. This, though, I could get used to.

Finally, when the kiss ends, she touches my stomach gently and says: “Make yourself comfortable. Dinner’s nearly ready.”

“Smells great,” I say. “Can’t wait.”

“Can you open the wine?” she says, nodding at the bottle on the table. “I’ll be back in a mo.”

I watch her slink back into the kitchen. Has she always moved like that? At this moment, I honestly don’t remember. Still, orders are orders, so I make myself useful with the corkscrew and pour us each a generous glass of red.

“How was your day?” she asks from the kitchen.

It’s a simple enough question, but I have to stop and think about it. Having spent most of my time fantasising about tonight’s raid, the actual events that transpired are somewhat elusive.

“You know what?” I say, moving to the kitchen doorway and handing her a wineglass, “I can’t even remember. I’m sure something must have happened today, but I’m drawing a blank. It’s like I spend the whole day on autopilot. It’s only just hit me that I really don’t care what happens in that place. The job’s meaningless. They could get anyone to do what I do.”

“Come on, that’s not true.”

“It is, though. I’m not saying that in a depressed way, it’s just that there’s nothing to it. I’m basically getting bits of paper and typing them into a computer, printing them off and sending them somewhere else. If they ever get a scanner, I’m out of a job.”

Donna looks at me and wipes her hands on a tea towel in a way I find indescribably sexy. “Maybe it’s time to look for something else,” she says.

I feel like I just got that flash of light that surrounds your character when you level up. Health and vitality are suddenly fully restored as I take an XP bump that takes me over the threshold. Look for something else. It’s so simple and obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.

“Maybe it is,” I say and smile.

“Can you take the potatoes through?” Donna asks. “I think we’re just about ready.”

Dinner is good. Better than good, in fact - it’s the best time Donna and I have had in a long time. When you live with someone, the business of cohabitation can take the joy out of things. You’re caught up in the cycle of work/after-work/sleep/morning that you forget that you love the other person and want to spend time with them. Being with Donna reminds me that I really do love her, not because I’m supposed to, but because she’s great. She’s funny and sexy and sharp and we talk in a way that we haven;t done in months, an intimate sharing process that I didn’t realise I’d missed. I suppose that’s how people in love are supposed to talk to each other, but I’m out of practice and I fumble around a lot. Donna doesn’t mind, however, and gently encourages me to go on.

In the corner of my eye, I can see the light on my Blackberry, presumably from other guild members. I spent £1.99 on an app that allows for custom alerts, so I could tell when I got messages in-game. At the time, I thought it was really badass, like I was a member of the Justice League or something, but now it just makes me cringe. When Donna goes out to get dessert, I grab the phone and see there are 12 messages my crew, but rather than send a group reply, I just switch the phone off. 

Donna comes in with a tub of ice cream and two spoons.

“Dessert,” she says with a smile, shrugging the straps of her dress off her shoulders and letting the garment fall to the floor.

Later, when we’re naked in bed and eating melted ice cream together, I see a recharge bar slowly accumulating in front of me. When it tops out, we’re definitely doing that again. The sex was better than it has been in ages, like the old days when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Just the feel of her skin on mine is bumping up the progress bar and we find ourselves giggling at each other and nuzzling away.

“So, better than ‘Elf Realm’ or what?” she asks, licking Strawberry Temptation off her spoon.

It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her refer to the MMO by name. Usually it’s just “that thing” or “that bloody game”. I tried to get her into it in early days, but she didn’t see the point. 

“Much better,” I say.

“So, what’s the appeal?” she asks.

“Of this?” I say, sliding a hand across her body.

“No…” she says, laughing, “of the game. You spends hour on it. There’s got to be something in it.” The surprise on my face must be clear, because she adds: “I’m serious. I want to know.”

“I thought you didn’t like the game,” I say warily. “You’re always complaining that I spend too much time on it.”

“I know…” she concedes, “but it’s important to you, so I’m trying to make an effort. What do you like about it?”

I think about it for a moment. “I suppose the social aspect of it’s one thing,” I say. “I’ve got to know people in different countries through it. I know it seems antisocial, just being on the computer, but there’s a real sense of community and you get to know people in a way that you don’t get a chance to in real life.”

“What sort of people?”

“Ah… well… there’s a guy from Wales who builds sundials. And there’s a girl in Holland who’s in a wheelchair, but it’s not so much about who you are in the real world, but who you play in the game. For some people, it’s about questing and getting loot, but I’m really into roleplay.”

“Ooh, kinky!” Donna says, gently twisting my nipple.

“Not like that,” I grin. “It’s more about putting thought into who you’re playing as and trying to act in the way that you think they would play. You try and talk the way they would talk, fight the way they would fight.”

“Like acting?”

“Yeah. Kind of. Some people have alternate accounts, where they play as different types of character, but I’ve had the same character since I started. You grow attached to them, you know?”

“What’s your character’s name?”

I hesitated. I’d never said it out loud before. Somehow, it made me afraid.

“Ladriel,” I said. “It’s kind of a bad play on words, like ‘Galadriel’ from Lord of the Rings, but a bloke.”

“You’re a tranny?” Donna says, teasingly.

“No, I’m not a tranny. But elves don’t think about gender the same as humans.”

“You’re an elf? What does that mean?”

“Well, you’ve got four basic races in the game: Humans, Elves, Trolls and Orcs and each of them are aligned to a different element. Humans are water, Elves are air, Trolls are earth and Orcs are fire.”

“So, does that mean that they cancel each other out?”

“Kind of. The setup of the game is that the Orcs and the Trolls are trying to wage war, while the Humans and the Elves are trying to find balance in the elements. And each race has its own homeland, so the Human come from the Islands of the Coast, while the Elves live in Forest Hills, the Trolls in the Caves and the Orcs live in the Volcano range.”

“So… what would happen if your character, um…”

“Ladriel.”

“So what would happen if Ladriel was to go to the middle of the Volcano range?”

“Well, as a Air Elemental he’d be vulnerable to their magic, so you’d only do something like that as part of a group.”

“But what if he went there by himself, without anyone else there to back him up?”

I shake my head. “That wouldn’t happen.”

“But what if?”

I was confused. I didn’t know why she was insisting on an answer to a hypothetical question. When she looked at me, I realised that it wasn’t hypothetical at all.

I jump out of bed and run to the box room where the PC is. I shake the mouse to wake the computer from sleep and double click the icon on the desktop. Connection to the game servers takes agonising seconds and as the rousing intro music plays, I say a silent prayer. 

It does no good. When the game finally connects, the memorial is there to greet me.

LADRIEL - DECEASED. LAST LOCATION: VOLCANIA

DO YOU WANT TO CREATE A NEW CHARACTER? 

OK / CANCEL

A long, low, non-verbal groan comes from somewhere deep in my stomach. Four years of play time. Thousands of hours invested. Millions of Experience Points. Gone. I feel the loss physically, as if someone has stuck a knife in my guts and is slowly drawing it up to the centre of my chest. 

I turn to Donna who - unlike me - has bothered to put on a dressing gown. Her face shows sadness, but no remorse. 

“Why did you do that?” I whisper.

“Happy anniversary,” she says.

“It’s not our anniversary,” I say, struggling desperately not to add two words afterwards. ”…is it?”

“No,” she says. “Last week.”

I can’t remember much about last week. There had been a big battle taking place in Ranger Falls. Orcs had made an incursion into the human homelands and…

“Come back to bed,” Donna says softly.

I look at the PC.

DO YOU WANT TO CREATE A NEW CHARACTER?

OK / CANCEL

I say “OK”, click “Cancel” and follow Donna back into the bedroom.

Back to level one.

15 - I Killed Moonbeam

Man, I really didn’t mean to do that, you know? It just, like, happened so quickly. We were out in the field, talking about this year’s crop and he started going on and on about how we had to get serious and have, like, a business plan and shit. I mean, that’s not my scene at all, so I thought I would just let it go, but he kept on and kept on and before you know it, we were having a fight. That’s a real step back for me, you know? I left all that violent shit behind me years ago. Anyway, words turned to shoves and before you know it, I’d grabbed the pitchfork and, well, now he’s got three holes in his chest and he isn’t moving. And, really, all I as trying to do was explain that the whole point of this community is to live in harmony with our surroundings, not try and rape it for profit, you know? I mean, one moment it’s getting accredited by the Soil Association and the next thing you’re getting endorsements from Nestle and Shell are installing a pipeline in your back yard, you know what I mean? He told me that I was being ridiculous and that it was “just like me”. 

Moonbeam, man… I don’t even know what his real name was. Suzie said it was Tarquin, but she might have been joking. She didn’t like Moonbeam at all. I wish I could say that she was the only one, but the truth is that he caused a lot of static in the group. I mean, a lot. Why do some people insist on messing with other people’s equilibrium? I wish I knew, man. I wish I knew. If I’d known that I wasn’t going to have another chance to ask, I would have asked - you know?

I didn’t mean to do it, but that’s not to say that I regret it. I’m not glad he’s dead, but I don’t want to get too caught up in the whole Judeo-Christian morality of it all. Death is just another state of living, you know? His spirit is still intact, so really we’re just talking about the transference of organic energy from one form into another. When you look at it like that, man, it’s just like boiling a potato. I really don’t want to get too hung up on it. I mean, I know he’s dead. I’m not a fucking doctor or anything, but I know he’s not breathing and there’s no pulse, so I suppose that’s that. 

Should I tell someone about this? Am I supposed to be a well-trained citizen and hand myself over to the ‘proper authorities’? I don’t know, man. I don’t like the idea of bringing the pigs on to our land. I know what they’re like. I’ve been kettled and fucking gassed man. How do you think they’ll treat a guy with dreads? You think they’ll believe me when I say I didn’t mean it? I don’t know man. I just don’t know. Karmically speaking, I think that bringing the babylon here would just throw everything out of whack, you know? So… maybe I don’t tell them? Can I do that? I mean, shit, the nearest phone’s a few miles away and Jocasta and the others have taken the van to the festival in Rotterdam. I could cycle, but I don’t like the look of those rainclouds. Maybe I should wait a while, smoke a jay and think about what to do next. Don’t want to be too hasty here, man, because that’ll get your chakras fucked up quicktime.

Also, y’know, there are other reasons not to bring the pigs here. I mean, Toby’s been growing magic mushrooms in the cellar and there’s about 50 weed plants just about to start budding. They’re just for our own personal use, but the amounts we’re talking about would probably get us done for distribution. Yeah, man, I don’t think bringing the police here would be cool with the others. I mean, it’s one thing to hand yourself in, but taking everyone down with me? That’s just low, man. That’s the work of a snitch.

So… shit. What am I supposed to do with him? No. Wait. It’s not “him”. It’s just his physical vessel, a shell that just contained his essence. And, really, he never seemed that comfortable in his own skin, so maybe I did his soul a favour. Maybe. Shit, either way, his shell’s lying there on the ground with blood seeping into the earth. I’m going to have to figure out what to do. You get so used to running everything through the group that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to make a decision without a campfire and a truth circle. Still, it’s kind of refreshing not to have to make sure everybody’s feelings aren’t hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m committed to the principles of collective consciousness and unified action, but it can get a little fucking long-winded at times. 

Focus, man. OK. Dead body on the ground. There’s nobody around, so that’s not a worry, but people are going to be back before too long and I can’t just leave him here. 

Can I?

I mean, all things being equal, I guess that would be the ideal solution, because eventually, he would biodegrade. Still, that would take a long time and there’s the smell to consider, So… I guess I bury him? Is that the best thing to do? I mean, we were just about to start planting the summer crops, so we’d be turning over the earth anyway. WHen the others get back, I can say that I decided to make an early start on it. In the long run, I think it would be the right thing to do. Moonbeam never really contributed much to the collective, but by burying him in the field garden, he would be helping feed us all for the upcoming year.

Except that we’re all vegetarians here. It’s one the guiding principles of the commune. What does it say about our decision to be meat free if we’re eating vegetables soaked in blood? I don’t know man, it seems kind of hypocritical. I mean, I know we won’t be eating meat as such, but still it feels like the thin end of the wedge, you know what I mean? Oh man, it’s one hell of an ethical dilemma. I really don’t know what the right thing to do is. On the one hand, unilaterally introducing blood and bone into the field is a contradiction of our cruelty-free farming process, but on the other hand, I’ve got to something with the body before it starts rotting. And, you know, wouldn’t it be more of a crime not to put his body to good purpose? I mean, it would be really wasteful. It’s not like we’re talking about testing perfume on animals here. This is a practical example of organic recycling, a testament to the circle of life. When you put it like that, I kind of dig it. 

Dig it. Yeah. That’s what need to do. Heh. It’s kind of funny. Sorry, Moonbeam, I know it’s probably not right to be laughing, but this whole thing’s kind of messed with my head. Don’t take it the wrong way. I think this is best for all of us. I hope you understand, but I know you probably won’t. I’m not saying that’s why you’re dead, but it probably didn’t help. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. 

I’m not doing this for me. Really, I’m not.

I’m doing it for us. 

14 - Parts and Labour

When I get to the garage at 6:30, I see Dad’s yellow Peugeot parked outside. He doesn’t wave or raise a hand as I pull in to park, nor does he say hello when I get out of the car and walk over. The only affection he shows is towards my dog, who bounds over to greet him. 

“Hello Tyson, hello boy,” he says, scratching the bull mastiff’s ears.

“That’s Buster,” I say. “Tyson was the dog we had when I was little.”

He nods, as if he knew that the whole time, but his eyes narrow and I know I’ve hurt him already. It wasn’t my intention - it never is - but I seem to manage it nevertheless.

“How are you, Milton?” he asks.

“Yeah, not bad,” I say. “You’re up early.”

“Ah, I don’t sleep much these days.”

“Car playing up?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Whenever I turn left it feels like there’s something grinding down there. I don’t think it’s serious, but you’re always saying not to take anything for granted…”

“I’ve got a couple in at the moment,” I said, “but leave me the keys and I’ll bring it in when there’s time.”

“OK,” he says, fishing the keyring out of his pocket and handing them to me. “When do you think it’ll be ready?”

“This afternoon, probably. Depends what needs doing and if I need to order any parts.”

Dad shrugs. “Ok, well, give us a call when it’s ready,” he says and starts to turn away.

“Wait…  do you want a cup of tea or something?”

Dad shrugs again. He does that a lot. Learning to read his indifference is an artform I’ve never mastered, so I decide to take the initiative.

I take my keys from my pocket and open the door set into the shutters. 

“Inside,” I say, maybe to the dog, maybe to Dad. Both of them step through the door at the same time, tripping over each other’s feet on the way in.

Once inside, Dad waits for me, unsure of where to step in the dark garage. Buster has no such circumspection and bolts over to the dog basket in the far corner. Once I get in, I flick the lights on. I’ve owned this garage for six years, but I can tell that Dad has never felt comfortable here. On some level, I think he was always perplexed by my preference for gears and grease over ink and academia. But then, sons have been disappointing fathers ever since the dawn of time. 

“Make yourself at home,” I say, knowing he won’t. 

I keep a box of Earl Grey teabags just for him and as I busy myself with kettle and cups, he stands around and doesn’t know where to put himself.

“Business going well?” he asks. “You always seem to be full.”

“It’s OK,” I say. “Gary was off sick on Friday, so we’re a bit behind.”

“Is that the new lad? How’s that working out?”

Gary’s been working here for three years.

“Fine,” I say and ask if he wants sugar. That’s not me being ignorant as to my father’s habits - he changes his mind with every cup.

“Mm,” he replies in an affirmative grunt. I drop a sugar cube into the mug and add milk.

“So, what have you been up to?” I ask, handing him his tea. 

He shrugs and shakes his head with a sigh. “Oh… Starting another book, you know… The Phoenicians.”

Dad’s interest in ancient history has withered a bit since he retired, but he keeps trying to write books and losing interest half way through.

“I think I remember them. Galleys and purple dye?”

“If you want to be reductive about it.”

“Well, I’d love to read some when it’s ready.”

Dad shakes his head in a gesture of unconscious rebuttal. He’s refusing, even though he says: “Hmm. Maybe.”

We sip our tea and say nothing for a moment.

“Is everything OK, Dad?”

His reaction is so startled, you’d think I just flicked an elastic band at his nose. 

“Of course. Why would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “You seem a little out of it.”

Dad snorts and that small gesture of ridicule makes me feel about eight years old. 

He puts down his tea and stands up to leave. “You’ll call me when it’s done?”

“Of course, but Dad-“

He hold up his palm. “I know how busy you are, so I don’t want to hold you up any further.”

“You’re not,” I begin, but he’s already turned to the door.

“See you, boy.” he says. 

I open my mouth, then shut it quickly. He was talking to the dog. 

It’s a relief when Gary turns up, dropping a bacon buttie on my lap and flipping the radio on to Capital Gold. He’s still not totally shaken the flu, but I’m glad of his company as it distracts me from the nagging chatter inside my head. We start ploughing through the backlog and manage to clear a good proportion of the jobs by the end of the day. It’s just as well, because the work was backing up so far that it was starting to test my customer’s patience. 

Getting round to looking at Dad’s car took a lot longer than I thought it would. As soon as I got behind the wheel of the Peugeot, I slid the seat back as far as it would go - an automatic gesture that I’d learned from the many times I’d had to do work on the yellow lemon. I started her up and listened for anything out of the ordinary. The starter was working OK and while the 1.6 litre engine was never going to sing, it didn’t sound like there was anything wrong with the tappets or cylinders. I give it a couple of revs in neutral and when it responds as well as it ever will, I put it in gear and start steering it into the garage.

As the wheels turn, I hear the scraping sound that Dad mentioned. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere on the offside wing. So I park the car inside, shut off the engine, get out and climb underneath. As I examine the wheelarch, I feel around with my fingers to see if I can detect any broken or buckled metal that might be causing the scraping sound. After a short period of blind fumbling, my fingers fall onto a hard lump wedged in between the arch and the axle. It’s impossible to tell by touch alone exactly what it is, but it’s certainly jammed in tight and no amount of yanking will budge it. I angle the light to try and see what’s stuck in there. It’s difficult to make out, but looks like a piece of metal and even though I can’t see exactly what it is, I can tell it doesn’t belong. I can’t get it out with bare hands, but after a bit of a wrestle with the wrench, I pop it out and it drops to the floor with a clink. 

The noise alerts Buster, who has been lolling around all afternoon, waiting for me to finish up and take him home. He scampers across to the new thing and I have to snatch it away from him before he covers in in slobber. As I do so, I can feel a sharp edge digging into my palm, one that could cut Buster’s mouth if he chewed at it. Eventually, he backs off and I’m able to have a better look for myself.

It’s a watch, or - at least - part of one. Most of the face is present, although the glass on the face has shattered. The rest is dented and dirty, probably from being jammed into a wheelarch for however long it’s been there. The most unsettling thing about it, though, is the way that the band has been ripped apart. The strap was made of stainless steel links, not leather, and the tear has created a jagged blade along one edge. I turn the broken watch over in my hands, trying to work out how it could have happened and how it ended up jammed into the wheelarch of Dad’s Peugeot. I tell myself that it could have been lying on the street and got picked up somehow as it was driven over, or that maybe there was some weird kind of electromagnetic field that attracted it to the car’s interior. It’s not very convincing, but I’m on the verge of believing it when I hear a unpleasant slobbering sound coming from the front of the car. I peer round and see Buster licking the radiator grille, his rough pink tongue lapping at the metal with so much gusto that I have to physically drag him away from the front of the car. 

I look at the radiator grille and between the white bubbles of canine saliva, I can see streaks of something red. Kneeling down, I look at the red marks and turn the smashed watch over in my hand and I try to think of an explanation for it all that doesn’t make my skin crawl.

I can’t.

I look along the bonnet of the car and I can see the indentation at its middle. I know that it wasn’t a stone or a carelessly placed shopping bag that made that impression, but the impact of a human skull.

I think about how the watch could possibly have got inside the car and try to envisage a scenario that doesn’t involve reversing over someone’s arm. 

I think about the blood was on the radiator grille and wonder how long you would have to spend washing it away and how bad a person’s eyesight would have to be not to notice that they hadn’t got it all. 

More than anything, I think about how much I love my Dad and how lucky I am that, for once, he’s got something I can fix.

13 - Programming Your Killbot

In previous chapters we’ve covered the preparation, assembly and control of your Killbot. In this section, we’ll explore the basic principles of programming and write a simple control script. Programming your Killbot has a number of advantages over manual control, as it allows the Killbot to operate to peak efficiency, leaving you free to deal with other tasks.

If you’ve never used a programming language before, there’s no need to panic - it’s really quite simple. Killbot uses a customised programming language called Murderscript. This is what’s known as a “high-level” language, designed to be easily read and understood by even novice programmers. (Advanced programmers can bypass Murderscript and access the core instruction set directly by using the low-level “M++” language. This is covered in the Advanced Technical Manual). Even if you have some programming experience, it’s a good idea to run through the tutorial to familiarise yourself with the syntax of Murderscript. The following is a basic program that will tell Killbot to kill twelve tall men. The full program looks like this:

// First Killbot Program
//  
// Preparation Phase

new.spree(“tall-men”) {
 flush.emotion;
 exclude.operator;
 total.bodycount = 12;
}

define.range() {
 type.radial;
 distance(500);
}

define.victim(“beanpole”){

var.beanpole(“height”, int);
 var.beanpole(“male”, bool);
 }
// Killing Cycle

travel.range();

scan.target {
IF height >= 190 AND male = true THEN target=beanpole;
ELSE ignore;
}

define.method(decap);

execute.beanpole (bodycount++);

on total.bodycount return;

If this all looks complicated - don’t worry. We’ll go through it line-by-line so you can see exactly what each of these commands mean in real terms.

The first stage of the program is the “preparation phase” where various parameters are established before Killbot goes into action. First off, we need to define the scope of our murder.

new.spree(“tall-men”) {
 flush.emotion;
 exclude.operator;
 total.bodycount=12;
}

This defines a new .spree with the name “tall-men”. If we were just murdering one person, we would use the .murder type, but any murder with more than one victim is considered a .spree. It’s good practice to name your subroutines, as it will allow you to recall them at a later date. If, for example, at a future date you wanted to program Killbot to eliminate tall men and fat women, you would be able to call the “tall-men” .spree from memory, without having to retype the instructions.

As we define the .spree, we also set a few parameters for the program. We use flush.emotion to bypass Killbot’s moral compass and to discriminate purely on the criteria defined within the program. Also, we exclude.operator to make sure that the programmer and operator of the killbot (i.e. you) is not considered a target for Killbot. (!! THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP - DO NOT OMIT THIS LINE OF CODE, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT MEET THE PARAMETERS LISTED WITHIN THE PROGRAM!! Programmers often test lines of code as they go and omitting the exclude.operator function may result in your death.)

Finally, we will specify a total.bodycount, which in this case is 12 victims. Sprees can have many different parameters that account for success or failure and these are covered in more detail in subsequent chapters. For the moment, though, we’ll stick with a simple parameter that gives us a definite state of completion.

The next step is to define how far and in what manner Killbot should travel in order to find victims. We do this by defining a range of 500 metres from the operating station, going out in a radial direction.

define.range() {
 type.radial;
 distance(500);
}

Unless we define a range, Killbot will continue travelling indefinitely. While this dogged determination is admirable, it’s a good idea to keep Killbot on a leash until you’re more confident in your programming abilities. By keeping Killbot close to home, you can monitor its progress and tweak your programs until they produce the exact results you want.

The final phase of the preparatory stage is defining a .victim. Using Murderscript, we are able to define a set of parameters that will enable Killbot to find victims based on any number of parameters. In this example, we are intending to kill tall men, so we first ascribe them the victim name “beanpole” and then define a few parameters that will enable Killbot to discriminate them from other people. Murderscript has a number of built-in parameters you can call on in order to identify Killbot victims. In this example, we are using “height”, which is an integer (whole number) value and “male” which is a boolean (true or false) value.

define.victim(“beanpole”){
var.beanpole(“height”,int);
var.beanpole(“male”,bool);
}

This completes the first stage of the program and Killbot now has enough parameters to work with. If you wanted, you could add further conditions to the “beanpole” victim type, but for the moment, these two parameters will suffice.

With the parameters set, we now enter the main program loop. This is the basic operating instructions for Killbot “in the field”. First, we tell Killbot to start moving and looking for targets. We do this by using the travel command and tying it to the range we set earlier.

travel.range();

Killbot automatically searches its surroundings for new potential targets and when it finds one the scan mode is automatically triggered. It’s at this point that we need to compare the data of the current target with the parameters we have already defined for our intended victim. This is done by a IF… THEN… ELSE comparison, which gives Killbot a series of parameters to compare the currently scanned object to.

scan.target {
IF height >= 190 AND male = true THEN target=beanpole; 
ELSE ignore;
}

In this case, we state that the scanned object’s height must be greater than or equal to 190cm (Killbot defaults to metric measurements) and must be male (meeting the male=true condition). IF these conditions are met THEN the target is given the label “beanpole” and if it doesn’t meet these requirements, it’s something ELSE and (in this case, at least) it can be ignored. As time goes on, you will learn how multiple IF… THEN… ELSE arguments can discern different kinds of targets and foster a modular approach to Killbot’s murders.

As well as acquiring targets, Killbot also needs to know the best manner in which to  dispose of the target. This can vary depending on the exact configuration of your Killbot, but assuming a basic configuration that is accessible to all models, we will select a parameter appropriate to the target. Given that we are selecting targets for their height, decapitation seems appropriate. We choose this by defining the method of death, like so:

define.method(decap);

So far we have defined Killbot’s range of travel, given it parameters for selecting targets and even chosen the method by which it will murder but as yet we have not given it the command to kill. Without the following command, Killbot will simply store data on the targets it scans. By adding an execute command, we ensure that Killbot fulfils its primary purpose and kills the target at hand.

execute.beanpole (bodycount++);

You’ll notice that as well as the execute command, there’s an additional rider on the command.The use of “++” tells Killbot to increase the value of bodycount by 1. The next line of the program compares the current value of bodycount to its projected total. 

on total.bodycount return;

If the values are equal, the command tells Killbot to return to its operator. Alternatively, we could tell it to explode or commit seppuku, but given that this is our first program it’s probably best to leave those options to one side.

Hopefully this brief example has given you a taste of how much can be accomplished by programming your Killbot for autonomous destruction. In the following chapters, you’ll learn more about how Killbot can acquire, discriminate and destroy targets based upon any number of parameters.

Programming Exercise

Write a program that will kill the following:

• 8 targets
• All female
• Under 140 cm in height
• Within 800 metres of the operator

12 - Post-its From The Fridge

11 - Hinged

i can hear them ticking. all of them. at first i thought it was just mr green next door, but then i heard it in the milkman and the man who came to read the meter. i left the house to get away from them, but everyone is ticking just under the surface. what worries me more is the slight echo i hear under the skin. it doesn’t sound soft and pliant like skin should. no. it’s bright and hard like metal and i don’t know what to think, because i don’t know what it says about what’s behind their faces. i thought i could get away, but now i’ve wandered around so much that i don’t know how to get home. i’ve been standing at this bus stop for a while now, but whenever a bus comes, the numbers change and i can’t keep track of them any more. still, i think the bus stop is a good place to be. even though there are only two walls, it’s safer than being in the middle of the street and as long as i keep touching the advertising hoarding, i will be safe.

a fat woman with shopping bags comes and sits on the little red bench in the bus stop. i push back against the adverting hoarding to give her as much room as possible. she pretends not to notice and makes out like she’s looking out into the road. i keep my back pressed against the shelter. i watch her with my peripheral vision and i listen to her tick.

eventually, she takes a packet of biscuits out of her shopping bag, opens it and eats the biscuits one-by-one. she’s as regular as a metronome and the crunching of the biscuits is in sync with the clicking behind her face. the tick-tick-tick-munch is only broken when my stomach growls with hunger. i haven’t eaten in a long time. the woman stops offers me the packet and i almost take one because i’m so hungry, but then i look at her face and i see that the right side has swung outwards from the hinge running down her face. there’s a catch just below her ear and it must have opened by accident. from where i’m sitting i can’t see what’s inside her head, but i reach out to push her face back into its proper position. the fat woman flinches and draws away from me, taking her biscuits with her. i try to tell her that i was only trying to help, but her clicking gets faster and more angry, drowning out my attempts to explain. in the confusion my hand gets separated from the advertising hoarding and my curtain of safety disappears. i run away. i don’t know what else to do.

coloured fog has descended from the sky, making it impossible to see specific details in the things around me. i have to navigate by tones, avoiding the dark purple and red areas and heading towards the blue and yellow safe places. i never seem to get there, even after hours of walking, so i have to rest in a neutral grey zone. the clicking here isn’t too bad. it’s not as intense or frightening as mr green or the fat woman. 

i don’t know this place. there are shops and people, but the fog makes it difficult to tell exactly where i am. it could be the high street near my house or it could be another place entirely. it all looks so familiar and so different, i don’t know what to do. i’m drawn to the light of a shop that sells televisions. the little people in the screens are much clearer than those walking around me and the fact that they’re behyind glass means i can’t hear them clicking. the man on the television reads the news and i’m happy just to watch for a while, but then he stops and looks straight at me. i9 freeze in place and realise i have to count to see how long this last for. 

one.

two.

three.

four.

five.

six. 

six.six. 

sixsixsixsixsixix-ix-ix-ix-ix-ix-ix-ix turns to clicks and i realise that he’s trying to wind me up, trying to start a mechanism inside of me. i turn away from the screen and when i do, i see the blank man standing next to me. he doesn’t have a face - just a blank sheet of flesh where his features would be. he seems to be trying to say something, but i don’t know what it is because he doesn’t have a mouth. he cocks his head to one side like a dog trying to understand and when he does, the hinge in the middle of his face creaks open and i can finally see the mechanism underneath - a clockwork instrument of flesh and bone. i see the white ivory cogs turning in tiny increments, connected by bands of cartilage and sinuous pulleys that push and pull the machinery inside his skull. small puffs of steam rise as the mechanism starts to work faster and faster and i can tell that something inside the blank man’s head is going seriously wrong. i can see the wheels starting to spin and the rotors sparking as they are pushed to capacity and beyond. the tiny bellows fuelling the furnace wheeze and cough and the cogs begin to fracture. the ticking gets faster and faster and i realise there’s only one thing that i can do to stop everything from going out of control. it’s up to me to fix it. that’s why i brought the screwdriver out with me. 

i take the tool from my pocket and jam it into the blank man’s head. there’s resistance as i force the crosshead into the machinery behind his blank face, but i can’t stop now. i continue digging through the machinery, prying away stanchions and crossbeams in order to get to the key components within. for the first time in a long time, the clicking stops. but as the clock winds down, a new sound replaces it - a shrill ultrasonic scream that hurts my ears. i don’t know if it’s better or worse, but it’s something new after the endless days of tick-tick-tick.

arms come out of the fog and wrestle me away from the blank man, pulling the wet screwdriver from my hand and forcing me to the ground. the shrill sound stops and there’s a low chatter of static that may or may not be words. even though i can’t see the television man, i feel certain that he’s smiling at me. it doesn’t matter. i think i’ve finally fixed it. tears of gratitude start flowing down my cheeks as the fog around me starts to flash blue. tall figures put me in handcuffs and say things i don’t understand. beneath their words, i hear their real language and i start to cry anew, because i realise that this is how it’s always going to be.

second by second. 

moment by moment.

tick.

tick.

tick.