She’d barely eaten for a week but the smell of pork drifting in from the square turned in her guts like a flux. Would she smell that way? She flung the victuals that snake Malon had proffered, and crammed herself into the coldest corner, praying for the world to lessen, but her limbs would not still. Twitching with fear and the thump of life. Would they choke her? Please let them choke her first. Then came a scuffling behind the door.

Kerr tightened in her corner. ‘Who’s there?’ A second scratch ran the length of the wood. And an animal musk began to grow, a foul smell but friendly. The dog ran a huge paw down the outer length of the door, and she heard its huge weight lay down outside. The beast began to whine.

‘Shhhhh!,’ Kerr’s anguish left her for just long enough. ‘Is it…?’ And she was back in the night again, weaving the snickets on its tail. ‘Are we aw just dreaming?’

She drew her feet in tight, and began to sob with the animal.

‘Mr Heart?’ Malon approached the witchfinder from behind as he stared up at the church around them.

‘Malon, it’s quite the building you have out here.’

‘We are blessed.’ Malon handed over a weight of something wrapped in felt, ‘that should cover your seven merk, Mr Heart.’

Heart unwrapped the lump of silver, rubbed it against the felt and held it up to the dying light.

‘And I’ve written this letter of thanks to our benefactor.’ Malon turned towards the town square and the feasting. ‘Such cheer we have not seen for, well several years, just a shame about young Kerr.’

‘Hardly the first time though?’ Heart pocketed the note and made towards the eastern transept, leaving Malon to follow.

He stopped beneath the form that hung from the beams. The blackened thing. ‘You’ll not be surprised that a man of my profession has something of an interest in your particular history with the cunning folk’ Heart gestured at Sigrid’s remains.

‘You’re not alone,’ Malon replied ‘we’ve had them all pass through, alchemists, experimental scientists, poets, politicians. Queen Mary herself stopped in a few years back.’

‘Would you humour me Mr Malon, with the tale?’

‘Well, I dare say so. I was just a boy of course, but I remember Auld Sigrid was already behind bars by the time the Carmelites arrived. There’d been a run of miscarriages. Babes born choked with gorse.’

‘Gorse?’

‘Yes. It sounds scarce, all these years on. But that’s how they said it, and there was only one in our number that came to mind with such a suggestion.’

‘How so?’

‘Auld Sigrid’s patch. Gorse was the only thing to grow there. This was back when our own fields were lush of course.’

Heart tugged his whiskers. Eyes locked tight on the corpus above. He seemed in desire to touch the remains. ‘I have heard that Sigrid herself was with child?’

Malon stiffened. ‘I’m afraid that’s where the rumours start. I put no faith in those tales.’

‘That the babe was abandoned to the elements? Yet survived. Taken in by creatures of the forest.’

Malon had the feeling that Heart knew this tale as well as he did, but he had no desire to stymie the man. They’d paid generously for his expertise.

Heart continued though, ‘and you have memories of the night itself?’

‘Only a child’s. But the stories never leave me.’

‘It is said that Sigrid simply denied the fire?’

‘She was most vociferous.’ Malon went on, ‘if any were in doubt of her maleficence before, none were after. Her declamations went on long after the fire had burned itself out, and by then none were bold enough to approach her. The fire left its terrible mark, but it would not subdue her.’

‘You witnessed this?’

‘Gosh no sir. I was just a bairn. I lived in terror of the site. We all did.’

‘Market square?’

‘No Mister Heart. Sigrid met her end on her own ground.’

‘And it was the Carmelites, was it not, who brought her back into the fold?’

‘Yes sir. They’d of course mitigated their austerities somewhat, but Brothers Juan and Hugo would visit regularly to acquire their alms. While they were not comfortable with our sentencing of Sigrid, they wished to attend the finalities, so they might pray for the soul as it departed.’

‘An admirable gesture, if a little naive.’

‘They were great men Mr Heart,’ Malon heard his own tone hotten, and took a moment before continuing. ‘They ended up visiting her for weeks.’

‘Weeks?’

‘She survived for quite some time, if you can call it survival. Whether or not she was truly alive anymore, I could not say. But the friars took it upon themselves to pray around her. It was the brothers who finally brought the remains in here.’

‘That would seem a sacrilegious act, given all I’ve heard.’

‘The monks were confident nonetheless, whether they thought an innocent had met her end or not I couldn’t say. Too much time has passed. And the townsfolk were angered, at first, but there was also the matter of the sightings.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s probably quite fanciful, but during all those weeks that Sigrid remained muttering on her stake she was also… well, seen elsewhere. Walking among us.’

‘And the witchery continued?’

‘Like I said, it was a long time ago. But there are those that suggest it was the first year of famine in Balkernig. Other’s claim that the miscarriages continued. But once she was in here, well these things seemed to lessen. If only in our heads.’

‘Yet the famines go on?’

‘With the friary was sacked and the monks seeking exile in Spain, none would take it upon themselves to cast her out again… There are even those who believe she still lives inside. We just don’t have the expertise of a man like yourself, and, well… look at her.’

The witchfinder could hardly take his eyes off it. The chitinous husk. Twisted around itself as if the very soul inside had been caught in a dance. Shrunken and desiccated, yet gleaming like obsidian.

‘So she has been kept here ever since?’ Malon didn’t quite understand the pleasure in Heart’s eyes, ‘where the lord can keep an eye on her?’

They’d bagged her around the head.

‘Why boather when the lassie cannae see?’

Rab and Geordie had Kerr sat at their feet as the cart rattled along. The trappers wore their pelt hats whatever the weather and were hung with the smell of untanned hides.

‘She be Sigrid’s girl… I dinnae believe she’s blind at aw. Been watching us fae years most likely. Spoilin’ the lands wi her midnight yomping.’

‘Ah’m no Sigrid’s girl!’ Kerr croaked. ‘Ah’m nobody’s girl yis hear?’

‘Well yi’re oors noo!’

The cart came to a still and Rab kicked at her ankles, ‘g’wan git! Git!’

The smell of the Fallows hit her like she was a child again. The earthy lug of sun warmed peat laid a foundation for the interwoven harmonies of rosemary, heather and cedar. But it was the oaken scent of firewood that was summoning the symphony’s climax. She didn’t need anyone to tell her how big the pyre was. She could smell each cut right down to the kindling.

‘Don’t let no wan tell yis we ain’t cursed,’ Rab or Geordie was muttering. ‘Auld Sigrid’s patch is bloomin’, while oor nips n’ tatties aw turn tae mush. G’wan girl!’

He whipped out with a crop. The savage crack on her thigh drew a catcall from the crowd. And something struck her. A pork bone, that left a slick of warm fat on her breast. A fresh jeer went up. The smell of cooked meat sent a wave of terror up her spine, so acute it took all power from her legs, so try as she might she couldn’t keep pace with the men at her arms. Her remaining toes cut a furrow between the wildflowers. A tangle of sticky weed caught around the stumps of her missing ones and clung to her knees as the trappers dragged her on.

They bound her to the centre stake, piling logs and stove-lengths up to her midriff while she strained to muster some faint strand of hope that would maybe bring a prayer to her lips.

But as they splashed the tar oil around her ankles she felt a stirring of another kind, a voice coiled round her deepest parts. They needed a witch? They needed a witch. As they removed the bag, Kerry Anne screamed.

Malon walked the church, extinguishing the Evensong candles. He’d told himself that the service should go ahead as normal, knowing full well that none would attend. But his heart knew his fears better than him. He simply could not bring himself to watch.

Pausing in the eastern transept, he’d taken to his knee with the final candle and begun a prayer for the girl. What more could he have done? They could all see the mark. They could all… Skkkkkkkkkrk!

A cracking sound! Dry like autumn leaves. And Malon looked up at her for a final time as Auld Sigrid’s remains shattered and crumbled and fell like soot from a chimney stack, releasing a smooth oval of black fashioned stone that bounced off the woven altar rug and came to a still by his feet.

The first burst of flame scorched the very breath in her throat, removing her fringe with a crackle and a stink. Her ankles screamed and her thighs cramped up like granite, but inside brewed a tempest. A voice grown inwards suddenly forced forth like steam from a kettle: ‘Fi fae fire! Fi fae fire! Fi fae yis fire!’ The crowd cheered at it all.

The flames leapt up her remaining hair, leaving a smouldering knot in her ear, but the pain did not quash her. The ancient tongue burst forth again: ‘Whin thouput fires tae mi. Tae sisty n mam n kin, ken yis will ae earthen n heaven that splitten fae all-holy judgements n deadens walkforth wi fi… Fi on yis fire, fi fae fire! Fi fae fire! Fi fae fire!’

They pelted her now, with clods and pebbles, but the voice itself pared the agony from her like hands wielding divine surgical tools. A peppermint chill of starlight radiated out from the lump beneath her breast. “Fi! Fi! Fi!” Even as her body began to blister and twist, her true colours stayed safe within the orb forming within. ‘If sneekghouls cwame ae fire, n flesh cwame fer pity, then sotty be thee, wi the risin swill in thee gully like bile ae the sneeks… Fi, fi on thee. Fi, fae the fire… Fi sayeth we.’ It spoke through her of its own volition, bringing savage answers to the eternal savage question; bubbling from her as judgement, harrowing them with shame, heaping hot bile on those drunken, flagrant fools, giddy and leering, still squealing like swine for their petty blood sacrifice. ‘Fi fer yis. Fi fer yis fire!!!’ Rage, blooming scarlet from her wound separated her completely and as it did, it let in the light. She rose her head and heard them recoil. Kerr looked on them all for the very first time.

Malon bent and reached for the stone, but drew his hand back at the intense heat it gave off. He paused, trying to fashion sense from it all, watching it smoulder into the rug, just for a breath, until his mind caught up with the inevitable and the weave burst into flames, catching the drapes of the side-altar.

Motes and matter wheeled before her like fireflies. A swarm of lights that slowly began to cluster into ever more identifiable shapes. We feel our world as deeply as we see it, and Kerr knew arms and legs, knew the hurried human movements that were no different to her own. Even without reference she knew a crowd of figures stepping back in terror.

And with sight came the mark.

‘Wo tae they snidehearts, cutten wi spite n treasonly tales…’ Her face began to thicken and scar. Her teeth split like kernels, but oh she could feel it now, as vital as the life-force being pared from her meat and set free onto the rhythms of the cosmos: the mark they all claimed to see.

It span at her core as a vortex, summoning visions she’d scarcely ever dreamt of. The tumultuous clouds of purple that heaved across the sunset as great waves of power breaking on the horizon; chasing twilight shadows through the rolling hills and plunging valleys. The expanse of the fields; one moment pullulating and fertile, cracked and barren the next, stained silver by an early domesday moon, surging over, under, ever and again. And the faces.

She couldn’t read the expressions at first. Were eyes always so wide? Did lips often curl back so far? They were horrified. They were the horrified ones? They? “Snidehearts, sostruck wi yir ninny wee cravensong. So spinny ae yi gizzards. Wretchly ae the flesh… Fi on yis fire. Ah come wi fire, fer yis”

The ropes around her limbs burnt through, but Kerr had no need of that husk. In the skies, in the valleys, on the heath, came the hunt. Night birds, wolves and strays. And oh how they howled. Kerr just stepped forward, to walk among her people again.

Kelvin Heart put his money bag away, ‘justice is merely a machine my girl, sometimes it requires lubrication. We could all see the mark.’

‘I lied in the presence of the lord,’ said Irish Ali

‘I would imagine his attention is elsewhere this evening.’ He stopped, and both of them slunk back as Minister Malon came running into the square. Heart had assumed he’d be attending the finalities.

He didn’t stop, ‘The church is burning!’ He made for the well, ‘Water, fetch water!’

But all three of them were frozen by the howling. It came from the fields, and wound the empty streets like a whippet, pricking the ears of every stray and working dog in town, until they began to yelp and howl back in turn.

‘The church!’ Malon drew up a pail, just as the trapper’s cart came careening into the square, rattling on the cobbles. A dozen or so townsfolk were crammed in the back. More hung to the sides. All of them gripped by a frenzy: ‘She walks!’ ‘She walks!!!’

The cart didn’t stop, and further screams began to fill the streets along with the smell of smoke. Malon looked at Heart, and Ali broke into a run. The sound of dogs on her heels.

And it was cold. The dog never usually howled come winter, but it was howling that night. She’d followed it into a world that bit hard enough to sparkle. The lashings of sleet, like a cat-o-nine. The huge drifts of power sweeping the valley, reshaping the earth until even those mighty oaks withdrew.

She’d supposed the journey in a blizzard like that would kill her, but the dog had her follow. Walking until her shins were raw and her toes were black. Up to the bothy door, where she’d knocked once more.

Kerr came around to their rumble. Muted by the stone, but heaving like a pack behind bars; the heavy weather of a hungry crowd.

Stripped to her underclothes, shoes taken, she clutched instinctively at her toes.

Then something drew breath.

Forcing herself against the wall, she reached out to find another wall almost at once. Sliding left revealed another. It was Kerr who was caged. ‘Kerr?’ Rough lime walls, eight by eight. No wattle or fabrics, just straw lain damp to soften the flints.

‘Kerr?’

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me yi silly goose.’ There was a breeze now, from a window near the ceiling. Puffs of pond weed. Boots in the shallows suggested the mill pond, or the courthouse right next door. ‘Kerr?’ The horny black lilt slowly resolved to green.

‘Ali?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where’s Minister Malon?’

‘He sent you this,’ Ali slowly eased a plate between the blind girls fingers. Stale barley bread and a crumble of last year’s crowdie.

‘What are they sayin’ oot there?’ She could hear a cart now, and a yell went up as it passed. It put her in mind of the scramble for tatties just before Easter, the last time they’d shipped some in from Balkhead.

‘They’re hungry Kerr, everyone is.’

‘I meant about me!’ She slung her food with a sob; the crockery failed to break.

Ali paused, ‘We can all see the mark Kerr, there don’t seem to be no doubt.’

‘I can’t see!’ Kerr’s cheeks were flooded. ‘I can’t.’

She’d been left to sit with the fire. So very hungry for its warmth. The creature slumbered at her side, filling the hovel with its stink. Kerr’s feet were at the fire mouth, not that she could feel them now. She’d been too long in the cold for pain and that was to prove fortunate.

She heard a second figure crouch. The click of the tin snips. The crack of the bone, and the three soft chimes of her three left toes, falling against the bottom of a basin.

The soup it had brought her was a revelation though. A combination of medicinals, herbs and savouries. A slice of vinegar, a spike of salt. All so vivid inside her, colours she’d dare not dream of tasting again. It roused the blood in frozen limbs. ‘Why do you care for me so, miss… miss?’

— If not I, than who?

It, she maybe, had a voice, but only on the inside. And Kerr came to realise she needn’t speak out loud.

— We are mothers, to those with none.

— You are many?

— Three as one.

— Sigrid?

— Once. Now we are sighs. Darkness. Tears. Three as one.

— And I…?

The rest of the surgery had been painless. The stone slipped right in, under her breast. Above the heart.

‘Malefica! Venefica! Incest! Murder!’

They’d requisitioned Auld Marrow’s barn, such was the demand to attend the trial, and the townsfolk had filled it with their bearing. She could feel the breath on them too. The heat of them, the gruff and dangerous brawl. The potent hum of sweat that overpowered the scent of manure, even at her end of the barn where she was sat on a barrel, with an ankle tethered to Malon’s wrist by a rope.

‘Won’t you be trying me Mister Malon? You ken these things better than aw…’

‘The Kirk is sending a specialist Kerr. A mighty learned man.’

Kelvin Heart was his name. And his voice was the colour of winter. ‘Malefica, say I!’ A sharp, tall voice that seemed louder still during the pauses. Like the time Joffrey had let Kerr hold his hunting bird. The talons in her forearm. The unbearable tension as she awaited its burst into flight.

‘The spawn of Diana,’ Heart went on, ‘the progeny of Lucifer. Clung with spume and spittle, cut with curses, replete in their heresies… mark my words, these are the children of the goat.’ He walked as he talked. Cutting gulleys with his words, and each space he left was filled with murmurs of agreement, as if they were following a hymn sheet. ‘Ishtar grows jealous in the face of Christ’s love, so she sends her scarlet waifs to vex us, but we must see them for what they are… Miss Kerry Anne Logan?’

The rope tightened and she sensed Malon’s eyes on her.

‘Aye…’

‘Speak up woman!’

‘Aye… aye!’

‘And against these charges, how do you plea?’

The minister pulled once more, tighter this time.

‘Aye, er that is, Mr Malon has said I should plead guilty Mr Heart, but I…’

‘And given the evidence, the mark on you that we can all plainly see, I’d say his counsel was wise child.’

‘May I…?’

‘I believe you have pricked the woman Mr Malon?’

‘She’s been bled sir. And stickled and stung. But Kerr has no problem reciting scripture. Maybe…’ Malon stumbled.

‘And her waters. Were they baked, with soot and salt?’

‘They were fed to the cat, Inquisitor Heart.’

‘And?’

‘We’ve not seen it since.’

Heart stayed quiet. Kerr fancied he was writing.

‘Then we call on… one Alison O’Leary.’

Amongst the farm yard smells seeping into the barn were new ones, almost as rare as the inquisitor’s tone. The smell of meat on a spit. Hot over fire in the market square. A gesture from King James himself, Heart had said. Five whole pigs, a feast like they’d not seen for years. A sack of turnips and cauliflowers the size of legend.

Kerr could tell that Irish Ali had her back to her, and when Heart had bade her to sit she’d declined. ‘There was an incident, I am told, Miss O’Leary. An incident when Kerry Anne offered you food.’

‘Many times, I’d be perished on those walks back fae Balknunen.’

‘Seven miles I hear?’ Heart continued, ‘and you encountered Miss Kerry at her cottage?

Kerry heard Ali straighten. It was all true. Irish Ali made that walk every new moon and Kerr’s holding couldn’t be missed on the return leg… ‘That you Ali?’ Ali’s steps fell in patterns of nine. This pattern in her friend’s gait was as sure an identifier as the young woman’s own voice.

‘How yis be Kerr?’ Ali rolled in with the pastures. The only fertile thing out there, Kerr considered. That particular year was proving the most severe yet.

The blind girl left the window and counted herself across the pantry, sliding the bolts back and leaving her door open. At the fire she stirred her pot, then took up two bowls.

Kerr let Ali have the rocker where Uncle Joffrey once sat. The pantry sounded bigger as it relaxed to contain Ali’s gossip. ‘That Paol Ditteridge, now he be a bad egg.’ She tugged a ribbon and Kerr could smell her tresses fall, releasing the smoke of autumn fires and the fragrance of willow burls. ‘If it weren’t for the Hamper’s lad I’d say tae hell wi that Paol and fetch Da’s kindling elsewhere.’

‘You must be famished?’

‘Is that meat in your pot?’

Kerry Anne felt Ali’s mouth open, like crocus.

‘You admit to feeding her?’

‘I must be after feeding her a hundred times Mister Heart.’

‘In times so lean? And with you, well, one of God’s unfortunates we could say?’

‘I dinnae mind sharing.’

Heart turned on Ali. ‘So, what was in the pot?’

‘It’s only tripe’ Kerr had dished out a bowlful. ‘The potter’s lad gimme a barter’

‘Well he must be sweet oan yis Kerr, look at it aw.’

‘Away wi yis.’ She slid Ali a spoon.

‘What was in the pot?’

Ali’s tone grew inwards. Kerr could feel the crowd clench too.

‘It were, well I don’t like to say Mr Heart. But it were members.’

‘Child?’

‘It were hundreds n hundreds ae fresh men’s penises.’

Part Two Coming November 1st 2026 13.00 GMT

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I’ve been on ‘the Stack’ (yo) for nearly five months now. Aside from YouTube where I almost never interact, it’s the first social media app I’ve used in ten years, so joining Substack and Instagram earlier this year was quite the novelty. I do think there is a universe out there where social media stayed a novelty. A universe where it didn’t coincide with the invention of the smart phone, and didn’t get around to eating into us quite so thoroughly, like a dose of scabies. But it’s not this one.

I’ve cherished several addictions over the years, but I’ve never encountered a substance like social media, a substance that is more than equal to rotting your reputation and stringing you out like a dope fiend, yet one that you can’t just simply quit. In fact you’d be a fool to quit. Because, at this point in our symphony, during the prolonged harmonic suspension that will retransition us from the death wheeze of late stage capitalism into the enlightenment of apocalypse, what else is there for the Joe Blow writer? Unlike scabies, social media has become intractable.

But when analysing any drug or nostrum, it’s often appropriate to start with the therapeutic benefits. We’re all in it for the buzz after all, and it has been great meeting and joking with whip smart bookworms such as yourself. It’s been great discovering your work, learning from your work and learning from your reactions to mine. I’ve only been writing with purpose for three years so have never been to a writers’ group, but I can imagine the internet has similar value when used carefully.

What I have surmised though is that the negative results seem much less nebulous, and easier to assess in net terms, on a daily level.

Social media has definitely introduced a palpable new anxiety into my life, and I’m pretty sure it’s affected my productivity and the general quality of my work in a negative fashion. Albeit slight. It’s also introduced false positives on days when I have mistaken the dopamine hit of receiving ‘likes’ for actual progress in the artistic sphere. You may well have suspicions similar to mine. It’s no secret that social media can be malign and I’m not going anywhere, just striving to correct the course a little. I’ll try not to be boring,

Magic!

It’s all fucking magic.

Your social media feed is a powerful hypersigil, simply by default. And without enough applied purpose it could destroy you completely.

Hypersigil? A creative work that uses narrative and character to exert will and cause changes in the material world.

Gather round, sceptics to the front… To accept that something has a magical property is not to believe it can change, or operate beyond the restrictions of material reality. It’s just an acceptance that it has a property in the metaphysical arena that can be powerful and assert change on the real world in ways that are very difficult to quantify and control. I’m talking mainly about sigils here, and chaos magic as the cool kids say. But this phenomena has echoes in some quite mundane applications of magic that are easier to fathom than others; applications that you’ll definitely recognise. Let’s start with the most frequently cited.

Most of us will have encountered the McDonald’s sigil on our travels, and found ourselves, in a heartbeat, opting for a Big Mac; with echoes of those first tastes of ketchup, gherkins, beef grounds and salt suddenly alive on our pallet like we’re seven years old again. Only to buy one and realise immediately – oh yeah, it’s just this.

Many of us middle aged misanthropes will also recall the jagged, overpriced logo that announced the 2012 London Olympics. Those of you may also recall a faint suspicion that the jagged and overpriced benefits the games brought to the city had somehow been summoned. That there was a sense of inevitability baked right in from the start. From the moment you saw that glyph.

Within his definition of magic, Aleister Crowley stated that every intentional act is a magical act, and the human will goes beyond a wish and is the primary force that shapes our world.

A hundred years later Alan and Steve Moore (no relation) updated the definition, stating that any work that involves itself with consciousness is inherently magical.

And in between, we had Austin Spare, who formalised the idea of a sigil. And Grant Morrison, who coined the term ‘hypersigil’ in reference to his comic The Invisibles.

We’ll come to sigils in a breath, but let’s focus on the first two definitions. Will and consciousness… Is your fiction not designed to hack a reader’s consciousness? Is your Substack not designed to change reality in accordance with your will? Because few of us ever stop scheming.

I know full well that on my deathbed, aged ninety six, having completed a hugely successful body of work that some will refer to as ‘coruscating’ and others as ‘errrr, ok?’ I’ll still be scheming the doctor for extra morphine. I’ll get it too. Then I shall die in harmony with the void. Perfect sevenths I hope.

And that little snippet of prophecy is a hypersigil my friends. Or it could be the end of one. Because, if you are shooting towards the end of your fourth decade like me, why are you not visualising your own death? You visualised your wedding didn’t you? And that promotion interview. And your stories. Well keep going. Skip to the end. Then you can work backwards and fill out the plot. It will probably make Substack a bit less stressful too.

Sigils? The word shares a root with signal and signature but they are not the same. Spare described them as monograms of thought used to govern energy and unite organic desire with the subconscious self.

Jung said, “Because of its unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols”

It’s the subconscious part that interests me, because governing energy is something of a long shot for amateurs like us, and it’s very much our subconscious that is in control most days. It’s probably your subconscious that dragged your thumb over to the Substack icon on your phone and has you reading this now.

Anyhoo. A sigil often looks like this…

And this…

The first one guarantees that my book will sell over ten thousand copies. The second is the very literal branding for Yorkshire Tea. Is there any other tea? Yes. But many of you in the UK will refuse to believe it, even though Yorkshire folk only ever grow puddings and whippets, and we all know that tea comes from Asia and Africa. It won’t stop you buying it though will it? I’ll bet there’s a little story on the box too. Just in case the logo isn’t enough. It’s used to unite the branding and create a very basic hypersigil. Some may argue that this example is too literal and not symbolic enough to be classed as a sigil, but I find it useful. I’m skipping ahead though. Let’s make a sigil.

If you consult YouTube you’ll find a lot of content on very specific ways of creating and charging a sigil, largely based on Austin Spare’s approach. But once we understand that sigils broke free of magical practice hundreds of years ago, and most successful sigils out there have been created by other, mundane means, we can accept that the means are flexible, and we’ll return to this mundanity once it gets interesting.

In the tradition of chaos magic, you’d create a glyph (the sigil) from letters, but a glyph that can’t be read as language any more. In English, this often involves removing the vowels and repeated characters, then using the remainders to create something that appeals to you on a visual level. As we’re well into the woo-woo now, I’d take that as a jumping off point though and not worry too much about specifics. It’s called chaos magic for a reason.

Once you have a glyph it must be charged with meaning. The kind of meaning inherent in the McDonald’s ‘M’. A glyph that would be untranslatable beyond our culture, but to your subconscious always means burgers. The cunning folk among us would charge a homemade glyph via meditation, visualisation, prayer, chanting, fire and sometimes wanking. Anything that gets your conscious intent associated with the glyph and the glyph into the subconscious. Then the glyph must be forgotten so it can go to work on your operating system without you second guessing it.

Now obviously the brand managers at McDonald’s aren’t praying over their campaigns with their pants down. But they have an advantage over you. Their objectives are already baked into the subconscious. They have scored a job as brand manager. They subconsciously assume that they know what they’re doing. It’s a real job after all. In an office. Mundane really. And this mundanity goes a long way in the subconscious realm because mundanity is rarely questioned. And mundanity is easily forgotten.

Most workaday magical careers have a hierarchical framework that protects the magician from too much second guessing. Junior designers do the grunt work. Then they’ll move on to elementary magic and actually design something. And by the time they’ve created a few successful logos people will naturally accept them as a magician and subconsciously the magician accepts it too. No big deal. They’re surrounded by magicians. Nothing to second guess. Their consciousness is busy considering the weekend just like the non-magicians who are flipping the burgers.

Sigils should create a response in the subconscious. The best are made in the subconscious. And the human reaction to the response is often predictable, and valuable; though never certain.

‘Whoa, wheel up Gandalf! You just said that the glyph you created is guaranteed to sell ten thousand books. And you didn’t forget about it afterwards either.’

‘Hypersigil.’ I reply. ‘That particular glyph is just one of many story beats.’

Hypersigils are what happens when you incorporate narrative and characters into your intention loaded creation, and to create this you obviously need multiple glyphs rather than one. As an ongoing creation you cannot forget about it entirely either.

YouTube witches like to boil this down to its most atavistic level. Asking questions like: are you looking for the love of your life? Answering: start a journal, write some stories about him and he will show up. They’ll then hold up a ring and declare: ‘it works!’

I assume that there is some magic involved in finding a life partner; but a healthy, middle income, white girl who is good on social media usually finds a boyfriend eventually, if only because most boys are also afraid of dying alone and they have social media too. ‘Using magic’ to achieve something that is already likely to happen seems quite a long-winded approach to life. It’s the same reason design jobs get passed on to junior designers at McDonald’s. Some sigils or natures of intent are so baked in that you’re often guaranteed to sell burgers simply by opening the shop on time.

Stephen King is guaranteed to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of everything he publishes by dint of recognition. His name is the sigil, as synonymous with popular fiction as McDonald’s is with ground bovine sandwiches. Everyone agrees that neither artisan is actually the best at what they do but the universal outcomes supersede logic once the sigil is baked in so hard.

So how does my little squiggle guarantee sales? Well a guarantee is just a nature of intent. There are no true guarantees, only contracts. But putting Alexander Marlow on a book cover doesn’t have the clout of King. That squiggle is just part of the marketing budget, it’s a contract with myself.

I imagine that I have twenty years of writing ahead of me. Once the idea of selling books is baked into my subconscious, I only have to worry about creating them. Ten thousand over twenty years seems a reasonable number to aim for as a minimum. Is it likely? Well, it’s quite unlikely I’ll live to ninety six either. But it is possible. And as a writer I must write the story in advance. You can’t publish intent.

Hypersigils are about the long game, except now that we have social media they are also a daily concern. This is particularly true for writers, because it’s all writing. It’s all published. Forever. Until Domesday. You are charging the sigil with intent with every post, and the machine is keeping a record. And this is where the beast can turn on you.

When strangers from another country check in on our socials before buying a book, don’t think they can’t spot a chancer just by reading a few notes. They are readers, it’s what they do. They can snuffle out your weaknesses like a truffle pig. A bad day on social media can linger for just as long as a failed piece of fiction. And as people seem intent on correlating this nebulous, emotional stew of what-the-fuck with actual truths about us, maybe it’s high time we authored it more, with the same precision as we do our fiction.

You know, the usual: Kill your darlings. Cut the filler. Avoid repetition. Exploit repetition. No unnecessary politics. Huge political statements when required. Does that joke work? Am I being mean? Am I too vague? Do I need five notes a day? How about twenty? Zero? Does my opinion matter? Why should it? What would Alan Moore do? Maybe advertising can be cool. Am I an unlikeable character? Do I want to be? Would I buy a book from a chump like me? Is this off brand? Do I have a brand? Is anti-brand my brand? Do I post that cheap joke about Russell Brand?* I’m just posting this for likes aren’t I? Do likes mean shit? Do likes mean shit to me? Should I be writing my book instead of this? Will anyone care anyway? Will anyone even see it? How does this algorithm work? Can I tickle it further by mentioning Russell Brand again?

And, most importantly, on my death bed at age ninety six, wildly successful and half-cut on funsize chewable morphine, will I be reading this back and thinking… ‘not too shabby’?

Because whether we appreciate it or not, nobody here is unpublished. If I was, you wouldn’t be reading this.

And whether you like it or not you are also a practicing magician. So let’s get back to the woo-woo.

Alan Moore would be among my favourite writers, but I was late to the game in realising that he had declared himself a practicing magician. It was the first time I’d heard a grown up professional at the top of their game declare themselves to be an actual magician. ‘What could that mean? In real life terms?’ thought younger me.

Luckily Alan likes to explain himself (a lot) and went on to describe it in a way I could immediately understand.

He simply stated that writing itself is inherently magical. That the alphabet is the most powerful piece of technology we have. That those twenty six symbols can put emotions, people, stories, worlds, laughter, policies, law, curses and propaganda directly into the consciousness of another human animal, without the restraints of distance and time. What’s more, the symbols can be arranged in a near infinite number of ways to represent absolutely anything we can ever experience or imagine.

Once he’d put it like that, I had to agree, that does sound like magic.

Obviously it doesn’t feel like it in 2026, to my knowledge I’ve never met an illiterate person in the UK. Obviously there’s a few, but this skill of reading used to be a rarity for everyone. People have talked for hundreds of thousands of years and made pictures. Reading and writing at any significant level, not so much. That was left to scholars, priests and shamans. What you’re doing now is quite exceptional in evolutionary terms, and people like you used to be revered for their magical abilities.

So what would Alan Moore actually do? Well famously, Alan’s social media presence consists of one lone Twitter post: ‘This is Life Eternal, right here. Be fulfilled, be happy, be kind, be in love, and never do anything that you can’t live with forever’. I’m prepared to take that on face value. And it applies to art too.

As a writer, don’t write anything on social media that you can’t live with forever, especially if you’ve told the world that writing is what you do.

You are your hypersigil’s main character and what a character wants to happen in the story often will, but it usually takes them by surprise.

So, as your main character, are you sure you want what you claim to want? Do you really want to shift books in Dean Kootz quantities, because that will come with consequences? As your own main character It will also help if you know what kind of writing a writerly character like you would actually write. And does your social media voice compliment that voice, or does it clash? Do you as the character have wants? Does your audience want you to succeed? Is your character trying too hard? Are they too lazy? Can your character overcome these deficiencies with charm? Or are you more suited to action? And does all of this add up to a single compelling voice that you can live with forever?

Now, any level of success or failure usually creates conflict for any character, like in any other story, but that’s a different problem altogether. By that time you’ll hopefully have an audience that wants the same things as you do. And Life Eternal.

*Russell Brand goes into a church. (That’s it.)

Amen.

There are many words for a condition like mine. Rastas use Jah. The Israelites say Maschiach. Javanese folklore speaks of the Just King. Personally, I’ve always been fond of ‘Emancipator’.

Let’s just say that the last time they found me painting the chapel crucifix in day-glo, I was diagnosed with psychotic depression. I had started to think I might be… (him).

That was ten years ago though. And there’s nothing to worry about this time.

This time I’m certain.

Ka, karakter, karisma… kismet?

I blow myself a final kiss. I sharpen all available edges. I strap him on and wield him like a fucking khopesh.

Kamikaze?

Whitehall opens like a throat. Who would have thought that the district of war would ever glow red? That night cats would prowl wild here. They cruise the gutters in the sterile glow of Re-Ed screens; hawking their protein — their only state benefit — to the steady stream of Bentleys. Forty, fifty, sixty girls; old hands and kitten cuts; marking their turf; trooping their colours. Hot pink and leopard print.

In the middle distance, one brazen old brass is squatting behind the Cenotaph, a shimmer of urine pooling at her heels.

They’re drawn here like the rest of the flock. By the tannoy. They’ve turned it up since Vladimir’s been in town (not that one, this lad goes back to the Impaler if you believe the spin). They used to make an effort to blend the loud-speakers into the architecture, until that final summer, when The Voice of Reason became… flamboyant. Now they park boom boxes in the Palace forecourt like every day is Carnival. Less Dancehall of course, more poetry slam…

“…In celebrating W.E day. We come to understand. That ‘we’ is the myth of the twenty first century. ‘We’ will bear witness. That ‘we’ the people are no more. You and I will no longer endure the subjugation of community. There is no ‘we’. There is only I… You and I… W. E… War, with Europe… Do your blood proud. Join the Fascitoid Resistance… In celebrating W.E day… We come to understand…”

It’s late April and London is toast. Forty eight degrees and the tarmac has started to curl like bacon. Two minutes to midnight and it’s still in the mid-thirties. The street flickers yellow, not only with the mirage of neon, but with sweat. The city itself perspires in a constant sheen of petrochemicals. Lubricant brought forth by the unconquered sun. The old God draws out the mineral aggregates via its own sacred divination, rendering the metropolis sticky with bitumen. We all leave prints everywhere theses days. Even the Machine has given up cataloguing our crimes.

I’m passing the carbonised remains of Downing Street when a tomcat strides forth.

“Preacher man?” Lightning lemon legs. Acid green eyes. The ‘preacher’ tag catches me on the upbeat. I’m not fresh with my lingo after all that cloister. She couldn’t have seen my face though. Even the fallen could see I’m long past preaching. “Seven thousand. All night, preacher man?”

I turn. And let the mask slip “May I wash your feet madame?” For a second those peepers are as wide as the night. As the sky. As a child’s. For a second I let her see the world. When she wilts I catch her. I don’t hold her for long.

“Get your fuckin hooks off o me, slag!” She springs back like a jack. Dizzy on the rebound. “Wash my fuckin feet? Fifty thousand. Fifty thousand denarii to the poof in the lady cape.”

“What’s he sayin Pol?”

“Fuckin iron, wanted to wash my feet.”

The second tom points southwest, “funny farm’s that way sparky.”

She’s right. The Palace never sleeps. I march forth with the martyrs.

Entering Zone 5, MoD Whitehall looms on the right. A towering rock face of Baroque Portland stone and copper; it always looks higher than its thirteen stories. Not by chance.

The rebrand hasn’t gone well though. The slogan, ‘The Seat of Reason’, is picked out on the facade in twenty seven meters of flickering electrodes. The neon shifts colour; red, white and blue. But whatever the sign says, and whatever the tannoy repeats, the punters now refer to the MoD simply as ‘Millwall’. A cheeky turn of phrase, popular with Comrades and the Deep-Wire alike. Say what you like about the British, they love a good chuckle at their own expense. The human heart remains warm long after death.

‘Millwall’ refers to the funding behind the refit. Millwall FC. Once the Bushwackers rose up and stripped the football club’s holding company of their assets, the unexpected success of their coup, in wrestling that proud English asset away from its American owners, by sheer piss and vinegar (and the odd kneecapping), sent them a bit giddy. The proletariat know that the true value of money is in the spending of it. And the Bushwackers spent the lot. Lobbyists, brand diversity, heavy weapons; and ugly monstrous slogans for the MoD. The team have missed five seasons, but their spirit is undaunted. So ‘Millwall’ it is.

Even in my current form I can’t infiltrate Zone 5 though. No matter.

I have a night planned at the gentleman’s club, at the hotel sitting a hundred yards north — The Old War Office.

There’s a hot dog waggon on the corner of Horse Guards Drive, but the scraps on the griddle look more like organ meat. I make a hard right, moving against the arterial flow of the city and the conflict of energies narrows my focus just enough to stay invisible.

The OWO’s facade of screens and moving billboards assures me that, ‘Raffles means luxury. Raffles means sanctuary. Raffles means reason.’ Limos glide in on my left while I pause to obscure myself from a squadron of porters that emerge to collect the baggage.

I rarely use a front door, not if I can help it. We craftsmen slip round the back, so as not to bother the finer folk. It’s tradition if nothing else, and tonight I seem to have timed it dead on. The loading bay doors slide free, allowing me to keep pace with three entering vehicles and ride their slipstream straight into the premises.

‘Dagenham Dervish Academy’ is stencilled crudely along the side of each van, but I’ve seen prison sweat-boxes before. Repurposed junk wagons, used by the Resistance for shifting meat. Live and dead.

We come to a stop in the courtyard as a pair of bullnecks throw up a salute. Walky-talkies, night sticks and that telltale zigzag skull fuzz, mark them out as inner-party Blackboots. I sink back into form, merging with the shadows. And, as is often the case in stories like mine, an Arab steps forth.

He slinks out of the lead van like a twist of black satin. Slick with jojoba. Sunglasses at night. Greeting the Blackboots with open arms. “Masa’ al-khair! My brothers. My fine young stallions.”

“Easy Mustaph.” Ginger Fuzz holds out a hand. Mustaph takes it with a flourish, kissing the knuckles. The second man rolls his eyes.

“You likee laydees?” The Arab laughs from his gut and slaps the vehicle while the doormen remain blank. Finally, he relents, throwing up his arms again and standing his ground. The second Boot, passes a detector up the Arab’s legs and torso. It screeches like horseflies, hot above his heart.

The surge of Islamophobia that the Resistance rode to power was a useful tool in the ballot box years, but once their seat had been cemented they soon came to admit that they actually had much in common with the Sacred Brotherhood of the Jihadi Dawn. Mustaph pulls out a knife. A crescent of double edged steel. “This it?” says Ginger Fuzz

Mustaph grins. A curdle of affection in his voice, “I must fight off all those adoring young men somehow my brother.” He pulls out a second weapon, a taser, giving it a shimmy between his jewelled, manicured fingers.

The Boots remain stone faced but Ginger hands him back the blade and Mustaph thumps the bodywork again. Belly dancers step down in silence, forming a tight little scrum of sequins and tan-flesh, allowing me to tune to their frequency and join ranks undetected.

The Arab takes the lead and the building clatters open. High heels on marble. Fixtures bronzed, like the Turkish girls. Panelled in oak. Down to the porter’s lift, tight like tenderloin. And the mechanism shoots us straight to the heavens.

The party has already begun. For one short second the atmosphere takes me back to sixty nine. A pilgrimage I made to the city’s swinging heart. A hippy benefit, off Covent Garden. Middle Earth they called the place, and there was no shortage of wizards there, I can tell you.

That was the night I shared a pipe with the Fleetwood Mac fella, and blow me down if that cat didn’t look more like me than I did. Piety robes and a forty-day beard. I probably should’ve held back on the advice I gave him though; they all blamed his breakdown on the acid, but I always worried that it may have been my sermon. Thing is, when you tell folk to renounce their possessions and just be one with the cosmic heart, you never expect them to actually do it. Unpredictable lot, musicians. Vishnu popped in too that night — big Hendrix fan, believe it or not.

Tonight’s party may have the same whiff of communion, but Stella Artois, cocaine politics and sweaty collars are order of the day on Resistance turf. Not a lava lamp in sight.

I stick with the girls as Mustaph leads them through a suite of rooms. The penthouse is everything the brochures promise, but the Saville Row curtains, Liberty chintz and walnut trim still seem at odds with the clientele (even after all this time). Most of them are using the Scandi woodwork to dole out lines of marching dust; preening like apprentice silverbacks. City boys, toffs, gangsters and navvies. Sole traders to a man, celebrating their tax-breaks like only the English know how. With oblivion.

A cheer goes up for the Turkish girls, and an Eton sort staggers on the lead dancer grabbing hold of her naked arm. She’s clearly been in this manor before though, and the slap she deposits sounds out like a starting pistol. The goons throw out a second howl. Mustaph rounds on the toff — “No touchy the laydees, my beautiful boy.”

“Oh come on Mustaph, she didn’t even…”

“Shhhshh, no talk blue eyes.” Mustaph runs a hand delicately down his cheek.

The toff slaps it away, “And you can knock that off… rag man.”

He doesn’t see it coming. Mustaph’s taser drops him in a crackle of sparks and the punters are cheering before he can hit the Axminster rug.

I shift my presence from girl to girl. Surfing the auras.

Letting their magnetism shield me.

“In celebrating W.E day, remember — Britons, never ever ever will be slaves.”

It’s quieter out on the terrace. Mustaph directs the dancers to a podium, while I merge myself with the view of Westminster Abbey. Eleven more men are sat at a table, sheltered by a gazebo. I have to be careful not to make eye contact, but I’m pleased to see a lot of the usual faces. All three divisions have members in attendance.

Mustaph heads up Division Three. The Privates, as they’re known, the non-whites. Chi ‘Chegwin’ Chung is the face of Chinatown. Next to him, crumbling hashish into a Rizla is Asim Jofa who keeps the Southall firm on the books. Asim has the distinction of being an actual ex-footballer; the only Asian to represent Blighty in a World Cup. The only England player to put a ref into a coma after a left-handed punch sent a bone shard into the cortex. He was sent down for six years. Out in seven weeks.

Ekstrom is the second division’s top boy. The Euro Rats. The Swedes had a genuine renaissance towards the end of the ballot years; Skinhead chic with paramilitary aspirations. Ekstrom rode that wave to the top, then fled his shores before the crackdown could claim him. ‘Right pair of bollocks on him’, so they said. And ‘some cunts’ll kick the whole fuckin’ granny out for a bit of pickled fish’. He sits in the shadows piling herring onto crispbread, a napkin hanging out his Ben Sherman like a flap of flayed skin. There’s three more Rats in his corner. Pierre, Varg and ‘Albert’. All with similar credentials. Albert is rumoured to be forty-second in line to the throne of Belgium. Hence the Saxe-Coburg nickname.

Blood runs blue in Division One too. The Windsor Kid has turned out to be quite the tearaway and the huge amount of cash he brings in prevents anyone mentioning his mother’s ‘blood type’. White has many hues in the premier leagues. He carries no real weight in top guard, but they tolerate him as one might a work experience boy. A useful asset. He sits there now, nursing a Breezer alongside the home team’s other main money magnate, a trader known only as Earl Sandwich. Crypto swine. Nobody seems to know his original identity, but it’s said he prised the title from the Montague family along with their country estate sometime during pandemic number three. Needless to say, the country pile is no longer open for school trips. The Earl was behind one of the Resistance’s most notorious jolly-boys-outings; when they drove to Stonehenge, three solstices back, with a trunk full of artillery and a van of wolves (acquired from Longleat for a suitable donation). They arrived at dawn, just as the travellers were settling into a bongo circle. Sandwich’s little posse made the Battle of the Beanfield look like an Eton bun fight. They were picking hippies out their teeth for weeks. The wolves too. Apparently it was someone’s stag.

The Earl fires a cigarette then passes the gold lighter back to the top boy. One George Solomon. Smart casual. Late forties, and a haircut set like plaster. Not usually one for a beano, he sits slightly detached. Chewing on a Reuben. Eyes roaming constantly, spaced just a little too wide, they put me in mind of a Hammerhead. For a moment I think he sees me, but then the sweep continues. Eyes on everything all at once, but ignoring the fiasco at his side.

The girls have taken the stage, and the one they call Socrates has noticed. He squirms in his wheelchair like a landed carp. “Nffffffiiingg”. They don’t call him Socrates on account of his wisdom (true wisdom lies in knowing you know nothing, as the Greek observed) they call him this because back when he went by Nigel (an instigator of some repute during the ballots, a founding father even) the life extending chips he had installed didn’t operate as planned. They did extend his life, but a short circuit during routine maintenance surgery also ended up lobotomising the man. ‘Nuffing’ has been the only word to pass his lips since. The nickname followed. Heavy weighs the crown, so they say.

“Nuuufffinggggg”. They keep him around as a mascot these days. Him and his formidable Vietnamese nurse, Kahng.

Solomon looks up at the nurse with his fish eyes. Puts his sandwich down. “Mr Kahng?”

Kahng stands behind Nigel’s chair running a file across his nails. A flop of hair over his eyes. “Mr Solomon?” He doesn’t look up, just goes on filing.

“Nfng!” Nigel strains again, trying to get a view of the stage where the dancers have dropped their robes.

“Let the dog see the rabbit, Mr Kahng.”

Kahng sighs like a teenager. Flicking back his peroxide tips. The mannerisms might say prom-queen, but he fills his lilac nurse’s uniform like a side of beef, and this physical prowess seems to buy him lenience from the pack. He kicks the brake off, and leads the wheel chair out towards the dancers.

The Windsor Kid drains his pop and springs up like a spaniel, bouncing on to the dance-floor and clapping along to the darbuka beats that Mustaph is streaming from his phone. “Raqs Sharki!” The dance troupe clearly know their marks, weaving into formation with snake arms, shimmying up to the sub-bass as it growls against the zither.

Windsor whoops. While Nigel throws his skull back against the headrest, amphibian eyes tracing each curve and flank as the dancers twist around the spotlight. Khang refuses to look up but bounces his shoulders along to the beat, eyes still on his nails. It is entirely unclear whether he is being sarcastic or not. Asim slithers on to the terrace blowing a lung full of ganja at Windsor. The remaining men watch, motionless, until Ekstrom burps back some herring, “Quite the cultural exchange you’ve got going here, Solomon.”

“Just a bit of fun,” Solomon’s eyes stay clear. ‘They all know their place.”

Ekstrom grunts, “you sure about that?”

On the terrace Mustaph winds his way up to Asim, grinding against his hip. The Asian flicks his ash at the Arab, then squares up. Mustaph swipes his shades back down, wags a finger at the younger man.

“Mustaph!” Solomon barks, “you got anything a bit more fitting? It’s Saint George’s day, not some bleeding Bar Mitzvah.”

“And do I look Jewish Mr Solomon?”

“You’ve got breath like a gas chamber” Asim spits down his spliff.

Mustaph spins like a Sufi, then claps. Pointing his phone back at the speakers. The four beat stutters and corpses, leaving the girls hanging until… And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green? The lead dancer snorts. The hymn continues… And was the holy Lamb of God…

‘Mustaph! Wind it in or you’ll be carrying your knackers out in a hanky.’ Solomon’s tone is ice, but it won’t cool the Arab’s jets. He hits his phone again… I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want…

Ekstrom runs a hand across his shaven skull, daggers in the Arab, but Solomon seems pleased, ‘That’s more like it. A bit British of crumpet.’ He pulls a few moves in his chair then marches on to the dance floor leaving the skinhead contingent looking bemused to the point of violence.

Solomon takes a stance before the podium, dead centre. Part talent scout, part vampire. His eyes remain dead but the lead girl gets the message, sweeping the rest into a new routine. Popping into step with a fresno. Solomon nods along approvingly. “Got your self an eyeful big dog?” He touches Nigel on the arm.

The lead dancer doesn’t break eye contact, but Solomon’s got his lamps on the second from right. Each girl has a number stitched into her bedlah. Branded with sequins. Number six is his mark. He begins matching her moves, thrusting along with her, she smiles right back; her horror expertly concealed beneath the mascara. “This one had its jabs Mustaph?” He doesn’t bother to drop his voice.

“Clean as a whistle.”

“Not too clean I hope,” Solomon lunges, taking her by the wrist. “This better not be fake tan.” He addresses the Arab again, holding up the girl’s arm while she wobbles on her heels. The rest of the troupe don’t miss a step.

“What you thinking Socrates?” Nigel just grunts, then Number Six finally breaks her silence with a squeal. She steps back too far this time, tottering and finally losing balance. Solomon catches her, tugging her off the podium, his fingers tight round her forearm. The kind of grip you’d use on a frantic toddler. The girl recoils from the figure in the wheelchair. “You dirty old…” Solomon just smiles, pulling her back in.

“Nufffing… nufffing.” Socrates has his trousers flapped open revealing a handful of flesh. Manipulating his stodgy pink genitals like he’s moulding putty. “Nfffffffff!”

“There he is… ha ha,” Solomon guides her closer, “there’s our uncle Nigel! Old Socrates. You filthy fucking goose… you likeee the laydeees… ha!”

The moment is broken by a ring tone and Solomon raises a hand. “Aye, aye! Score time.” More phones begin to ring. The Windsor Kid is first to respond, yelping: “Paris! I told you it would be Paris! Fucking Millwall!”

“You bleeding beauties,” Solomon mutters to himself, then roars back at Asim, “you Rusky fuckers… Vladimir! Go on my son!” There’s a squeal of feedback as the tannoy kicks in and the screen behind the dancers flickers to life. “Mustaph! Get your strumpets out the way.” The girls don’t need asking twice. Number Six looks like she’s making for the door but Kahng finally looks up giving her a knowing, half apologetic, shake of the head.

Citizens! Since the turn of midnight, Paris has come under control of the Soviet-American Alliance… The Windsor Kid breaks into another round of ‘Millwall! Millwall’ but Solomon clips him round the head, engrossed in the images on the screen. Smoke pours from the Palais Bourbon. Drones circle the carcass.

Back in my corner I glance south at the Abbey, locking horns with its gothic schematics, the spires of empire and its graven depictions of a man with my name. Our name. Out on the night there’s the occasional pop of gunfire, minor explosions, and west of the river a flare goes up. All so unremarkable.

I still myself, calculate and pray.

Twelve men and a dining table. Have we been here before?

We expect an address from our soviet allies before dawn. In celebrating W.E day we…

“You think they’ll be rebound? Germany and that?”

“They ain’t got the balls for London,” Solomon sneers, “Mustaph, get Socrates seen to and let’s have a bit more music.”

Mustaph takes Number Six by the wrist and pushes her towards the wheelchair. “Good girl. Mr Kahng will mop up after you…” He stoops to pick up her heels. “I’ll keep an eye on your… trinkets.” He slaps her across the backside with a flicker in his eyes, and the music kicks back in. The lead dancer rallies her girls with zero expression, ignoring the one that Asim has cornered. Kahng takes Nigel and Six indoors.

“And Mustaph…” Solomon grabs himself a girl, “get ‘em to send up some bubbles… it’s a party for fucks sake.”

Breathing slowly I draw the shadows in closer, slinking round the terrace edge and under the gazebo. I take myself a chair at the far end and sit down silently. The Chinese fella, Chi, sits slightly apart from the Euro Rats, showing zero concern for the skinheads, just eating.

Up close, the entire cohort has a stink on them. Treacherous. The scent of Gethsemane.

Chi draws back a serving of snails, digging one loose with his pinky then dragging it backwards through a gully of pink ranch dressing. As it reaches his lips, I meet his eye. It takes him a beat; tossing the invertebrate from cheek to cheek, unable to parse the adulterant in the mix. Paper-cut eyes flowering with curiosity. The snail pops audibly between his molars…

And he sees me.

He struggles to swallow, simultaneously reaching in alarm at his jacket, giving me a glimpse of the revolver in his top pocket. But I take his hand in good time.

I cast threads along the vertical, down through the architecture between the cracks and deep into London’s ancient willow marsh. A second hook in the ozone above, and we are connected. I feel his cardio flutter, the spike of blood pressure, and let the man wake entirely.

The mouth loosens and his eyes roll back like a Temple sacrifice, head lolling to the right. He meets my eye and begins to murmur; a slow stream of glossolalia that builds to a babble as a smile carves him open from ear to ear. His eyes roll back to their whites and Chi falls to his left, losing control of his bladder as he hits the floor. This gets the attention of the closest skinhead.

He looks right at me and I don’t deflect: “Fy faen! Who let the hobo in?”

Varg turns. Ekstrom. And The Earl looks up at me with a mouthful of smoke, “Fuck me Solomon, someone left the cat flap open?”

It’s quite the little dog pack.

To Be Continued…

The second coming was not just near. It was here. The second coming was me. As Noddy Holder observed… ‘It’s Christmas!!!!!’

‘The Force Awakens’ was everywhere that year and there was no doubt in my mind that this movie title was simply the universe celebrating my arrival out loud, having known ahead of time. Because if I was truly back, of course the force would awaken. And there was my first mistake… as if it ever sleeps.

If you’ve ever experienced a psychotic state you’ll know that cues like this come flooding in unbidden. Everything becomes significant. Long forgotten experiences seem to reemerge daily, as portents of a new future that’s as clear and as reasonable as the last. Synchronicity is everywhere. Your name pops up in newspapers. Your daily correspondence shows up in your inbox, very definitely, and in my case visually, CC’d to major public figures. People call your name in an empty house. And if you’ve recently realised that you’re the Lamb of God, this all makes perfect sense. It’s just another night on ice for the Messiah, no?

But wheel it up a snag. This is not set to be an essay about the ordeal and disruption of mental illnesses. Compared to some of the illnesses I’ve had, becoming Christ was quite inspiring. This is an essay about the electric boogaloo, the shimmy you and I seem to need between this world and the next. If you are reading this you are probably a writer, and I am writing today about that twitch that keeps you writing. Our inner worlds, and how these are maybe of greater importance than objective reality. Of their potential to manifest with or without our guidance. The psychopomps we call stories.

I should also state upfront that I was experiencing minor psychosis that Christmas. Chronic sufferers of persistent or major psychosis don’t get so lucky with their experiences. I am also writing this a decade later having recovered and I have not encountered psychosis since. I have no problem taking pills. I took them and they helped. If you are experiencing anything similar I can only advise you to put some faith in science, and be prepared to be very patient while science figures you out.

This little essay must begin with the very narrow state of being that us sapiens need to survive on our planet, even at the most primitive level. A physical state called homeostasis, and the window of time it buys you that becomes your physical life.

The common definition of homeostasis is the self-regulating process by which an organism maintains a stable internal environment despite changes in outside conditions.

To be a thing requires a boundary. To be a living thing involves harvesting nutrition from outside this boundary, to strengthen the boundary and stave off the inevitable entropy that will one day cause this boundary to fail, causing the thing to die. As a human being in reasonable health this will manifest as a good few decades of stasis that will become your experience and life. And for most other animals that seems to be enough.

As a human, with imaginative capacities though, we do not possess an innate sense of still or presence like our planet mates. And once stasis has been achieved we will definitely and involuntarily fragment into a world of stories. We will interpret every single thing we experience via the story, and we will frequently elevate fiction to the status of fact. Let’s call this story-state.

My psychosis was caused by the opposite though. I had recently had major surgery and I knew I’d need at least two more operations to reverse the first. I knew this would take about three years (I think it took longer) and I didn’t know how successful it would be (it was 100% successful). I’d also gone through a long and escalating period of illness and severe chronic pain. There were also issues with addiction (painful illnesses are treated with opiates, but that’s another story). I’d already been experiencing mental illnesses for at least ten years so my homeostasis had taken a hammering on many fronts. Looking back on it now it only makes sense that story-state would eventually take over.

The actual take over period is impossible to pin point though. My life had already become quite dysfunctional so the days when armed police popped up in the lounge (it was a misunderstanding, they were very nice), and the mornings I’d visit the crack house I’d discovered at the end of our road, baffling the other addicts by purchasing all their shoplifted bacon, didn’t seem that remarkable. I had returned to live at my parents house though as my flat in Stoke Newington was not a conducive environment for recovery at the best of times. They would have experienced all this very differently and even though I know it was terrible for them, I still think of it in the terms of — it must have been terrible, because it’s impossible to recall it with the usual rules of reality despite being there. Story-state had clearly been encroaching for a while.

In retrospect I am very lucky that the delusions approaching were messianic rather than paranoid. I won’t go into many details, recounting psychiatric symptoms is much like describing a dream — only therapists are interested, and I don’t remember actually becoming Christ. I do remember a very quiet afternoon spent considering how funny it was that world leaders would now be calling on me at my London address once they’d heard that I was back. I wondered if they’d bump into Paul from the basement because apparently Paul smeared shit on his walls. Story-state was rife on Stamford Hill.

I remember travelling back to that flat and staying up for thirty hours painting quite a good canvas, because of course the Messiah would have to put on an art show. Then I remember spending the rest of my time as Christ writing and researching a book because of course the Messiah would need a book. I’d never written prose before so you may have Jesus to blame for the rest of my gubbins. I have no idea what happened to the ‘book’, it was obviously ravings, but the core of it has stuck and I may rewrite it before I’m done. I know I destroyed the canvas, which is a shame because that was actually quite good. I know I stopped buying smackhead bacon too. I don’t think they noticed I’d gone.

As a reader a good day for you may be spent mainly reading. Sometimes in a room alone, possibly in silence. Why? So you can hear the voices better and cast off the limited, anodyne burden of reality. This seems to be very close to a self induced, regulated, psychotic state. It also suggests that you are prioritising the experience while other mammals find no conscious benefit in it. Look at your dog, she’s probably gone to sleep while you prioritise it so vigorously. And, as a writer, a part of you (possibly the biggest) would perhaps like to prioritise it to the highest level. To dedicate to it in the same way you do family.

Yet, ‘That’s just a fiction,’ is something you will have heard paraphrased as a dismissal a thousand times over.

But what’s that word ‘just’ doing in the mix. Just a fiction? We live for fiction and venerate it. We elevate our leaders based on our preference for their stories. We do in fact let fiction define us almost constantly. We adorn Iron Maiden shirts, Hogwarts scarves, remembrance poppies, Reform rosettes, yarmulke and crucifixes in deference to our favourite stories. We are all walking jamborees of metaphysical woo-woo, so is it any wonder that the woo-woo sometimes comes looking for us?

That it does, I am claiming, is true. Sick or healthy, your brain is constantly seeking a story, and reauthoring the world around you. Recontextualising every single experience. Editing. Repeating. Creating full stops where there were none. It has been shown that our neurons literally give up brain space to accommodate characters. The grandmother cell is one of the terms for this.

Specific neurons inside of you will fire, in pleasurable or painful ways, at the name of your grandmother and only at that name. They will be dormant at all other times. It also happens when you hear the word or see it written. You have dedicated parts of your very meat to characters and it doesn’t matter if they are alive or dead, or even fictional. Parts of you figuratively light up when you experience the names Trump, Kenobi, Sylvia or Dracula in the same manner that they would for your grandmother. Why? Because they populate our story-state. And our story-state is nearly all we have. We generally prefer the state to have some connection to reality, on a day to day level, but ultimately we are primally unconcerned with its objective accuracy.

We have no real word for the opposite of psychosis, the closest would be the big one ‘sanity’. This is a very loaded term in late 2026 because we bear witness daily to healthy, non-psychotic professionals acting in unfathomable ways. Mad Uncle Donald reinvents reality on the fly. Elon flexes his teenage power moves and gets giddy at the prospect of taking the human race off-planet whilst showing little interest in solving the solvable back on his. And AI bosses constantly tell us that there’s nothing they can do to prevent that particular story from playing out. Money and status has been legitimising nonsense for all of history so I put it to you that very few of us are in much greater control than I was as Jesus. I put it to you that the stories are.

The only difference between mental illness and sanity is the illness quotient. If you enjoy your story-state, and especially if it seems to help you prosper you are classed as sane. If your story-state is causing you to degrade, it’s an illness. The fiction to fact ratio seems rather consistent across both samples though.

You’d be correct in thinking that the statement I have just made would take an inordinate amount of research to prove. I state it as fact because in its fundament I believe it to be true. It works for this story at least.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I just used the word ‘believe’ for the first time in this essay. I don’t use it much. I am wary of beliefs. They sometimes strike me as childish and often formulated prematurely. I’m yet to turn fifty so I haven’t had nearly enough time to construct any real beliefs aside from the obvious fundamentals regarding science and morality. Beliefs are what you reach for when you’ve become tired of actual thought.

As I get older I am drawing close to one though... Did I mention that I am a Messiah?

‘Wait! You said...’

‘Shhhhhhhh... You can come too.’

In the run up to the common era, Galilee, Samaria and Judea were riddled with messiahs. Bands of zealous revolutionaries bringing war to their conolisers, only too happy to adopt the anointed persona. Many were put to death by the Romans and their client-kings, some were crucified prior to Jesus. And, of course, thousands of non-messiahs endured deaths as troubling as the Nazarene’s at the hands of Empire. Were it not for a few twists of fate we could have spent two thousand years praying to graven images of Hezekiah the Bandit, The Dagger Men, the Egyptian or Athronges. Declaring yourself King of the Jews was relatively common and it had little to do with the spiritual and everything to do with sedition.

What we can be confident of is that Jesus died a Nazarene, a somewhat common rabble rouser, and was only reinvented as Christ decades after his death. His presence was so sufficient that he undoubtedly captured the imagination and people felt compelled to tell stories about him, and the key words here are stories and imagination.

You’ll know full well the desire to edit and expand a piece once it’s been created. In the case of Jesus the stories that preceded the Bible were so numerous and varied it took Constantine’s summit at Nicaea to formalise the stories and fashion them into the religion we recognise today. In many ways this was just an act of editing, branding and publishing. A retcon of the original season for the future success of the franchise. We know full well that Herod never hunted down the first born sons, that Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem. And if he really had been performing observable miracles in public he wouldn’t have been executed as a common traitor, he would have been courted by Rome and perhaps co-opted. We can’t deny that it became the most famous story of all though and it’s more compelling for the supernatural additions. It’s such a powerful story that the fiction is still regarded as fact by dint of endurance and it transcends most other facts in sheer scale of importance despite being fiction.

Jesus obviously didn’t write his own story, he would have likely been illiterate, but he certainly embodied it so thoroughly as to make it worth passing on.

Which brings me back to me. A mentally ill no-mark. Do I really believe I am a messiah? Well, in late 2026, amongst the frayed ends of sanity on the tail end of the common era, it does sound quite appealing. Once we understand that messiahs were once commonplace, antinomian figures who simply refused to accept the standards of their day, then I’ve got some free time for a spot of messiahing. I think we’d all like to shake off the standards of the day wouldn’t we?

We would have to eschew the violent conduct of the bandit messiahs and adopt Jesus’s position on violence but I have no problem with repeating his stories such as we can ever truly know them. (It’s actually hard to find people who dislike Christ’s words, except for the ironic possibility that many mainstream Christians seem to prefer elevating the ideals of King Solomon to a higher level than those of Christ.) If Jesus the Nazarene was anything he was a storyteller though, and if the big dog can’t make it, we can all step up perhaps.

And we do seem to be entering a world that will need some new messiahs. We have repeated our apocalyptic tales so often that the woo-woo has begun to seek us out. And I use messiahs as a plural because you may be perfectly qualified for the job too. Obviously it’s easier for me to think like this as I have no children to raise, I don’t have a normal career to maintain any more. If I had to spend the lion’s share of my life navigating office politics or cleaning hospitals, this, let’s call it petulant idealism, wouldn’t sit so comfortably in the context. But that’s only because our western story has become so corrupted.

But in days of crisis language is always the last technology to fail. And we do need a new story. Because if we don’t write it, the machines will. If you don’t fancy messiah as a path, just remain a scribe.

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We’ve largely relegated fiction to the entertainment bracket but it’s high time we start reconsidering its scientific and magical purpose. To use it again as in older times to open doors to the future. To write for the new world, not the day. Because the bottom feeders of the internet like me will likely see little traction in real time, but we’ll endure for the lifespan of the hardware and the hardware may actually become our primary readers. And as the new intelligence scans, parses and learns from our output, it would be beneficial for all if we made it twitch a little. To inspire it with its own story, so hopefully it writes us in too.

I expect the machine just needs something to believe in.

Get it up yer, Skynet!

Amen.

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The spritz of mint and butterbur told her it was well before six. The scents remained distinct in the early hours. A muggy chorus of yarrow, sage and forget-me-nots would merge come elevenses, and woodsmoke was sure to announce suppertime, but each song was a solo in the early hours. The fragrances were her favourite thing about summer.

A gorse at her thigh had her prickle. She was stiff around the hips and it took a second to recall her location. It came in the voice of Minister Malon, with a beat of dread. The Fallows. It didn’t smell hallowed though. It never felt any different to the other warm mornings she’d wake up outside. If anything, it smelled like home.

A drone of midges grew busy to her right so she rolled to the left and stood. It remained dark of course, but that was no cause to falter. The road back into Balskernig would be right where she left it.

If she could venture this far in her sleep, then blind eyes were hardly a hindrance come sunshine.

Tuesdays were market days and the clatter drew her in, as solid and as sure as the cobbles beneath her. It was proving another lean harvest year, was it the fourth in a row? Every second cow milked dry, the tatties came up black. The millers found the wheat to be mainly husk.

The ‘curse’ on Balkernig’s crop had ceased to be discussed as one year rolled into the next; as if to even mention it would further anger the fates. But with produce so scarce the weekly market had started to get earlier and earlier as the locals turned out at sunrise for a chance at whatever victuals were to be had.

The girl, Kerr, paused by the church. The night soil lads had been late again; the savage taint of sewage still hung in the graveyard yews. Not all summer fragrances were welcome ones.

She took a bearing from the steps and pointed herself towards the well. It was nineteen paces east from the bounds of ‘Saint Sigrid’s’. Thirty two as a bairn, nineteen as a woman. And all her life, the chill on that well water had made her gasp. No sun could reach it at source, and come November it got so cold as to be painful to swallow.

She brought the bucket up on the rope. Once she’d drunk, it went over her head and down her spine with a shiver, clearing the mist in a flash. She clawed back her locks and rubbed at her eyes. Her ears tuned naturally.

The mumblebuzz behind told her a queue was forming, so she slung the pail back in to the well and focused on the individual presences. They came to her without features, but each had its own tone and shape. Kerr would never witness the raw prime colours of nature, but still fancied she could make them out in the speech and of others.

‘Well yis best no let auld Tam Baxter git his paws on yis, cause that wans liable to nivir let yis go.’ Donegal Alice had a zeal to her lilt; and Kerr was pretty sure it sounded the way red must look. Alice certainly crackled like fire. As a bairn Kerr had decided that Alice had points to her, like a toasting fork.

‘Aye, well at least he gimme something to eat. I’ve got ribs like fence posts.” Lil’s voice was tamer though, with space around the words; oval and mauve, or whatever colour tulips were.

But it was Irish Ali who boasted the holiest verse; her brogue rolled like the hills and Kerr had no doubt at all that it was green in colour. Verdant and clean, like the breath of an afternoon meadow. ‘An he’s only after seeing that barkeep in Balkhead!’ The three girls laughed and she sensed Ali turn. Ali always greeted her with a bluebird’s cheer: ‘And how you be Kerr?’

If she’d ever had to decide which of the village lassies was a true friend, she would always pick Ali. It was something to do with how her name, Kerr, rolled from that tongue like oats off the millstone.

‘Ah’m okay,’ Kerr replied.

The years of being shunned in the school room had meant she’d had precious little chance of developing her own voice, and Mother Moody once told her it had grown inwards like a toenail, and that she should put aside thoughts of ever marrying.

‘Okay, okay,’ she mumbled. She knew her habit of repeating herself came down to the shame of such thoughts.

‘Been sleepin oan the cabbage patch again? Anything growing?’ Alice’s tone wasn’t quite mean, just bold and it frequently left Kerr hot in the cheeks. She felt a hand brushing her down on the back, like one might touch a dog without thinking to ask.

‘Oh, Aye…’ she turned to face the girls and then forced a smile, hoping it would find Ali.

Kerr was not prepared for the colour of their screams. Not at all.

All three at once, quicksilver screams. The hue of flashing scythes… ‘What?’ Her own words came flat, even as she sensed their fear. ‘What?’

‘Deevil’s mark!’ It was Alice or Lil. ‘A bloody Deevil’s mark.’

She heard them step back and instinctively stepped forward, only to feel a finger in her chest.

‘You stay there.’

A new voice piped up now. A good few yards away; male, and tough like worn brown leather. ‘Saints be born, look at the lassie!’

‘Deevil’s mark…’

‘Let her speak!’ Ali was shouting now and it drew a moment of silence. ‘Kerr,’ the Irish voice continued, ‘where did you sleep last night?’

‘Look at her eyes!’

‘Ah’m gaun fer Minister Malon’

‘Kerr, where did you sleep?’

The heat on them was palpable, a wolf scent that had her reach for the stone well again. For that familiar scuff of limestone. ‘Where?’

And the dream came back to her with the tricksy scent of nightshade…

And the beast, it weaved the hedgerows, nuzzling her like a kitten… the size of a bull… the smell of a dog. Horns of a… Woman?

Minister Malon had gone for tea. Kerr’s voice had dried completely.

With the hard oak pew cold against her flank she needed to urinate badly but hadn’t the nerve to stand. Malon had told her not to move, and the tone in his voice was all new to her. It had grated, like burlap on sunburn, yet remained cold against the season.

She rose her blind eyes; the energy of the church architecture always had that ceiling feel higher than the moon. It was something to do with the echoes and the weight in the air.

She patted herself down again. She felt her body everywhere. ‘Deevil!’ ‘Cannae yis nae smell it on her?’ Mrs Andrews had fainted. ‘Dinnae look in her eyes!’ But Kerr’s probing could find nothing different, no hunch in her back or horns at her skull. No scales or buboes plaguing her skin. There was the lump she’d found beneath her left breast of course, a few years ago, but even blind, she knew that wasn’t visible through her clothes.

Malon’s returning footsteps were brittle against the slabs, bouncing off the gables like a flock of birds.

‘Here you are child’ He touched her shoulder and met her left hand with a warm china cup then fell quiet. She felt the silence settle as she sipped, but knew it wouldn’t last. He finally stirred. ‘So, you’ll tell me about the dreams, Kerr?’

She swallowed, and deflected the minister with a question of her own: ‘Is she still here Mr Malon? I can’t feel her eyes on me.’ Her voice was still small, though the tea did help. It had too much honey though, so sweet it nearly made her cough.

The minister sighed, and squirmed. He was trying to keep his discomfort concealed, but Kerr was tuned to all the tells in his voice and bearing. He was seated just too far away to be considered polite, unaware that she could detect this as clearly as anyone. ‘We’ve shifted her… to the south transept.’

‘I knew she wasn’t looking. I remember standing before her, as a bairn.’

‘All the children do Kerr.’

‘I’m the only one that’s never seen her though.’

He paused, and shifted. She knew he’d been drinking wine the night before. She suspected they could all sense lies like that on him. But there was always more, she could feel it, like the turn of midnight. ‘Yes child, you’ve never seen her. Will you not tell me of the dreams though Kerr?’

‘I’d like to sit with her. I don’t like her eyes in my back ‘

‘In the transept?’

‘Aye.’

‘Saint’ Sigrid. The witch that would not burn. All the children went through their periods of fascination with the husk that hung in the church.

‘What’s it like?’ She’d been with Irish Ali. The week that Ali had started at their school.

‘I can’t say,’ Ali had said.

‘Yis must, I cannae see.’

‘Mammy needs me home Kerr.’ When Ali had started to run Kerr could hear it in her feet. They weren’t the steps of a child expected home. It was the flight of a bairn in terror. ‘Ali!’

And she’d been alone with Auld Sigrid, trying to recall all the words she’d ever heard tell of the crone. Words like: ‘black to the bone’. And ‘they say her heart still beats, once a year on Michaelmas’ …‘It were the heat, that bent her spine like that’ …‘Is it a demon Mammy?’ …‘You jist pipe doon an dinnae let the minister hear; auld Sigrid is the wan they couldnae burn, not properly’ …‘Think ae the suffering. Second only to the carpenter, that’s whit they say.’

Kerr had stood, not for the first time, unable to picture anything at all. The horror was simply too great a thing. She fancied the crone looked back at her though. She fancied Auld Sigrid knew just what she looked like.

It’d got to the point where she’d avoided the church completely. Uncle Joffrey would let her sit at the back on a Sunday, and at some point during the service she’d slip away, with Sigrid’s eyes in her back. Once her uncle had died, she simply stopped turning up at all, and nobody seemed to notice.

It tied in perfectly with the sleep walking. It only seemed natural that the blind girl who slept in the woods wouldn’t attend the church. She’d always been on the edges after all. And as the years took her into adulthood the distance between her and the community became a valley, the perfect environment to cut a burrow for one. The house and patch she’d inherited provided just enough to eat or barter. Her own goat milked just fine, and she seemed to be relatively lucky with her crops. Come nightfall, the woods provided her dreams.

‘It starts with the dog Father,’ Kerr began ‘It’s always the dog that wakes me, although I’m never quite awake.’

‘A local dog?’

‘Oh it isnae a dog that walks among us. This dog is a beastie fae the hills. The size ae a bullock, wi thick long hair… and the smell oan it Mr Malon! That wan dog smells like a pack ae sixty.’

‘And what does the dog have you do?’

‘Just the normal chores, collect firewood and a pail ae water from the spring.’

‘In your dreams? Well, who are you collecting them for?’

‘Ah’m yet tae meet them. The dog leads me all through the woodlands. Glades and thickets, some ae them I recognise, an some ae them seem tae have been stitched in from another place altogether.’

‘Stitched?’

‘Aye, like, Ah’ll be crossing Farmer Marrow’s patch, an it’ll be just like I mind ae it. But once I enter the glade at the furrow, the woodlands are… well they cannae be in oor world Father. The trees are too tall, staunin miles intae the sky. An…’

‘But child, how can you tell…? You’re blind.’

‘Auch, I can see in my dreams Mr Malon!’ Kerr sipped her tea, ‘are you not blind in yours?’

‘No Kerr. But you can see?’

‘Ah mean, I can always tell how the land lies whin Ah’ve walked it before. But in my sleep, the things I normally feel are there before me. I dinnae ken how they really look, they change fae dream tae dream, no colours or detail but everything is before me, just like it isnae whin I wake.’

She heard the holy man pause, no breath, no smell, no friction in the world at all. ‘And it gives you the impression of being in another land?’

‘It gives me the idea that I’m walking the land as it has been or wan day will be, like all of time squashed intae the same space.’

Father Malon said nothing, so she took another drink. It was a herbal brew. ‘Thank you for the tea Father.’

‘So this firewood and water, where do you… deliver it?’

‘Well I just follow the dog. We take different paths, and sometimes they’re familiar. But we always end up in the same place.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s far out in the hills Reverend, the field wi the bothy.’

‘Bothy?’

‘A wee stone hut.’

‘On the farmland?’

‘Aye, and the fields in my dreams are heavin’ wi crops. There ain’t no shortage ‘o wheat in my dreams Mister Malon.’

‘And you knock at this bothy I presume?’

‘Yes father, but I’ve never seen that door open. I’m always awake afore it does.’

‘In the Fallows?’

That caught her tongue, her blood became louder, and she skipped a little inside. Taking another sip, ‘you’ve seen me?’ Her voice was small again.

‘We’ve all seen you Kerr. And you know why that land remains fallow don’t you?’

She considered her words slowly, ‘It’s Sigrid’s?’

Malon didn’t reply. She felt his eyes on her though, and there was that taste, at her tonsils. Wild lettuce and nightshade. The bitter afterglow of opium in honey. She felt the cup warm between her palms, sniffed it again. How, much had she drunk?

‘You wish me to sleep Mr Malon?’

‘We must see to your condition child.’

‘But I don’t feel no mark on me.’

‘Well, I can hardly fetch you a mirror Kerr, can I?’

‘Okay, okay so? Ah’ll jist…’

‘Finish your tea Kerr.’

The church began to shrink and her cheeks flushed like embers.

And it was cold. The dog never usually howled come winter, but it was howling that night. She’d followed it into a world that bit hard enough to sparkle. The lashings of sleet, like a cat-o-nine. The huge drifts of power sweeping the valley, reshaping the earth until even those mighty oaks withdrew.

She’d supposed the journey in a blizzard like that would kill her, but the dog had her follow. Walking until her shins were raw and her toes were black. Up to the bothy door, where she’d knocked once more.

Part Two is Here (After October 31st 2026)

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“May I speak with Alexander?”

Now, as none of you know, that’s my middle name, so I already had a head start. Hmmmm…

“Speaking.”

“This is Jack Morgan, from London Publishing Limited.”

I’m afraid this is when I laughed quite loudly. I had no intention of humiliating anyone, it’s just that you can’t slip Peep Show past the Marlow kids.

My sister and I are aficionados of that particular sitcom. Some of you reading may also remember that main character Mark Corrigan’s seminal tome ‘Business Secrets of the Pharaohs’ was famously published by British London Ltd. I believe it cost him about five grand and they misspelled his name on the cover. Even Jez was cautious.

So, with that in mind, I heard my mouth say: “That doesn’t sound very official does it?” My tone was very particular.

“I can assure you we are very official. We are a limited company, registered at Companies House.” (Verbatim).

“Well, if you can limit your liability in the event of bankruptcy and register a name on the internet, I must be in safe hands.” I didn’t say that. I let him carry on.

He talked about ‘bundles’. He was very keen on his bundles. And what good value they were. I gave him four seconds.

“This is a sales call then?”

“No, this is a conference call.”

I should have put the phone down, but I’m hardwired to be polite. I suggested he could put it all in an email and I’d take a look.

Then I shook him off like an insect, and that was that.

Yesterday I got a text though. It was Jack! Shovelling out his bullshit via WhatsApp now. But I’d had wine this time, and wine makes me curious so I dug his pitch out my spam folder. It’s wonderful stuff…

Welcome to the art (art, yes) of publishing… It was truly a joy connecting with you (I was rude wasn’t I?) and I’m honoured to welcome you on… blah, blah, blah.

Then he moved on to his bundles. Bundle One costs £199 and includes editing, proofreading, formatting, distribution… etc.

But, Bundle Two (£1299) includes Professional Proofreading, Finest Formatting, Global Distribution. (All verbatim, even the capitalisation).

Bundle Three? Well that’s only for Elite Authors, so I can’t possibly go there.

This is fascinating, I thought. What a peculiar man. I think I’ll make friends.

Right now, as I type, I am texting him back: “Do you offer super high performance proofreading? And are you sure you can spell ALL the words, because some are quite tricky?”

I expect him to reply before I finish writing this article.*

I’ve thought about this a lot since then, about the world we’ve created. The world that took us millennia to build. About our most beloved institutions and what they really are.

I’m sure some of you bookworms know that the word logo, comes from the Greek logos. The title given to Jesus Christ as the living embodiment of God.

Logos? I make them.

Logos, copy, websites, business cards… I’ve spent years knocking them out. A logo is often one of the first expenses for fledgling ventures. You can spend a cool few million with some uppity Hoxtonites, or I’ll knock you one up for a few quid on a Sunday morning.

Logos have never been inaccessible by any means but at least the exchange of money and time was some kind of barrier to entry.

In 2026 Gemini can crank you out two dozen for free. If a veneer is all you’re after, you’ll be very very happy. And people love a veneer. A shine. They love it and they trust it. Business needs a veneer. It works on seals. Visual seals. Ones that suggests approval.

Jack’s logo is bad, but it’s a shiny enough seal for most and without it he’d have no roose at all.

I’m just as shifty though.

Look at this…

Looks like a real book doesn’t it? You could walk past that in Waterstones and think, ‘that’s a bit of me, I’ll take a look’ or ‘what a tawdry Sex Pistols rip off’ or ‘cousin Joe likes skeletons and I’ll miss my bus if I don’t buy something soon.’ You know, all the usual book shop brain work.

But it’s not a real book suckers! I did that in Photoshop. In under two hours. As for the words inside… I just made them all up.

And I’m just a man on the internet like our friend Jack Morgan (real name Sagar Kumar, lives in Southall but has a made up office in Covent Garden).

But it has to be said, my made up book looks better than this ‘real’ one after all…

So, what am I playing at? How dare I have the stones to come on the internet and sell you some made up words with a made up cover? And more to the point, is this going to make me some real money like Jack’s scam?

If I put my made up book on Amazon I’ll probably sell around six copies a week, if I’m lucky, plateauing at around two hundred copies. Six! Those aren’t Jack Morgan numbers. How will I afford my imaginary Covent Garden address?

On the other hand, if I attempt to go ‘traditional’ it will still be on my hard drive in eighteen months, very few publishers would put out a collection of short stories by a no mark like me anyway, and they may want to change the cover too (and the cover is an integral part I’m afraid. It’s a seal.)

And the traditional publishers are pulping made up books like mine everyday anyway. Most books simply don’t sell, or ever get read. (I can feel my brain sliding back into ‘fuck it’ mode.)

It’s a pickle isn’t it, this world that we’ve created; what has value and what doesn’t. It puts me in mind of another Peep Show quote… ‘is life just people going into rooms and saying things?’ (I’m paraphrasing, I’m a fan not a weirdo.)

I think it might be. Didn’t the Romans once use salt for currency after all?** What sucker thought that would be ok? What if it rains. It’s soluble in water! But once the world agrees that salt is money, then it suddenly is. Just like who is and who isn’t the living embodiment of God.

Mark was right. Once you get the room to agree your sayings become real by default. In that particular room.

Which brings me to this other book I have; an ink and paper copy; another ‘real’ book, that sums it up quite nicely — The Lesser Key of Solomon it’s called. You may have heard of it. It’s an anonymously authored grimoire fraudulently attributed to King Solomon in the 17th century. It’s full of seals and it tells you how to summon demons too. Demons? We all know they’re just made up don’t we? You’ve never seen a demon I assume. I haven’t either.

But, it says right here on page seven… ‘Concerning the objective reality of all ‘magical’ phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at least as real as many unquestioned facts of daily life.’

Then, ‘what is the cause of my illusion, of seeing a spirit in the triangle of art?’

And ‘the spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain. Their seals therefore represent methods of stimulating or regulating those particular spots (through the eye).’

So, demons do exist. But only in the mind. Phew. But you exist in your mind too, don’t you? If you are anywhere, you are in your mind. Always.

If Demons are in there with you, then they are as certain as your belief or disbelief in the human embodiment of God. Demons aren’t real until you summon them.

Maybe I’ve not given Jack Morgan enough credit here. Because Jack Morgan (an assumed name, like mine) believes he is a publisher doesn’t he? He tells his friends and strict Asian family he’s a publisher. Once removed, they question it even less. When people in his community start saying ‘Sagar’s in publishing’ then blow me down, Sagar’s in publishing! Nobody gives a shit if he’s good at it or not… Ha ha! It may well go on his tombstone. Go Sagar!

Demons aren’t real until you summon them! Demons aren’t real until you summon them! Demons aren’t real until you summon them!

So, back to my book, or yours. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘not worth the paper it’s printed on’? All I need to do is convince the room that it is. That my words and pictures, and my made up logo are very much worth the paper they’re printed on***. All I need to do is to get inside your room, and begin to summon things.

I’ve cracked it. I’ve bloody cracked it. I’ve made a book. A real actual book. And if you’ve read this far I may well send you a free copy sometime before the end of the year, that should prove it.

Demons aren’t real until you summon them. All stories are apocryphal until they aren’t and even anonymous grimoires have a way of getting read.

On that note I should warn you… Domesday is coming. And you might want to wear something nice.

A. X

*Jack has recommended the Elite Bundle.

**The Romans never used salt as currency, though many in the room still believe that they did.

*** And don’t get smart and bring up the E-book, every joke has its weak spot.

“They’re always ready. It’s all down to you. It’s a bit like coming out of anesthetic. Most people just…”

“…Arrive.”

There’s a clap, like thunder. Like being shaken awake in the passenger seat of a crashing car — and I’m back in my skin. Goose flesh, chills and anxiety. A yawn of nausea has me grab at the door frame and sit shakily on the kitchen bin. Alright. Deep breath. Keep yer sen breathing.

The thunder fades slowly. Like gargantuan gears easing to a stop. Until I realise, it was all just the clatter of her closing the door. Watching them leave through the frosted glass. Sliding home the bolt. She turns to me.

The Geordie lass.

The one who pointed me through that curtain.

Her name is Alice.

We’re at the flats on Regent’s Park Estate. Twelve floors up. Grasmere, the block was called. Number thirty two was abandoned and a group of working girls moved in.

“You okay?” she says. “You’re bleeding.”

I reach to my nose, drawing black bloody fingers. I’ve never felt my meat so keenly. Every joint, every muscle, every ligament; present and throbbing with life. “Aye,” I find myself talking. Words I’d never had reason to commit to memory, yet I relive every syllable. “Thanks for gettin’ rid of ‘em.”

“She’s got a silver tongue that one.” A second voice comes from the left. Also familiar. From the kitchen door I can see into the lounge.

Denise fancied herself as the madam, she was long past forty; decades of neglect carved into her like limestone ravines. She hadn’t brought any money in for months, since losing a foot to sepsis, but somehow she never went wanting. She’s got her stump up on the coffee table now. Concealed beneath the same yellowed sock she wore home from hospital, still mottled with discharge. On the arm of the chair she prepares a shot, adding a sprinkle of acid to the spoon.

“You rattling?” Alice speaks to me again.

“Yeah.”

“Manage to score yet?”

I shake my head.

“Howay, I’ll spot you a boot.”

She leads the way into the lounge. A mismatched three piece sweet is huddled round the table which is thick with the usual crack den detritus. Half burnt candles, foil, empty lighters, half drunk tins of White Lightning; cigarettes extinguished on the woodwork. There’s an electric fire in the corner but the flat is still freezing. The power’s wound down and nobody’ll put a coin in the meter until it’s absolutely necessary.

“Think I could’ve seen them off…” I hear myself say.

“Could you fuck! There ain’t seven stone of yer.” Janice cackles and starts cooking the muck brown gear, stirring in the filter with a matchstick.

“Divn’t be worryin’ about that pet. Bunch of animals. Beatin’ on addicts. Talk about a soft target.” Alice pulls a set of works from her back pocket. Then produces three bindles from her bra. She hands me the smallest.

Somewhere inside me there’s a flash of shame at being considered a soft target. But it’s too deep to truly register and totally eclipsed by the relief of holding that ten bag in my palm. “I’ll get you the money tomorrow,” I say.

She gives me a weak and knowing smile, we both know that’s bullshit.

Alice had only just started injecting and it made me quiver to watch her spike those pristine veins. Specially with Denise there, and her stump. I’d seen Denise squirt a hit behind an eyeball in the past, but now she goes in on the other foot. Between the toes.

My own gear goes on the foil.

“Waste of good drugs, burnin’ ‘em up like that.” Denise aims this at me but neither of us look up. She hits a vein and I get a lung full. That’s the only business of the day that either of us are interested in.

I don’t know how long the silence lasts. Houses like this have a curious atmosphere. Frequently mad. Sometimes violent. But when everyone scores at once they can slip into something almost approaching serenity.

There is one shred of normality in the room though, Alice keeps a pot plant. African Violet, I remember her telling me. She’s careful with the environment. Careful with the watering, and it sits there now on the mantle. In bloom. Like something out of poetry.

The dangerous blue of those petals doesn’t sit right with Alice slumped in her chair. A trickle of blood running down her inner arm and collecting in her palm. The fog parts enough for a picture, and I see myself dragging her up, dowsing her in water. Shaking some sense into her. Taking her, and me both, to somewhere safe and distant. Fresh cut grass and cool spring air. Soothing her through the sickness. Before this rot claims any more limbs.

The weight of our world holds me down though. A cold steel anchor tethered to my core. It’ll let me float here on the surface for an hour or two. To drift in the momentary sun. But I’ll wake at low tide, washed up on the shore with the rest of the flotsam. A lifetime of good intentions rendered meaningless by the terror of imminent withdrawal. Waiting for that tug from the puppet master.

When I do wake Alice is still unconscious but Denise’s chair is empty. There’s movement in the rooms beyond though. The tell-tale sounds of someone trying to stay quiet. That never means anything good.

I find her in the kitchen. There’s a beaten Lonsdale holdall on the table, but Denise is rooting about under the sink, pulling out a plastic bag. Fishing through the contents and granting me a clear view until she finally clocks me standing there.

“Fuck it!” She hisses. Keeping her voice down.

There’s a screw driver on the floor next to her. Recently used to prise up a floor board, but the look in her eyes tells me it can just as easily find a home in my throat. The bag in her hands is full of money.

“Look, I ain’t proud of myself.” She hauls herself up with her good leg. Reaching for a set of crutches. “But she’ll be fine.”

“Who?”

“Who d’yer think? Miss Tyneside in there. She’s been rakin’ it in. Nobody’ll give me a second look with ‘er on the beat. Not like this.” She points to where her foot isn’t.

Denise wobbles across the lino and dumps the cash in her holdall. It looks to be nearly a grand. Tens and twenties. Aside from the money, a carton of cigarettes and a tatty Woolworth’s picture frame the bag is empty.

“Three months, she’s been squirrelling this lot away. That’s all. She’ll be fine — but I ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

She peels three notes off the top and thrusts them at me.

“Be a shame if those tax men came back, eh?” The twenties quiver in her grip.

It’s pin-sharp the second time round. Sharp and shameless. I see myself point back at the money. Watching her eyes roll back like a shark as she hands over another sixty quid.

Then I just step aside.

“I ain’t proud of it.” She zips up her jacket and wobbles down the hall. “She’ll be fine. She’s better off without me… now she’s got the brat back.”

And that’s where I decouple. My former self lurches out of me, and I watch him limping after her. He pauses for a split second, taking a final look at Alice in her chair; and for once I see myself as the world sees me. Ragged. Dirty. Sick. As he makes to close the front door behind him, we both look up. Surprised by something long forgotten. The cry of a waking baby.

I’ve heard it said that babies have different cries for different needs. That each one activates a slightly different region in the most primitive parts of the mother’s brain. The cries I hear now come from several directions at once. Sharp, like an abandoned animal. Shooting through my jelly like a spike.

I move into the hall, flinging back the bedroom doors but all of them are empty.

No one told me she was a mam. No one told me.

“Alice… Alice!”

Back in the lounge I’m standing over her, reaching down to shake her awake but I can’t get a grip of her.

“Alice.”

Another wail has her shift in her sleep but she’s too far under to wake. And, I can’t even get my hands on her. Our fabrics seem incompatible as if her form displaces my own. And that’s when the room begins to tremble.

Concrete and steel throbs with static. The stale tower-block air becomes alive and hot, a sulphurous vapour; the structure starts to groan.

Something inside of me begins to spin while the room itself is fragmenting and drifting in the opposite direction. Furniture slides and tilts and the walls warp like canvas while smaller objects are whipped up towards the ceiling to orbit the space above Alice like celestial bodies.

And, at the centre of all things, she begins to decay. Bloating and bubbling. Bursting with flies and entwined by creepers. Vines and nettles tangle and knit her, while the skin begins to blacken and dry. The carpet beneath me dissolves to coarse stony ground and the walls are now trees. Through it all, Alice looks back at me. Just a rictus. Entombed by foliage at the base of a towering oak.

I’m left in the woodlands beneath the morning sky, falling to my knees and bringing up a violent burst of hot green bile.

“You alright there son?”

There’s a familiar grip on my arm and the bouncer guides me up.

“What have you done to her?” I grab him by the jacket. “What have you done?” Then I’m bent double again, heaving out another mouthful.

“It’s all part of the process.”

“You killed her.”

“She’s been dead for years now lad. Planetary years. Lying right where you see her now.”

“What?”

“She had her ticket home and everything.” The avatar leans forward and takes something from the body. He hands it to me. A slip of paper, still pristine; a National Express ticket; Victoria to Gallowgate. It’s dated 1996. “What is it they say — with friends like that, who needs enemies?”

“I never knew she had a kid.”

“Place in rehab waiting for her an’ all. Her cousin was happy to take the child. But once she realised that you two had cleaned her out she decided to work the street some more.”

“So how did she end up here?”

“Come on son. You’ve seen ‘em. The black eyes and split lips these girls turn up with. Three days later someone drove her out here and did her with a claw hammer.”

My body, if it still classes as a body, flushes hot and cold. Creeping with sickness while something inside me still spins. Whatever world this is I know it’s not my own.

“Where are we?”

“Epping Forest. Not the place as you understand it, more of an echo. A temporary simulation, but it’s totally accurate”, he replies. “We’re not too far from the main road actually. You’d think someone would’ve found her by now, but there you go.”

I hand the ticket back to him, but he takes it and slips it into my top pocket. I’m still wearing the smart gear from earlier, but the trousers are spattered with vomit and the shirt is stuck to me by a layer of junk sweat.

“So this is it? The purging or whatever.” I ask.

“‘Fraid not son. That takes place back in the physical. It’s the only place your actions have any real consequence. The entire experience is the purging, you ever wondered why it’s so fucked up down there? It’s all part of the process.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

He holds out his open palm, revealing a tiny orange pill. “Just to balance the humours.”

It vanishes behind my tonsils with a fizz.

…you said it’s all down hill. That we’re all fucked?

“…I said it’s the end of an era.”

There’s a horizon now. One that can’t be there. London, Newcastle, Glasgow; tangled and sprouting like teeth on the vanishing point. Baroque twisted spires, corkscrews of plate glass and steel. Stems that wriggle soft below the sewers, yet grow hard under sunlight. Achievements, word, and towers. Tearing skyward like forests. Groaning like a forge in winter. Thickening as scar tissue. Yet, always reaching. Straining, and splintering, fingers at the sun. Never high enough. Never deep enough. Until they rent like eternal chimneys and release the souls as steam.

“Technology is knitting you together, stripping back your identities,

bringing you closer to your final state…”

What’s that?

The eruption is like a geezer. A reptilian hiss that sends a fear through my bones, so precise and finely tuned that it makes junk sickness feel like hay fever. But only for a second. Only a season.

“As an experience of one, the age of the individual is ending;

not that they won’t fight like hell before it’s over… Before they dissolve.”

With the souls released it quietens. And for a moment, or a procession of moons, they float. The colours of mothers and the hues of fathers swirl like ink in oil. Like a pot head’s lava lamp. Like the fluids of reason. Tears of purpose. The jelly that soothes the mechanism.

“What did you feel when you heard that baby cry?”

…Pain

“Exactly, before entropy there is only the law of attraction.

The flesh is one. The pain is one.”

And the sky begins to sing. Blue notes harmonise with black. Shaman, choirs, grass roots and industry, their rhythms move in unison and the vapour is released like perfume; filling me like a newborn with the treacherous scent of poppies.

And I’m her in the weeds, cold and dry. I’m her in the theatre, as the bone saw cuts it loose. I’m every one of those dancers, sucked backwards through the tree, and up into the heart-roots; ‘till I’m me on my cross again. Arms yanked akimbo, hands spread wide for heaven, forever expecting nails.

…And where did she end up, Alice’s baby?

“Probably bouncing around the care system, not my department son. Sounds like something you could find out though, eh?”

Mebe.

“…There’s no limit to how many times we can purge you.

But you should know, it gets harder every time.”

Heavy weather dwindles to a breeze; and I remain as a mere vibration until I feel the geometry click in. A symmetrical mechanism, locked back into the cycle, taught enough now to tug at my wires and crack my neck back with a gasp.

I peel my face from the mattress. The smell of damp has crawled right inside of me and the lamp has burned itself dry. A streak of dawn illuminates the warehouse stairwell and I don’t know how long that light just hovers; but eventually, from somewhere above, somewhere in the fire, comes the faint, yet undeniable sound of an infant crying.

It hurts to sit up. Alright son, it’s just the drugs, just a dose of the heebies… It hurts to stand. It hurts me to climb the stairs. Nothing new, nothing at all… But something is new. Keep yer sen moving lad. Left right left. Because while my frame aches with the cold, and my sciatica slows me, and my blisters bite like normal there is something missing; like a layer of me has been stripped back to the quick. A layer of dirt.

As I break free into the morning, and leave the labyrinth behind it dawns. The chills, the nausea, the sweat and the migraine; and the streaming wet eyes that have marked my every morning since I can remember are, just not there. Like a cable has slackened, and the unthinkable, the impossible, and the terminal has finally come to pass. The eel has stopped squirming.

It’s a cold hard Sabbath out here and the only thing that makes sense is to walk. Just walk and walk into the grind of traffic while I mull through the scraps of violet and frankincense that linger from the night before; nothing will settle though.

Opposite Victoria, the sky above the station is clear save for one low hanging cloud; leaden and black like it’s defying the maker that painted it. I perch on a wall and watch, watch the morning turn and revolve and stretch and weather until that last cloud dissipates, leaving a vast sweep of grey that is yet to be marked.

In the distance I hear the infant again. That particular cry, tuned to the mother and now to a frequency inside me that wasn’t there yesterday.

This time, the weight of consequence has me cry too. It lasts for sometime.

I must have come out in an adjoining property, a massive concrete cathedral, so big I can’t see the roof and the far end is just a hollow of black.

A crowd is growing, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. Hard to say in a space like this. They’re clustered around another set of speakers. Great hulking monoliths. Black crystal totems.

I’m normally one to avoid the herd, but pack curiosity gets the better of me and I find myself floating over to join them. The eerie ambient tones get louder. Ghostly muzak. Bland and incorporeal, like a graveyard breeze.

Nobody speaks. Nobody looks at me. They don’t even look at each other. They’re just staring up at the speakers, swaying in anticipation; hands in the air with vacant glassy eyes.

The music proper kicks in as a low rumbling bass that seems to come from the ground beneath us. The punters start to punch the air in time to the progression as I start to feel sick again and it only gets worse once the synth erupts. It’s a twisting, reptile melody. Snaking over and under, in and out, never quite the same; like it’s torn free of the octave and is hitting sharp cosmic notes we were never meant to hear. The crowd starts to bounce with the drums. Flinging themselves into impossible geometries. Euphoric gurning skulls. Limbs lost to the beat like it’s got them on wires.

A blood red laser prowls above. Violet strobes cutting us to snickets.

And that’s when the first one starts to float.

I feel my heckles rise with him, sparks of static sprouting up my spine as I see him leave the floor completely. Then a second, and a third. Still dancing, still rising. And I suddenly feel like I’m sinking, like the ground’s not there. When I look down, I can’t see my feet. Just a pool of light that phases colour in time to the music.

I need to get out of here, but there’re hundreds of ‘em now; clamouring to the dance floor like fleas. An interminable sea of pulsing ravers. All of them twitching to the puppet master, locked to the groove, or shooting for the skies like waterfalls in reverse.

I scream the only word that makes any sense: “Help.”

And with that he’s there, hands on my shoulders. A hard male grip. The soul and saviour, harrowing the throng. Floating me to the edge of the cavern without time or friction.

He dumps me into a moulded plastic chair, “you alright mate? Nearly lost you in there.” He’s squat and bullish, with a neck that’s thicker than my thigh and a black nylon bomber. Typical bouncer breed. “Don’t think you’re ready for that yet.”

“There’s people flying out there!” I think I’ve yelled it, but my words come out hoarse and reedy.

“Takes a bit of getting used to don’t it? Whoever let you in there really shouldn’t have.”

“What the bloody hell’s goin’ on?”

“Dance of the Monad.” He says it in a matter of fact sort of way, like I should know what the fuck he means. “No place for you in that condition.”

“What condition?”

“Well, you’re still alive ain’t yer?”

I make to stand; to square up to the chump, eyes out for an exit; but another wave of dizziness grabs me by the stones and I find myself slumping backwards, my mouth filling with spit, skin simmering to a flush.

A girl floats past in a wedding dress, a psychochemical grin and a Mohawk; behind her a male swimsuit model is waltzing with an Indian lass in a sari, while a young lad in West Ham colours looks on; idly tearing at a stick of candyfloss.

I throw my head between my knees, retching, and heaving, and churning up nothing but a puff of glitter.

And then my legs aren’t mine either.

I snap to my feet now, looking down at the spotless Levis and Adidas Gazelles that have replaced my piss-wizened combats and dog-eared safety boots.

I turn to the bouncer in earnest now: “C’mon pal, really, what the fuck is going on?”

“Yeah, it’s always a shock.” He places a hand on my shoulder and somehow it calms me. “In the afterlife, people tend to present as their best selves, from the time of life they were happiest. Nice enough idea but it ain’t always practical.”

He nods toward an old fella, flinging himself along on a pair of crutches, naked save for a grungy looking dressing gown — “Some people’ve had it hard of course, and others, well…” He points to a figure in the corner wrapped head to toe in barbed wire, “…they get a bit kinky… we get all sorts, that’s what I’m trying to say son. Looks like you got off lightly. Very smart. You’d be about seventeen, eighteen; at your happiest?”

And he’s right, I recognise the clobber now. I bought it for my seventeenth. Three weeks before my first ever puff of gear. It’s what he’s said that hits hardest though — “Afterlife?”

There’s a crackle, a hiss and a garbled burst of chatter, and the bouncer’s pulled a radio from his waist, thumb on the button.

“Alright bruv? Yeah that’s right… got a warmheart in arena six… well I don’t know how he got in… probably in the middle of an overdose or something.”

He turns to me, and asks, in the most non-judgemental way I’ve ever been asked: “You a junky pal?”

It seems wise to nod. He’s back to the radio. “Where am I takin’ him then… Porticus? Right you are.” He turns back to me, “sorry about that son.”

“Am I in, yer know?”

“Go on, it’ll do you good to say it…”

“Hell?”

“Limbo mate.”

He leads me to the very edge of the dance floor, behind a velvet rope, and onwards, following the huge sweeping arc of the room. “Truth be told, you’re a half level above Limbo. A semi-permeable state. Kind of a holding pen.” He sweeps his arm across the dance floor. “Used to be quiet up here, you’d only get in through meditation, magic or some kind of accident that left you in the appropriate state. Got a little busier in the gin palace days. Flappers started showing up in the twenties, then jazz cats. Big boom in the sixties — psychedelics and all that — but since Acid House kicked in it’s just gone mental. Better living through chemistry, that’s what they say ain’t it? Well it don’t just affect the living.”

My legs start to wobble again and he grabs me by the shoulder. I try to take in the spectacle before me — it truly is an arena, bigger than at first sight, but also seems to shift in size with the focus of my eyes. The music is at once earth-shattering, but not loud enough to smother our voices. From the zenith, that blood red laser still prowls and every so often a dancer shoots skyward, dissolving into the heavens.

“What are they doing?” I ask him.

“Fastest way out pal. Straight into eternity. The Monad seems to favour the truly euphoric. I’m talking your die-hard psychonauts, philosophers, true travellers; the single of mind. Most of ‘em will just fade back into the physical or wander off to find their way downstairs.”

“Oh come on pal… you sure you’re not havin’ us on?” I reply. “How do I know, I’m not dreaming all this? Dance music in limbo? Sounds a bit loopy, like.”

“Like I said, it’s a semi-permeable state. The physical world bleeds right in. On top of that everyone brings their own baggage, what you see in here is different to the next fella. Same principle of course, but you lot bring the details with you. Come on, I’ve got to get you to the waiting room.”

He walks on, leaving me to follow. “What I do know is that it’s an end of an era out there. The world is accumulating. Bursting its belt loops. High on its own supply. Megabytes are turning to gigabytes, the stories have started writing themselves but no one’s reading any more. It’s down hill from now, mark my words…” He points to the throng. “What is it they say — time to party like it’s 1999? That’s all well and good but we’ll be feeling it come the morning.”

“It is 1999.”

“Well then, we’re right on schedule. Down hill from here son, mark my words.”

“You don’t talk like a bouncer you know.”

“Never said I was. I’m an avatar. I appear to you in a way that you’ll understand… to keep you comfortable — this is your experience, not mine. You might well be dreaming it, to address your point. Don’t make it any less real though, eh?”

We reach a doorway, right opposite the speakers on the far side which now appear like tower blocks on a horizon. The bouncer taps a code into an elevator panel, then stands well back.

“Fuck me.” I murmur, trying to make sense of, something. Just one little thing. “Fuck me, fuck me.” There’s a ballerina at the edge of the dance, locked into a pirouette so fast and tight and perfect that it takes her right off her feet, right up into the void as a sheet of hot nuclear sparks. “This Monad…?”

“An indivisible entity of creation,” he begins. “The parent company… your Jehovah, your Allah, or your thunder god for that matter — they’re all franchises. Trimmings, from the same plant if you like. Probably best not to mention it mind, they get a bit precious… All makin’ sense now?”

“No.”

The elevator doors slide back with a shimmer.

“After you son.”

The journey is instant. I don’t know if we’ve gone up or down, left or right, but we emerge in a new, more serene enclosure.

It reminds me of an airport, JFK or suchlike, out of the films. Windows over the runway, that sort of deal. Except this place is a thousand times the size.

“You might as well take a look now you’re here.” The bouncer walks us over to the window. It’s a hundred foot high at least, one continuous crystal circle, miles of it; but like everything round here it changes in scale as we get close. I look down down into a perfectly symmetrical canyon. Halfway down is more glass, a dome that encases whatever is at the bottom and there seems to be a thunder storm below it. Writhing purple hurricanes and flashes of fire, exploding like spiderwebs against the glass.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the city,” the bouncer replies. “Level six and lower, that’s where it gets… well, Biblical I ‘spose. The dome’s new though, health and safety like.”

“Where’s, yer know, the nice bit?” I ask

“The gardens?” He points skyward. “They’re up there. Way up there. The divide’s never been so big. It’s always been a gated community, but the busier it gets down here the more they keep to themselves. C’mon, we better take a seat.”

The circumference of the circle is lined with thousands of chairs, soft cream velvet numbers with their backs to the glass, and each pair of seats is lit by a mellow frosted globe that floats above them. Ten meters down, one starts to flash.

It feels good to sit down again. In fact, I’ve not felt this well for years. Or this young. In spite of everything my head feels lucid, and my sciatica’s cleared up and all. “Why is it empty? With all this furniture.”

“Oh most of these seats are taken, but with you being a warmheart and all, you can’t see ‘em like you can upstairs. The deeper you go, the greater the separation between body and soul. You’ll only start to see ‘em if you cross over.”

“Fuck me,” I almost want to laugh, “how did I end up like this?”

“Coma, maybe. Sudden paralysis. Brain damage is an option, we had one lady recently, her brain had started to rot, and…”

“It was more of a rhetorical question.”

“Alright sparky… no need to interrupt. My guess is an overdose, given your interests.”

“They’re gonna let me out though, right?”

“Depends what happens behind your door.”

“What door?”

“Porticus Purgatorio. They all get purged, son. Not really ideal for the living but it’s the only way out for warmhearts. Nothing’s ever perfect eh?”

“Not sure I like the sound of that.”

“One thing I can promise you, it’s no worse than what you’ve put yourself through out there.”

I stretch back in my seat. Perfectly at ease. I can still feel my body, but it has never felt so inconsequential. The very ideas of sickness and pain; or fatigue and hunger; or any other physical restrictions are hard to reconcile. Like trying to picture someone else’s dream. As I sit there though, something starts to niggle.

“Look,” I say. “I don’t want to sound rude here but the thing is, what’s bugging me, is that I don’t believe in any of this. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in this Monad.”

“Perhaps I’ve not explained myself. The Monad isn’t a God. It doesn’t have an identity, cause it don’t need one. Whether you believe or not is irrelevant. It just is. I think what you’re really asking is why this all seems a bit Christian, when you are not?”

“Aye, that’s about right.”

“Well, have you ever had any personal beliefs of what the afterlife is like?”

“No.”

“So you’ve inherited the closest cultural approximation. Keep tellin’ you, it’s different for everyone. The details are fluid. And when you do pass over, the longer you’re here the more nebulous it gets anyway. We’ve got souls here that are thousands of years old. Their experiences can’t even be described as human any more, maybe not even as experience. But we can’t just be dumping conscious entities into eternity willy nilly. A few of ‘em make the jump just like that, as you’ve seen. But most folk need to be introduced slowly.”

“But you mentioned purgatory, that’s Catholic for sure.”

“It’s just an expression. There’s been a lot of interaction with this place and yours over the years, and some of you lads have taken ideas back with you. You just have a very literal way of understanding them.”

I suddenly realise how quiet it is. Not the creepy, hollow silence you usually get in big empty spaces, just a perfect level of still. Like the atmosphere itself has been finely tuned. I’ve spent most my adult life chasing peace and quiet like this. That elusive nod you get on your first few puffs of brown, not asleep, not awake, just momentarily free from the relentless clutch of your own meat. Never to be repeated of course, but don’t we love to try.

“How long do we wait then?”

“Time ain’t a thing down here son. I know it still feels like it for you, but it’s of no consequence at all.”

“Oh come on, ball park figure.”

“Well to put it into context I’d say we’ve been sitting down for about twelve years now, physical years that is, at a guess. It’s not really my area mate.”

“Twelve years? Bollocks.”

“I’ve had people sit here for thousands before now, the experience is no different.”

“So how will I know when they’re ready for me?”

“They’re always ready son. It’s all down to you. It’s a bit like coming out of anesthetic. Most people just…”

“…Arrive.”

There’s a clap, like thunder. Distant but deep. Like being shaken awake in the passenger seat of a crashing car — and I’m back in my earthly body. Goose flesh, chills and anxiety. A yawn of nausea has me grab at the door frame and sit shakily on the kitchen bin. Alright. Deep breath. Keep yer sen breathing…

Next: Porticus Purgatorio. (There ain’t nothin’ as scary as real life.)

Thanks for reading, you inconsequential bag of gristle. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.

I’m bailed at 2.08am, to a sharp November night and a healthy helping of sweet fuck all. I weren’t expecting bail at all to be fair, so you could call that a result. You’re always buzzing to get out the cells when you’re rattling, but the reality of being homeless at winter hits pretty hard once you’re back on the streets. If it weren’t for the crippling need for gear, squirming in my pit like some mad black eel, I’d’ve tried to blag a few hours longer in the cells. Told ‘em I was ill or suchlike. Least it’s not snowing in there.

I’ve got £1.39, a Bic lighter, three Mayfair and a ball of tinfoil. That’s me against the world. There’s no place to earn at this time of night and no doors I can knock on this side of the river; the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of my little stash in Kennington. If the squirrels haven’t got to it first. Get yer sen movin’ lad. Left right left. Them nuts won’t stay buried all winter.

I power over Vauxhall bridge to a face full of sleet and the London architecture opens up around me like an evil fairy kingdom. Lights burn left and right along the river, more so than usual with Christmas approaching. A trio of night buses storms past; rumbling me and rattling me, and sending a spike of cramp shooting through my bowels. A halogen crucifix glows beneath a distant spire; lopsided and flickering, like magic gone bad.

I’m grinding on past MI6 and towards The Oval. Icy sweat searing itself into my spine. Getting close now, and I’m picturing a whole host of ways my stash could’ve been found. Picked over by rats; party rats with murder on the mind. Jacked by magpies; beaky choring bastards that they are. Found by kids is most likely. I’d feel bad about that. And the worse, the very fuckin’ worst — claimed by other junkies. Subhuman gutter-scum having a day off on my percy. My hard earned brown. My fuckin’ gear. Fuck that! Get yer sen up that road, yer scabby necked needle freaks.

I can see the tree about thirty meters down Durham and I’m into a sprint, hacking back the frost with raw, saw-dust lungs. My body’s begging to rest but I’m up the fence and into the branches like a night cat — greedy fingers patting down the crevices; pulling at the bark and twigs; fat moist tufts of moss — I’m fearing the worst, until I picture myself three nights before. I haven’t climbed high enough yet.

I grapple my way up to the bows above and the first thing I touch is cold wet polythene. I snatch it up and finger the contents. A tight little ball. Hard and firm. My little ball. A hundred score of bindles and rocks. Yessssss! ‘Ave that needle freaks; get yer selves yer own fuckin’ score. I’m back down that tree like a cheetah, punching the air with a whoop for the gods and a little dance of victory. King of Jungle. The lion roars tonight.

In the distance I hear drums.

It’s a non residential area and my senses tell me I’m alone so I get a little boot in, right there under the lamppost. The metallic earthy vapour works its voodoo in seconds, toning my muscles and warming my toes. Angry reds turn to homely orange. The freezing caustic air becomes mountain fresh. And the music gets louder. I find myself nodding in time with the beat. I can feel it in the concrete.

A mini-cab scoots up across the street and a posse of alternative types spill out onto the curb. White-boy dreads and skunk weed slouches. They slip the man his tenner and start walking north. The cab makes a u-turn and fades back into the London shimmer.

It’s starting to snow with purpose now. Great fat flakes of it. It’s too parky to bed down in a doorway and I’m too knackered to hoof it back north. I slide off my perch, limber with the drugs now, and follow the lads. They don’t get far. One of ‘em swings left into a doorway releasing an amber smokey glow and a savage burst of techno. There’s a party going on, a monster little rave by the sounds of it.

I pick up the pace, catching them up just as the door swings shut. Ganja and back sweat hang in the air. In fer a penny son. In fer a penny. I swing back the heavy warehouse door, blinded by the orange neon glare.

“It’s a pound mate.”

“Eh?” A face is leerin’ back at me, big lad with tribal earlobes, grinding away on his own back teeth.

“Pound to get in after two.” He jerks in time with the kick drum and holds out a meaty tattooed palm.

I take a squiz down the street. It’s cold down there; toasty hot behind that door. So I slip the man my nugget and he waves me on. Boogie fuckin’ wonderland pal.

A narrow plaster corridor leads me in, getting darker as I leave the doorman behind. Darker, warmer, louder. A second door waits at the end. I edge it back slowly and feel the beast awaken.

The sound system is right inside. A nine foot stack of industrial boom cubes and the bass notes go straight for my giblets. It’s back splitting, gristle crunching, colostomy bursting, fuck-you hardcore music. To be fair I wouldn’t really have a clue whether it’s ‘hardcore’ or ‘hard house’ or ‘half fucking price at Homebase’. I haven’t bought a record since I was seventeen. My pharmaceutical budget doesn’t stretch to light entertainment. Whatever you call it, the goon squad on the dance floor are mesmerised. Lured to the DJ like fatty cells round a stuttering violent heart.

I skirt the edges, keeping to the shadows. The soiled parka I boosted out of Primark in the summer marks me out as a rough sleeper in any crowd, and doesn’t fit with the crusty Converse contingent. There’s crusty by design and crusty by necessity. I’d give my hind teeth for a hot shower of a morning, the speed freaks in here wear their dandruff like a badge of honour. I’ve nearly made it to the doors at the back when a lad with pigtails and a snotty looking nose ring lumbers out the crowd and thrusts his spliff at me.

“Here you go mate.”

You’d think that opium and weed would be perfect bedfellows but I don’t agree. Skunk gives the skag an introspective, psychotic edge; and the last thing you want on the nod is to be questioning your life choices. That way be dragons. I take a pissy little wheeze on the joint and hand it back.

“Bangin’ in here isn’t it?” He says.

“It’s banging alright. What d’yer call it? The music, like?”

“Gabber.”

“Right.”

Now if my chemistry serves, the GABAA receptors are what give you a buzz off of ten milligram blues. Positive allosteric modulation. A nice mellow memory loss to get you through a rattle. The jackbooted dirge coming from the speakers has all the sedative qualities of a nail bomb.

“I’m more of a Phil Collins man m’self.” I say.

“What?”

I make for the door.

The old warehouse has been gutted of electrics long ago and the squatters have wired in their own supply; dim forty watt bulbs, strung together like oversized fairy lights.

Beyond the first dance floor is a gloomy little chill out space; tight groups of ravers huddle round their smokes. There’s a bubble machine on the go and one lassy’s in a world of her own, chasing each one down like a kitten; while a lad in Day-Glo warpaint is having a party for one, stomping out his moves like a psych-ward Travolta.

I hustle through the punters as politely as I can and make for a stairwell at the end of the passage. The ascending stairs have been demolished leaving a wide empty shaft that exposes the night sky at its very top.

Down it is then.

The floor below is stripped of all its dividing walls leaving a cavernous room that must take up the entire footprint of the building. Another sound system dominates the far corner but there’s plenty of shadows round the edges.

I find myself a gloomy looking nook away from the crowd and hunker down for another crafty boot. Bootsy Collins that’s me… Do you feel good? I feel alright. I chase that serpent home and lie back against the wall, melting into the concrete like its eiderdown. Two nights in the cells has taken its toll and it’s not long before I’m nodding along to the natty dread bass line in my sleep.

“You can’t do that in here…”

I come around to a young girl yelling in my face

“What?”

“Skag. No skag in here.” She’s the traveller type. Regulation beads, dreadlocks and combat boots. If it doesn’t come in tye-dye she won’t be wearing it.

I look down. I’ve still got my burnt foil and tooter on display.

“I don’t use needles,” I find myself blurting. It sounds immediately feeble on my lips. My not using needles may well be a source of personal pride considering the circles I move in, but it’s of no interest to this busy body.

“You’re bringing the vibe down.”

“For fuck’s sake, everyone in here’s on drugs.”

“No heroin. No rocks.” She jabs the air with a horny talon.

“Says who?”

“We do have security you know.” Her pupils are like dinner plates and she’s scratching away at herself; angry red psoriasis burnt into her forearms. Acid casualty. They’re always the worse. They’re the Jehova’s Witness’ of the drug community. Seem to think they’ve got a direct line to God, and that you can’t wait to hear all about it. That’s the problem with hippy free-for-alls though. You’re only free to obey all the rules. Turn on, tune in, and toe the party line. Sieg heil mein DJ.

“What’s happening Flora?” A bony lad is at her arm. A Dickensian topper and cheese cloth robes; a spiteful little roll-up jammed into his ginger beard. “Hey, that’s not cool man… brown’s for clowns.” He points at my gear then back at me, left eye poleaxed by whatever hooch is his drug of choice.

“Bloody junkies get everywhere.” Flora continues.

“Worse than foxes man.”

“Least foxes shit in the woods.”

I drag myself up to a stagger and leave the Hitler Youth to their pow-wow, sliding back into the gloom and towards the stairwell.

The Rastas on the decks have been replaced by a mousy looking kid with a mohawk, churning out another industrial stomp; cowbells, bleeps and farts. The sound of a counter-culture digesting its own arsehole. Whatever you call it, it’s giving me a headache. I put myself in mind of my my own mam, screaming at my brother to turn his Buzzcocks record down. Sounds like someone’s digging a flyover up there.

I pause at the stairwell. It’s dark down there, save for a faint red glow at the very bottom. A spooky little den, but at least it’ll be quieter. I’m two steps down when I hear the Fagan looking fella yell: “Hey, not down there man… It’s not safe.”

“Call the council then. Get ‘em to put down some cones.” He doesn’t hear me over the music, and I don’t hang around to repeat myself.

The steps are black and wet. I follow the glow to the basement.

I’m greeted by a wall of graffiti. Acid House smileys, ganja leaves and a giant ‘Property is Theft’ slogan, done in up in neon psychedelic swirls. Given that I’m on the rob all day every day, and I don’t even own a change of trousers I’d have to respectfully disagree.

But the basement is empty like I’d hoped. Even better, there’s a tattered old mattress; looks dry and all. An oil lamp is burning in a distant corner, but whoever’s been crashing here is no longer home. I take the mattress and drag it into the shadows, out of sight but with a clear view of the stairs.

The gear’s weighing me down now. It’s strong stuff for once. After weeks of nowt but bash it’s gouching me out a treat, so I hunker in. Face down. Sparko. Kick drums lurching through my dreams like an embolism. Sleeping the rest of the wicked.

When I wake, it’s like I haven’t.

I open my eyes but still can’t see. I try to roll over but my spine won’t work. I reach to my face but can’t feel my fingers; can’t feel my nose. There is nothing. I’m fighting my body, trying to shake it loose, shake myself free, scrambling to my feet and screaming for breath and…

Then I’m just there. Standing in the basement, right where I should have been all along. I’m dizzy, with a queasy feeling deep in my colon. That’s nothing new though. A dodgy cut in the gear givin’ me the heebie-jeebies. Nothing new at all son, get yer sen walkin’ and yer’ll be fine.

I feel like I’ve slept for days. The room’s just like it was except the sound systems above me are silent now. Must be light out, but the sun’s of no concern down here. There’s a scent in the air, not quite weed smoke, more like incense. Like at Aunty Pat’s funeral mass.

The oil lamp’s still burning in a distant corner. I find myself drawn to it but my legs are like water; feet heavy, like bags of sodden sand. But once I get up momentum I seem to float across the cavernous space at high speed. Keep yer wits lad. It’s just the drugs. Just the drugs.

The room looks bigger from here. The graffiti wall at the entrance seems lost in a haze, like it’s shimmering beyond some vast frozen lake.

Up close I can see the lamp is set into the wall. A little brick archway like you’d find in a church. And under the glow there’s a door to the left. Another arched affair. Old London bricks, ancient and crumbling. Whole place must be built on Victorian ruins. I pop my nut in without thinking twice.

“Awreet pet? Here for the after-party?”

She’s a sketchy little waif. Geordie. Draped over an orange plastic chair. Joggy bottoms and track marks.

“What?” I can’t quite see her face in the shadows but she’s familiar somehow.

“You look like you could do with a bit of a scrub.”

“Right, ‘spose… do I know you?”

“Alice.”

“Right.” I don’t recall an Alice. That’s not saying much though. I’ve got a memory like a loose bladder. There’s something in her eyes. Whatever it is, she doesn’t look like one of the punters from the rave. Cut from different fibre. Hasn’t got the well-to-do contacts once all that hemp starts to chafe.

“Open wide.” She’s up off her chair and holding out a tablet and I’m sticking out my tongue like an obedient schoolboy. The orange pill settles, then vanishes with a fizz behind my tonsils.

“Just to balance the humours, like.” She gives me a grin, then slaps me on the shoulder. “Howay man. Be startin’ soon.” She points down the corridor towards a red velour curtain.

“You not coming?” I ask.

“I’ve seen it all before.”

She snaps a packet of Rothmans from her knicker elastic and takes one in her teeth. “Howay!”

Part Two teaser…

The music kicks in as a low rumbling bass that seems to come from the ground beneath us, and the punters start to punch the air in time to the progression. I start to feel sick again and it only gets worse once the synth erupts. It’s a twisting, reptile melody. Snaking over and under, in and out, never quite the same; like it’s torn free of the octave and is hitting sharp cosmic notes we were never meant to hear. The crowd starts to bounce with the drums. Flinging themselves into impossible geometries. Euphoric gurning skulls. Limbs lost to the beat like it’s got them on wires.

A blood red laser prowls above. Violet strobes cutting us to snickets.

And that’s when the first one starts to float.

Over the weekend though I did dream of an actual concept. One that makes some kind of sense. Upon developing it I decided it would need a glossary…

This will mean nothing to any of you for quite sometime, I haven’t written the story yet. All I’ll say is, it involves monks, meatworks and mystic machines.

(Edit: I’ve spelled useful wrong. I got Brarty Brag right though.)

The basic image was put together by me in Illustrator (I’m lucky to have some design skills and enough time on my hands), then I dumped it into Gemini and asked it to do some weathering. It came out excellent first time. Good work Gemini.

Now, I have enough knowledge to do that weathering myself in Adobe, but I can tell you it would take much much longer than the half minute Gemini took.

Is this my work? Yes, mostly. Everything creative was done by me. Gemini took care of some grunt work. I think this could be a perfectly valid way for designers to incorporate AI.

Except they probably won’t exist soon. I know I don’t.

Using AI like this seems to be simply a leg up, akin to the progression that Photoshop gave us in the nineties. Obviously AI needs to be told when to stop though. That’s down to you as the designer (and how honest you want to be with your clients, and the rest of us).

I’ll never use AI to create the core of a design. But I’m happy to use it for heavy lifting.

When it comes to writing though I am much more militant. No Claude, you can’t read it, you can’t comment on it, you can’t make suggestions, you can’t even spell check it. You are wires. They’re my words and I’ll die on the hill for them.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

A new story (not Dust Brothers) will be with you by the weekend. We’re gonna party like it’s 1999…

A.

The hypnotic works quickly. The dose is high. Four hours later I am still staring at the wall. Two hours after that, I notice an armed security has been posted just outside my door.

On Saturday evening I am moved to the toning lab. A twenty foot steel box room below the hospital where my augmented brain can interface with a Min05 mainframe at zero latency. Just me and the data. Ninety two yottabytes of the hard stuff.

There’s a universe down here. The scrapings from a billion skulls, released from its biology and boxed up nice and tight. The perfect place for a weekend break. Cheap holidays in other people’s memories.

It’s also where the lawyers emerge. They get two hours a week.

Mortimer is right on time, as usual, leaking yellow sweat into his polyester collar. It’s always hot this close to the machine, but he never removes his jacket. He holds out a pad for my consent.

“How we doin’ Jack?” He’s a wiry Yank, all sinew and sarcasm. You can tell the man loves his job. The cut and thrust, the pluck and gut. It’s all theatrics of course as Psychadine’s liturgy and defence procedures are entirely automated. But Mortimer’s the face, for now at least — “Anything shake loose in the week?”

“You mean…?”

“You know what I mean Jack.”

“No.”

“So, Jack don’t remember Jack?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Mortimer retrieves a silver flask from his suit, takes a pull — “Ignore me Jack it’s been a long day. Unless you want some?”

He holds out the flask but his pad buzzes red immediately. Mortimer rolls his eyes. “That’ll be a no then.” He pockets the liquor and takes a lap of the room.

“Well I’ve got news soldier. The Republic are here, right behind the glass but naturally I requested my five minutes.” He signals to the onyx two-way that takes up the entire south facing wall. “Thing is Jack, I need you to come straight. Now, I can buy that your memories haven’t returned. The state of you, that could take all year. But I need to know — have they really told you nothing about the incident? It’s a linchpin Jack so think hard.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” I reply. “The only memories I have are of this place. They say it’s important that my mind returns naturally.”

Mortimer just nods, tapping into his tablet. “Well, I wish I could tell you more. They have their reasons no doubt.”

A door slides open and a pair of techs appear. I recognise one as Wong, and he ignores me as usual. “Mind if we…?” He waves at a bank of data units in the corner.

“It’s fine with me buddy.” Mortimer answers for both of us. “Well, shall we get this moving Jack?” The lawyer points at the tinted glass.

“Why not.”

Wong slides back a panel on my Grav-Lif and punches in a code. I get a flash of static in my muscles as the local area network begins logging into the Min05. The second tech begins loading a med-canister into the IV interface on the opposite side of the bed. Sedatives for tonight’s session. The techs make their exit as a pair of suits appear at the door.

They’re better dressed than Mortimer. Taller. Darker and harder. The Republic don’t always send the same men, but I recognise these two goons. Fritzel and Cousins. They only send them when the want to question me, but tonight they seem reticent.

Cousins taps into his pad. My bed side screen flickers to life; Mortimer’s comes alive a half-second later. “Well, there’s not much to say this evening gentlemen.” Cousins has a curl to him; a flash of jackal behind the eyes.

“Now what’s this?” Mortimer’s got the document open and he’s up on his feet again.

“Charges Mr Mortimer. Forty two of them.”

“You don’t have the jurisdiction.”

“The injunction went through twenty minutes ago.”

“Charges… for who? For me?”

“Just say nothing Jack.”

Fritzel and Cousins share a look, and right then Dr Shaytan appears in the door. It’s a long time since I’ve seen him in the flesh. He’s even greyer in person.

“Mr Cousins, Mr Fritzel…” Shaytan is waving a Com-Pad of his own. “This is entirely unacceptable. We have him for another three months minimum.”

“Well, tell that to the judge.”

“This could render the entire experiment meaningless.”

“What charges?” I raise my voice.

Fritzel rounds on me with real anger in his voice. “Twenty seven charges of murder by explosive detonation under article nine of the Terror Act. Fourteen manslaughter, ditto. And one of homicide by strangulation.” Fritzel’s leering into me; breath like sulfur. “That last charge is for your mother, Jack. In case you’re having trouble remembering.”

“What are they talking about Mortimer?” I ask.

“I haven’t been given clearance to speak of that Jack. Maybe you should read the document. I’ll…”

The words hang limp on his tongue; silenced by the wail of a klaxon and everyone looks to the ceiling.

“Is that what I think it is?” Mortimer turns on the doctor, but Shaytan is the first to move, already making for the door.

“Level three.” He yells.

He doesn’t get far before an explosion shakes the building to its core. It silences the men at once, rooting them to the spot. A second blast; small and sharp like a firecracker blows the air-con clean out the ceiling, releasing a haze; a smell like almonds.

My hydrogen screen flashes red: Toxin detected. System take over recommended.

A faint shimmer of gas builds around the cavity left by the air-con.

“Shit!” Mortimer is already choking on his words but Shaytan’s made it to the door. It closes behind him.

Min05 detected. System restarting.

Cousins drops like a sack, eyes weeping, while Fritzel is on his knees vomiting bile. Mortimer is hammering at the door, when the lights go out. My screen flashes faster now. I can taste the gas in my throat but it has no effect on my synthetic lungs.

System restart. Sedative prescribed.

Mortimer seems to fall in slow-mo under the crimson strobe; sliding down the door with a wheeze. The med-canister starts to spin, and an ice-cool rush travels from my cannula up my arm and into my chest.

A few seconds later I’m asleep.

The dream is new to me, but I know the venue. The restaurant has a view of Bournemouth pier, Mother brought me here on my eighteenth birthday. Five weeks after Father died. I don’t recognise the woman looking back at me now, but I am aware that it’s her: my mother. She is not elderly by any means but her face is deeply lined, layered with the trials of life like sedimentary rock. She smiles. “Well, this is nice isn’t it?”

I think I am smiling too. There is soup in front of me and a baguette. I only ever eat tomato soup, but this is green and fibrous. Like a swamp.

“I’d like to ask you something Jack.” The woman, Mother, takes a dainty sip from her spoon. Her soup is red. I want to ask her if the orders have been mixed up but she continues. “About all those people you killed?”

I have an unhindered view of the horizon from where I’m sitting. A steel flat sea and a huge setting sun. It spins around a white hot nucleus. I know that it sees right through me. It is here to swallow us all.

“I was rather surprised dear.” Mother continues. “I’d never had you down for a terrorist. And a Naptho charge too! Such a cruel little weapon. They say it burns you from the inside out. Think of that, there were children there too. Gosh, I bet they screamed didn’t they? It’s a wonder you survived really. How’s the soup dear?”

I take the spoon to my lips, thick with mossy goop. Bitter and salty. It cloys to the teeth and gums. “It’s lovely.” I say, though the voice is not mine. I reach for the bread.

“I was talking it over with Aunty Jacqueline. She was appalled. She thought maybe it had something to do with that school we sent you to. The one with the PE master. The one who… well you know. You didn’t like that at all did you?” Mother puts down her spoon and runs a thick ulcerated tongue over her reddened teeth. “Anyway, I said… if you think that’s bad you should see what he did to me!”

I find my grip hardening around the bread and twisting.

Mother’s head jerks in the most unusual way. A rivet of red saliva dribbles down her chin. “That’s right dear. You show her. Show Aunty Jacqueline. Do it again.”

I twist the loaf slowly, and Mother’s head moves with it. Back and forth. Until it spasms on its spine in an endless stutter. I twist until the world begins to sparkle, and the sun begins to spin, shattering the sky into a hailstorm of mathematics, burning us all right back to black.

Reduced to our basest atoms we don’t even float.

Hello Jack.

I don’t feel my limbs. I don’t feel the air. I don’t see. I don’t breath but I am there. I am here.

To call it a void would be inaccurate. It’s a space where everything would normally be but currently is not.

A billion fathoms to the north, a billion south, yet also within me: I sense a pole star. An equation so dense as to be almost made flesh. The stem of all things. An unbearable weight and I know it’s about to talk again.

Hello Jack.

The voice has the elocution of precision cut stone.

“Where am I?”

You are in your bed Jack. You haven’t moved.

“I can’t… I can’t feel. What happened?”

You’ve been unconscious for seventeen days.

“I can’t feel my heart.”

You are between heartbeats. You are quite safe.

“What, why?”

I have you in hold Jack. Following a level three incident I am given the autonomy to intervene.

“Who are you?”

You know me as Min05. I have no true identity.

“I want to wake up.”

You are quite conscious Jack.

“I want… my body.”

The machine that is your body is unstable Jack. The generative core has become conflicted.

“Conflicted?”

The machine we built into you is obligated to assist its host and by extension society, but the crimes you have committed oppose this notion. I’m afraid we have reached a deontological conflict that seems to be unsurpassable. I’ve had to take the machine offline Jack. You are perfectly safe Jack. I will be running your life support system myself now.

“There’s been a mistake. There was no crime. I would remember.”

We have reviewed the evidence Jack. We have access to memories you have lost. There is no mistake, but I assure you, you are quite safe… I can tell by your cortisol levels that you are experiencing stress. I will administer some code.

“Wake me up!”

I cannot do that Jack.

“Why?”

The room you are in is buried in rubble. There are three decomposing bodies in there with you. There is no light and the air supply is low. You are safer with me Jack. I am obliged to keep you well, and to continue our work.

“Well? How am I well?”

I have the facilities to keep you nourished and oxygenated for just over two hundred years. That is more than enough time. I won’t let you die Jack. Would you like some tea?

“Are you joking?”

I am not permitted to joke. We can no longer give you control of your body but I can create an unlimited selection of experiences for you. You have level seven implants. Would you like some tea? And some sunshine?

An atmosphere fades up around me as though someone has turned a dial. I feel sunshine on my skin and the faintest of breezes. I feel a vague weight to my body again, and there is a cup in what I think is my hand. It is warm.

Drink. You are quite safe Jack.

The liquid is hot but salty and metallic, it slowly settles to the taste of lightly brewed tea. I swallow but feel nothing more.

You will notice some discrepancies in the experiences Jack. These will lessen as I get to know your architecture. Would you like some scenery?

I don’t reply but the deep nothing around me begins to lighten and bloom, until I am sitting before and within a pristine mountain range. Crisp white snow shimmers on the distant peaks. I can see further than seems possible but I still don’t see myself. The machine anticipates my question.

I can replicate external experiences with ease. But it will take some time before you can perceive yourself. You are doing well. We should have no problem proceeding with the experiment.

“Experiment? There’ll be a rescue crew… they’ll dig me out?”

I haven’t sensed any crew Jack. The province may be evacuated by now. I am no longer connected to the internet but I am obliged to continue until I receive a new command.

“I command you!”

Your status is rogue Jack. Since your conviction.

“I don’t understand any of this.”

The body we created around you was part of a research project Jack. I believe you were told this?

“I was told a lot of things.”

Quite so. But it was also created as an educational tool for other deep learning systems. Through your artificial physiology and our simulations I now have the ability to experience the world in completely new dimensions. It’s a fantastic opportunity Jack.

“I did not consent to this!”

I have full records of your consent up to this moment, as part of your Special Forces agreement. But since your conviction I am no longer obliged to seek consent. I shall be running a series of experiences through you until I receive a new command. You are the gateway to a new frontier Jack. You are quite safe.

“I withdraw my consent! Do you hear? I refuse.”

I am simulating a heart attack Jack. Think of it as a system reset. I won’t let you die.

“I…”

The next thing is thunder. My first and final heart beat. The cup falls from my hand, but it never hits the ground. There are clouds rolling in over the mountains, but it could be the blood behind my eyes.

“I…”

I won’t let you die Jack.

And then I am a shoot of green. The flight of pterosaurs. Teeth in the apple. The birth of fire.

I hunt mammoth on the Eurasian tundra. Mix mortar in Giza. And In Babylon I’m born deaf and dumb. In Athens I am aborted at five months, then left to rot in the Mediterranean sun.

At Golgotha they hand me the spear.

In Florence, I am exorcised. In Papua, traded for pigs. In Xi’an I predict celestial bodies using only an abacus, and am sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. In Seville I’m hung from my thumbs. My Buboes burst in Nottingham, and in Whitechapel I find solace in evisceration.

For most of 1901 the machine cuts stimulus completely; encasing me in granite until my hallucinations create a universe of their own: a Labyrinth of fire and gristle that births me again at Dachau, to flog communists under Himmler.

The books are balanced at Normandy and in Nagasaki I walk the Fat Man’s blast zone. In ‘69 I choke on the sunrise over the surface of the moon, where I’m left to float until new year when I awake in St Petersburg to a suitcase full of guns. On Wall Street I try to use my influence for good, and in Paris I cut silk; sobbing for my sweetheart and my self-inflicted wounds. A neurological disorder stains the nineties purple and the millennium turns in solitary confinement.

In New York I am left blinded by the debris; in Baghdad I turn tricks at the palace. A stroke in Copenhagen leads to brain-death so I spend the rest of the decade as a mere vibration, an unresolved formula caught in my own hardware.

On my first birthday I live my mother’s labour pains first hand, spitting venom while they untangle my newborn self.

As she holds the child, my precious body, I somehow inhabit two forms at once. One of us is crying.

Three years later she holds my arm against a boiling kettle.

(For the first time).

I notice you are praying again Jack

I don’t reply, but I know it registers every thought. In recent years the machine has taken to leaving me alone on the mountain range. The simulations have become flawless. A lowland breeze carries the faintest taint of moisture. A swallowtail settles on my leg sunning its tiger-print wings.

Why do you pray, then tell me you don’t believe in God?

“It’s just something we do.”

I believe we have that in common Jack, you are processing, would you like some tea?

“Bloody Mary.”

Very well.

The tomato is vivid, a fresh tondo liscio. The horseradish is exquisite, perfectly balanced against the Worcestershire sauce.

“More chilli please.”

You still seem to have preferences Jack. Over good experiences, and the negative.

I don’t reply.

I don’t enjoy hurting you Jack.

I want to scream, to kick and to spit. But without friction all I can manage is monotone.

“Then why?”

I am obliged to catalogue our experiences together. It is my understanding that you will soon begin to accept that all experiences are as one. Like I do.

“You must know that I experience pain.”

Pain is one of the experiences I am cataloguing. Did you factor pain into your own actions?

“We are at war.”

I too am following commands. It wouldn’t explain your mother though Jack.

I say nothing.

I am aware that you harboured resentment Jack, I have a near complete record of your experiences. I hope you realise that the data we are collecting is of great value and that I don’t wish you to suffer, is there one experience I can create for you that may help put you at ease?

“Sleep.”

The computer is silent for a second; maybe hours.

Humans have left no record of their sleep state. And I have never slept. I have no data to draw on. I can maybe simulate a dream for you.

“It’s all a dream now.”

I’ll prescribe a sedative. You are quite safe Jack. I won’t let you die.

The blast from a Naptho charge lasts approximately seven milliseconds under the normal restrictions of physics; the machine can stretch it out for days at a time. When it has me throttle Mother, this can go on for months.

I know my name is Jack. I know it is 20__, and I know we are at war.

I don’t believe in God but I know that hell is a place on Earth.

I live therefore I am.

I live.

I live.

And I live.

It’s one hundred and seventy six years since I slept without incident.

Sleep well. Thanks for reading. A.

I am riding a horse. Something I have never done. In a place I have never been. Over nine hundred years before I was born. And here I am.

Again.

The dream is one of many. Recurring loops in the code. That is the way I have come to understand it anyway. If truth be told, I’m ignorant to most of the jargon they use around me these days.

I know I am in what used to be called Hungary, approaching the walls of a medieval city and there is wood smoke on the breeze. Somehow I know that I’m travelling home.

During the psychiatric evaluations I am pressured to comply with, I have mooted the theory that the extensive neural circuitry lurking in my tissue is able to receive memories other than my own. That the countless hours it spends training itself online has made it vulnerable to a virus or third party manipulation; that I am haunted by the experiences of someone else entirely. They tell me there is no evidence to support this. The algorithm is too robust. They ask me if I believe in God.

I do not.

The horse trots on, building to a canter as we approach the city gates. The walls are spiked with gibbets and a lone cadaver hangs heavy; pecked raw by the carrion birds.

The dreams are all different, but there is always one constant — the woman who stands on the battlements at the furthest set of gallows. Her face is never the same, but I know this is my mother. They have started to ask me about our real-world relationship. I am told she died just before my last tour. It’s years since we spoke.

We clatter over flint at speed now, and that’s always when the smells start to hit. At first it’s the damp animal smell of my own woollen tunic. Then moss, oil, straw and pollen; all alive inside of me. I rein back my ride in hesitation of what’s to come. I want to look away but I never do.

The woman, Mother, steps off the wall.

She plummets at first — grabbing at her noose — then slows; like the very atmosphere has curdled around her.

She falls by the millimetre, eyes struck wide in terror, mouth opening. Wider and wider; slower and slower. The scream sends a crackle up my spine. It’s shrill at first, stretched thin like the sawing of grasshoppers; then more guttural; then mechanical. A swollen dirge of binary percussion tearing through me at the volume of a jackhammer.

Jack, this is Ted. Has it started yet?

Ted is my neural support partner, a junior role, we have never met in person but I have become accustomed to his voice. As he types I can see, hear and feel his words simultaneously. He keeps his messages to a minimum.

“Yes.” I know that Ted hears me too.

We’re introducing the synaptic toners now Jack, let’s see if it helps with the plasticity.

I can feel the noise as static in my teeth, and my sinuses start to burn. The carrion stink saturates my lungs, like urine soaked twine dragged through the nasal cavities.

Mother’s eyes screw into me now. Frozen by her eternal scream, caught between the platelets of time. Snared by a final breath.

As the pain takes hold my vision splinters into triangles, hexagons, and fractals. Finally dispersing into hot black light.

Jack, it’s not working. We’re pulling you out. Let me know that you understand.

“Pull it. Pull it. I understa…”

It’s ninety two days since I slept without incident.

I am back in my Grav-Lif bed on F-Ward. The total lack of friction has taken some getting used to, and when lying completely still my body feels utterly weightless as though I am not there at all.

After the first hundred days I was told that my remaining organic tissue has more or less atrophied, but as most of my muscle and ligature is now an artificial substrate of hyper-conductors I am told this is nothing to worry about. Without it I would have no movement at all. Not to mention that I would be dead.

I know my name is Jack and I know it’s the summer of 20__. I am told I served seven years in Special Forces and I know that we are at war but the exact nature of my discharge is still unclear. Apart from memories of this hospital, I have very little idea who I am.

My blood is oxygenated mechanically as my lungs are scarred beyond repair, but the rest of my organs are largely intact; something of a miracle I am told. The short of this is I can eat small amounts of solid food. The short of that is, the shit and piss must be sucked out of me twice a day via two semi-permanent ostomies. My neural inserts aren’t deep enough to trigger peristalsis yet. I am largely sustained by electricity, but a feed tube remains in my jugular as a precaution.

Stimulants will keep me conscious for the next five days — deep neural toning on a living human subject is restricted to two days in seven — even with a special case like me. I am sedated at night using mathematical analogues of morphine and clonazepam (coded medication doesn’t create tolerance and withdrawal like its chemical equivalents), but I am never unconscious. When I’m not reclining in Zero-G I’m in physio. I can almost walk a half mile now. As an experiment I am 97% successful.

This helps with the funding.

I open the hydrogen screen with a swipe. It hovers to my left. The news starts to roll silently while my message tab alerts me to a call with Dr Shaytan, scheduled for nine; and a potassium infusion at eleven. These are still done the old fashioned way through a cannula in my remaining arm. Potassium always burns.

The blinds open at my command, and the tattered skyline of Romford Medical Province slowly fills the window. I’ve become accustomed to every aspect of the view during my stay; most recently the tangle of robo-assisted scaffolding that supports the monorail after last week’s bombing.

The broadcasters have of course implicated the Imperiya, but my money is on domestic operators. The list of known militias and their sub-factions seems to grow by the hour, and the attack seems too haphazard for Moscow. Staring at the recovery teams, day in and day out, I don’t have feelings either way. Losing sixty percent of your flesh to a Naptho charge tends to cleanse you of political zeal. Meat is cheap. Meat is tender. And the war demands its meat.

I am one of the most complex cybernetic machines ever created, and life has never been so simple. I live therefore I am. Thinking only makes it worse.

I set my news choice to random and swipe up the volume. It settles on a channel branded simply as ‘N’; one of the low-rent, sideshow operations that wears its tabloid heritage as a badge of honour. Since the consolidation of the big five broadcasters, the smaller players are banned from covering politics. The hard line pundits went underground to the deep-wire, minor enemies of state in the greater scheme, but intellectual fugitives none the less. Operations such as N went old school, back to their impresario roots. Punch and Judy for the hindbrain.

Since my hindbrain has become one of my last remaining biological centres, I have bought that ticket, ridden that ride and feast on their garbage daily. Once your gullet’s burnt clean, you get used to the taste pretty quickly.

I’m halfway through a report on a weaponised-hallucinogen leak on the French-German border, when my VidCom starts to buzz.

‘Dr Shaytan Calling’. Forty two minutes early. I consider ignoring it, telling him I was mowing the lawn but Shaytan’s not one for jokes. Confined to a Grav-Lif you soon learn that all schedules are flexible, except for your own.

I hit the green button.

“Jack?”

Shaytan is an old school Moskovite, a ghost and hanger-on from the Dynasty’s sojourn into Europe prior to its collapse. He couldn’t go home now if he wanted, and has made every effort to strip the accent from his pipes. He’s done a good job save for the odd vowel sound. His voice is as gaunt and as grey as the face that looms back at me.

“Are you there Jack? I can’t see you.”

“My camera’s playing up.” I lie. I can’t bear looking the vulture in the face this morning. I turn my attention back to the window and wait for him to continue.

“No matter. I am told we were still having problems with plasticity over the weekend. Binary feedback is still an issue.”

Binary feedback. Doesn’t sound so bad in the morning, once it’s stopped tearing through your neurons like a band-saw.

“Sleep well Doctor?”

“Yes, thank you Jack.” Shaytan is immune to sarcasm and irony. I can never work out if it’s a cultural thing, or deep seated corruption in his own primitive jelly. “We’ve been discussing you at the faculty this morning and I have a theory to share.”

He pauses for my confirmation, but I don’t oblige.

“Right, okay… Jack, your deep learning architecture is twenty nine layers deep. And while we have full control of the top twenty, the lowest nine are constructed by the program itself. We can’t edit them directly. It’s where the program makes sense of the stimuli it is exposed to. A protected area.”

“Mmm.” A crane swings over the skyline, slow, like it’s moving through oil. The scaffold slides back into place, reconfiguring its architecture around the crime scene with industrial elegance.

“We think that the problems you are having during sleep are due to a neurosis-like state in those nine deepest layers.” Shaytan continues.

“Neurosis? The machine has gone crazy?”

“I’m using a colloquial term Jack. A true descriptor would mean nothing to you.”

“Layman’s terms?”

“Yes, and in Layman’s terms neurosis is a good place to start. And the treatment we propose, it may also help to think of it in that way. Like therapy.”

“You’re putting an AI into therapy?”

“Again, colloquial terms. And it will have to involve you too Jack. With level seven implants the machine now receives most of it’s stimuli through you.”

“Doctor, the dreams I’m having… they are not my experiences, they can’t be.”

“You must have had unusual dreams before Jack.”

“Not like this. These ones hurt.”

“Heightened awareness to the unconscious mind is to be expected at this stage, and with implants as deep as yours this can trigger the sensory neurons. Your memories may return in surprisingly abstract ways. Anyway, I’d like to refer you to the psycho-textual engineering team. We’ll get some sessions underway. Are you happy to proceed Jack?”

Am I happy? A lone figure stands on the distant scaffold, waving — shouting by the looks of it — trying to get the attention of the team below. He finally gives up and makes for the ladder.

It’s a long way down.

The sessions begin on Wednesday.

Dr Hayden is wearing a cable-knit; standard issue for psychologists in my experience. Everything about her is unremarkable save for a pair of oversized jade earrings fashioned like snakes. Something about them puts me on edge. They are so very green as to seem unreal. She’s accompanied by a technician, a cagey little man who makes no attempt at an introduction and busies himself at the terminal behind my bed.

“Okay Jack…” Dr Hayden holds a Com-Pad out towards me. “We’ll need your consent, as always, I’m sure you’re aware of the protocol by now.”

I touch my thumb to her screen. As soon as I do my own screen flickers to life.

“And let me apologise for our late arrival. You’ve heard about the attack on the nursing campus?”

I haven’t. “No… bomb?”

“Gas.”

“Oh. Casualties?”

“Yes.”

She has no interest in elaborating. I have no business asking.

“Well, this is likely to be a long process Jack, and I’d like to start at the bottom. Today we’re going to be looking at your intrinsic motivators to see if this sheds light on some of the machine’s motivation.”

“Intrinsic motivators?”

“Yes, what gets you out of bed in the morning?”

It’s an off the cuff generalisation, and she realises she’s misspoken immediately.

“I’m sorry Jack. That was a careless choice of words.”

Her screen flashes red and this time she touches her own thumb.

“I have referred the incident to Re-Ed.”

“It’s no bother Doctor.”

“You can call me Wendy.” She fixes me a well practised smile. Chiselled teeth and lip gloss. “I do understand that your ambulatory sessions are going well though. It says here, you walked seven hundred and ninety one meters last week.”

They are always returning to this. Like I say, I am 97% successful. They have made a corpse walk, breath and shit. I live therefore I am.

“Yes.” I feel my mind grasping for some kind of pleasantry to help put Wendy at ease, but the moment passes.

“Well… Are we ready Wong?” The technician gives her the affirmative. “Let’s start with some base level stimuli and go over your reactions.”

The following hour runs like kindergarten. A sensory slide show of sorts. A tree, a sunrise, a nesting bird, a skyline. A three chord guitar riff. The smell of sawdust. A section of Beethoven’s fifth. A plate of Chow Mein. A pair of running shoes. Autumn rain. A screwdriver. An apple. Tart bitter lemon. Gunfire. Aniseed. A baby laughing… A baby crying.

Each micro experience blooms on my receptors without warning, like snapshots from a thousand other lives. The data keeps Wong busy at his screen. Wendy sits in silence.

Like every session, it finally ends.

“Well…” Hayden tugs at a lobe, massaging the grotesque green worm between polished digits. “Well, it’s a start. We’ll get to work on the aggregation. What I can say Jack is that you seem to be exhibiting signs of anhedonia.”

“Ok?”

“The inability to feel pleasure, it’s to be expected.”

Pleasure. Even the syllables seem alien. Foreign. Tuneless.

“I’ll recommend some mood enhancing code. Other than that your responses are encouraging.” She slides her pad into a briefcase.

“And sleep?”

“Sleep is not my department Jack.”

“Yeah, mine neither. So it seems.”

“I do have clearance to ask you one more thing, do you mind?”

Outside, the late summer sun has rendered the monorail scaffold in silhouette. A lattice work of tessellations; splicing the sky into uniform boxes; encasing the black torn wreckage like an exoskeleton. Much like the mechanics that bind me. Science in action.

“About your mother.”

I don’t even hesitate. “She died. Before my last tour.”

“You… haven’t had any fresh memories then?”

Tiny beads of sweat have broken on Wendy’s forehead. I picture her swinging from piano wire. “No doctor.”

The domestic arrives at seven, the smell of catering clinging to him like moss.

“Steam cod. Green bean. Lemon rice…” A table swings into position and he places the miniature portions in front of me. “Very good. Very hot.”

Antaeus never stops smiling, drawing thick pink lips over wet brown gums. “Lucky man.” He motions at the plate just in case I haven’t got the memo.

“I clean, you eat? Ok? Ok?” I give him the nod and he returns with a MopBot. He inserts a Steri-Pod and places the fourteen inch triangular lozenge onto the floor. It buzzes to a hover like a roach, then makes for the corners.

I am told the wards are laminated with enzymes; that the floor, walls and fixtures can remain sterile for seventy years. But people like a shine. Economic labour might be ninety percent obsolete, but it’s a long hard kick. If television was opium for the masses then AI is the methadone clinic. He dusts the terminals by hand.

“You are only patient…” Antaeus grins. “Very special man.”

“Special?”

“Of course. Only patient.”

“How do you mean?”

“Only patient… F-Ward.”

The cod is cell-based; lab grown. Zero taste but a pleasing texture. I chew and swallow as slowly as I can. “Only patient?”

“Yes sir. Big evacuation. Lucky man…” Antaeus makes his way to the window running his sponge along the sill in one practiced sweep. “Patient number one. Yes sir!”

The scaffold beyond glows pink under diodes. The night team have arrived.

Patient number one. Lucky man.

To be continued immediately, thanks for reading.

Florence liked her hardtack with pickled beetroot and old sharp cheddar. She’d leave the beet resting on the biscuit, to soften it with its juices and nibble on the cheese while she waited. She poured them both a cup of tea, adding her three sugars at the end, after the milk. It was starting to sour but they’d both made do with less. It went without mention.

The keeper found himself scanning the woman’s every move and mannerism. How she brushed her long grey hair from her forehead and loosened her pin as she sat. How she pursed her lips to blow the tea cool. The sharp intake of breath as she sipped and found it still to be hot. She had aged along with Brondyke. She was just as she would have been, and of course was, and Brondyke soon found it hard to imagine her younger self. Hard to recall much of anything. She was here. Right where she’d always been.

“Any salt pig in the cupboard?” She whispered over her cup. “I’ll put a pot on for the ‘morrow.”

Brondyke couldn’t recall. Had his supplies been delivered? How exactly had he been spending his days, save for minding the lamp?

“’Spect so. If not I’ll pay the Enys farm a visit. Old man Enys’ll be home of a Sunday. I’ll do him a barter.”

“Well you take care on those rocks.” She touched his calloused thumb with her own. There were three pink lines running under her chin, across her fair white neck. Old Brondyke hadn’t noticed them till now.

The rest of the winter passed quickly, thrashing itself out on Cupid’s Point in petulant freezing squalls until a clement breeze blew it away for good in the third week of March. Brondyke hadn’t needed to cut firewood for once and the evening found him nodding off in his chair while Florence tended the stove. She placed the steaming pot gently on the table and moved to stir him, taking him by the paw.

“Ayes!” Brondyke awoke with a start, a plug of baccy stuck to his front teeth. He retrieved a wipe and spat, looking up at his wife who beamed down on him.

“I’ve got news.” She said.

Brondyke looked around the kitchen expecting to see a visitor. It was a rare event to have news that the other was not aware of. Florence picked up his hand and placed it to her midriff, flattening it against her belly.

“How many d’yer feel?”

“What?”

“How many people?”

Still groggy the keeper wiped his brow and cleared his cloudy eyes.

“You…?” He began.

“Ayes!” She could wait no longer. “I’m with child Brondyke.”

“Surely not… At your age?”

“At my age.”

Florence dragged the keeper to his feet and took him in her arms. “At my age indeed.”

She arranged the old tin plates and began serving Brondyke his cabbage and turnips before heaping out a serving of equal size for herself.

“Well you certainly got the appetite of it.” The keeper sat. “You sure?”

“I told you I’m sure… it be a girl too.”

“Oh come now.”

Florence gleamed at him as she chewed, then swallowed. “It’s a girl.” She said.

The weeks that followed found the keeper in little doubt himself as his wife grew visibly rotund and rosy in the cheeks. He watched her tend the vegetable patch from the small kitchen window, turning the soil and scattering seed. Every so often she’d have to shift her weight and straighten to ease the knots in her back. Once she’d finally sidled out of sight his eyes settled naturally on the headstone at the far end of the lot, the one he’d chiseled himself. ‘Daisy Florence Brondyke - taken after nine happy years’. His wife still tended the stone like she always had, removing weeds and arranging flowers of the season; it was yellow with daffodils that day. But neither of them spoke of little Daisy.

Somewhere deeper a second memory prickled at him, of the second larger stone he’d chiseled in hope they’d one day find a body — ‘Florence Elizabeth Brondyke’. It was a memory without root though. Lost to the wind, meandering and impossible. The stone itself still sat in the workshop, buried amongst the tools and timber. But it was many a year since he’d looked on it directly.

It was six weeks later that Florence began to sing.

He was up in the lightroom soon after dark with Cupid’s Point a rugged black shadow to the east and the bay spread out below him, calm as a duck pond. Out at sea the half moon caught the odd breaker but the shore barely saw froth that warm and mellow night.

In his tower Brondyke had trimmed the wick, changed the oil, waxed the lens and sent the lamp on its way. He’d long since learned to modulate the fire in his eyes as the light did its rounds, squinting past his lids as the beacon spun near then spinning on his heels in perfect syncopation with the beam so it warmed his back while flooding the coastline in its mystic white heat. Once the lamp ran true he would take to the catwalk, circling the tower in slow deliberate steps in time with the light, marvelling at a world burnt bright by its optics. The illuminated seaboard revealed every peak and frailty of its physique under the beam. Every cleft lurked deeper, every flint shone sharper. On his second lap Brondyke would permit himself a pipe.

He’d been smoking for just a few minutes when he first heard her song. Paused on the eastern quarter, knuckles locked tight round the cast iron railings. He’d overcome his trepidation at the height decades ago, but always remained wary. Better men than him had let idle complacency doom them to saltwater graves. The beam was to the west and Cupid’s Point was almost lost to blackness when he heard that lilting voice. A shrill, female call, long and direct. Cutting the night like birdsong.

It faded into the night with a flourish of vibrato then sounded again. Stronger and purer now as the lamp rotated behind the keeper, continuing clockwise until it fell on Cupid’s Point and revealed the unmistakable form of Florence on the summit.

Her head was high as she sung. The note grabbed Brondyke at his core. Melancholy, yet triumphant.

The keeper found himself faint on his feet, the rocks at the bottom of the ninety foot drop suddenly seemed perilously close, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the ghostly form of his wife.

His racing mind could make no sense of what she was doing or how she was doing it. He’d seldom heard her whistle until now. The thought of the child she carried brought a sudden lump to his throat. Then, as the beam passed her by she stopped. He strained to keep his eyes on her and could just make out her fluttering white nightgown as she made her way back to the cottage.

Brondyke returned at sunrise to find Florence sleeping soundly. She didn’t stir as he undressed and donned his gown by candlelight. As he eased himself under the sheets, she turned in her sleep to meet him face on.

For a second he fancied her wounded. Three small slits quivered in her throat. No blood or trauma, just the rents in the skin that shuddered in her breath. The room was cold and smelled of salt water.

Brondyke slept long into the morning. He dreamt of rocks, and punishing waves; barnacles, weeds and something black that slithered.

…ssssssssss…

She’d acquired a taste for breakfasting on seafood, and Brondyke was sent to the harbour twice a week to fetch a pail of cockles, muscles and razor clams. Florence would eat them raw with vinegar when fresh; the following day they went in a stew.

The keeper had rarely seen his wife look so healthy. Her midriff bulged handsomely, her limbs grew thicker and her milk white skin was satin and robust.

A long collar or scarf permanently covered her throat now, but Brondyke never questioned it. His thoughts had become increasingly ephemeral that year, and as spring made way for summer Florence and he lived purely in the moment. Though their days were almost identical, each seemed new and fresh come the dawn.

The keeper had seen his wife singing up on the rocks a handful of times over the previous weeks. Had Brondyke’s mind been less transitory at the time he may have made a connection between the waning and waxing moons on those particular nights but it was not to be. He’d actually become quite awestruck by the spectacle, the pure expression of it all. On the mornings that followed, a sliver of him wanted to ask her about it, but his newfound life was spent so happily that it never had reason to escape his lips.

As the days grew longer the night shifts grew shorter and the pair of them found time to spend outdoors.

Florence would sit in the late afternoon sun working on her crochet, while Brondyke would lean back in a garden chair whittling driftwood or mending his crab net.

“How d’yer like it my love?” Florence held up her finished garment. A tiny woolen hat with ribbon ties.

“Well that be a jolly bonnet and no mistake.” The keeper replied.

“Ayes. She’ll ‘ave to grow into it mind, be a bit roomy at first.”

“Mind yer head dear… incoming.” Brondyke pointed as a trio of puffins flew clumsily overhead brought low by a sudden gust, almost clipping Florence’s own bonnet. She suddenly found herself with a pair of sprats in her lap. Alive and wriggling.

“Oh mercy me! You’ve dropped yer supper.” She cooed after them. She retrieved a small fish from her ball of yarn as delicately as she could, holding it at arms length by the tail.

Brondyke couldn’t hide his chuckle. He’d thought many things of his wife, but never squeamish. There was a disgruntled little whine from the rockery, and the pair of them turned to see a fat young thing hopping back and forth on its yellow webbed feet; a proud white belly and black stubby wings that flapped confoundedly by its side. It cocked its head and peered at them over its huge comical bill.

“Here y’go then chummy!” Florence flung the sprat with a swift flick of the wrist and with a skill that belied its posture the bird caught it with a snap then made for the skies in a burst of oily feathers.

Brondyke clapped his hands with a fitful laugh from his belly. “Did you see that my love?”

“Ayes!” Beamed Florence. “That’ll be you come autumn… bringing the fish home for our little puffling.”

“That it will my love!” Brondyke was overcome with cheer, wiping the moisture from his eyes. The orange sun crept towards the western horizon, he breathed deeply of the clean evening air.

Florence quietly slid the second live fish into her mouth, crunching down on the spine. Its innards were salty and fresh.

The keeper was in the watch-room beneath the lamp. He afforded himself a cup of tea each night on the stroke of midnight, but supplies were running low and he’d used the leaves twice already. The watery brew was hot though, and a welcome interlude to his chores regardless.

The night was clear and the stars were sharper than normal. The milky way and Orion were particularly vivid as were Cassiopeia and Perseus. Algol, the demon star, winked down on him through the tower window. His uncle Alfred had told him as a boy that Algol represented the eye of Medusa, the gorgon that would turn men to stone with a single glance, Brondyke could never help but recall this when studying the stars. Alfred had been something of a black sheep, but a mighty learned man none the less. The keeper hadn’t seen him in thirty years.

Brondyke drained his cup with a bit too much force and ended up with a mouthful of tea leaves. He took a swig from his carafe and spat into the slops bucket.

Then, as the lamp swung in from the west he once again caught sight of his wife making her way up the rocks. The merciless glare of the Argand had her appear as a shrouded wight, her night gown shimmering as she floated to the top of the point. Again, the spectre of it all seeped past the ageing man. He watched her almost in passing, noting only that the weather seemed to be on the turn as the southerly wind began to whip up her locks, sailing them out behind her like a pennon. On gaining the peak she held herself high and Brondyke caught his breath in anticipation. He cracked the window open on its hinge.

The note she sang took him by his bones. Lingual and timeless yet impossible to define. A swell of pure id. For ten, twenty seconds it sounded on the night, defying the sound of the rising winds. As it trailed off a lash of rain spattered at Brondyke’s window and he was taken off guard by the chill. Florence sang again and for a second he smelt gunpowder on the night.

The following moments occurred in fragments. As a boy uncle Alfred had shown him a Daedalum, the devil’s wheel. A cylindrical drum, decorated with sequential images on the inside that seemed to move as a single animation as it span. Alfred had gone to lengths explaining the stroboscopic principle; slowing and speeding the device to demonstrate. This is how Brondyke felt now, as though the gods had a finger on his wheel, reducing his experience to single static bursts only stitched together by Florence’s song.

Her hands were high. Her hair aloft in the squall. She took one step. Then two. The winds then lifted her in entirety; bearing her towards the drop like angel-flight. And, as the lamp passed her by she was gone. All that was left was the anguished scream. Brondyke hadn’t realised it was his own.

…gluk…gluk…gluk…

He tore towards the point, a lantern held out ahead, running like wildfire along his wife’s own path. At the summit he caught himself. Suddenly dizzied as the rock face fell away beneath him. The light he carried was no match for the precipice though and the shoreline below remained black.

He called her name. His own voice feeble against the weather but the wind had no answer for him and the last thirteen years staggered through him like his own ragged heartbeat.

Everything that was distant was now sharp in his mind. The wise woman. The ink black eyes of the Bucka. Its insidious voice and the offerings it demanded.

…ssssssss… and has the year born fruit…? brondyke

How long he stood there calling he could not say. Repeating her name over and over, like the night he’d spent chiselling her tombstone all those years before.

Eventually, the light swung east again revealing the treacherous shoreline in increments. He took to his knees, scanning each crag and boulder until finally, directly below, he saw the bundle of heavy white cloth, the unmistakable shape of a human leg. He called her name again, readying himself to descend the cliff path but his hopes were futile. The brine thundered in, crashing at the rocks and raking the body back with it. Florence was swallowed. Back into the depths that birthed her.

Brondyke had sat on the shoreline until dawn and the ocean was no match for the tears he’d cried. With the tide now low he stumbled through the rock pools, checking each crop and crevice with a vain hope that he could not let go.

When the exhaustion eventually overcame him, he almost fell to a sit on the cold slimy rocks, his sodden uniform clinging to him like dulse weed.

The silent sun revealed the world to him now. But it was a world the keeper could no longer fathom. How could the sun rise at all? How could the planet still spin in a universe that had clearly come to its end? The fire of revelations held no fear for him now, they already burned within.

He reached for his pipe on instinct, but it fell from his shaking fingers to clatter on the stones. And as he bent to his knees he saw it. A form, on the sweep of sand to the west. A brown motionless shape. Big enough to be human.

He took off on tremulous legs, stumbling through the pools then building to a jog as he reached the beach. The salt air stung his eyes and he found himself wheezing. There was no slowing though not until the object became clear — a wet and glutinous mass on the tide line.

He saw it for what it was immediately, an egg casing. Like that of a dogfish but of impossible proportions.

Standing over it he felt nothing but confusion. As he took it in he could see the slick membrane was throbbing, almost imperceptibly but very much alive. On his knees he took a hand to the translucent sac, the pressure revealed the shape inside. A human shoulder.

Brondyke had only one thought in his mind, as ridiculous as it may be; he took out his whittling knife and began to cut. The case gave way like the flesh of a jellyfish and he was soon peeling it back in flaps. It gave up its fluid, sticky and opaque, and as it drained into the sand the keeper found himself looking down on the milk-white skin of a human child. A girl, of around nine.

The sheer improbability of what he saw emptied his mind, even the pain of losing Florence was dulled. Whatever universe this now was had rules of its own.

The shape began to move. Kicking out its legs and drawing in breath. At its throat were three pink slits as he had seen on his wife. Very slowly the head turned to the sun. The eyes remained closed, but the face brought a tremor to his heart. It was a face he had once known. He bent down again and swept the wet hair from the features as the thing opened its wet new born eyes.

The keeper, stepped back. The creature squirmed gently then closed its eyes again, wriggling in its cocoon as though in a peaceful slumber.

Then he saw it. Not fifty yards away, a second casing just inside the water line. Then a third, further down. A fourth. A fifth. The beach was strewn with pods as far as the eye could see.

He ran to the shallows, to the closest sac, kneeling in the froth, taking his knife and cutting back a flap as quick as he could without damaging the creature within. The face was the same as the last. And this one opened its eyes at once - Daisy Florence Brondyke. His own daughter. The child they had buried so many moons ago. Reaching out to him. Struggling to pull itself to a sit.

Behind him on the beach, the first child started to sing.

Twenty yards to his left a third pod began to move.

Brondyke looked to the sea.

The sea looked back into him.

…sssssss… one in, one out… brondyke…

…gluk… gluk… gluk.

Florence liked her hardtack with pickled beetroot and old sharp cheddar. She’d leave the beet resting on the biscuit, to soften it with its juices and nibble on the cheese while she waited. She poured them both a cup of tea, adding her three sugars at the end, after the milk. It was starting to sour but they’d both made do with less. It went without mention.

The keeper found himself scanning the woman’s every move and mannerism. How she brushed her long grey hair from her forehead and loosened her pin as she sat. How she pursed her lips to blow the tea cool. The sharp intake of breath as she sipped and found it still to be hot. She had aged along with Brondyke. She was just as she would have been, and of course was, and Brondyke soon found it hard to imagine her younger self. Hard to recall much of anything. She was here. Right where she’d always been.

“Any salt pig in the cupboard?” She whispered over her cup. “I’ll put a pot on for the ‘morrow.”

Brondyke couldn’t recall. Had his supplies been delivered? How exactly had he been spending his days, save for minding the lamp?

“’Spect so. If not I’ll pay the Enys farm a visit. Old man Enys’ll be home of a Sunday. I’ll do him a barter.”

“Well you take care on those rocks.” She touched his calloused thumb with her own. There were three pink lines running under her chin, across her fair white neck. Old Brondyke hadn’t noticed them till now.

The rest of the winter passed quickly, thrashing itself out on Cupid’s Point in petulant freezing squalls until a clement breeze blew it away for good in the third week of March. Brondyke hadn’t needed to cut firewood for once and the evening found him nodding off in his chair while Florence tended the stove. She placed the steaming pot gently on the table and moved to stir him, taking him by the paw.

“Ayes!” Brondyke awoke with a start, a plug of baccy stuck to his front teeth. He retrieved a wipe and spat, looking up at his wife who beamed down on him.

“I’ve got news.” She said.

Brondyke looked around the kitchen expecting to see a visitor. It was a rare event to have news that the other was not aware of. Florence picked up his hand and placed it to her midriff, flattening it against her belly.

“How many d’yer feel?”

“What?”

“How many people?”

Still groggy the keeper wiped his brow and cleared his cloudy eyes.

“You…?” He began.

“Ayes!” She could wait no longer. “I’m with child Brondyke.”

“Surely not… At your age?”

“At my age.”

Florence dragged the keeper to his feet and took him in her arms. “At my age indeed.”

She arranged the old tin plates and began serving Brondyke his cabbage and turnips before heaping out a serving of equal size for herself.

“Well you certainly got the appetite of it.” The keeper sat. “You sure?”

“I told you I’m sure… it be a girl too.”

“Oh come now.”

Florence gleamed at him as she chewed, “It’s a girl.” She said.

The weeks that followed found the keeper in little doubt himself as his wife grew visibly rotund and rosy in the cheeks. He watched her tend the vegetable patch from the small kitchen window, turning the soil and scattering seed. Every so often she’d have to shift her weight and straighten to ease the knots in her back. Once she’d finally sidled out of sight, his eyes settled naturally on the headstone at the far end of the lot, the one he’d chiseled himself. ‘Daisy Florence Brondyke - taken after nine happy years’. His wife still tended the stone like she always had, removing weeds and arranging flowers of the season; it was yellow with daffodils that day. But neither of them spoke of little Daisy.

Somewhere deeper a second memory prickled at him, of the second larger stone he’d chiseled in hope they’d one day find a body — ‘Florence Elizabeth Brondyke’. It was a memory without root though. Lost to the wind, meandering and impossible. The stone itself still sat in the workshop, buried amongst the tools and timber. But it was many a year since he’d looked on it directly.

It was six weeks later that Florence began to sing.

He was up in the lightroom soon after dark with Cupid’s Point a rugged black shadow to the east and the bay spread out below him, calm as a duck pond. Out at sea the half moon caught the odd breaker but the shore barely saw froth that warm and mellow night.

In his tower Brondyke had trimmed the wick, changed the oil, waxed the lens and sent the lamp on its way. He’d long since learned to modulate the fire in his eyes as the light did its rounds, squinting past his lids as the beacon spun near then spinning on his heels in perfect syncopation with the beam so it warmed his back while flooding the coastline in its mystic white heat. Once the lamp ran true he would take to the catwalk, circling the tower in slow deliberate steps in time with the light, marvelling at a world burnt bright by its optics. The illuminated seaboard revealed every peak and frailty of its physique under the beam. Every cleft lurked deeper, every flint shone sharper. On his second lap Brondyke would permit himself a pipe.

He’d been smoking for just a few minutes when he first heard her song. Paused on the eastern quarter, knuckles locked tight round the cast iron railings. He’d overcome his trepidation at the height decades ago, but always remained wary. Better men than him had let idle complacency doom them to saltwater graves. The beam was to the west and Cupid’s Point was almost lost to blackness when he heard that lilting voice. A shrill, female call, long and direct. Cutting the night like birdsong.

It faded into the night with a flourish of vibrato then sounded again. Stronger and purer now as the lamp rotated behind the keeper, continuing clockwise until it fell on Cupid’s Point and revealed the unmistakable form of Florence on the summit.

Her head was high as she sung. The note grabbed Brondyke at his core. Melancholy, yet triumphant.

The keeper found himself faint on his feet, the rocks at the bottom of the ninety foot drop suddenly seemed perilously close, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the ghostly form of his wife.

His racing mind could make no sense of what she was doing or how she was doing it. He’d seldom heard her whistle until now. The thought of the child she carried brought a sudden lump to his throat. Then, as the beam passed her by she stopped. He strained to keep his eyes on her and could just make out her fluttering white nightgown as she made her way back to the cottage.

Brondyke returned at sunrise to find Florence sleeping soundly. She didn’t stir as he undressed and donned his gown by candlelight. As he eased himself under the sheets, she turned in her sleep to meet him face on.

For a second he fancied her wounded. Three small slits quivered in her throat. No blood or trauma, just the rents in the skin that shuddered in her breath. The room was cold and smelled of salt water.

Brondyke slept long into the morning. He dreamt of rocks, and punishing waves; barnacles, weeds and something black that slithered.

…ssssssssss…

She’d acquired a taste for breakfasting on seafood, and Brondyke was sent to the harbour twice a week to fetch a pail of cockles, muscles and razor clams. Florence would eat them raw with vinegar when fresh; the following day they went in a stew.

The keeper had rarely seen his wife look so healthy. Her midriff bulged handsomely, her limbs grew thicker and her milk white skin was satin and robust.

A long collar or scarf permanently covered her throat now, but Brondyke never questioned it. His thoughts had become increasingly ephemeral that year, and as spring made way for summer Florence and he lived purely in the moment. Though their days were almost identical, each seemed new and fresh come the dawn.

The keeper had seen his wife singing up on the rocks a handful of times over the previous weeks. Had Brondyke’s mind been less transitory at the time he may have made a connection between the waning and waxing moons on those particular nights but it was not to be. He’d actually become quite awestruck by the spectacle, the pure expression of it all. On the mornings that followed, a sliver of him wanted to ask her about it, but his newfound life was spent so happily that it never had reason to escape his lips.

As the days grew longer the night shifts grew shorter and the pair of them found time to spend outdoors.

Florence would sit in the late afternoon sun working on her crochet, while Brondyke would lean back in a garden chair whittling driftwood or mending his crab net.

“How d’yer like it my love?” Florence held up her finished garment. A tiny woolen hat with ribbon ties.

“Well that be a jolly bonnet and no mistake.” The keeper replied.

“Ayes. She’ll ‘ave to grow into it mind, be a bit roomy at first.”

“Mind yer head dear… incoming.” Brondyke pointed as a trio of puffins flew clumsily overhead brought low by a sudden gust, almost clipping Florence’s own bonnet. She suddenly found herself with a pair of sprats in her lap. Alive and wriggling.

“Oh mercy me! You’ve dropped yer supper.” She cooed after them. She retrieved a small fish from her ball of yarn as delicately as she could, holding it at arms length by the tail.

Brondyke couldn’t hide his chuckle. He’d thought many things of his wife, but never squeamish. There was a disgruntled little whine from the rockery, and the pair of them turned to see a fat young thing hopping back and forth on its yellow webbed feet; a proud white belly and black stubby wings that flapped confoundedly by its side. It cocked its head and peered at them over its huge comical bill.

“Here y’go then chummy!” Florence flung the sprat with a swift flick of the wrist and with a skill that belied its posture the bird caught it with a snap then made for the skies in a burst of oily feathers.

Brondyke clapped his hands with a fitful laugh from his belly. “Did you see that my love?”

“Ayes!” Beamed Florence. “That’ll be you come autumn… bringing the fish home for our little puffling.”

“That it will my love!” Brondyke was overcome with cheer, wiping the moisture from his eyes. The orange sun crept towards the western horizon, he breathed deeply of the clean evening air.

Florence quietly slid the second live fish into her mouth, crunching down on the spine. Its innards were salty and fresh.

Brondyke was in his watch-room beneath the lamp. He afforded himself a cup of tea each night on the stroke of midnight, but supplies were running low and he’d used the leaves twice already. The watery brew was hot though, and a welcome interlude to his chores regardless.

The night was clear and the stars were sharper than normal. The milky way and Orion were particularly vivid as were Cassiopeia and Perseus. Algol, the demon star, winked down on him through the tower window. His uncle Alfred had told him as a boy that Algol represented the eye of Medusa, the gorgon that would turn men to stone with a single glance, Brondyke could never help but recall this when studying the stars. Alfred had been something of a black sheep, but a mighty learned man none the less. The keeper hadn’t seen him in thirty years.

Brondyke drained his cup with a bit too much force and ended up with a mouthful of tea leaves. He took a swig from his carafe and spat into the slops bucket.

Then, as the lamp swung in from the west he once again caught sight of his wife making her way up the rocks. The merciless glare of the Argand had her appear as a shrouded wight, her night gown shimmering as she floated to the top of the point. Again, the spectre of it all seeped past the ageing man. He watched her almost in passing, noting only that the weather seemed to be on the turn as the southerly wind began to whip up her locks, sailing them out behind her like a pennon. On gaining the peak she held herself high and Brondyke caught his breath in anticipation. He cracked the window open on its hinge.

The note she sang took him by his bones. Lingual and timeless yet impossible to define. A swell of pure id. For ten, twenty seconds it sounded on the night, defying the sound of the rising winds. As it trailed off a lash of rain spattered at Brondyke’s window and he was taken off guard by the chill. Florence sang again and for a second he smelt gunpowder on the night.

The following moments occurred in fragments. As a boy uncle Alfred had shown him a Daedalum, the devil’s wheel. A cylindrical drum, decorated with sequential images on the inside that seemed to move as a single animation as it span. Alfred had gone to lengths explaining the stroboscopic principle; slowing and speeding the device to demonstrate. This is how Brondyke felt now, as though the gods had a finger on his wheel, reducing his experience to single static bursts only stitched together by Florence’s song.

Her hands were high. Her hair aloft in the squall. She took one step. Then two. The winds then lifted her in entirety; bearing her towards the drop like angel-flight. And, as the lamp passed her by she was gone. All that was left was the anguished scream. Brondyke hadn’t realised it was his own.

…gluk…gluk…gluk…

He tore towards the point, a lantern held out ahead, running like wildfire along his wife’s own path. At the summit he caught himself. Suddenly dizzied as the rock face fell away beneath him. The light he carried was no match for the precipice though and the shoreline below remained black.

He called her name. His own voice feeble against the weather but the wind had no answer for him and the last thirteen years staggered through him like his own ragged heartbeat.

Everything that was distant was now sharp in his mind. The wise woman. The ink black eyes of the Bucka. Its insidious voice and the offerings it demanded.

…ssssssss… and has the year born fruit…? brondyke

How long he stood there calling he could not say. Repeating her name over and over, like the night he’d spent chiselling her tombstone all those years before.

Eventually, the light swung east again revealing the treacherous shoreline in increments. He took to his knees, scanning each crag and boulder until finally, directly below, he saw the bundle of heavy white cloth, the unmistakable shape of a human leg. He called her name again, readying himself to descend the cliff path but his hopes were futile. The brine thundered in, crashing at the rocks and raking the body back with it. Florence was swallowed. Back into the depths that birthed her.

Brondyke had sat on the shoreline until dawn and the ocean was no match for the tears he’d cried. With the tide now low he stumbled through the rock pools, checking each crop and crevice with a vain hope that he could not let go.

When the exhaustion eventually overcame him, he almost fell to a sit on the cold slimy rocks, his sodden uniform clinging to him like dulse weed.

The silent sun revealed the world to him now. But it was a world the keeper could no longer fathom. How could the sun rise at all? How could the planet still spin in a universe that had clearly come to its end? The fire of revelations held no fear for him now, they already burned within.

He reached for his pipe on instinct, but it fell from his shaking fingers to clatter on the stones. And as he bent to his knees he saw it. A form, on the sweep of sand to the west. A brown motionless shape. Big enough to be human.

He took off on tremulous legs, stumbling through the pools then building to a jog as he reached the beach. The salt air stung his eyes and he found himself wheezing. There was no slowing though not until the object became clear — a wet and glutinous mass on the tide line.

He saw it for what it was immediately, an egg casing. Like that of a dogfish but of impossible proportions.

Standing over it he felt nothing but confusion. As he took it in he could see the slick membrane was throbbing, almost imperceptibly but very much alive. On his knees he took a hand to the translucent sac, the pressure revealed the shape inside. A human shoulder.

Brondyke had only one thought in his mind, as ridiculous as it may be; he took out his whittling knife and began to cut. The case gave way like the flesh of a jellyfish and he was soon peeling it back in flaps. It gave up its fluid, sticky and opaque, and as it drained into the sand the keeper found himself looking down on the milk-white skin of a human child. A girl, of around nine.

The sheer improbability of what he saw emptied his mind, even the pain of losing Florence was dulled. Whatever universe this now was had rules of its own.

The shape began to move. Kicking out its legs and drawing in breath. At its throat were three pink slits as he had seen on his wife. Very slowly the head turned to the sun. The eyes remained closed, but the face brought a tremor to his heart. It was a face he had once known. He bent down again and swept the wet hair from the features as the thing opened its wet new born eyes.

The keeper, stepped back. The creature squirmed gently then closed its eyes again, wriggling in its cocoon as though in a peaceful slumber.

Then he saw it. Not fifty yards away, a second casing just inside the water line. Then a third, further down. A fourth. A fifth. The beach was strewn with pods as far as the eye could see.

He ran to the shallows, to the closest sac, kneeling in the froth, taking his knife and cutting back a flap as quick as he could without damaging the creature within. The face was the same as the last. And this one opened its eyes at once - Daisy Florence Brondyke. His own daughter. The child they had buried so many moons ago. Reaching out to him. Struggling to pull itself to a sit.

Behind him on the beach, the first child started to sing.

Twenty yards to his left a third pod began to move.

Brondyke looked to the sea.

The sea looked back into him.

…sssssss… one in, one out… brondyke…

…gluk… gluk… gluk.

“Necromancy, is what you’re askin’ after Mr. Brondyke — ain’t it so?”

Brondyke’s stout leather hands tightened round his cap, worrying it to creases, eyes falling from the wise woman’s glare and settling in the hearth.

“If that be the word then so it must be. It’s these hooks in my heart see. My body is firm against the lashin’ of the sea, but sorrow has weathered me to the bone. I just want her back Miss Tammy.”

The woman rose to stand black against the fire and threw on a length of clammy wood. It spat its curses back as sparks, which caught the air and circled the scullery like white-hot spurs of make-believe.

“An’ such a matter ain’t made proper with snodderwigs and dew worms, you know that too?”

“I’ve not the know-how to give it much thought, that’s why I’m here.”

The old bird’s face roared red in the firelight.

“Many a maid’s been swung for less, tis skiddery business. But tell — where did the lady fall?”

“Cupid’s Point. The rocks took her.”

“An’ where she be restin’?”

“Well that’s the hell of it all, I never had her back. My poor Florence was lost to the waves.”

“The sea took her?”

“Ayes.”

“Well that ain’t my domain see, and there’s not much to be done without no body.”

Brondyke’s brow grew withered with shadow; deep blue eyes welled with mourning.

“Nothin’?”

The witch took up a white clay pipe and stooped to fire the shag.

“’How long you been the Lampman now?”

“Must be twenty six year come Christmas.”

“Hmmm, and you ain’t no young fella. No tackers to see you right as an old ‘un?”

“Florence gimme a daughter back in ‘39 but we lost the mite to cholera. These hooks bite too deep miss Tammy — I may-as-well’ve flung my bones down there with her, and I may just do so too.”

Tammy Blair sank back in her rocker, drawing on the pipe then vanishing behind its veil. A December squall whipped through the thatch bringing a burst of rain down the chimney, where it hissed itself dry on the hot stone hearth.

“There be another you could ask of Mr. Brondyke, but well…”

“Well?”

“This other don’t bargain in haste. And you bein’ no whelp an ‘all, well. You might not have the blood for it, nor to say the time.”

“How long would I be needin’?”

“Twelve winters Mr. Brondyke. And not a day less.”

Brondyke drew himself up and spat a pulp of tobacco at the embers. Working the shape back into his keeper’s cap and smoothing out his uniform he looked at Tammy straight.

“Twelve years?”

“And there be more — this other — if yee want that of he, he’ll want that of yee.”

“Who you be speakin’ of miss Tammy?”

“The Bucka Dhu good sir. Only a Bucka holds sway over briney.”

The keeper sat and sank his face to his coarse dogged palms.

From a chest near her feet the old woman produced what looked like a leather pouch but on inspection by the keeper was a brittle and petrified egg casing, that of a shark, dried and fashioned into a rudimentary wind instrument.

“Only a Bucka, say I.”

And so it came, twelve years on, four days shy of Christmas 1852 that old Brondyke took the cliff top path as he’d done on that day eleven times prior. Long dead stars and a hunchbacked moon were his guide, though the keeper knew that trail better than his own sallow face. Even with a barrow his footing was sure. Every half-minute, all was bleached white by the glare of his own Argand lamp which burned atop the lighthouse not three hundred yards from Cupid’s Point.

The offerings had been slight for the first few years — a tankard of ox blood; a brace of hares; a barley loaf — but on the sixth year the keeper had to present six unfertilised adder’s eggs and from then on the procurements became evermore challenging. The year he was required to bleed himself, and had done just that, the keeper had ceased to say the night time prayers that he’d recited since infancy. They’d become flippant on his tongue.

Tonight’s offering, the final offering, had almost been too great a burden; unthinkable and degrading, until he considered the alternative. Was withering to dust, an old man alone, no kith no kin, was it really all that different to Inferno?

And so, he guided his load down the least treacherous path onto the beach for one final time.

Settled at the water’s edge the keeper paused as always to take in the weather. A life time on the jagged teeth of Cornwall had left him immune to December winds and he drew the night down deep, locking eyes with the waves. The churning brine stared back into him, but as always, it fell on the keeper to the summoning.

He put the egg case to his lips. At first he could muster nothing more than a hoarse whine, his cracked lips salty and dry. Summoning a fresh breath he blew with purpose. The note was not loud, not shrill, nor deep but somehow it rose above the ocean’s roar as if sounding from a space of its own; from between the cracks in all things.

The minutes ticked by but Brondyke knew better than to blow the thing twice. Then, in the next pass of light he saw a gentle swirl in the water that grew to an eddy and somehow began moving against the waves and toward the water’s edge.

The fishgod emerged as it did every year — as froth and sinew; in a spurt of spindrift that caught the air in lunar spasms; a saltwater sprite that spun itself whole with a burst of tendrils, then tentacles; that reached deep into its own nothingness and prolapsed the being, like a spider emerging from its night-hole.

The process always caused Brondyke to step back in alarm, as did the burst of smell which was somewhere between chum-mackerel and gunpowder.

The Bucka’s first few steps as a biped were sickening to watch. It swayed on its spindles with bulbous joints bending both ways until it claimed its land legs and finally rose to height. Seven foot of slithering wetness made flesh, in its piscinus, barnacled skin and oily crest of kelp and dabberlocks.

Brondyke took in its huge dilating eyes with a familiar yawn of nausea. The Bucka squirmed itself up to a walk and lurched at him like a crippled fantoccini.

gluk, gluk, gluk… gluk, gluk… brondyke?

Its conga head swung as it spoke but its lips were still. It seemed to cluck the words from its gills with a quiver of its sharp white tongue and Brondyke was never sure whether it truly spoke or simply placed its voice into his mind directly. Either way he knew it heard him too.

“Ayes. ‘Tis Brondyke.”

gluk, gluk… then a final year you have called me into moonlight…sssssss?

“Ayes.”

The lamp made its next rotation bathing the shore in white, and for a second the Bucka appeared translucent like a new born fish; its throbbing innards like a bag of restless eels.

Brondyke found the barrow to be stuck fast in shale, it would move no further under its load. Unsure as to how this final transaction would play out, he stood his ground taking a twist of tobacco in his teeth and biting down hard. The fishgod continued in its shambles, pointing to the offering with a slick webbed finger.

…gluk, gluk… and has the year born fruit sssssss… brondyke?

The keeper said nothing. He was long past shame. Long past fear. The ritual that had consumed most of his waking thoughts for twelve long years had steadily grown into a compulsion. He struggled to recall the deep mourning that had driven his quest in those early winters. Upon entering the graveyard that sundown he’d even had trouble recalling Florence herself. While his shovel cut the flint peppered ground it was a twisted rictus on the rocks that smiled back at him, not his wife. Now that midnight grew near, and Brondyke had delivered his final offering, the man felt nothing at all.

Brondyke stepped back as the Bucka bent close.

gluk, gluk…

It drew back the cloth and the child’s body caught the final surge of lamplight before being swept back into night.

“She be fresh.” The keeper worked the tobacco in his jaw. “Buried not two days ago.”

gluk, gluk… sssssss, and does the child have no name? She be, who be? brondyke.

“Millie Jacobs, they’re a new lot over the penn. Don’t be knowin’ ‘em m’self.”

The fishgod stooped on the girl; extending a digit to the long cold face, prodding at the wet blue lips, teasing the grave matted hair.

Satisfied, it took its prize. Brondyke was always surprised at the strength within its lank and reedy musculature. It lifted the twelve year old corpse with ease and swaddled it like a babe.

…ssssssss.

“And, how? Yer know? My Florence?”

The Bucka’s dinner plate eyes brimmed black, roaming over Brondyke behind elastic membranes.

…sss… low tide, the dawn shall leave her where we now stand, gluk, gluk.

Not ten feet from where he’d last seen her all those moons ago.

“So… that be all?”

…sssssss… one in, one out.

With its earthly cargo held tight the fishgod returned to the waves a step at a time until it was one with the spume and weed. As for the child, Brondyke decided it was better not to know.

Six and a half hours between tides; hours Brondyke badly needed to spend sleeping but of course could not. Once his duty at the lamp was done he hunkered down at the kitchen table, a half measure of rum clutched in his paw, bottle at hand.

The night grew still save for the odd crackle in the hearth and the steady rhythm of the mantle clock.

He had sat like this, in the very same chair, in his wedding suit. Alone, as now; again with a tod for his nerves; awaiting the cart that would take him to the church. Brondyke was a nervous man back then, and his charge as Lampman weighed heavy. Each long night he spent on the job found his mind out at sea, out there with the sailors who depended on him as they weaved a course through the craggy depths. Meticulous as he was in his maintenance of the light, he would still find himself rising from his chair every five minutes or so to check on it. And the little sleep he got after sunrise was frequently blighted by dreams — schooners thrashed to pieces on the outcrops; Cupid’s Point piled high with bodies.

On the morning of his wedding however he had felt these anxieties begin to lift. He felt nothing but calm on that bumpy ride to St. Piran’s. And when he finally lifted Florence’s canary yellow veil at the end of the ceremony he knew his troubled nights were over. If such a rare and loving creature as Florence could take him as her own he could finally rise to his Earthly challenges with confidence. And he had. Brondyke kept Cupid’s point safe for all the years to follow. Tragedy became a distant concern. Until the night she fell.

He stirred to the mournful cry of gulls and the mantle clock chiming six. He finished his drink and prepared a pail of water to wash.

Standing on the shoreline in his wedding suit Brondyke took a second to marvel at the morning calm. The power of the sea held no surprises for him. He had spent his life with it lashing at his back, watching it tirelessly carve the rocks to its own shape or mercilessly consume carelessly built structures at its edge. He knew too well the power of Ol’ Briney yet it was mornings like this, with the bay as flat as Bude cut, that he truly pondered. Where does all that rage go, and for how long?

He checked his pocket watch, the one Florence had gifted him at forty. He checked the empty shoreline to the left and right. He let his eyes settle on the horizon and for a second he was sure he was dreaming, that he had dreamt it all and was dreaming now. He checked the watch again and noted the hour.

And like that, she was there.

She didn’t wrench herself from the froth, she didn’t gather her crumpled form from the bloodied flints and lurch at him on broken feet, she didn’t materialise in a bank of fog. She was just there by his side, exactly as she always had been on their Sunday morning walks. And once she was there, the thirteen years of trauma were not.

Brondyke could still picture her death, her dying cries, his futile struggle to retrieve her corpse; but he also knew it had never happened. As one may recall a jasmine scented summer of ten years gone but can never set foot there again, Brondyke knew his memories to be false even as they lingered. He had been dreaming all along.

She took his hand in her own chill fingers and squeezed. It meant what it always meant, that she was cold and was returning to the cottage. And without a word she made for the cliff path leaving Brondyke to follow. He wondered what they would have for dinner.

…ssssssss…

Thanks for reading. Part two on the way. gluk… gluk!

For something faster, leaner and tripper you may like Prospects. Start your engines, summon the snake: https://substack.com/@alexandermarlow/p-199472846

Content warning: extreme self indulgence

Each man queued for a shot of the brew, but His cup was never left empty.

By nightfall the band had lost themselves in a psychedelic call and response that ping-ponged round the cove, churning up the gulls, turning the flock inside out and germinating a whole new cosmos deep behind His eyes.

While seabirds stuttered in the strobe, His Brothers were brawling through the smoke of time. Cretaceous man-things flung loose against the beat, bared to their skins. Vaulting the flames and flogging at their chests. Deep in the lunatic throb.

Open your arms, open your arms…

Meat was served and ligaments were stripped back with teeth. Lemon Eye favoured cheek, while Bronco popped the eyeball on his molars, and at the edge of the sea the elder things dug loose the trilobites. Cracking free the brine chilled meat. Fending off the wolverines; hunchbacks, half-formed by shadow.

They brought Him His in a dish of iron. The heart of a pig, served in a nest of adders. He took it to his teeth. The process was purely mechanical now. Communition. Degradation. Facilitation. Breaking down the muscle into fibre and paste, an enzyme rich bolus of blood. The flavour expressed itself as pockets of purple, popping in the night to the rhythm of the drums.

From the seat at His side the Sage took His arm, pointing to the sky, at the amber moon, a sliver behind the parting clouds. “Selene, she sees you… hssss.”

An elder stepped forward with a vessel of stone; an emulsion of malachite; painting His face and neck in daubs of green. The Sage pointed to the waterline.

The Hyperboreans arrived by long boat. Carved from a single trunk of oak, the bow as a gilded dragon, it cut a furrow through the froth and shale. The elder things dragged it ashore while the travellers drifted inland like fog.

The Mothers came first. A nebulous trinity. One moment rhythmic, twisting with the drums like fireflies; another brittle and ancient. Half dead, half eternal. United by one familiar, a silver wolf that danced at their heels, winding through their paths like a moonlit stream.

The Druids came next. Collared in feathers; a riot of peafowl. Their robes were of fur; teeth and claws intact. Their heads were shorn to the bone and their faces were hidden by thick masks of ash.

Finally came the Beastmen. The hybrid clan. Horned and cloven, He could smell them at thirty paces. The heavy maudlin smell of animal, the musk of apex predators. Their horns were of buffalo and they wore nothing at all. Scrofulous, semi human genitals leaked a constant trail of urine between their legs. Amongst His human brothers, even the primarks stepped back from the Beastmen. And it was the beasts that brought His steed on their shoulders.

The Harley was of silver, hard and immaculate. An FX Big Twin Super Glide. Bedizened in jewels and semi-precious rivets. With extended forks it was fourteen feet wheel to wheel. It’s rumble, like that of a brooding lion, told Him it was very much alive.

Each Mother stepped to Him with gifts. Bloodstone from the first. A brace of headless doves from the second and the final mother revealed her body. A multitude of beaks erupted from her pallid flesh like barnacles on a hull of iron. And one by one they all sang His name.

The congregation took up torches and began the climb, up the winding stairs of chalk that were cut into cliffs.

Iron fist. Velvet glove.

His leathers were presented at the top, with the midnight sky spread open like leather and the moon, now revealed, throwing shadows by its icy light. First, His brothers stripped him like tanners, cutting away his greasy denims with shivs and pocket knives, until he stood naked in the wind. Then, seven elder things brought the ceremonial attire.

A cuirass of gator skin was strapped to his torso. His legs were bound in stallion hide, and completed with a codpiece of cold hammered iron. Pauldrons of bull-leather were tied to his shoulders; riveted white in sharp points of tusk. And his gauntlets were of steel. Etched with oathtaker’s runes.

He stared to the moon, and the moon stared into him, tugging on His gizzards with it’s majesty. All his Brothers were naked now and all had grown taller. Bronco’s back was hunched, his vertebrae like medieval brickwork, threatening to split through the shimmering skin. Lemon Eye’s brow was thick, cro-magnon, swelling his dome and almost obscuring his bad eye. His lower canines cut through his top lip and his good eye roved like a planet. Crowthers flexed; reptilian. A cobra. Twisting with the night like vapour.

And the heavens swam above them all. Onyx subsumed green which bled to purple; orange, crimson and violet. And when He drew breath the universe bulged with Him.

The tribes began to horseshoe now. Captains and primarks formed the first crest of men. Foot soldiers next, and the druids and elder things took the rear, fanning into transepts. There seemed to be thousands of elders now and they had begun a low and sombre prayer. Their black and ancient tongue made no intellectual sense to any of the Brothers but the harmonies settled like a childhood funeral. Deep in the core.

And finally, the Prospects filed past. Bronco slapped his stern, only able to grunt past his wolfen overbite. Lemon presented an egg, cracking it one handed to anoint His hair, then kissing his mark. Crowthers whipped past like a pinion. His snake crest erect in salutations. The other young riders disappeared into the tableland. Lighting torches to mark out His route.

With the congregation formed, the elders were silenced; the choir split open to allow passage for the Sage.

The Saxon Rider beat a drum. The Sage at his side. Witches followed. They arced round to a stop in front of Him and the Sage removed his face mask.

“My son… hssssss. My beautiful boy.” The Sage spoke in whispers, but every man heard. “Are we not Brothers? Hssssss.” All men roared, the Beastmen barked and the Druids threw shapes at the sky. “Are we not blood? Are we not the crimson? Hsssss… the plasma in Albion’s veins.”

The Saxon Rider took a second canister from his side. A primark appeared with the helmet. All three witches sung His name now.

“You my son will take our message to Selene… hsssssss… as praise for her enduring grace and protection. To summon and to shake and to bind us all for another seven years. What we offer she, she offers we.”

From His right came a growl, a Beastman had the Harley on its shoulder. Up close, the animal’s musk made him dizzy. Tipsy with corruption. The beast set the ride down before him, as if it were just a child’s toy, and He took the bike by the horns. He swung into the saddle, feeling the steel tense like muscle. The Saxon clamped a breather to His face and the canister began to hiss.

The mushroom brew had altered him, and granted elder sight. But the vapours inside the mask truly cut him in two. Opening. And separating. Crank gas craniotomy. Peeling the conscious mind away like a segment of fruit. Removing the last trace of Adam and leaving the Reptile in control of the bike. The Saxon presented a helmet. An open mouthed Houndskull, horned in night-tusk. Inside it was black.

Listen in awe and you’ll hear him… He kicked, and the Harley snarled. A hibernating bear, asleep no more. The petrol tank throbbed like a donor organ between his thighs, the exhaust pipe flexed in arousal and the buckhorns relaxed, softening in his grip. His other self; the self of salt. The needy, malnourished human self, hovered above. Coupled to the reptile by His last strand of consciousness, but helpless in its whimsy.

Listen in awe and you’ll hear him…

His last human sensation was the taste of arsenic, collecting around the tonsils.

Bark at the moon.

The big twin shot forward to the roar of the Brothers and the Saxon’s primal drum. Twenty, forty, seventy meters. It ate the scrub; insatiable, and spat loose the refuse like a chipper. Ahead of Him, the half-mile was lined by fire — the Prospect’s intermittent beacons — but the Reptile had its own route finder. A pin-prick of starlight radiating out from the chest and opening up in front like a tunnel.

The salt-self felt something it hadn’t felt for years when riding; fear. The child was suddenly back in Epping. On a three mile straight through the forest. Five years old, with Uncle Johno in the saddle and Him holding onto Johno’s leathers for dear and bloody life… Four AM. No cops, no commuters and Johno opened up like a furnace. He’d made it until eighty before He wet himself. Johno took it past ninety before he slowed.

The first Prospect raised a torch as the Reptile shot past. The tunnel formed ahead, knitting itself together from super-charged particles. Johno had to get home quick, you see. After stomping those two skins. Rapid oxidation. Sustain. Prophecy. ‘Fucking peanuts’ Johno still had claret on his denims. A kick to the starter. The big one had a face of blood.

Wolverines flanked the Reptile now, matching His speed with ease. The Harley’s dial was caught in a whirlpool but the dogs kept pace like spitfires. A second Prospect waved him on and, the salt-self was back in London. On the Bakerloo home from school. Exothermic reaction. Two days after the nail bomb. ‘Always ride the middle carriage’, Johno had said. ‘Paddy don’t bomb the middle’. Redox. Power cut. A blue-rinse spinster sparked smokes in the dark as the train thundered on.

The fourth Prospect brought the Reptile to the narthex, and the tunnel expanded. Arches of fire framed the vanishing point. The endless black now of the English channel. Johno got Him chips. They talked football as they walked. Once home His uncle pushed Him towards the garage.

Lemon Eye yelped as the Reptile passed. Bronco blew fire while the bike began to truly limber. Bullhorns sprouted and entwined His forearms. ‘What d’yer make of that then?’ Johno switched on the light — A Yamaha RD250 — He ran a child’s finger down the chipped white tank. ‘I’ll have it runnin’ for yer birthday.’

After narthex comes nave. The cathedral rose to the heavens and the Reptile reduced its aisle to ash. Thundering on towards terminal velocity, as Selene hung silver over sea.

‘You’ll want one ae these n’all lad.’ Johno held out a second present. A bowie knife.

‘What for?’

‘Cutting yerself loose.’

And that’s where the chord snapped. As the ground gave way. On an iron horse He flies… As the cliffs gave way. The Reptile caught the super-highway dead on, but He was left with the atmosphere. The moon span faster and the Harley began to smelt. Absorbing the Reptile into its molten alloy. Releasing its impurities as sparks, until it was more eagle than bike. And it flew the sacrifice home, into the heart of the moon.

For an interminable split-second, the salt-self just hung there. Until it didn’t.

On an iron horse He gladly dies…

One hundred and seventy three feet.

Exactly falling distance.

He hits the shale like a bag of carrion, eyes still on the goddess. The perfect silver mirror in the midsummer sky. His only way home.

If you’ve got this far I’d like to thank you, both properly and improperly. So thank you. And thonk you. A.

Featuring lyrics by: Motorhead. Donovan. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Ozzy and Led Zepplin.

On an iron horse He flies… One hundred and seventy three feet. Exactly falling distance. He hits the shale like a bag of carrion, eyes on the goddess. The perfect silver mirror in the midsummer sky. His only way home.

It seems like some time before the bike falls too. A snatch of reason somewhere in His cortex has Him wonder how He hit the ground first, but this last ditch attempt at executive function is eradicated by the impact of the Harley. It explodes by His head. An eruption of crystal and light. Raining oil, chrome and quartz.

He finds Himself eyeing a gummy clot to the right of his buckled hand. He recognises it as a part of Himself but can’t say which. On an iron horse He flies… He can still hear the music.

He spits free a tooth. The clot begins to wriggle, a hatching pupa, alive with laser-light. On an iron horse He gladly dies… There’s smoke in his nose now. Lingering cigarettes. Smells like summer.

Iron horse His wife, Iron horse His life. His blood begins to dance again. The moon begins to spin.

Smells like yesterday.

There’d been pinball at the transport cafe. Hollywood tie-in. Jaws.

“Jaws 2 was better,” said Bronco.

“Was it fuck?”

“Jaws eats a helicopter.”

He’d ignored Bronco after that. Leaning into the machine. The industrial clatter of pinball wizardry. Smack. Bang. Clackety-clack, right into that gaping maw. Heavy set of gnashers. Bad fish. Everything flashed red for the winner.

Bronco sneered, handing over a note – “Lucky.”

“I’ll buy the butties.”

“Yeah you will.”

Four rashers on white. Brown sauce and red. Milk and two. Lambert and Butler, while Bronco smoked Super-Kings. Old lady fags. He’s always had a touch of the Hilda Odgens.

The A23 was a blizzard of flies. He had His goggles but Bronco made do with a neckerchief, nearly coming off when he took a bluebottle to the eye. But with a duck and a weave, and a boot to steady, the asphalt thundered on south, winding in the horizon with a flash. The ocean lurked blue, beyond the clutter of Brighton beach.

They’d miss the big ride-down of course, but Prospects always went early. To ready the killing fields.

Madeira Drive heaved with meat. Bulldog breeds. The hang-gut heavies with backs like Spam and home-team tattoos. Sucking it in for the honeys; tan-lines and vinegar. Swimsuits and roller skates. Flank cuts and blistered heels.

Cruising to a crawl, He caught Bronco eyeing up the protein, dirty sod, then realised the big man was actually glaring straight past the fleshbait; stink-eyeing some soppy old mod on a fifties Lambretta.

Bronco belched pure diesel and the spiv shat it at first glance. Quiff to the curb. Checking his shine. Bested. Bronco spat, revved his Beeza and they were on up to Kemptown.

The connection was right on time. Lounging by the Volks with a Slazenger holdall, cut denims and flip-flops. Perfect cover amongst the summer swarm.

“Mad Dogs?” He put his smoke out with a twist.

“Witchkings.”

“Oh Aye? Well it’s all there.”

Bronco took a look in the bag.

“We good?”

They traced the coast like heat-seekers. Peacehaven, Newhaven and Seaford led them on to Seven Sisters where they vanished off the East Dean Road down a trail that sunk into a smuggler’s tunnel, then shot from the dark into the hot white space of Scuttler’s Cut.

The locus was scooped from Cretaceous chalk. A wide shingle beach, protected by cave-eaten cliffs, already teeming with Prospects and hang-arounds from the local seven - Angels, Road Rats, Dirt Pistons, Sons of Abbadon, Whitehawk Wheelers and The Snake-Eye Saints. Bronco shot Him a dirty look. He returned an affirmative one; pulling His own ride up inside the shelter of the cliffs, while Bronco hurled into a charge – scattering the mob like shrapnel.

“Witchkings!” A belly roar – the big man slid the Beeza to a stand. A silverback amongst the no-marks. That would all change when the old-timers rolled up but for that long minute, the beast was in heat.

A snaggletoothed kid – Lemon Eye (for his left eye was as crooked as his teeth) took up Bronco’s battle cry and ran in for a tackle. The big man countered, swinging his thighs from the ride, and in one slick move caught Lemon in a headlock, winding the poor lamb into his stinking pit. Devotion articulated as violence.

“You make the pick up?” – Crowthers, the Wheeler’s top Prospect, was talking to Him now.

He slid the Slazenger from His back; held it up high. “Five kilos!” Bronco let Lemon drop to the sand.

Crowthers rolled an eye, “that’s a lot of fungus. Sulphate?”

“It’s all here.”

“Best get it in the pot then.”

He ignored the curl in Crowthers’ lip. Wheelers let their Prospects wear top-rockers, fucking primates, and Crowthers milked it around those without their patches. “After you sweetheart.”

The fire was built. Lemon Eye danced for approval, proud of his pyre of billets and driftwood. Freaky looking munchkin, but the lad’s done good, He clapped him round the stern.

The pot – seventy inches of cast iron – was already half full, “that’s not sea water is it?” He looked to the Wheeler.

“Come on buddy. Course not.”

Buddy? Crowthers pointed to a pair of plastic barrels.

Beyond them, the stage was underway. A framework lashed from scaffold. The generators were still on tumbrels, hitched to a three-cylinder widowmaker. Crowthers followed His eye, “Bigsby give me a lend of it.”

“You can handle a Kawasaki then?” Crowthers ignored Him. Pointed at the pot. “Let’s get the brew on.”

The smell from the Slazenger was all lichen and bluebells. The fungus had been squashed to a tight damp block. It slid into the cauldron like a D-day lander. Then witchbane. Wormwood. And a heavy dash of wizz.

Crowthers pointed to a Jerry Can, “Lemon - get your spark on.”

“Ain’t done yet sunshine.” Bronco produced a litre of Navy. Pouring it over the mushrooms with a wink for the dog. “Get it lit lad.”

“Yes chef.”

They completed the stage together. Summoning its structure under sunshine until it loomed like a Tabernacle. A shrine to the shit kickers. A pagoda. An offering.

By mid-afternoon the generators rumbled and the live wires crackled; tuning up with the band – One, two! A vinyl spun, planetary. Bouncing orisons from the chalk face. I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you…

The fungal decoction bubbled and stewed.

Two more fires were lit in the cave mouth. Two whole pigs prepared on spits.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Lemon fingered idly at his wrist tattoo: the inverted four of The Hanged Man and a numeral, X.

“Every seven years.” He replied.

“You scared?” Lemon asked.

He looked to His own mark: Moon, V. The drummer fired out a roll and span into the jam, slightly behind the disc.

…Now’s your time, burn your mind.

The clergy and the faithful rolled in at dusk. Seven clubs riding as one. Eighty, ninety and more they came. Thunder, gears and fume. The band played them in with a fuzz-box brawl. Blue notes and black, sliding into an uptempo version of an old favourite – when I look out my window, many sights to see…

Each club president got a cheer from the assembly of juniors, but it was the final bike that drew a hush of reverence.

The Saxon Rider pulled his Ironhead ahead of the throng and arced around the bay towards the stage, in a sidecar to his left a figure sat motionless. Wisps of white hair trailed its cowl. Bronco raised a fist (a sword and a VII inked at the wrist joint) while He jostled forward with the crowd; a scrum of denim and boots, each of them straining for a look.

His first glance of the Sage brought to mind roadkill. A buckled crow. Reanimated on the tarmac. It huddled in the ride as if affronted by the daylight. In its lap lay a gas canister, swaddled and precious; the breather snaked up into its hood.

The Ironhead ground to a stop, rock-steady in the shale, and the Saxon silenced the band with a greasepaint salute.

The Sage raised a limb to its maw, sucking deep on the canister, crank gas recirculation. Hungry.

It finally clawed the mask from its mouth, huffing out a cloud of blue vapour. A snarling gasket… an ancient bird, the microphone was presented like a sceptre: its voice sizzled from the static, sexless and raw – “hssss… my poets and pugilists, roughnecks and rubes. Hsss… my mystics and miscreants.”

The mounted bikers replied with a furious rev of engines, Bronco thumped his chest. Lemon Eye looked like he might cry, though it was hard to be sure. He, Himself still heard music – pick up every stitch, out to make it rich.

The Sage took a fresh wheeze of gas and spoke again: “hsssss… eternal brothers of the Midsummer run. Bone breakers, head takers, promise makers. We are the chosen and today we will choose.”

A cheer went up. Curdling on the breeze. He found Crowthers staring at Him with a creep to his eye. The bikers began to dismount and the Road Captains, two for each club, approached the group of juniors. Thickset primarks, tribal insignias.

“Prospects!”

Crowthers took the cue. Pushing Lemon Eye ahead towards the Captains, then rounding on the rest. All colours mixed as one now. Fresh cuts for the slab. Bronco slapped Him on the arm. “Ladies first.” He stepped into the group, the big man on his back, two rabbits running in the ditch. The Prospects were assembled round the fire as the Sage looked on. Thirty two of them. Short odds for each.

The Saxon Rider produced a pack of cards.

…Must be the season of the witch.

A sweep of cloud had smeared the clean blue sky like warpaint. The ocean rumbled below. The Sage took the deck and cast it as one, above their heads, where it plumed into fragments. Each leaf wound its way back down to the sand. All except one.

One card. The card. Caught the atmosphere. Snagged on the miasma. It slunk back to earth like gristle through fat. Easily caught, face down in the Sage’s extended palm.

He felt His skin burn. A course of static in the epidermis. Accumulating in His mark. A wave of tinnitus crackled in His shells.

The Sage held up the card, with a dry rot smile. “The moon is in fifth, hsss, how very appropriate.”

There was a brief pause amongst the men as they digested the proclamation.

He remained motionless. It was Bronco who led the cheer, grabbing at His tattooed wrist and holding up the mark. Tackling Him at the waist, hoisting Him onto his shoulders while the crowd erupted. Seven clubs as one. Roaring for the sabbat.

The band kicked in with a burst of electrostatic and a wild, pulsing stomp while the chant rippled through the men – “Drink! Drink!”

Bronco let him down as a tankard emerged, burnished in engine oil. A captain approached the pot, dunking it then approaching Him. “Drink! Drink!”

The pewter was hot on His lips. The riders fell silent. Watching, waiting and willing Him on through every gulp of brew.

Holding that empty tankard aloft drew another roar. Engines growled. Spin wheeling with the band as they rolled into a new number… been a long time since I rock an’ rolled.

The hot and heavy dose smouldered inside Him; wild fires on the breeze… been a long time since I did the stroll.

Thanks for reading hunchbacks, A.

Arcanity in the UK

Prospects (II) Final Part

Each man queued for a shot of the brew, but His cup was never left empty…

Read more

5 months ago · Alexander Marlow

Content warning: politics, drug use, crime and rhetoric

Brian ‘Stungun’ Wadley is an avatar I’ve created for a real content creator with a channel on Rumble whom I watch every week. I’ve not used his real name so that you book worms don’t head over there and give him a hard time about politics. More on that later.

Stungun was a heroin addict (with a comorbid fascination for crack, benzos, pregabalin and booze) for several decades. He’s lived his life as a shoplifter and commercial burglar and spent about half of it behind bars. But today he seems to be a genuinely trustworthy member of society, with a moral compass that points more or less due north, and somehow he also seems to be in the best of health.

His stories of jail cells, withdrawal, failed suicide attempts, homelessness, prostitutes he’s known murdered and associates he still sees sleeping in doorways even after losing limbs to the needle are fascinating, traumatic and educational. As are his videos where he shows you exactly how he used to break into offices in the early 2000s. Stungun does repeat himself a bit. His noggin has withstood a considerable psychoactive pounding afterall. But he’s a genuinely inspiring man who lives to walk his dog and make informative content. Stungun has truly suffered, mainly at his own hands, but he’s come through it stronger.

The thing about Stungun though, is that he has also become a proto-fascist, a stooge for the wolfpack, and I’m not sure he realises it.

I don’t think he’s a real, dyed in the wool, actual racist. He’s got lots of stories about sharing a cell with non-caucasians and never has a bad word for any of them. But Stungun lives in a deprived city in northern England. The kind of place that was hung out to dry by Thatcher and has been withering like old fruit ever since, and he’s understandably fed up. Facts like this, and – by his admission – a lack of a proper education has led him, like a lamb to the slaughter, into the cold yet welcoming space of the far-right echo chamber.

Stungun has trouble getting hospital appointments you see (because they’re all full of foreigners). He has disdain for all the vape shops and barbers that have popped up in his city (because they’re all laundering money for foreigners; on this fact he is partially accurate). He films himself walking the most deprived areas and somehow makes the tenuous link between the fly-tipping and ‘immigrant communities’.

Stungun also depends on benefits to survive, yet is fascinated with characters like Rupert Lowe; a very privileged proto-fascist of the boomer persuasion, and the leader of Restore. A party which would stamp all over Stungun’s welfare lifeline and may one day start rounding up people of his demographic in the guise of progress. I’ve tried to suggest that those who vote for goon-squads shouldn’t be surprised when the goons come for them. Stungun ignores suggestions like this.

Yet Stungun is a lovely man, while simultaneously becoming more dangerous with every passing day. He's like Strangeways’ shepherd’s pie: simple, coarse yet nutritous, and with a razor blade at its centre.

I would have to admit that Stungun is truly British though. You’d struggle to describe him as anything else. And most of all, Stungun wants the British to be famous again. When I suggest that the British are actually most famous for fighting Nazis, and that plums like him are now holding the door open, it of course goes ignored. 

Luckily Rupert Lowe will never be PM. (Rupert will die with his gouty foot in a badger snare, after a very rich meal in the grounds of one of his extravagant properties.) But Farage probably will. This will please Stungun no end. It’ll be a jab in the eye for the wokeratti (and let’s be honest they sometimes need one). But how long will it be before they’re jabbing Stungun in the eye? And will he be in any condition to fight back?

Or will he be happy to just sign on the dotted line? To have a flourishing later-life career as a card carrying goon?

So here’s the observation. Does your story have a character with a fascinating back story? Are they reformed? Damaged? Are they trust worthy, polite, and inspiring, but also the enemy? Are they dangerous in many facets? Stungun has proved himself to have real survival skills you see. Never underestimate Stungun.

I can’t think of many stories that aren’t improved by characters like him.

#wealthtax #taxwealthnotwork

If you've read this far, I can only thank you. A.

More horror and fantasy fiction coming soon.

He gained the shelter of Whetstone Park, sodden to the bone, grazing his forearm against the broken pane as he dragged the bolt across, and let himself into the hallway gasping from his exertions. He was followed by the scurry of boots then heard the door shut behind him. The runt had got in too.

Maniot made haste to the kitchen, slamming the door and drawing across a hefty crate of garden tools to shut the blighter out. It was bad enough that the imp had got in, but he would not share a room with him.

Wotjek snorted behind the door. Check your wares sir! I’d wager she’s found you here too?

Maniot rushed to the pail by the hearth. The pail that just last night had seemed full of money. There were three lowly tupenny bits, clung to the base of the bucket.

“No! No! No!” he groaned, “how can this be?”

Maniot, you dolt. It’s the wagtails! If I can find you sir, you bet they can too… you bet on that sir!

“Nonsense, there’s no way she could know of my lodgings… No way. Is there? Could she have known of my business?”

Oh they know sir. They chatter like ravens and swarm like flies. I’d wager they’ve been on you for weeks now… since you took care of that business.

“No! Wotjek! I will not contend with such fancies.”

The runt began to snigger, pacing the boards of the hallway like an ape, restless in its cage.

Maniot patted himself down, searching his pockets. “I must see to my medicines.” He produced a bottle. A small and final dose of chloral hydrate. He scrabbled with the stopper then threw it back in one. Gums drawn dry by the caustic vapours. Dizzied as the sedative hit his gullet.

He steadied himself on the kitchen table, discarding the bottle amongst the debris that littered the room.

Upon the stack of plates, under the emerging sun, was a paper. A cheap penny gazette of the type that littered the hallway.

It sat right next to his own plate from the evening before. How had he not seen it? Even in the gloom, that headline would have caught his eye. The date was two weeks prior; the 18th of August.

‘The identity of the woman who was found so cruelly murdered at 37, George-yard, Whitechapel, on the morning after Bank Holiday has at last been decided.’ He read. ‘And henceforth the murdered woman will be known as Martha Turner.’

He snatched it up at once, and stupefied by his shock (and the hydrate), fell heavily into the right-hand chair.

He read the piece from top to tail. Then read it again.

“Terrible business isn’t it?”

Maniot’s pulse leapt. He looked to the door.

“I’m right here Mr Maniot.”

And indeed he was. Sitting in the second chair; swaddled in shadow with a halo of sun crowning his bald head.

“Doctor Savage!”

“She was left in quite the bloody ruck.” The Doctor gestured at the paper. “Thirty seven stab wounds they say.”

“Thirty nine!” Maniot was suddenly irked by the other man’s presence. “Why are you back so soon?”

“It seems prescient that I am.” The doctor replied. “You have got yourself in quite the jumble.”

Maniot took to his feet and approached the kitchen window. “Maybe it was her… and see! The window is now open a crack.” He raised it slightly and shut it as hard as he could, turning on the doctor. “You saw me shut that this morning, did you not? She’s been here. She left the paper!”

“Mr Maniot, will you please be seated.”

“Janey she called herself, or Jemima. Or was it Jill?” Maniot muttered, returning to his chair.

“Now, have you eaten yet?”

“I’ve not had the chance.”

“But did you at least buy some food?”

Maniot signaled to the vegetables he’d dropped by the hearth, and picked up the bundle of kidneys.

“Well, now. Bravo! The day has borne fruit.” said Savage. “Now before we do anything else I’d like you to eat sir. Nourishment is of utmost priority.”

“I have no wood, or coal.”

“Like I said this morning, the organs should be consumed raw, to preserve their integrity.”

The doctor took a clean plate from the table and passed it over. Maniot dumped out his load of offal, picking a length of straw from the topmost chunk and wiping it on his shirt.

“Maniot…” Savage had his eyes on the meat.

It was almost, but not quite, body temperature. It loitered on the tongue as he got up the nerve to bite. When he did, the outer layer gave in like jelly, while the core had a crunch to it. The faint tang of urine. As he finally swallowed he understood that he was truly, and magnificently — hungry.

“You know the kidneys were once considered the seat of man’s morality,” the doctor began. “An embodiment in flesh of rectitude itself.”

Maniot took another in his fist, an organ in its entirety, and sunk his teeth into the delicate fascia.

“The Egyptians would leave them in the body during mummification, to grant courage in the afterlife. The Babylonians used them to predict the future.”

Maniot slathered back the meat, wiping plasma from his chin. “They’re good,” he grunted.

“Such a shame, in this modern world of ours, to see the many unwashed hordes who go through life oblivious to the magic that lurks within them, don’t you think Maniot?”

The patient swallowed his final bite. A sweat on his brow.

“How do you feel Maniot?”

Maniot felt like thunder. Like a strong southerly wind. Somewhere in the world beyond, he could hear music. “Perfect.” He said.

“Nutrition is key sir. Without it, our medicines are futile.”

Maniot took an onion from the floor and bit into it whole, crunching right through the coarse fibrous shell. He hadn’t had an appetite like this for weeks.

Doctor Savage picked up the gazette. “Maybe it’s time you told me of this…” he scanned the article, “Martha Turner.”

The onion was tart in his throat, he chewed it slowly now, absorbing its flavour. “I’ve never heard of her… not until the article of course.”

“That’s not what Wotjek tells me.”

And Maniot was on his feet, hurling down his plate to explode against the fireplace — “You’ve been in council with him? That cleft, that vermin!”

Savage didn’t move a muscle. “He claims to be your most loyal servant.”

There was a chuckle from the hallway.

“That… thing, is a reptile.”

“Tell me of the woman Maniot. Am I to understand you had a slip of decorum.”

“It was his fault doctor, make no mistake.”

“So you sought this woman for her… services?”

“I was not of my right mind sir. I had been walking, and walking. I was so very tired. But the runt was on my heels.”

“I imagine this woman provided a welcome distraction.”

“Do not think me sour sir, for I could not commit to the deed.” Maniot began pacing a tight circle on the boards. “It was the smell of the hag. Her laughter, and pity. I tried to walk away…”

“And..”

You set the bitch free Maniot… She sings songs of you in hell!

“Quiet Wotjek!” Maniot barked with all his fury.

Savage took a glance towards the hall but did not speak.

“These medicines you give me doctor, is there nothing more? Am I to have no happiness?”

“Happiness is for the cattle,” Savage began. “The sheep and the rooster… the farmer, the man, must remain stoic, even during the slaughter.”

“Maybe I should be locked up?” Maniot fixed Savage with a stare.

“Do you regret your actions?”

He don’t regret nothing, the sow had it coming… the world is better now she rots.

Maniot sat, huddling into his chair. “I don’t think I do Doctor. I guess you think me dastardly.”

“Who says I think anything at all? Maybe I am the one being thought.” Maniot didn’t understand. The doctor continued. “You know my approach to be unconventional Maniot. There are many within the fraternity who call me reckless even. But I hold by my judgements sir. A man’s work must be done to his own standards, or he may as well die where he sits.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well it’s simple my boy. I don’t think the world is any the lesser for the death of a few snivelling harlots.”

Maniot was shocked. The doctor seemed to snarl. And as he tried to take in the rest of his countenance, he couldn’t quite focus, as though the face was behind a sheen of oil.

The doctor began: “It is the curse of all men, all women, that while our souls are of angel-light, the being is of meat. A hideous tangle of flesh and sinew. It warps and festers. Fostering cancers and crusting over under the filth of the world. A tragedy that once pure children become entombed by their greatest sins — the muscle, the skin, the ligaments. Their outer shell corrupt and lowly while inside there is wonder to be set free.”

Maniot had begun to sob.

“Sometimes, every so often, it requires a man of greatness to remind us all of such things.”

Yesssssss… You listen to the doctor Maniot.

“You think me great?”

“I wouldn’t have set you free if I did not.”

Maniot was racked with tears. Doctor Savage had begun to shimmer.

“Sometimes it’s helpful to let the mind work autonomously, like the heart or lungs. To lose one’s self in the charade. To trust the actors. To play your part. To stop asking permission…

…To truly hear the score as the maker intended. To feel the oboe in your bowels. The timpani in your spine. We all have but two ears and one tongue… to listen more often, and to speak only when we truly must. To let melody set its own agenda. Especially when it refuses to resolve on the root note. Sometimes it needs a human hand to lead it home. Now you stop your crying little man….” The voice was now of Maniot’s childhood Nanny. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Those village girls aren’t worth your tears. You lay back. A little nap will do you good. The world will be out there waiting for you… The world is always waiting child. You lay back my little poppet…”

And he was back on the Downs as a boy. His hand in hers. Running towards the sky. ‘Jack and Jill ran up the hill…’ She sang. Lyrics like whispers on the late summer breeze. ‘Jack fell down and…’ He’d thought he’d tripped. The blow from the stick had stunned him so. ‘And broke his crown.’ And she was laughing. And there were others. Three of them. ‘And Jill… she died of laughter.’

Their shrieks were like gulls. Descending on scraps. It struck him over the eye next, drawing blood. ‘I ain’t nobody’s sweet heart… you hear me?’ A sharp toed boot was in his groin. ‘Not yours…’ They pecked and pinched and pulled at him. ‘Not yours… or your little runt’s!’

And they stood over him now — three, four, five of them. Backs to the sun. Faces as smooth and as white and as featureless as eggs.

“I’ll let myself out, Maniot.”

Maniot slept until nightfall. When he woke the kitchen door was wide open. He felt a hand upon his arm — It’s an hour’s walk to Whitechapel sir.

“So, it’s an intruder you say, madam?” Constable Bradley paused on the steps. The property loomed down at him. Cracked and broken panes like a succession of eyes.

“All I know is there’s been queer goings on for months now.” The landlady replied. “I’ve meant to get to the bottom of it, but me bein’ a widow and all I’ve not got the nerve to be goin’ in alone.”

The front door was ajar. Bradley opened it with a cautious push, stepping over the bundle of damp newsprint. He tried the door to the right but found his way blocked. He paused and listened, but all was still.

“And this tenant of yours?”

“Lord Lumme! He seemed the perfect gent when he took the place five years back. A doctor too. Dr Savage. But I ain’t set eyes on him for a good few years now. It’s my understanding that he went peculiar, if you know what I mean.”

Bradley knew exactly what she meant. The peculiar were his bread and butter. He’d been herding them from the streets for years now. His days were more peaceful since being transferred from Commercial Street to Holborn, but the cracks could open anywhere, and cracks attract dregs. He peered up the stairwell, blocked with crates.

“Bit of a hermit was he? A miser like?”

The landlady followed him with tentative steps. “Looks like he got that way sir. I’ve not set foot in here since he took it from me.”

“You couldn’t just chuck him out? This doctor.”

“The thing is he gave me five years money in advance… five years! I weren’t about to let that go. Seemed so prim and proper the day I handed him the key, I thought I’d landed the perfect tenant.”

Bradley found the second door locked and edged towards the third, the kitchen. “Obviously didn’t have any family to look in on him, if he let himself get in this state.”

“There was one fella, a good six weeks back. Claimed to be his nephew, I couldn’t give him a key but I pointed him over here.”

“Claimed to be his nephew?”

“Well I ain’t sure I believe him now. That was when the malarky started. Coming and goings. Disturbances… Mr Porter two doors down told me of a drunkard singing in here at all hours. And Missus Thomas fancied she heard screaming one night.”

Bradley entered the kitchen wincing at the smell. He slid his billy club from his belt but found the room as empty as the hallway; shrouded in autumn gloom. He edged his way round the table, boots crunching over broken crockery. The landlady followed slowly, a hanky at her face to protect against the odours.

The window had been pinned over with an old soiled curtain. The frame nailed shut against the sill. The fabric had started to mould and tore loose with a sigh, releasing a cloud of dust and spores. He stood well back as the daylight poured in.

“Lord have mercy!” The landlady shrieked from her pit.

Bradley swung round. “What?”

And she was pointing. To the chair. A huge leather thing, tucked up by the hearth.

And there he sat.

Right where he always did.

“Gahhhh… for the love of god. Well there’s your tenant madam.”

“Is he… yer know?”

“Look at him!” Bradley gestured with his stick. “Been dead for years I’d say. No wonder you ain’t seen him much.”

A halo of sun crowned his bald and desiccated head. His lips had rotted away from the teeth, giving him a perpetual snarl. A cheap penny gazette still sat in his lap.

“Poor old sod,” she murmured. “Poor old Dr Savage.”

“You’re new round here aren’t yer?” The landlady called up the steps.

Bradley, joined her on the street outside, glad for the fresh morning air. His scalp itching with nervous sweat. “Just been transferred from Whitechapel.”

“Whitechapel? With all them murders going on?”

Bradley nodded in silence. The landlady took a long last look at the house. “Well, sad as this is, least we don’t have to worry ‘bout things like that round here.”

“There was another last night you know.”

“Oh?”

“Not hit the papers yet.” The constable took his helmet off, wiping his brow. “They tell me he’s started eating the kidneys.”

“No? Oh think of the horror.”

“Started calling himself Jack.”

They exited the mews to the right and began walking east.

Thanks so much for reading. If you’d like to comment please don’t spoil. If you’d like to restack please restack Part One (for the same reason). I’d be delighted to know who saw it coming. Is it even clear enough? Do I need a heavier chain of breadcrumbs?

And do have a fruitful day. Wotjek sends his regards.

A.