Feature Category: Original Fiction

I’ve always had a lonely childhood, sickly from birth, no mother to speak of, and a father always absent with work. I spent most of my days at my uncle’s estate; however, he was seldom there, so I was left to my own devices. The only reason I stayed at the estate rather than at home was due to it being better for my health, apparently. I never felt any better, but my condition never seemed to deteriorate.

Uncle’s estate was a very strange place, dark, vast, and possessing a disorientating sense of timelessness. Days would merge into each other in a fleeting mass, or feel like they’d never happened at all. When I was very young I’d wander the manor and grounds out of sheer boredom, staring into lifeless gardens, or contemplating drab and dreary artwork that laced endless corridors. That changed when I found the sands.

My wanderings had found a study full of taxidermy; there was little of interest, but the various curios helped ease my boredom at least. However, at the back of the room was a marble archway, with stairs leading down into a heavy and thick gloom. I cautiously entered, but with every step the darkness intensified. Wading through a molasses thick void, my vision got worse instead of adjusting, cloyed with blackness.

Eventually, I saw a dull lavender hue in the distance; flickering, open flames. Soon vision returned, and I saw it, a library of sand filled jars. Childish curiosity saw me run to a shelf and spill its contents onto the floor. A rainbow of sand lay in front of me, silky soft and so fine you could barely see individual grains. I bolted to the kitchens, grabbed two buckets, one full of water, and dashed straight back to the sand.

For what felt like decades, I carefully tailored wet sand. First, a basic castle, then with practice, extra towers and keeps. Eventually, I learnt how to make a whole citadel, full of bridges, domed masterpieces, and ornate temples surrounding marketplaces. I made stories for this kingdom and adapted its landscape accordingly. New wonders, damage caused by wars and battles, renovations ordered by royal decree. I hid my kingdom in a corner of the sand library, I guessed Uncle wanted to keep this place secret. You don’t hide sand unless it’s valuable.

One day however, disaster struck. Whilst planning the biggest expansion of my sand realm, I spilled the water bucket. In an instant, my creation collapsed and dissolved away into a multi-coloured stained mush. Devastated, I began to cry; not just because of what happened, but because of what was to come.

Uncle appeared, in black, as always. A deathly glare from his deep set sockets. A thin, bony finger pointed at me and he began to boom. I can’t remember most of what he said; I didn’t understand a lot of it. All I remember is Uncle’s voice resonating, being dragged back upstairs, and wiping tears away with sand smeared hands. I was forbidden from ever entering the library again.

I’d like to say I learnt my lesson, I didn’t, I was still a child. It wasn’t long before boredom led me to the library once again. I was in the stables, where Uncle kept his prized horse and an oversized gardening tool. Behind some riding robes, I found a trapdoor, lifting the hatch slowly, I saw the familiar lavender hue and ventured into the darkness.

Back in the cavernous hall, I explored its treasures more thoroughly. The library seemed never-ending, paths lit by marble basins full of burning oil, giving off the purple flames. Midnight rugs formed trains between mile high cabinets. Each made of thick ebony, carved with all manner of mythical creatures, all claws, wings and penetrating eyes. The jars were dense glass in ironwood frames. But best of all, the sand moved! Trickling from one end to the other. Some jars were Spartan in design, and others exuberant and outlandishly decorated.

I used to enjoy wandering down the aisles, looking at the various containers; they seemed to be arranged by design. Some looked distinctly Oriental, others Mayan influenced, some classical. However, there were all mixture of sizes and dropped sand to their bottoms at different speeds. It looked so chaotic and disorderly, but at the same time, how it should be, as if preordained. However studying the jars didn’t go without creating further trouble.

There was one jar in particular which fascinated me, grander in both design and scale than those surrounding it. Rather than wood, the frame was marble. Its design a mixture of Greco-Roman and Christian iconography. Angels and apostles mixed with myths and legends. However, my attention was short-lived. Higher up, I saw an equally large glass, if not bigger. Arabic in design, covered in gold, jewels, sweeping lines and bright colours, a thousand and one moons decadently littering the woodwork. Hurriedly, I put the first jar back, reaching for the second. But, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the first topple off the shelf, slamming onto the floor and shatter into thousands of fine shards. Glass and sand indistinguishable. Chunks of marble scattered throughout the hall. I didn’t wait around for Uncle’s reaction. As I ran, I heard his bellows, and could feel his grim stare burning into me.

After what felt like days, I sheepishly made my way back to the manor. Uncle beat me. His hands were like fire and stripped the flesh on my back to the bone. He insisted that this was gentler than knowing what I’d fully done. I didn’t believe him at the time, mostly as the wound never healed properly. He insisted my being in the library would lead to trouble; the sands were important and mustn’t be tampered with.

Soon adolescence’s rebellious nature made me ignore all warnings and I entered the library again. To avoid being caught, I went at the dead of night. Armed with an oil-rag torch, I’d slowly venture around. The hallways were more fascinating at night, they seemed more labyrinthine like, they’d twist and warp before my eyes. However, my illness seemed to be getting worse, so I assumed it was hallucinatory. I still loved opening the jars and playing with the contents; but sometimes, my coughing fits led to me dropping jars or filling them with blood and phlegm. I’d hide evidence of my meddling at the back of shelves in hopes Uncle wouldn’t find out. As my condition worsened, the glass jars seemed to swell and shrink, and sometimes the volumes of sand would seem to mysteriously alter too.

I’d like to say the damage I caused was only ever minimal, but disaster always followed into the sand library. Once, I dropped the torch I was carrying. It burnt a cabinet, cracked some of the jars, and sand filled the floor. In a panic, I put the fire out and tried to clean up, brushing sand under the cabinet hoping Uncle wouldn’t notice.

After that, I gave it a few years before I ventured back to that forbidden archive, too afraid of causing more noticeable damage. Plus, my health was deteriorating rapidly; Uncle joked that anything linked to Father was pestilent and riddled with disease. My interest in the sands never ceased though, asking Uncle about it, he’d only say that my life was tied to the sand.

Curiosity soon got the better of me, I found a skeleton key in one of Uncle’s chambers and once again, armed with a torch, entered the sand library. It seemed darker than usual, unfriendly and full of danger. To try to brighten the hall, I dipped my torch into one of the burning oil vats; however, this just filled the vault with smoke. It became hard to breathe and triggered a violent coughing fit. My abdomen jerking wildly, I lost my footing and stumbled into a cabinet. It toppled backwards, hitting other shelves; a shower of glass fell around me. Amidst a flurry of shards, sand and smoke I managed to steady the cases, but the damage was done. Powder-like dust blocked my vision, all I heard was shattering glass and the clicking of Uncle’s footsteps across marble.

He didn’t say anything, just lifted me within his cold and bony grip. Grit filled eyes and violent coughing meant I couldn’t see where I was being led. A door slammed, and my vision returned in a room full of clean air, but I wish it hadn’t.

A marble statue of myself, naked, sunken features, crushing a globe in my right hand. The statue was crying blood. That wasn’t the worst part. Surrounding the effigy was a whirling torrent of phantoms, mixed races and ages, from various points in time. Individual shades flittered into focus, re-living their last moments. Phantasms of bricks fell around me as mothers shielded babes from the rumbling heavens; soon turning into thunderous tidal waves, which obliterated the prayers of a civilisation begging gods for mercy. Salt spray moistened my skin, which evaporated as spectral children were incinerated before me, the smell of charred flesh in the air.

“Your father asked I never showed you this. But, I have to. This is who you are and all you have done, Destruction. You create and end where you shouldn’t, not through malice but through nature. However, you need to learn what you are capable of.”

Uncle continued to explain in detail what I never understood as a child. Atlantis, the fall of Byzantine, The Black Death, The Great Fire of London, other massacres caused by my blundering. But now, I’d done something atrocious across Europe he could never forgive. Seeing these souls first hand was my punishment. He knew I couldn’t stop myself. But I had to see this.

Years have passed since then, I actively try to avoid the sand library, but to no avail. Trancelike, I’m drawn there, unable to stop myself. Sometimes, I find myself standing amidst decimated aisles in a daze. I have even awoken from deep slumber covered in grains.

I’m wandering the manor grounds, hoping exhaustion will prevent my subconscious wanderings. Exiting a maze, I see what looks like a small temple in the distance. I can’t ignore it. Something is drawing me forward. Through the threshold, I realise it’s a mausoleum. There are four colossal hourglasses inside; the first is cradled by a marble effigy of Uncle’s bony frame, the next of Father’s sickly form. The third has an emaciated guardian, finally, one surrounded by a mountain of muscle and aggression. I shiver. I shouldn’t be here, but I can’t stop. Behind these, another hourglass, devoid of sand and covered in dust. I begin to rub the bronze plaque at the top, revealing my name. Destruction. I fall back with a start and am greeted with the crunch of a weak floor, and the snap of metal. Suddenly, my hourglass falls from its fixture, slamming down. An almighty smash, the floor vanishes and I fall into darkness with it.

My descent is broken on a cabinet. I’m in the library again. I tumble to the floor like a rag-doll and look up to see the same vast cabinet topple towards me. Howling as heavy ebony crushes my legs, splintering glass and spilling sand drowns out the crunch of my bones. The wooden frame has knocked others over, they fall like dominoes. Soon the library is filled with the image of crumbling cabinets, the sound of breaking glass, the smell of spilt oil fires lighting wood, and the sensation of sand rising up against my trapped body.

The wood is too heavy to free myself from.

I can only watch and cry as the entire library is destroyed.

The sand rises quickly, I struggle to keep my head above it.

My lungs begin to fill up with grains.

The air grows cold.

Uncle slowly advances, dragging his scythe along the sand.

Oifa lays Carna down at the gnarled roots of the spider tree. She brushes her mother’s hair with her hands and manages a small, sad smile. “Ma loved the spiders,” she says, her voice soft and barely above a whisper. “Every night they would meet in her dreams, and she’d tell stories. They liked fairy tales the best.”

I don’t answer. Instead, I try not to breathe, or move, or make any sound that will disturb her. I feel like an intruder, as if I’ve stumbled upon this moment by chance. I’m no longer Oifa’s husband; I don’t exist. Right now, there is only a daughter and her dead mother – and, of course, the spiders.

Oifa’s eyes glisten, her lower lip trembles, but to her credit she doesn’t cry.

A cool wind plays across the lakes, but the water is untouched and remains smooth, a perfect blue reflection of the sky. Sand lifts from the dunes in swirling dervishes before tumbling over the Edge and into the nothingness below. I don’t like being this close to the Edge, my skin prickles, and I feel a chill despite the rising heat of the day. In my youth, the men of the tribe would dare each other to peer into its cold depths, but I never could. If you stare long enough into the dark, the dark will stare back. Carna told me that. It came to her in a dream from another world. Carna always had prophetic dreams; that was the reason the spiders liked her. The guardians of the Edge eat the knowledge of worlds, as we might eat fruit. I shuffle closer to Oifa and tighten my grip upon my ceremonial blade. The thought unnerves me.

Carna’s stories are the stuff of legends. We grew up with them. I manage my own smile and can almost see Carna as she once was: an ethereal creature as insubstantial as smoke.

“There was a princess,” Carna had told me, “who loved an impossible man. She thought him up one day: a scribble with chalk upon the palace walls. In her dreams she gave him clothes, hair, and a sparkle to his eyes. They often walked together in imagined woods of centaurs, fauns, and goblins. They made love in the gardens of her mind. Then one day she fell ill, bitten by the sly vipers that hid in the shallows of the lakes. In the heat of her fever she forgot her name, how to speak, laugh, even that she was a princess. When the fever burnt from her system like wildfire, she couldn’t remember her love – the memory vague as if lost in fog. He was half a man, his face a ragged hole, and she had become half a princess without him. It was more than her heart could bear. She leaped over the Edge into the gap between worlds and became nothing but a dream. In that way, at least, she is reunited with her love.”

Oifa sighs and stands up; it’s a slow process. She looks old beyond her years. I step towards her, hands outstretched.

“Let me-“

“Get away.” Her voice is twisted and full of hate, her eyes thin strips. “I have to finish this. You have no part.”

“That isn’t fair.” I reach out my hand, but she recoils. “Carna was mother to us all.”

Her eyes are dark pits. “If you interfere, I will never forgive you. They will never forgive you.”

I want to hold her close. I am a soldier. I can provide. But I won’t. She’s right. This is Oifa’s time: not mine. I won’t bring her shame.

The wind has picked up, the breeze now ruffles my hair, and I pull grey strands from my eyes. The sun is rising over the lakes. I can see the villages in the distance and the curl of smoke from the early morning fires. We’ll hunt today in Carna’s honour. We’ll bring sacrifices and treasures to mourn her passing.

“There was once a boy who dreamed of being a spider,” Oifa says. The tree trembles, and the silk webs in its branches tinkle like the chiming of a thousand silver bells. “He would capture spiders and keep them in his room. The spiders grew in size, as did he, until he was a pale and bloated thing. His parents petitioned a shaman for help, but when he arrived it was too late. The boy had died, wrapped in a cocoon, his head open like a new and exotic flower. His insides were missing: not eaten or dissolved. Simply gone, transformed into . . .” she shrugs and stares over the Edge. ”That summer, when the days were hottest and even the earth burnt beneath our feet, the tribesmen found webs as big as rope and eight-legged tracks the size of a man.”

The sun burns away the wisps of a lingering mist, and Oifa places her hand upon the peeling flesh of the tree. “Carna dreamed of you, also.” Her voice breaks, and a single tear rolls down her powdered cheek. “In your own way, I think you loved her for it. So I return my mother to her dreams, where she will be forever at peace.”

The spiders spill from the tree, so many to be a black, tumbling tide. From vast goliath spiders to the deadly funnel webs. Their eyes glitter with anticipation, and they sweep over Carna like a funeral shroud.

Oifa turns away, her shoulders sag, and she is once again the woman I fell in love with – my wife; my Oifa.

“Come on,” I say, “you don’t need to see this.”

I lead Oifa to the village. Only once do I look back. Carna has been lifted into the tree, her arms folded across her chest. The leaves part with a gentle sigh, and she vanishes into its depths. The tree groans, and the roots writhe, digging deeper into the earth. New branches sprout from the old, their leaves a rich, luxuriant red.

Oifa’s hand tightens around my own. She places her head upon my shoulder and keeps her eyes on the path ahead. She doesn’t want to know what becomes of her mother.

Perhaps, that is for the best.

The first time I died, they broke my neck.

Not that I remember it. He tells me. Every time he comes to wipe my mind, Cal Kairov tells me the story of how the guards didn’t even bother to shoot me. They were ordered not to. My neck clicks with the remembrance buried in my bones whenever he reaches the point in the story where the guard’s gloved fist smashed the base of my skull. I’m lucky, Kairov says. If they had shot me, I wouldn’t have been suitable for the process. Wouldn’t have been special. Wouldn’t be abandoned in this dark box with nothing but stolen blood and reprocessed air. I think he enjoys telling me the story.

I wish I’d stayed dead.

Or that I could die again.

But Kairov won’t let me. Instead he drags me out for more treatments whenever the desire takes him. Hours of more pain, more stories, before throwing me back into my box like a crumpled, discarded doll.

A dispenser, stocked with test tubes filled with the blood serum I need to live, sits in the corner of my cell. With barely enough room to stretch, I curse but still reach for the cold glass with shaking hands as the need devours me. Mists of sweat condense under my latex coveralls and my breathing quickens, my heart drumming a desperate beat. The serum has no smell. If I shake the tubes, sometimes I can hear the liquid splashing against the side. But that’s just my imagination. My need to experience something beyond this sterile box. Unfortunately, splashing drops in a test tube were no discarded sea shell transporting me to oceans blue and wild.

Six months. That’s how long it’s been since Kairov last visited. Six months since I had seen the light, felt the warmth of anything other than my stiff coveralls and heat stored in the metal walls. Six months since I had heard any sound except my own unpractised voice singing guttural hymns of hope. I would have gone mad had Kairov allowed it, had he not altered my brain to handle the deprivation. I wasn’t human anymore. I was a walking data chip with better security features.

Light burst in. Beautiful, burning light carving its way into my eyes. Blinking, my senses are overwhelmed by the pungent musk of fear. Two men, one nervous like a small rodent, the other coiled like a snake about to strike, stare at me.

“Well, this isn’t what I was expecting,” the snake-like one says.

***

The Great People’s Federation of Planets was nothing more than a collection of legitimised thieves and murderers. The people’s opposition to the Federation were no more than outlawed thieves and murderers. The masses, the people both parties claimed to represent, cared little, spending their days in monotonous drudgery and indifferent continuance. Each day merged quietly into the other as the mechanical cog of government whirred. The massive bureaucratic engines crushing any real rebellion.

The Federation grew outwards from Earth, rising and falling ripples from this small rock thrown in the waters of the universe. Nothing could resist the inevitable progression of the Federation ships, of their armies and their technology.

Until the rise of Che Hani.

***

“I need you to rob a bank. That’s what you said. A bank. Somewhere with money,” the rodent man moaned.

Hours had passed since my cell door had opened and my world changed.  I was in a room, full of off-white surfaces and polished edges. The three men, the two who found me and a curly haired third, ignored me. Back in my cell, I had fainted, overloaded by the flood of stimulants beating my senses as the door opened.

“Which you did,” said the third man. Che himself. Freedom fighter. Political criminal. Innocent. The information rose unsought from my mind. The snake-like one was Alexsandr Olek, a dangerous man. Assassin, fraud, former intelligence officer with the Federation. He was a genius with a set of personalised morals that filtered his values based on his own advantage. The third man, the rodent-like one, was an unimportant petty thief called Veniamin Popov. A greed-driven coward with an all-encompassing desire to preserve his own skin. He was only there because of his ability to open doors that should remain closed.

No, only the first two mattered.

“But there was no money,” Veniamin argued. “Kairov’s one of the richest men in the galaxy and his vault was empty.”

Except for me.

“I didn’t send you there for money.”

“But we found exactly what you wanted, didn’t we, Che?” Alexsandr crossed his arms behind his back, a lecturer preparing to bore his students. “Did you think if you told us the nature of the treasure you sought we wouldn’t go?”

“Well, why would we?” Veniamin piped up, his eyes flickering between the two as though watching a ball in an electronic game of squash.

Alexsandr didn’t bother to reply. His eyes narrowed on Che. It had all been prepared. The extra space on the shuttle, allegedly to hold the treasure, held a spare enviro crib fitted exactly to my size.

“Next time, let us in on what you’re planning,” Alexsandr snarled. “We’re not simple pawns to push around a board at your whim.”

Che shrugged. “I told you what you needed to know.”

“What’s so valuable about her anyway,” Veniamin demanded, his whining voice rising like steam through a kettle. “She’s just a vamp.”

For the first time I saw myself reflected in the surfaces of the ship. The black dataport on my head through which Kairov could reprogram my mind, pointing skywards awaiting instructions. Hair shaved in a mock tonsure. Patchy, pale skin, the whites of my eyes scratched with lines of red blood.  A ceramic doll to be tossed aside when my masters finished with me. Indistinguishable from hundreds of other vamps straight off the Federation’s production lines.

Vamps. Corpses rescued from the brink of death, mind-wiped and used for whatever purpose their new masters desired. Little more than reengineered slaves for the rich and powerful. For the process to work we needed to be brain dead, though not physically dead. Our minds ceased while our bodies held onto the last dribbles of life. Fed on the blood serum from which we derived our name, my body remained young and firm, though pale. I could see the mix of lust and revulsion in Veniamin’s eyes.

So could Che, who staked the cowering man with a stare which drove him backwards. “She’s power, Veniamin. Not a toy to sate your failure to get a girlfriend. The key to bringing down the Federation. During his years as an ambassador, Kairov collected secrets on most of the Federation’s key people, information that could set the outer worlds against the Terran heartland.”

He swung to face Alexsandr. “You always say we rush blindly into everything. With her on our side, we won’t. We’ll know who paid for the right to build the casino on Yeoman-Clark and with what. We’d be able to lay bare proof that political dissidents are being brainwashed to recant their beliefs. We could even prove we were innocent, that we didn’t deserve to be sent to penal planet. That the charges against us were faked.”

“They weren’t,” Alexsandr said coldly, quietly. “You might be innocent, but we weren’t.” He looked towards me, appraising me like an item at the auction house, waiting to determine my value. No lust or emotion in his eyes. “And nothing that thing can say will change our guilt.”

I wanted to scream, to leap up and pledge my allegiance to Che and his passion. I wanted to follow the lion into battle, enflamed by his cause, by his innocence, which rang clearly through my soul.

Instead, I screamed in pain and crumbled like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

***

Like all vamps, I remembered my life before I became a fleshy tool. I had met Che before. Admired him from afar. Joined the rallies that flooded Cygnus before the Federation armies drowned the infant revolution in a sea of blood.

I remembered lying in the cell, waiting for Kairov’s goons to break my neck.

I remembered waking, shaking, a slave entangled in my need for blood, blood which only a monster like Kairov could supply.

Popular mythology says vamps can’t feel emotions. That they burn love and hate and happiness from our bodies when they brand our minds with whatever mark they wish to leave.

It isn’t true.

Every emotion bites painfully at our minds. Every hint of gladness brings an automatic reprisal of agony. Tears breed more tears until vamps control our own emotions, self-brainwashed to avoid pain. It was just another game the Federation ‘repatriation’ squad invented when we were designed.

***

I woke to feel Che’s fingers draped against my skin, tracing the salty trails of my tears along my cheeks.

“I remember you,” he said softly. “From Cygnus. From Gamma Beta.” That’s why they chose me. Why Kairov wanted me as the host for his knowledge about Che and his revolution of cutthroats and thieves. “Manya Akinova. You were a believer. Your father died in the diamond mines on Aatlje. I know you, Manya Akinova.”

He seemed agitated, his breathing quickened not in passion but anger. The hairs on his arms standing to attention, saluting his concern. He stroked the grey bruise where they broke my neck. My mark of submission which would never heal. The Federation almost always broke our necks. It made it easier to kill the brain but preserve the body.

“You’re a trap.”

***

I woke screaming. Cables ran from the dataport in my head to the medlab computer. Only Alexsandr was there and he simply ignored my cries. In fact, his brutal bypassing of my brain’s security protocols were the cause of my pain.

Sweat dripped from my pores, coating my pale skin with a moist sheen. My back arched in torture, not pleasure, forming a bridge between me and the chair under which a boat could sail. Alexsandsr did not even look. His attention was focussed on the numbers and letters scrolling across the data terminal.

Eventually the rain of illuminated characters slowed to a stop and the torment ceased.

“You were booby trapped, you know.” Alexsandr held a small radioactive explosive in his hand. Rubbing my stomach, I could feel the ridge where he had operated. “It was linked to a particular dataset. As soon as we tried to access it, the bomb would have exploded. They were probably hoping Che would be standing nearby at the time.”

My head drooped in a resigned nod. I looked towards the data terminal, which held the information retrieved from the recesses of my head.

“Most of it is worthless,” he said. “There’s some surface stuff that might be useful, probably put there to make us think there was something hidden in the rest. In fact, following it would have led to the trigger for the bomb.”

“And me?” The first words I had spoken since they rescued me from Kairov’s cell.

Alexsandr said nothing. He didn’t need to. I had no value beyond my body. A husk of a vamp filled with worthless knowledge. Even if they analysed every segment of code they could never be sure there was not another trap hidden in my programming.

I knew why he was there and not Che. Why the great and noble man, so filled with his moral certitude, could not be in the room. I still believed in his cause.

I needed to be wiped clean. Reset. Rebooted. Reborn.

I had died for Che once.

I would do so again.

Proudly.

I embraced the chance of a new death.

My eyes met Alexsandr’s and I understood this was why Che kept him around. The edge of his lips curved up in a grim smile.

Then he raised a black-gloved fist and slammed it into my neck.

He awoke with a start to the sound of machines. Bright light burned his eyes, forcing his iris to strain and retract against the onslaught. A dry rasp escaped his throat. He had attempted to speak, but his lips were dry and cracked. His vocal chords felt bruised. His whole body felt bruised.

Attempting to move, he discovered himself bound. Straps on his ankles and wrists. Metal clamps held his body and head in place. The smell of surgical alcohol and bleach stung his nose. With his eyes now accustomed to the harsh paraffin-lamp light, features of the room could now be made out. White tiled walls, flecked with something best left unidentified. The ceiling was stained with layers of ancient tobacco. In places the plaster was cracked and crumbling.

‘Where am I?’ the thought emerged from his clouded mind.

He did not know this place. Through a jumble of sensory nonsense he attempted to recall how he might have come to be here.

He remembered the call on the radio. The police had found another victim. Another poor helpless woman, robbed of her life, and robbed of her face. The motif of this string of violent attrocities; brutal and sudden attacks, culminating in the victim’s face being removed from the head. The tabloids had taken great delight in hypothesising about which mania or delusion the perpetrator was afflicted by. What was not reported, however, was that in contrast to the brutal and haphazard attacks, the removal of the faces was surgical in it’s precision.

The call had come in from round the corner, and being the nosey PI he was, couldn’t resist slipping through the back alleys to get a look. The radio interceptor was illegal, and it was the third he had been forced to make. The others had been confiscated by the authorities. Why he hadn’t been banged up in a cell already he could not fathom. Freelance Aid to the Central London Metropolis Enforcement Agency. That was his official title. It got him a lot of benefits. It also got him into just as much trouble. Sometimes more of the latter. It depended entirely on who was eavesdropping on his conversations.

He slid around corners and ducked between shadows. He was very good at his job. The patrol blimps overhead continually scanned the streets below with high-powered and newfangled electronic lamps. The beams lit up the foggy streets and back-alleys a strange shade of yellow as they drifted by. Ahead, a congregation of three blimps marked the spot. He shimmied up a slim metal fire escape and across a crooked slate-tiled roof. He was careful to keep to the shadows, following the lines of the roof, so as not to stand out to the pilots above. Soon he had come to the edge of the alley around which the blimps were circling. Skirting around a chimney stack he peered down. Four storeys below he could clearly make out the faceless corpse of a woman, surrounded by a pool of blood and a multitude of police officers.

It was odd, how the blood shone in the electronic lamplight. Still very red. Still very wet. Very fresh. Too fresh. The sound of a boot on a slate tile behind him, the sensation of being hit by something large and hard.

That was all he could recall. Once more he tried to move. No luck. The straps and clamps held him firmly and resolutely immobile. His peripheral vision gave no hints as to what or who else may be in the room with him. This certainly did not seem like any hospital he had ever been in. The sound of the machines was invasive. He couldn’t stifle the sound, making his ears ache and his head pound.

With a clatter he became aware of someone else in the room. The sound had been a large metal door slamming loosely closed. Clipped footsteps approached. High heels. There was no mistaking the sound of stiletto on tile.

Trying to speak once again, all he managed was a pained rasp.

“Try not to speak, Mr Parfett.” The voice was Germanic, female and soft. “Try not to move at all. The procedure has yet to be completed.”

Leaning over him, he saw that she wore a surgical mask and scrubs. Over one eye, attached to a leather head strap was a magnifying glass. It enlarged one of her bright blue eyes by a terrifying degree. A strand of loose hair hung down and tickled his nose. She brushed it back behind an ear.

In any other situation he may have considered her attractive.

“You are lucky to be alive, you know.” She looked him up and down, then turned quickly on her heel and clip-clip-clipped away across the tiled floor and out of sight. He could hear her moving objects around. Glass jars or bottles. Metal tools. Liquid bubbled. Something hissed.

The Germanic woman returned, a large syringe in her hand.

“You will sleep again now.”

He tried to shake his head. He did not like needles. Not one bit!

The syringe drew nearer and nearer.

“You are my finest work.”

The prick of the needle was followed swiftly by the soft metallic emptiness of chemically induced sleep.

When his eyes opened next, he found himself free of straps and clamps and quite able to move. The aches and pains had gone. The sound of machines remained, however. Boring into his brain, causing a sharp pain between his eyes.

“Ouch.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing up his eyes.

The pain receded slightly, and he sagged with relief.

With a concerted effort he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the table upon which he had been laid. The room, he could now see, was some kind of laboratory. All manner of strange equipment was scattered about the place, half-finished, it seemed, on tables similar to the one on which he found himself. On a wall upon which he expected to find a window, there were light boxes. Electronic lighting again. It was all over the place these days.

Over the front of the light boxes hung images. Strange black images printed on transparent film. They appeared to be images of the inside of his body. They were labelled with his name. Each and every one contained something alien. A piston. A spring. A set of cogs. Agog, he studied each and every image. He then pulled up his sleeves. There were metal seams around his wrists. One finger was now made of articulated pieces of polished brass.

“What is this?”

He pulled his shirt open and looked down at his chest. A metal plate, resplendent with fancy latched hatch covered his left side. The sound of machinery filled his ears again. Not from far away. From very close. So close. Too close.

He gingerly brought a shaking hand up to the back of his head. A metal-framed section of his head was missing. His fingers caressed a thousand tiny cogs, spinning like the innards of a clock. Minute pistons pumped in and out in sequence, bouncing off his fingertips.

“What am I?”

The door clattered open,

“You are a piece of genius.” The Germanic woman said happily, “We saved your life.”

Grinning happily the woman took off her scrubs, revealing a police-issue medical uniform.

“We have built into your new body many useful tools.”

“What? Tools?”

“I am chief medic Von Hinda. And it is my pleasure to issue you with this.”

She held out a circle of shiny silver. A Metropolis police badge.

“You are now a part of the Emergency Agency. Congratulations, Adrian Parfett.”

He shook his head, “You’ve made me into some kind of human toolbox. Some kind of police-issue gadget.”

Von Hinda handed Adrian a sheet of paper. It looked very official, “And the rank of Inspector.” Her smile had fallen at his apparent ungratefulness, “We saved your life. You owe us.”

She spun and exited swiftly, letting the door swing shut behind her.

Adrian Parfett stood staring blankly down at the document and badge in his hands. He owed them. A debt, he suspected, that would never be fully repaid.

@cancer Well hello liver. You look good enough to eat. LOL!

John had started the @cancer persona on Twitter as a coping mechanism. Talking was his preferred method of conflict resolution, but his illness never talked back. By giving it a handle and conversing with it online he found himself better able to face the ravaging effects it was currently putting him through. He used it as a mirror against the disease; personifying it gave him a chance to at least argue with someone, to give vent to his sense of injustice.

@john12 @cancer I’m going to beat you.

@cancer Bring it on ROFLMAO!

John’s cancer persona turned out to be malicious, sarcastic, and immune to criticism; all of these proved to be popular traits on Twitter. The persona started to gain followers; a trickle at first, but as it got bolder and more aggressive, so its follower number grew apace. It began to enjoy the fame.

@cancer Hey, fresh meat for the grinder. LOL. THX for the mammaries.

@John12 I’m still going to beat you.

@cancer Bring it on sonny. And send more folks my way while you’re at it. I’m hungry LOL.

Over the following weeks, John suffered daily chemotherapy in the mornings, and the increasingly raucous taunts of his @cancer persona in the evenings.

@cancer Can’t catch me Ha Ha Ha!

@john12 Just wait. In a month or so I’ll be in #remission.

He had no real idea in mind when he used the remission hash tag beyond the fact that he knew it sometimes drew more people in to the conversation. He wasn’t prepared for quite how many. The next night his follower count was up by almost thirty. @cancer was doing even better, with over a hundred new followers, most of them cancer sufferers themselves, all eager to talk about the chances of remission.

The @cancer persona mocked them all.

@cancer Poor deluded fools. I’ll have you all for breakfast. #remission

To John’s dismay they kept coming back for more, in ever increasing numbers. The #remission hash tag became a trending topic and by the end of John’s first month of chemotherapy, @cancer had ten thousand followers while @John12 was being ignored, even when he used the #remission tag in his posts. To make matters worse there was bad news on his blood count tests, and the doctors were suggesting a more aggressive approach might be required. Surgery was mentioned as a distinct possibility.

@cancer HA! HA! Told you so!

@John12 I’m not beaten yet

@cancer Give it up baby. No #remission for you

Many of @cancer’s new followers seemed keen to egg him on to greater heights.

@jackthelad Hey @cancer Check out #hospitals Lots of new meat for you LOL

@cancer THX man – always good to spread the love LOL

The @cancer persona hit a hundred thousand followers on the day John went in for surgery.

A week in hospital did not improve John’s temper any, and on his return to Twitter @cancer was livelier than ever.

@cancer Liver yummy! Still think you’re in #remission Johnny boy?

John was too tired for any comeback. But the rest of the Twitterverse were more than eager to converse with @cancer. What began as a means for John to deal with his illness had become a global phenomenon with a virtual life of its own. John watched as more and more people fed hash tag populations to @cancer and its follower count grew to massive numbers. It was gleeful.

@cancer More meat for the grinder. FEED ME! LOL!

John got more bad news later that week. Metastasis became a word he never wanted to hear again. It had got into his bones now, a silent killer feeding and growing inside him.,

@John12 @cancer Happy now you bastard?

@cancer Hey, nothing personal man. I’m just doing what comes naturally ROFLMAO

The rest of the Twitterverse seemed unaware, or uncaring, of John’s condition. They did, however, seem to be having a lot of fun with @cancer. Campaigns were set up to drive followers to the persona, feeding it new hash tags, new populations. #remission became the hottest topic in Twitter history and @cancer’s follower count just got larger and larger until it rivalled even the hottest of celebrities.

@cancer Ha! Lady Gaga eat your heart out.

John got sicker as @cancer thrived. The chemotherapy wasn’t having the desired effect. The frustrated doctors tried an extended course of radiotherapy.

@cancer Hey, catching me some rays man! I’m walking on sunshine!

The follower count numbered in the millions. John got a large number of increasingly pleading emails from people wanting to use the persona for advertising purposes.

“You’ve got a world-wide phenomenon on your hands. The potential is huge. Time to cash in.”

But he couldn’t bring himself to take up any of the offers, despite the ever larger amounts of hard cash on offer. It would have felt like taking money from fellow sufferers.

@cancer Fool. I could make you a millionaire. All you have to do is keep feeding me.

Everyone else did that job for him. Reporters caught on to the fact there was a story and soon John was besieged. He became a prisoner in his own home.

He got sicker still.

Two months tops, the doctors said.

@cancer hit four million followers halfway though John’s last week. He started to see it sending out messages. He knew it was his account, knew that he was in control. But somehow @cancer didn’t care. It was holding conversations with people all across the planet. John’s illness had him confused, unsure whether he was still in charge or not.

He got proof right at the end.

Cancer cases soar, the headline said.

“Tell me about it,” he whispered. Those were his last words.

Just before it took him he got a final message from his alter ego, now sitting atop the Twitterverse with more than ten million followers.

@cancer THX man. I never could have done it without you.

The black, twisted forms of the winter-barren trees shiver in rain-laden winds. Looming over the narrow dirt pathway, their spindly branches meet, entwine, form into a bower.

Christiana spurs her horse on, the rotting forest smell now curling into her lungs. While needle-tip branches claw her face and snag her hair, she keeps her attention focused on the light she sees dancing in the distance through the trees. A divine light, she decides, leading to sanctuary.

As she rides the wind gathers; icy rain cascades down between the bare branches. Like the galloping of mighty hooves, thunder booms in the bruised blue-black sky. Head down, Christiana charges onward.

The pool of illumination cast by the car’s headlights is just enough for Lily to make out the course of the narrow road, beset on both sides by tangled woodland. Hands clenched tighter than normal to the steering wheel, Lily squints out through the rain-blurred windscreen.

‘In a dark, dark wood was a dark, dark house…’ Lily mutters to herself. How did that poem go again? ‘In the dark, dark house was a…’
Thunder rolls and the rain intensifies.

‘Great’, she sighs. Where is this dark sodding house, I’ve had enough of these dark sodding woods.

Aware of her pursuers gaining on her, Christiana steers her horse off the track and through a gap she sees in the thicket. Whinnying in protest at the blinding rain and the mess of gnarled, slimy undergrowth that seems determined to trip it, the horse somehow stumbles through. The ground then inclines downwards.

Unsure, the horse demurs. Christiana flexes her spurs hard into the horse’s side and it dashes forward down the slope and then makes a small leap into the open space of a wide bridleway.

The jolting swish of the windscreen wipers can’t prevent the world outside of Lily’s car from swimming into a watery wash. Keep going, she tells herself, can’t be far now. She strains to see the road ahead.

‘In a dark, dark wood was a…’

A shape suddenly emerges from the undergrowth and darts out into the road just ahead of her. Lily swerves the car, wheels on the dirt, trees…

The horse shies sideways and snorts as if suddenly spooked by something… but it’s just the whorling wind.

‘Come now!’ Christiana steadies then rides her steed hurriedly up the bridleway. The dancing light dissipates into the gloaming. A will-‘o-the wisp, she wonders? The ever-darkening sky – she must reach sanctuary soon. This way, this way.

Lily stands before a squat building of white stone and timber nestled amid neglected grounds, its windows tightly shuttered. She sighs with relief at having finally made it… and for avoiding hitting that tree.

Fumbling in her pocket, she pulls out a set of keys, long and heavy. A tell-tale tremble of her hand exhibits her still shaken nerves as she fits a key into the lock. Something compels her to gaze out into the shifting shadows of the surrounding trees – a sensation of being watched…

She unlocks the door to her new home, and pushes quickly inside.

Lily dumps her bags and looks about her in dismay; the rooms are low-ceilinged and bare, the only furniture in the lounge is an old leather couch and a wooden rocking chair. Hanging above a fireplace grate, on a wall marked with soot, the skull of some once mighty stag is displayed on a varnished plaque. Lily looks at it, ruefully. How exactly did I allow myself to be persuaded into buying this knackered old shed?
Two bars on her BlackBerry Z10, she tries to contact her friend, now 200 miles away in London. Her phone goes dead in the middle of the call. Lily hisses a curse under her breath.

Writing that article can also wait, she decides, a hot bath is needed now – oh God, please let there be hot water. And a bath.

Christiana approaches a clearing; it is shrouded in a spectre-grey mist. A stone cottage stands off to the side. Drawing closer the horse suddenly rears, Christiana hangs on but the horse bucks violently. Then, moving out of the misty woods like something in a dream, a cloaked figure on a fierce black charger emerges, flanked by other shadowy riders. Herne the Hunter is draped in the skin of a red deer, jagged antlers curl up from his head like frozen flames. He is the last thing Christiana sees before she is thrown headfirst to the mossy ground.

Lily turns the bath taps, only to be met with guttural grunting from the slumbering pipes – an accompaniment to the assorted wails and whispers of the wind that whips through the gaps in the cottage’s masonry. Lily shivers. Bed, yes, bed. Hopefully some sleep – leave everything ‘till morning. Bundling up her goose-down duvet, she heads to where a heavy, wooden-framed bed waits.

The horned silhouette of Herne the Hunter swirls back into Christiana’s view. The figure extends a hand to her, and, as if from the depths of some forgotten well, his voice intones ‘joins us in the Wild Hunt’. Dazed and fearful, Christiana somehow finds the strength to scramble to her feet and makes for the cottage. Throwing herself against the door, she pushes and pulls on the door handle, but to no effect. She glances over her shoulder and sees that Herne has dismounted and is now advancing on her. She bangs on the broad panelled door.

Bang-bang-bang. Lily peeks out from under the duvet. That wasn’t just one of this old pile’s bumps-in-the-night, that was someone banging on the front door. Bang-bang-bang go both the door and her thumping heart. A paralysis of momentary fear subsides and Lily slides her legs out from under the covers and pulls on a dressing-gown, ears alive to every sound. Bang, bang, BANG.

‘Who is it, who’s there?’ her voice tremulous as she tiptoes barefoot to the door. Only the shrieking wind replies. Now more angry at having being made scared than actually scared, Lily throws open the door. ‘What?’

Outside, nothing but the trees stare back. Then, from out of the murk, a figure scurries towards her. ‘Ah, hello! Hello,’ a bearded man in a rain-sodden green tweed hunting jacket smiles a greeting, ‘I didn’t think anyone was in for a moment there. Thank goodness.’

Lily stares open-mouthed, ‘can I help you?’ She looks around, where did he come from?

‘Ah, sorry, I’m Henry: the gamekeeper. I’d heard somebody had bought this place, nice to meet you. I wonder if I could seek shelter just a wee while? Got caught in the storm, I’m afraid. The winter winds blow the fiercest.’

The stranger grins expectantly, rain water dripping from his scraggly grey beard as Lily calibrates her response. The man’s wolfish, greenish-amber eyes fix hypnotically onto hers. After a moment, she steps back and allows him in.

Pulling the dressing-gown more tightly around her, Lily leads him into the bare lounge. ‘So… How come you’re out so late? Not working, surely…?’

She stops in her tracks; cowering in the corner of the room is a young woman dressed in a green woollen gown and red couvrechef. Christiana gazes through Lily with a hunted, haunted look.

‘Excuse me…’ Lily says, exasperated, ‘what…? Who are you?’ She turns to face Henry, who is stood casually admiring the stag skull’s antlers, ‘Is she with you?’
‘In a dark, dark wood was a dark, dark house…’ Henry lifts the skull from its mount; Lily’s face now a mask of bewildered fear.

‘Look, sorry, but I live here now and I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Tell you to leave. Or I’m calling the police,’ she waves her useless phone.

‘In the dark, dark house was a dark, dark room,’ Henry delicately fits the skull onto his head, placing it with the solemnity of a king with his coronation crown. ‘And in the dark, dark room…’ Henry’s eyes flick to Christiana, ‘was a ghost.’

Lily turns back to Christiana, except she’s nowhere to be seen. Aghast, she turns as Henry approaches her, his eyes glinting, glowing, a malodorous air about him. ‘Christiana fell fatally from her horse when it was shot by a soldier’s arrow, many centuries ago. She is dead, dear one. As are you.’

Reeling, Lily holds her head in confusion. She feels something, a split in her skull. She pulls her hands away – they are covered in blood. ‘I am Herne the Hunter,’ he extends a hand towards her, ‘ride with us for eternity in the Wild Hunt.’

Lily steps back, shaking her head. ‘No. No, stay away…’

‘Cursed are those trespassers who kill a royal deer reared in the bounds of these woods…’

‘Deer? I never…’ then she remembers swerving her car, too late…

Christiana reappears as from nowhere at Herne’s shoulder, her eyes also aglow. ‘I shot the king’s stag, and so I fell under this Devil’s curse. When Herne appears before you, you are to obey him; else the Evil One himself will seize your immortal soul and you will suffer torments unending.’

Herne offered again his hand.

Thundering hooves. Herne leads his phantom huntsmen, Christiana, and Lily, his newest captured soul, and they ride their spectral steeds weightlessly on the wild winds above the forest. Glancing down momentarily, Lily sees her car – mangled against a tree on the side of the road, the deer she struck still lying nearby. The sense of her old self fading, Lily rides on into the winter sky.

It’s not easy to cut through a human skull with a hacksaw. It’s not easy and it’s not fun either. Day in and day out; the same tedious work. Skulls, hacksaw, skulls, hacksaw. It’s tough work but it’s the price you to have pay for the pleasure of killing for a living.

I can’t very well just leave the bodies in my basement, can I? So after I take great pleasure in the mutilation and murder, there are certain mundane chores that have to be done before I can get back to the business of killing.

The best way to dispose of a body, as I’m sure you all know, is to eat it. Where’s the evidence if most of it’s in my belly? But before one can devour a human body there are a number of preparation techniques that must be completed. I won’t bore you with the details; suffice to say it takes a lot of work.

I don’t want you to judge me. I have to make a living, just as you do. My methods are more extreme but I was left with little choice. After the abattoirs closed down, I was of little use to a mechanised society. My butchering skills were swept aside. My whole family lost their jobs as the men with their machines rolled into town. One sweaty summer we were all informed that our services were no longer required. Out here there aren’t many other opportunities for employment and meat was my family’s means of making a living. Always had been, always will be if I have my way.

So after we lost our jobs and the cattle got sent to the slaughter in all new ingenious and ‘sanitised’ ways, there was nothing for me to do. Grandpa got sick. He loved his job, did our grandpa. More than you can imagine. Murder was his life, his income and his reason to get up in the morning. If animals needed slaughtering, grandpa was your man. When the suits told him there wasn’t any work for him anymore he collapsed on the spot. Not from the heat, the smell or the sight of blood but from the callous way those men replaced him with a machine.

Grandpa got my brother and me the job of killing cattle when we were just teens. We worked alongside him from the day we were allowed. Out here there isn’t a paper round, a job in the local cinema or any of the other stuff city kids grow up doing. We do as our elders do and we are damn proud to do it. Grandpa got father his first job there too. Three generations of our family worked together killing, cutting and preparing meat for people to eat. Until father died, that is.

He never got over the loss of our mother and it drove him crazy. So crazy that he died of heartbreak. We’re a close family, you see. We all live up in the same big old house just two miles down the road from the old abattoir. Our family lived there for generations, even before we lived off the meat market; my forefathers built that house and lived there till they died. But with no mother in the house, the air became toxic. Even with Grandpa, father and me and my brother Bill all working every shift they gave us, we could not afford to keep that house. The bank smelled blood, like the suits at the abattoir, and they came hunting for us.

Father couldn’t take the strain after Mum died and he hung himself in the barn. Bill packed up his things and left. Grandpa got sick and it was just me and him alone in the big house, once a place of so much childhood joy. Now empty, dusty, soulless and sad.

Well I wasn’t going to just let them take our house. They took my job, they drove my family to death or desertion and I was forced to make ends meet. For me and for my Grandpa. There ain’t no schools round where I live, no fancy education for me to get some new skills and learn to wear a suit. I couldn’t hang up my apron anyway. Bloody, torn and ragged as it is, it’s the only thing I’ve ever worn to work.

So killing is all I know how to do. Round these parts, you got two kinds of people; those that are locals and those that are just passing through. So I set up my own little abattoir in the basement of the lonely house. We get lots of people passing through round here; passing by the house, stopping for gas, picnics, walks in the fields. So now there are a number of new parts to my job, though I’m essentially still in the butchery business.

First I hunt. Grandpa always said it was what men were born to do. He sits up in the house waiting for me to get home. He’s too old and weak to do much of anything these days so it is me that stalks the prey. Single women are easiest. I’m a big guy but I don’t like much of a fight. They go down quickly with little more than a squeal if you catch them off guard. Just like a little calf, too quick to be scared, too weak to be a threat.

Then I bring them home, hang them up in the basement and bleed them out. I take great pleasure in the killing but it’s only after that the hard work really starts. They make good meat, those people, and it’s more than enough for me and Grandpa to live off. Then I take the rest of it down to the market and see what I can get for it. Veal, Beef, Pork, they’ll believe it’s anything if I prepare it right. So next time you sit down for a meal of delicious meat, spare a thought for me and my hacksaw. I might live right around the corner.

Frank wondered, Who hears the things I’m saying when no one is listening? as he wandered the dusty back halls of the campus library. His nose but inches away from his Personal Electronic Library Log. The device was nested firmly in his hand, bathing his face in artificial light, accentuating his high, knobby cheekbones, bumpy, red chin, and long, thin nose. The black and white text from the screen of his PELL scrolled rapidly across his pale blue eyes as he wandered deeper into the bowels of the library.

Frank was a curious fellow, not in his actions, but in a more literal sense of the word; not a moment would pass in which Frank wasn’t daydreaming about this or that. His interests, ever changing as they were, typically resided in the realm of cognitive sciences, his prospective major. It was a thought that Frank most enjoyed thinking. Thought was definitely his favourite thought.

And so Frank moved along the rows of towering bookshelves while thinking intently about thought. His eyes were buried in the scrolling text of available literature on his PELL, but he wasn’t reading. He was thinking.

Finally, Frank looked up. Nothing in particular caught his attention, not at first. It was the hanging lantern that dredged up the first feelings of concern in Frank. As he looked around, he realized he didn’t recognize this part of the library. He had never been here before, and it was definitely different.

The plastic-faced, florescent domes of beaming, white light had been replaced by hanging lanterns full of inconsistent, flickering flames. Their erratic dances cast fleeting, temperamental shadows that loomed over Frank, moving all around him. The floor was suddenly cracked and tarnished and made of centuries-old, unfinished timber. A complete contrast to the well-installed, short, grey carpet upon which he had been previously been dragging his feet. High above Frank’s head swung dozens of chandeliers, each gripping hundreds of small, unlit wax candles. It appeared as if they had all burned out over the years.

How many years? he asked himself as he continued to look around this strange, new, old place.

An enormous bookshelf lined the walls from floor to ceiling, breaking only at the door in which Frank had entered.

Then he noticed the pedestal before him. He approached it cautiously. It stood chest-height and appeared to be made from animal-hide and bones and cedar. Atop it was a large, hand-bound book. Wax in mid-flow, like frozen honey, clung to the pedestal’s edges and a handful of tiny, burnt-down wicks neatly surrounded the book. Its cover was made from the same animal skin as the pillar that held it and upon its face were the words, 

Index of Frank

A baffling discovery indeed. Frank jumped back.

Then he moved towards it again, reading the words carefully.

Frank jumped back again. This time his PELL fell loudly from his hand. It didn’t faze him.

Frank moved toward the book one more time, this time carefully peeling open the front cover while inhaling in a quiet hiss through his clenched teeth, preparing as if he were about to be bit or burned or prodded or beaten. But none of these things occurred upon its opening.

Each page was ordered in matching columns. In the first column could be found a range of dates and times, and in the second was a number. A strange index.

On the very first page, in the very first line, in the first column was Frank’s birth date and time with only a range of about thirty minutes. As he ran his finger down the page, he saw that it went on like this, in thirty-minute increments, throughout the book, the number in the second column growing linearly, one after the other, consistently up into the hundreds of thousands.

Frank looked at the rows of books surrounding him upon the walls. He saw the same set of growing numbers etched into the shelves all around him. He looked back at the Index of Frank, flipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for; the moment he got lost in the library. It wasn’t at the end of the book, it was somewhere toward the middle, something that deeply unsettled Frank. His stomach turned, realizing it wasn’t just a record of the past. Or maybe those books were empty, maybe they were all empty and Frank had nothing to worry about. Either way, the thought of it made Frank sick. He stuck with his original goal, refusing to look at the future – written or not – and found the number associated with his most recent thirty-minute increment.

It didn’t take him long to find the small hand-bound journal on the wall. The organisation of the books was amazingly simple to traverse. He slowly slid the volume off the shelf and held it tightly in both hands. He took in a deep breath and, while hissing through his clenched teeth, preparing for the worst yet again, opened the cover of the book.

It read,

“Frank wondered, Who hears the things I’m saying when no one is listening? as he wandered the dusty back halls of the campus library. His nose but inches away from his Personal Electronic Library Log.” …

The book fell from Frank’s shaking hands. His heart was pounding. His stomach turned over and over. He lowered himself to the floor, perching uncomfortably with his elbows on his knees. Slowly he gathered himself, taking deep breaths as he stared at the open book.

After a moment, he picked it up again and read on, skipping ahead,

… “Frank jumped back.

Then he moved toward it again, reading the words carefully.

Frank jumped back again. This time his PELL fell loudly from his hand. It didn’t faze him.” …

Which reminded him. Frank placed his index finger on the page and clasped the book firmly in his hand as he went over to the centre of the room to pick up his PELL. He placed it in his pocket and read on,

… “He took in a deep breath and, while hissing through his clenched teeth, opened the cover of the book.

It read, “Frank wondered, Who hears the things I’m saying when no one is listening? as he wandered the dusty back halls of the campus library. His nose was inches away from his Personal Electronic Library Log.”

The book fell from Frank’s shaking hands. His heart was pounding. His stomach turned over and over. He lowered himself to the floor, perching uncomfortably with his elbows on his knees. Slowly he gathered himself, taking deep breaths as he stared at the open book.

After a moment, he picked it up again and read on, skipping ahead…

He realised it was an exact log of him, down to his inner most thoughts. He continued reading, absolutely and entirely intrigued,

… “Frank jumped back.

Then he moved toward it again, reading the words carefully.

Frank jumped back again. This time his PELL fell loudly from his hand. It didn’t faze him.”

Which reminded him. Frank placed his index finger on the page and clasped the book firmly in his hand as he went over to the centre of the room to pick up his PELL. Frank read on,

“He took in a deep breath and, while hissing through his clenched teeth, opened the cover of the book.”

Finally, tired of the convoluted loops and self-imbedded actions and thoughts, Frank skipped to the end of the small journal,

… Finally, tired of the convoluted loops and self-imbedded actions and thoughts, Frank skipped to the final page of the small journal. Which read,

…Frank noticed an image running the length of the pedestal in the centre of the room. He recognized it and his stomach sank. It was his tattoo; the one he had reluctantly gotten on his eighteenth birthday…

Frank wondered if he’d find his way out, and the book, it wondered with him.

I’ve found a way to bend time. I can reach out and bring the future to me; make it mine… now… whenever I want to. It’s like having a remote control on my life except I can only fast forward. No more weekdays, no more 9-5, no more boredom and no more ever doing what I don’t want to do.

I wake up. It’s a Monday morning, grey skies outside. The thought of work makes me want to bury myself alive in this grave of a bed. I close my eyes, steady my breathing, slow it down, breathe long and hard and hope. I picture it being Monday evening. I’m coming home from the shop and the working day is over. My heart seems to stop. With my eyes closed, I hurtle forwards sickeningly fast through the darkness. I open my eyes and I’m here. Monday evening. Work has been and gone and I’m free for the evening. That’s how time travel works.

What’s going on this evening? I call my mate. He’s knackered. Says I was like a zombie at work as usual. Why am I now so full of beans? I call Shell; see if she’s around tonight. She is. I go round hers and we chuck on a film. I’m bored, restless. Waiting for the movie to finish and see if Shell is in the mood tonight. She loves the flick, nudging me, encouraging me to enjoy another complicated love triangle. I don’t care. For a moment I close my eyes and start to wish the film away. I’ll just fast forward to the end and then see if I’m in luck or not. For the second time today I go through the ritual, imagine the credits rolling and Shell turning the DVD off. I speed through time. I’m there, at the end of the film. We fuck then fall asleep.

That’s how it starts. Once, then twice a day. Then I find myself skipping a day or two at a time. Mondays and Tuesdays are pretty much guaranteed to be worthless. Work sucks and nothing much is on in the evenings. I skip a few days then I start skipping the whole working week.

All I get at work is grief. People say I’m blasé; living my life on auto-pilot. Unmotivated; a zombie. I’m not surprised. I’m completely skipping it. Living for the weekend. My mates and I go out on Friday, pop a couple of pills or see who’s got some coke. There’s always somebody who’s got some. Saturday might be quieter but usually I’m up for raving all over again. We usually hit it hard both nights. I’ve been saving myself for this all week. I’m probably a bad influence on the others. When they want to go home, I’m just getting started.

We hit the clubs or find a rave and I’m in my element. I’m a time travelling space alien sent to bring peace and love to the people of this planet. I tell people about my adventures in time travel as I chew my face off, the ecstasy coursing through my blood, as I sweat profusely and try to touch them like they’re my best friend. The wide eyed believers stare back at me and tell me ‘I know exactly what you mean, man… I do it too!’

There must be loads of us, I tell myself. Loads of time hoppers jumping to the weekends where we get to let it all hang out, breaking down the social barriers that make no sense to any of us. Sharing moments that we’ll never remember but that we never want to forget. Time flies when you’re having fun and I love the weekends. All night I reach out to strangers, communicate, connect and love. Then we sleep through the next day and wake up and do it all again. On Sunday nights, Shell and I chill in and she berates me for my social over-stimulation all weekend.

‘It’s like I’m not here sometimes’ she says. ‘You’re too busy talking to the rest of the world to even notice me’.

I find myself resisting the urge to close my eyes and wish this encounter away. I try to resist. This is important. It’s important that I hear this and respond to it. Stay here. Stay in the goddamn moment. But I’m tired. My eyelids are heavy and I don’t need this. They droop and I start to see me and the boys heading out next Friday evening. The pills are sorted and we’ve got a little bit of coke lined up for the weekend.

As my eyes close, I just hear Shell saying ‘Dave… Are you even fucking listening to me…? Dave!’ And I’m gone.

It becomes addictive. Like the pills, like the coke, life is too much fun to not skip the boring parts. Weeks go by in a second and the weekends pass by in a blurry haze of drug fuelled bullshitting and partying. I discovered my special gift at 18 when I left school and hit the real world. One sunny day, standing at the counter at work, staring into space, I closed my eyes and dreamed of sitting in a beer garden at the end of the day. Feeling suddenly nauseous, I felt like I was tipping forward uncontrollably. I put my hands out to steady myself and catch my balance, eyes jolting open at the same time and suddenly there I found myself; in the beer garden staring into the sunset and being sick.

The sickness went away in time and I learnt to control my gift. Next thing I know I’m 35. Shell’s long gone. My mates are long gone. I don’t even know when I lost them. It’s fine. I meet new people every weekend. I try to hit the same clubs and wander around in a state till I meet someone I recognize. We get off our faces and have a great night. No one seems that keen to carry on the party anymore. The new kids are lightweights these days. They make their excuses and disappear so I find some new friends.

I spend my 47th birthday with some twenty-somethings raving like there’s no tomorrow. One of them is giving me weird looks. We dance under the lasers, the smoke and the heavy bass. This girl keeps pulling her friends away from me. I don’t give a shit. I’m having a blast, feeling the effects of the sixth pill of the night. Must have been a weak batch. Off my tits now, though. 47 and loving life.

Suddenly I’m 60. Don’t feel it though. In my own world now. People seem even less keen to talk me these days in the clubs. Lightweights. Looked up Shell the other day while I was on a brutal comedown and hadn’t yet decided to skip it. Married. Grown children. Divorced. What a waste of a life.

I don’t really know a life outside the clubs now. It seems like only months ago since I started this time travelling stuff. I zap forward to stop any thoughts invading my mind; nasty thoughts that creep in and make me shake, threatening to kill my permanent buzz. Where have all my friends gone? What are they doing? Why did they leave me?

I’m a grey haired, wrinkly old cleaner now. How I got the job I couldn’t tell you. I look in the mirror and I can’t believe the old man who stares back at me. I must have not seen a mirror in twenty years. Old age snuck up so fast. I’m alone. I zap forward again. Those thoughts creeping in making me cringe again. No time for sadness. Skip it.

A dealer in the club shoves me this evening. ‘Fuck off, old man’ he says. The dealers stand in blatant rows, lining the corridors. I move to another dealer. I shouldn’t have come here tonight. They don’t know me here. The next dealer says the same. ‘What you talking about mate… I ain’t got nothing… Now fuck off.’

A bouncer comes over and grabs me. ‘This guy bothering you?’ he asks the dealer. Must be in on it with him, getting some of the take. He rough handles me through the club. I just want this to be over. I close my eyes. The nausea is back. But now something different. A pain. My arm. I try to get the bouncer’s hands off me. He’s still dragging me to the doors. My chest. I screw my eyes shut, just take me away from right now. I’m on my knees. My life flashes before me. The lights, the bass, the random faces. It takes less than an instant and I’m gone.

Eventually, he tires of the incessant scratching behind the walls. After almost a year of sleepless nights and rude awakenings, the tormented decides to investigate. He uses a sledgehammer for this purpose, knocking the wall cleanly through with a couple of blows and not a thought as to what the landlord might say. Many nights, he has imagined and dreamed and wondered what might lie within his own walls. Be it something banal and uninteresting, like the wooden supports creaking. Or maybe a terrified trapped rodent (a damn resilient one, living in there for so long). Sometimes he thinks it might be a pet fear of his; a nest of spiders, perhaps, or the clown from IT. Didn’t they once say a young girl disappeared on this very street? Wasn’t there talk of an unconvicted sex offender who simply vanished, around these parts? Always, he admonishes himself for such silly thoughts. Probably just a wooden beam, complaining against the approaching winter. Probably.

The sledgehammer makes short work of the wall, and fragments of plaster crumble to the floor. Should have put some plastic down, he thinks. From within the wall, a scratching sound. Louder, amplified as an echo from within. Definitely not something as inanimate as a beam of wood. Holding the sledgehammer like a protective weapon, he approaches. Another scratching scuffle. No, more of a shuffle, really. Like something stirring in its slumber. The man, he peers in. Nothing but dusty blackness greets his apprehensive eyes. The thing inside the wall moves again. Its loudest yet.

The man steps back from the breach. Searches the room for something he can use to combat the darkness and the unknown. It glares back at him; a void, an absence of light. What are you, he wonders. I hope you’re not spiders. I hate spiders. In the kitchen, he finds the old rubber torch he keeps for emergencies. Steals a set of AA batteries from the TV remote and double-checks the bulb. Back upstairs, back to the hole. Back to the scratching from inside the walls. As he enters, it vomits up a mass of dirt-blackened woodlice. He shrieks like a girl and runs. Definitely should have put some plastic down. The noise from within is still going, but has changed frequency now, more of a grumble or low roar. The rumbling stomach of an unknown monster. He sits on the toilet for half an hour. Eventually, the woodlice come looking for him, under the door.

Man up, he tells himself. Torch and sledgehammer in hand, he returns. Gingerly slipping back into the room, trying not to step on the lice (God, that sound) his eyes find the blackened void in the wall. What is that smell? And did it suddenly get a lot warmer in here? These questions he asks himself as he approaches, almost transfixed. This is too much. Call an exterminator. Or an exorcist. The door behind him slams shut. The light goes out, and the room is plunged into darkness.

Before he panics, he remembers the torch. This, at least, doesn’t fail him. It shows him things he doesn’t want to see, like the bugs (not just woodlice now), scuttling under the carpet, into his bed and inside his underpants draw. Innumerable tiny winged creatures flap around his head, settling in his hair and atop the wardrobe. The light shows him things he shouldn’t be seeing, like a crow on the bookshelf and Mothman in the mirror. He screams and goes for the door. The room feels hot and humid, and smells like onions and armpits. The doorhandle, hot, burns his hand as he tries to turn it. He whimpers, not realising that he could probably break the door through with the hammer, if he swung it hard enough. And then, suddenly, there is silence.

The noise has stopped. From within the darkness of the black hole, he sees something shift, only slightly. In spite of himself, hypnotised, he approaches, on his hands and knees. He looks deep into that black, impossible hole, as it grows like a tumour. He looks…

And I look back at him. “Hello,” I say.  And then, before he can even scream, I pull him inside for a cuddle.