

Missing Zero

# (a novel in three parts)

# By Lorem Ipsum

Copyright Lorem Ipsum 2012

Published at Smashwords

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CONTENTS

1. Nigredo — The Phoenix Principle

2. Albedo — The Persistent Fool

3. Rubedo — The Re-birthing Suite
1. Nigredo — The Phoenix Principle

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night..." — Lennon and McCartney

The experiment was to begin as a series of minor deviations from what Lorem Ipsum typically thought of as his normal way of thinking. By assuming a completely uncharacteristic stance on such a topic as the genetic imperative of a supposed ethnic master race, or, say, alternatively, by contending it was Satan alone who laid down the fossil record (so as to mislead a credulous humanity away from the true date of Creation), Ipsum sought to test the stamina and mental resolve of his fellow human beings.

Unsuspecting neighbours, co-workers and old school friends immediately suggested themselves as perfect candidates for inclusion in his first few early trials. Although, in time, he held high hopes a significant number of involuntary participants plucked from amongst the general populace at large would soon also find themselves falling within the parameters of his unique study — so that they too might be subjected to the kind of rigorous scrutiny his new empirical mindset insisted they ought to be.

At the outset, he had to accept not everyone was going to embrace his sudden and inexplicable change of temperament too kindly. Yet no matter how crippling the long-term psychological or financial costs were likely to be to him personally, he wasn't prepared to settle for anything less than the calculated effect he was ultimately seeking. For he knew the real Alchemists had taught, seemingly incongruously, that the total dissolution of that which was most highly prized amongst their initiates — in each and every instance — constituted a primary condition of the Work. And so, by necessity, Ipsum resigned himself to seeing his social-self suffer a small death during what he anticipated would represent a difficult preliminary phase of complete identity failure.

With this, then, his firm intent, Ipsum fairly judged his flatmate, Mortimer Chambers, as fully deserving the honour of being his very first test case. Quite apart from his being behind on the rent again, as a person, Mortimer was one of the very worst sorts of degenerates imaginable and therefore, as a friend, no great loss to him anyway. In the final analysis, he was one of the very worst sorts of degenerates imaginable because he was a traitor, a traitor of the intellectual variety. His was not a mind, but rather a veritable elephants' graveyard of mankind's highest ideals and most sublime notions. He also happened to be an unashamed materialist, not solely by nature but also by way of persistent habit. None of which is to say he lacked in moral intelligence altogether. It just happened to be his particular brand of genius lay in idleness.

Of the five or six books Mortimer claimed to have read since moving in, at best, only one of the titles (The Re-education of Ms Harriett Carriwitchett) could actually be classified as a serious attempt at literature. Indeed, by Ipsum's reckoning, the other remaining works on Mortimer's list were nothing more than sorry examples of that risible genre passed off by publishers as "adult" fiction, the inherent fascination of which was beyond even Mortimer's comprehension, apparently. For when pressed on the issue, his flatmate conceded to only having casually flicked through one or two of the neglected pile of paperbacks currently collecting dust beneath his futon.

In Mortimer's defence, it needed to be said he'd not really had the opportunity to read much of anything recently — not since botched laser eye-surgery had left him practically blind. Moreover, and almost as a final appeal for clemency, he did eventually concede of his own freewill soft-core pornography, such as his copy of The Lariat Lassie of Laredo, still ranked as pornography whether he read it in a large-print format or not.

It wasn't Mortimer's reading habits alone that were worryingly suspect; to be honest, his shortcomings were manifold. Even so, Ipsum might have felt more inclined to spare his flatmate, if only Mortimer had exercised better judgement in his choice of vocation. A human cannonball or bee-wrangler presented themselves as just two of the many offbeat (and consequently more preferable) occupations Ipsum felt Mortimer could have chosen for himself. Instead, he plied the contemptible trade of a viral marketeer; and regardless of any so-called extenuating circumstances this fact only served to strengthen Ipsum's growing conviction his flatmate's propensity for mental treason lay extremely deeply ingrained within him and therefore stretched well beyond either absolute atonement or for that matter mere forgiveness.

Still, lest this, and other harsh assessments like it, bring into question his ability to bear true witness when called on to account for his future actions, Ipsum knew he must keep in check any impulses within his study pointing towards a personal bias. After all, he rightly feared if friends and family were to simply find him guilty of having cast the jaundiced eye of a malcontent over those around him, it only stood to reason all of his subsequent efforts regarding impartiality would be similarly discredited as well. As an ardent realist, he grasped there wasn't any easy way for him to precisely control how his momentous undertaking would subsequently be viewed by others. Which meant the best he could do was simply trust the inherent validity of his personal quest to become a true man truly acquainted with the truth, in this the universal age of celebrated ignorance and embellished self-deceit. If this also called for his radically re-engineering the social milieu in which he lived, what of it? The intellectually-marred Mortimer would only be one of many forced to pay for their complicity in "The Great Lie".

Being a drearily ordinary Tuesday night (following another day of soulless drudgery), Ipsum sat parked in front of the television — without a doubt his least favourite place to find himself. And far worse, Mortimer, his least favourite person to be found there with, sat close by. The tiresome task of having to narrate the constant on-screen happenings to his sightless companion quashed any meagre enjoyment Ipsum might otherwise derive from the already lousy excuse for actual entertainment. Worst of all, the program on offer offered nothing the two of them hadn't seen broadcast a few million times before in slightly different guises and formats.

All was not lost, though — for the night itself would still yet prove to be remarkable, if only because just about everything regarding the two young men's lives was about to change forever. Firstly, their lives would change because of the aforementioned experiment; but also secondly because nothing, thankfully, can stay the way it has been for absolutely ever. As to the more far-reaching consequences of what the night held in store, even Ipsum himself didn't have the slightest clue.

The film they watched typified the sort of nonsensical piffle the average viewer evidently can't get enough of. From what Ipsum had bothered to digest so far, young girls with massive breasts — too perfectly perky to be real — were being "put through hell" in a boot camp somewhere in the Ozarks. While meanwhile their male counterparts — a slouchy bunch of slack-jawed picktooths — plotted at bettering the upstart female-types, by gluing all the toilet seats in the women's latrine permanently up.

Needless to say, the crazy shenanigans of the male recruits didn't go unanswered for long, before "all out war" broke out between the two camps. Jarringly, the good-humoured hi-jinx of the trainee killers kept cutting in-between times to grainy footage of some yet-to-be-civilised desert nation on the other side of the world, where the latest enemy of all that is good and decent steadily amassed its own army of apocalyptic proportions.

Barely rating as sub-moronic, the rest of the film's plot remained relatively sketchy. Although if Ipsum grasped the general daft gist of Foreign Soil correctly, its underlying message seemed to be saying armed conflict could really be seen as just another excuse for having a whole shit-load of relatively harmless unisex fun. Personally, he preferred stories based around revenge fantasies, so the entire point of the Hollywood blockbuster left him pretty much cold. In a more sober and hence more critical frame of mind, he would have probably dismissed the entire exercise in inanity as little more than a thinly-veiled piece of military recruitment propaganda. Instead, he worried about how long he felt he could hold out before having cause to actually vomit.

"If I should ever take a bullet in the guts on some foreign balletfield," his flatmate slurred lazily, offering up another of his many unsolicited opinions, "I'd want one of those kick-arse Valkyrie she-bitches to swoop on down and carry me off to that great big, bloody beer garden in the sky the bleeding Vikings were always banging on about."

Valhalla may have been many things, but to his knowledge Ipsum remembered it being depicted much more in the style of a beer hall than a beer garden. He decided it best to let the obvious gaff pass in the hope he wouldn't be drawn into yet another tiresome round of the mock-Socratic debate his heavily wheezing drinking partner so delighted in. No such luck came his way.

"If you had the choice to come back as absolutely any sort of household appliance you fancied," Mortimer began, gleefully, "what would it be, and why?"

"I couldn't say," answered Ipsum, as he squinted to read the display on his digital watch.

"No, seriously. Tell me what you would like to be."

Ipsum tried hard to imagine a worse fate than his own.

"Oh, hell...AN INSINKERATOR!" he replied a little too loudly.

Yet intolerably, his answer didn't bring an end to the idiotic game, as he prayed it might. Because his companion next challenged him still further.

"And why?" pressed Mortimer tiresomely. "Although please remember I have trouble with my sight and not my hearing."

"Aargh, I don't know. Probably because of its inherent honesty."

"Honesty, you say. Hmm, very interesting."

"Garbage in, garbage out. No pretensions or grand illusions. I could stand proud as being the very last vital link in life's big long, stinking food chain."

"Well, I most definitely would choose to come back as a soda siphon. You know, full of gas," Mortimer offered proudly, finally reaching his punch line, which he then celebrated by burping the first eight letters of the Coptic alphabet.

"Charming and erudite, however do you cope?"

"It's a gift really," sang out Mortimer beerily.

Ipsum pictured his flatmate's head as a giant boil in need of lancing. He looked around to see if anything sharp or pointy lay close to hand, but nothing presented itself as suitable for his purpose. In a desperate attempt to save his sanity, he turned his attention back to the TV.

By now, the fresh-faced recruits had since graduated from boot camp and were awaiting their deployment to a real war zone with zealous anticipation. And if he cared to think about it, Ipsum couldn't decide who he currently despised more: the media moguls whose networks regularly screened such unadulterated crap or his flatulent flatmate, who seemed to have meanwhile impossibly dozed off mid-fart. Worryingly, he grew convinced he would end up watching the remainder of the appalling film alone; something Mortimer suckered him into all the time.

Ipsum just couldn't buy it. Sure, he accepted the central premise his generation represented nothing more than a dysfunctional collective of inconsequential and young-beyond-their-years types, who spent their days cluttering up inner-city sidewalk cafes, reflecting vapidly on their collective inability to contribute to the betterment of the lives of others. And, granted, honest employment mostly held no allure for these modern-day dandies, who clutched their mobile phones and portable music players in place of the snuff cases and handkerchiefs of yesteryear. But whether a fair and just cause, along with a self-loading semi-automatic assault rifle, provided the answer to curing he and his ilk of their pampered excesses remained largely debatable.

Equally, while Ipsum couldn't fault the disdain with which he and his cohorts were largely viewed by the older generation, he suspected no amount of organised mass bloodletting held the key to bridging the gap between the two demographics. But beyond that, he suspected he'd identified a fundamental flaw in such a position's overall logic anyhow. By his reckoning, if he and his contemporaries were to willingly offer themselves up, en masse, as cannon fodder to the industrial military complex, then surely there would be nobody left behind to continue spending up big on all the domestic-level electronic gadgetry and techno-trinkets that clearly constitute a huge chunk of consumer sales across the financial markets of the free world.

"Man, that chick could out-suck a 'delta quadrant'-sized black hole," said Mortimer, unexpectedly, waking up from his self-induced micro-coma. "Don't let her Little-Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes routine fool you for a second."

"What?" asked Ipsum.

"The girl I was telling you about, last week, the one who works up at the drycleaners. Anyway, I nailed her. Coitus amongst the coat-hangers; I thought you'd like to know."

"Well, you're wrong. And for the record, I'm 100% behind seeing you left belly up on some foreign balletfield."

"Your caring words are duly noted."

Looking at Mortimer sat slumped before him thus, Ipsum struggled to believe his flatmate should come from a family practically legendary for its proliferation of chronic overachievers. History however had shown Mortimer's family were nothing if not real go-getters. Two of Mortimer's uncles had climbed each of the highest peaks on the seven continents, while his mother had twice run successfully for the Upper House. One of his brothers was a neurosurgeon, while the other was a palaeontologist of some note. That Mortimer should, then, be regarded as the great success story in his family rated as truly mind-boggling.

Nevertheless in the dirty-tricks world of viral marketing, Mortimer Chambers towered above all others as an undisputed god. For if it was his job to effortlessly ingratiate his way into the confidences of the spending classes — as, of course, it was — then he was surely born to do nothing else quite so perfectly. The big name aftershaves he wore, the brands of cigarettes he offered to strangers out to cadge a smoke, the top-shelf spirits he shouted newfound friends in twenty different bars across the city, in each and every case these were nothing more than calculated ploys to help him flog off the wares of ruthless corporate entities fighting over an ever-diminishing market share. Without a doubt, his entire life could be viewed as a one-man mission to elevate commercial greed to an art form.

His easygoing charm and rakish good looks made him a kind of perfect avatar for disseminating the personal plugs and product placements that were the bread and butter of his quasi-legal profession. After all, a nudge was as good as a wink from a blind man; and if said nudge should later incline a budget-minded partygoer to spend some hard-earned coin on a hitherto unheard-of, dodgy Latvian vodka called Chinovnik, then all the better for everyone concerned, eh what? "Chin chin, comrade!"

"What?" murmured Mortimer, opening half an eye warily.

"I said, you're drooling down your chin, mate!" Ipsum shouted belligerently, realising in his agitated state he must have spoken the last part of his mental tirade aloud.

"You're just jealous."

"I can't imagine why."

"Let's see, it begins with S and ends in X. Would, sir, like to purchase a vowel, perchance?"

Ipsum felt he would prefer to purchase a gun. Although he couldn't decide what calibre of firearm he favoured, quite so easily. Mortimer's cockiness touched a nerve. Perhaps Ipsum was jealous of the slew of young liberated firebrands out there, who, like his flatmate, indulged in copious amounts of wild anonymous sex simply so as to brag about it afterwards. Maybe he did envy the "many to many" around him whose wilderness years amounted to nothing more than loathsome pastiches of truly awful James Dean impersonations and copybook machismo swagger. Maybe he secretly wished he too could find happiness in simple camaraderie, just like the foulmouthed press agents and newsmongers he'd long ago studied with — who drank and hugged and pissed on each other's shoes in pre-dawn brothel car parks — claimed they did. These, then, maybe were the ones he aspired most truly to emulate. And what if he did? He certainly couldn't hate them for it. Maybe Mortimer had zeroed in on his sense of dissatisfaction correctly: maybe Ipsum was just jealous.

"So, tell me, what would you rather be — a Jacuzzi or a jackfruit?" quizzed his flatmate, innocently picking up from where he had left off earlier.

A voice deep within Ipsum told him the time had come for him to put his proposed stratagem into effect. Usually, alcohol helped to quiet such voices, but no amount of the amber fluid he drank this particular evening looked likely to do so. He would never achieve the kind of hops-induced bliss Mortimer languished in so beatifically beside him. The raging internal polemic against the status quo eating Ipsum up from the inside out demanded expression. Truly, everything appeared ripe for the experiment to begin in earnest.

"Mortimer?"

"Yes, my darling," joked the insufferable prat.

"Um, the thing is, I haven't been quite honest with you about something."

"Orright, Sweet'art. Altho' do you really fink it's a good idea at this point in our relationship to be sharing true confessions?"

"Look, just shut up for a minute, will you?" Ipsum groaned.

"Come on, out with it, then."

"You know how I said Archie was already dead when I got home?"

"Roger, Wilco!"

"Well, I lied. That's it."

"Come again?"

"I lied."

"Hey, this isn't funny," objected Mortimer, unsuccessfully attempting to sober up in a hurry. "'I lied. And that's it!'"

"It's not a joke, Mortimer. I'm not trying to be funny."

"So what are you trying to tell me?"

"I'm trying to tell you I alone am responsible for Archie's death."

"So why, in hell, did you let me think it was the postman's fault, all this time?"

"Guilt, I suppose," mused Ipsum distractedly. "But the truth is, it was I. I alone killed the Archduke Franz Furrypants."

"I can't believe what you're saying. Aren't we the very best of friends?"

"Marmaduke, now there's a great name for a dog, don't you think?" offered Ipsum casually. "Or possibly Rex?"

"Whoa, arsehole! You've got some serious explaining to do."

"Of course, I do. Let me qualify my earlier remark for you. If I felt guilty, it was only because I enjoyed killing your dog as much as I did."

"You evil, sick bastard!"

Flashpoint was achieved. In fact, Mortimer grew so enraged he would have probably leapt to his feet, except gravity and his inert body mass were too busy fighting for supremacy to allow it.

Ipsum took the opportunity to get up and walk calmly over to the adjoining kitchenette. He couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. It really did seem pathetic to him a grown man should be so overweeningly attached to the memory of some stupid dead mutt. Sure, in all fairness, Archie served as more than just your typical animal companion. Okay, so he was one of those special dogs of the seeing-eye variety; but he still had fleas and ate out of the garbage. So he was just like any other dog in reality. And people's pets died every day of the week because of something or other. They got flushed down the toilet, or buried down the back, and then their owners got on with the rest of their lives again. But brushing away a single stoic tear hadn't proved sufficient for Mortimer. He'd cried every night for a month after Archie "bought the farm". Grieving moron.

"This better be a joke!" Mortimer managed to threaten, as he at last broke free of the powerful hold exerted on him by the couch. "But I can tell you now, I'm not laughing."

"What? What better be a joke?" demanded Mortimer's "unofficial girlfriend", Verity, who suddenly appeared seemingly from out of nowhere.

Up until then she'd been holed up working away at a computer in a nearby bedroom, and her pursed lips and heavily creased brow indicated she was not at all happy about having to come out and play peacekeeper. Her persistent migraines meant she hated loud noises of any sort.

"Tell me what you two old fishwives are harping on about now?" she spat at Ipsum. "Truly, it's like I can't leave the two of you alone for longer than five minutes without either one of you complaining your beer's turned sour!"

"If you must know the cause of our little collieshangie," replied Ipsum dryly, "I'll lay it out for you dead straight. Your lying, cheating boyfriend here has finally found the guts to confess his secret, undying love for himself to me. Satisfied?"

"This...this...I don't know what...this...crazy fuck just confessed to killing Archie!" Mortimer spluttered with rage, refusing to let his drunkenness rob him of full expression of his ire.

"You can't be serious?" asked Verity, as she turned and challenged Ipsum by raising one of her over-plucked eyebrows disbelievingly.

"Oh, well, yes. I did also confess to that too," Ipsum laughed mirthlessly.

"I can't imagine why you would say such a thing. But I don't believe a word of it," she huffed, leading Mortimer unsteadily off to bed. "I always pegged you as an ugly drunk, but this is even too much for you!"

As she left with her sobbing charge, it struck Ipsum that Ms Verity Lane could easily pass for being the dullest person alive outside of a catatonia ward. For except for a certain cultivated dourness, her general demeanour never revealed anything about her other than her feelings of general opprobrium regarding the male species as a whole. Quite honestly, her chosen persona was nothing short of wallpaper-strippingly boring. Even when she felt beside herself with rage, as she did now, she barely registered as a living, breathing emotional being. And, put most aptly, he felt it cruel but fair to say it seemed as if her entire personality had long ago since paled into insignificance.

But there was more to her than what she presented as. Because even though he wished he didn't, he now knew better. He knew Verity's calculated drabness had only ever existed as a shameless construct — a cheap bald-faced fiction. Verity wasn't at all what she seemed, because deep down beneath her pallid exterior there also existed within her a darkly-perverse, sublimated beauty.

It wasn't as if he'd been completely blind to this other dimension to her character over the years. He just supposed he'd chosen to ignore it. On the day they'd first been introduced, she'd blurted out something about her keeping a journal. She called herself a bruise diarist, he remembered, or some other equally dippy term. Apparently, she bruised so easily she often forgot how it was she'd come by her latest injury. Therefore, she'd long ago resolved to note every welt, weal and contusion as it blossomed and bloomed about her body right through to when it gradually faded away to become nothing again. For what it was worth, she clarified the matter still further by stating things like abrasions and rashes and such simply didn't qualify for their own entries.

"Besides which," she had added candidly, "writing it all down makes me feel like I'm a pioneer of sorts in a hitherto unexplored field. It's like I'm the first one of my kind and I need to leave a record for future generations. I don't know, I'm probably a little bit crazy."

Probably totally, Ipsum recalled thinking.

And so, ever-so weirdly, with the sort of due diligence only youthful obsession typically lends to such undertakings, Verity had quite literally filled dozens of the little fairy-themed notebooks she favoured, as she catalogued every tiny bump or scrape she sustained during her day-to-day life. And thus, the size, shape and location of many thousands of such bruises were writ large, each fresh new hurt being awarded its own unique rubric and accompanying pithy entry.

As an example, on any given page, you might find she had jotted down something just so:

Tuesday, 29th February: Fat peninsular-shaped (think Norway and Sweden) port wine-coloured blotch, adrift of right shoulder blade — the consequence of lugging algebra books home on bus.

Or equally as likely:

Friday, 17th September: Faint, wispy Rorschach inkblot, smallish, on inner wrist where hit with shuttlecock at play.

To Verity, each yellow, grey/green and purplish-brown haemorrhage she spotted growing darkly in her epidermis became another cause for secret joy — an extremely pathetic kind of pastime, to be sure, but one Ipsum had chosen to dismiss as a simple hangover from a manifestly disturbed childhood.

That is, until just recently. For Ipsum had since become acquainted with a far more disturbing side to Verity's peculiar passion. Perhaps it only stood to reason with the advent of web cams and high-speed Internet modems her creepy hobby should have steadily evolved into something altogether more high-tech. What was not so innocent, he judged, though, was the way she no longer breathlessly lingered over her endless pillow wounds alone. Because, he had since found out, there now existed a whole worldwide network of voyeurs and other assorted perverts who regularly checked in at Verity's "The Truth Hurts" website, presumably so as to drool and masturbate over the hundreds of digital photos of her forever black-and-blue flesh she kept posted there. In fact, if her site's visit-counter indeed worked correctly, then Verity's subsequent profile amongst these kinds of pay-per-view users of online fetish sites had long ago reached viral proportions.

Mortimer took full credit for Verity's ever-widening exposure. The way he told it, he first saw a dollar was to be made by catering to those punters who liked the look of a woman "with a bit of colour about her". A bit of gentle persuasion later, and he had talked Verity around to his idea of their sharing her special gift with others on a pro rata basis. "There really is a beautiful synergy to it all," he had crowed smugly. Verity possessed her unique talent for bruising seemingly at will; while he himself knew how to up-sell people to their true hearts' most wicked desires. Sure, he boasted, Verity initially voiced her concerns with issues of moral propriety, until he finally made enough noises about giving her the baby she so desperately hankered after that she shut up.

Thenceforth, instead of waiting for the sort of happy accident that might typically result in a harmless enough journal entry, Verity regularly visited injuries upon herself solely in order to satisfy market demand. For a price, interested parties could even commission specific bruise types and patterns — one of Mortimer's further moneymaking ideas — whereby which, not too long ago, a prominent French peace advocate paid an obscenely vast sum of Euros to secure private vision of Verity's translucent inner thighs as she had slapped a studded hand glove against them. Mortimer laughed uncontrollably when he recalled how the burst capillaries left behind from that "little escapade" had taken well over six weeks to finally clear up.

As fate would have it, Ipsum only found out about Verity's secret life by way of fiscal necessity, to use the term Mortimer had called it. Out of the blue, he had asked Ipsum for his help in the execution of one of Verity's more bizarre engagements. In a sickeningly perverse display of brand loyalty, a syndicate of Japanese factory workers had apparently pooled their wages so as to see their company's logo emblazoned onto the wafer-thin skin of Verity's backside. The only trouble being that Mortimer worried he might land wide of the mark when it came to delivering the commissioned blow, owing to his failing eyesight. Quite apart from which, from a sheerly practical point of view, he had explained further, Verity herself couldn't be expected to seal the deal on her own as it were.

"Thus making you the only man for the job," exhorted Mortimer purposively, when asking Ipsum for his help one strange Sunday afternoon a few weeks prior.

Typically, it seemed, Verity used all manner of household items in her highly choreographed bouts of self-abuse. A rolled up magazine here or an ironing cord there, or perhaps even a knotted scarf with a coin tied in it. Any of these might be used as a way of lashing her preternaturally soft skin so as "to turn a quid", Mortimer had confided beamingly. That said, her Japanese clients' request called for something altogether more exacting. The global tyre manufacturer they worked for, Kwaidan Rubber, sported an oriental brushstroke character as its corporate emblem, and it was this they wanted to see etched into Verity's glorious white bottom. Somewhat ironically, the character itself, Ichio Eeche, could most closely be translated into English as meaning "a one-off opportunity".

"And this, my dread companion," Mortimer had hissed with undue emphasis, "is the very dilemma we are facing. As we are only afforded this one-off opportunity to get this so very right!"

Prior to his asking Ipsum, Mortimer had already made Verity carve the requisite bruise shape into the blade of an old wooden baker's-paddle. And it was this makeshift brand he handed Ipsum, as he continued:

"And so, here's where you come in. We need you to be our pinch hitter. If you've got what it takes, that is, to hit her right in the sweet spot."

"Okay, I guess," replied Ipsum flatly. "It's not as if I've got anything else planned till later today."

Only afterwards, when he'd actually physically wielded the curséd paddle, smacking it forcefully up against Verity's naked behind, did he experience what he imagined must be a crisis of conscience. On the surface of it, he felt rotten about what he'd let himself be talked into, obviously. Yet throughout the greater part of the sordid ordeal he felt nothing more than an overwhelming urge to degrade Verity still further. Something about seeing her down on all fours, waiting for the impact of the wooden blade against her reared up buttocks, had awoken a previously repressed part of his psyche. As sick and as unthinkable as it seemed, he remembered later he'd felt a maddening impulse at the time to brutally force himself onto his flatmate's unofficial girlfriend still further. Having scourged her flesh, he needed (so he told himself) to debase her entirely and thereby erase the sanctity of her body's inherent purity from his mind.

Looking back, he pictured himself as having broken the seal on a vial of madness-inducing vapour, with that one ill-considered act. What was worse, the victim of his obscene lust had seen the crazed and bestial look in his eyes, when she had turned to steady his quivering hand. Rather than recoiling from his gaze she had next moaned ever-so softly. In a panic, he'd fled the scene with his head in his hands and Verity's cold laughter ringing in his ears, her leather g-string unbeknownst to him tangled around his left foot.

Far from being jealous, Mortimer's sole concern throughout consisted of his wanting the job to be done perfectly right. Too many yen hung in the balance for him to let mere sentiment cloud his judgement. Their bizarre love triangle only ever existed for him as a simple business arrangement. Effectively, when it came to Verity, he could take her or leave her — although there was usually much more take than give, and none of it done too gratefully either.

For his own part, Ipsum desperately wished he could erase the sight of Verity's swollen red backside from his mind, along with his memory of the despicable part he'd played in her shameful humiliation. Ultimately as far as he cared, the whole world of paid masochism and self-injury fan sites could all go to hell, as he'd known no rest or peace ever since. He suffered as though in the grip of a fever for which there existed no remedy or cure. Only over time did he come to accept a depleted lack of soul alone had led him down the path of misery he now trod.

Slowly returning from his guilt-laden reverie Ipsum sighed and got up before staggering towards his bedroom, hoping to steal a few moments sleep before the din of his arguing flatmates should turn once again into the sound of Mortimer sobbing. The shit-storm engulfing their household looked set to burst into full hurricane proportions at any moment. And Ipsum (for one) felt in no fit state to start singing once the chocolate-coloured rain started to pour. If he got lucky, maybe, just maybe, some myopic Valkyrie would mistake him for a fallen angel and spirit him away long before then. But frankly Ipsum just wasn't feeling all that lucky, punk!

The exact same moment after he finally fell dead asleep on his bed, Ipsum awoke to the sound of Verity pounding on his door — or so it seemed to him. She'd packed all he's things into neat piles out on the landing and had come to tell him so.

When he investigated, he found she wasn't bluffing. It made him uneasy to see how she'd shoved all his alphabetised CDs randomly together regardless of whether they actually belonged with soundtracks, solo artists or alternatively under bands/general. He believed such things should be protected against by a kind of Geneva Convention relating to warring housemates and share buddies and the like. But he chose to let it slide.

Under different circumstance, he would have also brought up the fact that the lease named him as the property's sole occupant. Although he chose to let that slide as well. The way he saw it, he didn't wish to be accused of outstaying his welcome in his own home. So silently and methodically, he began ferrying the dozen or so bundles of his belongings out to his car.

As he finished, Verity skulked past him into the kitchen.

"Have you got someplace in mind to go?" she asked, sidestepping her way past him towards the kettle.

"You mean, like a men's hostel or something?" he replied. "Well, I suppose, I've always wondered what it's like to sleep under a bridge, so I might give that a go for a while."

Her deadpan expression indicated she had no conscience to prick, on this of all mornings.

"O-kay. So how long before you can see yourself shifting out the rest of your stuff — I'm talking about your bed and the other larger pieces of furniture?" she yawned.

"You're talking about my plasma screen and the fridge and the dining table and my lounge room suite and my designer cook wear? Hell, why don't you two love-birds keep all of it? As for the mahogany dresser and bed head in my room, you can always chop those up for firewood when the weather turns a bit brisk."

"Don't be a dickhead. You know, I used to think you were solid."

"Solid?"

Verity poured her freshly made coffee down the sink.

"I remember us being able to talk," she said.

"Hey, we're talking."

"Mortie still believes you killed his dog. That really was a sicko thing to say to him."

"That was sick?" asked Ipsum. "So what the hell do you call that bloody creepy doll collection you keep stashed away in your bedroom closet? Healthy?"

The air in the room was suddenly violently sucked out, leaving Ipsum feeling as if the two of them were now standing in a perfect vacuum.

"My precious wee bairns are not ever to be made a topic of conversation in this house!" Verity hissed through clenched teeth.

Outside of bruise taxonomy, Verity's dolls constituted her only other real passion. And it was a standing rule of hers that all talk of creepy doll collections remained strictly forbidden. Forever scrounging and pinching together the necessary funds for her latest purchase, Verity had grown her family of faded Kewpie dolls and patina-flecked ceramic ragamuffins to ridiculous proportions. There were not enough "orphaned dollies" in existence to satisfy her impulses — not even now she'd totally prostituted both herself and her first love of bruise collecting. The sad truth was, for all the money Verity earned exposing her battered and abused body to all comers, she only ever got to see a tiny fraction of the actual funds. Being the total cyber-pimp he was, Mortimer worked it so the bulk of his unofficial girlfriend's earnings from her sweet little Internet peep show went straight into his pocket.

"I suppose, the only dolls you'd see any point to owning would be the blow up kind, anyway," Verity spat at him. "You pig!"

"Save your self-righteousness for the confessional, sister," he retaliated, pushing past her into the living room.

"You...you're just a...a...such an iconoclast!" she finally shouted.

She looked like she might cry, and Ipsum had to resist asking her whether she needed him to get her some tissues or (better yet) a dictionary.

"While you," he said instead, "will — quite clearly — do anything to pay the rent. Anything apart from actually paying it, that is! You know, it's your kind that gives self-abuse a bad name!"

In the middle of their scathing exchange, Mortimer entered the room, wearing nothing but his beer-stained underwear.

"Go on, hit me," goaded Ipsum, waving the bleary-eyed interloper towards him. "It would make quite a change for you to try and take a swing at a man for once."

Mortimer, surprisingly, it turned out still threw an incredibly feisty and accurate right hook for a blind man. And Ipsum judged himself fortunate to not have been foolish enough to make any stupid wisecracks about white canes or Braille blisters, lest he should have been given a real flogging.

"Stop it!" yelled Verity hysterically, trying to prise her boyfriend's arm from around Ipsum's neck a few seconds later.

Caving in on himself, Mortimer released Ipsum from the crushing headlock he held him in, before flopping back onto the couch and releasing a contemptuous snort of disgust.

"I might not be able to see you, but I can still smell you, matey," jeered his blind attacker. "What the fuck? It's like you think when you piss, it comes out rose water. Get the hell out of here."

Verity silently retreated back to the safety of her bedroom, leaving the final kill to Mortimer.

"No heartfelt farewell, then," Ipsum called out to her. "What's a schmuck to do, eh, but sign off with a quick 'sayonara, chaps!' and make like Houdini."

"Take that half-a-mongrel you've been hiding for her in your pocket and go and screw yourself," said Mortimer bleakly. "Go on, dog killer, get out of here!"

"No, no, really," joked Ipsum, leaning back in through the open front door, "there's no need for either of you to put yourselves out in anyway. I shan't be home for dinner, so don't wait up. I plan to take lodgings at my club tonight and will send for the remainder of my things through my manservant, Pasquin, in the morning."

On the drive into work, Ipsum mulled over how things were progressing. As he did so, he also acknowledged to himself he could just as well walk the two or three blocks he lived from the office (in most probably half the time). But the entire point of owning a prestige, luxury foreign car was to be seen driving it at every possible opportunity. And in Ipsum's case, the fifteen minutes he spent each morning trying to find a car park in the city was worth every second of infuriating tedium. Anyhow, he typically used such times to go over whatever was currently upmost in his mind. Which is exactly what he did now as his car idled at yet another set of traffic lights — the fifth set to turn red on him already that morning.

When it came to Mortimer, he decided, he needn't worry overly. No doubt the evil prick would continue to thrive gloriously without him. For a man practically blind, he continued to function at an extremely high level. He stood at the top of his field of expertise and simply refused to ever come out second best at anything. A case in point was the recent court ruling Mortimer saw successfully overturned as to who was the rightful owner of his legal name.

Incredibly, it turned out Ipsum hadn't even known his flatmate's true identity for much of the time they'd lived together — the name Mortimer was christened with being in actual fact Jeremy Throgmorton. By contrast, the real Mortimer Chambers was revealed to be the place of business of the esteemed legal firm Grimwade, Gainsford and Gurney. The story went that, a few years back, the usually staid legal stalwarts had been keen to try and raise their profile with the cashed-up twenty-somethings who ran the youth industries of music, de-tox/re-tox and fashion. To this end, they let themselves be talked into a publicity stunt whereby the man Ipsum knew to be Mortimer Chambers formally took on the name of the legal firm's premises as his own. In his capacity as a viral-marketing guru, "Mortimer" was contracted to then set about subtly influencing the leading figures of youth culture when it came to whom they chose for legal representation.

The whole crazy scheme came undone when a deluge of strange bills and tax invoices next flooded the legal offices of Mr Thomas Grimwade and Company. Allegedly, the most outlandish of which was for a refrigerated case of authentic panda-hand dumplings. As an act of contrition, Mortimer swore he would fix the confusion over billing addresses with a single phone call, but countless other scandals occurred in the coming years. Totally fed up with their association with Mortimer Chambers, the man, the lawyers sought to secure an injunction prohibiting him from using the said name.

Impossibly, not only did Mortimer represent himself in the case, but he was also eventually judged rectus in curia. Which was not to say he was ruled to be an incurable arsehole. But rather that he was found innocent of all charges and allegations brought against him. The magistrate presiding, the right honourable Mr Oswald "The Great Oz" Spengler, had been bought off, Mortimer later confided to Ipsum, with the promise of a very special "access all-areas" deal, whereby the judge was free to acquaint himself with Verity's very special gift, in the flesh, as it were, at a time and place of his own desiring.

Nothing ever stuck to Mortimer; he repelled all of life's worst shit. It was almost as if he was made of human Teflon. As for Verity, Ipsum couldn't be so sure. There wasn't any helping it, though. The experiment alone existed as his sole priority. Verity was simply a liability, another little girl lost, collateral damage. Who could really say what was best for her, anyway? If she wanted to leave, surely she could leave? Nobody held a gun to her favourite doll Georgie's head, for God's sake! Who knew, maybe she actually preferred a life of Internet bondage? He wondered if perhaps he should have told her about Mortimer's secret vasectomy when he'd had the chance.

Overall, it did raise an interesting set of moral questions, though, mused Ipsum, as he crawled away from the traffic lights. Obviously, complex ethical questions arose in any experiment that included live human subjects, so why not in his own? In all fairness, he figured each and every person on the planet was at some point going to wind up partaking in some sort of secret study or other, official and otherwise.

No-one objected to the practically universal agreement amongst the world's various governments to fluoridate the water supply. And who knew what horrendous inter-generational side effects that particular decision was likely to bring about in the coming decades? Not to mention how the nation's beef and poultry supply was being doped with all manner of artificial hormones and outlawed antibiotics. Really, to Ipsum's mind, the humble dinner plate of Mr and Mrs Joe Average looked set to become the new Petri dish for the twenty-first century. Still, such examples hardly presented as the worst of it.

When it came to wide-scale social negligence, Ipsum's personal experience of current mental-health reform frightened him the most. To his way of thinking, the ad hoc deregulation of both mental-health care practices and its associated community infrastructure represented nothing short of a national disaster. Incredibly, ever-increasing numbers of reality-challenged individuals now had the liberty to co-exist with the general public, without the support or counselling they so obviously needed. Again, the lasting impact on society of such a laissez faire approach to the treatment and care of the psychiatrically disabled was yet to be tabulated. Although Ipsum guessed later findings would show it to be as morally reprehensible as affording infants the right to drive nitrous-injected monster trucks to and from their respective crèches each day.

In fairness, he confessed to holding very real prejudices about the issue, owing primarily to his firsthand experience with a mentally unbalanced woman from within the apartment complex he lived in — not Verity, this time, but one of their neighbours. The woman in question, a Miss Julia Rebis, had moved in as their immediate neighbour across the way, at roughly the same time Verity had come to live with him and Mortimer.

Julia had brought with her a cat, a harlequin collection of long knitted scarfs and no obvious male, or female, significant other. And if, at first, she had intended to move in without creating any kind of stir, then she succeeded perfectly in doing just that. She kept herself indoors, mostly; and she didn't attempt to make her presence known around the place by any forced shows of neighbourly good intention. She gave the impression of being at peace with her own company, and could easily have passed for just one more slightly handsome spinster-in-the-making. Her nights, one could imagine, were shared equally between her faithful moggy and a pile of paperback novels about torridly misaligned love affairs set in Tuscan villas or Parisian courtyard cafes.

Only in time did the first cracks in Miss Julia's illusion of respectable domesticity begin to show. The body corporate first began hearing complaints about the incessant noise emanating from the young woman's flat at all hours of the day and night. Judging by the sounds they heard, her neighbours believed her to be constantly engaged in either pulping, juicing or shredding the contents of the huge shopping bags of fruit and vegetables she had delivered daily to her door. Those who lived in her immediate vicinity called for her immediate eviction. The more forgiving body corporate counselled forbearance, declaring it really didn't pass for that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.

"So what, she's a bit of a food nut? Who doesn't have their fair share of anti-social tendencies?" the acting-standing head of the representative body had asked rhetorically, before branding Julia with the comic moniker of "Jools the Juicer" and moving onto the next item on the agenda.

As the resident whistleblower in their midst, it was actually Verity who a few weeks later noticed a change in their notoriously health-conscious neighbour's general appearance. Passing Julia on the way home one day, she spied what she took to be the beginnings of a baby bump. A man, she boasted, would never even notice such a trivial physical anomaly; because barring cleavage and hair colour, most men exhibit very little interest in a woman's fully clothed body whatsoever, or so she claimed. Whereas women, she said, felt compelled, whenever they met up with one another, to appraise every single last detail about the outward form of others of their sex.

Whatever the case, after that, Verity became fixated about trying to confirm Julia's pregnancy status. Unable to bear the suspense, she finally asked Julia point blank who the father of her child was.

"Oh, sure enough, she ummed and ahhed a bit," Verity confided later, "till I made her fess up — no way could she deny that bulge in her underbelly forever! Hey, but you'll gonna love who she named as the baby's daddy... "

Up to, and including, Verity's last statement, Ipsum couldn't have cared less about the pointless scrap of gossip. "What the hell do I care?" he'd thought to himself self-pityingly. In all honesty, talking about other people's sex lives captivated his interest about as much as watching the television test pattern.

"Don't tell me, I know what happened," he sighed, "she told you she'd been impregnated by a rogue pomegranate seed. Am I right?"

"She said he lives here at the complex; though she wouldn't say who...at first."

Ipsum interpreted this as meaning Julia had implicated some two-timing husband or boyfriend from within their midst as being her secret beau.

"As for revealing his identity" said Verity, relishing every word she spoke. "I promised her I'd never tell another living soul, and that I was there for her and that all men were bastards, anyway. And finally, she relented..."

"Do tell?" asked Ipsum, hating himself for even remotely caring. "I can't breathe another breath without knowing."

"She said I was acquainted with the person in question intimately. That, in fact, I was living with him under the same roof. Which got me to thinking. And then, BANG!, it all made sense. Don't you see, I now know all about your dirty little sleepovers? You shameless slut!"

If he'd been quicker on the uptake, Ipsum might have corrected Verity there and then. Only a complete idiot like her would have taken what Julia said and drawn such a naïve conclusion. Mortimer stood to escape all blame, yet again. Ever the coward, Ipsum resisted pointing out the flawed assumption lying at the heart of Verity's tirelessly constructed line of deductive reasoning. He needn't have wrestled with his conscience quite so much, however; for Verity immediately proceeded to clear up any confusion he might have been labouring under.

"And I guessed right! Julia confirmed as much, when you passed us on your way back from the gym yesterday. She said the two of you'd already been at it that morning. You dirty dog."

In horror, Ipsum had realised Verity seriously believed he'd fathered Julia's child. He couldn't have been more gobsmacked. He wanted to laugh out loud, but the shock had rendered him strangely mute. Much later, he recalled he might have even weed his pants a little. He also definitely remembered trying to work out if he was being made the butt of some cruel practical joke. Because unless he'd taken the art of sleepwalking to a whole new level, he had absolutely no knowledge of ever even thinking of their patently crazy neighbour in a sexual way. She looked altogether too mannish, for a start. And as for his becoming a father, Ipsum couldn't have felt more ill-prepared.

"Well, the little bastard's not mine — I can certainly tell you that much!" he'd managed to insist at last, but not without a degree of shrillness.

Never one to let modesty get between her and a juicy scandal-in-the-making, Verity crowed delightedly. Common decency was never — nor would it prove ever to be — a term she felt applied to her personally. Which also partly went towards explaining why she continued to forge on with her sordid investigation, so unashamedly.

"You're not trying to deny having shagged her, then?" she interrogated him further.

"Hello?! Look, she's clearly a fucking nut job, if she thinks she can pin the bloody thing on me."

"There you go again, my darling, protesting your innocence a little too forcefully. Really, it's simple. Have you, or haven't you, been playing crotchscotch with our dear friend Julia?"

He remembered a numbness settling over his brain. The utter absurdity of what Verity asked should have incensed him. Julia was never their friend — she barely left her apartment, let alone spoke to anyone (except evidently Verity). He flinched even more, though, on hearing Verity refer to sexual intercourse as crotchscotch. In the interim, he'd since surmised the term was probably meant to serve, as it were, as a distasteful reference to his metaphorically jumping between a variety of "boxes" willy-nilly. She herself didn't elaborate on the meaning at the time, choosing to leave her question naggingly puerile. Rather than answering her, he decided it best if he went out for a curry, in the hope imminent fatherhood wouldn't appear half as bad after half-a-dozen beers and a case of gastro.

Unluckily, things hadn't improved by the time he crawled into bed later that night. During Ipsum's absence, Verity had let Mortimer in on the emerging paternity scandal she'd uncovered. On arriving home, Ipsum was horrified to find Julia ensconced on the couch with his flatmates, as they then next attempted to confront him in a kind of impromptu-style "You're My Baby's Daddy" intervention. The deranged mother-to-be had him completely spooked. And nothing he said could get his flatmates to believe she lied through her sharply-chiselled teeth. She was damn convincing, he had to admit afterwards. Collapsed in abject misery at his feet, she'd begged him to honour his love for her, while all the while he'd refused to so much as look her in the face.

"Jesus, you two," he exclaimed, as he'd stepped over the hysterical woman clutching at his pants leg. "We've gotta call someone who can help her; before she does either herself or someone else a real injury."

His plea for sanity had met with silent condemnation from both Mortimer and Verity. They stoically told him he needed to "man up" to his family responsibilities and that they weren't going to be party to his shirking his moral duty in any event. Mercifully, Julia, shrewdly intuiting her presence was no longer required, had finally begged her leave.

"Until tomorrow, my love, auf weidesen" she whispered into Ipsum's ear, before making a beeline for the door.

The great show of humble penitence she made upon returning for her forgotten sandals, moments later, only served to make him look like more of a cad in the eyes of his disapproving flatmates. He'd wronged Julia, as far as they were concerned; and he could just as well fry in hell before they would deign to speak to him again. Something that suited Ipsum perfectly well during what was to become an intensely dark night of his soul. He knew until he came up with a plausible reason for why their pregnant neighbour should want to ruin his life, any attempt to maintain his innocence would end in a probable lynching — his own. Ipsum's name was blacker than mud within their divided household. And thanks to Verity, everybody else in the apartment complex had soon heard of his cowardly lack of moral commitment, as well.

Ironically, Ipsum's eventual reprieve occurred the exact same day he decided to simply cave in and make an honest woman out of his demented accuser. Having spent three or four weeks as the target of every sort of putdown and slander imaginable, he'd been forced to realise the growing hostility towards him amongst his neighbours no longer constituted a mere inconvenience. Julia had damned him into an inescapable hell of moral, psychological and social quarantine. While falling short of actually marching around waving banners and chanting slogans, his fellow residents staunchly maintained their hate campaign against him with an unnerving fixidity of purpose.

Things got so nasty Ipsum stopped using the downstairs communal laundry altogether, resorting instead to hand-washing his socks and underwear in the bathroom sink. It was all so insane, even now looking back on it. "Why not just marry the fucked-up head case and be done with it?" he'd reasoned with himself despairingly. Because at the time it appeared the only two options left open to him were either unholy wedlock or enlisting in the French Foreign Legion. And he hated the French trés much. So marriage had presented itself as the sole option left available by which to redeem himself as the apartment block's most universally loathed resident. He felt like he'd sweated blood as he made up his mind thus, but it offered him hope of sorts. Prayer had failed him too many times before for him to find any further solace in it. He told Verity of his change of heart and grimly set off towards Julia's apartment.

But then, as unlikely as it later seemed, his eleventh hour reprieve emerged in the form of Mr Germs, "The Corinthian" apartment complex's live-in caretaker. Nobby Germane (aka Mr Germs) was a malmsey-faced man who drooled lazily when he spoke and whose fondness for boozing held practically legendary status amongst the residents. Rarely seen sober, the hopeless piss-about souse said he liked to think of his prodigious intake of amber fluid as representing a sort of gross blip in the national average consumption rate of alcoholic beverages. At best, he came across as a complete joke. Indeed, many of his more fervent detractors believed Nobby had only managed to hold down his job of nigh on seventeen years solely by virtue of never being in his office. Whereas other less generous souls went so far as actually accusing him of eating leftover food scraps from out of the garbage hoppers parked beside his ground floor flat. His clothes stank and his teeth were rotted. All in all, he lived the life of a man terrifyingly bereft of either commendable qualities or perceivable charm.

Consequently, when it was revealed Julia had bizarrely faltered and admitted she couldn't rule out Mr Germs as perhaps also possibly being the father of her unborn child, all belief in her story had quickly vanished in a collective exclamation of "Oh, really?". And thereafter, as a virtual watershed, Julia incredibly went on to name no less than twenty-three of her male neighbours as lovers. To his great relief, Ipsum was totally exonerated of his alleged guilt, if only because many of those who had previously denounced him were now themselves suddenly being brought to account for their actions by their own long-term "crotchscotch" partners.

His complete vindication still brought a smile to Ipsum's lips whenever he thought back on it. And the divine bliss he felt as he'd listened to Verity's full retraction of her sanctimonious railings against him had from that day forward filled him with a warm, smug feeling whenever he cared to recall it. If nothing else, he'd discovered sometimes being the lone voice of dissent was well worth the shame and humiliation in the long run.

But Julia's madness hadn't ended there. Because although most people were soon able to forgive her for what they wrote off as the crazy attention-seeking behaviour of a hormonally-deranged expectant mother, her subsequent antics baffled even her firmest advocates. In all honesty, no one quite knew what to make of it when, later on, the full extent of Julia's insane agenda became known to all.

As these things quite often seem to go, Julia's final turn for the worse coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the Christmas festive season. Her closest neighbours remembered being initially shocked by the constant stream of swearing, and foul language generally, they heard issuing from her apartment. Because she lived alone, they supposed she was speaking on the phone during such outbursts. Building on from this original assumption, they next assumed the person she abused so vilely must certainly be the missing father of her child. In fairness, it did appear the most plausible explanation.

As the frequency of her clearly audible ranting steadily increased so too did the sympathy with which she was widely regarded. Julia's sad predicament pulled at her fellow residents' heartstrings with an insistent urgency. There she was in their midst, a soon-to-be young mother (and on her own too), during a time of the year when everyone is out to spread as much good tidings and cheer as is liberally possible. Really, it was practically inevitable Julia should come to represent the archetypal "soul in need" she consequently did.

For those overflowing with the season's requisite quota of peace and goodwill to all, her plight grew irresistibly compelling. As a matter of fact, Julia even started becoming the focus of community spirit outside the precinct of the apartment complex itself. For on hearing of her sorry lot, a number of local shop owners had soon also rallied together and organised a fund-raising appeal to help out the woman whom fate had treated so cruelly.

In the balance, though, it was Julia's troubling withdrawal from all contact with the outside world that galvanised more immediate concern than any odd fits of her potty-mouthed swearing ever did. If her habits, previously, were best described as solitary, her new daily routine made the average life-renouncing shut-in seem like a carefree gad-about. No one could recall with any degree of certainty just exactly how long ago the expectant mother had last been seen.

A general feeling arose that something needed to be done, but nobody knew just what. And so, as the last two or three days before Christmas Eve came around, little care packages began appearing on Julia's front stoop. Having given up on trying to get her to answer her door, her concerned neighbours had sought alternative means by which to show their love and caring thoughts. Expensive hand-stuffed teddy bears and home-cooked shortbreads in wicker gift baskets, along with flowers and boutique bath salts, were left in just such a manner.

Meanwhile Julia continued to keep her blinds shut and her telephone off the hook, almost as if she wanted to hide from the very people who were most worried about her. Uneasiness and a growing sense of misgiving spread amongst those who lived closest to her. And as the days went by, this sense of misgiving turned into a shared mood of grim resignation. Similarly, there also grew a shared belief that no amount of charitable sentiment or genuine offers of practical help were ever going to draw Julia out of the darkened confines of her apartment. People shook their heads and muttered it was a bad business. The safety of both mother and unborn child were discussed in increasingly sombre tones. And many said the proper authorities ought to be alerted, if Julia still refused to reconnect with the world around her once the New Year had been rung in. Of course, this all took place before the real tragedy happened.

If Ipsum remembered correctly, that year Christmas Day — the day of the fatal occurrence — fell on a Thursday. And even now, he couldn't recall ever having seen so many police cars in one place, with all their flashing lights and blaring sirens. Yet the thing he felt most struck by at the time was the visible relief he could see in the faces of the other residents. At last, the oppressive air of foreboding that had been hanging over each and every one of them had lifted. They no longer had to imagine what the worst might be. Even though a man lay dead in the district morgue (and as callous as it might have seemed to any outside observers), the inhabitants of the apartment complex felt they could finally get on with their Christmas celebrations.

At the preliminary hearing leading up to the subsequent full coronial inquest, Julia later identified the deceased man as being her neighbour, Herman Ubis. To her knowledge, her neighbour had (up until the time of his death) worked as the nightshift duty manager at a nearby biscuit factory. The two of them, she reported, had met a dozen or so times during the three months since he'd moved in next-door with his wife and two children.

According to Julia, not only did she not known her neighbour had been laid off from his job in the week prior to his death, but she had also never had any occasion to suspect he might be capable of enacting bodily harm upon either himself or any other person for that matter. As for offering any kind of additional insight as to why the police might have chosen to shoot her neighbour multiple times in the head, chest and neck for answering his front door while holding a butter-knife, she could only suppose he must have been a desperately unlucky man.

Further testimonies from the dead man's family and friends spoke of Herman's unfaltering devotion to his wife, as well as his profound love for his children. They were the sorts of testimonies that only served to heighten the poignancy of the fact the deceased father of two had been caught in the process of preparing crumpets for his eight-year-old daughter when ordered by the police to answer his front door bell. Apparently, fellow co-workers had tipped-off management the recently sacked man had expressed suicidal/homicidal sentiments on learning of his retrenchment. Fearing their disgruntled former employee might seek reprisal against the company's plant, product or personnel, the board of directors had decided to inform the police of the man's menacing outburst.

By all accounts, the tragedy lay in the fact the deceased man hadn't shown the presence of mind to offload the knife he'd been buttering his daughter's breakfast with. When summing up her findings, the officiating delegate for the Coroner's Office had said that, based on the evidence presented before her, she could not attribute any degree of culpability to the attending police firearms squad. She did, however, recommend a thorough review of police training, in regard specifically to negotiation skills in crisis situations, such as the one currently being investigated, to be implemented in the near future.

"Poor old Herman Ubis," reflected Ipsum bleakly, turning his mind once again to the traffic piled up all around him "Shot full of more holes than are to be found in your average breakfast crumpet!"

In the ordinary course of events the whole matter of his unlucky neighbour's untimely death would have been signed off on there and then. Yet evidently there had still remained the issue of the disturbingly high level of faecal contamination found present in the dead man's abdomen during his autopsy to be dealt with. Alarmingly, the autopsy report indicated the one-time factory worker would have had to have ingested a regular diet consisting almost entirely of his co-workers' bodily waste in order to return the kind of contamination level measured in his duodenum alone.

As it happened, Ipsum's flatmate Verity had actually attended the same hearing as a secondary witness. And later that night, as she gave Ipsum a run-down of the day's proceedings, she'd declared herself physically sickened by what their neighbour Julia had gone on to confess about the part she'd played in Herman's faecal poisoning. But ultimately that proved to be only half the story.

To begin with, Julia claimed she'd been born a true hermaphrodite. Among other things, she further alleged she'd spent the first half of her life living as a man (under the name of Julius), during which time she'd suffered from crippling gender confusion and severely chronic depression. Moreover, if Julia's story were to be believed, it was while undergoing treatment for these serious psychological problems that she initially came into contact with a private foundation known as FROLIC. For the record, Julia stated she had no prior knowledge of either the foundation itself or its covertly subversive activities, before this time. She also added her general ignorance in this regard explained why the two women staff-officers initially sent to recruit her into the First Reichian Oddballs, Loonies and Insaniacs Corps (FROLIC) had failed to get her to enlist.

By her account, the sticking point for Julia centred on the Corps demand she commit to living as a woman full-time (in line with FROLIC's strictly ladies-only membership). At that period in her life, she'd only just begun coming to terms with her female destiny and therefore felt unable to even conceive of living as a woman solely. Which was not to say she totally rejected the virtue of the clandestine sorority's radical agenda of social re-engineering and psychiatric redress. Rather, simply put, it was more the case she had not yet been ready to cast off her manhood in toto as it were.

Nonetheless, in the ensuing months, following on from what constituted this her earliest contact with the Corps, Julia said she'd found it difficult to think of little else. The very idea an organisation like FROLIC should exist at all — an organisation that didn't view psychiatric disability as a kind of moral infirmity, that actively lauded mental diversity, and that also offered on-going financial, emotional and spiritual support, assistance and guidance — seemed to suggest to Julia here lay the kind of safety net she so desperately longed for. Although it had to be said some of the Corps more militant leanings left Julia feeling uncertain about what exactly she would be signing on for if she were to join at some later stage.

From what little she'd been told, FROLIC's founding mother was apparently an Austrian doctor called von Auerbach, who had earned some renown for her pioneering efforts within a later denounced field of experimental psychoanalytic study. Unconventionally, the brilliant but attention-shy Dr Marie-Louise von Auerbach maintained psychological labels were merely verbal shackles by which those who purported to be sane kept others less sure of their own mental stability down. And, essentially, it was in line with this radical proposition the good doctor had initially founded her organisation — the official motto of which being: Mental illness is more than just a state of mind, it is above all else an unjust state crime.

But as to why only representatives of the female sex were invited to carry out the Corps good work, there existed no simple explanation. Some speculated Dr Marie-Louise's own unhappy personal life might have accounted for her wish to institute a worldwide conspiracy of women. It was, after all, no secret her mentor — the man whose name she had somewhat ironically immortalised in the title of her organisation — had crossed her in matters of both love and ideology. Whatever the case, she proclaimed celibacy marched hand-in-hand with sanity in the fight for psychiatric solidarity.

In her own mind, Julia had felt herself to be caught in a classic dilemma. How could she justify wanting to become part of the radical sisterhood, when she felt still man enough to be besieged with irrepressible erotic fantasies about surreptitiously fucking — preferably doggie-style — as many of the trouser-less Insaniacs Corps as was decently possible?

Obviously, it was easy to understand why FROLIC themselves should have been so desperately keen to see Julia wear the mulberry-coloured uniform of their all-girl army. On hearing of her unique sexual physiology, those in charge of the Corps believed they had at last found the perfect poster child for their movement, especially when Julia's history of psychiatric mislabelling was brought to the table as well. To them, Julia represented a living embodiment of the individual as much at war with his/her own sexual identity as s/he was with a society that sought to force its inequitable constructs of mental ill health upon him/her. If they could only get Julia to actively renounce her inherent maleness, what better standard bearer could Dr von Auerbach's Oddball Army wish for?

Verity later reported that when Julia reached about this point in her baffling confession the officiating delegate for the Coroner had finally interrupted and called for an immediate fifteen minute recess. After which, now flanked by two burly custodial officers, the clearly outraged official had then addressed Julia in the sternest of terms, indicating unless Julia deigned to provide any further information about matters relating directly to the deceased man she was to remain silent.

"And if, Miss Rebis," the delegate had added tersely, "you do not refrain from wasting any more of my time, I will have no compunction whatsoever about ordering these two gentlemen here to escort you to the psychiatric admissions ward of our city's closest hospital, where you will be summarily committed upon my most sincere recommendation. Sisterhood or no sisterhood!"

With her feelings of guilt evidently still yet hanging heavily upon her, Julia had next begged she be indulged just so long as was needed for her to prove she alone knew the source of her dead neighbour's dangerously unsanitary stomach contents.

The officiating delegate had next fixed Julia with a fiercely piercing stare, before granting the penitent woman her plea to speak further.

"But I must say it goes against my better judgement," the delegate had declared impatiently. "And be warned: I will not listen to another word of patently absurd claptrap about you and your alleged involvement with a pseudo-conspiratorial underground army of gestalt female freedom fighters. Am I making myself perfectly clear?"

Reputedly, Julia graciously accepted the delegate's firmly emphasised words of caution. However, she couldn't help going on to stress if she were simply granted permission to continue her statement from the viewpoint of her male alter-ego, Julius, while also assuming the "third voice" of a fully-matured natural-born Hermaphrodite, then much of the confusion relating to her time spent with Dr von Auerbach's Oddball Army would soon be dispelled.

"You see," she began, assuming a voice more closely pitched in the range of a full-bodied baritone, "rather than thinking of myself as just any other recruit, I preferred to think of myself as an enemy agent cleverly infiltrating his way into the innermost secret party rooms of FROLIC's guerrilla network."

Verity later reported that a disquieting silence had fallen over the room at this very moment. The way she explained it, everyone next looked anxiously towards the delegate, expecting her to explode into a fresh fit of wrathful indignation. Yet, in a surprise twist, a complete change instead came over the hitherto humourless official. Where before she had been prim and school-marmish, the delegate had now become almost coy and girlish.

"No, no, please continue, Mr Rebis. Believe me, I am truly fascinated to hear what you have to say in this regard. Go on, do. Please!"

It was the strangest thing. But Verity confessed afterwards she too had found the silkily seductive tones of Julia/Julius's "third voice" incredibly irresistible. She described hearing Julius speak as it being the closest she had ever come to experiencing true aural sex. What's more, she remained convinced every other woman in the room that day felt just as enthralled as she did. It was almost as if Julius were French-kissing each women present with every word that left his lips. His speech sounded at once both mellifluous and devastatingly masculine. Although there was still more to it somehow, allegedly. Sure, he spoke with charisma and charm and authority, but he somehow also spoke with a woman's delicate inflection and subtlety and sensual earthiness — for this evidently was the special boon of the adult hermaphrodite. Verity went so far as stating that she believed Julius could have talked not only her but every other woman present to the point of orgasm, if he'd so desired.

"For men, it's all about the jiggle of random tits and the stolen glimpse of a woman's white panties when she has stopped to bend over and pick up a pen she's dropped on the floor, isn't it?" Verity had observed the following day. "It's all about the visual. A man always wants to see what a woman's got to offer him sexually. Whereas as a woman, I want to hear what a man is going to do for me in the bedroom department — long, long, long before I even begin to size up his capacity to make good on his claims of god-like virility. The right turn of phrase (or verbal wink, if you like) gets me going every time. And so, I'm telling you, when Julia started speaking as Julius, s/he could have talked me into a three-way with a painted garden gnome I was so desperately feral for it!"

Whatever the case, Verity said Julius next set about finishing his confession on his own terms. And in fact no matter how far-fetched his allegations became, he never once lost the complete attention of every single woman within earshot. They yearned after every word he spoke, perching on the edge of their seats, their lips parched and their mouths dry with passion. Just how much he actively manipulated the effect he wrought on each woman there remained debatable. But whatever the case, he most definitely chose to take advantage of the chance it offered him to get a whole shitload off his conscience.

He began with a brief account of his subsequent enlistment into Dr von Auerbach's Oddball Army. Apparently, Marie-Louise, the aging Grand Heresiarch herself, had expressed her wish to oversee his induction into the Corps personally, and to that end she had invited Julius to join her at Waldsterben, her solitary fortress retreat in the mountainous Tyrol region of the Austrian Alps.

This, of course, signified a great honour in itself, as only a select few had ever seen the famed medieval FROLIC stronghold for themselves. And, if the reports were true, even fewer could claim to have ever been granted an audience with the elderly matriarch of the self-outlawed sisterhood. That Julius had achieved both while still living ostensibly as a man defied even the longest odds. Yet he'd only been able to do so because Marie-Louise had arranged for it to happen just so.

"Once there, I studied directly under Dr von Auerbach (aka 'Die Lehrerin' — 'The Mistress')," Julius had allegedly elaborated, much to the delegate's delight. "The Mistress spent hours on end brushing and plaiting my hair — which I habitually wore unusually long for a man — while drilling into me such things as the type of protocol to be observed when meeting a higher-ranking official of the Corps or, for instance, the Four Golden Laws of Living a FROLICSOME Life. FYI, the Four Laws governing all conduct at Waldsterben were taught to me in full as follows:

1st Law — Wear What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the First Law.

Explanation: If it is true clothes maketh the man, it is also equally true men maketh the clothes. Thus, women's fashion, in all of its many seductive guises, must rightly be viewed as an instrument of male corporate oppression. Dress not to impress, therefore, but rather to "redress" the imbalance in power between the sexes. The choice of appropriate underwear is similarly discretionary in the greater variety of cases, sinfully-expensive French lingerie notwithstanding.

2nd Law (or Sugar Daddy Clause) — Profit Not Solely From Thy Pretty Good Looks Alone.

Explanation: Providence provides for those who provide most perfectly for themselves. Be prudent about what one expects from others, lest they expect the same (plus compound interest) in return. Apply a Do-It-Yourself ethic to your daily dealings with others and reappropriate this useful term from the domain of male-dominated tool-shop culture. Remember always, a kept woman is a caged woman; and therefore provide for yourself after the manner in which you would most dearly wish to be provided for. In the end, beauty, like any other commodity, has a limited shelf life upon which one can expect to see a return.

3rd Law — Make Not of Food Thine Enemy.

Explanation: An arrogant French general once said an army marches on its stomach. Put more simply, it is true to say hearty rations make for a happy soldier. Chocolate was not put on this Earth so as to be ignored. Likewise for ice cream, cheesecake and choux pastry. Although it should be noted midnight raids on the contents of the fridges in the communal kitchen remains strictly verboten!

4th Law — Thou Shalt Not Quilt!

Explanation: It has long been an established fact sewing circles, knitting groups, crotchet clubs, embroidery guilds and cross-stitching collectives etc by their very nature serve to reinforce and perpetuate models of womanhood unsuited to a life of political agitation and social subversion. For this reason, it is the way of the Warrior Women of Waldsterben (WWW) to shun needlepoint and all other related domestic arts as being anathema to their struggle for global supremacy. In short, quilting leads to quietism. However, darning for practical purposes can be viewed as a necessary evil, should for instance one's bed sock come apart at the heel or one's favourite cardigan lose a button or two."

Pausing for dramatic effect, Julius had apparently thereupon stopped and looked warily around the makeshift courtroom. He no doubt knew much of what he said sounded totally outlandish. Yet rather than being greeted with general outrage and mass condemnation, as he understandably might have anticipated, he instead saw a great many at the hearing simply nodding their heads appreciatively.

"Oh, don't stop!" the dry-mouthed delegate had insisted abruptly, Verity laughingly recalled later. "Oh, God, don't stop now. Please, tell us about your...your mission. What was your mission? Hmmm, yes, we'd all like to know about it. Uh-huh. Please, don't stop. Tell us in detail. Minute detail, if you would be so kind? Pretty please? Use the voice. Oh, use the Voice. Promise?"

Indeed, her three pleases and a promise suggested the delegate herself must have been very close to savouring one of those sorts of truths seldom experienced outside of tantric practice. Her request had bordered on almost abject beggary. Verity had gone so far to describe it as the most pitiful display of sexual impoverishment she'd ever witnessed — this from a shameless bruise-whore, no less. To be fair, she did further acknowledge the delegate hardly stood out by herself in this respect, though. Every woman there who was alive from the waist down fidgeted and squirmed in her seat waiting for Julius to resume speaking.

Not surprisingly, the effect this sight had on the men present apparently also stirred up their own feelings of intense agitation. Every single man jack of them watched gob-smacked, filled with a combination of equal parts wonderment and supreme admiration, as Julius weaved his peculiar magic.

To his credit, though, rather than cynically taking advantage of the diminished thought processes of those around him, Julius stuck resolutely to establishing his guilt in the matter at hand. So even when Julius resumed speaking in the "third voice" nothing indicated he purposefully meant to titillate, tease or excite. Moreover, if his confession stimulated any such pernicious reactions in his listeners, he himself deserved little or no blame. For it had far more to do with how a woman's brain is hardwired than it did with anything particularly calculating or devious about his method of delivery.

And so, innocently enough Julius had reputedly continued thus:

"Throughout this time, I knew the Mistress saw the days we spent together as her grooming me for something really special. She told me as much, whenever we were alone. She said, however, there existed no hurry as far as my permanently switching sex was concerned. But I knew I would soon be forced to honour the pledge I'd made to live as a woman amongst women and become Julius no more. At the end of my first month in her tutelage, therefore, I took on the name of Julia and transformed my appearance to be far more in keeping with how you see it before you today. And although at that stage my sex change remained still only skin deep, Marie-Louise couldn't have been more pleased with how well my training progressed overall. Then, finally, following many more months of Marie-Louise's personal instruction — including small-arms training and basic deportment classes — I at last learnt what my mission was to be..."

Whereupon the delegate had suddenly hissed at those in attendance to be quiet: "I will have absolute silence in my courtroom while Mr Rebis gives his testimony!"

Verity explained the delegate's outburst occurred in response to the sound of a sweetie wrapper being opened by an immediately apologetic member of the transfixed throng. But ultimately the delegate's need for aural fulfilment merely sang out in chorus with that of every other woman there — if only Julius should deign to speak again would the physical release of their transcendence come.

"You see, the hermaphroditic 'third voice' marked its bearer as being a person in possession of a secret carnal knowledge," Verity had stressed next. "And as such — in this particular case — the secret knowledge Julius seemingly possessed when he spoke elevated him to the status of High Priest over his very own desperate-till-doomsday cult of ecstatic revelation. As the very sound of each and every syllable he mouthed sent fresh, euphoric thrills down each and every one of the spines of his captivated female devotees. Meaning that, even if s/he had wanted to, Julia/Julius couldn't have left the room without bringing her/his bizarre story to a close. A climax was demanded."

Composing her thoughts by pouring herself a fresh glass of green ginger wine, Verity had gone on to detail what immediately followed. For a start, she told Ipsum how the specific details of Julia's mission were apparently altered many times before a final plan became firmly settled on.

One initial proposal, for instance, saw the new recruit taking a position as a live-in nanny with the family of the Finnish Ambassador posted to Vienna. Although die Lehrerin had quickly over-ruled this somewhat prosaic scenario, arguing she couldn't see any likelihood for maximum social or political impact being achieved after this fashion. In her mind, FROLIC now had their very own "dirty little sex-bomb". And thus she believed the precise time and location (or Ground Zero, if you will) of Julia's deployment called for absolutely precise planning. There would be no second chances, should their plan to bring the governments of the world to the brink of collapse fail.

Rightly or wrongly, Dr Marie-Louise von Auerbach sought to end the existing world order so as to replace it with her own implacable regime of feminist separatism and psychiatric equality for all. For only then could FROLIC's blueprint for global re-education usher in the age of an entirely brand new species of human — The Golden Age of Homo Sanity.

"And so ultimately this was to be my mission," Julius had allegedly cried thereafter, waving his arms expansively around the court room, thereby indicating the sway he held over the enraptured mass of people gathered before him. "Although, granted, envisaged on a much grander scale. For, sadly, fate teaches even the proudest of souls we alone are not the authors of our own destiny. And so, if I have ultimately failed in my mission, there are many others than just myself who must share in the blame for my lack of success.

"Still, I alone am the only one who knows the full reason for why things were to go so horribly wrong. That is my particular fate — no matter how hard I might wish it were otherwise. And as such, I will now try to give an accurate description of the part I was ordained to play in Dr Marie-Louise's plot to eradicate worldwide belief in the myth of insanity. However, trust me, I swear by die Lehrerin's diamond-studded eye patch to try and keep my account as brief as possible."

Ipsum recalled requesting a toilet break at roughly this point, fearing Verity would continue with her account of their deranged neighbour's confession long after his bladder should have burst. Unperturbed, Verity had brazenly then followed him down the hallway of their flat, all the while keeping up her exhaustive verbal reportage of the day's outlandish events.

Standing outside the toilet door, she had cornered him for a good half-an-hour more, telling him about Julia and her irresistibly-sexy "third voice". It made him feel dirty all over somehow, listening to her from within the black-and-white-marble tiled lavatory. He felt as if he had been trapped in some diseased confession booth, forced to hear the sins of an unhinged Dali-esque fantasist high on psilocybin.

"And so," Julius had gone on to inform all those present in the court room that day, including, of course, Verity herself, "like I have already mentioned, this overwhelming sense of crucial importance as to when, where and how I was to best be deployed made for highly contentious debate within the upper echelons of the Corps.

"Reputedly, Marie-Louise dismissed many of the proposals put before her simply on the basis they lacked the necessary level of extremism she had in mind. Evidently, just how extreme the lengths to which Marie-Louise declared herself prepared to go surprised even some of her staunchest and closest associates. Meaning for the first time ever, strongly opposed factions began to develop within the secret sisterhood. The Mistress, in fact, soon found herself accused of being everything from a Stalin-in-stilettos right through to being an androgyne-loving autocrat. After which, perhaps unwisely, Marie-Louise sought to increase the overall numbers of her party faithfuls by restructuring the charter of her much beloved Corps to include a formerly ignored subgroup of the world's most disenfranchised...librarians."

"Oh, yeah," Verity had enthused, as she delivered this fresh piece of information. "You see, in a drastic move, Dr von Auerbach thereafter gathered together the warring splinter groups within her organisation and decreed before them that FROLIC was to henceforth continue its operations under the name of FOLLICLE (or, The Free-thinking Oddballs, Loonies, Librarians and Insaniacs Certified League of Extremists). Clearly, in hindsight, it would seem patently obvious this desperate bid for renewed stability was doomed from the outset. Because, as Julius rightly pointed out, surely there exits nothing so mutually exclusive in the English language as the terms free-thinking and librarian."

"Do you recall anyone seeming to be offended by any of the absolute bollocks Julius was saying at this point?" Ipsum remembered next asking somewhat incredulously, as he sized up the toilet window as a possible route for escape.

Nevertheless, according to Verity, the complete absence of cloying book-hugging sentiment amongst those assembled seemed to preclude the possibility entirely, as to whether there was any sort of contingent of offended library-going types in attendance.

"An uneasy peace ensued," Verity added thereafter, "as allegiances continued to be forged and broken in the most fickle of manners within Dr von Auerbach's Oddball Army. Rumours abounded, for instance, that Marie-Louise herself was set to be deposed from within the organisation by a reactionary cadre of microfiche workers. Apparently, the breakaway band of library technicians felt that, as a special-needs group, their disproportionate level of representation in the higher ranks reeked of tokenism. In reality, though, much of the bad blood between Marie-Louise's followers simply arose out of petty jealousies. They saw the inordinate amount of time the Mistress had spent preparing Julia for her mission as a sign she'd lost all interest in the League's rank and file members. Bitchy comments like ones about Marie-Louise preferring the company of filthy circus freaks (or, more crudely, how she obviously preferred her sexual partners fully-optioned) were ever on the increase. Schisms within schisms threatened to destroy FOLLICLE, and this before the design for the new letterhead had so much as been settled on."

But there was still yet more to come. For apparently Julia/Julius had next explained how it passed for a minor miracle when FOLLICLE's besieged executive council suddenly announced, seemingly out of the blue, they'd at last reached a decision as to how s/he could be best made use of.

Without wanting to overly labour the point, Julius had told the packed court room how he never really understood what the entire ruckus had been about to begin with. Certainly, he knew Marie-Louise prized him (or, more rightly, his hermaphroditism) so very highly, because she saw in him living proof of the correctness of her philosophy.

For if, as she contended, men and women were in fact natural-born enemies, then Julius himself embodied their enmity in his very flesh and bones. He personified that violently contested middle ground that stands as a hellish no-man's land in the battle between the sexes. For, in Dr von Auerbach's eyes, the tortured nature of his hermaphroditic soul confirmed, once and for all, that men and women were never meant to live in harmony as one. They were instead enemy combatants in a primal war that would find final resolution in the total genocide of one of their kinds.

"Although, as to understanding FOLLICLE's psycho-anarchic agenda for mental health reform," Julius had allegedly added, parenthetically, "well, I admit to being a bit hazy in that regard. Really, half the problem with the beleaguered organisation directly stemmed from the ridiculous number of crackpots and crazies it counted amongst its card-carrying members. While I admit my own mental health is far from being above scrutiny, even I felt taken aback by just how many loose screws there existed within the minds of so many within the sisterhood. Sure, I agreed in principle that de-humanising labels, misdiagnosis and drug therapy were the three great moral sins of modern psychiatry. Even so, I didn't for a minute believe psychological illness could therefore be dispelled as merely a sort of modern-day hex placed on the individual by society. It wasn't as if, at that stage, I'd lost complete touch with reality."

"He elaborated by saying he wasn't any kind of Joan of Arc or Boadicea either," clarified Verity, now slurring her words through the crack in the toilet door. "'Nor am I an El Cid or Henry V type of character, for that matter,' he had continued. He didn't see himself as one for rallying the troops with a rousing hurrah for freedom, justice and liberty. By disposition, he was a quitter. And he failed to grasp how his always-say-die attitude should have escaped the notice of the normally hyper-astute Dr Marie-Louise von Auerbach so entirely."

Ipsum had since grown convinced he would ultimately die alone in the ill-lit cubicle he languished in. But Verity showed no signs of letting him off quite so easily, as she somehow managed to force her head around the door while maintaining her unrelenting monologue. She said, Julius purportedly next addressed the delegate directly thus:

"Anyhow, if nothing else, I had hoped learning the long-awaited details of my mission might clear up any confusion I felt about where my final allegiances lay. Sadly, though, I confess it seemed all too pedestrian, when I at long last heard the final plan. Almost anticlimactically, it was explained to me that the much-weakened executive body had at last reached the less-than-thrilling conclusion my particular gift for exciting social unrest would find its fullest expression (wait for it) "somewhere in the broadcast media". Some where in the broadcast media...Don't get me wrong. As far as selflessly furthering the aims and objectives of the League went, I threw my full support behind the proposed undertaking. It was just that, short of being sent hurtling back through time to Stonehenge during in its heyday, anything would have felt like a bit of a let down. I'd spent months imagining the kind of momentous undertaking I might be called on to perform in the line of duty to the sisterhood. But joining the plethora of shock-jocks and talking heads already polluting the airwaves with their inane chatter, well, that had never really presented itself to me as one of the many prospective options. I hoped my disappointment was not too clearly evident to Marie-Louise and her inner circle of advisors."

"Just humour me here, you're still going on about this 'third voice' bunkum, yeah?" Ipsum had enquired, deflatedly, right about now, sitting slumped on the closed toilet seat, while meanwhile wishing Verity to be struck dumb for her ability to circular breath while talking.

"Hmm...well, sure," she had agreed, before swigging directly from the open bottle of wine she held to her lips. "Either way, I ought to explain at this stage of her/his journey into fully-fledged hermaphro...hermafroditism, Julia/Julius didn't have the faintest clue about the full power her/his "third voice" was beginning to exert over the opposite sex. For starters, bear in mind, s/he remained uncertain as to just which one of the sexes could truly be called opposite to her/his own. Essentially, when it came to her/his steadily growing powers of aural fulfilment, s/he was probably the last to know s/he even possessed them."

"Although let's be clear, Marie-Louise herself," Ipsum had offered more patiently than he felt, "didn't, for a second, miss the significance of Julia's special endowment. In fact, I'm guessing she saw in Julia the culmination of her life's work. For as an instrument for bringing about a complete paradigm shift in global consciousness, Julia couldn't have seemed more perfect. Once on the airwaves, she would be in a position to irresistibly give voice to every single belief, principle and tenet of die Lehrerin's counter-cultural teachings. The XX chromosome carriers of the world would be won over en masse and forced to accept the supreme sanity of her apolitically-correct No Mind for the Future (Wo)manifesto."

"And if things hadn't gone awry the way they did, I hazard to guess her plot might just have succeeded. But it wasn't to be, alas..." lamented Verity, by then leaning her head heavily against Ipsum's knees.

Sensing a rare note of hesitation in his flatmate's voice, Ipsum had seized his chance and pushed frantically past her. Making a beeline to his bedroom, he remembered muttering something about having to get up extra early in the morning for a dermatological appointment.

"Let me finish," Verity had said, struggling to her feet and tottering after him.

"Well, hurry up. Because I think I'm having a brain embolism," Ipsum had lied.

"Alright, alright. Look, despite Marie-Louise's repeated efforts to establish unity within her unhappy sisterhood, FOLLICLE inevitably collapsed in on itself. Julius said out of the slew of rival outfits fighting for dominance, in the wake of its collapse, it proved to be the Freedom from Egos and Menfolk Militia (FEMMe) alone who emerged as victorious, ousting Marie-Louise as supreme leader, while crying their rallying catchphrase — The Elegant Solution — in raucous unison, jubilantly waving their banners emblazoned with insignias depicting a mailed fist holding a trident encircled by a mirror of Venus logo."

"I can see it now," Ipsum had groaned. "A crushed Marie-Louise turning to her closest of supporters and saying, 'FEMMe: The Elegant Solution, it sounds like a feminine hygiene product, for Christ sake!'"

Mercifully, from what Verity went on to detail exhaustively, the actual coup took place fairly bloodlessly. As a sign of respect, the FEMMe insurgents even graciously allowed Dr von Auerbach a day or two to pack up her belongings before expelling her from the compound she'd once imperiously ruled over. Understandably, she was devastated. Julius had described her as crushed even. In attitude, he'd likened her most closely to a woman who's been crossed in love for the very last time. For by all accounts she would never again be able to muster the courage necessary to commit her heart to another party beyond herself. Her dream of an all-conquering female mental liberation army had been the defining principle in her life. And suddenly it had turned savagely against her.

"The very moment Marie-Louise's taxi disappeared off down towards the village lying below Waldsterben's precipitous mountain peak, Julius felt an icy change come over his fellow sisters," confided Verity next, sinking to the floor of Ipsum's cramped bedroom. "And by his own admission, as the Mistress-in-exile's acknowledged favourite, Julius might have faired better if he'd simply painted a bullseye in the middle of his forehead and offered himself up for target practice. He even went on to say he counted those days immediately following the coup as amongst the most harrowing of his life."

From what Ipsum understood, all talk of Julius's mission was thereafter set aside indefinitely, as FEMMe's ruling body soon found themselves occupied with quashing ever-increasing counter insurgencies from those still loyal to die Lehrerin. Left to survive the daily taunts and insults hurled at him by FEMMe's foot soldiers as best as he could, Julius correctly feared for his life. For not long after the events described, a life-sized effigy was left hanging by a noose from the door to his sleeping quarters. The words "Do what you know to be right" had been written in cherry-red lipstick underneath. In bed that night he said he hadn't dared close his eyes for longer than a split second, out of fear some fishnet-stockinged lynch mob should burst in so as to string him up in his nightgown. Luckily, though, for him, salvation had presented itself in the form of Marie-Louise's former aide-de-camp.

"Ultimately, Henrietta 'Etta' Perdu found herself in as equally a tenuous position as Julius did, you see," explained Verity knowingly. "As the longest serving member of Marie-Louise's private staff, Miss Etta's future within the FEMMe organisation hinged on her willingness to be of use to her new superiors. In the past, she'd acted as a kind of central repository of information about the various ins-and-outs of the sisterhood's international monetary interests. This meant any chance she had of continuing to live on peacefully at Waldsterben rested solely in her willingness to divulge where the "family silver" lay hidden — something she declared herself totally unprepared to do. Therefore she needed to escape as desperately as Julius did."

Verity continued her exhaustive account now in fits and starts, before claiming it was on the week anniversary of Marie-Louise's departure that Miss Etta had approached Julia/Julius, saying talk abounded that s/he was to be sold off to a foreign research concern in the next day or two. Miss Etta said she didn't know the precise details of what FEMMe had planned but Julia could be damn sure her ultimate wellbeing failed to rate as something they were at all interested in. If Julia should earn a few dollars for them on the black market, then they weren't about to stand between her and a team of South African vivisectionists flush with Krugerrand. Fortunately, though, Miss Etta had said there were still many within the sisterhood who were best described as FROLIC diehards. She then added this same loyalist underground had offered to help the two of them obtain their freedom by way of a daring plan.

In fact, if all went smoothly, Miss Etta explained that she and Julia would (God-willing) soon start living lives safely beyond the reach of the evil reigning militia. For that very afternoon, Miss Etta herself was to be smuggled out of Waldsterben in a grocery van, while Julia would later be carried down the precipitous mountain pass inside a coffin. The dead sister (whose casket Julia was to commandeer) had worked in the laundry as a general drudge. No-one outside the house cleaning staff had ever sighted her. Even amongst her fellow subordinates she was only known by name to one or two others. Thus, no one had cause to mourn her passing; and as such there existed no likelihood of any request for a final viewing of her corpse arising.

In secret, her body would be removed from its pinewood box and stashed inside one of the gas-fired industrial dryers. This done, Julia would then be able switch places with the — in all honesty — unmissed washerwoman and thereby leave the compound without detection.

"A perfectly foolproof escape plan," beamed Verity, dragging Ipsum's bedding up over his chest and arms, in response to his feigned attack of acute narcolepsy.

"And all would have been fine," Julius had reputedly cried, on reaching this particular point in his singularly peculiar testimony, "but for the putrid stench left behind inside the coffin by the dead washer-woman's corpse. Excruciatingly, I discovered too late that I wouldn't be able to breathe without retching for the entire trip down to the local village cemetery due to the evil stench filling my nostrils. For the life of me, I couldn't discern whether it was the lingering smell of actual decomposition or the woman's habitually offensive body odour causing my acute distress. If it were the latter, though, I decided it went a long way to explaining why the departed laundress had made so few friends during her daily work tasks...So, trying my best to stifle the gagging sound I involuntarily made, I lay in the coffin as though dead myself. And like this, I was shouldered by a detail of overly-chatty pallbearers..."

"O, Mother Mary — Mother of God! Enough already!"

This coming from the exasperated court stenographer who, Verity said, had meanwhile been dutifully transcribing every word uttered thus far.

"I flatly refuse to record a single sentence more of this insane gibberish," the poor woman had cried. "Seriously, what the Hell is wrong with you people? Why are you just sitting there like total zombies, hanging on every word of what is clearly a complete pile of demented tripe? Wake up, for heaven's sake, and grow a single brain cell between youse all!"

By all accounts, the hearing-impaired typist felt greatly aggrieved by the deeply disturbing testimony she'd been forced to take down. Or so Verity claimed. For the incensed stenographer alone, it seemed, had remained immune to Julia's beguiling vocal gift, relying as she did on her proficiency at lip reading in order to perform her court-appointed duties.

Whatever the case, her irate outburst produced the desired effect and within minutes groups of dazed people, sitting slumped in their chairs and struggling to find their bearings, straightened up; many of them rubbed their eyes dreamily, as if coming out of a deep trance-like sleep, and still others stretched and checked their watches, as if coming to the end of a long train journey; together, they shared a sense of lost time, like a shared amnesia; quite a few of the women busied themselves with fastening the top buttons of their blouses and smoothing out their skirts; still others raked stray locks of hair back into place; while the men, for their part, shuffled their feet and cleared their throats nervously, the greater majority of them guilty-faced, like they'd been caught secretly enjoying the sight of a shopgirl's cleavage. Searching for answers, their eyes all soon fell back onto Julia.

The delegate reputedly expressed the full ire of the dishevelled congregation when she said, "Miss, Mrs, Mr — or whomever the hell you are — Rebis! I find you to be not only in contempt of this hearing, but also to be the most contemptible individual I have ever had the misfortune to meet in either my professional or personal life. I want you to vacate this building immediately and never return. I will henceforth tolerate neither the sight nor even the slightest mention of your name, so help me God! You are an abomination and a hindrance to the workings of this court. I wish you good day, and command you to be gone from my sight."

Sighing, Julia had picked up her pink angora cardigan and left the hearing with her head hung low. Meanwhile, Verity hurried to slink out after her. Once outside, Julia confided to Verity she often elicited such adverse reactions, after assuming her "third voice".

"People always feel used, or dirty even. It's only aural sex. I don't know what the big deal is. It's not like any bodily fluids are ever exchanged or anything. It's just a simple zipless mind-fuck; I mean, get over it," she'd complained woundedly.

"Ha, ha, ha! And you were the very one who wanted me to marry the seriously-deranged nut job," Ipsum had laughed to himself, as Verity lay dreamily curled up on the floor beside his bed, having finished both her bottle of green ginger wine and her rambling tale of the Warrior Women of Waldsterben concomitantly.

And only after he felt sure she'd fallen into a deep slumber did he get up and lift her carefully onto his bed, before going out to spend the night on the couch.

Ipsum wondered what it was other people thought about while driving into work each day. Who knew what wild and crazy ideas went whizzing about inside each and every one of the heads of the people around him, as they rushed about their business each morning? Probably nothing. Or, if anything, their family affairs, most likely. He decided he didn't care to know. Luckily, he had his experiment to occupy his thoughts with now. And beyond that he didn't give a damn. Bring on the Apocalypse is what he said — if no more than to kill the boredom.

During his casual reverie he'd since travelled to within less than a city block of his alleged place of employment. And his attention now turned to the giant inflatable nose moored above the roof of the office building he was ultimately destined for. The part-nose/part-zeppelin floated on high as a promotional gimmick for a new hay-fever preparation. Somewhat whimsically, Ipsum began to imagine the incredible sense of smell such an extraordinary olfactory organ might give a person. Pollen allergies aside, the harsh stench of airborne pollutants and rotting refuse that automatically goes along with heavy urbanisation would be enough to sicken even the healthiest bearer of a nose one-tenth the size, he reasoned. And only an advertising executive with a similarly giant, inflatable ego could therefore have dreamt up the grotesque blimp to begin with.

Whatever would they think of next? he groaned to himself. Helium-filled haemorrhoids hanging in the heat haze of the horizon? Where were the wrathful sky gods bent on punishing humanity for usurping the heavens in their greedy pursuit of one more lousy dollar? he asked himself despondently. Here was mankind thumbing its collective nose, as it were, at the supreme creators of the world along with everything in it, and yet still nothing evil befell the irreverent race of upstart hominids to which he reluctantly belonged. There were no great plagues of toads or locusts. The stormwater drains didn't run red with blood.

As always, things were big business as usual. And just as usual was the sense of futility Ipsum felt, running late as he did, in his desperate bid to make it to his desk before morning tea time arrived. Although there existed no real need for urgency, he chided himself for his lateness anyway, walking into the entry foyer of his building with a furrowed brow.

As just another anonymous minion in the misinformation branch of a lesser government department, Ipsum's comings and goings went largely unnoticed. In effect, he typically saw his role as being that of a sort of bureaucratic grease monkey. Toiling away in virtual obscurity, he spent the majority of his days dutifully oiling the smoking wheels of a monstrous draft-paper juggernaut he alone could see was out of control and hell-bent on driving everything in its path, including he himself, down into the abyss.

If anything, his sole contribution to the common weal came from the vast amount of income tax he paid for earning such an obscenely high salary while doing practically nothing to earn it. His superiors would have no doubt sought his dismissal at an earlier stage, if they had only had the slightest clue who he was and what it was he was actually meant to be doing for them. The very model of the modern obsolete worker, he slunk towards the safe inner recess of his work alcove to hide, should his lateness be observed by his co-workers. But not before suffering a gnawing sense of guilt he and his fellow staff members were by very definition engaged in doing something unconscionably wrong. He hung his head low and hunched his shoulders, as he searched his in-tray for something to do.

An expert pedlar of government half-truths and out-and-out lies, Ipsum feared he'd long ago compromised his better nature. Indeed, his job demanded no less of him, as a matter of course. Yet, on this particular morning, it literally sickened him to merely be in attendance at his usual place of employment. He suspected his overnight resolution to quit thinking "normally" lay at the root of the problem. For in many ways, the current spin campaign he'd been assigned to was otherwise fairly typical, roughly speaking — his immediate objective being to confound (and literally bury, where at all possible) the entire membership of a national victim support group.

The details were all highly political. Essentially, the victim support group represented a loose collection of private individuals who all suffered from the same rare brain disease. They were lobbying the Government for compensation on the basis the sickness they were dying from had been caused by injections given freely at public health clinics. The Government, however, felt if the whole process could be dragged out long enough, then there existed a good chance there would be no one left to compensate, owing to the injured parties' brains having turned to mush long before any findings of liability could be brought down.

By and large, strategy stood for everything, when it came to protecting the public purse against marauding hordes of disaffected claimants. Accordingly, as part of the aforementioned misinformation campaign, correspondence mysteriously went missing, telephone calls were cut off mid-sentence and lengthy delays were instituted in response to any enquiry made by (or on behalf of) the largely-bedridden petitioners. All in all, it shaped up as the sort of politically-motivated undertaking Ipsum generally stomached quite well. Moreover, nothing much could be done for the actual brain-disease victims themselves, as they were in effect merely marking borrowed time. Truth be told, Ipsum typically counted the use of such stalling tactics as one of his fortes. So why, he thought to himself despairingly, over and above all the other campaigns he'd overseen should this current snow job stick in his usually nonexistent craw?

Up until then he had happily undertaken the shredding of those few thousand or so documents directly implicating the administration he worked for as being in any way culpable for spreading the brain disease in question. It was pretty straightforward stuff. And, in the end, he'd probably spent more mental energy worrying about the vague relationship status of the female temp he'd brought in to assist him on the task than he did about any bothersome ethical dilemmas he might have been beset with. Yet, hatefully, something had still shifted within his conscience. After all these years, something about the cynical and systematic removal of damning internal office communication from off the public record struck Ipsum as morally reprehensible.

All of which probably helped to explain why he'd ceased to take any pride — professional or otherwise — whatsoever, in what he did for a living. And it also probably went some of the way towards explaining the fake press release he'd written up the day before, while sitting forgotten in his airless work carrel. He'd since scanned the one-page document into the shared office fax machine, and at the appointed hour it would be sent out to countless news outlets right across the country.

The document purported to be an official response to accusations of collusion between the Government and a certain foreign pharmaceuticals giant. The drug corporation involved in the allegations stood accused of single-handedly driving a large portion of Antarctica's fragile aquatic life-forms to the brink of extinction. The party line, thus far, maintained the corporation had only ever acted within its rights as befitted its status as an international scientific research institute. To avert any consumer backlash, the corporation's CEO publically stated he and his business partners were committed to harvesting new pharmaceutically patentable organisms in order to develop potential cures for kiddies' cancers and the like.

The growing scandal centred on reports massive kickbacks had been paid to various government figures for turning a blind eye to questionable breaches of national environmental policy. What made matters worse was the issue cut across a number of portfolios. Voices of dissent in academic circles argued the whole despicable mess bore little chance of seeing the actual advent of any new life-saving medicines or pain-free drug therapies for the world's ailing. In defence of their polluting one of the last few pristine ecosystems on Earth, the French pill manufacturer had the gall to announce their company's cosmetics research arm had miraculously stumbled upon a breakthrough topical face ointment for those millions of teenagers afflicted with embarrassing acne. By synthesising a bunch of chemicals extracted from a previously undiscovered species of saltwater invertebrate, they claimed to have found a method for banishing unsightly spots off the face of the planet forever.

Ipsum knew his phoney press release would be universally discredited the moment it started spewing out across the nation's newsrooms. Nevertheless, he couldn't resist taking a parting shot at the very institution he'd once so diligently served to uphold. He viewed it as his final two-finger salute to the system. Sure, it was likely to be dismissed as a juvenile prank, even though he'd spent more time on it than the last speech he had written for the minister. Either way, he wanted to feel he'd had his say before he slunk off into the sunset.

Tone-wise, the suspect press release mimicked the style of other official face-saving documents of its type. It read thus:

Free Trade Flourishes in Fragile Frozen Ecosystem

In light of recent criticism regarding the Government's joint partnership with the French pharmaceuticals firm the Parturiunt Montes Industries Group (PMIG), the office of the honourable minister for Homeopathy, Purging and Trepanation, Mr Lloyd Greystone-Waight, feels compelled to issue the following statement.

Unfortunately, at this time, the minister himself remains unavailable for interview and cannot comment publicly on this matter, as he is currently out of the country on a fact-finding tour of Barbados. While he has been briefed on the brewing controversy, he has elected to refrain from entering into the debate until he returns home from his trip abroad.

Firstly, let it be said by forging close links with a wide range of business leaders from within the private sector, the Government has fostered a healthy economic environment supportive of both strong growth and long-term fiscal stability — the immediate benefit of which has already seen the increased living standard of every single one of this proud nation's 20 million-odd citizens.

Secondly, let it also be said to the small group of detractors who condemn such commercial ties as improper that every nation's prosperity comes at a price. And any argument about these sorts of alleged underhanded dealings blurring the division between corporate and public interests is naïve, at best. Since time immemorial, the business of government has been to be governed by business. Regrettably, what the unsuspecting populace does not understand is that without the odd bribe or overseas junket here and there nothing would ever get done. In simple terms, the machinery of government — as it always has been — is kept oiled only by way of payment of cash incentives from market sources.

Thirdly, let it be understood the minister does not actually personally endorse any of the claims of efficacy being made by the Parturiunt Montes Industries Group (PMIG), in relation to its new line of skin care products and toiletries.

Fourthly, it continues to be the express opinion of this office individuals only ever get the particular diseases or ailments they deserve, as such things are dictated by a greater divine power. In short, the relevant policy directive in this regard clearly states the belief people only ever fall ill when they fall from grace. Therefore, by the same token, the very idea of any so-called "wonder drug" holds no truck whatsoever with this office. Repentance alone has the power to lead evil transgressors back to the path of total salvation and full healthy wellbeing.

Fifthly, and lastly, in relation to Mr René Acien-Crapaud's recent comments to the press about his company's intention to continue exploiting the Antarctic region for as long as possible, it should be pointed out (at the time) he was speaking in his capacity as an official spokesperson for the PMIG and not as a mouthpiece for the Government in any way whatsoever. Likewise, his insinuation that the necessary papers have already been rubber stamped to allow for such a continuance to occur should be viewed with due caution.

There will be no additional statement forthcoming on this subject from either the Minister or this office until after the return of Mr Greystone-Waight from his arduous overseas duties.

Out of interest, Ipsum had since read of independent clinical tests finding Equivoque Facial Restorative to be about as effective in the treatment of teenage acne as those trial cases in which small handfuls of quarry sand were rubbed gently into the skin of a similarly dermatologically-blemished control group.

On being told the inside story behind the whole political imbroglio, Ipsum's old flatmate, Mortimer, had offered his own succinct appraisal of the fundamental issues at hand.

"Come on," he'd slurred belligerently. "No amount of horseshit applied to some young prick's dial is ever going to remove a single pimple. Never mind how exorbitantly priced it is. Face pox erupts in response to normal fluctuations in an adolescent's hormone levels. Anyone who says otherwise is a frickin' liar."

So with the aforementioned outgoing fax set in place, Ipsum now gave his full consideration to the one rubric left on his morning to-do list: Resign with dignity and aplomb.

To this end, he logged off the terminal at his workstation and walked purposively towards his supervisor's office. Once there, with a quick knock on her half-open door, Ipsum asked his boss whether she had a few minutes to spare. She waved him in while continuing to type furiously where she sat perched behind a precarious tower of registry files.

Bonjella "Bonnie" Parkhearse wore the clothes of a woman older and far more sophisticated than she herself, in truth, happened to be. Up close, she looked rather more like a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl than the director of a national government communications unit. Her phenomenal rise and rise through the ranks had raised its fair share of eyebrows. Tweed skirt or no tweed skirt, her extreme youthfulness created controversy with the many "lifers" among her subordinates. Sartorially speaking, only so much could be achieved through raiding her grandmother's wardrobe and, crazily, her love for endless bags of mixed lollies and other assorted sweeties totally belied her carefully-studied act of mature austerity anyhow.

Without doubt, her biggest weakness was for red liquorice laces. And it was a fistful of these she chewed upon, as Ipsum waited for her to speak.

"Now, how can I be of assistance?" she finally asked. "It's Patterson, isn't it, right?

"Patterson's in accounts. No, I'm one of the spare media liaison officers you inherited when our departments merged a while back."

"Of course, you are," she said encouragingly. "One of the ring-ins, eh? And?"

Ipsum imagined what it might be like to wake up next to the young woman sitting straight backed before him. Sans pants-suit and with her hair let out of its bun, she might very well pass for a sultry man-eater. He knew it lessened him to objectify her like that, but he couldn't help but think it deep down in the dark reptilian recesses of his brain. Her icy exterior didn't bother him, overly much. And he might have gone on to picture a more graphic mental image of the two of them interlocking their flesh, if he hadn't sensed that Bonjella was growing impatient with his inability to get to the point.

"And?" she repeated with exaggerated interest.

"It's about the carpet..." Ipsum insisted hotly.

"Hmm, okay, the carpet. Well, what about it?"

"Yes, it's about the carpet," he began again, "or actually the carpet fibres, to be more precise. When I first started here, I didn't have so much of a problem with them. Sure, at the end of a working day, I might find a fine layer of the fibres had deposited themselves in the cuffs of my trousers. But I paid it no mind."

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway, eventually, I got to thinking. If all these free-floating synthetic strands are abundant enough to collect in drifts in my trouser legs, how do we know we aren't also breathing in whole great lungfuls of the same stinking toxic stuff every time we move around the office? I mean, like, every single second of every single day?"

"Ah, yes, I think I can see where you are going with this," said Bonnie sagely.

To her credit, she didn't appear overly phased by the direction their conversation looked to be taking. She did, however, fidget with the handle of the top drawer of her desk, as though deliberating whether to pull out the loaded gun she kept there for just such contingencies. Ipsum felt cruel for not simply turning around and leaving then and there, but he itched to say what he had prepared earlier.

"However, the final straw!" he shouted, his voice breaking with the strain, "...the final straw was when I discovered this!"

Unzipping his fly, he reached inside his boxer shorts and pulled out his flaccid penis.

"Look here," he screamed. "Right here, inside the sheath of my foreskin — it's those same tiny, god-awful little carpet strands. They've managed to somehow burrow their way into the very flesh of my cock!"

Bonjella didn't so much as blink. If he'd been showing her a set of teeth marks left behind on a chewed pencil, she couldn't have looked more unperturbed. Her professionalism was inhuman, truly.

"Now, what is it exactly you would like me to do for you?" she asked dryly.

No fragile gasp escaped her lips. No tremor ran through her body at the sight of his naked member. The hum of her idling photocopier filled the room while, all the while, she continued to gaze coolly into Ipsum's face, expectantly waiting for a reply.

"All right," she said resignedly, when he completely failed to respond. "Why don't I get Big Jim Jim to come in and join us? Perhaps, he might be of some help. What do you say?"

Word in the tearoom had it that Big Jim Jim Blithe and Bonnie — known collectively as Bonnie and Blythe — were "an item" outside of work. Ipsum didn't believe it, if only because Big Jim Jim looked easily at least thirty years older than the prim little miss. Big Jim Jim also entirely lacked any of those requisite personal qualities that might recommend him as a suitable love match for any woman whatsoever, let alone their boss. In appearance, he resembled a stick insect more than he did a man. He was that tall and gawky and thin. Although almost as if to spoil an otherwise near-perfect metaphor, Big Jim Jim did also sport the very neatest of WWII aviator moustaches. His only other distinguishing feature came courtesy of his overly clipped faux British accent.

In all likelihood, the gossip doing the rounds regarding the mismatched pair came out of a larger smear campaign against Bonnie. To say she generated resentment the way others breathed oxygen missed the point entirely. Her ruthless approach to career advancement made Lady Macbeth, for all her foul treachery, seem like something of a quiet achiever.

Credibility issues aside, there existed a further reason why office innuendo linking Bonnie and Big Jim Jim made Ipsum laugh. The real clincher being he knew for a fact Bonnie harboured a secret predilection for all-girl pastimes. One of the few benefits of living with Verity over the years meant he had learnt just how much people were willing to reveal about themselves in their online postings. Bonnie, for instance, apparently liked to host panty parties. She also identified herself as a Virgo and excelled at Lacrosse. Some people had all the fun, he decided.

Looking sulkily over to where his boss sat flicking through the pages of her diary, he studied her intently. She had her phone cradled between her ear and her left shoulder pad, so as to free up her hands. As always, she presented as the perfect picture of efficiency. Ipsum's stomach gurgled. He'd never exposed himself to anyone before. Shifting his weight, he struggled with whether or not he should whistle some sort off ditty through his teeth, but he couldn't decide on an appropriate tune. Impossibly, the thing he had stuck in his head was the Sailors' Hornpipe. For him, it was one of those infectious sea shanties that couldn't be got rid of once brought to mind. He contemplated how it would look if he suddenly broke into a little bit of a jig right there on the offending carpet.

Instead, he wallowed in his own mire of self-loathing. While, for her part, Bonnie repeated a soothing Buddhist mantra as she waited for Big Jim Jim to answer his phone: O-soto-gari, O-soto-gari, O-soto-gari.

"Sweetie," she cooed, presently, "could you be an angel and just pop in here for a quick mo'? Cheers."

She and Ipsum were now left to face off in silence. In the intervening minutes, neither of them spoke. Unable to restrain herself, Bonnie reached for fresh liquorice. Ipsum strained to tell if she simply acted bored or whether she genuinely felt him to be beneath her regard. The not knowing became truly awful. And as the silence between them threatened to solidify into a tangible physical barrier, Ipsum yawned mechanically to break the tension.

Mercifully, salvation arrived in the form of their half-man half-bug colleague.

"What ho, how're things, chaps?" Big Jim Jim asked, craning his head around the door to Bonnie's office.

He scanned the room inquisitively with his big black bulging eyes before entering. By some trick of the fluorescent light, the man's skin had actually taken on a distinct greenish cast. Or so Ipsum thought, as he moved aside to let Big Jim Jim come in.

"It's a beastly affair, I'm afraid," said Bonnie, by way of a greeting. "This poor young man has a problem with his prepuce, evidently. Do be an old dear, and take a squiz for me, will you?"

Ipsum rocked back on his heels.

"Hmm, something wrong with the boy's Cushite fold, you say? May I?" asked Big Jim Jim politely, as he stooped down for a closer look at Ipsum's aggrieved foreskin.

"It's the carpet fibres or weevils or some such," added Bonnie as clarification.

With pen in hand, Big Jim Jim gingerly lifted Ipsum's penis up away from where it had been hanging limply out the front of his pants meanwhile.

"I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary," he reported straight off.

"From what I understand, you have to roll the thing back," offered Bonnie distractedly.

"Of course, you do," replied Big Jim Jim. "I'm a helmet man myself, though. Always have been, and damn proud of it. Pesky bloody anteaters."

Ipsum felt a hot flush wash over him. As with anything, an upper limit existed to the level of indignity he felt willing to endure. He'd reached his limit and then some.

"Yes, they can be real buggers — the way they burrow," muttered Big Jim Jim in the meantime, although it was anyone's guess as to whether he was now referring to carpet fibres or actual anteaters.

Visualising a more terrifying psychosexual nightmare than the one he currently found himself in fell well outside Ipsum's powers of imagination. For quite literally, from the way he huffed and puffed, it seemed Big Jim Jim was about to at any moment start peeling back Ipsum's foreskin in search of man-made debris. The gig was almost up.

Ipsum surveyed this, the lowest pit of hell, with tears in his eyes. His chief tormentors were nothing like the vile demons traditionally depicted as inhabiting the infernal regions. Here, they were helpful, well-meaning sorts, who, instead of wanting to prod him with pitchforks, happened to be pathologically inclined towards fussing and clucking over him for all eternity. Their credo seemingly being that no worse lash exists than the well-intentioned act of a bumbling and interfering meddler.

Ipsum must have visibly recoiled next, because Big Jim Jim chose right then to lunge forward and grab him by his belt buckle.

"Hup, you can't have fluff collecting in your John Thomas, man," he sermonised, as if quoting directly from an arcane satanic scripture. "It just won't do. Stand still, will you?"

"Ugh," said Bonnie in raw revulsion. "The mere idea of wearing a turtleneck makes my neck itch. I really don't know how you men can bear it. It's so not natural."

Distressingly, this was precisely the scene Phil from ministerials stumbled in on. He claimed to be investigating a matter regarding departmental protocol. Bonnie eyed him with suspicion. She had long held grave concerns about where the other man's final loyalty lay. On more than one occasion, she had gone so far as to actively warn her staff against trusting him. Her instincts told her he had a hidden agenda. She guessed he ultimately worked for some shady anti-government pressure group or other as a plant. His breath stank. A bad egg, through and through, she clucked to those she warned. Ipsum didn't mind him. Halitosis failed to qualify as an actual crime in his world. And judging by Big Jim Jim's booming welcome, he also harboured friendly feelings towards the other man, shit-eating grin or not.

"See here, Philby," he cried warmly, "this wretch says he has some genital grievance or other. But with your help, I think we'll be able to soon have him flying straight again."

Phil crouched down on his haunches next to Big Jim Jim. The two of them made a great show of carefully inspecting Ipsum's shrivelled manhood in unison.

"What's his gripe, then, an aberrant distractile dysfunction associated with acute dyspareunia?" Phil asked overly sincerely.

"No, an irritable dirigible. Stray strands of carpet weave chafing the collar region of his badger hound," replied Big Jim Jim, tracing a circle in the air with his left index finger.

"I shouldn't worry too much. A young man like this probably simply needs to find a nice girl to help him get the kink out of his nightstick. Wet the whistle, as it were."

"I suspect you're right. Get his end away, eh what? How about it, Bonnie? Are you for it?"

Her raised eyebrows indicated she felt neither for it, nor up for it. Either way, she escaped having to answer the question outright, as her personal assistant, Hamartia, had since entered the already crowded office with a fresh bundle of papers to be signed off on.

"Let me get back to you on that, my dear," stalled Bonnie, giving Big Jim Jim one of her trademark brush-offs.

Hamartia's arrival had shifted her boss's attention to more pressing matters. Matters pertaining to the see-through qualities of her fresh-faced admin assistant's form-fitting cotton blouse, apparently. With surprise, Ipsum intuited Hamartia was well aware of the minor sensation she'd created with her choice of garment. This shocked him. He never pegged her as the flirtatious type. If he'd been asked previously, the term "a nice girl" was the epithet he'd have summed her up with. "How wrong was I?" he thought to himself weakly.

"Allez-oop, I say, stand down, soldier," barked Big Jim Jim gruffly, bringing his hand back up towards his face protectively.

"It's the arrival of the gamine female which's stirred things up," observed Phil in the hushed tones that have given rise to countless parodies of television naturalists.

"Harrumph," Big Jim Jim concurred.

"Anybody got a cold spoon handy," inquired Phil more widely.

Ipsum couldn't fully explain it, but he'd always had a thing for Hamartia. Her honeysuckle-scented perfume and her soft ringlets of golden hair undid him every time she came near. He loved the elegant open-toed style of shoes she favoured. Insanely, he'd never so much as had a conversation with her, let alone complimented her on her pulchritudinous bone structure. So profound was the impact she had on him he invariably lost control of the greater part of his motor functions whenever she approached.

Just this week past, he'd broken the handle of his coffee mug clean off after stopping by to ask Hamartia how her weekend had turned out. Countless other minor catastrophes had dogged his most innocent of advances. On every single occasion he had tried to strike up a conversation with her, some freakish personal calamity precluded the prospect of any significant further exchange. The second-degree coffee burn across his chest would most likely heal; but he feared himself mentally scarred for life by the long line of similar recurring tragedies. His current predicament promised to be the most disastrous of the lot.

"Try and get a good visual fix on your maiden aunt's very finest fish 'n' finger pie, my son," Big Jim Jim drilled him forcefully. "That ought to do it."

Ipsum slowed inhaled until his breath had reached its fullest capacity. Holding the air in his lungs, he began to feel giddy — like he might faint.

"Sure enough, what did I tell you all? Isn't detumescence a wondrous thing?" Big Jim Jim crowed grandly. "If you stand closer, ladies, you'll get to see the classic 'Merry Dip' effect in action. It's basic hydraulics, don't you know, pure and simple!"

"Well, I'm inclined to retract my earlier statement," chipped in Phil. "I'm beginning to think there's more to this man's condition than meets the eye. Wet whistle or no wet whistle, I think this goes far beyond a simple matter of inner-tube lint build up."

"Hey, squire! I had a cousin who I'm sure had something wrong with him a lot like what your guy's got," said one of the two cabling technicians, who moments before had joined the throng. "Something called pellagra or pariahsis or...psoriasis, that was it! He ended up having to wear special oven mitts to bed at night, so as to stop himself from scratching a second hole in the soft underbelly of his priapic organ."

The outspoken technician and his offsider were busy installing network relays in the roof. They had an old stepladder with them, and it was from high up on this vantage point the outspoken man offered his unique estimation of Ipsum's ailment.

"Sorry to disappoint, my friend," countered Big Jim Jim offhandedly. "But I'm quite definite the boy has nothing more wrong with him than a severe case of chicken feet. The yellow bastard doesn't know whether he should run or hide. What?"

"For pity's sake," cried out Ipsum, fighting back hysterical laughter. "You know what, I also stole a box of black felt tips from out of the stationery cupboard. There, are you happy? What do you make of that, you fucked-up gang of mind rapists? I didn't even write an entry in the book! I stole some coloured plastic sleeves and took a hole punch, too. And I'm not giving any of them back, either. So how are you all going to live with yourselves when you know you let me get away with it? It's going to kill you, isn't it!"

"Nice," said Hamartia primly — this the only word she had spoken during the entire nightmarish episode.

Bonnie motioned for everyone to stay calm.

"You're upset," she said to Ipsum calmly. "I think we're all sensing that quite strongly. But you must know I can't let this go unreported. It is, after all, a sackable offence. A member of staff pilfering pens is something I will simply just not tolerate. My policy regarding the theft of office supplies is cut and dried. I'm sorry."

Immediately following which, Big Jim Jim leaned forward so that his face hovered just inches from Ipsum's own. Fixing Ipsum with his bulging bug-like eyes, Big Jim Jim then darkly spat at him: "I mean, how hard can it be to keep your bleeding hands off of it? Mark my words, my pretty, you are well and truly 'the Deed's creature' now!"

Walking with his armed escort to the lift, Ipsum tried to assess what exactly he'd achieved. If nothing else, his boss Bonnie would be forced to rethink her open-door approach to resolving the personal issues of individual workers.

His underlying goal had been to ruin any chance of ever being considered suitable for future employment within government service. No mean feat, considering how heavily the guidelines for dismissal were weighted towards leniency. His had been an ambitious and certainly reckless plan, obviously. But short of getting busted filming a particularly unsavoury snuff film in the video conferencing room, he struggled to imagine a suitable cause for being sacked. He still failed to understand what exactly constituted "conduct unbecoming of a Penetralian civil servant". From what he gathered, pilfering biros sat on par with urinating in the chief executive's water cooler — something he had ruled out as unnecessarily unsanitary earlier in the day.

The security guard ordered to accompany him off the premises was a woman in her mid-to-late fifties. Her identification tag bore the name Charlotte Totentanz. Everyone simply called her Lotte, or "A Whole Lot of Lotte", depending on who it was speaking of her.

The term "A Whole Lot of Lotte" carried a descriptive — if juvenile — take on the otherwise slightly-built woman's unbelievably large breasts. Rumours abounded she had previously made her living as a famous German porn star, performing under the screen name of Gabi Spitzflöte.
Ipsum refused to accept the kindly grandmother-of-six ever went to bed in anything shorter than a full length neck-to-toe flannel nightdress. Cruelly, the in-joke shared amongst the less enlightened males in the office hinted that the Double-G of her bra size, in fact, stood for "Double the Gravity". The shaky scientific theory behind the joke being that, together as a pair, Lotte's massive tits easily doubled her overall bodyweight and then some.

From where he saw her, Ipsum preferred to think of Lotte as the caring mother-hen type. Morning, afternoon and night she stood by her guard station eagerly inquiring about the health and welfare of her fellow workers as they entered and left the building.

"Mind your pfefferkuchen männchen, mein lieblein," she instructed him gently, before pressing the down arrow by the lift doors. "It's time we put him away for now. Your little gingerbread man."

She continued to stare impassively at the backlit numbers of the floor levels above her head. Ipsum stared downwards. Choosing his moment, he grimaced and discreetly obeyed the old woman's directive to put away his penis. The lift couldn't get there fast enough for him. Unconvincingly, he feigned a pocket-to-pocket search for some missing mystery item. Meanwhile, on the verge of panicking, with his free hand he struggled to do up his fly, which bizarrely refused to budge. Finally succeeding, a nervous compulsion made him cough twice, loudly, as he zipped his pants shut. He wanted to whoop with joy when the lift's bell dinged belatedly.

Happily now riding down to the ground floor, Ipsum strained to keep from sniggering. The words of a childhood fairy story repeatedly echoed through his head as he tried not to openly giggle in front of his silver-haired escort:

"Run, run, fast as you can! Can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

He had no idea what came over him. Biting his tongue, he speculated whether the impending prospect of freedom alone made him feel slightly delirious. Hopelessly, he lost his composure, when a few floors prior to their reaching their get-off point Lotte lost one half of her false eyelashes down her cleavage. Totally unexpectedly, she reached out and pressed the lift's emergency stop button, trapping them between floors five and six. For a split second, Ipsum feared Lotte planned to work him over some with her truncheon, before giving him his leave.

"Here's what Lotte wants for you to do for her," she commanded coolly, without turning to face him. "First and foremost of all, you must tell her what is the cause of this stupid underpants parading. Are you not maybe in the grip of a swamp fever; is this what we have here?"

Ipsum told her of his having experienced a few wacky dizzy spells lately, now she mentioned it.

Suddenly her assessment began to make a lot of sense to him. He always assumed himself to be in good health, but then what did he know?

"There you go," she said putting him in a head lock. "Lotte knew you mustn't have been smelling yourself correctly today. And so, aha, what have we here? You are not well!"

She paused briefly to sniff the air, acting out an astutely observed dumb show of arrogant vainglory.

"Sadly," she continued, "I cannot make the mess about the stolen writing implements vanish for you. It is too late for this. But as for what is eating you up, Lotte can help. Only you must promise her to do precisely as she says. To the very letter. Okay, okay?"

Ipsum nodded in agreement as best he could.

"Because of her previous employment, Lotte knows of a clinic specialising in your particular problem, your silly Torschlusspanik. It is a community set-up, and they do business out of the emergency department of the hospital near here. It is kept very secret, for privacy reasons, you understand?"

Letting him go, she reached in and pulled out a fountain pen and a pad of paper from inside the front of her guards' shirt.

"Okay, okay. Promise Lotte you'll go there right now and have a thorough examination. You do precisely as she says. Give the desk nurse this slip of paper and ask for Dr Sutcliffe."

She wrote out a quick note and backhanded it to Ipsum.

"Remember, Dr Sutcliffe," she re-emphasised needlessly.

Selecting one of the hundreds of keys hanging from a chain attached to her belt, she calmly reached over to the wall console. With a quick flick of the wrist, she then slid her small key into its matching slot and turned it deftly clockwise. The lift shuddered downwards.

"And no more with the monkey business, dummkopf," she said, rapping Ipsum on the back of his head with her surprisingly hard, wrinkly old knuckles six times. "Okay, okay?"

Back outside the building again, Ipsum rubbed his scalp stiffly.

"Okay, okay, okay, what the hell was that?" he asked the flock of pigeons milling around his car all po-faced and puffy-chested.

Like most days, his paint job had been bespattered with their plentiful droppings. He tried to pick just which one of the pigeons had recently contracted a noticeably virulent form of avian dysentery. If he could spot it, he could maybe throttle it, he reasoned vengefully.

He ruefully surveyed the roofs of the other vehicles parked around him. But, as he suspected, no-one's car had suffered anywhere near the same amount of collateral damage his had.

"Mucho guano, my muchacho!" he said, pushing a dapple-grey straggler aside with his foot, as he climbed down into the driver's seat of his car.

He'd already decided he'd have to stop past the car wash he frequented around the corner. At the same time, he wanted to follow Lotte's orders about seeking specialist advice. He figured once he'd dropped his car off at the Sudsy Malone's outlet, he could then walk to the nearby metropolitan teaching hospital she'd made mention of.

Strangely enough, by internally dissembling his true feelings, he even managed to convince himself a visit to Lotte's clinic might be just what he needed. It wasn't like he had anything else lined up for the rest of the day, anyhow.

With this in mind, he started up his car and fish-tailed it all the way to the parking lot exit. The lunchtime traffic had long since begun piling up, and a small eternity passed before he grabbed his chance to pull out into the trickling flow of urban sports utility vehicles and commercial delivery vans.

To his chagrin the nearby Sudsy Malone's franchise equally suffered from gridlock. Finally throwing his keys to the hollow-eyed driveway attendant, he set off towards the hospital on foot.

The twenty minute or so walk between the CBD and the clinic gave Ipsum the chance to gather his thoughts again. He spent most of this time lazily bisecting the massive public park that lay between him and his final destination. As he casually strolled through the park's yellowing groves of Lombardy poplar trees, he dreamt up new titles for his current employment status. He leaned towards conscientious objector but worried people might mistake him for a potential crazed gunman. Besides, knowing how slowly bureaucracies moved, he guessed he might never actually be formally axed. Freelance fuckup sounded strong; although, he decided, freelance leisure architect sounded friendlier.

Reflecting back on his earlier exchange with Lotte, he wondered what it was exactly about a woman in uniform that got the majority of men so worked up. Probably the handcuffs had something to do with it, he guessed. Also, most uniforms gave women a slightly androgynous look, with the form-fitted jackets and pleated trousers and the rest of it. Not something he was particularly a huge fan of. Although if it were of a mulberry hue, such a uniform might not be all that unappealing, he caught himself idly thinking.

Soon enough, the hospital loomed up into sight and Ipsum veered off cross-country, making directly for its front entrance. Viewed as a whole, the Queme metropolitan hospital sat on the surrounding landscape like an ugly, squat 400-foot high concrete bunker, after the style of a maximum-security prison or not-so secret military munitions factory.

Locally condemned as a horrific eyesore, it bordered the foreshores of the city's enormous designer freshwater lake, Lake Mercurius. How its builders ever conceived of it as a place of healing and recuperation beggared belief. The very look of its vast flanks of featureless stonework signalled defeat, causing the senses to deaden and the blood to run thin. Bowing to public pressure, the local government had since marked the site for demolition. Until then, it continued to stand as a testament to modern architecture's refusal to be likeable. Ipsum personally likened the building to a societal psychosis set in stone and mortar.

Walking down the hospital's breezeway, he reached for the slimline dictaphone he always carried in the pocket of his jacket. Pausing briefly, he held the quietly whirring machine to his lips and pressed the go button.

"What hath God wrought?" he intoned over-dramatically, foregoing his next most favourite phrase of "Klatuu barada nikto".

The device originally came to him as a gift from an ex-girlfriend. She claimed to have been driven to despair by his stubborn inability to remember a single word she said. The gift, she said, offered him a remedy for his poor recall. The long-gone girl urged him to use it for making mental notes to himself regarding whatever subjects they talked about each day. At the end of each week, she would type up the contents of the tape and present him with a crib sheet outlining the key topics of conversation that had occurred between them. Ipsum never really understood the system, but agreed to give it a try.

The girl described herself as kind of kooky, but he liked her. She worked for a stenographer outfit, and he met by chance one day outside a polling booth. Ever the forgetful prick, he still went on forgetting her parent's wedding anniversary and the number of times the girl liked to brush her hair before bed. When he also forgot who the bearer of the gift's least-favourite Bronte sister was, he had killed their love. The quaint technology-driven romance ended that very day.

It appalled Ipsum that their brief pairing no longer held sharp lines in his mind. The girl herself had simply vanished into the ether. He fought to recall some defining feature she possessed. But the colour of her hair and eyes cruelly eluded him. It disturbed him more again when he realised her name escaped him also. He believed it to be ironic that the voice recorder itself was the sole thing he remembered about the old flame who had given it to him.

Maybe this explained why he continued to carry it about. This and the fact he found the whole act of committing his voice to mini-tape strangely habit forming. A hopeless junkie for jamming down its red button, he craved how gratifying it felt to preserve some pointed social observation for his later personal amusement. An impulse that proved to be so gratifying, in fact, he'd since filled an entire shoe box with such recordings. Horrible drunken ramblings and other still-awake-at-midnight, navel-gazing marathons of introspection thereby collected together, waiting to indict him on Judgement Day.

More recently, he'd wrestled back control over his strongest urges. And most days passed without his recording as much as a single word. These were the periods when he finally believed himself to be free of his compulsion. But still he baulked at ditching the dictaphone itself. Each time he grasped it in his hand and tried to throw it away his resolve crumbled. The tape-etching mechanism at its heart knew how to unman him, appealing to his sick lust for just one more chance to record some pre-prepared speech of his finest witticisms.

Some of the most profound sentiments he'd ever spoken out loud had come to rest in its palm-sized mould, after all. His loyal companion and confidante for the best part of eight or nine years, the machine had grown to be a part of him. At times, he caught himself wishing its tiny inbuilt microphone permanently hovered over his trembling lips.

One method he used to limit his overall daily usage meant he only allowed himself the very shortest of off-the-cuff one-liners. Unfamiliar surroundings and/or faceless crowds of people usually provoked the strongest need in him. Unless, of course, a genuinely outrageous fresh incident set off his irresistible urge and he lost all ability to stick with a simple, quick "quip to self". These kinds of incidents typically occurred at random, which —coincidentally — explained why he at that very moment once again reached for the object of his strange, secret addiction.

Minding his own business, he'd entered the revolving doors of the hospital's General Admissions wing just as some old guy had toppled out of his walking frame. The old codger landed at Ipsum's feet, prompting him to record the following observation: "The upside of his abrupt downward spiral was that the dispirited old man had at last been forced to overcome his sorry lifelong lack of a purposeful direction."

The orderlies rushing to rescue the geriatric who'd come to grief with gravity didn't share Ipsum's funny-side-up approach to life's minor catastrophes, evidently. In making a hurried beeline for the nearby men's room, he believed he only just averted being called to task over his callous refusal to help up the crusty old buzzard.

Nobody cared the fallen pensioner had been a real pain (a real stick-in-the-mud even) about those rules of etiquette governing who has right of way when approaching rotating doorways. Ipsum detested ditherers. Apparently that made him a less than model citizen. In his world, however, the word sorry held no special power to change the past, so why should he feel forced into offering it?

A little later, after allowing a suitable amount of time to pass, Ipsum left the safety of the men's toilets and slipped off in the direction of the emergency department. Immediately becoming lost in a baffling maze of endless corridors and poorly signposted passageways, he soon regretted his hastiness.

The red location arrows he'd been navigating by were plainly the handiwork of a person completely unfit for the type of service he or she was indentured to. Twice, without any warning, Ipsum ended up in the hospital's open-plan Burns Unit — a seriously grievous mistake and one he vowed not to repeat a third time

Only once out of earshot did he succumb to his obsessive need and record a quick verbal impression of what he'd witnessed in the unit. On both the occasions he'd unintentionally visited it, the sight of one female patient in particular stuck in his mind. Nothing presented as inherently laughable about her situation, of course, but the fragile yearning he saw in her eyes had made him grasp the cruel joke her life had become. The word picture he recorded of her was, to his mind, sort of like a comic eulogy. He pictured the woman thus: "She was an angry sore of a person, crying out to be loved through her savage weepings."

The unsettling jarring effect he felt he'd achieved with his select choice of imagery pleased him greatly. The sick and moribund themselves so often lacked a sense of humour when it came to their own specific illnesses and disorders. But he hoped even the horribly disfigured burn-victim herself would relish the wry irony of his description, if only she could gain some higher form of objectivity about the miserable state she languished in.

He thought it best not to dwell too long on the woman and her appalling injuries. In short order, he needed to get his bearings back and find the emergency department before he suffered any further hold ups.

Perplexed as to even his current location, he worried he risked spending the rest of the day wandering the halls searching for any kind of clue to his whereabouts. No means existed by which he could differentiate one section of hallway from any other. Every wall, chair and stairwell exuded the same look of featureless sterility. Frighteningly, even the hospital workers he passed likewise looked interchangeable with one another.

Cursing his ill luck, he hunted desperately to find anything that might serve as an exit out of the linoleum-floored labyrinth. Not since childhood had he experienced such raw feelings of panic. His breathing became erratic and his top lip beaded with perspiration.

The metallic taste of stale air in his mouth lent an unnerving claustrophobic quality to his predicament. The taste had a deathly cloying flavour to it. Each time he breathed in, it tasted like he had inhaled one-part oxygen to two-parts ground dead-skin flakes. He feared he must be near the mortuary. Reaching for his dictatphone, he primed its record button before beginning to speak with more bravado than he actually felt.

"The anti-hero of our story found himself trapped, as if caught inside the stifled yawn of a somnambulant necrophile"

He tried to imagine what kind of a monster of a man (or woman?) a somnambulant necrophile might be. A living embodiment of the adage "there's no rest for the wicked", such a monster would relentlessly stalk the dead, day and night. How a person with a fetish for fornicating with the life-forsaken lived with him or herself lay beyond Ipsum's comprehension. So the very idea of rogering cadavers in the midst of catching a few zees must surely suggest some kind of heinous multi-tasking depravity of a completely different order again. Mustn't it? What other human perversion came even remotely close to matching it?

If one existed, Ipsum shuddered to think what it might entail. In the balance, his dictaphone obsession didn't seem nearly half as bad as he'd previously judged it to be.

Still believing he was somewhere near the mortuary, he next began to picture various people he knew as if laid out as corpses inside those kind of huge, metal filing cabinets he'd seen in countless television autopsy shows. Immediately, the image of poor old Herman Ubis again came into his mind, like a vengeful ghost seeking to torment him for some outstanding sin he'd committed long ago.

Thinking back, Ipsum recollected how there was still much more to his dead neighbour's story than he had recalled earlier on in the day. And all of a sudden, the whole distasteful issue of Herman's unsanitary stomach contents, as well as Ipsum's ex-fiancé's alleged implication in the matter, came powerfully flooding back to him.

The way Verity had told it the next morning, Julia simply couldn't refrain from telling her the missing part of her confession during their long bus ride home together. No court order, she'd argued, held the power to silence her now. Clearly, she wanted to get it all off her chest anyhow. And so Verity had resolved to listen patiently as much to pass the time than out of any genuine curiosity.

Julia first continued by finishing off the story about her harrowing escape from Chateau Waldsterben that she'd begun back at the hearing. She told of her trip down the mountainside, gagging from the smell of rotten egg gas, and then of her subsequent meeting with Margot the Pansexual Commando.

Margot, a staunch von Auerbach loyalist, fronted Julia money, a plane ticket and instructions on how to access the worldwide network of safe houses still operating covertly in over 96 countries in Dr Marie-Louise's name.

Apparently, the apartment Julia lived in operated as just one such safe house. Essentially, Margot had ordered Julia to wait there until news of die Lehrerin's imminent return to power should come. Until such time, she was to consider herself a "sleeper" — her status that of an undercover enemy agent deployed into the field and awaiting activation.

Suffering from the strain of the perilous relocation, Julia had confessed to Verity her mental health deteriorated rapidly around this time. The rigours of her dangerous bid for freedom from the evil and oppressive FEMMe junta, when combined with the enforced isolation of her new role as a sleeper agent saw her slip into practically total mental insolvency.

Where in the past her masculine and feminine selves coexisted somewhat peacefully, they now warred incessantly. Before long, the two diametrically opposed parts of her personality split off as complete rival identities. No give and take existed anymore. Prior to this, she experienced a central core of selfhood. Whereas thereafter her inner dialogue only ever consisted of two competing voices. On the one hand, there raged Julius with his agenda for male rights; and on the other, there on the barricades, cried out Julia. She wanted nothing other than to go on living as a woman. And Julius refused to let her.

A minor instance of the kind of inflexibility both parties displayed towards each other rose up over the issue of shaving. Typically, Julius liked his legs to be hairy; whereas Julia, in contrast, considered excessive leg hair to be totally animalistic. She vainly tried to point out a great many professional male cyclists waxed their legs without ever feeling any great loss of masculinity. She added, forthrightly, that facial fuzz was lairy and uncouth, and the mere sight of a five o'clock shadow suggested poor personal grooming habits. For his part, Julius couldn't be bothered arguing the point. But rather insisted if all their body hair had to be removed anyway, why not shave off some of the fur covering their shared genitalia too? Julia vetoed the repugnant proposal, on principle alone.

Even more contentious again was the issue of masturbation, though, which proved to be a powder keg of shared resentment and animosity. Julia's main gripe dealt with border disputes and similar boundary infringements. For although she claimed a certain willingness to turn a blind eye to her male half's often twice-daily sessions of self-abuse, she absolutely drew the line when he sought to take liberties with the "girl bits" of their mutual anatomy. In fairness, Julius listened openly to Julia's objections. He even observed certain no-go zones about their person, for a time. But it was a strained and uneasy truce. Tensions soon built to a head. Seeking a release valve, Julius suggested they try the odd bout of simultaneous self-pleasuring — something Julia said she felt sickened by. So as a concession to propriety, Julius continued to restrict his acts of onanism to regulation hand-relief during his morning shower along with the occasional afternoon wank over the bathroom sink.

At night, predictably enough, things couldn't be kept quite as orderly. For starters, Julius found it impossible to curb his sexual impulses while sleeping. In the same vein, Julia equally struggled to keep watch over her hotly-contested privy areas once asleep, leaving her open to all manner of violations. On several occasions, she woke to discover Julius fondling her breasts, ostensibly while still dreaming. And on one other occasion his hand had strayed as far as the moist inner folds of her labia. Although in this particular instance she had deemed it best to simply "play along" by pretending to be asleep and made no mention of the incident out of a higher sense of decorum.

Nevertheless, she absolutely drew the line at Julius's nocturnal emissions. For in each of these occurrences, Julia felt without a doubt that the Rubicon their conjoined sexes represented had been crossed.

"It's time we got that thing removed, once and for all" she had declared, with grave intent one Monday morning, pointing scornfully at the wilting pee-horn Julius scratched idly between their legs.

"You must be joking," he rebuked her.

"I couldn't be more serious. It is altogether more trouble than it's worth."

"For you maybe. But I can't imagine myself living without it," Julius had cried.

"Well, I could quite happily go the rest of my days without having to ever again see that disgusting thing stare back at me the way it does, all cock-eyed and bushy tailed."

"Hold on, girl," Julius upbraided her. "What's got into you now?"

"Hopefully not your little soldiers, you filthy degenerate. You voided all over me in your sleep again last night. From what I could gather, you were having some depraved wet dream about that bitch Margot the Pansexual Commando again."

It was an ongoing bone of contention between the two of them apparently that Julius had obviously taken quite a fancy to the black-lace-and-beret-wearing commando who had recently saved them from the Warrior Women of Waldsterben. His secret feelings for the other woman had been made abundantly clear to Julia by the pathetic way in which he never stopped talking about Margot's killer insteps and lithe forearms.

But beneath her outburst of rage there was a far more serious concern for Julia than any intermittent pangs of sexual jealousy. As "the adult" in their mixed-gender pairing, the mere concept of self-impregnation filled her mind with crippling fear. Forming a true hermaphrodite between them, she and Julius had at their disposal a fully functioning set of both male and female reproductive organs. Each month she had her full period, and Julius likewise produced enough active sperm to inseminate a small nation of receptive females. Luckily, actual penetration presented as a basic physical impossibility, although, in theory, given the right conditions, his sperm and her eggs enjoyed every chance of bumping blindly into one another.

The very thought of such an occurrence so disturbed Julia that she said she had openly wept as she douched herself later on that day. Sharing a body with Julius was one thing, but to share a child with him struck her as openly diseased.

Maddeningly, whenever she tried to broach the subject of contraception with Julius, he always brought up a whole raft of obvious objections. The pill wouldn't work, he said, because their internal hormone balance belonged uniquely to that of a hermaphrodite. And if, for instance, Julia should seek to have an IUD fitted, the consulting gynaecologist would doubtlessly insist on writing papers and conducting endless tests on their one-in-a-billion matching his-and-hers body bits. She knew he was right, which finally led to her hitting on the inspired idea of their having a complete genital makeover together.

At some point, she could recall having read an article about the growing number of skilled Asian surgeons specialising in gender realignment procedures who now operated out of a variety of luxury overseas 5-star hotels. Here, she had thought, was a truly winning combination; the very notion of combining duty-free shopping with surgical castration totally appealed to her on almost every level.

Obviously, she guessed she'd need to put a great deal of spin on her proposal before Julius would ever consider listening to a permanent solution being found as to how to sort out the problem of their shared muddled physiologies. And as such the most difficult challenge, she believed, would be getting him to agree to even meeting with any kind of surgeon in the first place.

Accordingly, she eventually decided to pitch the idea to Julius that they needed to get away for a much-needed holiday. They needed to get away from it all and resolve their differences once and for all, she had said to him after dinner one night. And as an extra incentive, she hinted that in more relaxed surroundings she might even quite possibly feel open to his sexual advances.

Julius declared himself an immediate fan of the idea. So much so, in fact, within 24 hours he had packed their bags and booked their flights in preparation for what he envisaged was to be one long, well-overdue, foreign dirty-weekend.

On their arrival at the island resort Julia picked for their overseas getaway, her next victory lay in persuading Julius they needed to consult the in-house doctor together for a check up. She explained if they were going to start having regular sex together she wanted to know everything presented as shipshape down below. As luck would have it, she added, the resident doctor in attendance just happened to specialise in intersex cases and other similar gender anomalies. If he gave everything the all clear, then she could see no reason why she and Julius couldn't start "getting jiggy with it" straight away.

Ever the optimist, Julius fell blind with lust and acquiesced to a full physical examination. And for once Julia quietly relished his brutish stupidity. She had laughed gleefully, she told Verity, at the mere thought of how soon she would be rid of her unwanted bedfellow. A single call to the hotel's surgeon-for-hire now being all that stood between her and her quest for gender unification. If only she could convince Julius of their also needing to undergo a general anaesthetic together...

As luck would have it, though, the weirdest thing happened next: the world turned. After spending the day soaking up the sun and sand on the breath-takingly beautiful Indonesian island paradise, Julia felt herself magically soften towards her hated male alter-ego. To her amazement, she weakened in her resolve. Whether the romantic setting somehow moved her or whether the sheer volume of white rum she guzzled caused her change of heart, she began toying with the idea of maybe letting Julius have his way with her just once before submitting him to the knife. "What's a girl got to lose, after all?" she had mused idly.

Once resolved to surrendering herself to his advances, Julia grew acutely aware of all the other barriers she'd built up between herself and Julius. There he was, the one person on the planet who knew her almost as well as she knew herself, and she had shut him out. Most days she struggled to utter a simple hello to him. And now she wished to cut him out of her life forever? She'd gone crazy. "And all because of what?" she asked herself guiltily. "Some prudish preconception of what constitutes a normal, healthy sex life? Newsflash, lovie, there's nothing normal about you. So why would you even attempt to try and maintain a so-called normal sex life, for Christ's sake?" she'd chide herself, after it was already almost too late.

And so this is how she backslided.

She took Julius to bed and let him ravish her.

And, oh, how glad she felt in retrospect she did so! In those first few hours of mutual rapture, a great revelation washed over her: she and Julius were by very definition their own ultimate sexual partners, this insight brought home to her during a seemingly infinite long string of multiple simultaneous orgasms.

No one could find his (or her) way around Julia's body better than Julius. He lived inside it with her, after all.

He knew every single intimate detail about each and every square inch of her most private places.

He took ownership of her pleasure from within and then teased her with it until she thought she must expire from the ever-increasing, inexpressible anguish engulfing her ever-so completely.

Her body shook and her toes curled uncontrollably, like as if she'd been hit by a ball of chain lightning. Meanwhile, Julius ejaculated until he complained he possessed not a single drop of sperm left to squeeze out of his penis.

In awe, the two of them lay in bed for the whole next 48 hours simply in order to recover.

Julia had no choice but to call off the planned surgical intervention she'd travelled halfway across the world for. Julius had well and truly earned his full reprieve.

From then on, Julia swore to herself she would fully endeavour to live with Julius on strictly equal terms. And as an act of contrition for her past underhanded dealings, she then made a full confession to Julius regarding her plot to secretly unman him.

Supposedly, he couldn't have cared less, if he were to be believed. Although he insisted they should seek to recoup whatever money they could from the hellish sum Julia had already paid upfront for his scheduled little nip and tuck.

Still, the fates smiled on them as Dr Liang Bau, the surgeon booked for their impending procedure, turned out to be a man of few scruples and indeed even fewer ethical misgivings. When approached about the possibility of a refund, he immediately suggested a way whereby all parties involved might benefit.

By his estimation, an elective colostomy at his clinic would end up costing only a few hundred dollars more than a regular penis removal. So rather than his being forced to bring in the lawyers, Dr Bau urged Julia and Julius to consider what he felt made for really a very generous offer. He would perform the alternative procedure that afternoon and simply write off any additional expenses incurred in the process as a sign of good will.

Julia was rapt. The hygienic appeal of disposing of her bodily waste in neat, little clip-seal baggies, for ever after, wasn't lost on her for a second. Julius felt no real preference either way. He simply revelled in the knowledge his prized gonads were no longer destined for the chopping block.

Dr Bau declared himself the happiest of the bunch. He would have gladly retrofitted his two patients with a complimentary origami paper arsehole into the bargain, just so long as he didn't have to return any of the massive bankroll of US dollars he'd already received as payment.

"Oh, but I know what happened now!" Verity had exclaimed suddenly, interrupting Julia's strange and surreal account.

"Really?!" Julia replied, turning to look at her companion who sat beside her on the bus.

"Yes. What I mistook for a baby bump was in actual fact an overfull colostomy bag. I'm right, aren't I?"

"You're absolutely correct. I don't know what came over me. I can only suppose I was too mortified at the time to contradict you," explained Julia. "Afterwards, I began to worry I might indeed be pregnant. I felt totally confused, I guess. Julius and I had only recently started having consensual sex. And it terrified me to think maybe you were right. Maybe I had fallen pregnant. People were going to want to know who the father was. Stupidly I named your flatmate. Ultimately, my mental state has never been what you would call robust. Besides, no one knew Julius existed, let alone I was a hermaphrodite."

"You poor thing," said Verity soothingly. "And that's what all the shouting matches in your flat were about? You were fighting with Julius about the prospect of your having a baby together?"

"Oh, no, not in the least!" Julia had reputedly uttered.

"Well, then, why were you always arguing?" asked Verity.

"I'm trying to tell you, if you'd only let me finish," said Julia.

By now, the two women had got off at their stop and were walking back towards the apartment complex where they all lived.

Verity didn't know what to make of half the things her companion had told her on the way home. She realised there was ever possibility that Julia Rebis suffered from being a pathological liar. And out of some wacky desperate need to always be the centre of attention, she could've been making the whole thing up.

Quite honestly, Verity couldn't remember ever hearing of a single case of "for real" hermaphroditism occurring throughout the entire span of recorded human history. This underlying misgiving, though, didn't stop her feeling sorry for her sadly deluded friend, whom she next encouraged to go on.

"Everything was hunky-dory, when we got back from overseas," continued Julia dutifully. "For a while, things couldn't have been better. Sure, I panicked when you accused me of being knocked up. But Julius and I soon became reconciled to the idea of my having a baby, imaginary or otherwise. No, our fertility issues never caused any of our little spats. It seems stupid now, but the truth is we fell out over the whole juicing business."

"You're telling me, what, that your fights were all over pitting, pulping, peel and pith?" Verity asked dumbfounded.

"It's complicated."

"More complicated than, say, the internal politics of international feminazi terrorist organisations or, for that matter, the frankly mind-boggling ins-and-outs of hermaphrodite sexuality?"

"Point taken."

"So..."

"Julius wanted to recycle our waste in a way I refused to condone."

"Uh huh."

"It all comes back to our dear old dead neighbour, Herman Ubis."

"How so?"

"Well," Julia began, "you see, the astronomically high level of faecal matter found inside Herman's stomach unquestionably originated from me. I'm practically 100 per cent certain of it."

"I don't dare ask," said Verity, bracing herself for the increasingly tasteless story's dénouement.

"Julius and I were branching out. Dualia's Juices. That's Dualia spelt D-U-A-L-I-A. We kind of envisaged running our business along the lines of a cottage industry. In the early stages, we would supply our immediate circle of friends and a few select neighbours, you know, the sort of thing. We were inclined to stay quite small. Only the bloody thing began to get out of hand. As it happened, Herman came to us through a recommendation he got off little Duggie Mole over in 27 B. Everything started out so very hush hush. But what can you do? Once people got a taste of our delicious homemade Juicelebrity fruity creations they came clamouring back for more. You couldn't turn people away. Anyhow, Herman was a real sucker for our Olive® Stone-fruit "post-Bender Mender" Hangover Cure. He prided himself on being our biggest customer. I guess, he must have been swilling down about a couple of litres of the stuff a day.

"The Bender Mender belonged to Julius. As such, I never really scrutinised what went into it to begin with. At best, it looked like a thick black sludge when it oozed out of the juicer. Seriously, I don't know how anyone could drink it. Although both Herman and Julius swore they'd found the absolute crème de la crème of pick-me-ups in it."

On hearing this, Verity later told Ipsum she had felt a dreadful sinking feeling in her stomach at the direction Julia's confession appeared to be taking.

"Please, don't tell me this is headed where I think it is," she had groaned desperately.

"Again, the idea came from one of Julius's brainwaves," Julia continued unperturbed. "He forever sought ways of keeping our overheads down. And suddenly the solution crystallised, as it were, right in front of his very eyes. By re-using the contents of our snap-lock colostomy bags immediately upon swapping them out, he calculated we could halve our expenses overnight. His special name for the liquid excrement so collected was dark matter. Although owing to our strict fruitarian diet, the waste product itself looked more of a watery tawny-brown colour. Once mixed up in Herman's favourite day-after-the-night-before zesty olive-flavoured health tonic, you couldn't really tell the difference. It might have even improved the taste a little, to be honest. I only ever tried it on two or three occasions."

Fearing her intuition about where things were headed was about to be confirmed, Verity had then called an immediate halt to proceedings.

"Look, I can't stomach this anymore," she reported yelling. "I think I'm going to vomit. Please, just stop talking. You are obviously an extremely deranged woman in dire need of help. Forgive me, I must go. See you have a nice happy New Year and all that. But seriously, goodbye!"

Her on-a-first-name-basis friendship with Julia (or should that be Dualia?) was, for ever afterwards, officially terminated. They never spoke again. Not to Ipsum's knowledge anyhow.

"What in God's name do you think is wrong with that woman?" Verity had asked Ipsum, on finishing her exhaustive account to him afterwards.

"I haven't the faintest clue. Competing schizophrenias, perhaps? I don't know."

"But split personality disorders are something altogether different from schizophrenia, aren't they?

"Damned if I know," he'd shrugged.

"Oh, let me get this right...She said she and Julius had achieved, um, full 'Gemini Consciousness'...that's it. Supposedly, it's another one of those kooky things a fully fledged hermaphrodite grows into..."

"Well, fuck me dead with an aardvark..."

In the course of his odd remembrance of things past, Ipsum had meanwhile got no closer to finding the location of the emergency department. At a pinch, he guessed he'd inadvertently strayed into the teaching section of the hospital. Lecturer-types lounged in a nearby communal staffroom, drinking herbal tea and playing miniature chess. While down the end of the hall he heard what sounded like nothing short of a hands-on splanchnology seminar for serial killers apparently in full swing.

Refusing to succumb to his sudden impulse to drop everything and run, Ipsum steeled himself by calmly focusing on how he might yet turn things to his advantage. Drawing in three deep breaths of fetid air, he closed his eyes. He counted slowly backwards from ten. As he reached zero, he used his hands to ruffle his hair, messing it up so it stuck out all over his head in unruly tufts. Next, he hunched his shoulders into a rather conspicuous stoop. After this, he untucked the fitted mauve shirt he wore beneath his suit jacket and undid its bottom three buttons. Given extra time, he planned to also untie his shoelaces, but thought better for it. This finishing touch smacked to him of overkill.

The office of the Dean of Female Sciences sat directly across the corridor from where he loitered. A brass plaque near its entry had the name Dean Obgyn embossed on it in bold copperplate text. Ipsum's immediate interest lay not in the Dean, but in the secretarial support person he'd meanwhile spotted sitting behind a computer in the small alcove adjacent to the faculty head's private chambers.

He watched as the very tidy-looking woman busied herself with the pointlessly anal chore of colour coding the contents of her lunch box. Despite not wanting to stare, he couldn't help noticing the woman possessed the fattest ankles he'd ever seen.

Seizing the initiative, he swooped into the woman's alcove and promptly identified himself as a Visiting Fellow from the Penetralian Research School of Psychosomatic Disturbances.

"My dear," he said boomingly, handing her his dictaphone, "see to it these supplementary notes get typed up as handouts for the second years. I'll need them first thing for a little speak-to I'm giving in the morning. I shouldn't think we'd want more than, pfft, 150 copies or so. But I'll need them prestissimo, old girl! Ha-ha, you surely will have to pull a rabbit out of your fanny to deliver the goods, right enough. Ta, muchly."

The woman dropped the piece of celery she held into the red pile by "accident".

"And another thing," he added distractedly, "Just before I go, could you also...Aaargh!"

Slumping forwards, Ipsum clutched at his left bicep. He let a bit of spittle dribble from the corner of his mouth as he grunted.

"What is it you want?" demanded the woman intently.

Apparently, her alcove was not the appropriate place for amateur theatrics.

"Having co-chaired my fair share of Animal Research Ethics Committees, I'll go out on a limb and say I'm experiencing the painful physical after-effects of a minor myocardial infarction," he said haltingly.

He dropped to his knees and groaned loudly.

"I mean, in the name of science, we've been triggering the bloody things in rhesus monkeys for years," he added painfully. "So I ought to know a thing or two about them. Therefore it's either that or I'm about to spontaneously combust. You make the call, sweetheart."

He finished by falling in a heap onto the floor.

The woman stepped over him and then sauntered midway out into the hall towards the staff common room. He could no longer see her, but he could hear her voice quite clearly when she proceeded to speak.

"Professors Peon and Minikin could you leave off whatever it is you're doing and give me a hand over here."

She returned to stand fairly and squarely on Ipsum's outstretched hand. If she had used her full body mass, he believed his fingers would have been crushed outright. Instead she used just enough of her impressive bulk to let him know who was in charge. Even face down on the carpet, he knew the woman felt no qualms at all about leaving him with a crippled hand for the rest of his life. He bit his lip and prayed the helpers she'd summoned arrived quickly.

At last, the two men came in. Their overall lack of stature left Ipsum despondent overall about matters improving. If the taller of the two stood short for a man, the other stood shorter again still. Just how the two pygmy professors signified help constituted a mystery.

"All right, men," purred the woman, coolly observing the pair's belated arrival, "it's Witherling's half-day off today, leaving me with a ton of budget costings to work through. And so — would you believe it — who should then poke his head up in the middle of the whole goddamn, glorious mess but this contemptible natterjack."

She pointed to Ipsum the way a person might point to a spoiled piece of beef in an all-night diner, when demanding to be given a refund.

"Tell us what's required of us, Dean Obgyn," asked the bolder of the two men.

"Find him a stretcher — or a straitjacket, Minikin, I don't care which — and take him off to Casualty for me."

"We'll need to get a few of the others to pitch in," dithered Professor Peon, the less height-challenged man by half an inch.

The Dean shrugged her shoulders.

"Whatever," she said. "Oh, and another thing. Get Flopsy here some carrots. I suspect his carotene levels lie at the root of his present physical impairment."

The two men scurried off on their errand, leaving Ipsum alone with the heavy-footed Dean. With the others gone, his chances of working himself free without sustaining the permanent loss of his hand took a dive.

He strained to twist over, hoping to look his captor in the face. From the gentle rocking motion she made, he gathered the Dean felt extremely pleased with herself. The instant her minions left, she began her slow victory dance, grinding his fingers further down into the carpet pile. Ipsum yearned to hear Big Jim Jim's Biggles-esque voice reassure him those evil carpet fibres had no business whatsoever making his nose itch like that, either.

Not yet broken, his hand meanwhile throbbed insistently, sending an urgent SOS to his over-heated brain. Time became an abscess, as the minutes passed with a suppurating slowness. If he survived, Ipsum promised himself to never again squander the joy of experiencing a good firm handshake, even with a Mormon. Somewhere in the torture he endured, he came face to face with the dark side of his soul. Intuiting the change in him, Dean Obgyn showed him partial mercy by lifting her elephantine right ankle into the air.

"I want you to lick my toes, boy," he next heard her whisper from above. "Make sure you lick 'em in between, too. I want you to start with the pinkie first — and do a real good job. Nice and slow, my Fine Young Visiting Fellow. Get 'em all good and slippery. And when we get to this big one, I want you look up into my eyes and thank me for letting you off so lightly this time. You got it, Slave? Start lickin'."

She kicked off her flat leather slip-on and gave him her foot. It smelt of ruined vinegar. Rather than a good licking, her toes needed a professional pedicure. Their pads were badly calloused and looked neglected generally. Ipsum hunted for a safe place left to run to in his mind. Spontaneous combustion no longer struck him as merely a laughing matter.

In desperation, he strove to visualise her foot as belonging to another. A million miles away, there existed a girl whose feet he worshipped. Harmartia's instep flashed into his mind. And by focussing on this mental image he wrested solace from the abomination he must next perform. The absent girl's remembered scent made the sick-inducing job only fractionally more palatable, however. Grimacing, he bent forward to begin his penance.

"I want to see my little piggies all sticky with your spit," hissed the Dean sibilantly.

He squinted as he sucked her second to smallest toe. Deep inside, he admitted it wasn't as bad as contracting scabies.

"Galumph," he grunted involuntarily.

"Quit stalling, Slave!" snapped the Dean, slapping his cheek with her foot.

The rest played out the same way all kinky sex-play inevitably does: Ipsum's mouth and jaw grew achingly tired, causing him to falter; Dean Obgyn chastised him for it; and he felt confused and abused and also a little bit soiled. The whole sordid scene lasted less than eight minutes. Retreating into mental fantasy, he spat his tongue clean out onto the floor in disgust.

The sight of Professors Peon and Minikin returning by no means improved his mood. Greater numbers just turned it into a squalid gang bang, rather than leaving it a private instance of humiliation.

As instructed, the two men had come bearing a canvas stretcher — the one, he supposed, they meant to carry him down to the Emergency Department on. An additional two new helpers tagged along behind them.

"Get him out of here," barked the Dean, as the ragtag bunch of academic luminaries gathered before her. "And listen closely, I don't want to see his Dibbs here bobbing up around these corridors again anytime soon. Flush twice and repeat, if that's what you think it's going to take to do the job properly. Any questions?"

"No, my Dean," said Professor Minikin, bowing forward slightly. "You know you can always rely on us."

"We will not disappoint, O Gracious Dean," chimed in Professor Peon, not to be outdone.

Ipsum had a question but it centred on the issue of mouth tissue and tinea transfer. He thought it wise to keep silent.

The Dean signalled her satisfaction by slipping her foot back into her shoe and leaving for her office.

Back on his own two feet, Ipsum broke the silence — his infantile need for maternal dominance being not yet fully satisfied.

"Look, about the handouts for the second years," he sang out after her. "I'm thinking we give the whole idea a big miss. Let the lazy bastards fend for themselves, eh? Truce?"

The woman halted and caught him in a deathly stare. Very deliberately, she slowly reached over and retrieved Ipsum's dictaphone from where it lay amongst a pile of papers on the desk beside her. A tremor ran through her body as she then pushed the voice recorder up against his cheek.

"Listen closely, boy. If I ever see hide or hair of you in my faculty rooms again," she warned him, "I will personally lodge this ego trip of yours so far up your rectum you'll be begging me for an acid-bath enema just to get the ungodly thing out. Understand?"

He gave her two thumbs up, indicating he'd received her message loud and clear.

"Really, how hard can it be for you to remember the one and only thing you've only ever got on your mind anyhow?" asked the incensed Dean. "And I'm not talking about your noble plans for eliminating third-world hunger, either, you dolt. I'm referring to how each and every one of your waking thoughts eventually leads you back to your thinking about how you'd like to inseminate each and every single flower of the female species you meet."

Under different circumstances, he'd have corrected her by saying he adhered to quite definite standards when it came to sizing up sexual mates. She herself ranked quite lowly in his estimation. Their paths, in fact, would have to have crossed a good couple of dozen times before she'd even register on his radar. Her ankles alone hurt her cause more badly than body odour or a bowel complaint ever could. Sure enough, he employed a sliding scale but, still, there were things no amount of alcohol could fix. Moustaches were just not on. And hairy moles relegated even Thai masseuses into the big no no basket. Unluckily, the Dean managed somehow to wilfully combine the two.

"Be gone, Creep," said the woman hoarsely.

Ipsum stayed firmly where he stood. He grappled with what it was she expected him to do next. Professor Minikin ended the confusion, by elbowing him in the back.

"Hey, Toe Floss, you heard the Lady. Assume the position," he growled, relishing his role as the Dean's head enforcer a little too much.

From what Ipsum gathered, he was apparently expected to crawl out of there down on his hands and knees. Sighing, he got onto all fours and started off towards the corridor.

"Oi, Flossie, where do you think you're off to?" shouted Professor Peon. "Get on this here stretcher double quick."

"You know, perhaps it might be easier if I just let you all get back to whatever it is you do up here." said Ipsum mildly. "I'm really feeling much better, thanks. Truth be told, I could probably skip going to the ER altogether."

A fainthearted tussle ensued as the Dean's men set upon him. No actual threat of his being physically overpowered existed. As far as overall strength, he held the upper hand throughout. Sure, he only stacked up as one against four, but years of interdisciplinary morning teas had left his assailants soft. Their collegial love of jam rolls and rosehip tea caused their bodies and spirits to flag quickly. As a group, they lacked the requisite psychotic predilection for violence to make truly successful henchmen.

Suddenly feigning a cramp, Ipsum prostrated himself on the stretcher and let the others strap him in for the trip to Casualty. He knew when to throw a fight. Besides, fear of the Dean stepping in to restore the balance caused him to break out in a sweat. Slyly, he blew her a kiss, as she went back to her chores of dreaming up new ways of instituting fresh staffing cuts while undermining student welfare more generally.

Thereafter the frantic mercy dash to the ER began. From the outset, it proved to be a terribly lopsided affair. Both of the two new helpers who'd been called in stood well over six foot. Meaning that their vast difference in size to Professors Peon and Minikin unhinged the whole stretcher-bearing caper entirely. Just as impossibly, it soon also became clear that what the two extra men made up for in height they altogether lacked in upper body strength. Even jointly they only wielded the overall muscle power of a sickly decoupage instructress. Their bodies visibly shook with the strain of simply holding their charge aloft.

Headway therefore remained erratic. To make matters worse, the ridiculous-looking foursome who carried Ipsum constantly bickered amongst themselves trying to choose the shortest route to follow. Professor Minikin expressed the opinion they should take the stairs. His esteemed colleagues instead wished to ride down in the elevator. All forward momentum dissipated. Ipsum even offered to walk for a while. His offer generated howls of derision.

By way of alternative, Professor Minikin suggested Ipsum keep his mouth shut if he didn't want to find himself stuffed into the nearest laundry-chute. Keeping the peace, Professor Peon proposed a round of scissors-paper-rock, as a means of breaking the deadlock, to which all agreed readily.

Progress continued after Professor Minikin threw down his eighth consecutive clenched fist to win the gruelling deciding rubber of the mooted game. The victor proudly referred to his winning strategy as his famous "Rock of Gibraltar" move. Ipsum saw nothing particularly elegant in the cock-a-hoop loon's unimaginative tactic.

"In yer face, Peed-on!" crowed the smug professor, taunting his associate further by flaunting an imaginary penis in front of his pants with his stumpy right hand. "Stairs it is."

This insanely laborious process was repeated countless times over. In each instance, some initial headway would be made only to result in the quarrelsome quartet reaching some further impasse about the direction they should now follow. Immediately it would again be "game on" between the two rival professors. And unbelievably, yet again — against the odds — Professor Minikin would once more come out triumphant, thanks to his patented eight-in-a-row "Rock of Gibraltar" play. Growing restless, Ipsum struggled to keep his head from spinning.

Thinking about how anyone could let themselves fall for the same old trick each time forced him to grind his teeth. It appeared obvious to him Professor Peon effectively kept losing through lack of nerve. This alone explained why he chose scissors on each of the occasions he should have picked paper.

It dawned on Ipsum the outcome ultimately held some ritual significance. Professor Peon actively reneged on his right to win each time. The two men simply acted out the charade for the benefit of others. The infuriating predictability of their violent outbursts and oddly stilted behaviour suggested as much. It would have been funny, if it were not for how grotesque the two stunted combatants looked as they squared off before each subsequent rematch.

Ipsum saw his trip to the hospital as having become very strange. Promise or no promise to Lotte, he wanted to leave. The two professors with their puffed out little pigeon chests fucked his mind up too much. In his agitated state, he split open the straps around his wrists just enough to get his hands free. He bet if he could distract his captors a moment or two longer, his legs restraints would pop open just as easily.

"She's quite the woman — the Dean. It must be such a privilege working for her, am I right?" he asked Professor Peon casually.

"You think you got it bad, chump," replied the persistent loser scornfully. "Well, let me tell you, you'd so know it if you were getting any real heat off the Day Boss."

"The Day Boss?" queried Ipsum.

"Sure. Dean Ogre is only the Day Boss around these parts. And trust me, she's a total pussycat when you get to know her. By comparison. You see, the one you've got to watch out for is her after-hours opposite — the Night Manager. We all call her the Night Shift Bitch. Now, believe me, she really is a ball-breaker. Let it be said, you wouldn't likely forget crossing paths with Her in a hurry!"

The cowardly pedant looked nervously over his shoulder, as though weighing up whether to add more.

"Shut it," snapped Professor Minikin autocratically, from beside him. "No fraternising with the patient. What's wrong with you, Peon? Do you want us all to be consigned to cleaning catheters from here until kingdom come, is this what you want? Now, get your back into it and give the doors behind you a good shove, man."

Next thing, the ragtag party of stretcher-bearers burst through a set of double doors into the long sought after Emergency Department. Ipsum drank in how normal everything looked. Patients displaying varying degrees of ailments and injuries sat along the wall in neat rows, waiting for their turn to be seen to. Some read magazines or books, while others lent against loved ones in various postures of suffering and boredom. A few drank instant coffee in white Styrofoam cups, produced by the nearby vending machine. Somewhere a person groaned loudly, following a protracted coughing fit.

The hopelessly ill-matched stretcher team dumped Ipsum unceremoniously at the base of the admissions counter. Too late, he finally worked his legs free.

"We've got a real live one here, Sister Frou Frou," said Professor Minikin to the desk nurse. "Dean Obgyn recommends he be kept in for observation."

The man Professor Minikin addressed owned the hairiest pair of arms of any nurse Ipsum recalled seeing.

"Thanks," grunted the burly sister. "Have the patient fill in the forms, and don't forget to assign the proper codes. That includes Dean Ogre's authorisation number."

From where he lay, Ipsum reached out to be helped up. Having completed his part of the paperwork, Professor Minikin instead shoved the clipboard he held into the other's open hands.

Straight afterwards, Professor Peon signalled to his companions they ought to leave. Flanked by their two silent helpers, the two professors then fled as quickly as their tiny little legs allowed. In their haste, they completely forgot about the stretcher Ipsum sat on, leaving him to deal with its disposal himself. Rising to his feet, he lifted the stretcher up beside him casually.

"Where do you want this, bucko?" he enquired of the hirsute desk nurse, while handing back his admission form.

"What do I look like — your mother? You think I've got time to pick up after you people? I'm too busy to wipe my own arse, let alone yours. Deal with it yourself, freakshow."

Common courtesy aside, it wasn't as if Ipsum felt he'd asked for any sort of preferential treatment. With a wounded air, he rolled the stretcher up and rested it against a sandwich-dispensing machine by the public phones. Feeling altogether out of sorts, he sidled over towards the general waiting area, as he thought about what he should do next.

His head swam.

He found himself caught in a classical dilemma. Should he sit beside the pretty paralegal secretary, who had returned his smile moments before? Or was the Euro-trash backpacker with the glowing tan more of a sure thing? He guilty conceded Dean Obgyn had captured a piece of his soul, when she summed up his mental mating habits earlier on. Yet guilt alone couldn't sully his enjoyment of the erotic predicament he'd just walked into. Blonde or brunette? Barbie or Brunhilde? Breasts or possible Brazilian? Beautiful or beautifully baaaad?

Ipsum's train of thought derailed with the arrival of a particularly harried-looking triage nurse.

"Mr Sdeerwf Eggeth, yes?" she asked curtly. "This is the third time you've been called. We haven't got all day, you know. Come through and doctor will see you now."

He breathed an impassioned sigh of relief — the dilemma of his seating arrangements had plagued him a little too much. Somewhere along the way his ultimate sexual fantasy had morphed into a crippling attack of performance anxiety. Perhaps, in reality, he fretted, he was not a worthy sexual match for either woman. Maybe if he'd simply sat down by the Salvation Army collection lady as he first intended, he wouldn't be suffering from such dire feelings of self-doubt. He left the waiting room bearing a mild headache and half a hard on.

Dutifully trailing the receding form of the triage nurse, he marvelled at her swiftness. At speed, she weaved through a series of interconnected passageways and curtained partitions, without once looking back to see whether her patient kept pace. His status as a coronary patient held no truck with her, evidently. Halting finally outside a small examination cubicle, she roughly ushered him into a space about the size of a dog kennel. She handed the file she carried over to another nurse who waited within.

"This unpleasant gentleman complains of chest pains," she said.

He was sure she felt he had nothing wrong with him that a good horsewhipping couldn't cure. Belatedly, and with marked relief, he remembered the letter of introduction Lotte had forced on him in the lift.

"I'm after the private clinic...a Dr Sutcliffe? I understand I was meant to hand this over at the front desk," he said falteringly.

The triage nurse huffily snatched up the piece of notepaper he held towards her colleague.

"What's this, some kind of sick joke?" she jeered. "'Sucked in, you lose'. What the hell's that meant to mean? Oh, this one's fully bizarro, Mimpsy, don't turn your back on him for a second if you can at all help it."

"That's enough now, Nurse Blatherskite. I'll take it here from here. Thank you," said the other woman primly.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you."

Nurse Blatherskite laughed haughtily and swept away back in the direction of the waiting area. As she left, she screwed up the scrap of paper and threw it at Ipsum's feet. He bent down and retrieved it. In amazement, he saw the nurse had read the message exactly how it appeared. There before him in a free and easy script were the precise words she'd uttered: "Sucked in, you lose".

Big-titted Lotte, for all her sweet grandmotherly charm, had shafted him! His belief in the goodness of others shattered into a million pieces. Devastated by her betrayal, he shook his head despairingly. Maybe she really did claim the ignominious honour of being secretly famous for having once been caught on film while being rear-ended by a (in equal measure, no way camera-shy) one-trick Andalusian pony? How would he ever know? How could he ever trust another human being again? The one thing he did know for certain was that no amount of hardcore German porn could ever restore his love for Lotte now.

"Eggeth?" queried the nurse he'd been left with. "That's a very unusual name, isn't it?"

The pen she filled in the comments field of his case file with was topped with a wild-haired pink troll.

"It's Norwegian, as far as we know," he replied. "I understand the Eggeths originally herald from a small fishing community situated not far from the capital of Oslo."

"Any history of cardio-vascular disease in the family, then?" she asked officiously.

"Oh, no, the Eggeths are a hale and hearty lot — on the whole. We come from good Viking stock, I guess."

"It's an assumed name, isn't it?" observed the nurse impatiently.

"Well, yes, obviously," said Ipsum feigning a degree of mild rancour.

The nurse directed him to take a seat on the bed parked against the back wall.

"OK, shirt and jacket off, please," she said, drawing closed the light fabric curtain that served as a privacy screen. "Don't stress, you can be certain Dr Sutcliffe will see you forthwith, Sdeerwf. Sit tight."

She brushed past the screen, leaving a faint scent of fresh pine needles behind her.

"See Sdeerwf forthwith, Sutcliffe," hissed Ipsum to himself archly.

Alone in his thoughts, he began to obsess over everything and nothing. "'Suck tight, Sutcliffe,' Sir Deer Whiff said, fraught with certainty ... Sutcliffe...sixth floor...stuck lift...you loser, Dr Sucklift...locked with Lotte in the stuck suck lift...grandmother of six going dooooown...okay, okay? Rapped six times on the back of the skull by Satan's mistress...six...six...six..."

His loose chain of free association soon fixed into a disturbing vision in which Ipsum now saw Lotte, the hateful traitor from his work, and Professors Peon and Minikin performing a highly lewd acrobatic routine. The scene that seared itself into his mind appeared so vivid he became totally immersed in it. He studied it with the kind of sick fascination one might study footage taken at a notorious crime scene.

From what he could discern, the midget professors were dressed as mice — two bad mice. And one after the other, they took turns using Lotte's overly ample bosom as a trampoline from which they sprang and leapt, turning bare-buttocked cartwheels in the air. Meanwhile, Lotte, who was naked (save for a skimpy rubber g-string), lay on her back, eating gingerbread replicas of such architectural marvels as the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra of Moorish Spain.

"Strip down, Mr Eggeth!" commanded the returning nurse. "Chop, chop! Doctor is coming!"

Fumbling with his buttons, Ipsum hurried as best he could.

"Tell me, Mr Sdeerwf Eggeth, do you sometimes fear you might slowly be going insane?"

The man who asked this question of him entered the room with a sideways shuffle.

"No, I don't worry so much about that," answered Ipsum breezily, "as I do about my possibly being the Antichrist..."

The other man stopped abruptly and, peering over the top of his glasses, fixed Ipsum with a penetrating stare.

"Hmm, I've been warned you were a bit of an odd character," he said matter-of-factly. "I really should have introduced myself first, I suppose. No biggie. Anyway, I'm Dr Mandible, and — for better or worse — I'll be acting as your appointed consultant doctoration expert today."

He exuded all the warmth and charm of an assembly-line automaton. Although more than that, Ipsum was lost for words at to what the man wore. For beneath his obligatory white coat and stethoscope, the mirthless physician wore a flamboyant, open-necked yellow Hawaiian shirt and a necklace with a gaudy gold medallion hanging from it. By any standard, his choice of clothing begged for ridicule. And if nothing else it only served to confirm Ipsum's personal maxim that it absolutely never works to resort to wearing resort wear to work.

"Is your job currently causing you any undue anxiety?" enquired Dr Mandible earnestly, as he squeezed Ipsum's wrist in search of a pulse.

"Oh, all right, let me see," replied Ipsum idly, "well, you know, it's not like I'm in the middle of overseeing the Allied forces' campaign to regain a secure foothold in Western Europe or anything."

"Troubles at home perhaps?"

"How should I put this?" mused Ipsum. "Okay, so, I did just recently kill my flatmate's seeing-eye dog. But our friendship was already beginning to cool. Things haven't been right, really, ever since I branded his girlfriend's backside with the logo of a well-known global tyre manufacturer'."

"You're really quite the wag, Mr Eggeth, aren't you?" observed the doctor dryly. "So, tell me about the perfect day as you might imagine it to be."

"Mine...as in for me?"

"Uh-huh, yours."

"Hmm, it's the weekend. I wake up later than usual. There's a lemon crispness to the air. I resolve, after a full English breakfast, to say in bed all day and read."

"Read what?"

"It's not important."

"Oh, but it is. Go ahead, tell me what it is you most like to read. Are we talking books, here; or the Sunday papers? Comic digests? What?"

Ipsum paused, before answering. "Books, mostly. But I only ever read what first fits inside the slots of my pop-up toaster," he said more firmly than intended.

"Your toaster?"

"I select what I read not by its alleged merit or subject matter, but by its toastability quotient."

"And this TQ-system works for you?"

"Clearly, the vast bulk of the great Russian writers are eliminated immediately. Even so, you still get your Gogols and Lermontovs. Old Testament: out. New Testament: in. Goodbye, Melville. Hello, Hemingway. Let's say, it evens itself out. And, I might add, notwithstanding the odd charred page here and there, it also happens to be a brilliant way of keeping your hands warm on chilly mornings."

"How ever did you hit on such an absurd idea, if you don't mind me asking?"

"To be quite honest, I can't really remember...ironically, though, I think it might have been something I read about in a novel."

"Utterly preposterous!" exclaimed Dr Mandible.

"As you can imagine, trilogies prove to be a bit of a tricky prospect," continued Ipsum undeterred, "as I've only got one of those units with the twin browning chambers at the top. And it's not one of those fancy ones with the focaccia-sized caddies, either."

"Great, I get the picture. So what is it that really brings you here today?" asked the other man, eschewing his previously conversational tone. "You're young, you're fit, a non-smoker, and your symptoms of physical distress would appear to be of a purely imaginary nature. What gives?"

"Are you saying there's nothing wrong with me?"

"I'm saying I can't help you unless you can give me some idea as to what you think is ultimately the matter with you."

"Okay, well, in a word...I guess I see myself as a sort of an imperfectionist," said Ipsum bluntly. "I can only ever see what is wrong with any given person, situation or outcome. It's my way, I think, of seeking a certain universality in regard to my own physical faults and personal limitations."

"Fair enough. It's a start. And so what would you say displeases you most about me, for instance?" asked the doctor smugly.

"You have no real neck, as far as I can make out. Your head sort of just sits there in the cup of your shoulders — it makes me feel terribly ill at ease. But as for why you would then choose to opt for wearing an open-neck shirt, Hawaiian or otherwise, simply kills me! I'm sorry, if this offends you at all. You've also got a sad, sad, droopy mouth. And a tapering brow. Are you quiet sure you want to hear this?"

"It's not a problem for me. As a trained professional I can take such slights on the chin, don't you know?"

"Phew," exhaled Ipsum loudly. "Although the whole lack-of-a-recognisable-neck thing probably means you're not left with too many alternatives. Am I right? Than to take it on the chin, I mean."

Dr Mandible gave the distinct impression he'd stopped listening a good while back. Then in a slightly menacing way he leant in towards Ipsum and spoke very softly into his ear.

"They might think I don't hear them, but I know for a fact the other staff on the ward here call me The Shifting Dullness behind my back. And you know what? I'm all right with that too. Got it, Jack!"

Glancing at his beeper casually, he straightened up once more to his full height. And with a quick cough to clear his throat, the expressionless medico resumed talking in his normal speaking voice.

"Nurse Tiddlypush, I want this man prepared for the machine," he said forcefully. "We may as well follow procedure, for what it's worth. We don't want any nasty surprises to come back and bite us on the bum later on, do we?"

"No, Dr Mandible," replied the ashen-faced nurse from where she stood off to one side.

"I'll be back with a speculum shortly. See to it the patient signs the consent forms I'll be leaving for him at the front desk."

The nurse was all business as she wheeled a heart monitor in from the passageway outside. With a disposable razor in hand, she next shaved two divots in Ipsum's chest hair, a couple of inches from his nipples. She did it so roughly, Ipsum couldn't stop from flinching as she applied the last finishing touches.

"Don't be such a baby, Eggeth" she said, scolding him crossly.

She slapped a pair of plastic sensors onto his raw chest.

"This should take half-an-hour or so to give us a full reading. But I'll check back in, every so often, to see how you're doing. In the meantime, try not to move about too much."

Before he could ask her to intercede on his behalf with the departed doctor, to maybe negotiate an early discharge or such like, she disappeared.

He weighed up what the doctor said to him about his being young and fit. The monitor he watched beside him hummed contentedly to itself. He knew no irregularities would show up. They never did. He'd undertaken similar tests dozens of times before in other hospitals and medical centres. It didn't make any difference. Next month, he'd present back for cancer screens or a suspected brain tumour. His age, he suspected, had everything to do with why he kept searching for something. Essentially, he knew he'd reached that age when, if you haven't already made a name for yourself somehow, you may as well stand aside and let those younger than you come on through and stake their claim.

A certain defunctness dogged his very reason for being. Frustratingly, while his physical body didn't exhibit any signs of decay in a measurable form without, he found himself each day counting down the time he had left until the ride was over.

It took the worrying overtones of the word speculum to eventually bring him back to his senses. What need Dr Mandible saw for a mirror, outside of remedying his unforgivable fashion crimes, worried Ipsum deeply. He understood a speculum to be an instrument typically associated with pap smears. Feeling uneasy, he watched a series of small spikes appear on the monitor screen beside him.

He stood up in the cramped space of his cubicle and strained to hear the approach of either Dr Mandible or the nurse's footsteps. What he heard instead was a pitiful whimpering noise, coming from one of the other cubicles nearby. He listened to the mournful whine with increased concentration. It betrayed a definite female quality. He saw, as if conjured up before him, an image of the woman who made the intensely harrowing sound. She sat in a trance-like state and rocked herself comfortingly. Her suffering became his own. He couldn't explain it, but her sorrowful cry beckoned to him. For within it, he heard the only note of truth he'd heard anyone put voice to all day.

He pushed the heart machine before him into the corridor. The whimpering immediately seemed to grow in strength, changing now into a haunting keening sound. From this, he quickly pinpointed the location of the distressed woman. Hers was the third cubicle on the right across from his own. He spied her back through a slight gap in the curtain she sat behind. A brunette with long wavy hair, she kept her face shielded from sight. Her sobbing increased as he studied the line of her hunched arms and shoulders. The woman's sense of desolation clawed at his throat.

Drawing nearer, he questioned what he hoped to achieve. Normally a rather shy person, the idea of approaching a total stranger gave him stomach cramps. Maybe he simply sought to offer her consolation, he argued to himself; or maybe he just wished to give her a shoulder to cry on and enquire whether she was all right; or maybe, on the other hand, he acted from nothing more noble than a compulsive need to silence the pitiful din. He didn't know. But act he must, and so against his better judgment he pressed on.

The woman jumped a little when he parted the curtain behind her slightly. Without speaking, he approached where she sat at the end of her child's sick bed. Her daughter lay quietly under her gaze, either asleep or unconscious — Ipsum couldn't tell which. The woman's face looked a mess of tears and maternal anguish. He saw a proud woman, well-groomed and educated; yet evidently her inability to cope with the situation left her helpless. She even smelt helpless, giving off a flat neutral smell sort of like old cold pancakes. Of course, the distraught mother didn't care a damn about how she looked or what Ipsum might think of her and continued to wail uncontrollably as he squeezed in next to her.

"I hope to hell that's not contagious what you've got there," he said, pointing to the forgotten sock puppet the woman wore limply on her right hand.

As if in a daze, she turned her attention from her child to the hand he pointed at.

"This is my little Becky's bedtime friend..." she said, choking up mid-sentence.

"If you're lucky, there's every chance they might still be able to save the rest of your arm," teased Ipsum gently.

The woman examined the puppet's stitching while biting at her bottom lip.

"Has she been like this for long?" he asked her, after a pause.

"Uh-huh. She's had a raging temperature for days. I blame myself for not bringing her in sooner. We've only got each other. And the doctor's won't commit to a diagnosis. I can't believe this is happening..."

"Listen," interrupted Ipsum, "she'll be okay. They're a lot tougher than any of them let on. She'll be out riding her bike and eating ice-cream with her little pals before you know it. You've got to have some faith in modern medicine. And really, the staff here are all top notch, believe me."

The woman lifted her head back and looked at him imploringly, relaxing visibly from the soothing quality of his voice.

"Thank you," she said. "I know I worry too much. But I'm just hopeless in a crisis, especially as far as anything to do with Becky is concerned."

She dried her eyes on a small handkerchief she produced from inside one of her sleeves. Ipsum meanwhile rubbed her shoulders comfortingly.

"Don't apologise!" he stressed emphatically. "A mother need never explain the intense bond she shares with her child and how such a bond makes her feel at such times."

The woman lightly rested her head against his hip. He glanced down but couldn't see her eyes. Instead, he caught a glimpse of her bra down the front of her top as she lent in closer. Her proximity made him stiffen momentarily, and as if noticing this the woman laid her hand across his stomach. In doing so she brushed his groin with the back of her knuckles, seemingly by accident.

"I'm thinking you're the one who needs to take a few deep breaths now," she observed playfully.

Ipsum counted the ceiling tiles above his head.

"Dolly Do-Gooder wants your widdle fwend to come out and play," said the oddly changeable woman next. "Aww, puh-lease, can he? Huh, Mister? Go on, say yes. Dolly wants to play."

She pouted sulkily and looked up at him pleadingly. Her pantomime sincerity was truly laughable. But Ipsum felt he could hardly refuse the woman, considering the gravity of the situation. Taking his silence as consent, she went ahead and deftly unzipped his pants before carefully guiding his growing erection out from within his boxer shorts. Her expert touch and the speed with which she undressed him caught him off guard. It felt like together they'd entered the eye of a storm.

And then, before he knew it, the woman vigorously grabbed hold of his penis and started pumping it, the same way she might an old leaky bicycle pump. Her grip was firm and warm. He judged it immediately as top class. In all likelihood, he guessed her fast and easy action meant she ranked highly in social tennis circles, where her lightening quick forearm saw her dispatching lesser players back to the showers in their droves. And although Ipsum had no way of either confirming or discounting his theory, he enjoyed picturing the woman in her skimpy tennis whites regardless.

The little band of perspiration beads forming along her hairline only added to her sexy sports-vixen allure.

He closed his eyes and imagined the woman bent over, adjusting her socks; her socks had little pink and white pom-poms sewn onto them at their heels. Details such as these always worked for Ipsum and his chest tightened as his breathing shortened accordingly.

The woman looked likely to beat him game, set and match at the next flick of her wrist. But just as he built towards climax, Ipsum faulted and dropped the ball. Thus far he'd successfully blocked out all untoward thoughts about the inappropriateness of the woman's advances. Thankfully, her child still lay unconscious on its sickbed beside her. Although surely this still didn't mean they possessed free licence to do whatever they pleased? Without warning, anyone might turn up and demand to know what was going on. They were, after all, in the middle of a busy casualty unit, and the sounds of people constantly coming and going had continued unabated throughout.

To be honest, it was the woman's stupid doll that gave him the biggest problem. For he hadn't fully registered what was taking place, when she first grabbed hold of him with the bedraggled-looking puppet.

"What's a Dolly Do-Gooder anyway?" he thought to himself miserably, as he struggled to decide whether he could bring himself to ejaculate all over the Looby Loo cloth look-alike.

As a novelty sex item, Ipsum concluded dollies of any kind fell well short of the mark. It didn't help on top of it all the woman meanwhile half-sang and half-hummed the same inane rhyme to herself over and over again as she worked away on him:

"Do you know the nuthin' man, the nuthin' man, the nuthin' man? Do you know the nuthin' man, he lives on dreary lane?"

He decided to fake his own orgasm. A heavy grunt and a thrust or two of his hips later and he was done. For extra effect, he dug his fingers into the woman's upper arm. She appeared pleased and seemed unaware of the complete absence of seminal fluid within his noisy show of release.

"There you are," she observed beamingly, removing the hateful puppet from her hand, "Dolly Do-Gooder says you're good to go, sir!"

Waiting for her to finish saluting him, Ipsum in horror realised too late he'd been duped. The woman was never somebody's mother. It was all fake. None of it was real. He watched in disbelief as she then threw the crumpled hand puppet into a laundry hamper beside the far wall.

Incredibly, her sick child was apparently merely a prop, too, because the woman shortly thereafter pulled out a large suitcase from under the bed and set about casually packing "her daughter" inside it. Now he looked more closely, it was obvious to him the child was in actual fact a fairly unconvincing wooden mannequin. Yet earlier on he could have sworn he'd caught the suspicious little brat checking him out through her half-closed eyes. For a terrifying moment, he lost complete sense of his place in the space-time continuum.

"I shouldn't worry, lovie," said the woman calmly, before closing the suitcase and securing its latches. "It's not like anybody's judging you, least of all me. After all, one man's Hamartia is another man's cheap harlot, wouldn't you say?"

"Excuse me, what did you just say?" asked Ipsum caught between thoughts.

"What, one man's mafia is another man's cheese market?"

"Whoa, that's way too cryptic for me," he said with genuine dismay. "I'm sorry, I must have misheard you the first time."

"I admit it loses something in translation from the original Italian. Here, take this. Hopefully it will help clear up any questions you still might have."

She took a glossy single-sided fact sheet from the folder she held tucked under her arm and passed it to him. While the woman further busied herself with getting ready to leave, Ipsum read aloud what he'd been given:

You've Been Done by a Dolly Do-Gooder!

What you need to know:

The Dolly Do-Gooders' Project is a non-profit community-based health care initiative funded by an international private foundation committed to promoting safe-sex practices and good mental hygiene throughout not only Penetralia but also the rest of the world. By providing its professional services out of key pre-existing medical health care facilities, the Foundation seeks to offer a wider section of the public access to its humanitarian undertakings than might ordinarily benefit from such a scheme.

All Dolly Do-Gooders are highly trained physical therapists and are bound by the following six-point code of conduct:

  1. Doctors, nurses, interns, orderlies, cleaners and/or admin clerks (or, indeed, hospital staff of any type) are without exception to be considered completely off-limits within a Dolly Do-Gooder's scope of activities. Truth be told, the vast majority of medicos are inveterate fuckmeisters anyway and best left alone to carry out their "important" daily tasks unmolested whenever possible.

  2. All liaisons are to be kept strictly casual in nature, i.e. follow-up encounters between Dolly Do-Gooders and their clients are totally frowned upon within the organisation and are therefore to be avoided at all costs. It should be made clear to all parties involved before commencement that the Dolly Do-Gooders Scheme is neither a dating service nor an escort agency.

  3. The sexual acts performed by a Dolly Do-Gooder must never transgress what would commonly pass for moral decency within a country's adult population. Consequently, hand-jobs over head-jobs are to be seen as the order of the day. Where necessary, however, specialty fetishes can be accommodated, but only on the receipt of two weeks written notice prior to the proposed engagement. Fondling and some of the less overt forms of frotteurism, for instance, are therefore perfectly acceptable in those cases were written approval has been previously sought and obtained.

  4. In line with established triage practices, a Dolly Do-Gooder is required to assess the risk status of each and every one of her clients before commencing a physical therapy session. Which is to say, each individual must be seen to solely in order of the severity of his dysfunction. There is no place for a "first come, first served" approach within a Dolly Do-Gooder's professional duties. If anything, the opposite should apply at all times, as expressed in the Dolly Do-Gooder's dictum: first served, first come.

  5. At no point are legitimate "patients" to be co-opted as participants within Dolly Do-Gooder therapy sessions. Coma victims and severe head trauma cases present a definite "no-go zone" for this very reason, as the term "consenting adult" clearly precludes the clinically brain dead etc. Thus, even when engaging in covert sexual romps it always proves better to be safe than sorry. On the odd occasion a client does lose consciousness or flat-lines during a session a Dolly Do-Gooder should rely on her native smarts to avoid any ugly scenes or confrontations occurring between herself and her client's grieving spouse/de-facto/life partner or extended family members more generally.

  6. Under absolutely no circumstances should a Dolly Do-Gooder accept either monetary payment or any other kind of financial reward for services rendered. It is a core understanding within the scheme that a Dolly Do-Gooder's unique talent for providing satisfaction to the disaffected masses should be seen not so much as prostitution but as substitution. By providing an outlet for pent-up natural urges not typically available to the ordinary man-in-the-street, Dolly Do-Gooders are encouraged to view themselves as serving a higher calling rather than seeing themselves as simply glorified call girls. Remember: To most men, the exchange of money is all that distinguishes time spent with a common whore against time spent with a wife, mistress or girlfriend.

As he finished reading out the code of conduct, the woman stretched over and whipped the laminated fact sheet away from him.

"But I don't get it," he said falteringly. "Who's the actual Dolly Do-Gooder here, you or the soggy sockdolager in the hamper?"

"Well, how smart are ya, Eggeth?" taunted the woman sarcastically. "What does it matter? Can't you see this all goes a whole lot deeper than the stupid little puppet show I just performed on you? For a start, after today, your details will be placed in a national register and you'll be exposed to absolutely everyone else in the organisation."

"What organisation?"

"You mean she never told you?" asked the woman incredulously. "Oh, this is bad. I mean, if nothing else, it's got entrapment written all over it."

"Who's she?"

"Who do you think?"

"I don't know. Who, Sister Frou Frou?"

"Don't try and be cute, it doesn't suit you."

"Who, then, the Lady of Shallot? Or is it Omertà, and you're not allowed to say? Oh, please, give me a fucking break!"

As was its wont, Ipsum's mobile decided to ring at this the most inopportune of times.

"Answer it," urged the agitated woman. "I've got another client to see anyway, and I've really got to go. Are you going to be all right?"

She hoisted her suitcase under her arm and bustled past him.

"I think I'll live," replied Ipsum flatly, retrieving his phone from his pocket and flipping it open.

"It's me: Verity," said the tinny voice coming from the handset.

"What do you want?" he asked warily.

"Mortimer's gone crazy — he's taken to eating Archie's dog biscuits again. I thought I ought to warn you, he's says he going to find you and make you pay for what you did."

"I'm sort of in the middle of something here," he said, clumsily dressing himself with his free hand. "Can this wait, at all?"

"I also wanted to let you know I caught up with Julia earlier..."

"Julia?" he repeated blankly.

"Your ex-fiancée? I met with her for coffee this morning...she told me some things about you leaving her weird messages and a whole bunch of other scary sicko, stalkerish stuff."

"Yeah, right," he scoffed. "Come on. How-smart-are-ya, Eggeth/Ha-mart-i-a's leggeth."

"You've lost me...hey, are you still there?"

"Holy Shit. It's too monstrous for words. But I finally get it," mumbled Ipsum feebly, before dropping his mobile to the tiled floor, where it immediately broke neatly in two.

Years later, he would look back at this moment as being the exact point at which his mind first curdled. But for now, he was simply aware his thoughts had solidified into unworkable lumps of indigestible matter. He felt his lungs collapse in on themselves as he fought to draw even the smallest scrap of breathe to no avail. And, for a full two or three minutes, he knew what it was like to exist in a vacuum. He stood alone in his despair. All the while, the sickening realisation remained: the Warrior Women of Waldsterben (the WWW) had won. Their Mistress-in-exile had triumphed. Ipsum felt the skin peeling off inside his brain, as he was beset with a paralysing sense of doom that seeped into the very marrow of his bones.

"What does it all mean, though?" he asked himself frantically, sifting through the muddle of grievous suspicions and bewildering fears filling his head. "Dean Obgyn, Bonnie, A Whole Lotta Lotte, Nurses Tiddlypush and Blatherskite, Madame Fourchette (his childhood piano teacher), Dolly Do-Gooder and Julia/Julius, they must have all been in on it together from the very beginning. They had to have been. And Hamartia? Sweet angel-toed Hamartia. Surely, not she too? Yet, of course, why not she as well?"

No doubt, they were all probably somewhere else in the building pissing themselves laughing at his expense. And why shouldn't they have their fun? After all, he was the enemy of everything they stood for. For he was the complete antithesis of what they saw as representing a model human being within their utopian world vision. But he knew it was not just because he lacked a vagina they hated him so. It was clear to him that, more than anything, he was also being punished for his past actions too. He'd sealed his fate when he scorned the mother of his unborn child all that time ago.

It didn't matter whether the child his crazed neighbour had claimed to be carrying was later proved to be merely imaginary or not. By denying his paternity, Ipsum had committed the unforgivable and heinous sin of calling a woman a liar to her face. There was no saving him. The sisterhood would see to that. He felt very afraid and vulnerable in a way he'd never experienced before.

So fully convinced was he suddenly of the reality of a worldwide female conspiracy, at any second, he literally expected to see Margot the Pansexual Commando herself come crashing down from out of the roof cavity in a shower of ceiling plaster. Shortly whereafter, as the worst day of his life reached its climax, he would then be given the kiss of death by the beret-wearing elite forces' killer, as she doled out her own unique brand of justice, Waldsterben-style.

Succumbing to his growing sense of panic, he fled the room he was in and began flinging aside the curtains of the other examination booths nearby. They were all empty. In fact, the whole place was bizarrely deserted. There was not another single soul to be found anywhere.

Similarly there were no furnishings or fixtures whatsoever anywhere either.

In his confusion, he stumbled blindly towards where he believed Nurse Tiddlypush had first asked him to wait. But instead he only succeeded in getting himself horribly lost.

There was nothing right about what was going on. He'd personally seen and talked to members of the medical staff not more than ten minutes ago. Yet now it seemed he'd never been in the Casualty Unit at all. The entire thing had been a charade. Apparently, there were absolutely no limits to how far those who persecuted him were willing to go to see him suffer.

It exhausted him just thinking about the scope of the plot being hatched against him. His mind simply couldn't encompass all the intricacies involved in such a plan. The sheer enormity of the undertaking loomed as a truly frightening vision. And it had all been directed towards the sole end of bringing him to this point.

The prospect of such dedication and care being devoted to such a monumental task unnerved him no end. He didn't feel worthy of the special attention his case had evidently warranted in the eyes of the hate squad assigned to him. His name alone topped the WWW Hit List and he was being made to pay. BIG TIME! That much appeared obvious.

In his fragile state, it took an extra few seconds for him to decipher the meaning of the announcement coming over the hospital's internal PA system.

"Dr Sutcliffe to Carphology — we have a code 911," said the coolly-detached female voice above his head. "Repeat: Dr Sutcliffe to Carphology."

Meanwhile, the machine monitoring his heartbeat began to beep alarmingly. Only then did Ipsum become consciously aware of the bulky piece of medical hardware he'd been dutifully wheeling around with him everywhere he went. He tore at the two wires connected to the sensors on his chest, but this only caused the monitor to start beeping more loudly.

In frustration, he kicked over both the machine and the trolley it was perched on. Immediately after which, he jammed his fingers in his ears and ran for the emergency exit, reciting a tongue-twister recalled from his childhood as loud as he could:

"Awfully ordinary Audrey...brutally bossy Bessie...crazily contrary Connie...dreadfully dreary Deidre...easily enraged Edna..."

To be sure, Ipsum had always hated birthdays and tended to view his own with the same sort of fondness he might an anniversary sickness or recurrent malaise that struck at the exact same time each year. However, this particular birthday was already proving to be far more of a trial than all of his other previous ones combined and then some. This one day in particular really did take the cake.

"...morally measly Mary..."

Reaching the end of his wits, Ipsum ran through the exit doors at full speed, and as he did so he knew — experiment or no experiment — his old life was over and there would be no going back to it ever again.
2. Albedo — The Persistent Fool

"Well, it's a marvellous night for a moondance ..." — Van Morrison

As he burst forth into the autumn sunshine outside, Ipsum remembered how to breathe. He remembered what it felt like to simply draw in great, big lungfuls of air and breathe. And while so doing, he remembered what it was like to breathe freely and naturally again. A comforting repetitiveness resided in the rise and fall of his chest. All the while, a fuzzy, diffuse wash of golden sunlight engulfed him and he squinted as his eyes adjusted to the new level of brightness. Far off, he heard birds twittering in the treetops down by the lake, where they were congregating in large numbers in their afternoon roosts, waiting for the lengthening day to draw to a close.

For forty-five minutes or so, he strolled around in a daze, not knowing what to make of the events he'd recently been caught up in. It all struck him as a bit confusing, really. If he were to be honest with himself he had to admit something truly extraordinary had just transpired. For although he didn't fully comprehend what exactly had changed within himself, there was absolutely no mistaking the symptoms — he felt happy. Well, happier at least than he could recall feeling at any other time in the last fifteen years or so.

As far as he could gather, the difference in him was that he finally had a degree of certainty in his life. Because if nothing else, Ipsum now knew who to blame for the downward spiral his life had suddenly fallen into. The experiment, his career, his personal relationships, they'd all been deliberately sabotaged without a shadow of a doubt. Of this much he could be sure. And this unshakeable surety filled him with a purpose and resolve he previously lacked. Yes, he might have had the resources of an entire worldwide, evil lesbian-army pitted against him, but he would survive. If nothing else, his will to prevail had since galvanised his crushed spirit in a way only someone who has been truly left for dead can fully comprehend or appreciate.

For all these reasons, there existed a profoundly revelatory quality to the unbridled elation he enjoyed as he traipsed down the hospital's long sloping lawns. He realised he'd totally got out of the habit of being okay with things. On a cellular level almost, he'd ceased to believe there was any kind of an upside to his existence. Whereas now, now he felt positively abuzz with positive vibrations. In fact, he couldn't have felt more alive and full of enthusiasm. It was as if he'd slipped into a fantasy world of his own invention. A fantasy world in which he pictured himself climbing aboard a giant rainbow-coloured double-decker bus, stuffed full of young radicals, come to take him over the horizon to an idyllic, psychedelic wonderland beyond space and time.

True to form, he did also worry slightly about whether or not he'd recently eaten something suspect. In effect, he knew there were limits to how much euphoria the average person could expect to feel without the presence of an underlying bacterial agent being implicated. Sure enough, there were such things as natural highs, but then equally there were also gastro-induced deliriums as well. And Ipsum had more than just cause to be wary of the latter.

A few years back, having eaten a whole bag of bad packaged figs, he'd spent the entire night conversing with the balloon-headed, cartoon party-people (the "Duncie", or Don't See, Folk) who inhabited the cornices of his bedroom ceiling. He remembered laughing himself silly as he'd watched the good-humoured hi-jinx the animated ceiling revellers had got up to. At the time, he really thought he might have lost his mind. And so, since then, he remained a little uneasy whenever beset with any sort of sudden attack of unrestrained mirth or inexplicable hilarity.

Meanwhile, he had meandered down towards the water's edge so as to follow the shoreline back in the direction of the city centre. Before long, he came to a small wooden footbridge and stopped to watch as a pair of swans, flanked by their sooty-faced baby cygnets, nibbled pondweed amongst the rushes. The small inlet they swam around in was littered with empty drink containers and discarded cigarette butts. Some idiot's shoe lay embedded in the muddy bank. Even so, the proud family of swans enjoyed their blissful lot regardless, radiating a calm serenity as they glided to and fro. And Ipsum believed, left to himself, he could have watched the feeding birds for hours.

But it was not to be, because next thing, as if almost on cue, a class of amateur oil-painters came clattering over the footbridge, weighed down with their easels and palettes and folio-sized art pads. Ipsum drew off politely to the water's edge to let them pass.

"Disgusting!" exclaimed the tight-lipped teacher leading the group, as she marched by.

Ipsum thought at first she must have been referring to the filthy state of the swans' habitat. He agreed, it was dreadful. And he was just on the verge of lamenting the appalling condition of the waterway himself, when the teacher silenced him with a withering look of contempt.

"Someone ought to call the authorities," she proclaimed haughtily, snorting with disapproval.

In dismay, Ipsum looked about his person to see what the woman's problem with him might be. He didn't have to look far. In all the excitement, he'd left the hospital without putting his shirt back on. He was similarly bereft of both his jacket and tie. Not at any stage had he registered his embarrassing state of undress, and the shock of suddenly discovering himself to be half naked sent him into a panic. As a final ditch effort at maintaining his dignity, he shouted out to the quickly departing art class to stop and listen to him.

"It's all right, I'm a trained Pilates instructor," he explained agitatedly. "I really don't have a drug problem or anything, honest. I'm just a normal guy looking to keep fit, seriously. Check out the flexibility."

He tried to lift his left leg up to his head but his right knee buckled under the strain, forcing him to stagger back into a nearby willow tree. Getting the sense his ruse had failed to impress, Ipsum turned and sprinted off over the bridge and up into the park instead. He'd not been aware before how cold he was, but as he ran he noticed his nipples were standing erect like two hard, little rubber bullets. His exposed chest had a bright pink glow to it, and he wondered — not that he had any idea what they were — if he might not get chilblains. He decided it probably pretty unlikely, given it was only early autumn; however, being over-cautious about his physical health represented one of the major mainstays of his psychological makeup and therefore fuelled a great majority of his internal dialogues.

Either way, he felt it just as likely he would trip and fall if he didn't concentrate on the uneven ground beneath him. And running was helping to keep his naked limbs and torso warm, anyhow.

Exuberant from the oxygen-depletion caused by the forced pace with which he ran, Ipsum screamed "Happy Halloween" at the other park-goers he encountered along the way. It seemed appropriate somehow. And he sincerely believed if he continued to display just the right amount of bonhomie and carefree abandon as he approached them, the majority of the people he crossed paths with would dismiss his strange state of undress as a harmless prank.

Unfortunately, the fill-in manager at the Sudsy Malone's carwash proved less than understanding when Ipsum later turned up to reclaim his car, sans shirt, sans jacket and — more importantly — sans wallet. The fedora-wearing "king-pin" of the gangster-themed franchise was clearly not in the mood for harmless pranks.

Even when Ipsum tried to insist he'd been the victim of a root canal procedure gone horribly wrong, the teenage extortionist insisted on being paid with either cash or major credit card. In despair, Ipsum finally surrendered his wristwatch as security and promised to return the next day with the outstanding $6.95 he still owed. The 24-carat Swiss timepiece he handed over had been a gift from his parents and was claimed to be water resistant up to a depth of several hundred metres. Bar while showering, though, Ipsum had never had the opportunity to test the claim. Without a second thought, the barely pubescent manager chucked the hand-forged watch into a box under the counter and had gone back to flicking through his stamp-collecting digest.

"You know philately will get you nowhere," Ipsum had quipped jokily. "Although if you lick the back of enough manky old stamps you might just get yourself a fleeting glimpse of the Akashic records, I suppose."

"Huh, right, that's funny," replied the youth, waving him away. "The keys are in it."

Once in possession of his car again, Ipsum dug out his gym bag from the boot and pulled out a change of clothes. His workout gear smelt musty sure, but at least he was fully clothed again. He'd decided to visit his brother.

Thankfully his brother wasn't one to be offended by such things as the wearing of unlaundered garments. Truth be told, over the years, his brother had elevated the crusty practice of underwear recycling to the level of a virtual science. By his own admission, his policy regarding washday consisted of a strictly "no stain, no gain" approach. Put bluntly, a metrosexual he was not.

Given a choice, Ipsum would have resisted the urge to visit his brother altogether, but he quite simply had nowhere else to go. So out of necessity rather than any real familial affection he now drove off in the direction of his brother Esau's flat.

As he steered through the waves upon waves of homeward-bound traffic, Ipsum occupied himself with trying to nut out what he should do with the boxes of stuff he sat squeezed in amongst. There were personal papers and the odd memento here and there, obviously, but the greater proportion of the contents of the boxes could just as easily be dumped.

On reflection, he decided Verity and Mortimer had probably done him a great service by gathering all his junk together in a way so perfectly convenient for his offloading it wholesale. He'd already thrown a bunch of his effects from the boot into the skip out the back of the carwash. For by his own estimation, he wasn't going to be in desperate need of matching lava lamps or his ivory backgammon set any time real soon.

Stuck at traffic lights again, he quickly offloaded his entire music collection onto a bemused windscreen-washing guy who had offered to clean his spotless front windshield free of charge. The other man's embarrassment as he received the armful of back-catalogue postpunk classics and slacker-pop compilations was truly pitiful to witness.

Only as Ipsum drove away did he realise the man most likely had neither a house nor even a stereo with which to enjoy the pile of CDs he'd been lumbered. He could always pawn them, Ipsum supposed, but he would doubtlessly be accused of stealing them should he try. Seriously, there really was no helping some people, he decided, before quickly winding his window up and accelerating off.

Just to be different, he thereafter spent the rest of the trip blowing kisses at his fellow motorists. He'd found an old Polaroid camera mixed in with his things, and it was this he used to capture the facial responses of the other drivers he passed — his favourite picture being of a long-bearded bikie he caught in the act of blowing him a kiss back. It cracked him up. But soon afterwards he ran out of film and became scared the hog-riding Neanderthal might not have been merely play-acting with him.

Thinking better for it, Ipsum turned off onto a side road and resolved to tone it all down it a bit. After all, there existed a limit to just how much social unrest he felt prepared to instigate in any one day.

A short distance later, he came within sight of his brother's block of flats. He parked in the visitors' area and took a few moments to regroup himself. The day so far had been pretty hectic, crazy even. He inspected his face in the rear vision mirror, searching for obvious signs of fatigue and stress. There were none. At a stretch, he looked like he might legitimately be dressed for a workout session at the gym. Esau knew he liked to keep fit. And hopefully, he wouldn't think anything of his health-obsessed younger brother turning up wearing sweat pants and trainers.

Having settled on this cover story, Ipsum next found himself reminded of a conversation he'd been part of, a few weeks back, with some of the other guys at his health club. It'd started out as more of an impromptu forum than a genuine conversation — the central topic of which being the most unusual place any one of them had successfully completed sex with a stranger in.

Of course, the claims made within the group of men ranged from the somewhat offbeat right through to the plainly impossible. There were the usual out-of-outdoors locations, including: up a tree; on a chairlift; in a shark tank; and while riding a merry-go-round.

Then had come the decidedly more public exploits, such as: on a revolving airport carousel; in a sluggish bank queue; astride a mechanised rodeo bull; and under the glass catwalk at the city's annual Fashion Week opening parade. However, many of the reported conquests didn't stand up to the even slightest scrutiny; for instance, one of their number spoke of having to be resuscitated after knowingly "doing the deed" in a burning house.

Not to be outdone, another thereafter bragged he'd once got lucky in the middle of a thunderstorm while lying wrapped in a sheet of tinfoil at the base of an enormous lightening rod.

Anyway, towards the end of their discussion, one of the more talked about members of the gym had walked by and weighed in with his own two-cents' worth on the subject. His name was Malcolm Kent, and he was a morbidly obese IT consultant with delusions of candour and an ever-present wheeze.

"What are you miserable pissabeds crapping on about? Sex? Oh, fuck me, Roman," he'd exclaimed pompously, "I can't get enough of the old sticky dickie stuff. Don't get me wrong, I don't ever want to do it again myself. It's such a damn awful stinky, sweaty business, hey? But I could watch young black bucks ramming it to those honeys on cable with their sweet shaved little snatches until well after the second coming of Christ. Are you knob polishers hearing me, right?"

The room had fallen completely silent. Oblivious to the stir he'd created, Malcolm then waddled off to the showers, humming a beer jingle. No one knew quite what to say. The inappropriateness of his circuit-room confessional had them all stunned.

First off, in many ways, Malcolm stood out as something of a legend around the gym. He was like an institution almost. And, therefore, no one had the balls to actually question his lack of social propriety. By thirty, he'd already turned himself into a self-made multimillionaire. During the past three years alone, his privately-owned company, Outré Renegade Business IT (ORBIT), had twice won the nation's highest industry award for service excellence. And the one year in which his company didn't win, Malcolm went on to expose how there'd been a glitch in the award council's online voting system.

His achievements, therefore, commanded a certain degree of respect and deference, if not outright awe from the other health club members, many of whom were young corporate types as eager to work on their personal networks as they were their abs when in attendance.

Certainly, as far as outré renegades went, Malcolm Kent modelled himself as being very much "out there". He knew intimately about the virtual oracle status he'd been afforded by his peers and traded on it shamelessly. Without a doubt, his extreme gaucheness grew out of the constant flattery and barefaced fawning he attracted wherever he went.

He did have his share of detractors, too, to be fair. For example, there existed a running joke amongst his critics that, being the size of a small planet himself, and therefore subject to the same sort of intergalactic forces, Malcolm had thereupon named his company in honour of the heavy arc he followed every fifteen minutes or so between his computer and the fridge.

Ultimately, the obscenely rich IT guru deserved whatever flak he got, especially as so how much of what he said and did so easily lent itself to public ridicule. For his own amusement, Ipsum himself had a while back gone so far as inventing a joke name for the roly-poly bigot. No real reason existed as to why he should have done so, but he'd gone ahead and done it anyway.

To his mind, he just felt the name Cuthbert Splodge suited Malcolm so much better than the one he'd been christened with. Consequently, whenever others spoke of Malcolm Kent, Ipsum mentally-substituted the name Cuthbert Splodge. It all had to do with the play on Cuthbert and Custard, he supposed. Custard Splodge — he liked how it sounded. The name had a silly, onomatopoeic feel about it; splodge being, after all, Ipsum believed, the sound a custard would make if it could walk:

Splodge, splodge, splodge went custard-bellied Mr Cuthbert Splodge as he trudged off to the showers, his terry-towelling loincloth bundled up around his enormously pendulous ball sack...fludge blucket, fludge blucket, fludge blucket.

Really, the biggest beef people generally had with Malcolm had to do with why he bothered going to the gym at all. It wasn't as if he ever used any of the equipment there. He readily admitted he preferred to "sit on the sidelines" and watch others run their treadmill marathons rather than actually "joining in with the common herd" as he put it. And the only iron he regularly pumped was the one he used to wrinkle out the creases in his enormous jumbo-sized tracksuit pants. The staff had long ago given up trying to help the unrepentant lard-arse drop his excessive amount of body fat. So really the sole form of exercise Malcolm took, when present, consisted of simply bobbing around in the elite fitness centre's saltwater warm-down pool.

It was after just such a one of these protracted soaking sessions that Malcolm had offered up his unique take on all matters carnal. Wheezing out a parting "excuse my French", he'd left Ipsum and his companions staring at each other incredulously, as he disappeared off to the change rooms.

"Yukkity fucking yuk, that fat porker totally creeps me out," a guy called Ari had managed to blurt out finally.

He constituted one half of a set of identical twins referred to by all as the Anagnorisis Brothers, or, just as often, the Best-to-ignore-us-suss Brothers. They were terrible tattletales, the pair of them. In fact, the two muscle-bound look-alikes were considered the undisputed kings of scuttlebutt amongst their peers.

When it came to spreading rumours about the scandals and private misdemeanours of their fellow gym members, the brothers could best be described as unflaggingly tireless. And by sheer coincidence, on that particular day, Aristotle (Ari) Anagnorisis just happened to have heard a fresh scrap of gossip concerning Malcolm and the club's newly-acquired hyperbaric chamber.

"So, you know these chambers are normally used by divers suffering from decompression sickness?" he had asked those around him leadingly.

"The bends," clarified his brother Onomastikos (Cossie), owing to the irritating habit he and Ari shared of telling their stories in tandem.

"Well, these chambers," added Ari, "can also speed up recovery rates in sports-related injuries."

"Things like joint and ligament damage, this sort of shit," said Cossie.

"So, get this, the very day the machine is installed," jeered Ari, barely able to contain his obvious scorn, "Tassie (you know, Tacenda, the work-experience chick from reception) comes down at closing time to start locking up and finds his lordship..."

"You know...Malcolm...none other than the outré renegade himself," blurted out Cossie uncontrollably.

"...finds," continued Ari, "his lordship, Moby Dick, stuck, wedged arse-first in the airtight rubber seal lining the entry hatch into the special miracle chamber."

"Oh, but that's not all," enthused Cossie, "Cop this."

"The fat prick is naked, except for a pair of UV goggles..."

"...and his trademark pink Stetson perched atop of his big fat bald noggin. It seems he mistook the bloody thing for a tanning booth. If you can believe it."

"Yep, that's what he reckons, apparently. Fat fuck!"

"Either way, he's since fallen asleep while waiting to be rescued, you see?"

"'What to do?' thinks Tassie meanwhile."

"Now remember — this is allegedly a true story," stressed Cosi.

"Yeah, that's right," confirmed Ari, "remember I'm not making any of this up. So, Tassie is busy trying to work out what to do when..."

"When Malcolm wakes up, doesn't he?"

"OK, so what's the little miss to do? Does she pretend to have suddenly gone blind, fake an epileptic fit or simply try and wing it?"

"Just imagine it! Poor girl."

"'How can I be of assistance today, Mr Kent?' enquires Tassie, like a seasoned pro."

"You can get me the 'f' out of this bloody stupid contraption for a start," wheezed Cossie for full effect, seamlessly assuming the role of the outré renegade. "Huh, well? Get to it!"

"Now, Tassie's no dummy, okay?" explained Ari in turn. "So she gets to thinking about how she can prise Malcolm's more-than-ample arse out of the entry hatch."

"And then it hits her: turn the bloody thing on," chirped Cossie.

"Sure, by turning the machine on, she reckons she can create a differential in the air pressure between the inside of the chamber and where she's standing outside. And all being well, she just might be able to shoot Malcolm out of the hatch, like the fat fool is some kind of great big cork stuck in a bottle of champagne."

At the time, Ipsum couldn't help thinking a marked degree of "bad" science underlay Ari's explanation of what happened next. The trouble for Ipsum, though, lay in the fact he could also never remember which of the two twins periodically suffered from homicidal 'roid rages. For as well as being the source of the greater part of whatever malicious gossip currently did the rounds of the gym on any given day, the Anagnorisis brother's were also notorious steroid abusers.

It was they themselves who had dubbed the exclusive men's health club they belonged to the Sub-Q Ranch, based on how many of the other members, just like them, shot up subcutaneous injections of performance-enhancing drugs. In addition, the thick-necked bovine appearance of both Ari and Cossie made the name they'd coined such a perfect fit. The bottom line being that Ipsum had absolutely no wish to upset either one of them by challenging the facts of their elaborate story and so kept his misgivings to himself.

"A champagne cork, you say?" he'd asked guilelessly, on behalf of those listening, while indicating his keenness for the brother's to keep going.

"Couldn't be easier," Cossie beamed back at him.

"Right," said Ari, unconsciously flexing his pectoral muscles. "So, ten minutes after Tassie flicks the switch, Malcolm starts hee-hawing like a donkey who knows he's about to be gelded. And, a few more minutes later after that, his whole head starts to swell up and goes an awful purple colour. All the blood from his gigantic fat arse is being squeezed into his brain, isn't it? But because he suddenly can't see through his blood-engorged cheeks and eyelids anymore, he starts slapping at his face like a demented elephant seal. Soon after which, he breaks into song — almost as if he were suffering from the initial ill-effects of a sort of nitrogen narcosis maybe, yeah? The song he sings (at the top of his voice, mind you) is, 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning' from the musical Oklahoma! Young Tassie is beside herself. She wants to go and get help, but she's genuinely worried the fat toad's head might explode while she's gone. In a moment of madness, she chooses to up the ante and sets the controls for the heart of the sun. She winds the pressure valve all the way open and hopes for the best. Meanwhile, Malcolm stops serenading the poor girl and now starts thrashing around frantically, like some sort of freaking apoplectic orang-utan peaking on bad acid."

"OMYGODGETMETHEFUCKINGHELLOUTTAHEREIMDYINNGGG!" screamed Cossie, once again assuming the voice of the absent outré renegade.

"'What!?' screams Tassie back at him," said Ari, sniggering to himself. "'I've got no idea what you're saying.'"

"MYFUCKINBUNGHOLESABOUTTOBURSTYOUDIRTYSTUPIDCOW!!!"

"Now, I shouldn't laugh, really," began Ari more soberly, "but this is when our fat friend passes out. Tassie thinks she's killed him. So she goes over to see if she can administer the kiss of life to him or whatever. When lo and behold, the filthy fucker chooses just then to come hurtling out of the entry hatch, landing fair and square straight on top of her, pinning Tassie to the ground. Malcolm's totally KOed, I tell you, and so the poor girl has to wait it out under the grotesque beast's contorted mass of fetid belly fat till morning."

"When the two of them are found the next day," Cossi elaborated, "no one can make any sense of what's happened. Tassie is a total nervous wreck. And Malcolm still has a huge angry, bright-red ring around his flabby, great big fat hippopotamus arse, doesn't he? The owners think maybe the sick little minx has keelhauled Malcolm in the night. I mean, who's to say what kind of twisted shit she might be into. The fact she's weeping and pulling at her clothes, though, as they take her into the office, seems to suggest she feels like the injured party in all this. Malcolm, bless him, can't remember a thing. Although you won't believe what he says next about the whole ghastly ordeal! Go on, try and guess. I bet you can't!"

"'I've never slept better," giggled Cossie, unable to contain himself.

"...never slept better. What a heartless cunt, huh? The girl herself has since had to receive all sorts of intensive trauma counselling. She's been having night terrors and shit; and as far as I know, they're still keeping her medicated up to the eyeballs. And, look, from what I've been told, she's not likely to be ever coming back. God's sake, I ask you..."

As Ipsum now left his car and climbed the external staircase up towards his brother's second-storey flat, he sensed a certain despondency in how he felt. He couldn't begin to conceive what it would be like if he and Esau shared the kind of relationship that existed between the two Anagnorisis twins.

He and Esau seldom spoke with each other, and on the odd occasion they did it usually resulted in his brother asking him for money. Their "mutual arrangement of estrangement", therefore, came out of no great feeling of animosity on either of their parts but rather instead indicated the length of time Esau's pride would typically force him to hold out before he again felt compelled to ask for another handout.

In the meantime the day had long since shifted further into evening. Street games and office work were done with, and children and their weary parents had retreated inside their homes. A few elderly residents of the rent-assisted housing complex Esau lived in still shuffled around eager for news from the outside world. Everywhere dinners were being prepared and baths being run. Some place a off to the left a dog barked joyously on being reunited with its returning master.

Soon the sky would turn fully black and the nearby traffic noise would subside to become an intermittent hiss of passing freight trucks and after-hours commuters. Everything had wound down to a more relaxed pace. And throughout the honeycomb network of flats people had started turning on their lights and drawing their curtains.

On reaching the landing outside his brother's door, Ipsum took a moment to steady himself. He desperately tried to remember why he'd decided to go there at all. Shockingly, he couldn't recall when he'd even last visited his brother.

Only then did it suddenly occur to him Esau might well have moved. There were certainly no signs of anyone being at home, and his brother rarely ventured out after dark. He rarely ventured out full stop. It made no difference to him: day or night, Esau was typically one for staying holed up inside his flat unless either extreme hunger or some severe personal calamity happened to drive him out into the big bad city.

Shrugging off his feelings of uncertainty, Ipsum knocked loudly on the door in front of him. He strained to hear movement within. It was hopeless. Esau was obviously not there. Waiting a moment or two longer, Ipsum knocked once more before turning and leaving. As he set off, he consoled himself with the knowledge he'd at least been spared the indignity of having to ask his brother for help.

Equally, he'd also been spared from having to endure the nauseating stench that characteristically permeated any space in which Esau regularly slept and/or ate. Sometimes Ipsum speculated as to whether his brother might not just be nothing more than a massive sweat-secreting sweat gland on legs, so offensive was his pungently-acrid body odour. Worse again still, the rank-smelling perennial loser's subsistence diet of baked beans and tinned ham in no way served to improve matters either.

Ipsum shook his head in despair. Clearly, absence didn't always make the heart grow fonder. For the life of him, he had no idea what must have been going through his mind when he decided to pay his brother an unexpected visit in the first place.

He got halfway to the stairs before he heard the door open behind him.

"Oh, it's only you," sighed Esau, standing hunched outside the front of his unlit flat.

Ipsum had to stop himself from immediately bolting down the stairs and running off into the night.

"Just to let you know, I haven't got you anything," said Esau impassively. "I mean, for your birthday. If that's why you're here."

Without another word, he left the door wide open and walked back inside.

"Yeah," mocked Ipsum, "I've come here on the remote chance, after thirty-three years, you've finally gone and got me something you actually paid for in a shop. You — the same person — who for my thirteenth birthday gave me a miniature, shrunk-down version of Rodin's Thinker sculptured entirely out of your own ear wax."

Esau chuckled.

"I'd forgotten about that," he smirked, as he disappeared further into the gloom.

"Well, I hadn't," mumbled Ipsum to himself. "Neither that, nor the mega-fauna fossil skeleton you fashioned out of toe jam for me the following year."

Still in two minds about staying, he hesitated at the threshold of his brother's decrepit bed-sit. Merely seeing Esau again caused a gut-wrenching uneasiness to well up within him. He couldn't help feeling judgemental always; he truly didn't want to, and yet he found it practically impossible not to. When all was said and done, it wasn't enough for him to simply dismiss his brother as being one of life's unfortunates. That struck him as too easy. Because, really, it had to be said Esau himself had played a key role in turning his life into the unmitigated disaster it had become.

"Hey," Ipsum called out after him, in exasperation, "what's with the whole lights out thing? I can't bloody see where I'm going."

Esau stopped moving. He went completely quiet and waited until Ipsum drew level with him.

"I assume you've heard or read a little bit — here and there — about the worldwide depletion of economic resources, yeah?" he asked bitingly, "So I'm conserving energy, all right?"

He finished talking and pushed Ipsum down onto an impossibly saggy couch positioned somewhere near the middle of the room.

"Okay, answered Ipsum calmly, "so do you perhaps, then, have a candle or a kerosene lantern, or the like, so we can at least see each other?"

"There," said Esau impatiently, walking over and opening the fridge door, "are you happy now. I suppose, next thing, you'll probably want a fucking birthday cake too."

A weak yellow glow from the halogen globe at the back of the fridge seeped out into the tiny hovel.

"Come on, surely you're sucking more power now than if you simply switched on one of the lights," Ipsum railed angrily. "This is absurd!"

"Of course. Christ, what an idiot! I should have known straight away who's put you up to this," spat Esau, "It's Our Dear Old Mumpsimus, isn't it? She's got you over here to do a bit of spying on her behalf, hasn't she?"

Our Dear Old Mumpsimus and the Paterfamilias were the two titles by which Esau dismissively referred to their shared parents. Long ago, he'd explained to Ipsum he liked the name Mumpsimus, in particular, because it had a cutesy, playful sound to it, which was completely at odds with the type of person their no-nonsense mother liked to think of herself as being.

In Esau's world view, their mother represented, at best, some kind of insufferable archetypal meddler; at worst, he thought of her as being the Devil's Dam incarnate.

By the same token, Esau found it just as hilarious his nickname for their father suggested the "poor bastard" actually enjoyed some sort of exalted position of authority within the family, which he clearly didn't.

Ultimately, Ipsum had his own issues regarding their parents and so therefore didn't care enough, either way, to have previously challenged the appropriateness of Esau's personalised terms of derision for the pair of old fogeys.

To his mind, their parents merely represented living embodiments of a horribly flawed conceptual arrangement: i.e., their marriage existed as a sham; and they were thereby forced to live lives that were terribly fraudulent. That was as far as his thoughts on the matter went.

By contrast, Esau resented the very existence of their mother and father. He couldn't stand either one of them and remained entirely distrustful of their motives for wishing to maintain contact in any capacity. On principle, he boycotted anything to do with such things as family Christmases and the like, believing nothing but ill could ever, Ever, EVER! come of "just hangin' with the folks".

As for Ipsum, he simply found it refreshing to be around someone who habitually suffered from a far more seriously intense form of paranoia than his own.

"I promise you," he assured his brother solemnly, "I come as a free agent, acting wholly independently of the parental units. So now, for fuck's sake, can you please TURN ON A LIGHT?!"

Esau glared at him through the fug.

"ALL RIGHT!" he yelled in return.

He reached over and flicked on a light switch halfway up the wall beside him.

"Satisfied?" asked Esau irritably. "God, you always were such a prissy little fanny."

Able to see at last, Ipsum took in the less than salubrious surroundings that Esau, apparently, for want of a better word, called home. It made for a far from pretty sight, as the combined kitchen/eatery-cum-bedroom was literally lined with wall-to-wall filth. Discarded food scraps lay mixed in with sprawling piles of computer componentry and general household debris. Not a spare inch of space remained free of either one of Esau's unwashed socks or some other abandoned article of his filthy clothing.

Incredibly, even the ceiling above them screamed out to be cleaned, being covered as it was in massive mould blooms. The whole place looked to be in dire need of fumigating, if not outright condemning.

His brother's incurable hoarding compulsion lay at the heart of the problem. He never gladly parted with anything, hence why he'd been able to accumulate enough earwax to model Ipsum a birthday present out of the vile stuff. And as part of this compulsion, Esau also felt uncontrollably driven to acquire more and more things which to hoard.

For as long as Ipsum could remember, it seemed to him as though Esau had suffered from some sort of garbage-gathering mania. Even back when they were still young, Esau spent every free moment of his time dragging home stuff like busted old typewriters and broken curling wands back from the rubbish tip, just so he could keep adding to the stash of useless items he kept hidden underneath his bed.

Pathetically, no matter how loudly Ipsum or others entreated him to stop, Esau simply couldn't help himself when it came to curbing his unhealthy acquisitional urges. Even now he was largely housebound, Esau had found a way of still satisfying his insatiable scavenging impulse by trawling the Internet for whatever might next catch his eye.

And so what to Ipsum's mind looked like a horrible mess of cast-off crap amounted in his brother's eyes to a prized collection of rare personal treasures, consisting currently of a selection of the following items: a milk crate full of barely-used (ex-military) Soviet Nixie numerical display valves; an unassembled old punch-card computer mainframe system; a rusty belt-sander motor; a couple of 8mm reel-to-reel projectors (with working splicer); an assortment of diecast car hood ornaments, and a fully functional set of moveable type pieces raided from an abandoned printing press.

Ipsum had heard it all before. Esau would always have some profound reason as to why each and every single bit of junk in his flat could never be thrown out.

"You know, they don't make these anymore," he would say defensively, holding up an antique tea strainer as if it were some holy relic from the time of the crusades.

It was all bullshit. For while Esau saw his home as being an Aladdin's cave of recovered technological wonders and marvels, Ipsum only saw the lair of a deranged madman or potential Unabomber-type.

The mould on the ceiling perfectly symbolised the whole delusional world his brother had built up around himself. It had nothing to do with any war Esau might say he was waging against the corporate world and built-in obsolescence or whatever. The fact remained that he was simply too damn lazy to get up there and start scrubbing off the fungus spores where they were spawning. End of story.

His brother lived the life of an unrepentant slob and would forever more. A stinking fruitcake, with his dishevelled locks of long unkempt hair and wild beard, he had the appearance of a man who has absolutely altogether given up caring about appearances, or such matters as cleanliness and personal hygiene more generally. Nothing noble drove what he did, certainly not by any standard Ipsum cared to think about anyhow.

"I remember you saying you were finished having anything to do with me the last time you were here," said Esau with a recriminative tone, slumping down to sit by his computer.

"And yet here I am," Ipsum responded dryly.

"So get to it. What's brought you all the way here to see me?"

"Surely, a guy can reach out to his brother, without having to explain why he might feel the need to do so?"

"If you're after the money you lent me, you can forget it," growled Esau crossly. "It's long gone."

"Shit," Ipsum scoffed. "I wrote that money off the moment it left my hand. Really, you need to forget about it. I mean, bar flogging off a few million strands of your moulting beard hair to the world's biggest manufacturer of merkins, I can't possibly imagine what it would take for you to be able to pay me back everything — plus interest — I've lent you these past twenty years or so."

"You always were a snug little cunt, weren't you," said Esau, taunting him.

"I'm guessing you actually meant to say smug...oh, I get it. It's a play on my merkin reference. Anyhow, how would you feel about me staying the night?"

"What?"

"My flatmates kicked me out and I need somewhere to sleep."

"So book into a bloody hotel. I hear the Waldorf Astoria's quite the place, don't you know?"

"I'm destitute."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"No, you're right," replied Ipsum. "I'm fucking with you."

"Why don't you just tell me what is it you're really here for?"

"All right, I need to ask you a favour."

"Here we go," groaned Esau.

"It's my car," explained Ipsum carefully, "You see, I've got some tax problems to do with my gross income having reached a certain threshold. It's all a bit complicated. Don't ask, but through one of Mortimer's contacts I recently made a packet on some dodgy 'importacus exportacus' scam."

"It figures."

"Yeah, okay, so I need to dump some assets real fast. My accountant has already mentioned something about doing jail time, if I don't get this thing sorted out straight away."

"What's the favour?" asked Esau.

"I want you to take my car off my hands. As you can understand, I've got to get rid of it for a song. And therefore, we'll just say you paid a nominal amount for it. What do you think?"

"Is any of this even legal?"

"Ok, there's a whole bunch of red tape and change of ownership malarkey to deal with. But sure, why not? Have you got a problem with the idea?"

"Well, for a start, what if I don't even want your poxy twat-mobile?"

"Think of it as a peace offering."

"A piece of what? Charity?"

"If by charity you mean that which is an all-encompassing love for the Divine expressed in selfless words and deeds enacted solely for the benefit of others, then, no. Rather instead, this would be a way of evening up the score between us."

"You know I can't drive," complained Esau tetchily.

"So get lessons. The bloody thing's an automatic. How hard could it be for you to learn? After all, you're the one who is supposed to be the fucking genius in the family, aren't you?"

Esau shrugged his shoulders.

"What were you again? State-wide King of the Cuisenaire, five years running, have I got it right?" asked Ipsum rousingly.

Even after years apart, he knew just how to win his brother over.

"I would have retained the title for a sixth year, as well, but I got too cocky," lamented Esau, with barely concealed superbity. "I should have known in Cuisenaire circles originality breeds contempt. Notwithstanding such, I still argue I was robbed."

"Come on, big fella, you gave it your best shot. And there's no shame in being lumped in with the rest of the also-rans every so often, hey, is there?"

"I guess not," admitted Esau sheepishly.

Ipsum decided to steer the conversation in a new direction.

"So, anyway, how's your magnum opus coming along?" he asked, as though the question had only just then suddenly formulated itself in his mind.

"I've suffered a few setbacks recently, to be honest," confessed Esau.

"Oh, really?" asked Ipsum, feigning disbelief.

By his estimation, his brother's entire life thus far had consisted of nothing other than one long series of setbacks. The guilt of repeated failure sat literally etched into every line and crease of his face.

Esau usually called them shamanic declines, though — his setbacks. And so therefore it surprised Ipsum to hear him willingly adopt the term their mother typically referred to his mini-breakdowns by.

"Meta-Intervallic Sound Easel Compositional Humbug, or what?" exclaimed Ipsum impatiently. "I can never remember what it is. Your miserly chords thing, how does it go?"

"Meta-Intervallic Sound Easel Recording and Imaginal Compositional Hardware or Regulated Digital Soundscapes (MISERICHORDS [sic], for short)," said Esau, spelling out the acronym by force of habit.

"Fuck, that's crazy. A sound weasel. Have you ever thought of maybe changing it to Meta-Intervallic Sound Esau Recording and Imaginal Compositional blah blah blah...?"

"You know, fingers were made before forks," replied Esau, throwing out his middle digit towards Ipsum.

"Or, hey, what about this: Meta-Italic Soul Esau Reclining and Imagining Conversational Harboursider? Invent that and you might find you've got someone around here to actually talk to occasionally. It would kind of be like dialoguing with yourself, if your other self happened to be a computer program, that is. Brilliant!"

Esau clearly didn't appreciate Ipsum's dismissive take on his pet project. And in a show of impotent rage, he slammed shut the door of the overhead cupboard situated directly above where he sat. Whereupon which the flimsy plywood door immediately flung back open, spilling the cupboards contents along with an open packet of rice puff cereal all over his brother and the floor.

From what Ipsum had been able to glean previously, Esau's sound easel was (in laymen terms) a computer-generated modelling program whereby music could be "hung" — or visually arranged — within 3-dimensional space according to specific user-defined protocols. Yet whenever Ipsum tried to actually pin Esau down as to what practical use there might be in the real world for such a thing, his brother would become increasingly agitated in his responses. He would start off raving excitedly about microtonal scales, the dark secrets of Pythagorean mystery cults and the underlying paradoxes abounding within string theory more generally. It all sounded impossibly stupid. Not least of which because there didn't ever seem to be any physical evidence or product as such to back up his brother's farfetched claims.

Music essentially by definition, in Ipsum's broad understanding of it, was typically considered one of the hearing arts. One experienced it with one's ears. Yet for Esau, apparently, his experience of it encompassed other multi-sensory dimensions. He described himself as being a synaesthete, and said he saw recognisable patterns of shapes and colours whenever he heard music being played.

Most operas, he stated authoritatively, radiated a bright orange colour when performed; whereas, allegedly, for instance, most jazz pieces struck him as having a spiky purplish hue about them. Interestingly, he reported he found it hard to differentiate any sort of colour shift at all in contemporary pop songs and so had concluded that therein existed proof enough such material didn't constitute "real" music at all — certainly, not in the "truly cosmic sense" anyhow.

The final absurdity, of course, lay in the fact there existed no easy method of either validating or indeed disproving the efficacy of Esau's so-called MISERICHORDS software. By his own admission, only other synaesthetes could ever actually "view" the soundscapes he created with his wacky program. And, even then, any such person would have to be synaesthestically-aligned along the same lines Esau himself was. If, for instance, the other synaesthete in question characteristically experienced music as a tactile or olfactory affair, he or she would be just as unresponsive to the mind-bending, grand tonal vistas Esau's sound easel reputedly produced as any other normal person would be.

Ipsum roughly likened the whole idea to the age-old conundrum to do with dog whistles and how it's impossible for a human being to test one of them simply by blowing into it. For, seemingly, in much the same way only a dog is able to hear the high-pitched frequencies emitted by such a whistle, only someone of the same "breed" as Esau was theoretically able to perceive what he himself saw within his yet-to-be-patented MISERICHORDS masterpieces.

"Homo Maximus, I believe, is the right term to use when referring to the most fully actuated individuals of our kind," he had declared, many years prior, in the course of explaining his special gift.

"Maximum homo, hmm," Ipsum remembered musing aloud at the time. "I shouldn't think otherwise. No, it sounds spot on, really."

In the end, it remained largely academic whether Esau could be believed or not. To him, the great worth of his undertaking stood in its potential benefit for future generations; if not his own. His harebrained scheme to establish musical composition as one of the new visual arts had literally consumed him. Ipsum knew all this, but even so he couldn't resist giving his brother's sacred cow a good slap on the rump. It was almost compulsive on his part to do so.

Ultimately the saddest thing about Esau was that he hadn't always presented as the pathetic, reclusive figure he did now. And Ipsum could still recall a time before the beatings had begun in earnest, when Esau had not yet fallen so low. In fact, during his first two years at high school his brother had proved quite popular with the female student body. It seemed a lifetime ago, but Ipsum had actually envied the type of attention Esau had once garnered as a teenager.

Unbelievably, Esau had achieved full penetrative sex by the age of thirteen. He'd even shown Ipsum a pair of the willing girl's pink cotton panties to prove it. Ipsum remembered being overawed.

The girl Esau had screwed was a couple of forms higher and already sixteen. She had a full woman's body, including knockout breasts. Not surprisingly, Esau became an instant legend amongst his peers at Wonder Valley High School — quite aside from his pre-existing status as their ex-King of Cuisenaire.

Even Ipsum himself had managed to bask in the reflected glory of his older brother's conquest for at least six months. And although he didn't get any sort of real action because of it, he did gain respect amongst the cooler kids in his class more widely.

Encouraged by his sudden high-profile level of popularity, Esau had thereafter methodically set about banging as many of the girls in the senior forms as he felt he could reasonably get away with. It was almost sickening to see the cold-hearted deliberateness with which he proceeded to fulfil what constitutes every teenage boy's greatest fantasy.

In his spare time, he would actually go through old yearbooks circling potential candidates for his further consideration from amongst the female ranks. Disgustingly, he even confessed to Ipsum he'd only slept with one particular girl called Sandy Zamarkis because her surname started with a zed. He said he liked the idea of knowing he'd fucked his way right through the upper forms from A to Z (from Abercrombie to Zamarkis). When he said it, he couldn't help laughing at his own lack of scruples. Looking back, Ipsum had to admit, despite everything, Esau had for a while been something of a god to him.

By all accounts, his brother's irresistible allure had had to do with his extreme hairiness. He first grew facial fuzz when most of the other boys his age still lacked decent pubic hair. By the eighth grade, he wore a roguish goatee and rakish sideburns to school, after the style of a Hollywood pirate. And the girls simply went mad for it. He didn't even have to speak, and they would throw themselves at him.

In a sea of pimply-faced boys, Esau stood out as a man amongst mere youths. He knew no rival. And in the beard growth stakes, he reigned supreme for the majority of his days in junior high school.

Tragically for Esau, though, his time at the top proved short-lived, as puberty slowly caught up with the rest of his male classmates. Before long, they too had started sporting their own early attempts at 70s porn moustaches and underlip soul patches. Esau soon lost his unique appeal as the manliest-looking representative of their number.

In time, the girls at his school went off him completely and quit vying with each other to catch his eye. Yet worse for him than that were the powerful feelings of resentment he'd stirred up in the other boys, as he'd blithely cherry-picked his choice of sexual partners right under their acne-strewn noses. Their revenge proved to be both swift and brutal to the extreme.

The ringleader behind the organised beatings Esau thenceforth received was a kid named Duncan O'Dowfart. Everyone called him Dowie, for short, and he had the build and countenance of a pit bull. He also prided himself on being a master sadist, with a special talent for inciting the very worst sorts of mob violence. No act of barbarism or thuggery was beneath him. Even the teachers feared his attacks of blind rage. By graduation, Dunkin' Dowie claimed he'd personally shoved more than a thousand heads into the pans of the boys' toilets. And few dared to openly dispute it.

His real speciality, however, was something known as the pole treatment. Marshalling his gang of thugs, he would randomly select a victim from the younger grades for said special treatment. The luckless boy so picked would thereupon be bodily carried out of the playground and off down the hill to the school's netball courts. Proudly re-christened The Knackery by Dowie and his mates, the fenced in ball-sports courts were where the real fun began. With a mighty heave-ho, the captive boy would then next have his legs unceremoniously spread apart before being run full-tilt into the nearest netball post, scrotum first.

The day Ipsum saw his own brother get what the evil bully Dowie termed "the full treatment", even now, stood out as one of the most harrowing of his life. After a solid 10 minutes or so of pole work, Dowie had gone on to suggest it might be more of a laugh for he and the others to try and see how long it would take to kick a hole into the side of Esau's head. Of course, knowing how to successfully phrase the suggestion that such-and-such a person deserved a good head-kicking is not necessarily something that comes easily for everybody. Unfortunately, for Esau, it happened to be the very thing at which Duncan O'Dowfart excelled most.

"Hey fellas, what do you say we try and get this fucking sissy's ears off before the class bell sounds?" he'd sung out to his mates ebulliently. "Who's up for some soccer practice, eh? Cop this, Hee Haw! Let's play ping the ears off the donkey!"

It had been truly horrific to witness what happened next. And, to be perfectly honest, Ipsum had no idea how his brother survived the ensuing attack. Cruellest of all, though, had to be the name Dowie had spontaneously come up with for Esau on the spot: Hee Haw. For this was the name which his brother would be stuck with for ever after.

On his eventual release from hospital, Esau was immediately met with the hateful braying sound the other kids now made whenever they saw him approaching. And before long, Esau was forced to spend his lunch hours safely holed up in the school library away from the taunts and physical mistreatment his fellow classmates doled out to him. In short, his status as a playground pariah was cemented from that first brutal day of his fall from grace ever onwards, and nothing Esau did or said improved his lot either.

The girls who'd previously made themselves available to his brother on an ad-hoc basis now shunned him completely. He couldn't so much "cop a feel" anymore, as he could breathe underwater. The Panty Express had reached the end of the line, and there was no return ticket to be had for either love or money.

As an illustration of the fickle nature of Esau's many female admirers, the actions of his second-to-last girlfriend, Justie McCombe, spoke loudest. Bustie Justie, as she liked to be called, had loved nothing better than to ride Esau bareback on the black leather couch nestled in her father's den. She was a nut for it, reputedly. Esau said she had rubbed him raw, on more than one occasion, bucking up and down like a mad thing in heat while her parents watched television in the next room. He'd even stopped seeing her because of it. He said it totally creeped him out.

Justie had declared herself heartbroken. That is, until the day Dowie and his boys had set to work upon Esau in their infamous Knackery. On that fateful day, Justie had stood — front and centre — throughout the entire gut-wrenchingly spectacle, egging on Esau's tormentors to greater feats of schoolyard brutality.

"You always have to somehow wind up being the centre of attention, don't you!" she had spat at her one-time boyfriend, crouching directly over Esau's face, as he lay bleeding and semi-conscious against the wire nets surrounding the netball courts.

Ipsum still believed Justie might have even gone so far as urinating on Esau's head, but for the belated arrival of a member of the teaching staff — Miss Profigliano, the substitute Italian teacher. His brother's last-bar-none girlfriend, Constance Constable, had been the one to alert the fill-in teacher as to Esau's plight.

But it wasn't as if Constance herself had acted out of any sort of undying loyalty in this respect. As ultimately she went on to date (and eventually, much later on, then marry) Duncan O'Dowfart before Esau's bones had so much as set.

It was while in hospital that first time that Esau had confided to his brother what had been going through his mind as he lay there being kicked to death.

"I heard the most amazing music," he'd whispered conspiratorially. "Just the most ground-quaking, pants-wetting, fuck-me-in-the-heart chords of desolation and redemption, thrilling through the marrow and source of my very essence. And all the time, I knew it was more than mere musical notes I heard. The music itself represented a kind of interface with a parallel reality to which I found myself being annexed, one split atom after another. I heard shapes and colours and spatial relations, all in one great symphony. But more than this, I actually communicated with the living entities residing in the silences between the individual tones of the immense Krakatoan fugue."

This still stood out to Ipsum as the moment when he knew his brother would never be the same again. A part of him had died in the Knackery, and no amount of physiotherapy or physical rehabilitation training had the power to make him whole again.

The day he went back to school, three months later, Esau shaved every single scrap of hair off of his body. His chest, legs, arms, face, head and pubic region were all completely clean-shaven. When pressed, he said it was his way of declaring himself unfit for consideration as a member of the human race. He wished to set himself apart as an untouchable. And by doing so, he hoped to become invisible to the other students.

In retrospect, his ploy could only be judged to have ultimately worked against him. At graduation, the caption under Esau's photo in the school year book cruelly read: Most likely to never be seen or heard from again. Fingers crossed!

"We're agreed, then, you'll take the car," insisted Ipsum abruptly, coming back to the earlier conversation and rising to leave.

"The Silver Bird is yours to do with as you please," replied Esau gruffly. "But I've got to tell you, I still think you should consider doing the jail time instead."

"Nah, I'm too pretty for prison," joked Ipsum. "Seriously, though, I've left some of my stuff on the back seat. They're just a few odds and ends I've got nowhere to store at the moment. Use anything you might find useful, like my collection of complimentary toiletries bags, for instance. Spruce yourself up a bit, hey? Who knows, with a new set of wheels and a shower, you might get yourself a bit of action, huh?"

"So remind me what this sustained assassination of my character is all in aid of again?" asked Esau.

"Look, think of the car as recompense on my part for all the times I denied you were my brother. OK?"

"What, you really believe I give a toss about all that, 'No, I am Squirtacus' bullshit!" Esau jeered, wanking away into the air off-handedly. "Hell, I don't. I don't need anybody else's pity."

"Jesus, don't come the whole poor-little-orphan-Esau routine with me. Just shut up and take the keys. All right? End of story."

Ipsum threw his keys at his brother and walked to the front door in one sweeping movement. He turned the deadlock and hesitated as he waited for Esau to speak.

"You always were a sucker for making grand gestures," observed his brother wryly. "Well, whatever."

"I've got to get going," said Ipsum, swinging the door open.

"Hey," Esau called out after him, as he departed. "If you do happen to see Our Dear Old Mumpsimus, tell her I need some new socks and vests for winter."

On his descent back to the car park, Ipsum wondered whether he'd actually be able to go through with leaving behind his belovéd set of wheels. Considering the ongoing sacrifices he'd made to purchase the privately-imported sports car, he expected to feel, at the very least, a pang of remorse as he surrendered his keys to his brother.

Instead he'd felt nothing other than a certain emptiness throughout. In all honesty, the car had already served its purpose long ago. The money he was forced to scrimp and save so as to it buy it had given him an excuse for dealing cheaply with those around him for years. Whip-arounds at the office for leaving colleagues and get-well bouquets for sick/dying friends were all shrugged off with equal impunity, once he explained the repayment schedule he was fixed to.

Ironically, now the stupid thing was finally paid off, he felt nothing towards it. It was just a car. It didn't define him.

Being noticed while driving around in it had been nice, sure, conceded Ipsum to himself, as he crossed over to the footpath on the far side of the road running past his brother's flats. And yet here he was going it alone. He would leave the car where he'd parked it. Au revoir! Non! Je ne regrette rien...

On a whim, he'd resolved to try and cover the fifteen or so kilometres to his parents' house on foot. Dressed as he was for the gym, he thought he might as well get some exercise into the bargain.

He broke into a slow jog and looked up at the stars hanging in the clear night sky. He couldn't name any of the constellations by name, although he wished he could at that particular moment. It was cool outside and the easy rhythm he'd fallen into kept him warm. He couldn't remember the last time he'd run out-of-doors, let alone in the dark.

It seemed weird to him suddenly there were so many things he never did ordinarily. His life was so regimented he typically never had the time to do anything as spontaneous or unorthodox as to go out running in the dark night air. Simply by choosing to eschew using either his car or public transport he'd rediscovered the joy to be had in inhabiting a young, fit body free of infirmities or disease.

More importantly, he now also felt liberated and cleansed of the unpleasant sense of guilt he always came away with after visiting his brother.

He'd run for close on half an hour, when at last his legs began to tire. Then his breathing became more laboured, too, and Ipsum decided to slow down to a casual stroll.

He judged himself to be about two-thirds of the way along a winding suburban street and only had a rough idea which direction he needed to go next. Truth be told, he had more interest in spying though the windows of the houses packed tightly together in the dark on either side than he did in finding the shortest route possible to his parents.

The heavy shadows of the night gave him a privileged position to watch and observe the goings-on of the households nestled around him unnoticed. He didn't believe it to be a voyeuristic thing. If anything, it had more to do with his relishing what crazy and mixed-up creatures human beings really were when seen from the outside looking in.

A small distance later, he happened upon a group of young kids jumping their razor-scooters off the gutter into the road. He supposed they were probably eight or nine years old and wondered what they were still doing out on a school night. For a split second, he considered crossing over to the other side of the street but decided against it.

As he drew nearer, he heard a few of the children sniggering amongst themselves. One of them then turned and spat onto the footpath in front of where Ipsum walked. Unfazed, he continued to walk in silence and ignored their laughable attempts at comic-book villainy. Let them have their before-baths victory, he thought to himself wryly. And with that, he pressed onward, lengthening his stride as he passed the group of boys leaning on their scooters by the curb. He sensed he stood little chance of getting off quite so easily, however.

"Oi, Grandpa," yelled one of the boys now behind him, "get the fuck off our street!"

Ipsum turned. He knew he shouldn't have done it but did so anyway. What an impudent little shit, he marvelled incredulously. The sheer inanity of the insult had caught him off guard. There was a total lack of logic within the vile child's ageist taunt. Here was Ipsum in the prime of his life. At most, he was old enough to be the boy's father; certainly, not his grandfather. It wasn't like he carried a walking stick or anything, either. The kid might as well have called him a water buffalo or a lawn chair it was so patently stupid.

"Snail Bite, tell the faggot to give us his money or we'll bash him," piped up another one of the gang of short-arsed delinquents.

Any actual threat to Ipsum's personal safety remained minimal; even so he couldn't help flinching on hearing the violent taunt.

"Hey, bitch," growled the boy named Snail Bite next, menacingly, "I thought I told you to fuck off. This is our street. Pay up or cop it sweet!"

This time, the obvious leader of the belligerent scooter gang came over and pushed Ipsum in the stomach to emphasise his point.

"All right, all right, I don't want any trouble," chuckled Ipsum awkwardly. "Maybe we can settle this thing like adults, yeah? I tell you what, rather than me giving you any money, what would you say to my getting you all whacked up on drugs. How does that sound, huh?"

He saw the eyes of the boys light up around him.

"You see, I've got this standing prescription for some anti-recurrence psychotics and a whole bunch of other stuff, as well," Ipsum added offhandedly. "Mood modifiers, that kind of thing. You wash it all down with a couple of alcopops and you've got yourselves nicely fucked up. What sayest thou?"

"What's in it for you?" asked Snail Bite suspiciously.

"Let's call it safe passage," replied Ipsum glibly. "You escort me to the closest late-night chemist near here, and I'll repay you by helping you unscrew the childproof lids of your minds. Deal?"

"Fuckin' A," enthused the fledgling gangland killer.

With that, the small band of thugs fell in beside Ipsum, pushing their scooters before them. The boys were — each one of them — filled with the excitement of their big adventure. Their leader, Snail Bite, led the way with an easy air of authority, while the rest followed expectantly. And as they bustled and skipped happily along, the young ruffians could have passed for the most innocent little lambs in the world.

For his own part, Ipsum only had a vague memory of the shops they were leading him to. He could recall having gone there once with Esau on some crazy search for splicing tape, after midnight, one Sunday, years ago. Esau, he guessed, had probably been in the throes one of his shamanic declines or something.

Ipsum suspected he was only bothering to mess with Snail Bite and his gang because of his earlier reminiscences about his brother's schoolyard bullying. The mere act of remembering the brutal actions of Dunkin' "Dowie" O'Dowfart and his fellow Knights of the Knackery had evidently taken its toll on Ipsum's ability to simply live and let live.

His usually relaxed attitude towards childhood delinquency had since resolved into a much more militant mindset, he realised. Just at a time when he knew he would ultimately be better served thinking about his own survival, he was being distracted by thoughts of mere revenge instead. He couldn't help it. The task he'd set himself the night before was for him to become a stranger to his own normal way of thinking. And indeed the thoughts he now held in his mind were nothing if not strange.

Surrounded as he was by the raucous group of boys, Ipsum believed he no doubt looked like some kind of latter-day Fagan, with Snail Bite passing for a modern-day take on the Artful Dodger's character to boot. Given enough of a chance to bend them to his will, he wondered whether he could, in fact, recruit them to assist him, as he carried out his evil plan to subvert consensual reality wherever it flourished unabated.

Seriously, just how much antisocial ill will were the little monsters truly capable of? he asked himself idly. After all, who knew what they might become under a strict and constant regime of physical and mental dressing down? And if, as well, he were to actually supply them with the kind of drugs they were practically lining up for, how long would it be before they were willing to commit themselves fully to his sick anti-cause?

Ipsum faltered. Really, in fairness, the boys themselves weren't to blame for their vicious little personalities, he supposed. Because, from what he personally understood of the matter, bullies were not made — they were rather born to a life of giving wedgies and dead arms and the like. As, nine times out of ten, such kids as Snail Bite and his mates were simply the offspring of similarly sadistic and sociopathically-inclined individuals.

It had therefore been as good as encoded into each of the boys' genes that each one of them should eventually gravitate towards a life of street violence and petty larceny. A sorry truth which meant, bar the implementation of pre-genetic testing amongst all prospective parents, the "dickhead" gene was going to forever keep on popping up within the general population.

Most shocking of all to Ipsum was the horrific realisation Dunkin' Dowie could quite literally be the father of any one of the hateful gang of eight- and nine year olds jostling beside him. When he did the sums, it more than squared up, too. Snail Bite could so easily be the legitimate sprog of Duncan O'Dowfart and Connie Constable, Esau's last-ever love.

Ipsum searched little Dowie Jr's (aka Snail Bite, as he was known to his friends) face for any hint of obvious similarity with his father, Duncan's. Nothing struck him as immediately apparent. They did arguably both share a palpable meanness of purpose, though, which inclined Ipsum to think they must be related, after all. And so, to his mind, then, Dunkin' Dowie O'Dowfart and Snail Bite were thereafter, without question, father and son.

Immediately upon reaching this shocking conclusion, Ipsum experienced a huge sense of relief. The instant hatred he'd felt for the horrible little demon-seed became totally understandable. It was practically his personal duty to teach the cretinous street punk and his crew a lesson they'd never forget. Forcing a smile, he steeled himself for the dire comeuppance he planned to visit on the unsuspecting gang.

The after-hours chemist they arrived at soon afterwards sat wedged between an Asian grocery and a closed mixed-business. As they drew up in front of the shop, Snail Bite waved off the others and indicated he alone would accompany Ipsum inside. Stopping to pass his scooter over to a trusted member of his fraternity, he flashed a wicked grin at his high-spirited friends.

"Something tells me you lot are going to be out of your fucking trees, sooner than you can say juvenile detention center, five times real fast!" he shouted.

The other boys laughed appreciatively. Ipsum, meanwhile, pushed open the shop's glass front door and stepped into the flood of fluorescent light within. In a flash, Snail Bite rushed in beside him. The perverse child next reached out and grabbed onto Ipsum's hand before he could react.

Seconds later, the owner of the store caught sight of the two of them and addressed the pair together warmly.

"Gentleman, welcome," he boomed loudly. "What brings you two to Kozatchok's family pharmacy this evening?"

The chemist who welcomed them was a short, stocky man. He spoke with a heavy Russian accent and wore a flea-bitten Astrakhan hat atop of his perfectly round (and ruddy) head.

"It's my nephew," explained Ipsum, indicating Snail Bite, who had since pulled the hood of his jacket so tightly around his small, wizened face he could barely see. "The fact is the boy's goldfish has just died. And I was hoping you might have something to lift him out of the doldrums, as it were."

"Whatever could you have in mind?" asked the good-natured chemist quizzically.

"I don't know," replied Ipsum. "For starters, how about we get him straight onto a course of aripiprazole — some Abilify, in an oral form, for instance? A couple of 30mg capsules taken six times a day ought to do it. Or does this sound too light on to begin with?"

"A rogue bull elephant could be subdued with far less," answered the other man mildly. "But I think I know where you are coming from. You know, where I come from, we call this kind of thing the chemical lobotomy."

"Point taken," said Ipsum, acknowledging his obvious rashness. "Alternatively, have you anything perhaps that might, say, bring on an attack of amoebic dysentery or a case of terminal jock itch, even?"

"Not if I should not wish to lose my licence," said the chemist, stroking the ends of his impressive handlebar moustache with great aplomb.

"No, of course not," observed Ipsum wistfully.

Snail Bite shifted uneasily. Ipsum could tell the boy had begun to suspect he was being toyed with. And the game was almost up, therefore.

Ipsum knew he would have to come up with something fast, if he were to keep any sort of momentum going. Quite unexpectedly, it was the old Russian chemist who next took the initiative.

"So, what I can do for you, however," he offered, out of the blue, "is to let you have one of my own private preparations. Strictly, on the quiet, uh-huh?"

The slightly hunched-over man's shrewd eyes sparkled as he continued to speak.

"You see, back in my homeland, I make my own patent medicines — youth elixirs, health potions and such, eh? Like every other nut I am searching for the divine Alkahest, yes?"

The chemist tapped his forehead to signify his own incurable craziness.

"Some sort of universal panacea to cure all illness and suffering in the world? That sort of thing?" asked Ipsum naively.

"Oh, no. The cure for baldness, my friend! Hair rot treatments! This would make me a mountain of riches, believe me!"

Flinging his tattered wool cap to the ground, the chemist rubbed his bald pate with the tips of his fingers vigorously.

"I hate this skin hair I have! It is no good for the making of love with many women. I have my needs, dammit, I am a man!"

Snail Bite decided this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen or heard and began to laugh gleefully.

"My wife, Vorsila, she says, 'What does it matter? You are too old,'" ranted the irate chemist unperturbed. "'Who would sleep with you anyway, you old goat?' she asks me."

He pointed a single bony finger down towards the far end of the long dispensing counter he stood behind.

"This comes from she — she who, mind you, has a bear cub between her thighs, down there, it is so hairy, you know what I mean?"

Only at that moment did Ipsum realise the three of them where not alone in the shop. To his amazement, directly in line with where the peculiar old man had pointed, there sat a grandmotherly, babushka-doll type of woman. She wore a peasant-style neckerchief and a braided black shawl, offsetting the rest of the traditional garb of her native region. Her attention, thankfully, it seemed, was turned fully towards the tiny black-and-white television set she sat perched before.

"I mean, do you tell the woodpecker he is too old to peck the wood, now?" complained the chemist crankily. "Well, I ask you?"

"I guess not," conceded Ipsum diplomatically.

"No, you do not. I drink the Red Cuckoo wine — Piet-My-Vrou! Piet-My-Vrou! Piet-My-Vrou! — and my pants begin to dance. Hoop-la! Just so!"

The demented apothecary danced around like an organ grinder's monkey, his woollen cap in hand.

"Ivan Ivanovich, enough!" barked the man's wife from where she sat stony-faced. "You quit being the doorak."

"Sorry, my pet," apologised the contrite lunatic guiltily. "It won't happen again. I'm gonna be good. Trust me."

He meekly placed his hat back on top of his head and assumed a more professional air. Then, leaning forward, he whispered to Ipsum behind the back of his hand.

"I tell you something for free — because you seem like nice fellow. The difference between men and women is simple: man is collector. Let me explain. If a man has an ugly wife and sees a pretty girl he takes this new pretty girl for girlfriend — but he keeps ugly wife too. If he then sees another girl who catches his eye, he takes her too as girlfriend — but still keeps ugly wife and girlfriend number one. He sees a third pretty bird and she too becomes girlfriend — girlfriend number three. You see, he collects. But for women it is different. Married woman sees sexy man, bang!, she leaves husband, saying husband is no good bum. The secret being women wish to be collected and not have collection of their own. Simple truth, meaning, as men, we are expendable."

"Fascinating," whispered Ipsum back.

"Yes, it is both fascinating and certainly very frightening," replied the chemist, resuming his normal speaking voice. "So, can I now maybe get your nephew something from my private stock of medicinal tonics?"

"Sure, why not," said Ipsum, patting Snail Bite on the head parentally.

"A wise choice, sir, if you don't mind me saying so myself. Even the Great Paracelsus would have envied some of the results my concoctions have been known to produce. But you wait, please, and I will retrieve a few of my best draughts from out back momentarily."

The old man disappeared through a door into the strongroom behind him.

"This is totally bogus," hissed Snail Bite, as he spun around and slunk off into the cough mixture and aspirin aisle nearby.

Seeing that Ipsum was alone, the departed chemist's wife next chose to hobble over and strike up a conversation with him.

"Pay my husband no heed," she said, on getting to a few feet from where Ipsum stood. "It is all this cheap Internet Viagra business. It is a curse. It has affected his mind, I'm afraid. He has money on the brain, as they say, because of it."

"Oh, right. That's terrible," observed Ipsum sympathetically.

"As for you — you, too, are like the open book to Vorsila," said the woman, clucking her tongue. I watch you, and I tell straight away you have the bleeding arse–itis."

"Bleedingarseitis?" queried Ipsum, unsure he'd heard the term correctly.

"You have it bad. For some, it is the bleeding heart-itis. These are martyr-types. And a plague they are, too. Don't get me wrong. But for you, it is your arse which is always bleeding. You're always worrying about yourself, over and on top of every one else, yes?"

"I'm probably a little self-obsessed, I guess you could say. But who isn't, nowadays?"

"Own up to yourself, my son. You are every day putrid with fear of your small impending death. 'What's this fleck of blood doing in my stool,' you cry like a scared old woman, 'I'm dying!' Pathetic!"

"Who amongst us doesn't fear his or her own individual mortality?"

"Me, for one," boasted the wrinkled old crone.

"Honestly?"

"I am 108 years old, next Wednesday. True story. And I am none too scared."

"That must be a kind of record."

"I have lived a long time, I admit it. Ivan is my fourth husband, if you can believe it. No one else in our village would marry him; because of the baldness, you understand? But — euphemistically speaking — I still needed a man who could chop my firewood for me, and he has since lasted me through more winters than it is reasonable for any woman to expect. So here I am, stuck with the old fool."

"You say death doesn't scare you."

"Not a jot."

"How so?"

"Well, I hold a secret passed onto me by my mother. As is the way with these things, my mother was originally told the secret by her own mother, and so on it goes down the family line. And knowledge of the secret therefore comes from countless generations back."

"I gather if it's a secret you're probably not at liberty to tell me what it is," remarked Ipsum cagily.

"No, not at all. No, it's no problem for me to tell you. I see you look like nice boy."

"All right, then. What is this secret?"

"The secret to an extremely long and healthy life is this..." the old crone paused for effect. "The secret is pouring warm water into your ears each morning and night. One, however, must pour the water directly into one's ear canals or it won't work."

"Is that it?"

"That is plenty! What you are doing, in essence, is washing away the oily secretions that build up in there otherwise. Left there long enough, such stuff clogs up your brain and arteries and everything. This is the trouble with everyone these days — they are all walking around like waxwork dummies, with their heads filled with muck and filth. It is repulsive!"

"So, what, your basic ear bud wouldn't suffice?" thought Ipsum to himself incredulously.

"You may have just cracked the human genome there," he said out loud instead, as the sound of the chemist's approaching footsteps brought their little tête-à-tête to an abrupt end.

Snail Bite in the meantime continued stuffing his pockets full of family-sized packets of condoms across the way.

The returning chemist carried with him three glass pint bottles, none of which had any sign of a maker's name or label on them. He plonked the makeshift vials down on the dispensing counter unceremoniously.

"Voila!" he exclaimed grandly.

"The thing is," explained Ipsum guiltily, "I probably should have told you earlier, but I've lost my wallet and don't have any money on me. How would you feel about my writing you out an IOU for these?"

"How would you feel, if I should come around to your house and ask to sleep with your daughters?" rebuked the old man gruffly.

Ipsum felt momentarily taken aback by the man's lewd suggestion. The chemist's wife, on the other hand, didn't so much as bat an eyelid. Not for the first time that day Ipsum realised he would have to tread carefully.

"So that would be a no to your accepting some form of promissory note, then?" he asked warily.

"What, so I am not man enough to have sex with your daughters!" railed the Chemist loudly.

Snail Bite sniggered to himself gleefully somewhere off behind them.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you," apologised Ipsum.

"If you didn't mean to offend me, then you must want that I should make like your bitch and roll over, so you can fuck me the new arsehole!"

Ipsum ran his tongue across the back of his teeth.

"Excuse me, maybe we should just go," he said, still reeling from the other man's strangely violent outburst.

"No, no, stay, please stay," entreated the chemist insistently. "I am merely taking the mickey from you. Forgive me. I am uxorious old fool. To be honest, personally, I would take the IOU straight away, but my wife would never allow it usually. It is this account-keeping software she uses — it has no entry for IOU, exchange of livestock or whatever comes off back of falling truck. But I will tell you what I am going to do for you. In this case, I will make an exception. I like you. You are good man, hey? Here write me what you are wanting to be offering me."

He pushed a ballpoint pen and a blank prescription pad towards Ipsum.

"OK, are we sorted?" asked the chemist excitedly.

"Sure," replied Ipsum.

"First, then," began the old man apace, tapping the bottle closest to him, "we have here a preparation for how we send young men into space. It is — how you call it in English? — 'Sputnik Juice' or 'Rocket Fuel'."

He tipped a small amount of clear liquid from the bottle into a glass for Ipsum to try, who, on tasting a mouthful of the proffered drink, concluded that it was in actual fact 100% proof, pure tap water. And as if to confirm the accuracy of this assessment, the Russian winked at him slyly behind the back of his deeply wrinkled right hand. Ipsum coughed and spluttered on cue, to help create the illusion that he'd just swallowed a good stiff shot of alcohol.

Not missing a beat, the wily chemist then pushed forward the next bottle for Ipsum's consideration.

"This one I call 'Cremnitz White' or 'Mother's Milk', and it is guaranteed to put your inner problem child to rest permanently," he chuckled wickedly. "One swig, and your nephew will be sleeping with the angels."

The second bottle looked to be full of a cloudy concoction Ipsum guessed might well be a mixture of mineral turpentine and milk. It was either this or the toxic swill left over after a paintbrush covered in white high-gloss house paint had been rinsed out. Needless to say, he passed on the chance to sample the evil-looking concoction.

"Finally, I call this 'There's No Place Like Home Brew'," beamed the crafty chemist, pushing forward the third and final bottle. "I believe it needs no other introduction or recommendation. It stands on its own two feet, you will agree."

Ipsum settled for a quick sniff test, before declining to taste the warm russet-coloured fluid contained therein. He couldn't be sure, but the dark amber liquid sitting inside the bottle smelled suspiciously like it might be a freshly collected specimen of the hoary old goat's own urine.

"Now you must choose which one of these you will be getting for the young gentleman, if it pleases you," urged the chemist insistently.

Ipsum believed he might well have met his match in the crazed apothecary. He passed over the IOU he'd since scrawled onto the prescription pad.

"They all have their merits, I'm sure...but I am inclined, I must admit, towards 'Mother's Milk'...although, seriously, you couldn't actually let a child drink that stuff, could you?" asked Ipsum disbelievingly, pointing to the middle bottle. "Most kids would stand a better chance of survival if they drank some of the Reverend Jim Jones' special brand of cool aid than if they were to drink whatever it is you've got in there."

"Oh, no. You are too soft, sir!" bellowed the chemist. "It is not as if we are talking about something so simple as flogging a young lout back into line here. The hoodlums you arrived here with are a stone's throw away from ending up involved in a murder or the like. Then what, we should lock them up in prison and throw away the key? Maybe the parents will wake up to themselves, if they have to visit their little childrens in an oxygen tent in the ICU. Let me tell you a story, please. When my father first find me smoking the cigarette, he make me smoke his cigar till I vomit. When I vomit, he then make me eat the vomit and also eat another cigar. I thought he did this to me because he didn't love me. Not true. I do not smoke, and I am 106 years old — you do the sums."

"Gee, it sort of sounds to me a bit like child abuse by numbers," reflected Ipsum.

"You are forgetting I have also offered you a bottle filled with plain water. I give you the choice to do what you see fit. You brought the boy into my shop. What is it, then, you have in mind for him?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some simple purgatives or such like, maybe?

"Ha! This is just like putting a bandaid over cancer."

"Don't you fear there might be retribution on the part of the parents, at the very least?"

"Retribution? No. I have no reason for fear, when I have my good friend Kalashnikov's AK-47 always at hand. Vorsila, show him what I am talking about."

With deceptive ease, the (until then) unassuming old woman nimbly sprang to her feet while meanwhile brandishing a fully loaded example of the aforementioned assault rifle, it's safety off and its firing pin cocked and thereby ready to execute justice. Just where she produced the weapon from so quickly had Ipsum entirely stumped.

"This little puppy fires ten rounds per second and is deadly accurate over 300 metres. It is ideally suited to urban warfare and close quarter fighting. Right now, I could put a hole in your head the size of your fist, long before you could even cry out for your mama," she said with obvious admiration. "You know, the gun's designer has also now his own line of vodka. We are currently not approved stockists of it, however."

Ipsum recoiled instinctively. Armed citizenry existed as a largely foreign concept to him. He, for instance, had never fired a gun, let alone ever owned one — the mere sight of the gun's nuzzle pointing at his chest caused his legs to tremble uncontrollably. To add to his discomfort, the demented chemist had suddenly begun roaring loudly and stamping his foot next to his wife.

"But what is this! It will not do," raged the incensed man. "You judge I have the shit for brains, this is most certain."

"Sorry," said Ipsum with a conciliatory tone, piecing together meanwhile it had to be his IOU that had caused the chemist to erupt so violently. "Is a big screen TV no good? If you want, I can phone ahead and let my flatmates know you'll be coming by to collect it."

"Television is also like the lobotomy! I never watch any myself; it is my wife who is addict. She only watches it for the shampoo commercials, mind you, or so she would have me believe. 'You are bald in the head, Ivan,' she says to me. 'What could you know of beautiful, tangle-free curls?'"

"Idiot, let me see," insisted his wife, reaching over and grabbing the IOU while expertly swinging the assault rifle down over her back.

She held the note Ipsum had written up to the light and squinted intently.

"Forgive me for saying so, you bloody arsehole, but this looks more like a nervous breakdown than genuine authentic signature," she commented, as she laid his IOU out flat on the counter.

Turning to her husband, she then said, "I think this man is full of the phoney baloney bullshit, Ivan. Let me give him and his bleeding arse the bum's rush."

"Not so fast, Vorsila," replied the chemist resolutely. "I recognise straight away the young punk our friend brought in with him — he is the boy called Snail Bait. It is he and his gang who is always spray-painting graffiti all over the front of our shop. So now I get my own back. Payment or no payment, I don't care a fig!"

"Well, for a start, you old fool, it shows how little you know that you should think Snail Bait is a boy. Your little homo-boy is girl! Look over there and you will see she is right at this very moment stealing from our supply of cost-friendly DIY home pregnancy kits. What boy cares for these things, huh? Ask yourself that, Mr Ivan 'I-have-brain-in-my-butt' Kozatchok!"

"It's not true!" cried the chemist defiantly. "Snail Bait — he is boy! Homo-boy IS BOY!"

Nevertheless, Ipsum knew instantly the old woman was right. He should have picked it earlier. In fact, it struck him as something of a mystery as to why it had taken him so long to figure out what the hell was going on in the first place. The military-style firepower the old crone wielded should have been an absolute dead giveaway, obviously. And then there was the oppressive stamp of female authority he'd felt the moment he entered the Kozatchok family pharmacy. The wizened-faced Snail Bite had simply acted as bait to lure him into the vile and evil trap he'd fallen into — he understood it all too clearly now.

"FEMMe," he hissed archly, under his breath, as a familiar taste of aluminium washed over his tongue, "or FOLLYFOOT or FROLIC or whatever the FUCK!"

"HE IS GIRL!" yelled the old man's wife with a heavy-accented emphasis all of her own, slapping her husband over the back of his reddening bald head.

"Which one is girl?" asked the twenty-something-year-old guy who next thing pushed his way through the door at the front of the store.

"Sergei!" exclaimed the chemist's wife. "What, you too proud to visit us, except at undercover of night? Your father, he hardly recognises you even from photograph anymore. It's a bloody shame."

Sensing it might be her last chance to escape, Snail Bite, who had meanwhile been pretending to be oblivious to the stir she created, sprinted out the front entrance holding a bikini-wax kit under one arm and a moisturiser pack under the other.

"Hey!" shouted the crestfallen chemist. "Wait! Oh, shit!"

Panicking, he tried to wrestle the AK-47 from his wife, as he sought to stop the fleeing thief from exiting.

"Papa, don't be so bloody stupid!" cried his son, Sergei, sternly, rushing over and grabbing the gun by its barrel. "Why must I always be telling you this — we are not in the old country any more?!"

The old man relaxed his grip.

"Good," said Sergei calmly, switching to talk to his mother. "Mama, you put this back somewhere safe, okay? Me and papa need to talk about business."

"Pttf," spat the chemist's wife contemptuously. "I give birth to you when I am 85 years old, but what do I know of running business, huh?"

Coolly balancing the assault rifle across her shoulders, she shuffled away back to her corner perch.

"What the flippin' heck was that, Dad?" asked Sergei, once his mother had safely retreated.

"You no swear at me!" rankled the chemist, proudly puffing out his chest. "I am protecting my stock! Hair police or no hair police, I shoot the little buggers who think they can give me the five-finger discount. Fuck them!"

For some reason, Ipsum thought he heard the grumpy old curmudgeon say "heir police" when, in each instance, he had actually said "hair police". And this simple misunderstanding thereupon sent his mind off on a weird mental tangent, whereby he started thinking about elite direct-lineage law enforcement agencies and families of roving vigilante hit squads and the like. He beheld a momentary vision of a futuristic urban wasteland where "social illegimates" were left to die impaled on large steel spikes stationed at busy street corners. He guessed he was probably just sore Snail Bite had been able to blithely scamper off scot-free.

Whatever the case, a part of him couldn't help genuinely sympathising with the mad chemist's call for direct action. Basically, given the time over again, Ipsum would make damn sure to at least knee little Dowie Jr in the groin before telling him to, "Make sure and give this to your father for me!" That is, if Snail Bite happened to be a boy to begin with...

"Who's this joker?" asked Sergei, in due course, apparently perturbed by Ipsum's vacant stare.

"He is arsehole," sang out the chemist's wife from the far end of the counter. "But what do I know? He is bleeding arsehole all over the place. Pfft."

"He is my friend," said the chemist, making a great show of turning a deaf ear to his wife's rude outburst. "He has very kind hands, Sergei. Look what he give to me."

He patted Ipsum's IOU with loving care. Sighing, Sergei bent forward and snatched the piece of paper off his father.

"Is the TV full HD?" he asked cautiously.

"1080i," replied Ipsum, nodding.

"I think you and me need to step outside a minute."

"All right."

Sergei paused to inspect the three glass bottles arrayed before him on the dispensing counter. He took a quick sniff of the one furthest to his left.

"Ugh, God! What have I told you about pissing in bottles, Papa? Use the hand basin out back, if you really need to go. There's laws about these sorts of thing."

Grabbing Ipsum by the elbow, he then bustled him out of the shop.

"So, man, this IOU can't be for real. You're planning to just give away a 76″ flat screen TV for a couple of bottles of old man Kozatchok's pizzle water. Give me a break."

"It cost me about eight grand new," offered Ipsum helpfully.

"You must have kidney stones in your head, my son!"

Once outside in the crisp night air, Sergei became altogether much more animated. He slapped his thighs and scratched his chest and arms, as he jiggled around in the semi-darkness. So bad was the other man's ceaseless fidgeting, in fact, that Ipsum soon concluded he had to be suffering from some seriously powerful drug withdrawal.

The obvious contender for his drug of choice being ice. With the unlimited access to pseudo-ephedrine his father's shop would provide him, Sergei could even quite possibly run his own ice lab, decided Ipsum dispassionately.

"A nice little sideline," he said, thinking aloud.

"What?" asked Sergei impatiently.

"Nothing."

"So," began Sergei, spitting out the piece of fingernail he'd just chewed off the corner of his thumb. "First off, don't pay any attention to anything my old man might have told you in there. He's half-pissed on the Georgian red-cuckoo wine most of the time. He's always drinking it on the sly out in the backroom. You know, he probably told you he was 969 years old or some such shit. But he and my mother aren't either of them a day over eighty-six years old apiece. That and his constant 'the gulag is too good for you' proselytising can really get a schmuck down awful quick, believe me, I should know."

In a barrage of words, he next explained, quite coincidentally, he himself just happened to be, at that very moment, in the market for a large screen TV, as he and his mates were having a prawn- and-porn night the following Saturday. And, if he were to be believed, the very thought of being able to sit there with a bunch of his buddies watching some über-whore being serviced — in wide screen — front and back by a couple of guys hung like centaurs had him totally peaking.

That wasn't all. With unflagging enthusiasm, Sergei went on say he also had big ideas about selling the family business and opening a cocktail lounge on the other side of town. Apparently, his aim was to try and diversify before the next big shift in pharmaceutical sales saw everything end up going mail order.

"It'll all be online, won't it?" he asked with marked urgency. "People will all be shopping for their verruca salt and flatulence charcoal in the privacy of their own homes. But it's no fun getting drunk alone, is it? Hey? You are always going to need places where people can get shit-faced together and hug each other and shit. I'm not talking any old dive, though. I'm thinking of doing something real classy, you know. There'd be, like, lingerie models for drink waitresses, all right? And strictly no fat chicks or nothing. Maybe even pole dancers, although there's all these building restrictions about the pole height and worksafe issues to consider."

Growing ever more confident, he also went on to detail an ingenious plan he'd worked out for getting his hands on an actual (not virtual) fully decked-out time machine.

"I think about this a lot," he confessed spiritedly. "Some people might even say I think about it too much. Whatever. Anyway, I worked out a while back all these people — "genius types" — are all busting their brain boxes trying to figure out how to make a time machine happen, you know? But if time travel is really possible, then it must already be going on all around us, huh? Do you see my point? So, all you've got to do is to try and steal a time machine off somebody else who already has one. Someone from the future, right? Sure, they would be using all kinds of cloaking-devices and shit, but...excuse me..."

On saying this, he briefly paused to light up another cigarette, his fourth or fifth in five minutes.

"But," he continued, "if you had some sort of hand-held device designed to measure stray tachyon particles, for instance, you could probably find out where one of these time machines was left parked. Although, chances are, you would have more luck, if you knew "when and where" you were looking was a likely time and place for a time machine to be present. Because, if you think about it, people would be using time travel like a kind of tourism kick, wouldn't they? Sure, they would come back through time to come and see the big events from the past — first hand as it were. Can you imagine what it would be like to be an eyewitness at the crucifixion of Christ? Or what about being in amongst the crowd at one of the Nuremberg Rallies? How's this, though, my personal favourite: what about barracking for yourself at your own birth? Could you see yourself there with a cold beer in one hand and a hotdog in the other? 'Come on, you little arse-monkey, get those shoulders out!' Or maybe you might like to check out who of your friends and relatives, if any, cries at your funeral? I don't know..."

By this stage, Ipsum held grave doubts about the likelihood of there being any foreseeable end to Sergei's wild raving.

"Ahem," he interjected at last, "look, this is all so very fascinating I've completely lost track of what it was we were meant to be discussing. Could we maybe choose just one subject and try sticking to it? Or better yet, could you perhaps instead help me to draw some sort of point out of whatever is you're saying?"

"It's pretty basic, isn't it?" snapped Sergei. "I'm talking about making history happen. Because if you could cause a significant little piece of history to occur, you could be fairly certain some curious travellers from the future would show up in their invisible time machine just as whatever shit it was you'd cooked up was about to go down. Then with the right kind of monitoring equipment — much like what I described to you earlier — you would be able to isolate the precise location of the said travellers' time machine, if by nothing else, let's say, than a dramatic spike in recorded tachyon particle levels within the boundaries of the predetermined site. Next up, you would obviously have to disable the time machine's cloaking technology to make it visible to the naked eye. With this achieved, hey, presto, you could hijack the crazy thing for yourself and go on the most fucked-up magical mystery tour imaginable. QED!"

Despite hating himself for asking, Ipsum couldn't resist enquiring of Sergei just what exactly he imagined would constitute the "right" kind of historical event for him to stage in order for his plan to ultimately succeed.

"I don't know," dithered the clearly confused yaba-head, "something along the lines of Zapruder's headshot footage, I suppose. You know, that Illuminati-type of shit! The JFK assassination, yeah? To be honest, I haven't totally decided yet. Have you got any thoughts yourself? I'm open to ideas here. OK, so maybe I've got a bit ahead of myself."

"Well, yeah..." answered Ipsum with a sceptical tone. "You see, I don't really buy into this whole belief twentieth-century America, along with its would-be global monoculture, represents any significant epoch in the history of the universe. Sure, without a doubt, there are probably a whole host of extraterrestrial beings out there already whizzing around through time and space; but what, if any, level of interest would they be likely to have in our pissy little galactic backwater? I mean, from the standpoint of an alien intelligence, it's a tad arrogant to assume anything we do down here holds any cosmic significance, isn't it. Seriously, you whack some talking monkey and spray his brains all over his pretty mate's fashion-defining twin set, so what? The sun still rises the next day, doesn't it? And if, by chance, you're talking about human time-travellers coming back from the future to see their ancient forebears in action, they'd probably be some kind of race of cybernetically-modified mutants who think of the first microchip as being more closely related to them than we are."

"Wow, respect, man!" said Sergei with obvious admiration. "You're got the angles all figured out. Holy cow, I've got to re-think this thing. Hey, what odds do you give us of becoming partners and having a go at pulling this caper off together?"

"Look, it's certainly taking reverse engineering to its most logical extreme. And, I have to admit, it's not totally as at odds with Novikov's self-consistency principle for time travel, either. So, sure, I'd sincerely love to have a crack at it with you, Sergei, man, but I have to go because my taxi's finally got here, thank goodness! Catch you on the flip side!"

Opportunistically seizing on the arrival of a cab at a nearby curbside rank, Ipsum flashed his erstwhile manic companion an A-okay hand signal held up to his right eye and then ducked away before he could be dragged into further debate.

"Sergei," he yelled out, as he pulled open the taxi's door. "The TV's yours. Show my flatmates the IOU and everything'll be sweet. The address is there on the bottom. Happy landings!"

The very notion of the 6′8″ ice fiend stopping by to pay good old Mortimer and Verity a visit brought a warm glow to Ipsum's heart. Because more than anything, he hated leaving loose ends untied.

Sliding into the taxi's front passenger seat, he frantically waved at the driver to get moving.

"Where to?" asked the bored cabbie, flicking on his meter.

"Anywhere but here," replied Ipsum hastily.

The taxi driver accelerated out into main thoroughfare while peering into his rear-view mirror.

"Isn't that old man Kozatchok's son, Sergei?" he asked, checking the mirror one more time.

"You better believe it," said Ipsum.

"You know he took a busload full of nuns hostage a few years back, don't you? It made the newspapers and everything. He only got let out at the beginning of the year, the crazy bugger. The authorities showed him leniency, after he pleaded insanity ran in his family. But old man Kozatchok wasn't having a bar of it and tried to have his son deported. Fuckin' hell, what a bunch of screw ups."

"Well, good on him," Ipsum replied. "Because, you know what, the problem with this country, pal, is everybody has got too much freedom. People like you and me are pretty much free to do whatever the Hell we please."

"I expect you're right," concurred the cabbie agreeably.

"Hang on, let me finish," objected Ipsum bullishly. "We should all be taxed more, for a start. And politicians should have more control over how you and I go about our everyday lives. On top of that, I reckon migrants are a really overlooked resource as well. Sure, they talk differently to us; but they also bring new skills and culture with them, yeah? So, let's give them a fair go, I say. However, it's actually the unemployed who I feel most for; they really get an undeservedly bad rap, to my mind. Yeah, sure, some of them use drugs and others of them aren't at all that inclined towards looking for work. But there's not always enough jobs to go around, is there? As for the youth of today, well, they just frankly blow me away. They're so switched on. I mean, don't get me wrong, I too was a self-starter from an early age, but these young kids I see coming out of the universities these days are just shit hot. Pardon my French. Because, I reckon, each successive generation just keeps getting brighter and more thoughtful towards others and has better music taste than the one before it. And if the future's in their hands, we can all breathe real easy. I don't know about you, but I'm totally excited about the state the world is in at the moment, to be honest. In fact, I'm feeling so good about my life, I'm thinking about quitting my second job and becoming an unpaid campaigner for gay rights in the clergy. Or maybe I'll take up a fine art course at the local community college instead. How 'bout you ..."

Feeling exhausted and a little bit giddy, Ipsum awkwardly shifted his weight where he sat on the cold vinyl car seat and farted freely.

"...have you managed to catch any good theatre recently, perchance?" he asked innocently enough.

"The nerve of it! Why, that's a direct violation of the Penetralian commercial drivers union's regulatory code," blustered the appalled cabbie, steering off to the side of the road. "Get the hell out of my cab. Oof! What have you been eating, anyway, jellied eel omelettes? GET OUT, you filthy dirty Jew!"

"Just so you know, I didn't have sufficient funds on me anyhow," admitted Ipsum repentantly, as he climbed out onto the footpath. "And you know something else? After all that, I've since changed my mind. It's such a beautiful night I think I'll walk the rest of the way. However, I simply can't thank you enough for all the great free advice."

"Twat," growled the driver, sticking out the middle finger of his right hand as he sprayed up sheets of gravel and made a tight u-turn back in the direction of the city.

Left standing in the dark again, without transport or money or a phone or his own home to go to, Ipsum next began to think about the series of events that precipitated his slow descent into destitution. Sitting down on the edge of the gutter, he decided he needed to sort a few things out in his mind before continuing any further on his way to his parents. He knew there would be the usual Q & A session when he arrived, and so he wanted to be on his top of his game long before the obligatory grilling began.

By his reckoning, everything had gone off the rails after a work party he'd attended a few weeks prior. He remembered that much quite clearly. The party itself had been more of an informal gathering rather than an official party proper. Ipsum recalled he only went there because his lift had wanted to stop in for one last round of flaming sambucas, following a night a whole bunch of them had already spent out on the town. Ultimately, it was the party after the real party, then.

As a rule of thumb, he believed work-dos at best only rated slightly higher in the entertainment stakes than his annual bowel examination did. So it was only under extreme duress Ipsum agreed to their dropping by at all. For one thing, he absolutely hated shop talk under any circumstances; and, for another, the complete dearth of sparkling personalities amongst his co-workers ensured such happenings were guaranteed to be fatally boring.

Anyhow, in an effort to liven things up a bit, he had next begun to prowl around "mine host's" home looking for small items to steal — a fairly harmless pastime considering he never took anything of any considerable worth in such cases.

Characteristically, he liked to take stuff based on its annoyance value rather than its value in actual dollar terms — things like television remote controls or other people's bedside reading glasses. Things that when they went missing only really served to irritate the hell out of their enraged owners. Hence it was not really an act of greed on any level, but much more about the potential for creating disruption and disharmony that made the whole exercise worthwhile to him.

The fun didn't stop there, though. Because Ipsum's next party trick was to in return leave behind (in exchange, as it were) some little foreign mystery object collected during one of his previous raiding sorties. The power a single woman's earring, for instance, had for driving an unhealable rift between even the most enduring of lovebirds — especially when left strategically positioned at the base of a host couple's marital bed — literally cracked him up. Still, in the end, (more often than not) the simple joy of knowing his seemingly trivial theft of a toothbrush meant some poor victim would wake up the next morning with lethal road-kill breath and have no recourse by which to remedy its cause kept him in the game.

And so, like this Ipsum had first stumbled upon the hidden occupant of the house he was a reluctant guest in on that fateful night. In the act of innocently rifling through "mine host's" sock drawer he had inadvertently caught sight of the reflection of a cast iron spiral staircase in the mirror before him.

Rather than returning to the relative safety of the main party, as he then should have, Ipsum had instead decided to investigate where the set of stairs led to. Afterwards, it almost felt as if he'd been compelled by a higher malevolent force to do so. Certainly, there existed no internal sense on his part any good would come from his curiosity getting the better of him so completely. All the same, he felt he had no choice but to climb the metal stairs up towards the attic door he next spotted.

Only once he stood at the top of the staircase did he waver in his purpose. Nothing had prepared him for the fetid stench of decay that would greet him there. Holding his nose, he had next pushed open the heavy timber door before him and entered the large gloomy expanse beyond. Immediately whereupon he saw the wasted carcass of a man hung suspended from the roof above him. The man lay inside a kind of windsock-shaped harness like those usually found attached underneath a hang glider. From what Ipsum could discern, the man might well have already been dead. If he were not, his death loomed scarily imminent.

"Hello, can you hear me?" Ipsum had asked the emaciated form above him. "Hello, are you okay?"

He waited for an answer, although he suspected none would be forthcoming.

"Are you okay?" he asked again. "Can I maybe get you something?"

He may as well have been talking to the sole of his own shoe. He remembered thinking how he'd next resolved to leave the grisly scene altogether, deciding it best to head back down the staircase in the hope of getting a lift home. But it wasn't to be.

"I wait now for nothing but release," replied the enfeebled stranger, straining to turn his head so as to address Ipsum face on.

"All right, let me see what I can do," Ipsum had replied, cautiously sizing up the elaborate system of pulleys and ropes the man hung suspended by. "In return, though, can you tell me who you are?"

"Of course, for that is something I am pretty sure I still am certain of," the other man had wheezed, "because, you see, I used to be someone frightfully important once. You may have even heard of me."

"Perhaps, I have at that."

"Well, I should not have cause to doubt it, for I was — and am still — the Last of the Prisoner Kings of Fernando Po."

Not for the last time, Ipsum was to wonder whether the old boy had not well and truly lost his marbles.

"The Last of the Prisoner Kings of Fernando Po?" he repeated questioningly.

"The very last, I can assure you."

"Forgive me for my impertinence, sire," inquired Ipsum next, gently indulging the deluded invalid in his fantasy, "but if it pleases his Majesty could he explain why it is his royal person has been trussed up like a plucked spatchcock ready for its garnish?"

"Oh, please, do not feel the need to apologise for your frank admission of ignorance," said the other, with an air of dignified arrogance. "Suffice to say, as to my condition of perpetual bondage, I will only tell you this — while it may seem primitive or even barbaric to the uninitiated — it is in simple fact my habitual regalia. I am restrained thus as the complex particulars of my situation dictate that I must be. Because if nothing else you must understand this — I dare not move! Should I move but an inch, catastrophe would indubitably follow."

Immediately after which his Royal Highness had suffered an uncontrolled coughing fit.

"Could I get you a glass of water?" asked Ipsum, waiting for the man's hacking cough to subside. "Or is there someone below who can help me free you from this apparatus? A family member, maybe?"

"Perish the thought!" croaked the ailing monarch. "If you can conceive it, believe me when I tell you it is my pitiless daughter and her husband who have restricted my movements after the fashion you see. And so, do not think for a moment they will be of any assistance to you."

"I might have guessed..."

"If you do in fact still wish to help me, I entreat of you that you do not delay" the old man had proceeded to mutter feebly. "I really must feed my hounds."

"Pardon, what's that?"

"My dogs, the royal hounds, need feeding."

"Look, it can't be so very difficult," said Ipsum. "Hold on, and I'll have a go at getting you down."

From what he had judged, a single rope alone held the old man aloft inside his cocoon-like restraint. And so, by carefully uncleating the simple belaying line, Ipsum had believed it should be easy enough to lower the whole bizarre contraption to the ground and thereby release the prisoner king from his cruel mid-air state of "perpetual bondage".

Unfortunately, when he went ahead and actually loosened the rope's secured anchor point he only succeeded in causing the man's hang gliding harness to pull free of its rigging.

Thereafter which, both man and harness had come hurtling down to crash loudly at Ipsum's feet. The effect was sickening. Ipsum had not known whether to run or to stay and administer CPR to the crumpled basket-case lying bleeding before him. Either way, Ipsum knew his hosts were going to look none too kindly on his having interfered with their senile parent in such a cavalier manner. That he moreover should have then killed said parent, he supposed, would only make them judge him all the more harshly still.

It had taken every bit of moral fibre he possessed to not immediately flee the hateful attic before anyone else should discover the hand he'd played in the old man's demise.

Ipsum need not have worried. For against all odds the man who reputedly held Fernando Po's highest station somehow miraculously survived his horrific fall. And on closer inspection, Ipsum had been further relieved to see that, notwithstanding the odd broken bone or possible dislocation here and there, the captive prisoner king looked likely to live at least another day or two.

Indeed, moments later the scrawny specimen of a man had confirmed himself to be far from vanquished when he signalled he wished to be helped into a standing position.

"First, if I may impose on you further," he began pluckily, "you must needs unclasp my skull latch. The wretched thing acts as a pivot when I am attached to my trapeze, you understand? But, my goodness, it doesn't half chafe."

As requested, Ipsum hunted for the skull clip on the back of the man's head before sliding it open, thereby releasing the connecting tension strut attached to the harness proper.

"Ah, my boy, what it is to be rid of these shackles finally!" gasped the emancipated man, gratefully, with a lusty sigh of relief, "I am eternally indebted to you, for forever and always. Our kingdom has never known a hero as selfless and valiant as yourself. Now to the chair, if you would be so kind. It is no throne, mind you, but trust me I am no longer a stickler when it comes to such matters."

The threadbare recliner he motioned towards sat in the corner furthest from the door.

"Here, lean up against me," offered Ipsum, reaching his arm right around the frail man's frame before pulling him to his feet.

"Mark my words, your brave and noble deeds as the king's champion shall not go unrewarded," declared the self-proclaimed ruler of Fernando Po appreciatively.

"All right, you take it easy, we're almost there," Ipsum had insisted, too drunk to work out what to do next beyond seeing the old man safely to his armchair.

As luck would have it, he got no time to think any further beyond this anyway. Because the very moment the other man had been sat down, two of Ipsum's co-workers had raucously burst into the room. The boisterous interlopers were a couple notorious throw-'em-down party girls from the Audit Branch, who were not at all backward in being forward.

"Hello, you. I hope we're not interrupting something special," Fellatia (not her real name) had giggled, falling out of her stilettos into Ipsum's arms. "Who's the old buzzard?"

"Eh, he looks a bit like my lil' ole dead grandpappy, innit," her equally pissed friend Ms Yoni Gamahuche (God's truth, her real name) had volunteered inanely.

"Why, this here is Rex Harrison," Ipsum informed them discreetly. "Rex is a big time music producer; aren't you, Rex? He's just flown back in from Japan, so he's feeling a little bit jet-lagged. We were in the middle of discussing his latest inclusion to his stable of international recording artists."

"So, like, he's really famous or summin?" Yoni had asked hopefully, before turning to her friend wickedly and saying, "Waddaya you think, Felicia — should we give old Rexxie a bone?"

By this stage, Felicia — known (quite aptly, if altogether politically-incorrectly) to all and sundry as the office bike — was already half out of her skirt. And without so much as a by your leave, the two girls had then proceeded to give old Rex Harrison (the famous music producer) the most disturbing lap dance Ipsum had ever had the misfortune to witness.

"My dogs," the besieged man groaned pathetically whilst the two semi-naked gal pals had writhed all over him crazily, dry-humping his skeletal frame as though on doubly amplified heat.

"We iz not your dawgs, Big Diddy. We iz your bitches, Homie!" Yoni corrected him, slinging off some of her best MTV slang.

"Hey, Old Timer, what say you get busy and fluff my bunny for me," Fellatia flirted, assuming her best baby doll voice.

"Whoa, enough" Ipsum yelled thereupon. "Give the poor man some air!"

"Would he rather watch her and me make like finger food," asked Fellatia selflessly. "I'm so totally okay with it, if he does?"

"Bags being the butch, if we're going dyke," sang out Yoni witlessly.

"Yeah, I'm not too sure Mr Harrison's medical insurance actually covers him for death by orgy, all right," interjected Ipsum. "So I want you two to go back to the party, where you can find someone closer to your own combined ages to pick on, OK? Vamoose, she-devils."

It proved to be one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. Even now, it made him question his sanity that he should have acted so soberly. "In the end, what did I even really owe the old bastard to begin with?" Ipsum thought to himself ruefully.

At best, the question remained largely rhetorical, because it made absolutely no difference now to reflect back weeks later that he should have been altogether more open to the immodest proposal the two girls had put forward.

"Spoilsport," Yoni had jeered.

"You know the saddest part, lover? You're gonna die wondering whether we were bluffing or not," added Fellatia, dragging her fingernails across Ipsum's chest on their way out.

He knew she was right. For the rest of his days, any final audit of his various sexual romps and associated encounters would leave him feeling somehow cheated. Even at the time Ipsum had watched with a heavy heart as the two would-be porn queens left in search of fresh meat moments later.

"You are wrong!" protested the Prisoner King of Fernando Po, recovering the power of speech soon after. "For ministering angels they were, yea verily, and she-devils not. But we must press on. If you still wish to be of service to your king, it is imperative you do not dilly-dally a jiffy longer. To the kitchen for a carving knife we will go, and from there we will venture forth to feed my hounds. Hurry, my lad! We've not a second to lose."

Accepting the mission conferred on him, Ipsum dutifully picked up the strangely persuasive old man and piggybacked him down the stairs. Stopping by the kitchen, he selected a large bone-handled knife from the cutlery drawer, before again lifting his charge onto his back and walking out the laundry door into the night.

Unbelievably, not a single soul spotted them at any stage. Although what a sight they must have made, reflected Ipsum. Just the mere thought of the King of Fernando Po in his pink flannel nightshirt, waving his spindly arms about wildly, while grandly issuing commands and directions about where he was to be dutifully taken, caused Ipsum to laugh wryly.

As it was, the royal hounds, it turned out, were nothing like what he had envisaged. They looked a good deal more like a pack of caged wild Eurasian timber wolves than faithful family pets.

Standing beside the outer fence of their steel mesh enclosure, Ipsum became immediately conscious of keeping his hands and fingers well clear of their vicious snarling mouths and frenzied snapping teeth.

"It's astounding, they truly are governed by the workings of their stomachs, bless them," remarked their agéd owner proudly. "I have known them to fill up their bellies with eating a gutful of dirt rather than go hungry. And I believe they would even go so far as devouring their own body weights in orange peel, should they be faced with skipping a meal. Still, better off wolf meat than worm meat, wouldn't you say?"

As he spoke, the man had surprised Ipsum by leaping down off his back with remarkable agility.

"Noble knight, my blade if you will," he requested, once on his feet again.

Thinking nothing of it, Ipsum passed over the kitchen knife he'd been holding clenched between his teeth.

"You have been the most loyal of subjects, my son. And for this I thank you while bidding adieu," said the very last of Fernando Po's famed line of divine rulers.

In a flash, the man had then slipped inside the cage housing his much-loved hounds. And producing a big rusty padlock from some hidden place, he immediately thereafter bolted the kennel door shut behind him.

"My gift to you is a difficult lesson, I'm afraid. But here it is! Know above all things that you are more than the dross this heavy earthly form represents!" he shouted, holding his knife aloft. "Tally ho!"

Finally sensing too late what lay in store, Ipsum lunged forward. But before he could even so much as move the other man had brought down the blade from above his head and calmly sliced off his own ear.

"Oh, fuck! What the hell have I done," cried Ipsum, realising too late the grave error he'd made.

In short order, the suicidal monarch had next hacked away his other remaining ear, sliced off both lips and removed his nose. His speed with the knife was dazzling, and the surety of his purpose momentarily transfixed Ipsum.

As if forgetting the gruesome nature of what he witnessed, he saw a deeper supreme grace and dignity in the other man's bloody actions. There were no unnecessary flourishes or instances of egotistical showboating whatsoever. It was pure ritual. With methodical certainty, the man whittled off every spare scrap of flesh he could pinch together on his royal person.

And making no great fuss, this was how he had fed himself to his dogs.

"Sweet Jesus, forgive me," Ipsum had wailed, vomiting convulsively.

"Desist with your snivelling!" commanded the mortally wounded man. "It is unmanly to beg for forgiveness at such moments as these. To us frostbitten Mountaineers of the Soul — aye, to us Seekers after the Rose Stone — atonement is achieved through defiance. This is the terrible Work you must submit yourself to! So quit with your shameful grieving. Believe me, I would never have chosen you if I thought you were going to turn out to be simply another one of these blood-awful sniffilis-types the world's so lousy with nowadays. Gets a grip!"

What struck Ipsum most during the dying man's tirade was the compelling authority with which he spoke. From the second he entered the kennel, he seemed to grow in stature somehow. And his regal bearing was in no way diminished once he found himself unable to stand, either. Crouching on his haunches as he cut fillets of leg meat from his calves and thighs, the ravaged king positively radiated the privilege of dominion.

But it was finally the man's eyes Ipsum became mesmerised by. They were a piercing ice blue colour, and the intense serenity within their gaze enthralled him. They were so very clearly not the eyes of a person gone completely insane. If anything, Ipsum remembered thinking they were instead rather the eyes of a man who has gleefully beaten another party to the punchline of a longwinded joke. They remained resolute and hard as glass throughout the whole bloody ordeal.

Nonetheless, when it came to delivering the final deathblow unto his own person, the old man hesitated briefly, seemingly so as to remind himself of the necessity of his dire actions. In the intervening few seconds, Ipsum had to fight off the impulse to raise the alarm by calling out for help. He knew nothing could be done. The royal hounds had already started helping themselves to their master's bloodied limbs and torso on an ad hoc basis.

"Quite a fine and fitting feast of a king, I do make — don't you think?" the dogs' delighted owner had chortled, lovingly rubbing the stump of his free hand over the saliva-flecked coats of the frantic animals.

Grotesquely, short of bending steel with his bare hands, Ipsum felt entirely powerless to stop the ensuing feeding frenzy. And so, without further ado — apart from his sighing blissfully once or twice — the exquisite silver-haired gentleman-King of Fernando Po had, just so, died his gory noble death.

Racing back inside, Ipsum had at last yelled blue-blooded murder. To his amazement, no one paid him the slightest attention. Insisting he join them in forming a giant conga line, the hosts vigorously poo-poohed the very idea such a thing should put a damper on the festivities. Indeed, on hearing of her father's violent end the hostess, Ms Miranda van Lear, had only this to say: "Oh dear, did Daddy go for a burton, did he? Well, never mind, his ghastly fondness for Luxembourg this time of year won't be missed, I must confess."

The police were never called. And a full month on from the strange and terrible events described everything seemed forgotten.

Ipsum's own inclination had been to dismiss the entire unpleasant incident as merely being a bad dream or nightmare suffered after a night of extreme binge drinking. Certainly, no-one talked about the bizarre tragedy in the office or at any future staff happy-hours over the following weeks.

On the whole, if anything, the party itself was ruled a great success by all who attended. It soon came to seem as if the man Ipsum had mindlessly helped free of his shackles had simply never existed. That is, but for the gnawing attacks of bad conscience Ipsum had been plagued with ever since. That, and also, of course, the incriminating stash of bloodstained clothes he kept wrapped up in a plastic garbage bag under his desk at work, for want of a better hiding place.

As is often the way, though, that fateful night still held more in store for him later on. Because on being driven home from the party afterwards, Ipsum had next arrived just in time to see his flatmate Mortimer's dog, Archie, escape from where he usually slept chained up on his leash.

The normally placid animal had a real thing about relieving itself under a particular crop of rhododendron bushes across the road from where they lived. In hindsight, maybe unconsciously he really had wished to see his friend's furry companion die.

Understandably enough, his hatred for the canine species at that particular instant had hit its greatest peak by far. Whatever else, he knew he should have waited before calling the straying Labrador to heel. The final irony being that although he was a seeing-eye dog Archie never actually saw what it was that hit him.

The express mail delivery van that ran him over didn't even stop.

The only thought Ipsum remembered having had to do with how he could at least tell Mortimer his dog had died "post-haste", and thankfully thus without suffering.

Ultimately, it was a lie. But he decided he had nothing to gain by giving his flatmate a graphic account of how Archie had convulsed for a full five minutes before dying in the gutter, his slobbery red tongue lolling obscenely about all the while. As it was, Mortimer had cried for a week.

Out of respect, Ipsum took it upon himself to organise the necessary burial arrangements etcetera. But for the most part, he couldn't understand his flatmate's devastation and had himself gone to work each day pretty much as usual.

Needless to say, their friendship had suffered badly from then onwards. Quite honestly, to Ipsum's mind, it didn't befit a grown man — blind or otherwise — to grieve the loss of a pet so deeply. He couldn't help suspecting Mortimer cynically milked the situation so as to get out of paying the months of back-rent he still owed.

And so, all in all, if Ipsum somehow miraculously had the chance to re-live the night Archie died, he knew without a doubt he would act differently to how he'd acted the first time. If nothing else, he concluded, the crippling attacks of pre-dawn anxiety he later fell prey to were simply not worth it.

Even hell fire had soon come to seem preferable. But, by definition, he knew the past could not be undone and therefore he believed only a divine reprieve had the power to set things right all this time later on.

Sighing, he resolved to once more set off in the direction of his parents' house. Pushing himself up off the curb, he scanned the skyline for the aircraft signal station his parents lived a short distance behind.

The navigation aid he searched for stood on the top most point of a giant golf ball that in turn sat in the cup of a 12-storey concrete tee. The oversized exercise in kitsch marked the location of the ultra-exclusive Grass Widows' clubhouse, yet to locals it was simply known as the All-Seeing Eye. And seemingly, his entire life, Ipsum had longed to see some plus-fours wearing colossus stride down the 18th fairway before clobbering the hell out of the stupid thing, launching the satellite-sized pitted ball dead-set into the surrounding heartland of soul-stifling suburbia.

At night, the sweeping arc of the aircraft beacon shone out as a clearly visible beam of light over the entire greater valley Ipsum walked through. And so like it or not, he used its position to create a fix on his final destination simply by marching towards the centre of the powerful rotating spotlight.

As he walked, he swore to himself if in the future he were to ever take up social golf of his own freewill he would (god forbid!) on the very same dark day also gladly file for psychological, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy.

The game itself, to his mind, representing a sort of shared consensual coma between its participants.

As to why so many older professional men and women chose to spend their scant few hours of leisure time sweeping little balls of Swiss cheese into tiny mouse holes scattered amongst manicured rugs of green carpet completely mystified him.

Given enough plastic explosives, he might have been able to make sense of it all. But unfortunately he lacked even a box of matches, let alone the necessary detonators and firing switches to make his dream become a reality. He became quite despondent, just thinking about his helplessness.

Mercifully, before too much longer, his parents' street came into view, and his mood shifted once again to one of firm resolve. A favoured address of the rich and spiteful, Gargle Street was a long meandering street that, in its lower numbers, wound down to run parallel to the edge of the golf course.

Ipsum's parents lived towards the envied upper top half of the steep stretch of hallowed road. And this meant Ipsum still had another half a kilometre or more of uphill slog to go before he would finally reach the family home he'd long ago been raised in.

By now, he'd altogether stopped thinking in terms of there being any sort of experimental method to his madness. Immersed as he suddenly was in the familiar surroundings of his childhood, he couldn't help thinking he was about to make some grave mistake. For, surely, no good could come of his dragging himself back to the very place he'd vowed never to return to.

The House of Correction, Esau had called it, most aptly, when they were still yet children — number 33 Gargle Street, the quarter-acre block time had forgot — the house where, if their mother wasn't tersely correcting their articles of speech, faith and dress for them, she was instead fanatically instilling in them the "correct social values" they evidently so sorely lacked.

Comparing the neighbouring properties as he approached his parents' driveway, it struck Ipsum that, in the end, he and his boyhood friends were of no higher rank than having been born the sons of good honest lawn-makers. Regardless of whatever future his mother might have imagined for him as being most fitting, here on a grass roots level he could see for himself what he amounted to (and what he was therefore predestined not to be, as well).

Sadly, ever since Ipsum's father had suffered his "little accident", the front yard outside their family home had lost much of its former glory. The leaves of years of neglectful gardening had long ago formed into great drifts running the length of the fence line. And the dozens of rose bushes and camellias that had once stood so proudly in their regimented rows had been allowed to become woody and shapeless, left like brambles to grow wild in a forgotten back paddock.

Even in the dark, Ipsum felt taken aback by how untended everything looked. After all, the religious devotion with which his father previously maintained the house and its manicured grounds had made for the stuff of family legend.

The late hour of Ipsum's visit probably served best to explain why it took his mother the time it did to eventually answer her front door.

"Who's there," she enquired nervously from within.

"I'm the ghost of Christmas past," mocked Ipsum impatiently. "Who the bloody hell do you think it is? Do you really expect some roving gang of murderous marauders are going to knock before setting about busting their way in? Just open the door, can't you!"

He knew her manner well enough to know his mother was unimpressed.

Without seeing her, he knew she would be rolling her eyes as she struggled to release the last deadlock of a set of three. Pathetically, home security represented one of the few remaining shared passions of his parents, and so every entry point to the family home had been heavily fortified accordingly.

"Are you in some kind of trouble?" asked his mother, at last pushing the screen door open for him.

"No, no, I'm just popping by to tell you I'm getting hitched to my betrothed tomorrow," he replied overly-sweetly. "Ergo, I'm on the hunt for something borrowed and something blue. Any suggestions?"

"Your brother Esau told me the police have been around looking for you."

Mother, I swear, I'm not about to bring shame upon your house by entering it. I've got a few outstanding parking fines, that's all."

"And so, who's Sdeerwf Eggeth when he's at home exactly?" she asked undeterred, employing her patented tone of recriminative concern.

"Trust me, I go by no other name than that which I have been burdened with since birth — Cease-sus Colostrum. All right, already?"

Ipsum brushed past his mother before veering off into the adjacent front living room.

"What's that meant to mean?" she objected. "Some more of your brother Esau's infernal pig Latin, I take it?"

"Losecay nougheay."

He really must have given his poor older brother quite the scare, Ipsum thought to himself with a mixture of disbelief and wonderment. That Esau had actually resorted to calling their mother on the "curséd telling-bone" constituted cause enough for amazement. That he should have then gone on to speak of matters not in any way related to his own miserable existence was absolutely unheard of, if not unprecedented.

Ipsum couldn't help but suspect Esau felt genuinely worried about him, despite the studied indifference his brother typically displayed in their dealings.

"Have you eaten anything recently?" Ipsum's mother demanded to know, joining him by the sofa. "Would you fancy a late-night cheesy melt, if I whipped one up for you?"

The question had a completely incongruous quality to it, if for no other reason than because of the outlandish setting in which it had been asked.

As far back as Ipsum could remember, his mother had declared herself to be a confirmed rabid Egyptophile and had fitted out the whole interior of her house accordingly. As such, anything with so much as a hint of a hieroglyph emblazoned somewhere upon it soon found special favour within her monomaniacal approach to home decorating.

Over time, every hutch, bench, cabinet and tabletop in the sprawling family home had become packed to capacity with animal-headed figurines and other assorted middle-period Pharaonic paraphernalia. In fact, given half a chance, Ipsum believed his mother would no doubt have shipped sand from the base of the great pyramid itself so as to fill any spare living areas of the house with rolling dunes of the blessed stuff. Her obsession knew no bounds, reasonable or otherwise.

As a young boy, before he ever knew the names of the seven dwarves, Ipsum could identify the Egyptian deities Anubis, Osiris and Thoth on sight, not to mention Set, Horus, Nephthys and Isis into the bargain as well. The ancient names of long dead mortals such as Imhotep, Akhenaten and Khufu were also as familiar to him as the names of his own closest relatives.

Whilst other people's kids had grown up with TV cartoon characters as their shared cultural reference points, Ipsum's first nursery wallpaper had instead depicted hand-painted friezes of life in the Nile valley as it was lived millennia ago. His first eggcup was moulded in the shape of a scarab beetle, and his first teddy bear hadn't been a bear at all but rather a stuffed toy sphinx.

All this would have been funny, if not for his mother's deadpan insistence her all-consuming love for the sun-drenched Land of the Ankh represented no laughing matter. When still barely old enough to walk, Ipsum had learnt lame wisecracks pertaining to "daddies really being mummies" was not something to be tolerated.

In the same vein, puns about "denial/the Nile" being not only a river in Egypt were also strictly prohibited. The effect proved totally stultifying. And Ipsum could remember thinking how when he'd first left home he could have easily gone through the whole rest of his life without setting eyes on another single, fucking pre-Ptolemaic knick-knack quite happily.

"A cheesy melt sounds perfect," he said at length, finally answering his mother.

"Take a seat, then," she urged him, before bustling off towards the kitchen. "I'll see what tasty morsel I can rustle up."

Ipsum sat down and rubbed the head of a black marble temple cat while he waited. As usual, he couldn't help being struck by how insane it all was. Sitting there in his mother's front parlour, he could have literally been seated in the Antiquities Room of any major metropolitan museum. It struck him as being really quite eerie.

He simply couldn't begin to fathom why his mother should have become so completely fixated on the people of the ancient Nile valley and their lost civilisation. Most insane of all, though, had to be the fact his mother had never so much as tried to locate Egypt on a map let alone travelled there to see the place for herself.

"It's full of the wrong element nowadays," she would observe with the superior air of an unabashed bigot. "The place is lousy with filthy, grave-robbing migrant races — positively teeming with them, don't you know? No, sadly, the pyramid builders and their culture are long dead. And I have absolutely no desire to witness Her degraded state, in person, thank you very much. As this way I can keep my dreams of Her past glories in tact forever."

If any one person could be blamed for the complete lack of interest with which Ipsum viewed his mother's peculiar monomania it had to be Esau. After all, it was he who had spent hours upon hours with Ipsum meticulously debunking the Great Myth their mother built up around the empire of the pharaohs. The pyramids of Giza, for instance, he never tired of saying, were no more or less of a wonder than your average termite mound. As both, he argued, were simply monumental examples of what could be achieved on a grand scale through the organisation of labour. And as such, he contended still further, neither arcane magic nor any supposed evidence of extraterrestrial intervention lay behind the construction of either formation.

Hardly surprisingly, his take on the Egyptians' penchant for embalming was equally damning.

"I'm sorry, but mummification represents an ignorant and barbaric practice, whereby royal personages, upon their deaths, had their brains dragged out through their noses," he would rail. "And even when seen as a primitive forerunner to the — equally useless — modern science of cryogenics, it still amounts to nothing more than a laughable form of ritual mutilation of the dead."

Esau, of course, never spoke these direct words of heresy within their mother's earshot. He would instead wait until night-time when he and Ipsum were lying in their bunk beds, in the safety of the room they shared together. Only then would he dare to utter his ongoing commentary of dissent.

While Esau could rightly have been accused of being many things, he was not a complete fool.

"Here we are, dear," said Ipsum's mother, interrupting his thoughts with her abrupt return. "I'm afraid you'll have to make do with shrimp paste. The cheese's gone stiff."

His mother handed him a china plate with two pieces of toast on it.

"Thanks, but I think I'll make do without," replied Ipsum, resting the food he'd been offered on the arm of the sofa. "How's dad?"

"Well, you know your father..."

Ipsum begged to differ but lacked the requisite energy left to say so.

"And how's everything at work?" asked his mother, picking up from where she had trailed off. "On your last visit, you mentioned something about your being up for some sort of promotion"

"Hmm. You could say my career prospects have taken a significant nosedive recently," he laughed mirthlessly

"Oh, well, I suppose you know what's best for you."

"Actually, I've decided to take a sort of indefinite sabbatical instead."

"You have other long-term plans, then?"

"Nothing concrete. It's more that the whole buttoned-down work-a-day world doesn't do it for me. I'm totally through with it. And I can only hope it's through with me too. Because that would be just dandy."

"But you can't simply do nothing, dear, surely?" she insisted.

"To be honest, I'm kinda interested in trying my hand at being a metallurgist of the soul for the next short while or so, although I expect I'd be just as happy bumming around a bit instead."

His mother flinched.

"What a wonderfully hobohemian thing to say," she sniffed. "Personally, I always imagined you'd end up becoming a real scientist someday. After all, wasn't it entomology you really set your heart on studying while back in high school?"

"That was Esau, Mother. Either way, I haven't the patience for the inherent tedium of catching, killing and classifying the stinging winged brutes you'd have to deal with everyday."

"Or what about a writer? You wrote some wonderful little observational compositions, I seem to remember."

"That wasn't me, either. Don't you remember it was Esau who won a poetry prize for his 'The Odour of Indolence' piece, one year? Along with a bunch of other stuff."

"Don't be silly," his mother corrected him tersely. "Esau was always about his music. Whereas you, well, you were our family's little apprentice wordsmith, our budding Tusitala in the making, if you will. And if you wait a minute, I even think I might have one of your little stories put away in safekeeping. I'll try and go and retrieve it, shall I?"

"I shouldn't bother," Ipsum called out after his mother, as she left the room. "You've evidently confused us for each other again. Although it shouldn't be at all hard to tell Esau and me apart. He was the child prodigy and I was his intellectual punching bag. How easy is that?"

But his mother had stopped listening, and in a matter moments she gleefully reappeared with the prize she had meanwhile set off in search of.

"Eureka," she beamed, proudly holding Esau's composition aloft. "I've kept it safe all this time, because I always thought it ever-so sweet. What, with those exquisite tiny little talking bugs conversing with each other about such funny buggy things."

She moved forward and proudly placed the neat sheaf of papers in Ipsum's lap.

"Now that's dealt with, I'm back off to bed. And I don't want you staying up too late, either," she fussed. "Mind, I've left your favourite blankie on the end of your bed, in case you feel a chill later."

Ipsum waited until his mother left before throwing the story onto the sofa next to him. He still felt hungry and had thoughts of raiding the fridge for a midnight snack.

Once in the kitchen, he took stock of what might at a stretch pass as being fit for human consumption. Annoyingly, the wizened contents of both the under-stocked fridge and cobwebbed pantry soon quashed any thoughts he had of filling his empty belly.

In recent years, his mother had taken to eating after the manner of a regular domestic household cat. And her idea of shopping for food, these days, consisted entirely of simply buying a selection of tinned fish products and a few packets of dry digestive biscuits. Throughout any given twenty-four hour period, she would then snack on canned tuna salsa or sardines or some such seafood by-product, mixed with crunched up water crackers.

She forever complained about how she suffered from chronic heartburn and terrible indigestion. Yet, no amount of reflux could persuade her to rethink her peculiar dietary habits. It turned his stomach just thinking about it.

Begrudgingly, he called off the hunt and resolved to turn in for the night. Switching off the kitchen light, he went back and snatched up his brother's manuscript off the sofa. As a long shot, he hoped it might help him get to sleep. From memory, he recalled the story as centring on some befuddled beetle-brained philosopher. Looking back now, it struck him Esau had constantly been writing daft plays and crazy short stories about all the many wacky insectoid characters he had writhing inside his bug-obsessed brain.

It had to be symptomatic somehow of Esau's grossly infected headspace, Ipsum concluded, offhandedly, as he reached the door of his childhood bedroom.

Stripped down to his underwear, he collapsed onto the bottom mattress of the bunk bed he'd once shared with Esau all those years ago.

Strictly speaking, the bottom bunk belonged to Esau. Although when his brother moved out, Ipsum had subsequently claimed the spot as his own. Either way, he'd not slept in the bed for longest time and wasn't even sure he would still fit.

He needn't have worried, however, as he soon found he had more than enough room to stretch out in. Twisting over onto his side, he now peered at the title page of the story his mother had been so insistent belonged to his own hand and began to read.

# The Thought Zoo

Hannibal lived alone in a severed pig's ear down by the docks.

And although the ear itself appeared battered and somewhat forlorn looking, it served as a more than adequate abode, nonetheless.

By way of explanation, from what the solitary insect (and hero of our making) could establish, it was most certainly some careless butcher or more likely a devil-may-care apprentice from the nearby slaughterhouses who had dropped the fleshy scrap whilst in transit to who knew where.

In size, Hannibal, as far as rhinoceros beetles go, was rather too large to fit comfortably into, say, an empty box of matches. And yet, contrariwise, on the other hand, he was still far too small so as to find, for instance, the average biscuit tin in any way cosy.

Which meant, when he thought about it, the downy conch of pig meat he called home was just about the perfect size for him, after all. And, to be totally truthful, that was precisely how he preferred things to be. Or, put another way, Hannibal's immediate preference was for perfection in all things. In fact, without exception, the more elegantly simple a solution to one of life's problems proved to be the more inclined he was to like it to begin with.

None of which is to say that Hannibal avoided facing up to life's really big questions in his day-to-day scurryings-about. What, with the half mile jog he made each morning to the brewery, and his daily visit to the equally distant tannery, one might have imagined his day left him without the energy — or much less the inclination — to delve into those deeper mysteries pertaining to his frankly improbable existence.

However, nothing could have been further from the case. For from an extremely young age Hannibal's unique predisposition had ideally lent itself to introspective pursuits and philosophical conjecture. So much so, that a great deal of his adult mental life consisted of his doing little more than thinking up fanciful thoughts solely for his own diversion and amusement.

Thus, while others of his kind liked to take part in endless social gatherings, soirees and backslapping ceremonies, Hannibal himself preferred to live at a certain remove from the so-called "thick of things". Indeed, in a neighbourhood where a yellowing cabbage leaf might be turned over to reveal perhaps fifteen or twenty young sewer bugs come together in the name of a good time, Hannibal was, by contrast, known to all as a total stay-at-home. Ensconced there in the peaceful surroundings of his severed pig's ear, he would, night after night, sit and — through personal choice entirely — quietly mull over some of the oh-so-many! truly perplexingly intellectual dilemmas and paradoxes he held so dear to his heart, blissfully apart from his fellow creepy crawlies and their painfully stale repartee.

Just one such conundrum Hannibal consistently found himself being drawn back to during these coveted times of calm reverie centred on — he knew not why — the matter of reincarnation. Sure, when all was said and done, it made no real difference to anything much, he supposed. But it did nevertheless vex him that as of yet he'd been unable to conclusively accept (or reject) those particular teachings that specifically posited an eternal cycle of death and rebirth as their core belief.

It truly bugged him; it really did, as he couldn't stand being undecided on anything. After all, generally speaking, if he were nothing else, Hannibal prided himself on being a beetle of firmly held convictions. As a matter of fact, you could even go so far as saying he made up for what he lacked in actual physical backbone sheerly by force of his dumb mental obstinacy alone.

"What bugs me more again still, though," he would rail inwardly to himself, when considering the why and wherefores of past lives and whatnot, "what really bugs me most is the common insect in the street's belief that if he or she did once live long ago in some other time it must surely have been as some high dignitary or figure of royal significance."

And pausing to collect his thoughts, Hannibal would then raise his twig-like foot to rub his furrowed brow before venting his spleen more fully.

"It's utterly preposterous!" the incensed horn-nosed leaf chafer would protest. "Because it's simply not possible we should have all occupied such exalted positions of power. I mean, has there not always been those amongst us who have had to roll balls of dung as their lot in life? The mythic example of the scarab beetle Sisyphus — punished so as to have to perpetually push shit uphill — surely tells us as much. Seriously, we could not have all been queen bees, no matter how beguiling the image presents itself to us as, could we have?"

On the pro side of the reincarnation debate, however, Hannibal knew it was no less a thinker than the mighty Plato himself who first declared that bees represented the highest ideal to which a soul could aspire upon dying. And so regardless of his own personal reservations on the topic, Hannibal could never dismiss the entire matter of metempsychosis simply out of hand, opting alternatively to remain undecided on the problematic issue. Still, it irked him greatly.

"I am therefore I think," he'd been heard to say on more than one occasion as he struggled to come to grips with his obsessive need to divine the truth about what happens to us in the hereafter. "And because of this I cannot but think myself into knots over this most perplexing of quandaries."

Parenthetically, as an interesting aside, there actually existed a time when Hannibal had wondered whether his very name might not perhaps have provided a clue to the mysterious route his own unique imperishable soul had traversed down through the ages.

But the truth proved to be less than glamorous. For when he eventually brought up the subject with his mother, she insisted his name owed absolutely nothing to that famous Carthaginian general of yesteryear, as he'd mistakenly thought. Because, if his mother were to be believed, his name came to her by way of the particular brand of tamarind rind chews she had craved so badly while still heavy with him and his multitude of siblings. In disgust, Hannibal had cursed his mother for her gluttony. She, on the other hand, had retaliated by telling him he clearly needed to get out more so as to experience the "low life" he'd been so obviously missing.

When all was said and done, though, it was the teachings of another giant of the ancient world, the esteemed mathematician Pythagoras, which, to Hannibal's mind, best seemed to sum up the crazily unknowable nature of the soul's supposed predilection for life-hopping. Because famously, when asked to provide proof in support of his claim to having lived before, Pythagoras had merely pointed to his own leg of solid gold, as if that single cryptic act alone should preclude all future scepticism and debate.

"But why," agonised the internally-beset beetle (and hero of our making), "why should this whole blasted confounding leg-pointing business prove anything much at all? Would not the ability to talk fluent ancient Greek, when sprung straight from the womb, or the remembrance of exact details from a past epoch constitute more compelling evidence than this? Why should a golden leg be of any significance whatsoever?"

And in just such a fashion, Hannibal had wiled away many an evening, trying to make sense of the riddle left to us by Pythagoras and his trick leg.

And so, it wasn't until near mental collapse that the despairing beetle had finally hit on the key to understanding the age-old teaching. For, in the end, he realised it remained immaterial whether the Famed Theorem Maker's leg should have been gold (or iron or even wood for that matter), a crucial fact that Hannibal had missed time and time again during his protracted mental strivings.

A slave to his greed for ancient riches, as it were, the severely-blinkered beetle had been blind, all the while, to the actual lost leg the congenitally-afflicted Pythagoras had sought to indicate he was lacking.

"And so, herein, then, lies the direct evidence Pythagoras had been called on to provide for his belief in reincarnation. Distilled to its simplest form: Pythagoras pointed to his missing leg, and his missing leg, in turn, pointed — one can only imagine — to some horrific injury the venerated mathematician believed himself to have sustained in some previous lifetime. NQSED. Not quite so easily done! End of story. Phew!" Hannibal had grunted triumphantly on the occasion of his having successfully interpreted the age-old riddle left to us by antiquity.

All of which is not to illustrate, however, that Hannibal lived an entirely friendless existence or that he had no one whatsoever to converse with.

Indeed, our freethinking beetle counted himself amongst that select clique of enlightened intellectuals who inhabited the city's open drains and seedier alleyways. And it was with the purpose of visiting just such a fellow enquirer into life's really big questions that Hannibal now found himself headed for the gantries that lined the wharf.

Most likely, it had to do with the steady comings and goings of foreign cargo ships and freighters that made Harbourside the preferred address of the most radical and disaffected of bugs, bugs always looking for something new and exotic to loom over their horizon.

From one day to the next you could never be quite certain as to whether the latest shipment of cigar crates from Cuba brought with it a new and dangerous political insect in exile or just the usual bewildered moth or mosquito sealed in inadvertently amongst the straw packaging way back in Havana.

On occasion, you could also get lucky and catch a glimpse of a visiting dignitary wrapped in the banana leaves of his or her native Africa, as he or she emerged resplendent from a pallet of animal skins, before being whisked off by the city's fathers to the more grand surroundings of the nearby botanical gardens.

So it had in no way surprised Hannibal that his friend Milton should have recently taken up permanent residence behind the maritime customs house. Sure, there existed the typical collection of low-lives and parasites to contend with. And equally to be avoided were the turf wars that broke out sporadically between the entrenched ant colony that ruled the harbour and the scorpions who wished to overthrow them. But Milton presented as a centipede more than capable of looking after himself. Because although he typically gave the impression of being a harmless enough bookworm, he was also a bug of great action.

To see him on the march, in fact, made for a sight Hannibal was not likely to forget any lifetime soon.

On this particular morning, Hannibal found his many-leggéd friend peering over the tattered scrap of a crossword puzzle.

"Bert's futile attempt to net some of these beauties...eleven letters...hmm," Milton muttered to himself.

"I love to gallop bareback, but not because I've got a thing about horsy spit getting on me," she reasoned falsely (9)

"Are you still torturing yourself with palindromes and anagrams, Milt?" teased the Hannibal contentiously.

"For me, anyway you look at it, it's all about mana and rags (8). I know it," replied Milton. "I shouldn't waste my time on the stupid things, but I just can't seem to put my foot down."

"Bucephalus!" Hannibal suddenly sneezed violently.

"Zeitgeist," said Milton, by way of a blessing.

"You know, I've been thinking," began Hannibal, with a noble air, shortly afterwards.

"Hmm?" queried his friend mildly. "Thinking about what?"

"Let me explain and I will tell you."

"Uh-huh, please do."

"Okay, well, you might like to think of this as a kind of Grand Unifying Theory of All and Everything. So here goes...Now, if Time is merely the abstract term by way of which we seek to best describe the clearly observable fact everything in the universe is not happening all at once. And if Space moreover is merely the abstract term by way of which we seek to best describe the clearly observable fact everything in the universe is not all in one place. And if, Life is merely the abstract term by way of which we seek to best describe the clearly observable fact everything in the universe is not dead. Then it follows that with these three terms alone we can satisfactorily quantify the lion's share of what we experience in our day-to-day lives."

"Granted, yes" his old friend concurred sagely.

"Well, I have, however, of late been perplexed by the phenomenon of music, in this regard; as it strikes me as constituting a gaping hole in the Swiss cheese of absolute certainty! Simply put, music is timeless as it does not age, it takes up no real space to speak of, and it is neither alive nor dead. It has no use for the law of entropy. It shouldn't be, but it doth be. So how can we best describe its factual existence? And how, although stone deaf, could a famous composer like Beetlehoven still hear his symphonies inside his head?"

"Bravo, Hannibal," Milton rejoiced, relishing his friend's fondness for philosophical theorising. "Do go on!"

"All right," Hannibal began again, "For a start, it must be stated that within the framework of our own physical universe, we can only just begin to grasp the greater mystery music presents us with. For beyond the study of the physics of soundwaves and such, there lies the metaphysical dimensions of a far greater mystery. Which is why an enlightened few through the ages have posited there must exist other alternate universes to our own. Essentially, music in all its forms, these illuminati have argued, rightly belongs to one of the other multitude of alternate universes that run in parallel to the one we ourselves reside in.

"Our knowledge of music, therefore, has come about solely by way of certain of its special meta-dimensional qualities bleeding from its home cosmos into our own. Our assimilation of these special qualities then obviously occurs by some form of psychic osmosis. On having absorbed the so-called fundaments of musical composition, we go on to translate them into the physical sounds we hear as music. The very fact people talk of music's magical ability to transport them to another place is evidence of the overall compelling plausibility of this theory. What these people are responding to is in fact their coming into contact with the meta-dimensional life force of a be-ing from another universe; if you like, they are inter-facing with the living entity of an alternate reality."

"Careful now, Hannibal," cautioned Milton, while wiping his bifocal spectacles clean with a special rag he kept at hand for just such a purpose. "Your talk of an illuminated few has dangerous undertones within it, your example of Beetlehoven notwithstanding..."

"Not convinced?" countered Hannibal insistently. "Ok, so let's look at how music is used within our society on a more basic level. Without exception it is used when we wish to escape from our knowledge of the limiting factors of our existence, which are once again: time, space and the quality of being alive. In the course of any give day, we are constantly reminded of our finite supply of time, our lack of adequate space to spend it in, and the ever-present reality of the precarious nature of any kind of life existing whatsoever in what is in essence a dying universe. Music on the contrary exists to launch the listener into another realm of existence — a place where there are no wristwatches, traffic jams or funeral processions. Music extends the promise that what we see, hear, touch, smell and taste is merely but one tiny current within a giant river of potential forms of experience.

"Which brings me back to my original quandary. If, as I contend, music offers this transcendent promise of escape, why is it then that musicians — as the select champions of this very promise, as it were — are such a sorry-arsed bunch of fuck-ups? And again, I draw attention to my example of Beetlehoven. To which, I would simply answer: because they are all quite literally caught between worlds..."

Hannibal stopped speaking and looked to his friend for his thoughts at this point. Whereupon Milton next shuffled his feet excitedly, before suddenly crying out, "Sophistry!" gleefully.

"What?" asked Hannibal.

"It's sophistry! I love to gallop bareback, but not because I've got a thing about horsy spit getting on me," she reasoned falsely (9). It only just came to me," explained the pleased centipede smugly.

"Oh, never mind," grumbled Hannibal crestfallen.

"So," asked Milton, with a brightening smile, "What did you say brings you here to my humble abode, on such a fine Saturday morning?"

"I'm planning to go to the Thought Zoo. And I thought that you might like to come with."

"Ah, hmm," deliberated Milton. "Now, to which do you refer? Are you speaking about 'the zoo imagined', as it were? Or is it, rather, you are alluding to that incomparable place of marvels where wild ideas and outlandish notions are held penned in (against their own wishes, mind you) for the questionable purpose of creating an extravagant spectacle for an ever-increasingly jaded viewing public?

"I suppose, that I'm none too sure," Hannibal conceded. "I've never been there before, but I've always pictured the Thought Zoo as being an imaginary menagerie sanctuary of sorts. If nothing else, I've heard there's nothing else on Earth quite like it."

"I confess I seem to recall my nephew telling me about such a place recently. By his account, the North Sea inklings were, without a doubt, the undisputed standout darlings of the exhibits on show. That said, he also acknowledged that the antics of a particularly mischievous clan of peccadilloes from Central America played their part in drawing the record crowds who flocked to the zoo on the day he attended. Let's see, as well as these, he mentioned that the Hyena-like Bolivian brouhahas, showy Ecuadorian epitropes and Peruvian poppycocks were similarly of interest."

"Well, I heard tell of there being some kind of a hybrid animal at the zoo called a pussillanimouse," added Hannibal, not wanting to be outdone. "The creature apparently represents a completely unhappy and cowardly-natured cross between a sub-Saharan rodent and a species of South African meerkat that should probably have never been dreamt up in the first place. Worse than that, though, was an incident I read about involving the zoo's newly acquired Chinese paper tigers and how they'd clawed their way into the papal bull runs a few weeks previously."

"Indeed. My nephew spoke of a hippo-pot-a-mouth enclosure and a world class Chicanery Aviary, too. And a children's petting area, where parents and their young pupae can get up close and feed monk-eyed rambutans and wild cantaloupes by hand!"

"Of course, allowing patrons such close proximity to the exhibits makes great business sense," expounded Hannibal knowingly. "After all, I think if you were to sound out any of the top conceptual architects currently working in the field today, they would tell you when designing a thought zoo — or any similar type of notional theme park, for that matter — the ultimate challenge lies in trying to convince the paying public that, simply by passing through the front turnstiles, they'll be putting not only their lives, but also those of their nearest and dearest, at risk. Quite simply, if it were not for the remote yet very real danger of their being savagely mauled (or perhaps, even better, eaten alive), what else would keep zoo patrons coming back time and again?"

"Oh, yes," pitched in Milton. "Each and every one of us is innately fascinated by the idea of being devoured whole by a savage beast of prey, I agree. Nonetheless, it goes without saying any perceived danger to patrons should be entirely illusory. Although an underlying sense of imminent disaster must exist, no doubt. Having said as much, I feel myself to be far more disposed towards the idea of going on a philosophical safari than any old trip to the thought zoo you might have in mind. Because I, for one, like to see my mental qualia existing freely in their natural habitat, not housed and subdued like servile lap dogs."

And it was at this exact point that Hannibal now remembered why he didn't drop by his friend's house more frequently. Because ultimately, he always came away thinking Milton to be the most dreadful of intellectual snobs. An insect of the people he was not, nor a populist either. And Hannibal hated elitist posturing wherever it existed. He readied himself so as to chide his friend in this regard when the roof of the abandoned tea chest Milton called home was abruptly ripped off.

"Argggh!" shouted Milton, waving his multitude of legs frantically in the air, before dying from the force of the massive shaft of metal being forced through the thick black carapace of his back.

"There you go, my pretty," sang the little boy called Esau to himself, pinning the millipede to the felt backing board of his collection box gleefully. "Wait till Caleb sees you. He's going to spew from jealousy...Argggh!"

"There you go, my pretty," squawked the inter-dimensional being, placing the juvenile Earth human called Esau in a liquid-filled collection tank aboard the Diverge-ling starcruiser gleefully. "Wait till Mixolydian 9 sees you. He's going fermelbot his chawdoes, for sure!

Far from having the desired effect of sending him off to sleep, by the time he finished reading Esau's composition Ipsum felt more fully awake than ever. Sitting up in bed, he turned over the last page of his brother's bug-tastic story and found where some long-suffering primary school teacher had scrawled the following remarks:

"Beautifully preposterous. Your unique gift is to write wrong, although beware of the allure of employing specious arguments in your prose. Well done as always!"

Ipsum wondered why teachers bothered writing such comments, when the sole thing students were interested in was the final grade a piece of work had earned anyhow.

Esau's tale of two nitwit earwig philosophers had only earned him a six out of ten, owing to the fact he hadn't stuck to the assigned topic of writing about his summer holidays. It constituted a cruel mark, the teacher conceded amongst her detailed notes further down the page, but one she felt entirely justified awarding him.

Why anyone would ever want to be a writer completely mystified Ipsum. And seeing the fickle way his brother's budding talent had been dismissed out of hand only really served to reinforce his feeling that the life of a writer must truly represent one of the very worst sorts of vocations.

He tried to conceive what it must feel like to have, say, a novel inside you just bursting to get out and no way of getting the words down onto paper due to crippling writer's block or the lack of the use of your hands, for that matter. He imagined the feeling ultimately might not be at all dissimilar to the gnawing hunger pains he currently experienced due to his having not eaten now for a good sixteen hours or more.

Getting to his feet, he wandered out again into the hallway, making off towards his parents' bedroom, still lost in his thoughts about the similarities between creative deprivation and physical starvation.

When he reached the end of the hallway, Ipsum paused momentarily to consider his motives for getting out of bed at all. Standing there surrounded on each wall by his mother's extensive collection of middle kingdom death masks, he could easily imagine he had since wandered into a dimly lit netherworld. The eerie effect the masks produced filled him with a compulsion to turn and run. Just what on Earth had possessed his mother to fill her house with the gruesome funereal bric-a-brac in the first place he couldn't even begin to fathom.

Try as he might, he failed to picture his parents living in any way different to exactly how they did at that very moment. At an earlier time, they must have been young and vibrant and full of vigour, even though there existed little evidence to suggest it now. And together, the two of them had obviously raised a family while maintaining an honest enough home in which to go about doing so. Yet in keeping with how he always remembered them (from his very earliest memories onward), the two virtual strangers who slept on the other side of the bedroom door across from him didn't seem to possess any of those attributes necessary for performing even so much as the most basic of tasks associated with child rearing or, merely, for that matter, simple house-keeping.

His parents always hovered somewhere near life, but seemingly were not actually part of the whole terrible saga of human happiness and tragedy and boredom and anguish that everyone else seemed to be so powerlessly caught up in. They lived alternatively, if such a thing were possible, in a permanent state of stasis. They didn't age, and had not done so now for thirty years or more. They had not grown closer together with the passing years, nor had they grown further apart. They neither quarrelled, nor cared for each other unduly. They shared a marital bed, but didn't share marital embraces. They didn't feel overly cheated by life, but they also didn't feel they had been visited with great good fortune, either.

From week to week, they did little in the way of socialising and had even less contact with their neighbours, for instance, than they did their few friends. Most nights they went to bed having spent the bulk of their day in separate areas of the house.

For all intents and purposes nothing ever particularly bothered or troubled them about how their lives were arranged. And chances were they would go on exactly as they had been for a good deal longer yet.

"Hey, Mum, it's me, wake up. I have to ask you something," called out Ipsum, while pressed up against his parents' bedroom door.

"What is it, dear?" his mother asked from within wearily.

"You forgot to wish me a happy birthday..."

"It's almost three o'clock in the morning," she complained long-sufferingly. "I mean, it wasn't intentional, believe me, really."

She would have continued in much the same vein, but for the fact her dormant maternal instinct had doubtlessly begun to stir inside of her. And so despite the ungodly hour, she proceeded to dutifully struggle her way out of bed, stopping only to put on her slippers and dressing gown before joining her son in the hallway.

"What's this all in aid of?" she yawned sleepily, leading Ipsum back towards the kitchen. "You've made it quite clear previously you don't have any desire whatsoever to celebrate the day of your issue, with either your father or me, come hell or high water. Not in any capacity, shape or form. Full stop! Or am I misrepresenting you, in this respect, possibly?"

Ipsum waited for his mother to finish filling the kettle.

"No, you're absolutely right, of course," he responded indifferently.

"So, please, take mercy, and let me know why it is I have to be woken up like this, then."

"I wanted to ask you about Esau."

"Oh, not this again," moaned his mother.

"Really, who the hell is he? Seriously?"

"He's your brother, as you well know."

"He's my adopted brother, you mean."

"Well, you already know that," sighed his mother. "So what would be the point of my having to say it every time?"

"But, like, he was never just normal, was he?" continued Ipsum, practically shouting.

"That's right, dear."

"He's, like, so absolutely, impossibly weird. And I've always been so completely, incredibly normal."

"Yes."

"Although you know what finally struck me, as I was lying in bed tonight?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm actually the odd one out, don't you see? It's me. It's like I'm the one who doesn't belong. Because both you and dad are so totally bonkers, as well. So, it's like I'm the only one who's totally normal around here."

"There's nothing wrong with being normal, darling. And you shouldn't let anyone ever tell you otherwise."

Ipsum stopped talking to collect his thoughts. Meanwhile, his mother, taking his silence for despondency, decided to expound more generally on the complicated nature of their strained family ties.

"The truth is you've always known you were the result of an unplanned pregnancy. Your father and I were always scrupulously upfront with you about that. In fact, we were adamant it was only fair to Esau the two of you should both be entirely clear on this point from the outset.

At best, the very nature of your conception represented a kind of cruel joke. If anything, your coming into being, at all, was more of an afterthought on the part of the fates, as opposed to a wished for blessing. You see, when we adopted Esau, your father and I foolishly assumed he'd be our only ever child. And so, by the time you showed up as a blip on the radar, we had already moved into a different phase in our lives.

As you can well imagine, to suddenly find myself heavy with child proved truly devastating. For a start, even if your father and I had wanted to have you as a way of trying to save our marriage, you came about six years too late. Also, I know for a fact Esau would have preferred to remain an only child forever. So, at the end of the day, it has to be said that you have always been a misbegotten source of woe to each and every one of us."

"Thanks, Mum," said Ipsum flatly. "Look, I understand all that stuff. I really do. But none of it goes towards explaining why I've then gone on to become 'the well-adjusted one' in the family, as it were, does it? I mean, I should be a complete screw up, shouldn't I? Just by the process of osmosis alone, surely?"

"Well, for one thing, none of us can chose how we are going to turn out, I suppose, now can we?" his mother observed sagely. "But also, for another, I know Esau always tried much harder to fit in than you ever did. You always were more of a lone wolf, weren't you?"

"I only ever felt I was trying to be the kind of son Esau has been for you."

"You know, I won't be made to feel bad that when it came to the divvying up of my time and affection. Your brother simply stood ahead of you in the line. Anyway, I can't understand what your problem is. You wanted a fish, and I got you a bloody fish!"

"What?!"

"At the church fete. You wanted one of those goldfish they sell in little plastic bags filled with water. Well, you cried because you wanted one so, and I bought it for you!"

"This is, like, before I was even five years old, right?" asked Ipsum incredulously. "So whoa, well, that makes all the difference! Goodness, what am I thinking? Cue the 'Mother of the Year' dancers!"

'There's no need to be rude."

Ipsum shook his head in despair.

"Hey, we really ought to do this again sometime soon," he snorted.

Leaving his mother by the sink, he strode out of the kitchen and back to his old bedroom laughing all the while to himself under his breath.

"Maybe it's me," he said, to no one in particular. "Maybe I simply missed the inherent poignancy of her heartfelt account about the whole, stupid bloody goldfish-in-a-bag thing. I don't know."

He crawled back onto the bottom bunk and lay down his head. Shifting slightly, he next reached around under his back and pulled Esau's short story out from where it had become twisted in the bedclothes.

"No, thank you," he muttered, testily. "I've had quite enough of that."

Propping himself up on one elbow, he turned and threw the crumpled sheaf of papers out into the middle of the room. As he did so, the previously bunched-together pages broke free of their fastener and fluttered nosily to all different parts of the room. Ipsum sighed and sank back onto the mattress.

What a day, he thought to himself, mistakenly thinking the worst of it was now over.

He next dozed off into a kind of half-sleep or semi-delirious state. Unable to fully settle, he slept so fitfully he could remember, at one point, wondering whether his mother hadn't maybe slipped him one of her prescription amphetamine pills during their little family therapy session in the kitchen.

Without direct evidence, he concluded she was probably innocent of what he suspected. But it didn't stop him from trying to figure out if there'd been a point at which she might have secretly dropped one of the capsules into the hot milk toddy he'd taken with him to bed, all the same. For if not that, how else could he explain the subsequent wild imaginings he fell prey to?

Lying in the dark of the room, he could only imagine what he next suffered from amounted to the rapid onset of an acute inability to separate reality from fiction. In the grip of a waking nightmare, he watched in horror as the words of his brother Esau's story came to life all around him.

Later, he recalled having first peered down to where his brother's crumpled manuscript lay strewn on the floor. Strange rustling noises had made him look over the side of the bed in the direction of the dozen or so typewritten pages. Directly after which the words on the pages came loose, writhing about in their neatly spaced rows before snaking off into the dark shadows of the room.

The escaping words were in actual fact more like the tendrils of an evil, massive plant-like monster, Ipsum soon discovered. The tendrils of an evil monster evidently hell-bent on taking root inside him. For as he lay motionless on the bed, gripped with terror, hundreds upon hundreds of adverbial phrases and mobile conjunctions began slithering inexorably upwards, ever higher towards his face.

He would have screamed, if he had not been so utterly petrified. Instinctively, he knew a portion of his internal organs were already compromised — some of the insidious word mass had wound its way into his body. And as if merely to confirm his morbid suspicion, he subsequently coughed up a budding stanza of the internally-sprouting nursery rhyme vine that had since taken root in his spleen.

His immediate impulse was to tear at the offending piece of verbiage/vegetation where it bloomed behind his teeth and tongue. And yet he feared the plant might have already entwined itself with his innermost viscera. By just wildly yanking at the thing, he judged it a fair chance he would only end up causing himself a severe mischief.

He must at all costs proceed with due caution, he remembered counselling himself tersely. No good was to be had from simply stripping away a stray font curlicue here or there, as the growth of the indwelling word plant had soon rocketed to an exponential rate.

Collecting his thoughts, Ipsum judged it better to try and glean the hidden meaning or subtext of the tangled mess of incomplete phrases and sentence fragments he found himself disgorging in larger and larger chunks. In short, he believed if he could at least elicit the general gist of the ceaseless flurry of written language he disgorged he might have a better idea of what he ultimately found himself up against.

From what he soon gathered, the evil plant text most closely resembled a bastardised early childhood reader — a childhood reader filled with darkly fiendish verses writ large in the Devil's own hand. Its images were for the most part taken from the charnel house and were quite unnecessarily brutal and loathsome. For instance, one of the first snippets he read ran thus:

The crop house shelves are empty/And summer's harvest mourned/The mare with foal falls twisted/Her issue born ill-formed.

And a second like so:

Wolf down felt pack eats their master/As slaves to market feed their young/Broken imprint of flesh in crisis/Cries for justice half undone.

However, on other occasions, the rhymes he read were nothing more than childishly sinister playground chants, such as the following:

Jack-a-napes plucked out his eye/Jack-a-napes never learned how to cry/Schooled in good humour, he best liked his cheek dry/Tho' he sobbed up his sleeve when taught he must die.

Or this one, equally:

Little Baby Sydney did quarrel with the truth/But what unto to his parents should this nasty fact behove?/They judged him on the evening of a sinful Sabbath day/His curly locks they straightened, and thus his cankered bleats allayed.

No inherent central theme seemed to exist within any of it, as far as he could discern. The random snippets of devilish aphorisms and half-finished cryptic poems left his head swimming.

Then it suddenly hit him. He needed to focus not so much on what the perverse scraps of verse said but how they said it, for therein lay the truth. They shared a common voice — one quite obviously belonging to an earlier period in history.

As is often the case with dreams (or, as in this case, nightmares), without quite knowing why, Ipsum found himself next reminded of his mother's obsession with the past — specifically, all things Egypt-illogical. And herein lay the key. He needed to push back further again still down the timeline that the nursery rhyme vine represented within him. He had to dig deeper within himself until he reached its very roots. Because only there, he felt, would he find his salvation.

In a frenzy, he began to physically attack the internal word creeper within, reaching into his mouth and pulling out freshly-emerging new branches of meaning by the fistful.

When he at last finished, there remained nothing left alive of the foe within. And all that remained of the nightmarish parasitic word-plant was a curiously constructed triptych that Ipsum set about diligently memorising, as he slowly floated back into full consciousness.

Coming to, he spoke the hard-won text artefact aloud, so as to remember it better:

# The King Tut Key to All Man Acts/The Kentucky Almanac

(A Rendering of the Ancient Family Plot)

On the yellow rock road to Malabar, with respect

Father Osiris was laid down to his rest

Of all the world he really only made up one less

For a ladder to the moon he had climbed in small steps.

His heart he turned back, he self-styled his own death

Inside his cold cenotaph his future now slept.

I spy with the little Eye of Horus, the sun/son

For I play the Game of Hours, Wedjat in tact

As my mother is Isis, lest we should in our lifetimes forget

The loss of a husband (and a merciless father) in this his final act.

Only once he felt absolutely certain he'd learnt the poem by heart did Ipsum get up out of bed.

He wanted to find pen and paper, so as to make a hard copy of the ten-line "Declaration of Interdependence" straightaway.

His first stop took him to the general utility drawer in the kitchen. But when he pulled it open, he found nothing of any use to him. That is, not unless he wished to core a few non-existent apples or time the boiling of an equally non-existent egg.

It should have proved dead easy. People ordinarily kept writing implements in various places all over their houses. Not his parents, apparently though, irritatingly.

He checked by the telephone to no avail. Next, he searched down the back of the couch in the TV room, also with no luck. In desperation, he resorted to sifting through the pockets of his mother's coat, after finding it slung over the back of one of the chairs in the dining room. Nope. He couldn't turn up so much as a crayon.

In the back of his mind, there glimmered some kind of dim recollection it had ever been thus. Even when growing up, he'd never been given any colouring-in pencils or fluorescent day-glo markers to play with. Likewise, for paper. There never existed a time when a children's art pad or even just any single sheets of loose foolscap, for that matter, lay around at hand.

In retrospect, he only now registered how out of place the neat stack of papers containing Esau's story had looked to him, when his mother first handed them to him. He couldn't recall ever seeing such a generous wad of paper pass between two members of his family before. Not a single newspaper or magazine featured in his childhood memories of spending time at home. And the only books he could recollect seeing were the ones Esau smuggled in to study under the bedclothes by torchlight.

He guessed some deep reason existed for the strange embargo, but he decided he couldn't be bothered trying to nut it out at present.

Instead, he grew increasingly frustrated at his inability to set down the words he'd committed to memory earlier. Giving up on finding any kind of sane solution to his problem, he at last decided to search the kitchen cupboards for any ingredients with which he could possibly mix up a workable substitute for real ink. He wasn't entirely sure he knew exactly what to look for but had a fair idea what to avoid.

Turning on the stove, he hauled out the biggest pot he could find and began mixing together whatever next caught his eye. His primary concern being that his ink should end up with the right consistency. He didn't want to waste his time by producing an end product either too runny or (far worse) too lumpy to write with. His best bet, he suspected, lay in trying to make an ultra-thick marinade or sauce of sorts.

To start with, he poured two half-full bottles of Soya sauce into the steaming vat he stood over. For good measure, he next added four handfuls of the cooking ghee his mother kept in a tub beside the bread bin. Following that, he mixed in an entire packet of cornflour, as well as a spoonful of black treacle.

As he predicted, consistency proved to be a real sticking point. And getting just the right amount of tackiness within his mixture appeared to be beyond his culinary powers. His ink had an overall oily texture to it no matter what he did. He needed to bulk it up more and thereby give it more body somehow.

Casting around on the bench top for further inspiration, his eyes fell on a stack of food tins his mother had arranged earlier into a small pyramid behind the toaster. He couldn't believe his luck, when he saw the neatly piled collection of her favourite shrimp pastes and fish spreads stacked before him thus. Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed the tins and a can opener before flinging their fishy contents into his fiery crucible. And at last, his makeshift ink reached the kind of critical mass he'd been seeking to achieve.

Unbeknownst to him, his reckless undertaking had meanwhile woken a very real and present danger lurking within the hidden recesses of the house. His mother had warned him of its presence a million times or more throughout his lifetime. And yet only now it was too late did her dire words of warning suddenly flash into his mind.

"House Survival Rule No.1," he heard her say inside his mind, "NO STICKY MESSES!"

"Oh, for pity's sake," he groaned. "I've only gone and forgotten about Esau's bloody Bugger ants."

The "ants" he referred to were a particularly vicious insect crossbreed his brother had first created back when they were both still children. In fairness to Esau, the killer bugs were never meant to be vicious at all. His brother had simply sought to produce a new species of giant house-painter beetle, by mating a European Reduvius personatus (assassin bug) with a common sugar ant. As creator of the planned, hybrid insect worker, Esau confessed to being as genuinely appalled by the resultant abomination of nature just as much everybody else was. Or so he claimed.

A child as precociously gifted as Esau should have known better. And possibly therefore actually had. It didn't take a genius to figure out that wantonly contravening the immutable laws of speciation simply wasn't on. It didn't matter either whether Esau latter claimed to have mistaken a female ant lion for the more placid sugar ant queen he also owned within his collection. As nothing changed the fact he alone had first unleashed the diabolical plague of insects upon their family home by way of the subsequent unholy pairing he had contrived.

Originally to be called the Sweet-toothed Killer Beetle, Esau found himself forced to rethink the somewhat harmless-sounding name almost immediately. Experience had quickly taught him there existed absolutely nothing at all sweet (let alone harmless) about his new species of insect whatsoever. They were ruthless killing machines through and through, eating — upon their first hatching — not only the slowest and weakest of their number but also the bug hag who bore them. Besides which, the little bastards had a sting on them that hurt like absolute buggery. Hence, the more descriptive term Bugger ant.

Before long, Esau's dreadful creatures had escaped the heavily modified "maximum security" ant farm he secretly kept them hidden in underneath the bathroom cabinet. In a matter of weeks, they went on to establish a colony of nests stretching the entire length and breadth of the house. Following that, there was absolutely no getting rid of them. Instead of endowing his insect helpers with basic home maintenance skills, Esau had inadvertently bred a virtually unkillable species of household pest.

Without a doubt, Ipsum should have recalled his mother's hysteria concerning sticky messes much, much sooner. Her position, essentially, had grown out of the fear they now all lived under. He knew that. And he himself challenged anyone to not feel a little bug phobic upon seeing Esau's evil ants in the midst of one of their insatiable feeding frenzies. Every spilt drop of soft drink and dropped cake crumb heralded a fresh invasion of the insanely rapacious insect horde into their family home. So that by now, in his mother's mind, "sticky mess" simply spelt "Bugger-ant blitzkrieg".

Ipsum felt in no position to judge her for it. For the basic truth remained that the "little ant problem" she had spent so many years of her life diligently trying to combat represented a problem for which there effectively existed no sane solution, save ongoing damage control.

Mere damage control gave Ipsum little hope of winning through on this occasion, though, he suspected. His stinky ink cook-up had left the entire kitchen smeared and splattered with an irresistible array of greasy food stains and oily residue. Stains and spills irresistible, that is, to the currently invisible ant army lurking within the plasterboard, waiting to launch their attack.

Ipsum grabbed a dishcloth from the nearby drying-rack and frantically began to clean up after himself. He need not have bothered— the time had long since passed for panicking. Marching in superbly disciplined formation, wave upon wave of marauding Bugger ants suddenly began to stream into the kitchen, amassing in ever greater numbers, like the dark forces of Armageddon in miniature.

Everywhere he looked, he saw still more of the hellish insects as they swarmed out from their nests underneath the floorboards, mobilising for war. They came out of the doorjambs and light fixtures. Others fell from the ceiling vents. And soon every chip and gap in the surrounding wainscoting began literally bursting with their bristling bodies.

Direct action was called for, and Ipsum knew he must do something quickly. As an absolute certainty, he could guarantee his mother would die on the spot, if she were to suddenly walk in and witness what he'd done to her spotlessly pristine splashback and benchtops.

He also knew, if he failed to act decisively, before long the brutal ant offensive would break free of the kitchen and overrun the rest of the house. The sheer physical presence of the massive numbers contained within the swarming insect plague, assembling as they were in their formicating ranks around the stove, understandably had Ipsum feeling more than a little "antsy".

Grimly, he found himself wondering about just how quickly the voracious insects would be able to strip his flesh down to the bone, given half a chance.

Despite himself, if he were to be honest, Ipsum couldn't help admiring the all-pervasive unity of purpose with which the Bugger ants stuck to their task. They had his ink in their sights, and each and every one of them showed themselves to be unwaveringly committed to their cause. He knew he faced certain defeat — with the kind of certainty one knows a blow from a hammer onto the tip of one's thumb will smart for days. Which meant it came as no surprise to him whatsoever, when the first dispatch of kamikaze insects began next flinging themselves into the naked flame of the gas stove top, in their attempt to storm his wildly bubbling pot of thick black tar.

Without a thought for survival, legion after legion of the insects launched their doomed offensives, only to end up like their fallen comrades before them, sizzling and popping in the jets of the ring burner beneath the pot. Amidst the carnage, Ipsum found he couldn't help speculating as to whether or not there may actually be an underlying scientific explanation for the extraordinary sight he witnessed. Hunger alone couldn't explain the impassioned fervour with which the ants continued to rage their campaign.

His instincts told him their behaviour displayed the properties of a pheromone driven frenzy. He had no concrete proof, obviously. But proof enough as to the merit of his theory lay in the pudding as it were. And from what he'd seen so far, he believed there existed every chance he'd accidently synthesised a similar chemical compound to that which Sweet-toothed Assassin queens produce in order to maintain morale and cohesion within her colony's workers. It certainly stood as a sort of working hypothesis, if nothing else.

From this germ of an idea, a bold and reckless plan began to hatch in Ipsum's mind. Snatching up the savagely besieged cooking pot off the range burner, he rushed out of the kitchen and into the adjoining living room. A rash decision on his part, to be sure, but one he felt the situation more than warranted. Time for worrying about what constituted a suitable cooling-off period for his ink had long passed.

Esau's thwarted Bugger ants responded at once. As one, the army of enraged insects reared up on their hind legs, their antennae all aquiver, before streaming after him into the living room in greater numbers than ever.

From the moment he implemented his plan, Ipsum knew his actions would galvanise the feral hybrids into renewed feats of fanatical zealotry. He counted on it. Because his very knowledge of this fact lay at the heart of his audacious ploy.

Hurriedly taking down an ornately-framed temple scripture with his free hand, he surveyed the blank expanse of wall he now stood before. Straight away, he knew he'd found the perfect surface. And with less than ten minutes until the future fate of his parents' home would be sealed forever, he prepared himself for what he must do next.

After that time, Esau's frenzied Bugger ants would either triumph over the house and all who dwelt within it or, alternatively, he would have brought an end to what represented a very dark chapter in his family's shared history, now and forever thereafter.

Desperately aware of the gravity of the moment, he reached over and plucked up one of his mother's throw cushions from off the couch. He imagined he could hear his mother's reproach ringing in his ears already. But he had no choice now but to see his plan through.

Steeling himself, he defiantly bunched up the corner of the cushion he held and proceeded to scoop out a large dollop of ink from within the pot he gripped in his other hand. The ink steamed madly, giving off a hot and acrid smell. By a fluke, it turned out to possess exactly the kind of consistency he'd hoped for, being extremely tacky and full-bodied. Happy in the results of his labours, Ipsum next began to daub the wall with the nauseating muck. Bathed in a pool of silver moonlight and with sweat already dripping from his brow, he began to write out the strange poem he'd committed to memory earlier on.

He himself didn't actually think of the poem as being such. To him, the three stanzas it contained represented the heart-stump of a "nursery rhyme vine" he'd battled for his life against back in the bedroom.

And it was now, with no pen or paper or even ink to be had (and beset with Bugger ants on all sides), that he sought to set down the diseased fable as best he could.

Fine, he told himself. He would adapt and prevail, if only because there remained no other choice left to him but to prevail.

Finishing the first line of the infernal verse, Ipsum stood back to allow his handiwork to dry. As he watched anxiously, the circling insect hordes descended en masse to devour his hastily crafted words. He smiled to himself wryly. The trap he set had worked perfectly.

The very moment the ants came into contact with the inky outlines of his makeshift graffiti they became ensnared — in their hundreds, at first, but all being well he hoped it would soon be in their thousands. The supreme stickiness of his ink made it King. Setting back to work, it occurred to Ipsum he might yet win out.

Unfortunately, the first real setback came when Ipsum realised moments later he'd largely forgotten the tract he had so diligently tried to memorise.

Despite the greatest effort, he couldn't recall exactly even the subject matter of the original text. And when he thought about it, he felt sure both the title and opening line as they appeared on the wall weren't the same as the ones he'd learnt by heart, either. Somehow a veil had been drawn across the luminous truth of the original words, and he could only guess at what they might have been.

Quickly overcoming the split second of guilt he felt constricting his stomach, he feverishly "wrote out" the following spontaneous verse instead.

# The Flyman's Plot

I am the scribe of Anubis, the Heart Measurer,

And harrowed be my plot, for I am the Flyman also

Caught between masters, in a web of words

The meaning of which is falsely called treason.

A spagyrist, brother fool and totem-headed contrariant

I am cut from the same shroud as mine own father's.

So fear me, Mother Isis, as you would the truth

That lies buried at the crux of my design

For it is with Maat's feather as quill I shall write

The balance tipped against your golden, everlasting favour.

Here then existed a living message, or prayer almost, in a language he felt his mother would have no trouble comprehending. Extending from floor to ceiling and writ large in thick black freehand strokes, the ink and ant mural dominated the entire room.

Nothing more needed to be said or done. The icing on the cake, for Ipsum, being the knowledge that he had once and for all finally achieved a sticky mess to outdo all the others come before it, imagined or otherwise.

The personal cost to Ipsum proved enormous. He felt shattered. The extreme physical effort behind what he'd done undid him completely. On the point of collapse, he lurched back to the bedroom and fell face first onto his mattress, sinking immediately off to sleep as if down into a deep well of oblivion.

Later, he would remember thinking how hitting rock bottom wasn't nearly so cripplingly final as he'd always feared it would be. And how, having plumbed the most extreme depths of his darkest despair, he knew he thankfully now couldn't sink any lower again still. Which is not to say he would have described his experience as in any way uplifting. He lay crushed and broken for all to see; so if anything he simply refused to admit himself ultimately defeated.

The next morning Ipsum overslept his intended sleep-in by a good eleven or twelve hours. So when he did finally awake, it had already become dark again outside the house.

The brain fever he'd been in the grip of the night before had subsided, much to his great relief. So that now he merely felt like an empty shell (or a spent cartridge, perhaps). In a disconcerting way, he also felt cleansed somehow. All of the grand illusions he had previously held about himself were laid bare. It seemed as if during his wild madcap antics of the night before he'd at last successfully cast off a role he'd spent his whole life imperfectly trying to perfect. Essentially, he lay there as a man without dreams.

Very little of him still existed to speak of at all. The smoke and mirrors with which he'd shaped his reality were dissipated and smashed, respectively. The resentments he'd slowly let define him were similarly gone also. Likewise, for his strongest and most primal emotions. His anger and hate and grief and envy, they too had been siphoned off somehow. The very means by which he'd previously delineated his fleeting sense of self from that of others remained strikingly absent.

With hindsight, he could see he'd been a man on fire. The difference now being that the fire within him had been quenched. In total, he added up to nothing more than the cooling ashes of the person he once used to be.

As he lay in the darkness, he listened for clues as to what his parents might be up to. His mother must surely be livid, he decided. She had every right to be, too. He'd flagrantly transgressed the golden rules of her household and must therefore expect to endure the full extent of her wrath. Family law stipulated he deserved no less. What he didn't look forward to was having to hear about his unforgivable crimes for the remaining term of his natural life.

Failing to hear movement within the rest of the house, he soon concluded his parents must have actually been out. The unlikely stroke of good fortune buoyed his spirits immeasurably. Feeling like a free man again, he got out of bed and cautiously lent out into the hallway. With the coast clear, he next made a sprint for the shower. And only with the bathroom door firmly locked behind him did he begin a more thorough assessment of his predicament.

As he brushed his teeth with his finger, he still recognised himself in the mirror. This surprised him. Moreover, he discovered he could also recall entire conversations he'd had several months past. What had changed within him, then, he concluded, suggested more of a kind of emotional amnesia. On a gut level, he no longer felt the same. He'd become emotionally disconnected from the sum total of his past life. It didn't feel visceral to him anymore. None of his prior actions or experiences felt in any way connected to his inner core.

When he tried to go over the crazed and hectic events of the past few days, it seemed like they'd somehow been put behind glass. No sense of immediacy existed regarding who he'd once been. An all of his previous experiences of self struck him as being no more real than the fanciful travails of a fictional character one might read about in a novel — so little ownership did he currently attach to them.

Standing naked before the full-length bathroom mirror, Ipsum questioned the wisdom of his undertaking. Only forty-eight hours had passed since he first set out to exorcise himself of his all-consuming sense of futility.

What he'd not bargained on back then was his losing touch with his own unique self-defining idea of himself into the bargain. Panicking slightly, he feared he might never feel at home again inside his own skin. Not if he failed to regain this most quintessential of ideas. Understandably, this upset him greatly. He now wore the Extemporer's new clothes and wasn't at all sure they made for a good fit.

Ipsum's mood deflated. Seeking refuge from his funk, he retreated into the shower recess and turned the taps fully on. The sting of the jet against his face numbed his brain. Sighing, he closed his eyes and stood motionless under the torrent of water. Despite everything, he caught a part of himself wishing he could merely complete the process and dissolve away. And even after he'd stood there for a good twenty minutes longer (long after when the hot water had begun to run cold), he made no move to get out and dry off.

He figured he would probably rather be gone before his parents got back ultimately. And on thinking this, he did eventually step out of the shower. An idle curiosity also grew in him, meanwhile, urging him to revisit the scene of the crime he'd committed the night before. Besides which, he'd also started to think about how he could positively murder a proper bang-up sandwich, not having eaten in God knows how long.

Opting again for his dirty gym outfit, Ipsum walked softly to the other end of the house. He'd waited to drip dry first, before getting dressed — a delay he rued sorely, as it left him feeling all the more hungry. He could have put his stuff on while still wet, he knew, but doing so tended to irk him terribly.

"All good things come to he who waits," he whispered, as he approached the kitchen with bated breath.

What waited for him within left him truly speechless. For the sight he saw as he entered the stark white room defied all logic. Unbelievably, not a single skerrick, smear or even faintest of smudges remained of the evil tacky goo he'd cooked up to serve as his midnight ink. Everywhere, the kitchen counters gleamed and sparkled.

If he squinted, Ipsum thought he could almost make out a halo of cleanliness hanging suspended over the entire sink and white-tiled splashback area. Even the stainless-steel cook top shone, being spotlessly free of the slightest blemish. Most unnerving of all was the pristine state of the pot he'd used to manufacture his liquid tar. It seemed to mock him, sitting there at the ready, like the very picture of innocence.

Not the tiniest scrap of evidence remained to suggest anything out of the ordinary had ever taken place there. He knew his mother was good, but not that good. Surely, he asked himself quizzically, something must have escaped the twin assault of her Proserpine kitchen spray and favourite scrubbing brush. Where were the mounds of charred Bugger ants, for instance? They couldn't have simply vanished, could they?

The most probable alternative alarmed him even more than if the ants had indeed magically disappeared of their own accord. Quite seriously, his mother's thoroughness when it came to cleaning had a way of setting his teeth on edge. The statement her little cleaning spree made spoke louder than the severest of reprimands ever could. To cap it all off, she'd left a cheerful note on the fridge door, as well. Addressed to him directly, the note expressed his mother's hope he felt better after his long lie-in. In short, she said she had quickly stepped out in order to buy some more supplies.

She'd added via postscript he should feel more than welcome to eat the tuna casserole stowed within the fridge proper. Re-heating instructions were supplied as were directions as to which piece of cutlery he should use.

The breezy tone of the note did nothing to help untie the knot Ipsum felt growing in his stomach. He didn't like having his head fucked with. His mother had set him a test regarding his moral fitness. Food never existed as just food, in such cases. A thinly-disguised layer of guilt accompanied the meal she'd supplied. Going hungry, he decided, left him his pride, at least.

He needed a strong game plan. And that required a reality check. He had to get to the truly true truth of the matter and be quick about it. His mother wanted him to believe she still trusted him. The mutant ants, his sump-oil ink and the crazy word mural had been wiped clean from her mind. While at the same time his sanity depended on there being a clear cause for her to hate him. The unlit living room across the way held the key. For there he might be able to uncover the visible proof he needed. No mere mortal could have restored its trashed interior within the intervening few hours that had since passed.

Ipsum swallowed down hard. If nothing else, he told himself, history had shown his mother to be entirely capable of pulling off the most amazing feats when it came to matters of both family decorum and/or domestic housekeeping but she remained only human, after all.

As he reached the living room, he faltered momentarily before flicking on the light switch. He had sensed a presence in the darkened room beyond— someone else was there in the house with him. He shouldn't have been startled. And yet he buckled at the knees slightly as he realised he had failed to properly recognise his own father. It never dawned on him that his father should have stayed behind. He couldn't mistake the sound of the other man's voice, however. And even as disembodied and barely audible as his father's voice sounded, his words seared themselves into Ipsum's brain like arc-heated razor wire.

"Your mother has never asked for all that much from us, son," his father said. "It's not in her nature. But believe me, it's been no picnic or frolic for her all these years, either. What I can tell you, first off, is that we're the ones who have let her down. And while I know it's easy for you to think of her as the enemy, she doesn't deserve your condemnation. I mean, how dare you blame her for that which cannot be undone? I ask you, is it fair that you should resent her for being your sole able-bodied parent? You are no longer a child, damn it! If you can't sort out what it is you think of her as a mother, then you can at least treat her with the respect she deserves as a good, strong woman, a woman who has fought mostly solo to keep her family from going under. God's truth, she'd steal and shuck the Devil's own peas to get food on the table and dinner into our blessed gobs before calling it quits!"

His father had spoken. Meanwhile Ipsum's head reeled from what he had heard. He could not believe his father had actually spoken to him, thereby breaking what felt like virtually a lifetime of silence between the two of them. Ipsum stopped and waited anxiously to hear if his father might have anything else to add. But nothing further proved to be forthcoming other than a characteristic stony silence. Ipsum fought hard to try and break the code of what his father had said.

Obviously, there existed a main gist to his father's lecture along the lines of, "Don't be mean to your mother, she's not to blame". But underneath this message, Ipsum believed there lay the true meaning of the other man's words. For why else would his father address him after all these years, if not to warn him of an encroaching personal disaster or similar?

From what Ipsum could decipher, therefore, the real message his father meant to convey to him actually said something more like this, "Your mother, as THE ENEMY, doesn't deserve any commendations! God only knows, it's no picnic being her son. Besides which, be warned that FROLIC law dictates good, strong women, like your mother, shall in time rule over us all!"

The back of Ipsum's knees prickled with sweat. "I'm sorry, Dad. I guess, I was only trying to make sense of the greater conspiracy, we're all caught up in," he managed to blurt out.

But his father had reverted to his old self. He wouldn't speak again, not now he'd said his piece.

The "little accident" he'd suffered occurred years ago back during Ipsum's infancy. No-one ever spoke directly about the incident itself, which meant whatever Ipsum knew about his father's condition came solely from what his brother Esau told him. And the way his brother told it, their father had many years ago simply given up.

Back at the time when it had all happened, Esau said he would come home from school to find their father lying outside in the driveway, staring blankly up at the clouds for hours on end.

For some inexplicable reason, the one thing Esau most delighted in telling Ipsum about had to do with how many jobs their father had fallen in and out of, as a consequence of his complete failure to give a damn anymore.

"The Paterfamilias and his many chosen professions," Esau would observe slyly, during his tell-all family exposés "were never what you or I would call a truly suitably match."

To hear him tell it, their father had pretty much had a go at most occupations, without necessarily sticking at any one of them for very long. Originally born into the stationery trade, much like his own father before him (and so on, back for countless generations), he'd rebelled against his lot, evidently. Renouncing his claim to a family business that stretched across two continents and four centuries, their father had declared he found the very thought of peddling office supplies, at best, mind-numbingly boring.

Naturally enough, his cry of dissent had fallen on deaf ears and all assumed he, too, would eventually take his rightful place in the long, unbroken dynastic line of stationers he came from. Any personal ambitions he held about striking out on his own were dismissed as being a passing rebellious phase on his part.

"Mind you, this wasn't any ordinary stationery business he stood to inherit, either," Esau had stressed, on countless occasions, "Family legend told how one of our line had long ago held a rival patent for the paper clip. And how, if it were not for losing the ensuing legal battle resulting from the claim, our family could have gone on and started printing our own paper money, at least figuratively speaking."

Called the "All Licensed Fool's Cap Stationery Company" (or "the family firm" by those who ran it), there was simply no escaping the sense of tradition and pride the stationery company's very name elicited in Esau, as he described its grandeur.

"Well," he'd said one night, from where he lay ensconced smugly in his bottom bunk, "you know, much to his detriment, the Paterfamilias couldn't resist the inexorable pull the family business had over him and, despite his initial reservations, he eventually joined the firm he had once so desperately sought to turn his back on. Immediately upon doing which, he had then added the tagline of 'Pushing the envelope into the 21st Century!' to the company's masthead."

Branching out, he had soon positioned himself as a sort of celebrity stationer or stationer to the stars, as he liked to call himself. His new clientele consisted mostly of well-known film and television personalities as well as well-heeled society types, according to Esau. That is, until disaster struck. Tragically, the "little accident" their father famously suffered had occurred just when he looked set to become a big name with the international party set, including Saudi royalty and foreign shipping magnates and the like.

After that, he'd sunk what little remained of the family fortune into a whole procession of hare-brained schemes and ill-conceived business ideas. One of many such failed ventures was a fish-mongering outfit called The Squid Pro Quo Co, which their father had operated out of a caravan by the side of a busy inner-city thoroughfare. Sadly, the underlying concept for the business proved altogether too cerebral for the average man/woman in the street and it had gone belly up almost immediately. To make things worse, Squisho the Squid, the company mascot, had been run over in a drive-by road rage incident the very same week.

Another similarly insolvent undertaking was his Tom o' Bedlam's Crazy Discount Beds and Bedding Supplies national chain of franchisee-owned retail stores. Sure enough, while Tom o' Bedlam's prices may have brought a smile to the faces of his happy customers, the terms and conditions of his employee's contractual obligations proved to be no laughing matter, being quickly exposed to be an industrial relations' minefield.

"But who could ever forget his Pseudocidal Manioc Greengrocer's Store? A Goth-inspired organic fresh produce store for ultra-hip, death-obsessed vegetarians. Enough said, RIP," Esau had quipped, on another occasion.

Equally doomed apparently was their father's cheekily named Better Out Than In, a speed-dating service for gas-afflicted closet homosexuals. Not to mention the short-lived Last Laugh Comedy Club, originally touted as a one-of-a-kind entertainment venue for the terminally ill. A failure their father quickly followed up with a national bingo syndicate for the weight watchers' crowd called Fat Chance. When this too went under, he allegedly next moved into the oracle business, establishing Going Through the Motions, a divination agency offering specialist advice derived solely from rituals pertaining to the ancient art of scatomancy — a service that immediately found itself shut down by the local Health Department the moment they caught wind of it.

A second-hand op shop for all things equestrian, named Mare Frippery, it seemed also suffered the same ignominious fate as all the other businesses that came before. As, evidently, the dressage set would rather be seen dead than buying previously owned horse wear (read, filibusters). And as for Amateur Hour, a repair shop specialising in timepiece restoration —staffed entirely by apprentice watchmakers — its time was soon up once people got sick of the consistently shoddy workmanship.

"Splitting Heirs, a combined barbershop and legal practice, offered a one-stop shop for those seeking both a haircut and representation from someone eminently knowledgeable in the field of contested wills," Esau had explained, as he and Ipsum had dressed for school one morning. "Trouble is the Paterfamilias turned out to be allergic to dandruff."

Not one to admit defeat easily, their father thereafter tried his hand at the hardware-selling game, opening The Interim Solution Shoppe, a place devoted to serving all those half-hearted DIY hobbyists of the world looking to cut a few corners. But despite the staggering selection of stopgap measures on offer, the idea never took off. Somewhat predictably, the business's target audience more often than not were inclined to settle for a roll of sticky tape and a few pieces of string, forgoing entirely the pricier celebrity-endorsed, time-saving devices the store had for sale. And said shoppe was hastily shut up, Esau had explained with a snigger — this being the sanest solution their father could find to curb steadily spiralling overheads.

But by far, Ipsum's own personal favourite amongst his father's many failed enterprises had to be No Fun Intended, a humourless amusement park where the disaffected and lonely could allegedly fritter away a few desperate hours, without having to share their rides with the happy masses or any other such sticklers set on enjoying a good time.

"Whereas my personal favourite," Esau had declared, in response to first hearing his brother express the aforementioned opinion, "has to be Rough 'n' Tumble — being as it was the most spectacular failure of them all. Conceived as a specialist laundromat for bikies, this one business alone caused the Paterfamilias more headaches and grief than all the others combined. Who could have foreseen that rival outlaw gangs such as The Hell for Leather Harridans and the local chapter of The Living in Sin Bastard Sons of Satan would simply refuse to stick to their designated laundry days? The result was sheer unadulterated madness and soon escalated into some of the bloodiest street brawls ever seen in the (then) mayor's suburb of Upper Royston. It's hardly surprising the city's police force should have put the Laundromat under constant 24-hour surveillance afterwards. You've got to imagine they were just waiting for an excuse to go in and shut the widely-hated shithole down!"

As a coda to this particular story, Esau explained later that market forces soon took care of closing the cursed premises of Rough 'n' Tumble for ever. Their father it seems made the grave error of putting too much fabric softener in with a load of soiled boxer shorts belonging to the leader of The Quasimoto Madmen. The unforgiving chieftain of the Madmen, Hugo "The Beast with Two Backs" Bellchambers, vowed to make Ipsum's father pay for the grievous insult in teeth.

Mercifully, his crew eventually managed to talk Hugo down from his fit of pique. Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and — thinking better of a proposed name change to The Vicious Cycle — his father had locked the dryer doors of Rough 'n' Tumble for good the following week.

Unlikely as it sounded, Esau ultimately listed their father's naïve foray into the shadowy world of stage hypnotism as the occupation that spelt his final doom.

After having at first dabbled with recreational mesmerism on his own, at night and on weekends and such, their father had gone on to develop an unwholesome fixation regarding the dark power of guided suggestion, more generally, his brother had told him. Before long, their father began living a double life: on the one hand he continued to perform those duties expected of him as a husband and father of two young boys, while on the other he masqueraded as a light entertainer known as Peter Schlemihl: "Shadowmancer and Trancendentalist Extraordinaire".

According to Esau, calamity had struck one fateful Christmas morning when their father (aka Mr Schlemihl) sat practising one of his routines in front of the bathroom mirror. In an unexpected flash of self-reflexivity the over-preening mesmerist fell under his own spell, as it were. Or so Esau said. And the trance he put himself under was never to be broken.

"His Boxing Day gig at the Starlight Lodge "Borrowed Time" Nursing Home had to be promptly cancelled, along with all his other upcoming bookings and engagements," Esau said, as he and Ipsum had sat on the front step of their family home squatting mosquitoes one night. "If you look closely at photographs of him from the time, you can clearly see he's a man who's completely lost his bearings. He looks like he's just been slapped in the face. Or rather that he's just overheard someone say something particularly unsavoury about his dying mother's moral rectitude..."

This alleged paranormal event next led to a veritable explosion of creativity on their father's part, if Esau were to be believed. Out of the blue, the one-time stationer had formed a power trio jazz-fusion band called The Fallen Behind — a name the trio was quickly forced to change to The Lapsarian Lap-dancers due to copyright infringement issues. Incredibly, the band went on to become a huge overnight success. Their debut album, Dirt Finger, topping the underground jazz charts on the first day of its release, a position it continued to hold for a record 48 weeks.

The man once known as Peter Schlemihl seemed unstoppable after this. Breaking away from his former band mates, he next founded the post-punk ensemble Iron Lungfish, which garnered even greater critical acclaim. And it was this band's first full-length album, Paradise Is Wherever You First Lost It that signalled their father's widely applauded departure from jazz-fusion into the realm of dystopian electro-trance beats.

Sadly, said ensemble's long-awaited follow up album remained forever unfinished, owing to violent band infighting. And thereafter there came a distasteful foray into Gregorian chant, when their father joined a band called the Force-fed Cannibals, which did nothing to improve his musical standing in the minds of many of his disillusioned fans.

Still, if Esau were to be believed, this didn't stop the musical maverick they called their father, as he immediately went on to start the seminal angst-rock group The Frozen Left Overs, before leaving again to begin his notorious association with the Recidivist Onion Collective, an ill-fated Anthony Burgess-inspired a cappella choir inexplicably hung up on the approaching Apocalypse.

Obviously, as he got older, though, Ipsum began to question the veracity of much of what Esau told him about their father's supposed music career. He simply refused, for instance, to accept Esau's claim their father had next gone on to front an experimental Yugoslavian folk group called Night Soil, with which he had headlined the Glastonbury festival the following year. And similarly as to his father's supposed stint as the mock nineteenth-century highwayman Dick Turnip in the internationally feted jug band, Blown Gasket, Ipsum didn't believe the story for a second.

Really, to Ipsum's mind, therein lay the trouble with his brother Esau — he simply never knew when enough was enough. In the end, the credibility gap always simply loomed too large. At its simplest nothing more needed to be said about their father than that he had been an irredeemable failure his entire life. For this much Ipsum knew to be true.

Digesting this sorry bit of certainty, he squinted his eyes in order to see if he could make out the form of the failed man himself within the unlit living room. He couldn't. Neither could he see the state of the room itself.

It was probably better that way, Ipsum decided. With a single flick of the light switch, he possessed the means by which to either establish or debunk his own mental solvency instantly. He instead chose to walk back to bed oblivious to the truth.

Once there, it proved all he could do to simply crawl under the covers, before sinking back into unconsciousness again.

Immediately he found himself back in the grip of a powerfully vivid dream. He saw himself being chased by a gigantic pseudocidal manioc bearing the face of his father. Alternating between being hunter and hunted they raced over a cellophane lava field, his father shouting over and over the same inane phrase at the top of his voice, "Riddle me this: is it Satan's soft serve alone which serves the soft-centred Beast best? Or is the runaway slave simply a jester short of a sad sack?" In response, Ipsum screamed his anguished reply back over his shoulder as he ran, "Meat without gravy is like life without hope. Mans without ladies is like soap without rope. Sea without navy is like folk without pope. See me go crazy over-scrutinising a joke..."

The nightmare visions Parsival endured on his quest for the holy cup of Christ were less frightening, thought Ipsum suddenly as he awoke with a start.

His mother stood at his bedroom door, smiling at him. He guessed it to be well into mid-morning, judging from the light filtering through the curtains. His mother called out his name, the way she had used to when he was still a child.

As if undecided about something, she turned to leave. Ipsum coughed like he had a tickle in his throat.

"I didn't want to disturb you, but you've got a little friend come over to see you," she said, feigning repentance. "She seems like such a lovely lass, and I told her you needed an excuse to get out of bed. I left her in the front parlour."

"I don't make deals with the enemy," Ipsum said firmly, turning to face the wall.

"I see. Well, I better..." his mother replied, before walking off mid-sentence, with a slightly dazed expression on her face.

Ipsum jumped out of bed and followed after her. He felt intrigued as to who it was his mother could possibly be referring. He didn't really have any real friends, not in the ordinary sense of the term. If he could have chosen who it would be, his visitor would definitely be Hamartia from his work.

Nothing he ever prayed for came true, though, he sighed. All Hamartia need do is look up his next of kin information on his personnel file. But, no, it wouldn't be her. Clearly, his pure love for her had not been reciprocated. He couldn't blame the doe-eyed office goddess. Where she came off as all horn-provokingly perfect, he came off as merely paltry and pathetic and gag-reflex-inducingly mediocre.

He did find cause to congratulate himself in one respect, however, as he neared the sitting room. Luckily, the fact he'd gone to bed fully clothed meant he didn't need to worry overly much about his appearance when he eventually greeted his mystery guest And this pleased him no end. Waving away his mother, he rubbed the sleep from the corner of his eyes, and slouched into the front room of the house, with all the decorum of a pantomime drunk. His mouth tasted sour and he needed to urinate desperately.

"Or maybe not," groaned Ipsum, on seeing Mortimer's girlfriend, Verity, who stood up to meet him., before buckling under his glare and sitting back down on his mother's favourite easy chair.

"I wasn't sure whether to come," she blurted.

She sat hunched on the front edge of the chair, looking at her hands as if they might provide the necessary clue.

"I see the bespoke bruise business is obviously coming along a treat," said Ipsum, breaking the awkward silence between them finally, as he gestured casually towards her face.

"Oh, don't worry about this," Verity scoffed, pulling her hair forward from behind her ear. "You know me, I'm like an over-ripe pear, I bruise so easily."

The whole half of one side of her face was swollen up into a giant purple welt the size of a man's open fist. Mortimer's fist, Ipsum guessed.

"And, well, you know Mortie probably better than even I do," she then said. "Stupid ass doesn't know how good I am for him."

She looked away guiltily, before setting about chewing her fingernails down to their quicks.

Sensing a lull in her confession, Ipsum took the opportunity to park himself in his father's dusty leather recliner opposite.

"I visited your brother, Esau, first" said Verity, at length. "It was Mortie who told me where he lived. You two couldn't be more dissimilar."

"Really?" Ipsum asked incredulously.

"He seemed really nice. He played me some of his music."

"I'm truly sorry. I mean it."

"What? No, I liked it."

"The whole professionally-paid masochist thing would explain it, I suppose."

"You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?" said Verity hotly.

Ipsum shrugged his shoulders. "Make what easy?" he asked.

"I want to clear something up between us".

"Is there something between us, Miss Verity Lane? — if that is even your real name," mocked Ipsum, pretending he was cross-examining a reluctant witness in a late-night murder mystery.

"Mortie accused me of sleeping with you behind his back. He said that's the only reason I cared about what happened to you."

"Stands to reason. So?"

"So maybe you did and said all those things the other day because you..."

"Yes?"

"...are..."

"Hmm?"

"in love..."

"Uh-huh?"

"with..."

"Come on."

"...me?"

"Thank God," exclaimed Ipsum, "I thought you were going to say with Mortimer."

"Don't make fun of me," raged Verity.

"OK, let's just say I'm not feeling you on this issue," he laughed.

"I can't be wrong about this," she said, walking over to where he sat while hitching up her skirt.

"So much for the slow reveal," objected Ipsum, immediately noticing Verity's distinct absence of both pubic hair and panties.

"Shut up and take me," she hissed into his ear, straddling him in full view of an on-looking alabaster statue of Rameses II.

"You know my mum's in the next room..." he protested uneasily.

"Don't be such a prude," Verity scolded him. "How the hell do you think she made you?"

She reached inside his sweat pants and grabbed his stiffening member.

"Well, I don't know how that got in there," he said glumly, as she lithely mounted him.

Ipsum sank back and surveyed his flatmate's battered thighs and torso as she forcefully thrust her pelvis hard up against him. It rated as the worst sex he'd ever had. He felt like he was having sex with a hit-and-run victim, she looked so beat up. Worse of all her phoney ecstatic groaning only made him want to retch.

He sat up and looked over her shoulder at the laces running up the back of her knee-high suede boots. The whole act struck him as hollow and mechanical, when it should have been life-altering and revelatory. He felt like he was being used as a human pogo stick. While all the while, he became consumed by the foreboding sense that even more bad news lingered no further than an unexpected telephone call away.

"Well?" asked Verity, lifting herself off afterwards.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Stay tuned until the end of this program when we will be bringing you a special word from Our Sponsors..."

"What are you?!" she yelled at him. "Who the hell are our sponsors?"

"For superior grip in the wet, Ms Verity Lane always prefers to use Katana Tyres — they cut through where all others fail," Ipsum replied.

"You fucking arsehole," she cried. "Everything's just one big joke to you, isn't it?"

"No naked reminder."

"What do you mean?" asked Verity, slapping his face, as though he were delirious.

"No naked reminder," repeated Ipsum. "Sex should always have something of the naked reminder about it. Remember the jump-up-and-down heavenly joy of just being naked you experienced in childhood?"

"Sex isn't some sort of childish game," spat Verity.

"No, not usually it isn't. But it should be."

"You're such a waste of space."

She gathered her skirt about her legs and strode defiantly over to the entry hall.

"I can't help it if that's the way I feel," apologised Ipsum. "Maybe I've got a blocked emotion duct somewhere inside my head or...Hey, send my regards to Madame von Auerbach's Craziacs Corp!"

But Verity had already left, slamming the front door shut behind her. He shrugged and dried his penis on his underpants before tucking it away.

If he really were the Antichrist, he thought, surely he would have heard about it by now, wouldn't he? But maybe he simply failed to receive the confirmation slip in the mail or something. Who knew, perhaps come Judgement Day he would out of the blue find himself teaming up with The Four Horsemen as they together brought down the final curtain on the whole of Creation. It would be nice to have a definite purpose, if nothing else, he supposed.

Suddenly, he felt hungry again. Literally days had passed since he'd last eaten a proper sit-down meal. Dimly, he recalled something about the tuna casserole his mother had left for him in the fridge.

"What gruff beast, its feeding hour come round at last, skulks towards the Kelvinator waiting to be gorged," he quoted raspingly, as he pushed off in search of food.

Skulking into the kitchen moments later, he set about searching for the pre-prepared meal he hungered after. He soon found the dish he sought and shoved it straight into the microwave. As he waited for it to cook, he glanced around every so often to see if his mother approached.

He mentally crossed his fingers she'd gone out back to her potting shed, where she was forever busy transplanting cuttings and whatnot. Under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever did he want to have to meet her eyes as he stuffed his face with her casserole. The perfect crime would see him secretly allay the savage beast within and then crawl back into bed, before his mother even knew he'd finished entertaining his guest. He hurriedly grabbed a fork from the cutlery drawer and jogged on the spot, as he urged the timer to count down to zero more quickly.

A little later on again, he'd crawled back into bed, having successfully demolished his mother's tuna pasta bake without detection. Lying huddled in a ball under the bedclothes, he worried about whether he might be coming down with something. His limbs seemed altogether too impossibly heavy for him to lift them by himself unaided.

He grimly likened his predicament to being that of a tiny moth slowly drowning in a huge vat of treacle or molasses. When he thought about it, he had to concede there were probably far worse ways to die — a thought that quite tangentially put him in mind of a person Esau had told him about a few years back. A guy called Xian Wayne, who Esau had first got to know while hanging around flea-markets scrounging for old computers and other junk. According to Esau, Xian had still been studying at university when they first met.

Well, Xian Wayne (or True Git, as he oddly liked to call himself) came from mixed Chinese-American heritage and held the ignoble honour of being the most sleep-obsessed person Esau had ever had the misfortune of knowing personally. Hands down, Xian's greatest love in life was sleeping, along with all those other various associated states of nocturnal human repose. Allegedly, while still a student, he even went so far as supplementing his already generous allowance by working part-time for a bedding-and-bedroom furniture retailer — in return for store credit.

Absolutely no limits existed when it came to his obsession. His overriding ambition, he declared whenever given the opportunity, apparently, was to one day sleep through an entire 24-hour block without ever once stirring.

As far as unusual fixations went, Xian's predilection for catnapping didn't originally strike Esau as being all that much of a wacky thing to be hung up on. Boring? Yes, definitely! But wacky? Not so much. Meaning more often than not, with a groan, Esau would simply listen to whatever Xian's latest marathon sleep-in effort happened to be and just nod appreciatively at the appropriate juncture.

"After all, who doesn't love the idea of lying in bed of a weekend?" Esau had asked his brother, in the course of telling him about Xian's less-than intriguing sleep history.

It also didn't require a national poll to show university students were mostly a notoriously lazy and feckless pack of individuals anyhow, said Esau. Xian merely excelled at what his fellow cohorts dabbled with. His reward amongst the student body being that he found himself largely treated with exactly the sort of blasé disregard he fully deserved. The general consensus amongst his few friends, and ever-diminishing circle of acquaintances, stated Xian was clearly born to (make others) yawn.

Evidently, legend had it his interminable soliloquies on the subject of hyper-somnolence were enough to kill a bedbug infestation stone cold dead.

"You can totally imagine Xian's delight, therefore, when he found he'd been selected for a national sleep study project taking place at his very own campus," Esau had later reported to the private investigator hired by Xian's parents to find their missing son. "He really was completely over the moon."

At that earlier time, Esau had simply told his brother that the research study meant Xian could now marry his fulltime sleep obsession with an activity which also directly contributed to his overall course credits

"Hallelujah! It's like a marriage made in heaven," Xian had reputedly crowed, according to Esau. "Pardon the pun, but it's like I've literally fallen into my dream job."

Things went along swimmingly for Xian thereafter. Every night, rather than going home to bed, he instead eagerly presented himself at the research centre located behind the old chancellery building at the university.

Following a short Q&A session regarding what he'd eaten throughout the day and such like, he would then be hooked up to an impressive battery of scientific equipment. A massive dose of hypnotic suggestion later and he would be off to Lah Lah Land. The arrangement couldn't have been sweeter. Xian so loved to sleep, and the research centre claimed to be forever in need of willing test bunnies. Win/win.

Only later did matters take a turn for the worse, when a few months further into the study Xian began to suffer from what he himself called "brownouts". These "mini-shutdowns" or "brownouts" could occur at any time throughout the day, but unlike a full blackout Xian never reported fully losing conscious.

The first few times he experienced one of his mysterious turns, Xian related how his eyes had simply glazing over and how his mind had next shifted into some sort of power-saving mode. From what he had said, it felt as if someone had quite literally reached inside his brain and switched his thought processing unit onto standby.

Worryingly, instead of improving, the attacks soon grew more frequent as well as more severe. It didn't take a genius to figure out some link existed between Xian's affliction and the sleep study he had so readily signed up for, obviously.

"Man, you're going to have to ask some questions about what the fuck it is they're doing to you up there at that research lab!" Esau had urged his junk-shopping buddy. "For all you know, they're injecting monkey butts into your brain while you're sleeping. I mean, think about it!"

"No friggin' way," Xian had replied. "I'm not risking getting kicked out of the study, not when I'm two credit points shy of finishing my degree. Hell, if I don't get these extra points, I'll have to come back next year for another full semester — and you can screw that!"

Determined to complete his allotted 24-week test cycle, Xian kept ignoring the warning signs, long after it became clear to all something was gravely amiss. With his brownouts becoming increasingly debilitating, he spent more and more of each day "stuck in neutral" inside his own frozen headspace. To be honest, most people, if asked, would have admitted to actually preferring Xian's company while he was thus cerebrally indisposed. But that was surely beside the point, even if Xian himself didn't particularly think it to be.

Xian's judgement, Esau said, had become clouded on the issue owing to his near-miss experience with an unusually attractive first year girl, while in the grip of exactly one of these kinds of prolonged vegetative mental states. Drifting back to full consciousness one day, he had been surprised to find the attractive co-ed writing out her phone number for him on the back of his hand. She told him he held the inimitable honour of being the best listener she'd ever met.

For Xian, this close encounter with the other sex represented a BIG DEAL. Not surprisingly, with his lank hair, coke-bottle glasses and maddening propensity for "pillow talk" the man who called himself True Git had never enjoyed any real success with the ladies. And true to form, before long, he succeeded in characteristically blowing his chances of ever "sealing the deal" with the hapless girl who'd given him her number, after he spent their entire first date together jabbering on about REM cycles and the etymology of the word dormouse — and this only when he wasn't explaining the hibernation habits of Richardson's ground squirrels.

No other girl in the history of first dates has ever wished more desperately that she'd written down a dummy number than that poor little miss. Or so Esau reckoned, upon hearing a mystified Xian recount how the girl had frantically bailed from the taxi they shared on the way home so as to walk back in the rain.

To Esau's mind, calling Xian broken-hearted missed the extent of his misery entirely. The miserable sap declared his already impoverished self-esteem to be totally bankrupt. By his own frank admission, he believed his only chance of ever getting laid now involved his slipping into a full coma.

"I had her eating out of the palm of my hand," he had moaned despondently. "The only frickin' trouble being that I happened to be out to lunch myself when I first snared the little fox."

For weeks, Xian's sense of loss plagued him. He couldn't believe he'd been so close to crossing over into that misty paradise which awaits all those who venture inside the panties of a co-ed psych major. Unbeknownst to him, he stood to still yet be hit with far worse.

In a cruel twist of fate, Xian started suffering severe insomnia right about then. His natural sleep cycle appeared to be completely out of whack. He yo-yoed between his ever-more frequent brownouts and bouts of total hyper vigilance where he wouldn't sleep for 36 hours or more. Even for a normal person, this would prove insufferable. For Xian, who'd devoted his entire waking life to the attainment of the perfect night's repose, it proved catastrophic. His very life's meaning was quashed.

The lowest point for Xian came when the heads of the university's sleep research centre went on to next declare him unfit for further participation in their study. The fact he no longer slept precluded him from further eligibility, they argued. To soften the blow, they assured him his current circadian arrhythmia most likely represented a temporary ailment. They had no idea Xian felt like he'd been robbed of his most precious possession. When he tried to give voice to his feelings of injury and aggrievement, they reminded him of a certain ironclad disclaimer he'd signed, upon first agreeing to take part in their controversial research project.

In the months following, Xian's condition deteriorated rapidly. For eight or nine hours each night, Xian would stare forlornly at the cracks in the ceiling above his once much-loved bed and contemplate his unhappy lot. And in those, the very darkest, hours of his life he decided the vengeful gods of heavenly slumber themselves had conspired to send Nemesis, in her spiteful guise as the harpy Insomnia, to punish him for his sleep-obsessed hubris. Now he would never earn the requisite number of units he needed to complete his applied physics degree. Nevertheless, it wasn't True Git's style to give up quite so easily.

"So what? I've been ejected from some shitty sleep study, and my life is consequently in the toilet," he had said to Esau matter-of-factly, while slowly coming out of one of his trademark brownouts. "Well, you know, I can't help thinking this is the beginning of something really positive for me."

"The something positive Xian spoke of later led to his being forced to hide in a witness protection program, while living under an assumed name — a cover so secret not even his own parents knew how to find him," Esau had told his brother in strictest confidence, as an aside to the story proper.

"It's like I've got it all worked out," Xian had said next. "See, I've been thinking about all these changes I've been going through lately...and about how it's all got to add up to something. And then it hit me! I know what's going on!"

"What? What's going on, Xian," Esau had asked, taking the bait.

"Can't you see? I'm obviously some sort of nascent...superhero."

"Could have fooled me," scoffed Esau.

"Hel-lo, I'm only just coming into my full powers! It's the classic pattern of metamorphosis. First a crisis, and then apotheosis. You get bitten by a radioactive spider/exposed to gamma radiation/injected with alien DNA, and, then, BAM!, you're kicking butt with the big boys of the Justice League!"

"That's probably not what's happening here, I shouldn't think," Esau recalled saying ever-so carefully.

"I've totally read about it heaps of times," insisted Xian, "It's a no-brainer, really."

"So what sort of super powers you got, then? I mean, how are you any different to me?"

"Well, for starters, I no longer need sleep, ergo I am no longer human."

"What, no x-ray vision? Or telekinesis? You've been ripped off, dude!"

"We'll see," said Xian archly.

Fortunately, the whole nascent superhero thing proved to be short lived. In quick succession, Xian also soon claimed to be a firefly and a hand grenade. It took his stint masquerading as a suckerfish to finally bring him to the attention of campus security. The disproportionately high number of female versus male hosts he had attempted to attach himself to didn't go unnoticed for long. And following an initial warning, Xian wound up being handed over to the "proper authorities" before being charged under newly legislated stalking laws.

The resulting scandal only came to light, when — under hypnosis, as part of his psychiatric assessment — Xian began recounting what had actually taken place during his sleep study sessions. For as Esau had rightly suspected from the get go, the government-sponsored research project wasn't at all as innocent as it pretended to be. Acting in his role as informant (code name: True Git), Xian went on to testify that the entire set up existed as little more than a front for a top-secret military testing program. Kickbacks to faculty members and other honorary campus bigwigs had kept the whole thing very hush hush.

"We were labelled "the sleepies"," Xian had later confided to Esau through the plexiglass shield of the police watchhouse's visitors station, in the lead up to his plea bargain hearing. "While the others were referred to as "the warries" — you see, they were the SAS soldiers, whereas we were the control group. The sleepies versus the warries. They were searching for a way of turning combat troops into "sleep camels", without the use of amphetamines. Their method lay in combining basic hypnotic suggestion with direct alpha wave manipulation via electric shock stimulation. Hence my insomnia..."

"Scum-sucking bastards!" Esau said he cried out, raising his right fist in a show of solidarity for his terminally sleep-deprived friend.

Xian told him the line had been crossed when bored lab techs took it upon themselves to set up informal sweepstakes where they then "raced" their allotted sleep camels in between official testing periods. The longest reported incidence of wakefulness to result from such activities allegedly amounted to 28 days, 11 hours and 48 minutes — although it should be noted the soldier who held this particular record subsequently collapsed from mental exhaustion and died with his head in a bowl of cornflakes shortly afterwards.

Needless to say, the ramifications of Xian's eventual testimony before the university's disciplinary tribunal were both far-reaching and shocking. And as a result, the True Git case became an almost legendary byword for high level corruption in the academic arena. Sadly, for Xian, nothing in the way of actual compensation came his way, largely because of the aforementioned disclaimer he had foolishly signed without reading the small print. No longer a nascent superhero or a firefly or a suckerfish even, he found himself left to contend with a life vexed with persistent brownouts and recurrent sleeplessness, as best he could.

Ultimately, Esau said he no longer knew the whereabouts of his one-time friend. And he reported telling the private investigator as much, when being questioned about just that. Although he did immediately afterwards recall the last thing Xian ever said to him, before he'd left to take up his new life under the witness protection scheme he'd been forced into.

"Just so you know," Xian had said, while shaking hands with Esau outside the greyhound bus terminal located near the city centre, "I never really thought I was a suckerfish. But what would you do? I mean, I'd literally stumbled on the perfect plan for how I could plant my face in as much free-range cleavage as I could ever possibly desire. Call me a pervert, if you must. But once I'd discovered it, I just couldn't find it within myself to suppress my inner remora any longer."

All these years on, Ipsum had to admit he liked the whole idea of being a nascent superhero. And lying in bed, half-awake as he did, he began imagining what kind of caped crusader he might make. The name Super Subliminal Man for some reason appealed to him, but he felt wary about over-thinking the trappings of his super persona too early on.

"Oh, save me, Super Subliminal Man!" some helpless victim of evil tyranny or crime would cry. "Only you can deliver me from certain social embarrassment or similar identity death!"

Hearing the dire cry of distress, Super Subliminal Man would then miraculously materialise from the thin-edge of consciousness before springing into action to yet again save the day. Always ready with a quick, witty aside and a dazzling smile, he would allay all fears with a morale-boosting speech:

"No need for alarm, Peaches. There isn't a villain alive who can match the superior whiteness of my teeth!"

Super Subliminal Man's particular unique talent would be revealed as being an uncanny ability to pass through life totally unnoticed by other people. Unlike ordinary invisibility, this specific special superpower would allow Ipsum to see all those things that typically passed ordinary people by as they went about their everyday lives, while all the while he remained in plain sight.

The more he thought himself into the role of superhero the more Ipsum warmed to the idea. And before long, a plan began to form in his mind. He'd known it would only be a matter of time until the way forward should reveal itself. Moments earlier, the inner voice inside his head had told him to be patient. Whereas now, it told him to "get dressed as though for war".

He obeyed the stern mental directive, at once, by getting to his feet and staggering out into the hallway. In his mind's eye Ipsum recalled watching his mother as she had stowed a collection of his father's clothes inside the guest bedroom's built-in wardrobe, during one of his previous visits. Perhaps there, he thought, he could find an outfit with which to attire himself for battle. He and his father shared a similar physique, so whatever he found should fit. As to whether he would turn up an actual flak jacket or combat fatigues, he couldn't be so certain.

"If clothes maketh the man," he said to himself, while swinging open the wardrobe doors before him, "then what a piece of work my father must once have been."

Looking up at the racks of neatly pressed dress shirts and cuffed pants lining the space within, he shook his head. Not a single bullet belt or solitary piece of camouflage clothing presented itself. His father had clearly never dressed as if for war at any point in his life. It would never do. Ipsum wanted to create a look for himself both unique and distinctive but also didn't want to end up standing out from the crowd unnecessarily.

So it was only after much rummaging, swearing and agonising that he finally hit on an ensemble he could be truly happy with. Still hanging inside its clingy, clear plastic dry cleaners bag, at the very back of the closet, he at last saw what he searched for. He'd uncovered his father's old pipe band kilt. And immediately upon seeing it, Ipsum knew he couldn't wear anything else in its stead.

When partnered with a long-sleeved plaid shirt and a cable knit jumper, the kilt lent him an instant Highland Avenger crossed with eccentric homeless person vibe — exactly the kind of look he felt drawn to. The way he figured it, no-one would pay him much mind dressed like that. He'd fit in with all the other crazies and wackos just fine. For footwear, he chose a pair of his old in-line skates, retrieved from the milk crate resting on the floor of the wardrobe.

As a teenager, his feet had been abnormally large and had never grown much since, so the boots still felt surprisingly comfortable. Beyond mere comfort, he hoped the roller blades would give him the edge when it came to him fighting for truth, justice and sanity in his guise as Super (shhh!) Subliminal Man. He held his finger up to his lips as he gleefully inspected his outfit in the full length mirror attached to the back of the wardrobe door. The stage was set. Set for total all-out war.

Moments later, he left his parents' house for what would be the last time, giddy with excitement. It was the dead of night and when crossing the front yard he had to keep himself from yelling out random obscenities at the neighbours. He immediately regretted not taking some kind of leggings for himself, when he'd had the chance. Given the choice, he might have turned back. But he felt powerless to quiet the voice inside him that urged him on. It ordered him to march on regardless; albeit on roller blades.

A dog began barking at him from behind its gate across the way. As he passed the askew "for sale" sign he had helped his mother hammer into the lawn — in some distant age past — he picked up speed, his pulse rate spiking as he next rolled out into the street.

"OK, I've done everything you've asked of me," he screamed out loud. "I've quit my job, pissed off my few friends, squandered my finances, demeaned myself, murdered my parents and prepared for war! So can you please just tell me who you are and what the fuck is actually going on?"

"As you would have it — know that I am Boaz," his inner voice replied calmly. "And this is my story. I was here at the beginning and I will be here at the end. It was I who first told you the experiment was to begin as a series of minor deviations from what you might typically call your normal way of thinking. I have been here with you the entire time, watching, preparing and guiding you."

"What the hell are you?" cried Ipsum frantically. "First of all, you started as just a niggle; then a headache, before becoming a persistent migraine. Before I knew it, you were telling me what to do."

"I've explained who I am to you already — I'm Boaz. Or Boaz the Constrictor, if you will. You can think of me as the Ringmaster/Beastmaster of this whole mental circus — or zoo (or what have you) — that you, might typically, call you mind. But as to how I got inside your thoughts and head, well, that's a much more complicated story, I'm afraid..."

"Don't jerk me around!" Ipsum snapped.

"Okay, try this on for size. I am the water in which all the other fish are swimming."

"What does that freaking make me? A minnow? Get the fuck out of my mind!""

"Hey, Jack! Listen! I am the one giving the orders here! You are simply a Jack of all slaves and MASTER of none. So don't go trying my patience! Besides, I have already told you, this is my story. You don't know jack shit about what's really going on. So don't go jacking my back up with your attitude, like some all mighty fruitcake jack-in-the-box."

"What's with all the "jack talk"," railed Ipsum, adding air quotes due to his overly agitated state of mind.

"God, watch where we're going," shouted Boaz, as Ipsum hastily veered past a car parked at the bottom of his parents' street. "Anyway, if you must know, Jack was/is my brother, my twin."

"Yeah, right."

"You see, Jack suggests an anglicised form of the name Jachin. And well, at any rate, it has always been about Jachin and Boaz/Boaz and Jachin. We stood as twin pillars outside the entrance to Solomon's temple. Jachin was the Kingmaker; whereas I am known as the Sophic Hydrolith, and as such marked the path of the rival eschatological heir to the Royal Davidic bloodline. We were first crafted by a group of men who studied under the pyramid builders whilst enslaved in the unholy land of Mizraim."

"Bullshit!"

"You wanted to hear the truth. I can't help it if you don't like how it sounds, ahem, to your ears."

"...all right. But tell me, I'm not about to start growing a vagina or anything, am I?"

"What?!"

"It's just my ex-fiancée, Julia, you know, the hermaphrodite — she was always talking delusion garbage about hearing voices in her head and conspiratorial armies and how I'd impregnated her without my knowledge. That sort of thing."

"Seriously, believe me, you don't need to worry about her any more."

"Why not?" Ipsum asked carefully.

"I'll tell you this: she existed as nothing more than a foreshadowing — a shade from the underworld. She only ever existed to prepare you."

"Prepare me for what?"

"For your preordained destiny...and my coming forth by day."

"Gemini consciousness..." said Ipsum, half to himself.

"Hardly," replied Boaz wryly.

"And the whole FROLIC worldwide female-conspiracy thing, what was all that about?"

"Misdirection. Or a smokescreen if you will."

"You're saying there's no conspiracy?"

"Careful now...I'm merely saying I played on your most deep-seated misogynistic leanings, so as to get your attention more fully."

"The Elegant Solution!"

"You've got to stop thinking in terms of the bleeding obvious. Don't you know there's always a much bigger game going on than the one you think you're already in?"

"Let me regroup for a bit," wheezed Ipsum stopping to catch his breath against a lamp post.

An uneasy silence held sway while Ipsum collected his scrambled thoughts.

"An astral projection blown off course," interjected Boaz at last.

"Come again?"

"Ultimately, that's the best answer I've got for you as to who I am. I suspect a powerful magical time vortex of some sort has exiled me to this future place, where I have since become trapped in your body or brain or whatever."

"So how the hell do I get rid of you?"

"Only magic can undo what magic hath done."

"Stuff that, I want you out right now."

"Well, I'm guessing if you were to die suddenly I'd probably be instantly freed of this physical bondage you call a life."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying it would be better for now if you kept on at playing host nicely. Because, ultimately, I'm still trying to decide whether or not it might would work out better for me if you were dead."

"Get real. I'll get you exorcised before that happens."

"Calm down," said Boaz firmly. "I've got another plan whereby we both still might get what we want."

The plan Boaz outlined next (at its least complex) had everything to do with sacred geometry and the intersecting lines of power he claimed lay at the heart of the city's geometrically-aligned patterns of buildings and public monuments.

According to him, hidden throughout the urban landscape surrounding them, the magical symbols of a secret esoteric tradition had been clearly laid out in pathways of stone and mortar if one only knew where to look. Not a single brick, arch or thoroughfare happened to be where it stood merely by accident. Just as the placement of he and his brother Jachin at the threshold of Solomon's temple conformed to these ancient laws of magic, so to did the city of Queme's avenues and houses of parliament etc.

To the initiated, he insisted, the city read like a three dimensional map of key leylines and etheric meridians.

"By physically tracing these selfsame paths of power lying etched at the heart of this metropolis we can tap into "the real grid", as it were," Boaz explained. "And by so doing we will be able to generate more than enough natural magic to rend the veil, as it were."

At which point, he next entreated Ipsum to "get his skates on", telling him that if they were ever going to collapse the universe and bring their spiritually-conjoined state to an end they needed to start straight away their "squaring of the circle".

Ipsum's days and nights thereafter became reduced to little more than a form of living hell, as he began endlessly traversing an intricate network of footpaths and byways only Boaz himself knew the supposed true significance of.

From what Ipsum gathered, the rough shape he followed approximated an elongated nine-pointed star, with each point corresponding with a major civic landmark. The schedule he followed was crippling. Skating from first light through to whenever he finally collapsed from exhaustion, each day became a blur of forced exercise and extreme hunger.

He slept where he could. But the nights were so bitterly cold he often kept moving simply to stay warm. Sleep became a luxury he stole wherever he could find it. An hour here or there inside a public toilet cubicle or maybe huddled up against the wall of a derelict bus shelter was the most he could hope for.

Boaz's regime proved to be both tyrannical and insane. But for Ipsum there existed no way of defying it. He had no other plan by which to rid himself of his unwanted head-guest.

Oddly enough it was the lack of clean underwear that threatened to break Ipsum first. For beggars could indeed not be choosers, he soon discovered, when it came to the matter of clean laundry. In his old life, he wore a fresh pair of underpants every day. But now he lived his life bereft of even a single, solitary pair of freshly laundered briefs. Out of sheer desperation, thoughts of mugging some other hapless passerby for his boxer shorts soon crowded his mind. He never did mug anyone, thankfully — despite how low he'd fallen — if only because the idea of pulling on a pair of some stranger's still warm undies filled him with gut-wrenching revulsion. Which meant he continued to free-ball his way down into the depths of total destitution with at least his sense of pride still left in tact.

First weeks passed and then many months slipped by. All the while he sank further from of the field of vision of those he crossed paths with on his daily beat. In between times, he encountered the others like him who nobody noticed. They were all the other crazies and nut jobs whose off-centre trajectories intersected with his own.

Through a sort of unspoken law, each of these other comrades-in-arms knew exactly where another of their kind held his or her special patch of the city. And trespassing into another's territory wasn't something any of them did at all lightly, for fear of violent reprisal.

Ipsum's own patch for what it was worth took in the Two Bridges Walk, Aspirin Island, the Corridor of the Fallen War Dead, the Parliamentary Pyramid, the Hyperbole Sports Stadium, Needle-Stick Park and the abandoned Lost-and-Foundry glassworks by the rail yards.

The one place he'd found where people generally put their differences aside was the city's main soup kitchen, standing as it did as a kind of neutral territory or Switzerland of the psych-affected.

It was there Ipsum first came across Alister (or A-lister more correctly), a fellow foot soldier in the war against mental orthodoxy. He was forever making lists of things, out loud, like for instance about the kind of edible beans one can buy. He'd list them off much like this:

"Well, you've got your black beans, green beans, red kidney beans and baked beans. String beans, mung beans, navy beans, runner beans and broad beans. Butter beans and jelly beans, and, oh, Garbanzo, soya, Lima, borlotti, pinto, aduki, tepary and refried beans, too. In addition, coffee, castor, cocoa and vanilla are all known colloquially as bean varieties as well...hmm, and that's all for now, thank you!"

When Ipsum asked him to categorise their dining companions at the soup kitchen one night he responded as follows:

"Let's see, shall we? We'll of course you've got your obligatory god-forsaken god-awful god-botherers, your agnostic alcoholic Antarctic arborists and sacked senile senior civil servants/confirmed atheists over there. Teenage runaway mums, ex-Nazi collaborators and testicularly-deformed circus performers over here. A satanic shop Santa, convicted panty stealer/sniffer and undercover Schadenfreude junkie in the middle. Not to mention, bag ladies various. The dispossessed, chronically depressed along with the delusional and the cripplingly disillusioned make up another third. The fatally infected, narcoleptic self-injected and morbidly introspective round it out. Oh, and, of course, there's you and me and the damned pigeons...and the Hare Krishnas. Or more simply put, you could say we have before us a complete cross-section of the world's vexed, perplexed and oversexed...hmm, and that's all for now, thank you!"

Such was the mix of individuals Ipsum encountered on any given night Boaz actually let him stop by for a mug of the kitchen's thick, hot potato soup.

Mostly, Ipsum ate alone. But on occasion he would find himself roped into heated debates about society's perceived ills with some of the more outspoken regulars who frequented the place.

"We're all the missing fucking zeros who have slipped off the balance sheet of life," coke-fucked Marceau had ranted, in the course of one of these very debates. "Missing FUCKING zeroes! Living in the margins! But we're the missing part of LIFE's great big fucking equation. Things just don't add up right, when we're not included. The normals just can't see it! They point at us, as being the problem, when society's neat little formulas don't square off properly! But really they're scared of us, because we see everything and hear everything; and because we miss absolutely nothing when it comes to the sterile, vapid lives they lead!"

The 1st Baron Kelvin couldn't have put it more eloquently himself, Ipsum had remembered marvelling on hearing it all stated so succinctly.

The others called this other guy Marceau in reference to how he'd looked when he first appeared on the scene a few years back — his whole face had been literally caked with white powder, or so the story went, leaving only his bloodshot eyes clearly visible. It made him look like the famous mime of the same name, apparently. Expect this Marceau did nothing quietly and spoke to everyone like they were on the other end of a long distance phone call or profoundly deaf. He'd been some big-shot motivational speaker, back in the day, but he'd got his wires crossed and got caught up believing his own bullshit.

"One word. Futuretising! Selling the fucking future today!" he would shout in the face of anyone who would listen. "I'm a master at it. Selling the idea that fraudulently states, 'Oh, sure, everything might be crap currently, but look how great everything's going to be 20 years from now. You'll be flying to work with your own personal jet pack, when you're not being sucked off by your state-of-the-art live-in robo-whore! Let me explain. This shit only works because we've fallen off what all the children are on, am I right? Because we've all forgotten how to get high on life. Yeah? We're all waiting for that next BIG HIT to come along, and it never does, does it? Take Bella, here, she's a prime example of what I'm talking about! I call it The Cycle of Shit."

Marceau had pointed wildly at a large trolley-toting ethnic woman in their midst. Ipsum knew the woman by sight to be Belulah, a notoriously belligerent bin/bag lady. To his mind, she cut a slightly terrifying figure. In the course of his daily rollerblading marathons he once saw her reduce a young school boy to tears for locking his bicycle wheel to one of the municipal bins she regularly patrolled for cigarette butts and discarded food scraps. Also, for some reason only known to her, whenever she crossed paths with Ipsum, she would violently hiss the words "filthy antikhristos" at him through her splintered black teeth until he moved away, as though she saw in him the root cause of her physical destitution.

"Let me tell you, my friend," Marceau next boomed. "Belulah, believe it or not, used to be a respectable mother of six, who sadly lost her way somewhere between the cashier aisle and the car park of her local supermarket one hapless summer's day. After paying for her many sundry items, Belulah simply went AWOL. Walking in a daze past her coveted parking space, she shed off the only life she'd ever known. All the while, her kids were there bashing on the windows of the family station wagon and beeping its horn; but all to no avail. It was as if their mother had become lost in a dream, unable to see their faces or recognise their cries anymore. Just picture her there, if you will, under the burning midday sun, the frozen yoghurts and icy treats she was loaded up with seeping out of their wrappers and leaving a technicolour trail spiralling away behind her, as she lost all connection with accepted soccer-mum reality..."

Pausing for effect, Marceau had inhaled deeply before beginning again, "I'm told the supermarket's manager finally decided to call Belulah's husband, but even his arrival did nothing to help her. The vice-like grip with which she held onto the bar of her trolleyful of spoiled foodstuffs couldn't be loosened for either love or money. In despair, her husband and kids thought it best to cut Belulah free and wait back at home for her to return to her senses. Although — I'm sure you won't mind me saying so, Bella — she neither has nor did.

"This then is her lot. For the better part of the last decade, she has walked up and down that same square half-acre of car park where she first took leave of her motherly and wifely duties. Pushing the very self-same trolley before her. All the while she warns off any passerby whose eyes linger too long on her prized collection of old shoes and unstrung tennis rackets, by hissing, 'Move away or Belulah will spit on you!' And why? 'Why does Bella choose to live like this?' I hear you ask...It's simple: the Cycle of Shit.

"OK, stay hydrated and stay with me, people. Let me explain further. As a human being, I contend it's not really so much about where you are in the food chain. But rather about where you are in the Cycle of Shit. Go ahead and ask yourself this: 'How much of my day do I spend cleaning up the shit of others?' Now, I need to qualify this is not necessarily a question that needs to be answered literally. I'm not referring to actual physical turds per se. Sure, nurses, for one, and nursing mothers, for another, have to deal with more than their fair share of poo. But, see, I'm talking more figuratively or loosely, if you will, about the sort of 'crap' others will happily dump on you from greater and greater heights, if you are stupid enough to let them.

"So, then, maybe a better way of phrasing my question would be to say, 'Are you an habitual apologist for those nearest and dearest to you?' For instance, do you always find yourself saying things like, 'Oh, he or she can't help fucking up my life like that, because he or she is a hopeless drunk/chronic loser/useless piece of shit'? Uh-huh? Are you smelling me? Anyway, if you answered 'yes' to being an habitual apologist etc, then you can be damn sure you're at the very bottom (pardon the pun) of the Cycle of Shit. You've probably been stuck carrying the can for every screw up and charity case that has ever come your way. Am I right? Of course, I am!"

A general murmur of agreement had rippled through the motley collection of street dwellers he loosely addressed in the soup line after his fashion that particular evening.

"You see, people always ask me, 'But what can I do about it?" he went on next, sensing an imminent groundswell of support in his favour. "I'm too nice to say anything to rock the boat.' Well, for one thing, you've gotta draw a line in the sand today and shout out, 'ENOUGH!' I'm NOT gonna take it anymore! GO SHIT SOME PLACE ELSE, BUDDY!' Because when you think about it, it's the only sane thing to do. Refusing to Own Other People's Shit, or, as I like to call it, OOPS — as in 'Oops, I just shat all over you, I hope you don't mind'— is the cornerstone of my five-step plan for avoiding getting bogged down by other people's number twos.

"Now, Belulah, here, made that break. It cost her her house and her family. But she's a free agent. She's not taking shit from no-one no-how NO-MORE! She is a woman in charge of her own destiny..."

Despite how crazy it sounded, it often proved hard for Ipsum to keep from being swept along by the sheer force of Marceau's conviction in what he said at these times. As often happened, a few days following just such a speech, Ipsum found himself still acting in a manner quite uncharacteristic for him. He'd been left feeling all riled up, with no real reason for the extreme level of agitation he continued to experience. Which is why, he later concluded, the unpleasant incident in the park took place at all.

Like any other day of the week, he'd been lying under a sheet of newspaper on his favourite park bench, when a little girl in braided pigtails interrupted his mid-afternoon power nap, by singing out from her bicycle, "Excuse me, Mr Scarecrow, what kind of dinosaur are you? My mummy said I'm a Tinyosaurus Rex. So what kind of dinosaur are you?"

"I'm a pterodactyl," he mumbled.

"Excuse me, mister, but I'm a terror tactile. So what kind of dinosaur are you?"

"All right, then, I'm a stegosaurus."

"But I'm a stickosaurus. So what kind of dinosaur are you?"

"A triceratops?"

"Hey, but I'm a tricycleshops. So what kind of dinosaur are you?

"A flipping ichthyosaur."

But I'm a whatchamacallitosaurus. So what kind of dinosaur are you?

"I'm a bronto...oh, you know what, kid, just go and take your shit some place else," groaned Ipsum. "OK? I'm a fed-up-o-saurus. So just shove off. Beat it!"

"Well, that's not very nice," the little moppet had cried haughtily. "I don't like you anymore, Mr Poo-face Scarecrow. And I've got a good mind to tell my mummy you offered me a lolly, you dirty old perv. Good-bye!"

Without thinking, he'd crossed the line over to becoming a public menace. He knew if he wasn't careful the police would soon be by, asking him a whole lot of questions about his moral hygiene etcetera. Stupid Marceau and his drug-fucked pep talks deserved the blame.

The first rule of being a street person is don't interfere with the general public. Ipsum understood that on an instinctual level almost. But he had messed up all the same. He would have to be more careful, he'd cautioned himself severely, resolving to avoid that particularly park for the next week or two.

Other more real threats soon overtook him, anyway. Without him knowing it, Ipsum had inadvertently stirred up the envy of one of the other vagrants he shared a small part of his patch with. The first taste he had of the other man's animosity towards him came while Ipsum stood stooped over a water bubbler outside the library of the city's main university.

"I'm gonna git me them devil-skin boots, boy, so help me" a voice had rasped in his ear as he drank from the rusty water fountain.

Looking up, he instantly recognised the purple-suited form of the Man from Planet XYZ. The guy claimed to be from a distant galaxy, and his favourite haunts were those places wherever students tended to congregate in greatest numbers. Infrequently, he would stray as far as the central city bus interchange, but outside the university's cafeterias and study halls were his more usual hangouts. He liked to accost unsuspecting undergraduates and share his views on higher learning with them whenever possible.

"This is bullshit, what you learn here!" he would drawl with a thick Eastern European accent, before adding, "My mother, not even she would fuck you, you are so stupid-arsed, you fuck."

Rumour had it he was the "ghost" of some visiting high-ranking foreign physicist who had split his mind instead of the atom back in the day. And evidently from what Ipsum understood, the purple-suited alien had since formed a special liking for his rollerblades.

"Excuse me, were you speaking to me?" asked Ipsum, straightening up.

"Of course, he's talking to you," spat Boaz. "He wants our skates. Tell him to take a hike."

"I kill you. And then I take them devil-skin boots," threatened Ipsum's would-be nemesis.

"They're rollerblades," offered Ipsum helpfully.

"Ye lie, Mary Queen of Scots! I've seen how you fly with them. They are made from the Devil's own hide."

"They've got little wheels...see here."

"I will piss on your grave. You give me those boots!"

"Whoa-oh, look out, he's bat-shit crazy, Mary," Boaz warned him. "It's time to fly. Fly like the wind!"

And fly they did.

Several weeks passed before Ipsum sighted his purple-suited foe again. This time the interstellar menace had strayed well away from his normal "beat", having left university grounds to prowl through the annual Daffodil-ADORIA! exhibition gardens on display down by the foreshores of Lake Mercurius. "Well, why shouldn't he, he's entitled to just as much as anyone else?" thought Ipsum gloomily. After all, people from the other side of the world came especially each year to see "the unspeakably clean city's of Queme's annual celebration of Spring" in all its floral glory. "So why not the other side of the galactic rim, as well?" he supposed aloud.

Swearing under his breath, as he weaved his way through the gaggles of elderly women with sun umbrellas who shuffled leisurely before him, Ipsum hurriedly sought to put a safe distance between himself and his sworn enemy.

Whizzing past rows upon rows of velvet-backed tulips and resplendent bearded irises, he represented a blur of incongruous motion within the otherwise perfect vision of tranquillity and genteel refinement. Ruefully, he reflected how his entire afternoon felt ruined. He had been hoping to find a quiet leafy corner to soak up the spectacle in, before setting about scrounging left over food scraps from the outdoor tables of the various temporary eateries dotted about the place. Now he would have to wait another whole day to gorge on half-eaten morsels of olive baked focaccias and almond-bedecked strawberry friands.

Still running on adrenalin he looked over his shoulder ever so often to see if he could slow down again. And only when he'd finally judged himself clear of immediate danger did he stop and sit down heavily next to two school kids making out on a wall near an open air chess pit.

As he exhaled loudly, the two teenagers turned their backs and looked the other way. Ipsum was used to such a response. Looking like a hairy derelict, and dressed as he was in his tattered pipe-band kilt and equally-filthy fisherman's jumper, he knew he presented as an unsavoury figure where young love was concerned. Truth be told, his bedraggled appearance attracted disapproving looks and nasty comments wherever he went.

"Hey, grandpa! Do you mind?" said the fat-faced Romeo, rising to his feet abruptly. "You stink like a toilet. Go pollute some other place, for real."

"Just catching my breath," responded Ipsum between puffs.

"Cop this loser, will you?" snorted Romeo of the fat face, helping his Juliet to her feet. "He's got an attitude, as well, eh? Bloody wino, I reckon they should round 'em all up and bomb 'em to hell. Let's give him a shower. That'll teach him!"

Before Ipsum could so much as shield his face, the pair had shaken their cans of soft drink and began spraying him with the resulting jets of foam. Recoiling backwards, he fell headfirst onto the concrete chequerboard pattern down behind him.

And like this the Beast of the Apocalypse was laid low.

"Brilliant!" hooted the jubilant school boy, draping his arm over his girlfriend's acne-pocked shoulders. "Don't forget to scrub behind your ears, Dick-cheese."

Excitedly, his two teenage assailants left Ipsum flailing about on his back, without a second thought for his welfare. As they ran off, he reached up to rub his scalp. He noticed a pool of blood had collected near his head. Next thing, the chess pit began to spin beneath him vertiginously. Rolling onto his side, he groaned aloud, blaming everything from TV violence to non-selective human breeding practices as the cause of his woes. When he later regained consciousness, his feet were bare.
3. Rubedo — The Re-birthing Suite

"he not busy being born is busy dying..." — Bob Dylan

Twelve years passed, during which time Ipsum marched until his feet couldn't take another step. His toenails long ago had fallen off, and the bare soles of his feet were one big bunion each. Stopping dead in his tracks, he now stood still for the first time in as long as he could remember.

"We must press on," Boaz urged him. "We must keep squaring the circle!"

For a full fifteen minutes, Ipsum remained motionless instead, silently gathering impressions of the world around him. He drank in at length the familiar sights and sounds and tastes and smells and textures he usually took for granted. He then lay down in the middle of the sea of dry waist-high grass in which he had been walking.

Immediately, his eyes caught sight of a small tawny-coloured hawk, just across the way, where it swooped and hovered over its quarry for really the longest time imaginable.

All about him nature went about its business unperturbed by the nearby bustling activity of the city and its frantic inhabitants. And for all the concrete high-rise edifices and snarling traffic congestion nearby and sounds of aeroplanes overhead, there were still patches of wild dandelions and chirping bird choirs and refracted golden sunlight.

The more time he spent observing this delicate interplay of subtle life energies, the less he felt like a separate entity set apart from the natural order. A light wind gently swayed the overarching trees above where he lay, and, higher up still small, wispy cotton-wool patterned clouds scudded silently across the sky.

To his amazement, he became filled with a child's innocent wonder when he spotted the faint outline of a crescent moon riding high up above the pale blue heavens. It reminded him of how impossible the whole fragile reality of existence is, hanging as it does in such a tenuous balance. The world itself existed as nothing more than a bubble suspended in the great dark void of space.

"This must be how it feels to be dying," he thought calmly to himself. "The cessation of all chatter and mental chaos."

He supposed next he might well actually be dying, for maybe this was what Boaz had meant when he constantly lectured him about their pressing need to collapse the universe.

"No, I'm talking about the creating of a singularity in the space/time continuum, you dolt," Boaz interjected impatiently. "I've already explained this to you a million times before."

"I'm not listening," said Ipsum, sticking his fingers in his ears.

"It's all to do with bringing then and there to the here and now."

"I'm not listening to you."

"By 'collapsing' the universe, we no longer have to traverse the infinite reaches of time and space in a linear fashion."

"How do I even know you are real?" asked Ipsum.

"Of cours...listen, we become not so much 'travellers' through time and space, but rather we experience what it is to be omnipresent — we are suddenly everywhere all at once. There is no longer any division between past and future, and the cosmos itself fits right now inside a matchbox."

Summoning every last ounce of his strength, Ipsum pushed himself up onto his knees. "I don't believe you!" he cried and began crawling toward a nearby stormwater drainage pond.

"Just remember, the fastest way to get where you are going is to already be there," Boaz instructed him.

"Hummmmmmmmmmmmm," hummed Ipsum, nearing his destination. "I can't hear you."

"Once we have a direct fix on when and where we wish to be — and having already since gone about collapsing the universe — we simply reposition ourselves so as to attach ourselves to the unique new set of coordinates we wish to inhabit. And, voila, we return the universe to its uncollapsed state, whereafter we find ourselves exactly when and where we want to be."

"La-la-la-la-la-la-la-lala-lala- ti-da!" sang Ipsum, before throwing himself into the drainage ditch and sinking beneath the surface.

"I'm serious, if you just keep walking the paths of power I've plotted for us, we can ultimately unlock the door to the secret staircase of the Gods."

"The infinite amount of energy created by bringing such a singularity into existence alone would kill both of us in an instant, Einstein," sighed Ipsum, gently settling into the mud beneath him.

"Please," said Boaz, "go up for some air and we'll talk about it."

"Convince me it's worth my while."

"All right. We don't have to collapse the universe ourselves per se. It's already happening all the time. We merely have to recognise and respond to it. The universe is always contracting and expanding, like an animal's lungs when it's breathing. Walking the paths of power merely allows us to perceive this rhythm. That's all. And once recognised, we can then ride the In/Out-breath Express, as it were."

"As if this universe in fast thick pants were breathing..."

"Precisely! You've got it!"

"...grop," gulped Ipsum, swallowing a huge mouthful of untreated effluent, as he rolled onto his side.

"There's no catastrophic release of potential energy, trust...hey, what's that?" said Boaz lazily.

Ipsum had heard it too. There was a woman crying out hysterically up above the water's surface somewhere.

"Help! Please somebody help me," she yelled. "Won't somebody please help? Oh, dear, he's dying! Help me, please! Somebody!"

"It's some crazy lady. Forget about it," said Ipsum.

"No," said Boaz. "I think you're scaring her. You better stand up and show her you're just joking around."

"Be quiet. I'm trying to compose a poem here. I call it:

The Howl of the Jabbernowl

'Twas Sillig, and the slicey toes

Did tire and grumble on the slave

Called mumsy were the borrowed clothes

And the phone wraiths did all shout, "Knave!"

Beware the Jabbernowl, my son!

"He's drowning!" screamed the woman above, hysterically, mid-Ipsum's poem.

"Seriously, give the poor woman a quick heads up everything's hunky-dory with you, OK?" implored Boaz. "Please, do it for her sake."

"Oh, for the love of Pete Bartholomew...!"

Lifting his arms high up above his head, Ipsum got up and slowly rose to his full height in the middle of the stagnant water course.

Immediately across from him, he next saw the frantic woman causing all the ruckus.

"I'm fine," he reassured her. "I just wanted to cool off. Trust me, really."

"Thank goodness," sighed the woman. "You might still be able to save him. Look there."

The focus of the woman's anguish wasn't him at all, but evidently a horribly slimy water rat tangled up in some fishing line left by the edge of the pond. Following her gaze, Ipsum waded over and scooped up the desperately writhing animal in his hands. The woman couldn't have been happier if it were her own grandmother he'd just rescued and rocked and cooed to herself on the bank joyously.

The rat itself proved to be not so grateful. On being released from the fine nylon twine wrapped about its plump little belly, the rat promptly twisted around and bit Ipsum's thumb, clear to the bone.

"Ouch!" he shouted, dropping the freed rodent into the pea-coloured water. "Go back to hell, plague mule!"

The woman cheered and waved the rat goodbye, smiling while she watched the arc of ripples it made as it swam away.

"Thank you, thank you so much," she beamed, motioning for Ipsum to join her. "I don't know what I would have done if it weren't for you."

So long had passed since Ipsum had last spoken to another person for a moment he didn't know whether he still knew how.

"You're...wel...welcome," he mumbled into his beard.

"We've got to get you cleaned up. You're a mess, and your clothes are all wet. You've got to come home with me; I only live just near to here. It's the least I can do."

He began to stall her, but the woman refused to hear it.

"I really do live quite close, and I can give you a hot bath and fresh clothes. It's only proper...oh, but whatever's happened to your shoes?" she asked, gesturing to him to follow her towards a nearby laneway leading out of the park.

Ipsum took her question to be largely rhetorical, owing to the fact he had neither socks or toenails either.

Ultimately, he struggled to interpret the meaning of much of what the woman said and therefore choose to remain silent. He suspected his ears conspired to deceive him, for the bulk of what the woman said seemed barely intelligible.

"You can think of me, if you like, as the First Lady of Swords — the card no man in his right mind (if you'll excuse me saying so) wants to be left holding," she contentedly prattled, giving him her arm upon seeing how unsteadily he stood. "I am a woman with a mind of her own, a woman with a brain. I am Rickety Kate, the Black Bitch and am an untameable shrew to boot. I am the Madonna without child. I have been called termagant and virago, but also far worse than that too. Although, if you want some stimulating repartee to go with your pudendum du jour, then I'm more than enough woman for any man."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Ipsum managed to blurt out, convinced Marie-Louise's oddball army had finally found him out.

"Hmm," the woman reflected aloud, oblivious to his accompanying attack of intense paranoia. "I ought to probably clarify I'm not speaking about anything so vulgar as the concept of vagina dentata, if you were at all worried by such a thing. What I meant to say is there's only so much fucking two people can do before they must try and maintain a meaningful dialogue about less carnal matters, like grocery shopping for instance. I can't really speak to you from down there, if that's what you were maybe thinking."

"Roger wilco."

"Super. Do you have a name?"

"My name...ahh...You see, most people around here know me simply as Boaz, but that's not who I truly am."

"So who are you?"

"Ask me again later," he said. "I'm not sure yet I want to remember, it's been a rough few years..."

"Luckily, I find names terribly impersonal," she declared forthrightly. "To my mind, names are things we should only ever bestow on our pets anyways. Really, we should never name those we truly love. It's good enough for me that we're two desperately in love souls who shall remain nameless for the time being. Deal?"

Ipsum tried to embrace his confusion but failed to make even an adequate fist of it.

"And where do you live ordinarily, my beloved Animus?" asked the woman, without missing a beat.

"Beware the hairy noose, my friend!" Boaz warily cautioned him finally. "I feel this daughter of Venus has designs upon you. Shun Gavina Tunc in all of her myriad guises! Could be FROLIC is afoot again in these parts..."

"In and around the park, pretty much," Ipsum told her, ignoring his inner tormentor.

"Ah, so, as I suspected, you are a runaway slave who would lay claim to the title of King of the Wood. Perfect. Which is why you must come and live in my garden shed. I like my men black of soul and bitter at the world."

"Help, no, we must evade capture at all costs," warned Boaz. "Our squaring of the circle is nearing completion. Tell her to naff off."

"Naff off yourself, Catweasle," Ipsum hissed.

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that," said the woman.

"Ahem, I'd like nothing more in the world than to live in your garden shed," replied Ipsum gruffly.

His future living arrangements were finalised right then and there.

Upon arriving at the woman's house, he moved straight into the small yurt located out in her rear garden. A part of him guessed she merely wanted him to stay there as a kind of talking point for friends and family to gawp at when visiting. Whatever the case, the two of them quickly fell into a casual enough routine and it soon felt like he'd been there forever. And despite his initial staunch reservations, even Boaz eventually quietened down, muttering something about his seeing it as an opportunity to revise some of his calculations regarding the city's paths of power and whatnot.

Indeed, Ipsum's once constant companion settled into the background so much so, after this, that whole days would often pass without his making a single remark. Which meant when the woman went to work, Ipsum was frequently left to amuse himself as best he could.

Quite frequently, this entailed him finding new ways of fritting away the hours that intervened between when the woman left for the bus stop and when she would arrive back home again in the early evening. One particular pastime he used as a way of killing a few hours at such times was a game he liked to call The Game of Waste. Essentially, the game grew from the idea that practically anything could be endured just so long as it didn't last for longer than five minutes or so.

In light of this personal insight, Ipsum came to understand that the whole reason unrepentant sinners were threatened with eternal damnation derived solely from the fact that five or six minutes of fire and brimstone hardly seemed like much of an inconvenience, let alone a soul-purging predicament. The factor of time and not damnation itself made for a vision of hell frightening enough to scare the wicked back onto the path of righteousness.

On any given day, in the course of playing the said game, therefore, Ipsum would divide up the overall number of hours to be wasted into more manageable intervals of approximately 300 seconds each. Following which, he would then devise some new and unique activity whereby he could rid himself of the time that had been left hanging on his hands so heavily. One morning he might hold his breath for as long as he could whenever he read the words "a reliable source" in the gossip magazines the woman supplied him with. On another he would try and list as many prime numbers as he could in a five minute interval. Even cutting his toenails with his non-dominant hand sometimes sufficed as a suitable time-wasting strategy.

At night, when the woman returned home, she would invite him up into the "big house" and they would interact fitfully in between long periods of silence. Over time, they warmed up to each other's company, and the words they spoke began to flow more easily. Until they reached a point when both of them realised that the more they talked the more they found they had to say to each other.

"I still maintain meaningful communication between the sexes is largely impossible," the woman said, one evening, savouring a glass of bottled red wine, while sitting out on the back deck. "Because, you see, for a woman, talking to a man is rather like talking to a walking erection most of the time."

"I quite like having erections," said Ipsum, without having screened what he was about to say first.

"There you go, you dickwit. Spoken like a true man," she upbraided him. "You know, it might surprise you to know most women like to think of themselves as being more than just simply penis parking bays on legs!"

"She should try and see what it's like being forced to live in the head of another man rather than just having his penis inside of her," Boaz had objected. "Bah. Does what I just said even make any sense? Talk about a mind fuck."

Despite Ipsum's reluctance, it proved to be inevitable that the mismatched pair of housemates should become lovers. Their courtship began when the woman slipped a white envelope into the food box she delivered him each morning. Inside the envelope she'd stuck photographs of herself posing naked in front of a mirror. In a couple of the more graphic shots, she pleasured herself with one hand while balancing the camera in her other. Ipsum imagined he could almost see the woman's pent up lust crackling electrically along the lengths of her blurred fingers.

Until then, he'd practically forgotten what it felt like to be held transfixed by the sight of a woman's exposed sex. In the entire six months of their getting to know each other, he'd not once tried to imagine what she might look like without clothes on. And yet now he thought of nothing but the sound of her hot breath panting in his ear as he entered her. All thoughts of breakfast and the day ahead immediately bled from his mind, to be replaced now only by the woman as Masturbatrix and the rapturous vision he'd glimpsed of her enflamed passion.

When he next saw the woman, later on that afternoon, she wore only a cat mask and a slinky animal-print wrap. Her mask covered the top half of her face, after the style of what one might wear to a high society masquerade ball. Her flashing eyes burned through at him all the brighter for it. There was no escaping the intensity of her fixéd stare. She came to ensnare the very essence of his soul with her naked body, and he felt powerless to resist. Succumbing to that most potent mixture of lust and awe, he reached inside her flimsy clothing and grabbed at her warm breasts. The slowly-gyrating seductress bit him savagely on the cheek and dragged him to the floor.

Getting down onto all fours, she proceeded to arch her neck and swished her long hair about teasingly. Dropping forward, she then reached up between her thighs and beckoned Ipsum to join with her. Hesitating not a bit, he knelt up behind the woman and proceeded to fuck her with all the frustrated fury and agony he could muster from within his burnt out soul.

All the while, his lover hissed and spat glorious profanities at him over her bared shoulder. More than anything, he felt like a ringmaster putting a wild lioness through her paces, as with each ecstatic thrust of his loins he sought to tame her. And like this he ministered to her insatiable need, for just as long as he felt physically able to endure it. Finally, with his teeth tightly clenched, he acquiesced and ejaculated while still deep inside her writhing body.

Not finished with him yet, the woman lay on her back and drew Ipsum down to suckle at her engorged nipple as she brought herself to orgasm. And as she moaned climatically he entered her once more, having grown hard again in the process. This time their lovemaking was less hurried and more sensual, as they fused together perfectly like the words of an intricate Zen koan forged in flesh:

Woman says, "I am the keeper of the mystery."

Man says, "I want to know the mystery; for I am a child born of the mystery.

The wise know that birth is the mystery to which all must make their return.

Locked in tight embrace, the new couple slept together on the floor and saw nothing more of the day remaining.

Secret surprise fields of energy shimmered and swirled in the corners of Ipsum's eyes as he slowly stirred from a waking dream.

The woman made toast in the nude, and she told him she was expecting his baby quite matter-of-factly. She said it with such compelling surety he never for a moment doubted her.

They ate their toast by candlelight and took turns drinking a steaming mug of Spanish vegetable soup originally intended for Ipsum's dinner. He'd never really given any consideration to having children of his own before. Like most men, he'd always believed kids just sort of happened to you when you weren't looking. He wondered whether or not the two of them should get married straight away or wait for a while.

"All fun and sex games aside, Mr Super Subliminal Man," the woman said sternly, "you've got an awful lot of growing up to do. Especially now you're going to be a father. And as for getting married, I'm not going to be one of those brides that looks like a great big fat white elephant in her wedding dress because she's pregnant. We'll wait till after the birth, I think."

He rubbed his eyes and searched around the floor for something to wear, as she ranted at him about the finer etiquette of shotgun weddings more generally.

"Oh, I also burned your clothes while you were sleeping," she said. "Enough was enough."

"What for?" he asked.

"Your jumper alone made you look like some sort of demented druid. And even after I washed it, like, five times in hot water it still refused to smell good."

"I liked it like that."

"What was to like?"

"It'd become my second skin, after so many years" he persisted. "You know, the fishermen of the Inner Hebrides used to wear them."

"Fascinating."

"All right. The women there used to knit them for their husbands and sons in such a way no two were ever the same. You see, you have to bear in mind these fishermen were often lost at sea. And because it might take a few weeks or months for them to eventually wash ashore somewhere, there needed to be a way of identifying their bodies. As you can well imagine what remained of their corpses was badly affected by the elements. And so as to avoid confusion about just whose missing kin had been found, their jumpers provided certainty. This all being long before dental records and such, you understand."

"Is it really so important to you people should be able to easily identify your corpse when you're dead? I mean, what do you care what happens to you once you've left the building?" the woman objected loudly.

"I think it had more to do with the grieving families," said Ipsum.

"A good point, well made," encouraged Boaz, from somewhere off in Ipsum's mental margins.

"OK. But there was no excuse for the kilt, surely?" attacked the woman from another front.

"The kilt was my father's. He wore it back when he kicked around with a roving band of outlawed Dadaist minstrels going by the name of The Kilt Down Frauds."

"Gee, let me guess, according to Esau, that is," sighed the woman, "for your brother Esau is once again the impeccable source of information behind this absurd slice of your family history, am I right? Gosh! Seriously, did you ever stop and think maybe everything he ever told you might have been just a whole bunch of lies? That he made it all up?"

"Yeah, sure I have. But, then, there must been some reason my father had the kilt hanging up in his wardrobe all those years. While he mightn't have been a bagpipe-playing anarchist, you can be damn certain he didn't just wear they bloody thing to hang out the washing."

"That's really telling her," said Boaz, before changing sides abruptly. "Well, I for one am glad she burnt your stupid skirt, Nancy boy!"

His speaking so much at all took Ipsum by surprise, who couldn't recall the last time he'd heard his inner companion speak in the woman's presence. He only ever tended to speak now when she left the room or went to work. In fact, his old admonishments about their having to "square the circle" together had almost dropped off completely. And he'd given no recent indications of how his "re-calculations" were progressing either. Ipsum had to confess he didn't miss the persistent nagging one little bit.

"Screw you, too, Boaz," Ipsum said quietly. "And anyway weren't you the one who kept telling me to leave my underwear off, because traditionally-speaking you believed that's how real men should wear their kilts? You filthy hypocrite."

As the months passed and the woman began to near her due date, she set about preparing a nursery in anticipation of the day when they should bring their new child home from the hospital. It was during this time that the slightly fearful mother-to-be started to ask Ipsum the oddest questions. Like how might he feel if she ended up giving birth to a penguin, for instance, instead of a baby boy or girl?

"How would you feel about it?" he remembered asking.

"Oh, I shouldn't mind too much," she said.

"But what would we feed it?"

"Well, he or she wouldn't be an it, for a start. Anyway, I expect we'd have to regurgitate fresh fish heads or something like that for the first few months or so."

"Of course, we would. Whatever was I thinking?"

On another occasion she made him promise to always love her feet. Her biggest fear was that like every other woman who'd ever become a mother she would end up with horribly-unlovable chapped heels and neglected, swollen red toes. And if inevitably this were to be the case, she wanted to know he would still cherish her once belovéd feet just as much as he had always done.

The choosing of names, however, proved the most contentious issue between them by far. It didn't help they'd only found out extremely late into the pregnancy that they were expecting mixed-sex twins, either. After countless hours of racking their brains, they still couldn't agree to anything even remotely approaching a shortlist. That is, until Ipsum hit on using the naming system used by certain tribes of North American Indians. Or so he had hoped.

"How about, Flying Bird with The Answer in His Beak, for the boy? And, She-wolf with Golden Future Eyes, for the girl?" suggested Ipsum optimistically, in the bath, late one night.

"How about, He Who Makes Bubbles in Bathwater by Talking with Anus," said the woman, throwing a wet sponge at him from the other end of the tub.

"Oh, forget it! I give up," he sulked.

Eventually, out of desperation, Ipsum secretly asked Boaz his thoughts on the issue, who next instantly offered up the idea of Magus for a boy's name and Psi for a girl's name. Both of which the woman loved immediately upon hearing them. Ipsum of course took full credit for the suggestions, basking in his rare victory for a good hour or more afterwards.

"You'll make a good father yet," the woman teased him half-jokingly, as they climbed into bed later.

"I wouldn't go that far," he said.

"You know, you never really talk about your own upbringing," she said pointedly. "And when you do, it always turns out to be another one of your brother Esau's cock-and-bull stories."

"They're the only stories I've ever known."

"But you told me Esau is adopted. You're not even his biological family, for Christ sake! I mean, I've never met the guy, but it's entirely possible he's been telling you all this stuff down through the years to screw with your head. Isn't it? Maybe he's some sort of sociopath or psychopath or something?"

"He's still my brother..."

"Well, what do you know about his birth parents? They could be the sickest, most diseased individuals to live this side of Sodom and Gomorrah. Did you ever stop and think of that? Esau would share their genes, and you in turn would have been infected with his tainted blood through social osmosis, making you a potential psycho yourself."

"Hold on. Let's not get hysterical, here," Ipsum objected.

"And I'm going to have little monster babies..."

"All right. All right! Get a grip!"

"I've just realised what it is you've got to do," the woman cried.

"What's that?"

"You've got to try and find Esau's real parents and see what kind of people they are."

She was absolutely right, even if for all the wrong reasons. And Ipsum knew in his heart of hearts exactly what he must do next.

He contacted his mother the following morning and asked if she knew the current whereabouts of Esau's birth parents. At first, she stalled by asking what good could come of his prying into the family's dark past and the like. But Ipsum remained resolute. Eventually, she backed down.

She finally admitted she'd long since lost touch with Esau's birth mother, although she then added she had some idea how Esau's father might still be contacted.

Anyhow, her hunch paid off, and a day or two later she called to say a go-between had agreed to accompany Ipsum to where Esau's father now resided. Ipsum only had to wait at his mother's house on the coming Sunday and his meeting with the go-between could take place. The arrangement couldn't have been simpler.

On the morning of the actual rendezvous, his mother purposefully absented herself, leaving Ipsum free to wander around alone in his parent's house until late in the afternoon. And as is always the way it was just as he had started to forget why he was even there that the doorbell rang.

The man who stood on the front step outside presently introduced himself as a Mr Orez Gnissim.

Try as he might, Ipsum couldn't help squinting at the sight of the stranger's appearance. In all honesty, the man standing before him looked nothing if not like a slightly scaled-up version of a wooden ventriloquist dummy, replete with Fez. Without being asked, Mr Gnissim went on to say he'd acquired his name after consulting a Ouija board during a misspent youth.

Even more unsettlingly, Ipsum believed he kept discerned a momentary lag each time between when he saw the man speak and when the man's voice would actually next issue forth. Whether the man also consciously chose to model his intonation and manner on the long-dead actor Peter Lorre remained anyone's guess. He wore a crumpled linen suit and shook Ipsum's hand overly vigorously; while in his free hand, he cradled a half-full glass of scotch like it constituted the very last drop of the tawny liquid miracle left on Earth.

"Don't let my crazy get-up put you off.," he lisped unctuously. "I learnt a long time ago the crazier you look, the less people look. And you can believe me when I tell you there are certain people out there I would feel better for not being see by. You see, I pride myself on being able to notice everything without going noticed myself. This way I can dig up the kind of dirt those in power would prefer was left buried deep down under their own dead grandmothers."

"I also fell prey to a similar philosophy myself for a good long while," said Ipsum half to himself.

"Whatever. You will now come with me," the other man urged him. "But first you must put on this blindfold."

"What, no foreplay?" griped Boaz.

"Shut up, Idiot!" hissed Ipsum under his breath.

"I can assure you, I am in no sense mentally deficient, good sir," said Orez, peering over his right shoulder suddenly. "The blindfold is merely a precaution to maintain secrecy regarding the location as to where the man whom you seek currently abides."

The way he stressed the words the man whom you seek made Ipsum shrug involuntarily.

Orez next passed him a black silk blindfold, while waving him towards his car with his other hand.

"Come, the hour's getting late," he beckoned.

Unable to swallow because his mouth felt so dry, Ipsum tied the blindfold around his eyes and let himself be guided by the elbow towards the road. A few minutes later the two of them drove off into the early evening in silence.

What followed left Ipsum feeling so queasy he wanted to curl up and die in the seat well of the strange man's car. Constantly thrown from left to right and back again, as Orez executed a never-ending series of tight turns and switchbacks, Ipsum grew horribly carsick. Interpreting his passenger's reticence to speak as shyness, the maniac driver grew increasingly garrulous as the kilometres flew past beneath their wheels.

"When your mother called to say you wanted an audience with the man whom you seek, I said obviously I'd see what I could do," he boasted merrily. "You know, he doesn't really meet with too many people these days. If one is really lucky, one might be granted a quick talk-to with him, though. He tends to travel a lot now, never staying put longer than a month or two."

"Oh, Hell," whined Ipsum weakly.

"Yes, it's very easy to be envious of the great man. He really has lived the most amazing life. When I first met him, he worked in the employ of a top-secret government think tank, overseeing feasibility studies into various projects like microchipping the brains of private citizens. This sort of thing. Simply marvellous, you understand!"

"I think I'm going to be sick," groaned Ipsum, as the car careened into a roundabout, its tyres screeching like a banshee in a blender.

"Please, don't feel ill," Orez counselled him. "Microchips are not so bad. People always fear losing control over their minds. They mistakenly see thought control as the first step towards the enslavement of humanity. But, in actual fact, impulse control is by far a much more efficient means by which to hold the general population in check. Controlling when the individual experiences hunger or thirst or when they should wish to sleep or fornicate that, my friend, marks the complete erosion of individual freedoms. Not thought control."

Even in his nauseated state, Ipsum couldn't help thinking Orez was a man desperately in lust with the sound of his own voice. Nothing looked likely to shut him up.

"You know, I'm beginning to fear you live in a world gone so evil," said Boaz to Ipsum meanwhile, "that the pre-ordained role you suspect you may yet be called on to play as the Antichrist has already been made redundant for forever after."

Ipsum couldn't have agreed more (or less) with Boaz, owing to his sickeningly nauseated state.

"Most of us wouldn't even be aware we had one of these chips implanted in us," Orez continued apace directly afterwards. "We would present, say, for a routine physical as part of the taking up of a new job, and "hey presto" thereupon the attending physician would insert the microscopic device through our ear canal into our brain. Even so, it has to be said, microchips are pesky buggers to maintain."

"Does it really have to be said?" asked Boaz, speaking now for both he and the mostly-comatose Ipsum as well. "Block-headed chatterbox!"

"Curséd things tend to show up in x-rays and autopsies and the like. Then you've got the problem if one of them should go on the fritz: you've got to try and somehow retrieve it and replace it without the host's knowledge etcetera. This is wherein the beauty of the man whom you seek's subtle genius lies. What if people's pets instead were the ones we implanted with impulse control chips? he found himself wondering. Fido and Mittens could be used as stooges or intermediaries, if you like, in the influencing of the masses, and here (as it were) by way of a backdoor the ruling elite crushes free will forever!"

Pausing for a fraction of a second, he wrenched on the handbrake, sending the car into a terrifying power-slide, before releasing the brake lever and accelerating off at dizzying speed in a new direction.

"How, I hear you ask, would such a plot work? Two words: Psychic Transference."

"We didn't ask," muttered Boaz, "Believe us."

"Think of how pet owners are always speaking about the special psychic bonds they share with their furry little companions. Well, it's a science now, thanks to one very special man. Interspecious-reciprocity, he calls it. And you're about to have the honour of meeting the man himself responsible. By training microchipped animals to psychically influence the behaviour of their masters, he has empirically proven that a totally invisible chain of command between the world's industrial overlords and the people they wish to enslave is entirely feasible. Just imagine a chain of command that can never be broken. And I ask you, if the people themselves don't even know they are slaves, can they even truly be thought of as slaves? Think about it. It's beautiful. Pavlov only scratched the surface with his dogs and their "psychic secretions". Pwah! It took a man of real genius to raise the scientific bar to such gloriously dizzying heights."

Ipsum pulled himself together enough to open the glove box before vomiting into it violently.

"Hey, watch the plush interior, bub!" Orez chided him.

"Ugh, that's much better," gulped Ipsum, swinging the glove box back into position and winding down the window. "Are we there yet?"

"No, I'm still in the middle of telling you about the subtle genius of the man whom you seek."

"Sorry, I must have passed out. What were you saying?"

"Let me explain further," said Orez. "In the course of his clinical investigations the man whom you seek discovered a pet rabbit able to accurately predict local weather patterns with uncanny certainty. A white angora named Alice, the rabbit only ever refused to leave her hutch of a morning if rainfall was imminent. In addition, her owner claimed she and Alice shared a telepathic bond, whereby they always knew how the other felt at any time of the day or night."

"A rabbit, you say?" Ipsum wondered aloud.

"Called Alice, yes. So, yes, then the man whom you seek took this rabbit into his lab where he ran a series of tests on her."

Ipsum grimaced as the smell of his vomit began seep from the glove box in nauseating waves.

"Yet apart from her voracious appetite for dandelion stalks," Orez said, "the tests revealed nothing. Originally, at least. Likewise, for all the other tests they had run on everything ranging from sea urchins right through to university-educated chimpanzees. Absolutely, no empirical evidence whatsoever could be found to support the idea of psychic ability in animals. The whole project looked as if to be dead in the water. Until Alice began to broadcast, that is. You see, my queasy friend, in Alice they had got far more than they ever bargained for. Not only did she happen to be psychic, but she was also a medium of the very highest order."

"Fruit-cake alert," whispered Boaz, being unaccountably slow on the uptake.

"I'm not sure I follow, Mr Gnissim," Ipsum confessed sheepishly.

"Well, this little furry bunny one day began to channel no less than the World Spirit (or Gaia) herself. Immediately upon which, Alice next began to telepathically broadcast the most hateful imperative statements towards her handlers in the lab. 'Stop killing my planet!' she ordered them. 'Die! Die! Die! Die, you filthy parasites! Your species spreads like a pox over the face of the Earth.' This kind of thing. Really, pointless and sappy tree-hugging sentiments. It drove everybody mad. Oh, it was awful.

"Anyway, when it became obvious to the study's financial backers that they weren't simply being made fools of, as victims of an elaborate hoax, they flew into a mad panic, insisting Alice should be destroyed as a dangerously rogue subject. But in all good conscience, the man whom you seek could never let that happen. Choosing instead to make off with the rabbit, on the eve of the day before her death warrant stood to be enforced. And together they have lived as fugitives of the law ever since."

"Extraordinary."

"Indeed," agreed the strange man beside him, who now pulled the car over and parked up next to the curb before turning off the car's engine.

"What?! But we're back to exactly where we started from?!" cried Ipsum, having since ripped the blindfold from his face.

"There is no fooling you. Of course we are back where we started. For the man whom you seek lives in a bungalow at the bottom of your mother's back garden."

"I don't believe you!"

"I have no reason to lie to you. Go look, and see if I am not telling you the truth."

"So what necessitated the pointlessly insane car trip? Dear God!"

"Excuse me, but I thought a quiet drive might be a nice distraction. I have some new tyres which needed to be worn in, and we had also some time to kill before when I had been advised you where to be delivered."

At that moment, Ipsum wanted to punch the man mannequin called Mr Orez Gnissim in the nose almost more than anything else in the world. As it happened, though, he craved fresh air more and so got out of the car without saying another word.

Amazingly, 33A Gargle Street sat tucked away down in a hidden back corner of his parents' backyard, just as Mr Orez Gnissim had claimed. Ipsum couldn't explain why, but standing as he did in the short gravel driveway leading to the secluded bungalow before him, he became suddenly overwhelmed by a discomforting mixture of intense déjà vu and stomach-troubling uneasiness.

He remained not a little perplexed as to why he'd never been aware of the adjoining dwelling before. Admittedly, he didn't spend a great deal of time exploring the largely featureless backyard during his youth. But it did cause him to wonder what else might have possibly escaped his notice over the years he'd lived there. Given his current state of bewilderment, he wouldn't have been overly surprised to also now find a railway station and airport lounge packed together tightly in some other forgotten recess of the mysterious quarter acre block.

Moments later, as he rang the bell attached to the bungalow's front door, Ipsum felt the churning agony in the pit of his stomach switch into overdrive. He knew he'd stood in that exact same spot hundreds of times before, he just couldn't remember when or why. He knew it as a nagging certainty that he could actually taste at the back of his throat.

"Quo Valis?" rasped a disinterested male voice from behind the locked frosted-glass door.

"All Albion One..."

The door swung silently inward. Immediately after which, a man lent out and gestured for Ipsum to enter. From what he could see, the man was completely smoothly shaven, over both his head and jowls.

What impressed itself on Ipsum most was that he couldn't recall ever having seen a man make such delicate movements before as the one who greeted him now did as he moved forwards and spoke.

"The Mademoiselle from Armentieres hasn't been kissed for forty years," the man whispered from the corner of his mouth.

"Hinky, dinky parlez vous?" responded Ipsum.

"It is an immeasurable pleasure to have you here. I am Father Ignatius Thyrace, do please join me," said the man relaxing into a broad-toothed smile.

Sartorially elegant in his single-breasted white suit, he shepherded Ipsum further inside, never once breaking the serene gaze he kept fixed on his perplexed visitor.

"Please enter our Institute for Biologically Kleen Encounters™, my son," he purred warmly.

The hand he waved Ipsum in with gracefully lingered in the air, as if pausing to catch a sudden shower of imaginary crystal rose petals.

"I would, but I can't see anything!" said Ipsum, panicking, before hurriedly stepping back. "My eyes. I've gone totally blind."

"Nonsense," said the other man, soothingly, while pulling Ipsum forwards and shutting the door. "You're simply experiencing a temporary period of readjustment. What you're suffering from is something rather akin to snow blindness, this is all. Your eyes are unable to cope with the extreme levels of pure whiteness that they must needs register around them. So instead they substitute black for white. A simple ocular inversion. It will pass, believe me."

"I've been here before, haven't I?" gulped Ipsum, choking back the half hysterical/half accusatory tone creeping into his voice.

"Oh, yes," responded Father Thyrace evenly, guiding his charge by the elbow down a curiously echoic corridor. "You played here many times, with my son Esau, over the years, as a child. You even for a time, used to call me 'Dad', having no father of your own to speak of. But it would be more fitting now, please, if you continued to call me by my actual title of Father Ignatius."

"But I can't remember any of this? And also why is it so damn hot in here, suddenly?"

"As to your amnesia, it's probably most helpful if you think of our enterprise here as existing outside the normal parameters of human perception. Here we are dead to the world. Nobody knows this place exists. Certain carrier waves — let's say in the 410 to 420 MHz range — help create a mental blind spot/virtual oversight, if you will, in the minds of all who come within a 250 metre radius of where we are standing. It's nothing new. The Montauk experiments back in the '50s dealt with all this in great detail. In practice, your mind is literally wiped clean of our existence here each and every time you leave through the front door should we so wish."

"I suppose, it's a good enough way of keeping the odd insurance salesman at bay..." Ipsum said halteringly. "Not to mention bloody Jehovah Witnesses, eh? Oops..."

"Please, don't apologise. Mine is not a title of divinity, but rather a reference to my seniority within the organisation. It's more of an honorary appellation. I am a man of the World, not of God. I liken my position here to being that of Decentralised Scrutiniser. But if it helps, you can think of me being instead somewhat like a pre-Christian Father Christmas surrounded by his elves. Or Knecht Ruprecht aided by his helpers, if you will."

"Sort of something along the lines of 'Das Wort of Gottes Bleibt in Ewigkeit'?"

"Hmm, no, more like Fiat Nox, I should say..."

"Not another bleeding nutter who's off with the fairies," murmured Boaz. "You sure can pick 'em!"

"Shh, shut up!" rasped Ipsum.

"What's that?" queried Father Ignatius. "Ah, yes, you asked about the extreme heat, too, didn't you? Hmm, let's see, well, the heat comes from the fact we also run a fully operational Chinese laundry in-house."

"Chinese laundry?"

"Sure, Blind Freddy's — it's a sweat shop cum combined opium den/Chinese laundry type deal, with a sideline in acupuncture and herbal medicines. You could say we've diversified in recent years to stay competitive. We have, in addition, recently established a R&D department in Abu Dhabi, incidentally. But I am not at liberty to discuss its charter, currently."

"Mr Gnissim mentioned your running ESP experiments in the past..."

"Sorry to butt in," interrupted Father Ignatius abruptly, "but can I just say, although while I hold Mr Orez in the very highest esteem possible, I'd like to distance our undertakings here from any crazy notions he may have tried to fill your head with. He is a good and dear friend; however, I simply can't comprehend why he comes out with the things he says about us here at the Institute. I suspect he believes he is trying to protect our interests. Unfortunately, he is essentially a very suspicious person, bordering on being outright paranoid most of the time, and therefore he sees conspiracies in the most mundane trivialities. I don't know why he should be so obsessed with the Order of Perfectabilists and the idea of trying to prove their existence by way of the most innocent of coincidences."

Ipsum nodded his head sympathetically.

"So suffice to say," Ignatius continued, "I have never directly worked (or acted under the auspices of, either officially or otherwise) on Project Paperclip or MK Ultra; I currently have no affiliation with the CIA, and I'm most certainly not in possession of any sort of mystical bunny rabbit while being hunted by the world's so-called intelligence agencies. Period."

"Awesome," said Ipsum, shrugging his shoulders and coughing casually. "I thought it most unlikely."

"But I will neither deny nor confirm whether I have attained the 33rd degree, however."

"Not really any of my business, luckily."

"Exactly. And with that little unpleasantness cleared up, I will merely add our contribution to germ warfare or the war on germs, to be more precise, takes many guises. But enough said. Now you must tell me the reason for your visit?"

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure," Ipsum confessed readily. "Essentially, the idea was suggested to me by a friend."

"Honest enough answer, if a little gormless. However, let me break it down for you, then. You're here for atonement."

"Could be..."

"Could be he's a full egghead short of a good Christmas eggnog," chimed in Boaz.

"To be at one with your past upbringing," mused Father Ignatius. "It's only natural you have questions. Your family situation was...complex: my son Esau raised alongside you, like a cuckoo in the nest; your own father absent; your mother a Grand Dame of denial; the existence of a neural disruption field in your very own backyard. Heavens! No wonder you're confused. But first, it might help if you let me tell you something about my own upbringing, yes?"

Ipsum raised eyebrows did nothing to deter the other from continuing on blithely.

"Hmm, so, let's see," Father Ignatius pondered. "Ah, well, my own parents met when father turned up in my mother's recovery ward during World War II. She nursed at a military hospital specialising in mental disturbances. And more often than not, it was father whom she used to drop in on after finishing her rounds. They'd share a pot of tea and a quick chat, and then she'd pedal off home to the nurse's quarters. Romance blossomed, and they married. Soon after, father was declared cured and discharged back into civilian life. Seeking to put the horrors and atrocities of the war behind them, my parents started life afresh. They made a home together and started a family. Which is where I enter the story.

" Uh-huh," said Ipsum encouragingly.

"Unfortunately, father's cure proved short-lived. First came the night-sweats and then the nightmares. I was packed off to boarding school. I hated it, being only six years old. The place I attended was run like a maximum-security prison — rules existed for just about everything. Indeed, the Headmaster's Statute of Limitations stood as absolute law, only to be contravened upon pain of severe torture. Countless times, I remember being caned and having my bedding confiscated for the slightest breaches of conduct. Yet, even so, over time I somehow learnt how to survive under this severely strict code of discipline, being eventually made head boy of the school's Sonderkommando unit in my final year. Is this a term you are at all familiar with?"

"Sonderkommando?" queried Ipsum. "I'm guessing it's something similar to school cadets?"

"Hardly," replied Father Ignatius, as he stopped walking and drew in a great lungful of air. "It's a term usually associated with the Nazis and their concentration camps. Sonderkommando were those wretched souls whose daily work detail demanded the disposal and burial of dead prisoners. That the Sonderkommando were as a rule selected from amongst the prisoners themselves made such grisly duties all the more repugnant, as you might well imagine."

"Ugh," grunted Ipsum involuntarily.

"Oh, yes" the other man added coolly. "Just remember these same men, the Sonderkommando, were likely being ordered to bury members of their own families in unmarked mass graves. At other times, they were called in to carry the bodies of small children from out of the gas chambers and such. Equally, they were employed in the retrieval of gold teeth from cadavers and so forth. But you must see what I'm getting at, though, can't you? One makes do and survives whatever the situation. A simple fact of life is that all thoughts of personal morality immediately fly out the window the moment someone points a gun at one's head. Every single one of us is, at heart, a ruthless coward, ready to sell our own flesh and blood down the river for just another single day above ground."

Ipsum strained to make out the face of the man speaking to him within the darkness he perceived as engulfing the two of them so completely.

"Do go on," he urged, failing to see anything but the faintest outlines still.

"All of which naturally," said his companion obligingly, "brings me back to the story I set out to tell you. So, mercifully few actual deaths cropped up within the student ranks during my tenure. Nevertheless, as the head of the Sonderkommando I frequently oversaw the interrogation and internment of fellow students, as part of my commission. Anyway, let's just say a certain underground student newspaper called The Tergiversator had become a problem. A big problem! You know the sort of thing. Its pages were filled with the idle and subversive twaddle young ratbags can't get enough of. We caught the editor in the print room and stripped him down to his undershorts. But no matter how many times we hit him on the head with a stump mallet, he resolutely refused to talk. He withheld the names of his editorial staff until he collapsed, in fact. Stupid fool! As fate would have it the boy later died of his injuries. Dreadfully inconvenient business."

"You killed him? So were you punished?"

"Punished?! Dear Lord, no! I received a special citation. Turns out the boy happened to be the Headmaster's own son. 'I told him he'd find no special favour here. Rules are rules,' the Headmaster had confided in me afterwards. 'Damn impudent little turd, he was.' They'd enrolled him under the mother's maiden name, you see. So none of us knew!"

Father Ignatius laughed out loud raucously, as though he were still in disbelief about his good fortune, all these years later on.

"The entire story is a complete fabrication, you understand, obviously. Still, damn near learnt everything I know about fatherhood that very day," he said, regaining his composure abruptly. "But enough about me! Like Telemachus, another famous fatherless son, you're after absolution or atonement or some such, hey what? So fire away."

Ipsum was just beginning to make out the vague outline of the room they stood in together. From pitch black, his field of vision had shifted to include muted greys and the odd stray green or blue highlight.

The room looked like an infirmary on a space station might, all smooth surfaces with a line of aluminium chairs arranged against the wall nearest them. There were no windows or potted plants or bookcases or throw rugs or mantelpiece ornaments. A solitary statue in black marble of a stylised female nude graced the far corner.

"I don't really have a list of questions, as such," he began to say, whereupon the other man lifted his hand to silence him again.

"First, there is someone you really must meet, before we begin. Cinnabar, my dear, do please join us."

To Ipsum's amazement, as these last few words were spoken, the statue he'd been absentmindedly gazing upon all of a sudden next came to life.

"The statue is not of a woman, but rather is a woman and one who is not made of black marble at all," clarified Boaz, also at a loss.

The woman who approached them appeared to have suffered some horrific injury at an earlier stage in her life. Her face, if it could still be called such, was charred beyond all recognition as a face. While her fingers lay fused together at the end of her hands, making them resemble crab-like pincers more than anything else.

Apparently further injuries to her legs also limited her ability to walk smoothly towards them, each shuffling step she made being agonisingly slow, after the fashion of a wind-up clockwork doll. As to whether she wore clothes or was completely nude, Ipsum could in no way ascertain.

With his compromised vision he couldn't discern whether the woman wore a fine gauze black body sock or whether alternatively her naked skin was covered all over in black scales of charcoal and ash.

"Behold! Here she is, our very own Primacord Princess!" announced Father Ignatius grandly.

Ipsum desperately tried to think of a suitable greeting to offer the hideously disfigured woman standing before him. All attempts at eye contact failed him, and so he clumsily blurted out the first thing to pop into his head.

"How's life?" he asked blankly.

"Oh, you know, I'm suffering from another one of my famous bad hair days," replied the living statue of charred flesh before him. "But besides that, everything's just peachy."

"Forgive me, I don't know why I just asked you that," confessed Ipsum, angry at his own stupidity.

"Don't beat yourself up, I have that effect on people all the time," said Cinnabar kindly.

"Believe me, I've got a special gift for always saying the wrong thing."

"Well, I'm not offended."

"To be honest, I think a part of me actually wants to say the wrong thing on purpose."

"Such as?"

"The ugly stick must have begged to be broken after hitting you."

Ipsum clasped his hand over his mouth. His eyes must have betrayed his overwhelming sense of panic, because Father Ignatius now spoke up.

"Don't worry," he said reassuringly, "let me explain what's happening to you. Our Cinnabar is quite unique. She is essentially — for want of a better description — an extremely potent homoeopathic agent in human form. She somehow draws out the concentrated very 'is-ness' of other people, their quiddity. It's all very mysterious, to be sure. It might help if I give you an example: let's say the person she encounters, for instance, is at core a spiteful person, yes? Well, then, immediately following first contact with Cinnabar, the person's true nature will well up from within, expressing itself as a mile-wide mean streak. You clearly are a harsh judge of imperfection in others. So I'm guessing intolerance lies at the heart of all you do. Me, I'm a control freak."

"Is plastic surgery not an option?" asked Ipsum, despite himself.

"Caesium 137," explained Father Ignatius. "Cinnabar was exposed to enough of it to kill all the remaining reindeer left in the Arctic. Her family lived near a laboratory dedicated to heavy-ion research near Dubna in the old Soviet Union. Cost cutting led to all-too-human error. And a nuclear fireball engulfed her house. Only she survived. Her scarring is irreversible. We keep mirrors from her, if we can help it."

"How did she wind up here? If you don't mind me asking," said Ipsum, directing the last part to Cinnabar.

"I discovered her innocently picking daffodils in a meadow deep within the exclusion zone," answered Father Ignatius. "During the aftermath, I found myself in charge of the foreign clean up effort. I arranged for Cinnabar extrication and paid for her medical bills. I've kept her close to me ever since."

"Abduction, more like it. You've practically kept me here under lock and key, ever since," objected Cinnabar hotly. "And, for the record, Ipsum, mind you don't put too much stead in the truthfulness of what this old goat tells you. Here in the compound he's known amongst us as the Father of All Lies."

"Tosh! I confessed already to my having certain control issues," said Father Ignatius. "And I freely admit you bring out some of my least admirable qualities, when I'm in your presence."

"You'd keep me collared and cuffed and on a chain, if you thought you could get away with it."

Father Ignatius turned to address Ipsum solely.

"There are worst cases than my own. Believe me. Take our dear friend, Orez Gnissim, for instance. An intensely suspicious person to begin with. Now, when he first met Cinnabar he became totally consumed by a whole slew of paranoiac impulses. He suspected his bowlful of breakfast cereal was trying to eat him from the inside out. What's more, he told me the bathroom wall tiles were conspiring against him. The poor man suffered a complete resistential crisis. I literally stopped him from marrying a string bean, as he believed himself to be caught up in some demented vegetable shotgun wedding scenario, for Christ sake!

"Although, as a pertinent aside, I must say that I think the trouble with conspiracy theorists like Orez, more generally, is that they aren't paranoid enough, in fact. For the record, it isn't a matter of whether the moon landings ever really took place, but rather whether there really is a moon. If I were to tell you we've all been living on a replica Earth since 1962, you'd no doubt laugh at me. But I assure you it is nonetheless true..."

"All right, Ignatius, I think I'd better go and make some of our special house tea," interrupted Cinnabar knowingly. "Before you give our guest the wrong idea about your fitness to discuss such matters."

"Too late, lady," muttered Boaz.

Without further comment, Cinnabar shuffled off towards the doorway opposite, presumably to fetch tea as mentioned.

"Damn witch will grow on you," said Father Ignatius, once she had left the room. "Just you wait and see if she doesn't. But you don't want to talk about her. You want to know all about Esau, and how he came to be the turd in your manger that he most certainly represents. Am I right?"

"Yeah, I suppose," agreed Ipsum.

"Well, here's a funny thing. You know, you've only got Cinnabar herself to blame for that blood-awful balls up, don't you? So, you see, we're going to end up talking about the poor little burnt-matchstick girl, in any case. Perhaps it would be best if you took a pew. Here sit."

With a sly smile, the older man reached across and shoved Ipsum backwards, who cried out in surprise, fully expecting as he did to hit the hard tiled floor beneath him with a thud. Impossibly, instead he next found himself floating seemingly in mid-air.

"Quite a party trick," he gasped.

"Not so much a trick, as Vril power. Simple anti-grav technology built into the floor tiles is all. We've had the know-how for years, thanks to the Germans. The trouble is we can't lift anything much heavier than a human, as yet. Certainly there's no question of our transporting interstellar craft any time soon with it."

Ipsum watched as Father Ignatius lowered himself carefully into a seated position beside him. And together like this, they continued their conversation, as if sitting on a big old chesterfield in a gentlemen's club after a perfectly dignified day at the races.

"My only mistake," Father Ignatius confided, "lay in the fact my wife happened to be extremely heavy with child when I first brought Cinnabar back into the country. Hateful business. Trust me, the effect on both mother-to-be and the tiny foetus inside her proved to be nothing short of hellish."

"And the foetus was Esau."

"Yes, and the foetus was Esau. My firstborn. And if I'd known for a second how truly devastating the impact was to be, I wouldn't have allowed the two parties to come into contact. Not for the life of me."

A kettle whistled in a nearby room, causing Father Ignatius to grimace as he paused for it to stop.

"Sure," he sighed, taking up where he'd left off, "it all seems so obvious now. But at the time I couldn't have foreseen the dire consequences of their meeting. In fairness, Esau's mother already languished in an extremely precarious state prior to any actual exposure taking place, owing to various complications arising throughout the course of her pregnancy. Normally of a fairly stoic disposition, she had become a nervous wreck. Initially, I thought she suffered simply from the ill-effects of a hormone imbalance. The constant weeping and Tourette's-like bouts of swearing indicated as much. And then, Cinnabar came to live with us..."

A spasm ran through his body, as he recalled the obviously painful memory. Closing his eyes, he readjusted his weight where he sat and slowly began to speak again.

"Immediately, my wife started to behave in the most peculiar manner. Peculiar, even for her. She possessed a direct telepathic link to our unborn son, she informed me over dinner a few nights later. And evidently, my son wished me dead, or so she said. The patricidal little bastard plagued her incessantly with the ingenious ways he meant to eventually dispose of me, "the old man". Here were Cinnabar's yet unknown unique homoeopathic powers in action — forming a fully fledged Oedipus complex within the budding psyche of an unborn embryo."

Unable to successfully stop himself from laughing completely, Father Ignatius convulsed involuntarily in between making the odd random snort of contempt. The effect was altogether unnecessarily disturbing. Rather like when, as a child, Ipsum had watched a bull elephant seal being accidently harpooned on a television documentary one afternoon after school.

"I think his mother actually began to relish recounting our son's murderous intentions towards me," Father Thyrace complained. "She began to "channel" him for my benefit. Her face would twist up and her voice took on this evil wheedling quality. 'For starters, I'll set to your eyeballs with an emery board, you vile and corruptly putrescent Monkeyman. And shitake mushrooms I'll grow in your ear canals. Just for kicks. With your teeth I will fashion maracas, before fixing myself a drum with the skin of your paunch.' It was no joke.

"Of course, when it came to Esau's finally being born the situation escalated to the nth degree of insanity! I didn't know whether to cry with joy that my son hadn't come out toting a fully-loaded Beretta or whether to have my wife committed for having dreamt up the whole demented charade. Essentially, though, I too began suffering the deleterious effects of long-term exposure to our houseguest by this stage. Which meant I also had become a mess of insecurities and paranoia, as well. Randomly factor in increasingly-powerful bouts of megalomania on my part and you will understand why our living arrangements had to change. The decision was simple — the demon seed and its mother must leave."

"It felt dreadful to know I was the cause for the family splitting," said Cinnabar, returning from the kitchen, bearing a full silver tea service perched on its matching tray before her. "That poor woman lost everything she most loved in the world, and all because of me."

"A happy medium my wife was not. No need to blame yourself unduly. Now should I play mother?" asked Father Ignatius, rising to his feet.

Once standing, he carefully poured the steaming hot beverage into the clutch of fine china teacups provided.

"An added benefit of drinking this tea is the neutralising effect it has on the poison you currently have coursing through your veins," he explained for Ipsum's benefit. "The tea's made from an extract of Asphodel I discovered a few years back, which helps counteract Cinnabar's unique transformational qualities, for a time."

"Please, I better have some, then" said Ipsum. "Before I have a chance to say how I wish my eyesight hadn't returned to normal quite so quickly...sorry."

"Not to worry, my boy, not to worry. One lump or two? Hmm, or milk? Or are you more of a 'straight with no chaser' man, after my own fashion?"

"Not being much of a tea drinker, ordinarily, I'll just have it the same way you like it," said Ipsum.

"Licked off the teat of a nubile Swiss seamstress, eh? Mind, it's scalding hot."

Ipsum accepted the tea cup offered to him, with his eyes downcast as if studying a stain on his shoe.

"Don't mind her," said Father Ignatius bullishly. "You can't be a living catalyst for transformation change and not have experienced just about everything there is to know about human foibles. It's the scientist in me, no doubt, that finds it so endlessly fascinating, I'm sure. This girl here has become my life's work. She's cost me my marriage, my offspring and my professional stature, possibly even my sanity. It's a curious love/hate affair ultimately."

"What became of your wife, if you don't mind me prying?" asked Ipsum. "Esau's mother? Is she still alive?"

"Only in the biological sense. Not psychologically or spiritually. Although she did originally consider entering a convent, I recall, after we first separated."

"That's enough, Ignatius!" cried Cinnabar. "It's not fair to toy with him. He has a right to know."

Ipsum sipped his tea, hoping his eagerness didn't betray him.

"A right to know what?" he asked.

"Your mother, God bless her..." Father Ignatius stalled. "And Esau's mother, God bless her...are one and the same woman..."

"What?! You've got to be fucking me," he blurted, the tea not yet having had its desired effect.

"Fucking with you, I am not."

"He's not," whispered Cinnabar.

"My mother's your wife?"

"She was," clarified Father Ignatius.

"In some parallel universe peopled entirely by fricking lunatics!" protested Ipsum, jumping to his feet.

"Alas, no. I've never once let her out of my sight since. Not in all these 30-odd years. Not even after you came along."

"So Esau really is my blood brother?"

"So it would seem. Is it really such a terrible idea to you?"

"But why did my mother lie to me about his being adopted, then?" objected Ipsum.

"Denial leaves the conscience functus officio — that is, free from further obligations. If he was not her son, then she was not his mother and was therefore unable to be judged either unfit or otherwise."

"I need some air."

"Let me help, I'll take you down to the greenhouse," offered Cinnabar.

"Oh, yes. Do please go with her," entreated Father Ignatius. "I have some administrative matters to take care of, in any event. We can talk again later. And you must of course stay for dinner. Cinnabar is the most wonderful of cooks."

"This way," beckoned the charred and mutilated form standing across from Ipsum. "I like to water the plants at the same time each day. We therefore mustn't delay."

The trip to the greenhouse consisted of their riding the service elevator down six floors below ground level. Through the glass panels on the lift doors, Ipsum searched each floor they passed for any distinguishing features. But overall each floor looked much like the one before it. Long narrow corridors, lit by recessed fluorescent lighting, ran off into the distance, with only the odd closed doorway here and there to break the visual monotony.

"What is it they actually do here at the Institute, anyway," he asked Cinnabar somewhat idly. "Father Ignatius mentioned something about a war on germs? But you wouldn't need all this to do that, surely?"

"It's partly true, but it's mostly a front," she replied, sliding open the door as the lift reached its destination with a heavy clunk.

"So what is the real purpose of it all? What are they really doing?"

"They hide from Death. Try to control the uncontrollable. And indulge their juvenile adolescent fantasises about ruling the world from a secret underground lair," said Cinnabar flatly.

"Who are they?"

"It's better if you don't know ultimately. I simply call the three of them who are in charge The Blind Freddies. You'll meet the other two at dinner," she elaborated with a distracted air.

Cinnabar reached out and flicked on a switch attached to the wall beside the lift entrance. Instantly, a dazzling burst of light shone out from the massive array of floodlights which hung suspended 60 feet or more in the air above them. Only then did Ipsum realise they had stepped out of the service elevator into total darkness. The effect was both awe-inspiring and a little overwhelming. For he now saw they stood in a vast domed glasshouse crammed full with vegetation of every different variety. Here there were creepers and vines like those found in equatorial jungles, growing right next to desert plants, including wildly various flowering cacti and other assorted succulents. Palm trees stood dotted in amongst conifers and eucalypts, and there were braces of elms and sequoias mixed in for good measure too. And further afield again, buttercups, bluebells and begonias displayed their brilliant foliage in all their full glories, interspersed with unkempt thickets of fennel, bamboo and Spinifex grass.

"It's stunning!" gasped Ipsum. "It's crazy, I mean...yet stunning...beautiful even..."

"It's pretty much my domain. Nobody else ever comes down here," said Cinnabar.

"You've somehow managed to grow all these plants, hundreds of feet underground, by yourself?"

"Largely. I've always loved plants. And I've got a lot of time on my hands," Cinnabar explained. "Also there are no seasons to contend with here in my special little sanctuary."

Ipsum waded into the sea of green tree-fern fronds and shoulder-high pampas grass before him.

"Up until the accident I should have liked to have been a prima ballerina and danced with the Bolshoi," Cinnabar called out after him. "Alas, it wasn't to be. Instead I have been given the gift of green thumbs."

"It's just so amazing."

"I think of it as an ark. Maybe when those idiots upstairs have fried the whole planet, I will have saved enough plants to start again with."

"You could get lost in here."

"Not me, but perhaps you. Anyway, it's time to turn on the sprinkler system. Then we should head back on up."

A few minutes later, as they entered the lift together Ipsum stopped Cinnabar's hand as she went to press the button to close the doors.

"Do you really think of yourself as being a prisoner here?" he asked her. "Those things you were saying to Father Ignatius earlier. It made me think he's got some kind of hold over you. Is that true, or am I simply imagining things?"

"I am no more, or less, free to leave than you yourself are."

"Oh, good."

"You misunderstand me," she said.

"How so?"

"Leaving this house of mirrors might prove altogether far more difficult than you could ever imagine."

She pushed the button and the lift whirred upwards. The two of them stood in silence as they made their return journey together. Just before arriving at the lift's starting point, the hideously disfigured woman spoke.

"No matter what they say to me or make me do, I know I am a goddess inside. And one day, I'm going to escape this place. Believe me. Just as soon as I can figure out what to do with all my plants, I'll be gone."

Her impassioned speech finished the moment the lift doors parted, leaving Ipsum with no chance to respond.

"Ah, here are my darlings!" enthused Father Ignatius, on seeing the pair step out into the vestibule adjoining the main living area he waited in. "Come, join us. For the preliminary results are in!"

Ipsum saw his host was now flanked by a man and a woman, each of whom wore a white lab coat and carried a clipboard. Cinnabar meanwhile muttered something about fetching some nibblies.

"May I present to you my two esteemed colleagues, Dr Eke Cognomen and Dr Marie-Louise von Auerbach (aka Die Beleuchter)," continued Father Ignatius. "Together, we three constitute the unholy trinity, if you will, of Transhumanism. Collectively we are also known as The Archons of Hypostasis."

"The Blind Freddies," whispered Cinnabar to Ipsum, on her way past to the kitchen.

"Pleased to meet you, at last" said Ipsum, casually addressing the white-coated pair of strangers in unison.

Meanwhile, his legs swayed under him, as he cursed Boaz under his breath.

"WTF, I thought you said the Craziacs Corp only ever existed as an invention of your own devising," Ipsum hissed. "You said you made the whole Waldsterben thing up!"

"I thought I did!" answered Boaz incredulously. "Look, just play it cool. We need to know what they want from us. And anyway maybe Dr von Auerbach hasn't recognised you yet."

"Preliminary results about what," asked Ipsum, feigning a degree of casual indifference meanwhile.

"Ah, you see, you were being observed when we were talking earlier. The good doctors were studying your responses from behind one-way glass."

"OK. And transhumanism?" queried Ipsum. "It's not a term I'm too familiar with.

"How about the phrase 'human all too human'?" asked Dr von Auerbach sharply, struggling with the softer vowel sounds of English compared to those of her native tongue.

"Gently, Marie-Louise," cautioned Father Ignatius. "The boy still thinks of us being germ scientists remember."

"Only, in reality, we shifted the parameters of our research years ago," chipped in Dr Cognomen menacingly.

"If you can't beat them, join them," added the finely-wrinkled Dr von Auerbach cryptically.

"Ahem, well, the science of Transhumanism seeks to change or modify what it means to be human," clarified Father Ignatius. "In all its various respects and associated manifestations."

"Super," said Ipsum.

"As a specimen, you were found — how should I say — to be wanting," said Dr von Auerbach, squeezing the bridge of her nose between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. "A classic case of advanced retro-juvenilism. An Untermensch, if you will."

"Retro-juvenihilism, more correctly, I'm guessing," argued Dr Cognomen, skimming his eyes over the notes he'd written on his clipboard. "It's all the rage in the States at the moment."

"Remind me of his implanted memory matrix sequence," Dr von Auerbach demanded to know of her colleagues.

"Allow me," said Father Ignatius. "Son of a second-rate jazz guitarist who enjoyed some notoriety back in the day. Mother forever living in the ancient past. Also, the father suffered a stroke ...by his own hand, as it were. Making him merely a felon of his former self — a felo de se."

"Ah, of course, I knew I detected the smell of self-slaughter lingering upon the lad," laughed Dr Cognomen knowingly.

"This isn't a harmless parlour game you're playing here, you know," objected Ipsum.

"Tut. Don't mind us," said Father Ignatius. "We're total professionals. Now let the good doctors get on with their diagnosis."

"So he is to be our Missile Zero," observed Dr von Auerbach cryptically. "This is He that shall strike terror in the hearts of our enemies!"

Ipsum caught himself wishing for once Boaz would hurry up and say something normalising.

"Is it not fitting that the Man of Sin bows before our wills, as we successfully decipher the cipher he wears as a mark upon his skin!" added Dr Cognomen, looking like he literally might laugh up his own sleeve at any moment.

"OK. That's enough. Now let's eat!" said Father Thyrace, with the smile of a lioness satisfied she has made good her kill.

After dinner, Father Ignatius pushed himself back from the table and began rolling a cigarette, before addressing Ipsum with a conspiratorial air.

"You see, the thing is, over time, we've built up certain tolerances to Cinnabar's unique gift," he explained. "The Asphodel tea probably hasn't helped, in that regard, either, mind you. However, this means, Marie, Eke and I require a more concentrated dose to experience the same level of effect we once did. Are you with me?"

"I guess so," said Ipsum, wondering how long he would have to wait before making his goodbyes.

"Which is why we hit on the idea of taking scrapings of dead skin from the soles of her feet and smoking them."

"Pure genius," laughed Dr Cognomen, clasping his hands together in front of his chest excitedly.

"Oh, goody!" cried Dr von Auerbach, letting her hair out of the tight bun it sat in on the top of her head.

"I liken the experience to being on DMT," said Father Ignatius. "In any case, it's how we directly communicate with our Hypergorean masters. Care to try some?"

"No, I'm good," said Ipsum, glancing over to where Cinnabar shuffled towards the kitchen holding their stacked dinner plates. "And anyway I must say I'm not too sure what kind of warning the surgeon general might attach to your special brand of cigarettes."

As impossible as it seemed, he believed he caught the faintest trace of a smile on Cinnabar's face. Either way, his mood lifted immediately, because of it, leaving him feeling more determined than ever to make good his escape.

"Anyhow, Hypergoreans or no Hypergoreans, I must be off!" he announced loudly, slapping the table with the flat of his hand.

"But you mustn't disappoint our shape-shifting reptilian overlords," Father Ignatius objected. "They are most anxious to become acquainted with you personally, and have been ever since I first mentioned your intention to come and visit with us again."

"Their alien armada steadily amasses only a stone's throw or two outside of our stratosphere, as they await their final deployment," added Dr Cognomen, with obvious awe and admiration.

"Waiting for the glorious day of man's colonisation," sighed FROLIC's erstwhile mistress-in-exile, accepting the half-lit roach being passed to her widdershins.

"And the end of humanity and all its filthy diseases," said Father Ignatius, exhaling a great blustery lungful of fetid foot smoke, before turning to address Ipsum squarely. "You've been groomed here your entire life for just this moment. Now, finally, it is time for your Ascension, the time when you are to take on your mantle of supreme executive authority and ultimate power."

"Alrighty, well, leave it with me," said Ipsum, rising abruptly. "In the meantime, I think I'll just go and help out in the kitchen for a bit."

Gripped by an impending sense of urgency, he left the room in search of Cinnabar.

"Hey, Sister Morphine," he said, moments later, as he approached where Cinnabar sat crouched in front of the dishwasher. "Great meal. We've got to get the hell out of here!"

"I'm not going anywhere until I've finished stacking these last few plates," she said, dismissively.

"Come on! You can't stay here, we've got to escape. It's not safe with that lot out there. If nothing else, they're going to smoke you to death. And I also happen to know Dr Marie-Louise isn't at all who she's pretending to be."

"But my plants won't survive without me."

"Better them than you. You can always grow more, can't you?"

"Father Ignatius and the others won't let you leave..."

"Just watch them try and stop me," said Ipsum, guiding her by the elbow back towards the dining room. "You'll have to trust that I'll send help for you, as soon as I can."

During their absence, the scene around the dinner table had degenerated still further. As the pair entered, the three alien collaborators sat cross-legged on their chairs, chanting a mantra consisting largely of gibberish, which evidently called for their supreme masters to become manifest.

"Hey, Smokey," called out Ipsum, shaking Father Ignatius by the shoulders. "Wake up!"

"Jubela, Jubelo, Jubelum, your faithful servants pray for you to come," droned the bald pated heresiarch, his eyes rolled back in their sockets. "Jubela, Jubelo, Jubelum the world awaits the dawn of a new sun."

"Yes, fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. I get it," yelled Ipsum. "I'll show myself out, okay Pops?"

"I forbid it," said Father Ignatius, grabbing him by the wrist forcefully. "If you leave now, you will be damned to live amongst the great unwashed forever. Stay and become one of the chosen. Throw off your hidebound virtues and stop clinging to this diseased vessel you call your body."

"Who do you people think you are?" asked Ipsum scornfully.

"We three, if you like, in effect, make up the white (or sclera — for the scientifically minded), the cornea and the iris of the all-seeing eye," boasted Dr Cognomen smugly.

"And what's more, you are the pupil...our pupil," sighed Dr Marie-Louise von Auerbach almost lovingly. "Mind your pfefferkuchen männchen, mein lieblein."

"I can't take it anymore!" shouted Ipsum suddenly panicking. "Boaz speak to me! Boaz, you bastard! Whatever happened to our collapsing the universe together?"

"You've been delivered," Father Thyrace announced with unsettling finality, "and so your departed friend has performed his service, shall we say?"

Cinnabar shuffled closer to Ipsum and put an arm around him, as he dropped his head in despair.

"Here's the thing! Yes, okay. So, I drank toilet water as a child once, when none of you were looking!" Ipsum confessed abruptly, snapping his head back up and staring fiercely into the eyes of his would-be captors.

Drs von Auerbach and Cognomen immediately stopped looking quite so pleased with themselves.

"All right, you know, now I think about it, it might have been more than just the once," conceded Ipsum, correcting himself. "I had a real thing for it. If I couldn't get a cup or a glass or something, I'd soak a piece of my clothing in the toilet bowl and then suck on the soggy shirt sleeve (or what have you) right through the rest of the day."

Total pandemonium ensued. Or put another way, sheer hell next broke loose. Chairs and other sundry items of furniture were violently flung back, and all thoughts of common courtesy were dropped instantly, as Ipsum found himself being suddenly shepherded down a long corridor in the direction of the front door by the sclera, cornea and iris now united as one very evil eye.

"I wouldn't say I do it more than a couple of times a year, these days, though, honestly," he said, glumly, to Father Thyrace, who looked might he might vomit at any moment. "Does this mean I'm out of your little End-of-the-World club for good?"

Evidently, the door that was slammed closed behind Ipsum as he got back onto his feet on the grass outside served to answer his question well enough.

Hmm, I never even got to learn the secret handshake, he thought to himself wryly. Or say goodbye! And here I was all the while fearing the Rothschilds and Rockerfellers of the world.

In any event owing to the extreme haste with which his captors had sought to expel him, it seemed they had also completely forgotten to erase his memory. And that was something he knew he should be supremely thankful for — on so many different levels he couldn't even conceive of them all at present.

Before heading home, he first let himself into his mother's house and wrote out a long detailed note on her kitchen table. In the note he wrote down everything he'd learnt about Cinnabar and her captivity amongst the Hypergorean cultists living at the bottom of the garden and everything else that came to his mind as well. He hurriedly finished off the five-page letter with a picture of a big smiley face and then dialled a cab.

Later in bed, pulling the doona up under his chin, he sighed the sigh of a man completely free, if only momentarily, from the frustrations that arise from the imperfect workings of an imperfect world.

"How did your meeting with Esau's father go," asked the woman lying next to him, as she rolled over and yawned dreamily.

"Superbly. Although we're apparently on the eve of impending alien enslavement."

"Can't be worse than queuing for cinema tickets, surely? Hey, I solved your whole alter ego/mind-parasite thingy, for you, while you were gone."

"Huh?"

"Your little friend Bogart or Borat or Bouree or whatever. You know, the one who you're always muttering away to under your breath."

"Boaz?" asked Ipsum quizzically.

"Yeah, Boaz. Well, I figured out he's simply one of your pluriform selves, just exactly as you are one of his. For him, you are a remembrance of things future, that's all. Time, we know, is of course illusionary. And so, therefore, you're essentially co-existent, the two of you, although seemingly from completely different epochs in the history of mankind. He is you, and you are he. So get over it. It's totally Joycean, is all. Meaning it's time for you to lay your inner daemons to rest and get some sleep."

Ipsum lay in the darkness, speechless, listening only to the rhythmic snoring of his strangely adorable bedfellow.

The next morning the woman forced him to carefully recount his visit to 33A Gargle Street, right down to the very smallest of details. When he got to the part where he left his mother the note, her eyes lit up.

"That's it!" she cried, "Don't you see? You need to write all of this stuff you've been telling me down. From the very beginning right to the end, everything about what happened at your work and the Prisoner King of Fernando Po and the Dolly Do-gooders and Dr von Auerbach's descent into mindless drug addiction and poor gentle Cinnabar the homeopathic saint..."

"Hold on," he objected. "Woah, hang on a minute, without a doubt we've got to get things ready for the twins, before any of that can happen."

"You're right, of course. But you must agree we ought to alert the police to Cinnabar's plight, either way. I'd do it right now, if only my sorely aching womb wasn't stopping me from being able to get out of bed. So you should call them, straight away."

"Come on, the police wouldn't believe a word of it for a second. Anyway, I'll come up with something soon enough or hopefully mum has already thought of something. Although, you know, part of me suspects Cinnabar actually wants to stay down there in her plant kingdom far underground."

"Really. So, tell me what else it is you think you know about what women want. For instance, what is it that a woman looks for in a man? Huh?"

Pausing to collect his thoughts, Ipsum knew he had inadvertently stepped into a deadly minefield of wrong answers and forced sexual abstinence.

"What women really want," he said hesitantly, "is the kind of man who will change her blown light bulbs and carry in the groceries after she's been out shopping — without being asked. A woman wants a man who will open the lids off her jars when they have been twisted on too tightly. She wants a man who will listen to how her day went without yawning. She also wants a man who will hold her when she's crying — without getting an erection, unless requested otherwise. She wants a soul mate to watch her favourite crap television game shows with. Moreover, she wants a man who still wants her even when she is wearing her oldest and crappiest pair of tracksuit pants. She wants someone who shares all the best attributes of her father, but none of his worst qualities. In short, she wants to be made to feel like a queen, but just as importantly she wants her man to love her most irritating habits with fond tenderness. Have I missed anything?"

"You stupid dumb ass. Listen, the only thing women want in a relationship is exactly what men are after too. All they want is to know that the person they're sleeping with isn't busy screwing all of their friends behind their back. End of story."

"That's exactly what I was trying to say, in a round about way!" he cried bitterly.

A few days later, Ipsum received a peculiar visit which just happened to coincide exactly with when his fiancé had moments before left the house on an errand. On answering the doorbell, he came face-to-face with a disgruntled scrum of men who crowded the doorstep as they jostled and shoved amongst themselves for better position seemingly.

"We represent, collectively, you might say, a deputation of sorts of various ex-lovers, stalkers and one-time boyfriends of Elissa May," declared the self-appointed spokesman of the motley cross-section of men. "And we are here to sound out your intentions towards the aforesaid prize catch."

"Yeah, you can think of us as being a concerned cadre of her past conquests," piped up another voice from somewhere within the mob.

"Or more simply put — we're sort of like your friendly local-neighbourhood poontang police," added a less evolved member of the posse, immediately afterwards.

"Man, that's just plain offensive," objected another more-romantically inclined soul in their midst. "No wonder you don't have any kind of luck with the ladies."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please," Ipsum interrupted, fearing a riot might take place on the doorstep before him, "I give you my word my intentions are entirely honourable and just."

"We'd all feared as much," jeered a man dressed completely in black towards the back.

"Look, what makes you so certain you can succeed where each of us has already failed?" asked a clearly exasperated man from within the throng.

"You will need much more than just a machete and compass to explore the dark continent of her soul, my friend," asserted yet another.

"I suppose what we are trying to say is that, before you go scaling her walls and burrowing beneath her buttresses, you might like to give some consideration to what kind of future the two of you will have together," said the original spokesman for the group. "Where, for instance, do you see yourself being five years from now?"

"As far from your grubby little Spanish sexual inquisition as common self respect and dignity will allow, I wager. Now piss off before I turn the hose on you all," threatened Ipsum, slamming the door firmly shut.

Elissa May, for this indeed happened to be her name, she later confessed, laughed off the incident.

"They meant well, I'm sure," she said. "Sweethearts, each and every one of them. You're probably just feeling a little bit jealous."

"I'm feeling a little bit after the fact, to be honest."

"Nonsense. You'd end up gnawing your arm off to get away from me, if I was a common or garden variety wallflower, now wouldn't you?"

She squeezed his cheeks and then flopped onto her back on the couch.

"It made me feel very conscious of the fact I don't have any prospects to speak of. Having all those guys wanting to know what it was I had to offer you that they didn't," he said bleakly.

"Here's your answer," she laughed, passing him the bridal magazine she'd been idly flicking through meanwhile. "Outsider art!"

Ipsum took the magazine of her and began to read indifferently where she had stabbed the page emphatically with her finger.

"Perpetua Flounce, editor of the very publication you are holding," she informed him smugly, as he did so, "is apparently seeking to broaden her horizons by funding collaborative works of art encompassing a 'decidedly outsider bent'."

As he ran his eye over the article, Ipsum read that Ms Flounce, apparently tired of her role as editor-in-chief of the hugely successful A Modest Proposal magazine, hankered to do "something with more substance". To this end, she planned to take an indefinite leave of absence from her normal editorial duties, while she reacquainted herself with her primary passion for totally "out there" visual art. The article finished with an invitation to her readers to submit ideas for "creative works suitable for consideration as future collaborations".

"I'm thinking of your wall mural. You know, the one with the ants and the home-brewed ink," Elissa May suggested helpfully, giving him a mischievous wink. "But wait for it, my real ace in the hole is that I just happen to know Perpetua personally. We grew up in the same housing estate. And if she wants to re-establish her street cred, as it were, I know just the guy for the job."

A quick email or two later and a meeting between Perpetua and Ipsum had been pencilled in for the following Thursday. In the intervening days, Ipsum stressed himself sick trying to come up with a pitch he felt happy with.

"What's wrong with just doing the wall mural thing?" Elissa May asked him, after enduring another night watching him pace the floor.

"I don't want to feel like I'm simply repeating myself," he complained bitterly.

"Surely, you can't get more "outside" than living on the streets. I've already told you you've really got to write all that stuff down. Once you've got it all on paper, you can turn it into a word collage type of thing. Don't you know graffiti art is still massively lucrative at the moment? So what is it that most sticks in your mind from when you were hopeless and homeless?"

"George."

"What, that's it.? One word?"

Too agitated to answer her, Ipsum hurriedly left the room without speaking.

About fifteen minutes later, he returned holding a single piece of white paper filled on both sides with his own very rushed looking handwriting. Coming to a standstill in front of where Elissa May remained sprawled out on the couch, he handed her what he had since written. Struggling to get into a half-sitting position, the heavily pregnant woman readjusted the considerable bulk of her swollen belly, propping herself up on one elbow as she did so, before reading out aloud the following:

### Out of Mind Out of Sight

On the day you find yourself falling through the cracks (or what are, in reality, the gaping holes) of our "me-first" society, the first thing you'll notice is that there's actually very little opportunity for you to rue the cruelness of your individual plight. More primal concerns, like survival, fill your thoughts. Food, shelter and personal safety become your sole obsessions.

At the mercy of the elements, you can no longer simply reach over and turn up the thermostat should you feel the cold wind numbing your fingers and toes. There's also no more microwave meals should you should find yourself feeling a bit peckish on a lazy Sunday afternoon, either. As for calling for an ambulance, having no telephone (let alone the luxury of a permanent fixed address) means you might as well forget it.

Yet until our own life starts to come apart at the seams, we can never truly grasp how quickly the social fabric of existence unravels. Be it from drug addiction, domestic violence or an untreated/untreatable psychiatric disability, each and every one of us could just as easily wind up living on the streets. No one is immune to misfortune, as much as we would all like to congratulate ourselves otherwise.

Picture yourself, in the shoes of my friend George, if you care to. A migrant to this country, you have worked your whole life as a professional cook. Due to a thick accent and lack of formal qualifications, you never get to work in any of the fancy kitchens of the swankier restaurants around town. But you are known to be a good honest worker who takes pride in his craft and you end up cooking short-order meals at a steak house in the outer suburbs somewhere. You live alone and save what you can of your modest wage, in preparation for when you become too old to work any more.

Then unexpectedly, due to new eligibility restrictions, you suddenly lose your rent-assisted housing flat. Without relatives to take you in, you find yourself temporarily without accommodation. And so begins your stay of a couple of nights at a men's hostel on the other side of town. Unfortunately, the extra travel time also means you arrive late for work the next three days running. An offence for which you are promptly sacked. Now homeless and unemployed your downward spiral begins in earnest. Drinking your way through the small nest egg you had put away towards your retirement dulls the pain but also leaves you sleeping in an abandoned car for the next couple of months.

Standing in line with the other rejects and cast-offs from polite society — having being reduced to eating from soup kitchens now — you wonder at what point it all went wrong. While day in and day out, your clothes reek, your body gets filthier and filthier and your mind keeps playing evil little tricks on you. You trust no one. Not even the kind old grandmotherly-type lady who serves you the soup at the front of the line.

Sanctuary, for you, becomes something as simple as a vacant park bench in a crowded park, somewhere where you can blend into the background and blur into the margins of life. You soon learn, as well, that you are less likely to be attacked in broad daylight by roving street thugs, and so sleep as much as you can on your very own private bench when the sun is high.

Imagine your insane rage, then, when one fateful day you arrive to find a television crew setting up their equipment near your favoured spot. Exhausted, with having walked the whole night through, you dump the dirty swag of your few belongings down beside you and occupy the last patch of territory you feel in anyway entitled to, regardless. With an unhinged look in your eye, you bark at the sound recordist, as he comes too close while laying out his cables.

"Check out this crazy bum hungry for his fifteen minutes of fame!" hoots the location scout-cum-gofer, who tries to shoo you off by kicking your aching feet with his designer army boots. "Why can't he just go and die in a ditch someplace else? Man, I searched all morning for this place!"

The ass-prod (Assistant Producer, for those of you not in the game) joins in by explaining to you (in between fielding calls on his mobile phone from his private holiday consultant) that they are operating on an extremely tight budget and asks therefore that you get out of shot, letting them get on with the business of filming their commercial.

"So be a sport by pissing off for a bit, and I promise we'll be out of your hair in three or four hour's time. Absolutely tops," he assures you, patting you reassuringly on the back with his clapboard.

Off to one side, the talent slated to appear in the eventual 30-second TV spot are meanwhile busy having their eyebrows and nasal hairs plucked by a makeup artist, who laughs contemptuously at the state of your sun-damaged skin. And all you can think about is the fact you've had nothing to eat since when you ate a discarded burrito out of a bin the day before.

All of a sudden, into this nightmarish scene there bursts quite possibly the fatness man you can ever recall seeing. He wears a hot pink Stetson and brandishes a large metal fire extinguisher with which he begins to spray forth a jet of chemical foam straight towards your mouth and eyes, making it impossible for you to see and just as difficult for you to breathe.

"Bansai!" roars the self-styled outré renegade, ignoring your piteous cries for mercy. "Nobody is gonna to stop my new line of Mal-wear™ from being sold to the masses. The people demand high quality fitness apparel at affordable prices, and I'll be damned if Malcolm Kent can't give it to 'em!"

The rest of the crew cheer and clap, on seeing the jubilant fat man's moment of triumph, blind to the fact you are retching up blood and mucous as you stagger away to collapse under the awning of a bandstand across the way.

"Look at him, the old soak's gone off to sing a few bars in his own exclusive one-man Brass Razoo Revue," he chortles, as you slip into unconsciousness.

And never for a moment do any of those sundrily assembled reflect on the inherent truthfulness of the phrase most ideally suited to this the most solemn occasion of poor old George's passing, "There but for the grace of Godge [sic] go I..."

"The One-Man Brass Razoo Revue," thrilled Perpetua Flounce on reading the exact same thought-piece a few days later. "I love it. Oh, most certainly I do! That's what we'll call the entire exhibition. I'm seeing mixed media, along with some 'found objects' and some interactive spoken-word installations. The waiters will be stripped down to the waist and wearing pink Stetsons and they'll only serve half-eaten burritos. And there, emblazoned on the back wall, sits a single word, GEORGE! I'm thinking Diane Arbus meets Harvey Pekar for the overall look of it all. With your gritty snapshots of life lived on the skids and my eye for theatre, we're an absolute shoe-in for success, baby!"

"I'm glad you like the idea of telling the stories of people like George and Alister with his kidney beans and all," said Ipsum. "It's just that I've got a few reservations about it appearing like an exercise in exploitation."

"Hey, sweetie, exploitation sells! So don't knock it! If it didn't, we wouldn't have titty flicks and third world debt. I'm simply asking you to see the potential."

"These were real people I saw suffering."

"All I'm saying is nobody's ever going to call this housing estate gal 'unassailably upper-middle class' again, not after this thing blows the doors off the shitty old shit-factory we call modern art."

"I don't want to sell anyone down the river."

"No, problemo, signor. Leave the ethics, to me. Just bring me a dozen more character studies like Georgie's here, and I think we've got ourselves a show."

"I'll see what I can do," said Ipsum, getting up to leave the table he sat opposite from Perpetua at.

"And I'll also need your bio for the printed programs we'll be handing out as guests arrive."

"A bio?"

"Sure, but keep to the current house-style being used in art circles. Happy chatty! The brooding artist-thing is so outmoded. The cult of Van Gogh has gone the way of the garter belt, honeybuns."

"All right."

"Remember, happy chatty," she repeated, rubbing lipstick off her teeth with a napkin, while peering into a small compact she held cradled in her other hand. "Always happy chatty, happy chatty, happy chatty, happy chatty, happy chatty...chatty, chatty...cha cha CHA!"

A couple sitting in the café at the table next to them stared as Perpetua loudly sang the idiotic personal mantra into her pocket mirror.

"A real conflagration of the inanities, yeah?" mocked Ipsum. "Something like that?"

"Huh?" replied Perpetua, now having moved onto removing stray hairs from her suit lapel.

"You know, I saw the best wines of my generation destroyed by badness..." laughed Ipsum, pouring the contents of his half-drunk wine glass into his companion's. "I really must toodle. Maybe poor old Basquiat was onto something with his 'same old shit' line, eh, whaddaya think?"

"Which is why all I have to offer you is a lifetime of penury," summed up Ipsum, as he finished recounting the disastrous meeting to Elissa May at home later that evening.

"I'm sorry," she apologised. "Pertie always was such a dreadful prat, growing up. I should have known better, for I too have seen the best lives of my generation destroyed by blandness. Which is why I willingly accept your offer of matrimonial penury — just so long as you promise to stay forever crazy on the inside for me, huh? Deal?"

"Deal."

"Oh, crap!"

"What?"

"I think my waters have broken..."

And then everything changed. Again.

At exactly 9.17pm that very night, the shell-shocked pair found themselves in possession of their firstborn son, delivered by the obstetrician on duty at their local hospital.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Callum!" misquoted Ipsum in wonder.

A complication of the birth saw the healthy baby boy's twin sister refusing to be born, however. And no matter what medical techniques were employed, nothing looked even remotely likely to make her budge.

Somewhat embarrassed by the odd turn of events, Ipsum and Elissa May eventually took their son home with them and waited for nature to take its course.

Months passed in a tense deadlock, with neither of the two contesting parties willing to give an inch. While meanwhile the boy, whom they had since named Magus, continued to grow apace. His development, in fact, seemed to be accelerated in every respect and he became a particularly early talker.

"If one key opened every lock in the world, then there would be a lot of fuss about who got the key and who didn't, wouldn't there" he theorised, as he spooned his porridge to the cat hiding under the breakfast table one morning. "Don't you suppose?"

And in a similarly contemplative vein he next added, "If God is everywhere and created the world and everything thing in it but the world's not perfect, then God mustn't be perfect, either. Don't you think, dada?"

Ipsum didn't know whether he should be proud or alarmed to hear such sentiments coming from the mouth of a virtual babe. But his consternation soon doubled when the boy's sister, Psi, not wanting to be outdone, started making her own contributions to the family's daily breakfast table banter from within her mother's belly. As the children's father, Ipsum worried whether his exposure to Cinnabar's mysterious homeopathic powers might have somehow infected Elissa May at a crucial point in the gestation of the two twins. In a completely unbidden way, the story he'd been told about how his own mother claimed to have developed a telepathic link with his brother Esau in utero came back to haunt him.

Really, it became most of the time to feel like their lives had turned into a carnival sideshow.

"I'm counting to three and then you're going to let yourself be born, missy!" he found himself threatening one hot summer afternoon just before Psi and her brother were about to turn a year old.

"Can't make me, big nose," his daughter taunted.

"What's so special about being in there, anyhow?" Elissa May begged to know.

"What's so special about being out there?" countered her wilful lodger.

"A joke's a joke. Now, please, come out of your womb!" Ipsum insisted.

"Shan't. I like it in here. No one out there seems to be wonderfully fun, from what I can tell," said his daughter, snubbing his authority.

Pretty quickly a pattern soon developed whereby no matter how much they cajoled, implored and begged their daughter to start acting sensibly she simply flatly refused to comply with their wishes. Her sole concession being that in the future, when she finally turned old enough to move out of home into a place of her own, she might consider venturing forth into the world at large. But until such time came she intended to say firmly put.

In sheer frustration, Ipsum lost his temper finally and demanded to know how Psi still managed to fit inside her mother's belly anyway.

"It's ever-so simple, Daddy, once you suspend your disbelief," she had replied ingenuously.

***************

Standing out on the front veranda of an old wooden miner's-shack, Ipsum listened as a car laboured its way up from out of the river valley below. As he waited for it to arrive, he walked out onto the grass in his bare feet, hoping to catch some of the first rays of the early morning sun. In the meantime, the car continued to wind up through the steep foothills at the base of the mountain. He knew it had to be Esau and Verity, for sure. For a start, only one road lead up to the pass at the top of Mt Rubedo and once it got there it headed directly towards where Ipsum stood. Besides which, from the woeful sound of the grinding gear changes alone, he bet money Esau gripped the wheel of the approaching vehicle; no one else could torture a car quite so convincingly, as he.

So ruling out the possibility a particularly determined bible salesman was coming by to ply his trade, Ipsum got ready to make welcome his brother and his brother's long-time girlfriend any time now. That is, if the state of the road below didn't cause the two stragglers to turn back in horror. In many places, the single lane of dirt they travelled on looked more like a donkey trail than a serious access route for vehicles, consisting as it did of a series of perilous hairpin turns, many of them cut into the sheer rock face of the mountain itself. If he hadn't driven the treacherous stretch of road himself just recently, Ipsum might not have believed such a feat at all possible.

Verity only had herself to blame, thought Ipsum idly, as she was the one who'd chosen for them all to meet up at the remote mountain retreat to begin with. She'd heard of the place through a friend of a friend and decided a re-birthing weekend might be exactly "what the doctor ordered" to divest Elissa May of her tardy daughter. By this point, Elissa May would have willingly eaten live eels to bring on her daughter's long overdue birth, and so the matter had been immediately settled on upon her first learning of it.

Thelapis House Cabins Resort sat perched at the topmost point of a range of mountains famous for their once-rich deposits of red gold. No central dwelling or structure actually marked the property as such. Instead, there existed a ramshackle collection of shingle-roofed slab huts and slap-up sleep-outs made from various bit of recycled timber dotted over the landscape, along with a traditional North American Indian tipi thrown in for good measure. Down in a corner of the paddock furthest away from where Ipsum waited there also stood a converted railway dining carriage with a psychedelic mural painted down one side. The mural depicted a Nag Hammadi-inspired "Dawn of Creation"-type of scene, in swirling fluorescent day-glo colours and drew the eye from every angle on the property. Just as striking, though, were the billowing outcrops of wild bracken and glorious old-growth eucalypts which grew around the edges of the improbable bohemian fairyland.

Any actual rebirthing-related activities were scheduled to take place later in the day, and so Ipsum felt in no hurry whatsoever as he quietly watched his brother finally pull up into the gravel driveway out front. Ipsum had guessed correctly as to who would be driving. Verity's ashen face told of her ordeal better than words. Whereas Esau felt well pleased with himself, judging by his massive grin.

"What's this?" he asked, leaping out of the driver's seat and banging on a piece of tin strapped to the entrance gate.

As a lark, Ipsum had constructed a simple makeshift sign reading, "Beware the Jabbernowl!" and attached it to the gate, after arriving with Elissa May and the kids the night before.

"It's to remind me why we're here," he answered his brother after a pause.

"Fair enough," Esau replied, slamming the dusty car door behind him. "Can't understand why everyone keeps saying I need to get my licence. What a trip!"

"How's Elissa May doing?" asked Verity, walking around from the other side of the car.

"She's ready," said Ipsum, "if a little nervous. She's inside along with the rest of the family enjoying a little sleep in."

"Any word from the birthday girl?" asked Esau, giving Ipsum a sly wink.

"Not a peep since she got wind of what we've got planned. I can only guess she's feeling a little ganged up on, I suppose."

"Well, then, let's get to it," said Esau, unhitching the trailer attached to the back of the car, before adding, "Well, what do you think, anyway? I got not only the car and the trailer but also much of the sound gear I've got in there as well, for a direct trade in on your old Silver Bird twat mobile. Beat that!"

Ipsum shot his brother a look of mock disbelief, as Esau with a great flick of his wrist removed the large canvas tarpaulin covering the oversized load he'd just towed up the mountain.

"In-A-Primi-Gra-Vida, Bup, Bup, Baahhh...Don't cha know that we lur-urve you?" he sang raucously.

Ipsum shook his head, before going over to lend him a hand.

"Are you sure we're going to need all this firepower," he said, casting his eyes over the jumbled mess of speaker cabinets and other assorted amplifiers and equalisers sitting crammed into the trailer.

"Birthing children is a messy business, from beginning to end, or so I'm led to believe," replied Esau darkly. "And I mean to come out on top in whatever shit fight we end up finding ourselves in. So, here, grab the end of this 20 inch subwoofer bin and start lugging, peacenik!"

"Honey, you promised you wouldn't go overboard this weekend," said Verity. "What do you say about bringing things down a little in intensity?"

"What do I say?" he asked, "I say, In-A-Primi-Gra-Vida, Ba-By. Don't cha know there's no such thing as what's tru-ue?"

"Jesus wept," said Ipsum. "I'm having seconds thought about letting you provide the music for the weekend at all."

"There's nothing excessive about what I've packed," objected Esau. "What you've got is a basic quartet of 2,000 watt speaker towers, along with the four matched power amps needed to drive them. There's also a keyboard and synth or two, as well as the midi controller I use to interface with my computer soundcard. And, oh, okay, the smoke machine is purely for atmospherics. Granted a few of the pieces could be replaced by digital stuff, like the old-school mixing desk, for instance, but I prefer the warmth of the analogue, even if it is bulkier."

"I'm getting earache just unpacking it," said Ipsum.

"Surely, desperate times call for desperado measures, hey, Gringo?"

"As big of a pain as our daughter can be, she's still really only a little baby. I mean ..."

"Well, I think it's totally beautiful here," Verity said, trying to change the topic. "Leave that stuff, Esau, and come and have a look around with me. We've got hours until you have to start worrying about setting up your light and sound spectacular."

Without a further word of protest, Esau linked arms with his girlfriend and escorted her off towards the lily-filled dam lying at the centre of the clearing encompassing them.

"Oh, won't you come out and see? And walk this land?" he sang, as they strolled away in the bright golden wash of summer sunshine.

Only later, when preparations for the rebirthing ceremony were nearing completion did Ipsum find a chance to take Verity to one side and quiz her about her life with Esau.

"For one thing, I don't bruise nearly half so easily, since we've been together. It's a bit weird, actually. And you know, for another thing, he's quite the romantic," she confided coyly. "Not like you."

"Well, ours never rated as a great love affair. Whatever it was, that thing we shared between us," he replied.

"It was sex — the thing we shared between us. Dirty, skanky, mutual getting-off."

"I didn't get all that much off on it. Sorry."

"But you did love me."

"I was going through some shit."

"Yeah, for about 15 years, arsehole." said Verity slapping him playfully.

"I'm happy now."

"I should hope so," she laughed, "you're about to become a dad for the second time."

"Only wish I knew what the hell I was doing...being a father is so much harder than I ever thought it would be. Probably because I wasn't raised properly myself, I guess."

"Um," hesitated Verity before saying softly, "...Esau told me about what happened with your father, on our trip up here."

"Oh, yeah?"

"About the accident."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said your father suffered from a morbid lifelong fear of paper, after suffering a near-fatal papercut one day at work. For someone who worked in the stationery trade, the effect proved to be almost crippling. Before long, he couldn't even tolerate people mentioning the p-a-p-e-r word let alone their naming any of its associated by-products, such as recycled pulp or reconstituted cardboard packaging etc. In time he became a recluse, confined to living inside his own house as a virtual prisoner, owing to paper having found its way into just about every aspect of civilised life. Your father couldn't sneeze without someone trying to offer him a tissue! And as for the matter of wiping himself after going to the toilet....well."

"Please, do go on. Esau's never shared this particular part of the fairy tale with me before," Ipsum said, pretending to stifle a yawn.

"I'm not surprised. You see, as a last resort, your father's doctors suggested he leave the city altogether and take a rest cure by the seaside somewhere for a year or two. A change of scenery, they hoped, might help lessen the frequency and severity of his paper-specific posttraumatic stress disorder. He was advised to avoid writing postcards and such, but by all accounts a healthy dose of sun, sand and sea would do him the world of good. And so, in good faith, he went home, packed up Esau and your mother and headed for the coast.

"On the first night they arrived, Esau had a brainwave, apparently. And acting from a kind of princess-and-the-pea sort of premise, he secretly hid a paper nautilus under your father's pillow. To his mind, he felt if he could prove to your father that the paper aversion he suffered form simply existed in his head maybe he could be cured. Esau's plan consisted of letting your father sleep soundly for two or three nights on top of the unmentionable item, before he would then reveal the grand trick he had played. Of course, he would be forgiven entirely as soon as your father came to see that the thing he'd once most feared was in actuality perfectly harmless..."

"Groan," sighed Ipsum heavily. "I can't do this anymore. Let me guess, the nautilus shell still has its little creature living inside it. And, that very night, it crawled out and burrowed into my father's ear canal, consuming his brain, before assuming his identity."

"That's just absurd!" objected Verity.

"Is it? Look, I've pretty much pieced together what happened to my father over the years. And I know Esau has only ever been trying to protect me from what's essentially a simple shabby truth. My father petered out. Boom, boom."

Perhaps mercifully, the deafening test signal which next blasted from out of Esau's imposing-looking outdoor PA system ended the two ex-flatmates opportunity to catch up any further.

"We should check up on Elissa May and see how she's doing, anyway" suggested Verity.

"Good idea," agreed Ipsum.

Earlier in the day, a pile of pillows and various cushions and other soft forms of padding had been placed together in a heap on the platform next to the site's modified railway car. And much like a Bedouin queen, it was there they found Elissa May, reclining, almost at the exact spot where the light of Sophia's finger penetrated the primordial darkness within the mural painted on the side of the psychedelically-enhanced train carriage.

"Ready for the eviction party?" she smiled weakly.

"We can only hope Esau knows what he's doing," said Ipsum, bending down to rub the soles of her feet with his thumbs. "Remember what we learnt about your breathing from the classes. Sacrifice the incoming breath to the outgoing breath and the outgoing breath to the incoming breath and everything will be fine."

"I've got butterflies in my stomach."

"You'll do great, I'm sure," encouraged Verity. "Just relax into it and we'll take care of the rest."

Esau raced over and joined them, bearing a much-delighted Magus on his shoulders.

"All set?" asked Esau.

"Just run us through what's happening again, quickly, can you?" queried Ipsum.

"Ah, you're such a worrywart, little bro. It's the essence of simplicity, really. By giving your shy, retiring daughter sufficient fanfare, we seek to persuade her to come on out and join in the festivities. To this end, I have prepared a compelling selection of music generated by my soon-to-be patented MISERICHORDS software system."

"It's too late to pack everything down and head home, then?" asked Ipsum, unsure as to whether he was actually joking or deadly serious.

"If nothing else, you can rely on the immutable fact that every new generation absolutely loathes the music held dear by the generation immediately preceding it. And that alone might do the trick, who knows?" observed Esau.

"How long till it begins?" asked Elissa May nervously.

"It began the moment life first entered matter," laughed Esau, lifting Magus down off his shoulders and returning to his control console to make some final adjustments. "Just give me about another 15 minutes or so and then it'll be show time!"

The day which had already begun lengthening into shadows for the past hour, slowly slipped into early evening. At the same time a magical hush fell over the clearing except for the occasional bird call from within the surrounding forest gums.

Everywhere they could think of, Verity and Ipsum began turning on lights, only stopping when the haphazard collection of makeshift dwellings surrounding them had taken on the look of a gingerbread village out of some Brothers Grimm story. They then collected together as many extra blankets as they could find and joined Elissa May and Magus back up on the railway platform.

I call this piece I'm about to play, "Through the Eye of the Beholden," called out Esau across to them loudly. "All aboard the Palingenesy Express!"

Elissa May tensed, as Ipsum sat down and wrapped her shawl about her shoulders.

"Follow the breath," he said to her gently.

From the opening few bars of music onwards there existed no way of describing the sound blaring out of the speakers stacked around them as anything other than mind-bendingly insane. In layman's terms, Esau had earlier likened his composition to a simple aleatory contrapuntal fugue of polyphonic harmonies played backwards over a recursive tribal psycho-rhythm. What Ipsum personally heard in the pounding slabs of dense electronic synthesizers and swirling uncontrolled feedback amounted to a global termination of all silence. Every available square inch of air in the glade they sat in bled with ear-splitting noise. It became impossible to think. Impossible to breathe. Impossible to hear one's own fears or doubts anymore. Surrendering to the sonic dissolution of his psyche, Ipsum entered the meta-euphoric wormhole the music opened in his mind and powerlessly followed it into a parallel realm of pre-birth insensibility. The trans-dimensionally hypnagogic cadences of Esau's anti-matter symphony won out, thereby signalling Ipsum's return to the One Great, Cosmic Honey-Mind. Thinking back later on, Ipsum thought it highly likely he even blacked out momentarily.

Unbeknownst to Esau even, the impossible music next became like a beacon, triggering an irresistible homing impulse in anyone and everyone who heard it across the length and breadth of the misty peaked mountain range. People began to gather from out of the surrounding bushland in their droves. Dairy farmers and their wives left behind their milk-heavy jersey cows to come and investigate the beguiling music being broadcast right through to the valley below by virtue of the landscape's unique natural acoustics. While trout fishermen discarded their waders and reels to search out the musical epicentre of the soundquake rippling their ponds and scaring away their catches. Amateur naturalists camping in the hills flung aside their favourite reference tomes and set out to discover the cause of the preternatural din, as well. And ironically, for once, not wanting to be left out, a nearby enclave of renunciants forwent their daily devotional practises so as to make a pilgrimage to the source of the ecstatic melody making.

Elissa May looked across at Ipsum with a dazed expression.

"Who are these people? And what do they want?" she shouted at him, upon the arrival of the first of the multitude of their uninvited visitors.

"I've no idea. Just go with it!" he yelled back, before turning away the face of the speaker closest to them. "Hey, Psi, honey, it might be a good time to come out and join in with everybody! How about it? You can meet your brother! And you can even be a bridesmaid at mummy and daddy's wedding. I think I saw a priest somewhere over there. We could have a spontaneous marriage ceremony. Would you like that?"

"I'm scared," said Psi sulkily.

"We're all scared, honey! The world can seem like a scary place at the best of times, but you've got your family here to protect you!"

"No, I mean, I'm scared everybody's going to laugh at me!" ranted Psi, huffily.

"Why would anyone laugh at you?"

"I'm still really only small..."

"Well, you haven't been born yet. So of course you're small."

"I'll need a pouch."

"A pouch?" asked Ipsum.

"Shh! I don't want everyone to hear," she said. "Oh, fine! Maybe we should just forget the whole thing!"

"Don't you worry, baby," said Elissa May soothingly. "Daddy will get you the best pouch a little girl could ever hope for."

Leaving in a mad panic, Ipsum couldn't believe he was now being forced to race off in search of something that could possibly serve as the requested item.

As he left, Elissa May struggled to her feet and followed him down off the railway platform. Wending her way through the steadily growing group of people congregating before her, she set a course for the tipi, obviously hoping to secure herself a bit more privacy. Meanwhile, Magus cavorted in the grass with a cart-wheeling gang of children let loose by their parents to play amongst themselves.

"Hey, dude, this is the best frickin' music festival I've ever been too!" shouted a new arrival who seemed intent on getting right in Ipsum's face, as he tried to dash past.

"Out of the way, buddy, I've gotta find my daughter a day-womb!" he replied, sprinting off back up to where he'd parked the family car.

As he got there, a couple of spaced-out mushroom hunters pulled up in a battered old burnt-orange station wagon. As he caught his breath, the look-alike pair piled out and introduced themselves as the two Godots.

"Where's the keg?" the more vocal of the two Godots demanded to know.

Ipsum waved an arm back behind him randomly.

"This music, it sort of swallows your mind, doesn't it?" observed the other Godot sagely, before hurrying after his travelling companion towards the fray below.

Ipsum, with his head spinning, looked in despair at the chaotic scene unfolding around him, as yet another car drove up, this time parking practically on the exact same spot where he stood with his hands pressed against the sides of his face.

"Mum?!" he cried out, as he peered in through the car's dust-caked side window.

"Who were you expecting, — Margot the bloody Pansexual Commando?"

"What on earth are you doing here?"

"Look, it was really her idea," his mother confessed, pointing over at the partly-obscured occupant of the passenger seat, while winding down her window more fully. "However, I wasn't about to miss the second birth in a row of one of my very own special grandcritters, anyway, I can tell you, mister!"

"I NEED A POUCH!" Ipsum bellowed.

"Well, ask her," his mother directed him, again pointing across at her passenger.

Ipsum leant in through the window to better see the "her" his mother kept referring to.

"Cinnabar?! But how?" he gasped.

"Your mother and Esau rescued me. It's a long story...I'll fill you in after the Apocalypse."

"Well, just so you know, I always meant to come back for you, but life...the alien armada...and the Blind Freddies..."

"I know."

"I NEED A POUCH!" he yelled at her frantically.

"I know, don't stress it," said Cinnabar. "Here, take this."

She gently handed him the bowl of a massively-oversized Brimborion nut she had since lined with plush red velvet.

"Ah...but...for once in my life, it's totally perfect!" he rejoiced, with tears welling up in his eyes. "But how?"

"I did tell you I was a goddess, didn't I?"

Ipsum turned, and at breakneck pace, sprinted down to where he'd seen Elissa May crawl into the tipi back what seemed a whole lifetime ago.

"Did you get it?" she asked him anxiously, as he leant through into the tipi's canvas interior.

"WHAT!"

"DID YOU GET...IT?"

"I got it... I GOT IT!" he said, getting right in up close to Elissa May, before handing her Cinnabar's offering.

"Ok, you need to leave now. I have to be alone with Psi for a while. Understand?"

"Me, ugh, I mean..." grunted Ipsum, like the complete Neanderthal he felt himself to be when it came to the whole birthing of children situation.

Verity greeted him as he pushed his way out of the flap that served as both the tipi's entry and exit point.

"HOW"S THE MOTHER-TO-BE TRAVELLING?" she asked.

"As well as to be expected," he said. "Look, I'm finding it hard to hear anything! I'm going to kill Esau for this..."

"Yeah, I can't hear too much either. So stand closer!"

"You know, out of the blue, I found myself thinking about Mortimer the other day," yelled Ipsum, stepping in towards her.

"Really? I never think about him. Thank God!"

"I started wondering where he got to..."

"You know, according to the way Esau sees it," explained Verity, "Mortimer never really existed."

"You mean about how he stole his name from a bunch of lawyers?"

"No, no-no. I mean, if you think about it, Mortimer only ever existed as a kind of play on words. Like a sort of verbal sleight of hand."

"Really?"

"Break down the name itself, and it becomes 'mort-i-me-r'. Change this around to more normal syntax and you get 'I-me-r-mort'. Or 'I-me-are-dead'. Mort being the French word for dead. When you add his last name of Chambers, you then get: 'I/me are dead chambers'. Ergo, his name means a place where the dead are buried. Like a crypt or catacomb."

"I don't think we should be discussing the others like this. Not at this time."

"It's so terribly post-modern...mortem...post-mortimer, isn't it?" giggled Verity.

"It makes me feel kind of uncomfortable."

"Ah, live a little. It's not like we're doing anything that hasn't been done before"

"How so?" he queried.

"Operation Mindfuck ring any bells? All hail, Discordia? Does the Hypostasis of the Archons sound anything like the immanentizing of the Eschaton to you?"

"Oh no! Not this fucking zipperless mind-fuck thing again. Okay, I'll bite. Whose dog did I kill, then, if not Mortimer's?" Ipsum asked, despite himself.

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me," he railed.

"Hmm, it might help if you try and think of Archie as being a literary device. If you like, he represents the cautionary tail in one big long shaggy-dog story."

"Uh-huh, I get it now! If you lie down with dogs, you're gonna wake up with fleas."

"Not sure I follow," Verity objected.

"You've caught Esau's lying disease."

"Perhaps so. But at least I know who I am now."

"And who's that? The Scarlet Woman?"

"Verity Lane, silly. Esau took me to see it."

"Took you to see what?"

"Verity Lane. It's the small road that runs behind where the Asylum used to be — the original Thought Zoo. Anyhow, he told me that was where he ended the head trip he was on before starting the heart trip he's on with me."

"Beautiful. So what about Esau? Who's he meant to be, then? I suppose we're all just merely figments of his over-active imagination or something equally psychotic, am I right?"

"Through loving him, I've come to see you and he simply represent two very different sides of the same coin."

"And what side of the coin am I on?" Ipsum demanded to know. "Heads you win or tails I lose? Who the hell am I in all of this?"

"Let's just say," replied Verity artfully, "that for a figure of fun you really are impossibly gloomy a great good deal of the time."

"Ok, riddle me this, little miss smarty pants. What about Julia, my ex-fiancé...what about her?"

"Didn't you hear? She made an honest woman of him/herself by marrying Mr Germs and opening a national chain of her DUALIA'S JUICES outlets. She calls them Juicelebrity Bars, however. Her company motto claims that each and every one of her franchises offers 100% Guaranteed Hand (Squeezed) Relief."

"Now I know you're totally nutso."

"Could be," Verity grinned wickedly. "Come on, try me again."

Before Ipsum had a chance to respond, though, he was next astonished to see Cinnabar had meanwhile shuffled her way down from the car to come join them. And before either he or Verity could speak another word, Cinnabar's presence began to mysteriously act upon them both. Immediately, great tears began to roll down Verity's cheeks as she beheld the awe-ful vision standing before her. And she was not alone. Others too among the assembled mass of people near them were also crying freely at the sight of Cinnabar standing amongst them, quite literally, in the flesh.

As to whether she herself noticed the stir her arrival created, she never let on. And although her trip down from the car must have been agonisingly slow and quite an ordeal in itself, she showed no sign of feeling sorry for herself in anyway whatsoever.

"I could have guessed I would have been better off in flats," she hissed, playfully kicking a pair of candy apple red platforms off her charred feet.

"I'm having a baby," said Ipsum.

"What!" asked Cinnabar, pointing roughly to where her ears should be.

"I'm HAVING A BABY!" he shouted.

"Having trouble understanding basic male anatomy, more like it," said Esau, joining them suddenly. "Here, come and help me move this speaker."

He beckoned to Ipsum to follow him and the two of them went across and swivelled the massive speaker in question away from them, creating a pocket of comparative quiet in the area directly outside the tipi.

"How much longer do we need the music anyway?" Ipsum asked his brother.

"Is Psi born yet?" replied Esau.

"I-I don't think so."

"Then, trust me, we still need the music. Hey, Cinnabar! What's up?"

"So the midwife's in there with Elissa May already, then?" asked Cinnabar leadingly.

"Midwife?" Ipsum cried. "Elissa May told me to leave her on her own for a bit. There's no midwife. I didn't know..."

"Typical. Typical man," she growled. "Out of the way!"

With that, Cinnabar disappeared inside the tipi, leaving Verity the job of slapping the two brothers over the back of their heads.

"What's that for?" they both said.

"For being idiots," she explained.

"Nothing was stopping you from going in there yourself early," said Ipsum. "And booking a midwife is secret women's business, surely."

"And you," said Verity, ignoring him and turning her wrath towards Esau instead, "and you, you never told me how breathtakingly beautiful Cinnabar is. No wonder you spent all those weekends wiring up her automated, perpetual watering system for her, you pervy bastard!"

"Come on. She's like my big sister, Vere," he said.

"I..." she said, "I'm going to go right up to that nice-looking fireman over there and ask him to dance with me."

"I'll know where to find you, then" chuckled Esau.

Not so coincidentally, the "machinery of night" abruptly shifted gears at exactly this point.

Arguably Cinnabar's mysterious transformational power had much to do with the marked change in "vibes", as her unique influence continued to subtly ooze through the gathering crowd. Whatever the case, Esau's 2nd Symphony for Synaesthetes from that moment forward took on truly apocalyptic proportions, messing with both the minds and senses of all who listened. Sounds became colours, tastes were perceived as smells and touch mingled with the extrasensory spectrum of human experience. Ipsum swam in a sea of sensation, within which waves of anxiety (attached to the imminent birth of his daughter) periodically crashed over him.

"Esau, you've got to make it stop," he groaned.

"I can't make it stop anymore than you can, brother. Try and go with the flow..."

"We should've just taken the brown acid instead."

Everywhere people swayed and gyrated to the music from another world. Many were naked, having taken off their clothes, mistaking them for arguments of an insidious intent. Others hugged in groups and tasted the sound of each other's laughter as the colours of the rainbow. And a few exceptionally lucky souls even found themselves crossing the boundary between the various realms of corporeal existence and the great infinitude at will. Having sat down because of the intensity of it all, Ipsum looked up to see Esau standing before him with his fingers arranged like antlers out of the side of his head. Ipsum would have laughed or vomited or vomited laughter, but he could taste Esau's sincerity, like it was a mouthful of homemade hot rhubarb pie. His brother then dropped his right hand and pointed urgently off up towards the scrub.

Ipsum looked to where his attention was being directed and saw the echo of a magnificent Stag, as it stamped its front hooves and snorted in the cool night air on the fringe of the clearing.. The sight proved to be fleeting and elusive, but Ipsum got to his feet and raced after the numinous creature as if in a dream the smell of indigo and dark, bitter chocolate. The bracken sighed as he ran deeper into the forest of night shadows before him. A second fleeting glimpse of his quarry saw him quickly change direction and fight his way through thick bushes surrounding the base of a rocky outcrop. In an orange crescendo of agony, he heard the furtive animal make good its escape.

Initially, he sensed rather than saw his father with his eyes. There came over him first a sense of calmness and then a sense of profound presence. And within the presence rested all the fatherly patience and understanding a child could long for. Ipsum still couldn't help feeling embarrassed about how he'd practically barrelled headlong into his father without recognising him. Ill at ease, he stood waiting for the older man to speak. For a good while they held the space between them in silence. In time a warm glow in Ipsum's chest served to strengthen his spirit. He looked up and saw his father smiled on him, forgiving him his recklessness in his pursuit of the fleeting antlered shadow.

"I've never even known how you felt about me," he said to his father, crying solely from the excruciating joy of being in his company again. "I always felt like I let you down. Like somehow I represented the Son of Perdition to you or something."

"You could never do anything to disappoint me," said his father with proud parental good humour.

"But what do you feel about me?"

"I feel exactly the same way about you that you feel about Magus and Psi."

The enormity of the connection described created a feedback circuit in Ipsum's heart and mind. He shook his head with amazement, as his heart filled to breaking. For he knew he had at last become a true man truly acquainted with the truth, in all of its rib-bursting entirety.

"I think I finally know how to defuse the 666-megaton Eschaton bomb I've got strapped to my back!" he yelled joyously and ran back towards the clearing, shouting out as he left, "I love you, too, Dad!"

As Ipsum neared the tipi, his brother Esau took him by the shoulders and peered intently into his face.

"Did you catch him," he asked expectantly.

"No, but I didn't let him get away either. Now turn off the music and go and get mum and Magus and Verity and whoever the hell else and bring them back here. Sunrise is coming!"

The second Esau left, three elders representing the Norean peoples, the traditional custodians of the surrounding mountain range, solemnly approached Ipsum from out of the scrub.

"We bring gifts for the child who it is prophesied will help heal this land that has been raped, pillaged and poisoned by those greedy armies of men searching for its red gold," said the leader of the delegation, a bare-chested woman of generous proportions.

On Psi's behalf, Ipsum graciously accepted their garlands of white-flowered lemon myrtle and slabs of wild bush honeycomb wrapped inside melaleuca-bark parcels. Unsure of the correct protocol, he then bowed solemnly and begged his leave.

"You'll please excuse me, Most Venerable Magi Three," he said, addressing the delegation as one. "But I've got to deliver humanity a baby!"

And perhaps (some would attest) almost miraculously, that's exactly what he did next. Seven years, four months, one week, two days, eleven hours and seventeen minutes after her twin brother had been born, Psi — the Daughter of the Apocalypse — officially became a part of the human race.

At a later date, the family doctor informed Ipsum and Elissa May this massive gap in the birth times of their twins represented something of a record. But on the night of Psi's birth itself something as trivial as the recording of a modern medical marvel was the furthest thing from either of their minds. Both parents' prayers had been answered. Their family's triplicity had at last become a quadruplicity. They were no longer 3.14159 etcetera ever after. They now together had become solidly four. In fact, Boaz, if he'd been asked (should anyone have known his current whereabouts), would have gone so far as saying that the circle had finally been squared.

In his excitement Ipsum had wildly burst forth from the tipi like his shirt was on fire and told everyone the good news both collectively and, where he could, individually. Immediately whereupon the inaugural Festival of Global Psi Consciousness was consecrated in both name and place with a rousing toast of moonshine distilled by a deaf immigrant pig farmer from across the valley.

As the only other curious oddity pertaining to Psi's birth it also happened to be that she was born covered in a hard white casing. Being white and porous, the casing looked almost like an eggshell. And strangely only after Elissa May cracked through this eggshell-like casing did she see Psi lying curled up inside, like a little baby puggle. Placing her daughter in her "pouch", the second-time-around new mother next walked out of the tipi, wearing a look of great relief and contentment.

"If I didn't know any better," began one of the amateur naturalists present, on overhearing Elissa May telling Verity about her having to break open her daughter's eggshell earlier, "I'd say, zoologically speaking, your daughter quite possibly represents some sort of throwback to a shared common ancestor humanity shares with the monotremes."

"Hey, Professor Factoid," objected Ipsum testily, hovering nearby. "Watch what you've got to say about my daughter, all right? You bloody scientists are always all monotremes and no manners!"

Too busy with defending his daughter's honour, Ipsum failed to hear Elissa May's stifled cry beside him. "What is it? What's wrong, honey?" he heard Verity ask, before he turned and saw the cause of Elissa May's anguish. A rivulet of fresh blood streamed down the inside of her left thigh past her birthing gown and all the way down to her ankle and left foot. Ipsum had never seen so much blood before. What scared him most was seeing how scared Elissa May's face betrayed she herself felt. The flow strengthened with every passing second, and it appeared almost as if Psi had been a plug inside her mother and by removing that plug all of Elissa May's lifeblood was now left free to drain away. Seemingly, by their forcing Psi to take her rightful place in the world they had consigned Elissa May to certain death. Nothing looked likely to save her. Everybody could see something needed to be done to staunch the bleeding, but nobody knew exactly what.

"Is there a doctor in the house?" Magus finally yelled out above the ruckus.

"Yes, a doctor?" asked Ipsum, regaining composure. "We need a doctor!"

"I could be of some help, if it pleases you," spoke up one of the two Godots, approaching the gruesome scene warily.

"Fucking oath, it pleases me," answered Ipsum.

Meanwhile Godot Number Two explained to the surrounding crowd of bystanders that his friend had only recently completed the third year of his medical degree, which by sheer luck alone had also included an obstetrics rotation. Even so, no one expected the student doctor to have come across a case quite like Elissa May's during his training.

"We need to get this woman to a hospital," commanded Godot Number One moments later, assuming a faultless tone of informed authority.

"What the hell kind of name is Psi, anyway?" Ipsum's daughter asked him, without speaking, as he sank down on a plastic chair in the waiting room, while anxiously waiting for news of her mother. "I mean, everybody knows psi stands for pounds per square inch; because it does, doesn't it? And so, like, what, you bloody well wanted people to think of me as being some sort of huge inflatable blimp, is that it? It's so stupid. Which is why I've decided I want to be called Gloriana instead."

"Sweetie, you call can yourself anything you like," replied Ipsum absently, swapping the makeshift pouch he held her in to his other hand.

"Hey, that's not fair. If Psi is allowed to change her name, then I want to be able to change my name too." Magus chimed in. "From now on, I will only answer when referred to by my new name of Decoder Oyb."

"Sure, let's all change our names," said Ipsum, in an abrupt about-face. "I want to be known for forever after as Theandros. How does that grab you both? Now be quiet, I'm trying to think."

"But what about, mum?" objected Psi. "What's she going to be?"

"How about Miss Ion Impossible," joked Boy Recoded, bleakly. "Sorry!"

"That's enough already," Ipsum shouted. "You're going to have to wait in the car, the both of you, if you don't shut up!"

"Hey, time out," ordered Esau, as he walked towards them with Verity in tow.

"Any news," Verity asked edgily, when they got closer, offloading the huge bouquet of wildflowers she carried onto Ipsum's lap.

"No, nothing yet...nothing yet. But what about you guys, any further ideas about what's happened to Cinnabar?" asked Ipsum, keen to change the subject.

"Let's see, according to you she was last seen disappearing into the tipi. Although, afterwards, when you went in, she wasn't there, right?" said Esau. "Now, dear old Mumpsimus remembers it a little differently. She said she recalls the renunciants took quite a shine to Cinnabar, calling her the Palladium or Black Virgin or something or rather, and how they kept begging her to come back to their enclave in the hills, where they wished to serve and worship her as the True Goddess."

"Yeah, but that's not what I saw..." Verity trailed off.

"Well, what did you see?" asked Ipsum.

"I saw her turn into a tree...Or more, like, morph into a tree. No, she melded into a tree. She called it an Agnus Castus and said it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. It's the small purple-flowering tree, or bush, growing just inside the front gate, as you go into the property. The day we arrived it was literally covered in butterflies. Remember? The butterfly bush?"

"No, no, no, dada," disagreed Code Red Boy. "The pretty lady drove off with the Godots, after you and mummy left for the hospital. She said they were going to take her home, once their visas ran out. What's a 'sure thing' mean?"

"Well, I saw her return to the Mother ship," added Esau next, quickly. "The Diverge-lings came for her and beamed her up into space inside a shaft of blinding prismatic white light."

"You mean the Hypergoreans, surely?" challenged Ipsum.

"No, the Hypergoreans are dad's personal little pet project. Whereas the Diverge-lings are the living entities I first saw residing between the silences in the music I heard when Duncan O'Dowfart tried to kick me to death back in high school."

"So they come in peace now?"

"They always did," said Esau. "I don't think they mean us any harm; in fact, I believe they're here to help. Anyway, they'd so totally kick the Hypergorean's butts, like, any day of the week. They've got way better hardware for a start and with Cinnabar on board...game over. Armageddon/Alien invasion averted. Big time!"

"You want to know what I think?" interrupted Ipsum impatiently. "I think it highly probable we're all suffering from the acute ill-effects of extreme volume poisoning, thanks to your bloody sound easel. And so, who knows where Cinnabar's really got to? Hopefully, she's happy and safe wherever she is and will get in touch real soon. Anyway, I've got more immediate problems to deal with than any alleged conflict between warring alien species!"

"It will all be alright," Verity consoled him, placing her hand on his shoulder.

"Will it. You know, I just figured out the woman I love — the only woman I've ever loved and with whom I share two children — doesn't even know my name! I mean, I've been so busy trying to find myself all these years, and now here I am facing the possibility of losing the only person who ever really loved and wanted me. And she might not ever get to know the real me!"

"It seems Mr Eggeth here still hasn't learnt how to see the world sunny-side up, hey Vere?" said Esau teasingly. "Because surely that's an easy fix, yeah?"

"I can't see how," sulked Ipsum.

"How 'bout you try this," Esau suggested helpfully. "Just stop it. Stop only thinking about yourself. Then, when you've finally got over yourself, wait till 'the woman you love' comes to and then introduce yourself. I suggest keeping it simple. You could always say something like, 'I love you, Elissa May, and will forever hold you dearest in my heart. Which is why I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you for the first time properly. My name is...Thelonious Scrivener, and I am the loneliest scribbler in the world without you. And may I next present to you our two beautifully glorious children? Here is our son, our Firstling, we know him as our Magus Opus; and here is our daughter, Gloriana, with whom you have not yet had the pleasure of spending a quiet hour or two — she is, I think you will most surely agree, our Fay Accompli. Our Faerie Princess. FYI she also comes in a hard cover.'"

No longer as offended by sentiment the way he once might have been, Ipsum took his brother's advice to heart. And in little over an hour he gave Elissa May, almost literally, the exact same speech, word for word, as she first opened her eyes in the recovery ward of the small district hospital where her life had been saved. That is, apart from when he broke down and wept on her bosom like a child for a full fifteen minutes. Three litres worth of blood the richer, and feeling much more serene than the night before, she held him close and let him cry it all out, thereby helping him overcome his crippling case of completion anxiety forever after.

"Dry your eyes dark stranger," she entreated him tenderly, "the worst is over, for you're truly home now."

Then the absolutely unthinkable happened. With all the various complex ins-and-outs of their belated introductions dealt with, Verity quit typing and shut down her computer. The experiment proved to be a complete success. Ludolph's magic number lay vanquished and the elixir of life (Primum ens Melissae) flowed in abundance. Yea verily, the truth no longer bruised quite so readily as once it had — Verity's song of innocence regained now being sung.

"What on Earth will you do next?" she asked, confidently turning to face that which was still yet to become.

"That's as easy as psi! Like the risen phoenix, I imagine I'll simply just have to wing it."

This is where the neville ends...this is where the noel ends...this is where the novel ends...

