

QUINTESSENCE OF DUST

(stories)

Craig Wallwork

Copyright © 2012 by Craig Wallwork

(KUBOA)/SmashWords Edition

www.kuboapress.wordpress.com

It is the genuine hope of KUBOA to receive unfiltered feedback from readers regarding the works we produce. Whether your reaction to the work was positive, negative, or ambivalent, we would much appreciate your taking the time to send some remarks to us—these will be shared with the authors.

kuboacomments@gmail.com

Night Holds a Scythe

"A is for apple, and Amelia. D is for dog. B is for bed."

I tell Amelia we don't use them anymore. "They're bad for us." And she looks back down at the alphabet cards in her hands.

Outside the beechcraft's window, bed pyres burn below like little mushrooms pressed in the town of some city. Huddersfield, maybe. Leyland. Preston. Who knows? God cracks open the clouds long enough to throw light upon a small clearing. Hits the landscape before me like a guillotine. At this altitude, most things seem normal. I check the fuel gauge.

"M is for moon, and Mummy."

Amelia goes quiet. I know what's coming.

"Where's Mummy?"

Hands tighten around the yoke. Turn around with a smile. Turn. Face feels numb. Amelia is strapped in the passenger seat. On her lap are the cards. The ear protectors seem comically oversized on her small head. I forget she's only three years old.

"Are you tired, sweetheart?"

Amelia lowers her head and begins shuffling through the cards. Looks up, once, to see if I'm still looking. I catch her eyes.

Sarah and I honeymooned in Fiji. Took a small aircraft similar to the beechcraft over Monuriki Island that formed part of the Mamanucas. God and the birds could gaze at that island and never understand the effect its beauty had on me that day. Remembered it for years, and found it again in my daughter's eyes six months after she was born.

"Remember, don't sleep, honey. If you want to sleep, tell Daddy."

I return to the vista of horary clouds and turtle shell patches of life below. A notepad vibrates on the flight deck controls. Handwritten notes tell me the rotational speed of the earth at the equator is 900 knots. Decreases in knots with the cosine of the aircraft's latitude. There's a formula to chase the sun. Formulas for everything. If the aircraft is 60 degrees north or south then the rotational speed of the earth is 450 knots. For most airliners, that's well within their scope. Factor into account the tilt of the earth on its axis and an airliner would need to incline its path of flight in reference to the orbital plane around the sun.

The beechcraft I stole from Barton airport has hardly any speed, and the only formula I have is one written by an old aviator who had a gun pressed against his head. The laymen's version is, keep the sun on the horizon and hope God's breath pushes you towards it.

"S is for snake, and sky."

News report. The world record for someone staying awake: Tony Wright, 42, from Penzance. He beat the 264 sleepless hours set by Randy Gardner in the US in 1964. 11 days. That's the record. My wife managed 3 days. Amelia is at 4. To a kid, 4 days beats Mr Wright's record by a mile. Amelia's a tough cookie. Dropped all carbs from her diet the first day. Added caffeine in the second. Had to beat a man to near death for ground coffee when the looting began. Hysteria was a virus. Descended quicker than night.

News report. Cot death increase. News report. Mystery illness affecting the elderly. News report. Increase in deaths for narcoleptics. News report. People dying in their sleep.

Starbucks sales went through the roof. Energy drinks were sold out in hours. By the third day, drug dealers were peddling caffeine pills and shots of adrenaline. Bags of speed and coke tripled in price. Everyone on the planet became a junkie overnight.

Modafinil is gold. The rich and famous were peasants compared to the wealth of the simple narcoleptic. Someone leaked a list of addresses. A disgruntled nurse, they think. Got out on the Internet. Every narcoleptic's house was raided for modafinil, or any other drugs used to keep awake. Didn't matter that their stinking corpse was rotting in front of the television set.

Darwin was right. Those that adapt to change the fastest have a greater chance of survival.

Drive. That's all you can do. Keep moving. Leave the house. Leave possessions. Looters will get it all anyway. Beds lay burning at the end of the driveway. Windows smashed. Coffee, prescribed drugs, whatever it is, they'll kill you for it. Used to be if a man wanted another man dead, he would buy a gun. Now he pours cough medicine down their throat.

"N is for net, and night-time."

Night holds a scythe. Depression, dizziness, hallucinations, irritability, nausea and loss of memory. These are the symptoms. Before me clouds are white monsters chasing each other through the sky. Amelia's voice floats over me as though uttered from the mouth of a long-standing gargoyle perched upon the ledge of a church.

Flying home from the war zone in World War II, pilots with sleep deprivation would crash their planes. They survived a war to lose their life to a lack of sleep. Amelia helps us both. To know that C is for cat means I'm still awake. And she is too.

Day remains a constant. Chase the sun.

Sarah was diagnosed with ME three years after we met. Along with babies, the sick, the coma victims and narcoleptics, ME puts you most at risk. We tried but she needed sleep. I took her to our bedroom and held her for forty minutes. Listened to her breathing taper to a slow whisper before disappearing forever. Her skin warmed my tears as they fell to her cheek. Then everything went cold. Made dinner for Amelia and that was the last meal we had in the house before I drove us to the airport. Passed people in the street stripped naked, hoping the cold would keep them awake. Saw groups fighting. Hitting each other in the face.

Amelia nearly fell asleep that night. Had to open her eyelids with my fingers. She cried for forty minutes. When she was teething, or had colic, I would hate her crying. Now, I wish she'd cry all the time.

"R is for rocket, and river."

Doctors are working on the cure. Those doctors still alive, that is. Governments are going to work together to distribute vaccines, once they're available. Instructions given are to stay awake. Stay awake and stay safe. The world is burning and they fall to clichés.

Head north. Follow the sun. If the beechcraft makes it over the Atlantic, I'll hit Canada in eight hours.

The horizon is a miasma of dream. Ghosts float through its skin and beckon me with snake-like arms. Wipe my eyes.

Fuel is good.

"F is for flower, and fire."

Angels breach the skyline, dressed in rags, hair of seaweed. I peer below towards the shifting lands and the pastures and meadows blister like skin pressed against a hot skillet. From the fissures great plumes of smoke descend towards the beechcraft. From the haze a vast hand appears. Reaching.

"Hold on, Amelia!"

I throw the yoke to the right and the plane tilts with such speed it feels as though God himself has pushed us to one side. Amelia cries and the engine of the plane follows in anxious accord. Air currents form an invisible maze. Up. Down. Right. Left. The beechcraft is a mouse in nature's laboratory and from the side window, the hand envelops the aircraft. Darkness. For a moment. I turn to Amelia.

"Don't sleep, honey! Remember, sleep is bad!"

A deluge of tears fall. I see all her back teeth. Each one born into a screaming mouth. Each one, a night of agony. Walking the nursery floor. Lullabies. Soothing gel. Each one, milky rocks of misery.

"It's not night! It's the hand of the devil!"

The plane bumps against air pockets. Panels creak. Seats rattle. The engine roars like the lion with the thorn in its paw.

"I'm going to lay us down, Amelia! Hold on, honey!"

Descent. Clouds turned into jellyfish swimming against cabtabatic winds. The yoke shudders in my hands. Nose dips. Through murky tentacles the tailwind pushes us downwards. Breaching the underbelly of the clouds I see a rutted landscape of verdant hills and valleys.

Silence. A memory: Sunday afternoon, last summer. The top of Blackstone Edge, a gritstone escarpment 472 metres above sea level. Sarah and Amelia sit looking out towards Hollingworth Lake. Amelia points to the flanking hills and I tell her a story. Before the first tick and tock, giants rambled the flatlands of earth. They lived in harmony. But the world began to get small. Or maybe the giants got bigger. They needed space to grow. The sky was getting too close to their head. The shoulders of other giants too close in the night. Social boundaries were breached. Politeness and harmony was exchanged for bitterness and anger. They began to fight and every evening the world shook as each fell to the ground. Days and months passed. Only one giant remained. And he, too weak from fighting, lay down too. Years ushered in cruel seasons and upon the giants' backs, grass and moss formed. The crevices of their armpits filled with peat. Their nostrils collected rainwater. And what we know now as hills, tors and mountains, are really the backs of felled men too big to share the world.

G is for giants.

The noise of the engine snaps me back into the cockpit. 100 feet. 50. 25. The wheels touch a giant's back and the small aircraft bobs its nose like the beak of a curious duck. Brakes. Slide. Loam collects and forms primitive chocks. The aircraft breathes one final time before retiring. Wind arrives around the windows, its breath laboured as though our descent had held it in shock. I turn to Amelia.

Cards lay strewn across the cabin's floor. H is for hat. V is for violin. Q is for queen. Her head is tilted to one side. Ear protectors look more like a futuristic neck brace. Eyes are closed tight. A candle wax tear of blood pools in the ravine of her pale lips.

"Amelia!"

I undo the belt. Scrabble over the chair. I raise her head, wipe her mouth. I shout her name again. Feel her pulse. Beat. Beat. Beat. A tough cookie. Using my thumb, I press her fingernail and her eyelids flutter.

"Wake up, sweetheart. We're here."

Those tropical islands reveal themselves again. Her brow buckles. She cries. The salt water taps my wrist in quick succession. I feel her tiny heart beat against mine and for a moment, all is well. The adrenalin assuaged. Worry turns to relief. We hold each other for a long time. Or maybe no time passed at all. Her sobs become lost to the cotton of my shirt. And mine to her silken hair.

"It's okay." I press repeat in my mind. "It's okay."

Beyond the window, the sun scurries behind the hills. The chase is over. A bluish veil washes over the sky. I undo Amelia's seatbelt and I lift her. We exchange positions. She now sits on my lap and I rest on her seat.

Upon her arm my finger strokes the skin. Nose and lips touch her crown. Shadows wander by the small windows like ghosts peering in. Amelia's chest contractions fade and she settles.

"Is Mummy here?"

I shouldn't, but I say, "She's coming, sweetheart."

Light fades on the horizon. The fleeting blink becomes long-lasting. The world of giants before me, yawn. Stretch their backs.

From her hand the last card slips to the ground. S is for sorry.

And for sleep.

Railway Architecture

Perry Rankling was nine years old when he first fell in love. Her name was Lauren Cowie and she wore pretty red dresses and white ankle socks. Appropriate to her surname, Lauren's eyes were as large and as brown as a heifer's, or so Perry remembered them to be. She would suffer with hayfever, and during seasons of high pollen, would make grunting noises with her nose. At will, Lauren could make her gums bleed, and once, during recess, Perry stood at the fringe of ten excited children watching as her milky white teeth turned the colour of rose petals. He later went home, took a pin from his mother's sewing tin, and punctured his upper gum. When he smiled, he had the appearance of a boy who had been eating glass. He never felt so happy.

In the summer of 1986, softened asphalt turned the grass shades of autumn. Tree sap speckled windscreens of cars sheltering under thick boughs, the birdsong hushed by fatigue. Every living creature moved with measured steps, as did the boy from Pakistan named Aneil, and Perry, both of whom paced listlessly at the school gates. A gentle zephyr lifted the fragrance of exotic spices from Aneil's skin, cumin and paprika, and in later years, whenever Perry ordered Indian take-away, the smell would remind him not of his friend, but instead of the ersatz pearl necklace he stole from his mother's dresser: low-grade costume Jewellery, but to Perry, priceless. Under a sun that bleached the horizon so both earth and the heavens were equal, he and Aneil waited. Upon seeing Lauren leave the school building, Perry gave Aneil the small crushed velvet box containing the necklace and instructed him to tell Lauren that, "Perry Rankling loves you with all his heart." He then ran behind the bicycle shed, awaiting Aneil's return. Like a mirage merging from the sweltering haze of a desert, Aneil came back a few minutes later with two things: the first was the same velvet box. The second was the crushing news that Lauren had described Perry as a dog. That night Perry sobbed in his bedroom, and congested with misery, he breathed through his nose. The noise he made reminded him of Lauren when she had hayfever, and while wretched with sadness, Perry Rankling smiled and thanked God for bringing him a little closer to the one he loved.

In the Cowie aftermath, Perry found sanctuary in his mind where scenarios played out in his favour. There, Lauren would approach him. They would talk, and Lauren would lean forward and kiss his lips. Sometimes this would happen in class where everyone could see. Sometimes under cherry blossom or behind the bicycle shed. The sky was always bright and Lauren's hand always soft. And so it was that rejection tilled the fields of imagination and from its fertile bed grand and wonderful moments were fostered.

***

When Perry was twenty-five, a work colleague told him about the many worlds theory.

"Imagine that time is a train track, and you are the train," said Brandon Mallinson.

Brandon was, by his own admission, as bent as an Arab's knife with a tongue twice as sharp. For this reason, many who knew Brandon did not wish to know him well, lest they find their confidence shaved off in pounds. It was sheer happenstance that Perry found himself being measured by Brandon that afternoon. Each day Perry postponed his dinner until everyone finished theirs. He would then retreat to the kitchen area on the third floor of the office building and sit alone eating from a small plastic Tupperware box with plastic fork and knife. Perry would take a book and eat in silence, the air around him a sickly cocktail of heated food and burnt coffee beans. That day, Brandon had postponed his dinner too, and was waiting beside the microwave that was heating up a Thai Curry.

"The stations you travel through are significant moments in your life," Brandon carried on, ignoring the fact Perry was still reading, "the first station is birth, and the last station on the train track being death. You with me?"

Perry looked up and nodded before continuing to eat his homemade tuna pasta.

Looking through the microwave's door where a yellow hue illuminated his pretty face, Brandon continued, "Every now and then you hit a switch in the track, and change lanes. These switches are decisions, decisions you've made that carry you along a different track. Say there was a point in your life where you fell in love, but, for one reason or another, that person didn't love you, or, when you asked them out, they said no. That is a switch. One track leads along a path where they said no, and there exists another track where they said yes."

Perry stopped reading his book and Brandon turned to face him.

"For every decision we make in life," he said, "there is a switch, and where there is a switch, there's another world where things go your way."

Brandon produced a fork from his back pocket and began picking at the dirt under the nails of his right hand.

"Take some solace in this, Perry" he said, holding long fingers to the light above his head, "you may be the most pathetic and repellent man in this world, but somewhere else you are happily married with a beautiful wife."

Perry ushered around the penne pasta shapes, avoiding Brandon's eye. Brandon glanced at Perry's loafers, the stitching coming loose around the toe, the flanks scuffed. The grey Teflon suit Perry wore was too small. Black socks festooned with bobbles, lank hair, sallow skin, bony features and National Health glasses. The impact of a cold shave and blunt razor peppered the white collar of his shirt with tiny blood spots.

"There was one station where you made a fatal decision, Perry. Can you remember which one?"

The microwave pinged and Perry looked up to find Brandon's eyes burrowing into his skull.

"Your dinner is ready," Perry said.

"It has to stand for a minute."

Perry knew the station well. It was the one where Aneil handed Lauren Cowie the box containing the pearl necklace. His life continued from that moment drenched with a sense of desperation, of insecurity and hopelessness. Of the women he found himself around, Perry adopted a self-depreciating demeanour, his words soft and uncertain of their conviction. His back arched at the neck, forming a slight stoop to his walk, giving the appearance of a man who took solace in the flotsam that swam in the gutters, oblivious to the beauty within the sky. His heroes were fictional characters from books; Atticus Finch for his strong values and wisdom; Vito Corleone for his power and influence; even Victor Hugo's deformed but brave Quasimodo was someone to aspire to be. As his mind was stretched by mawkish stories by the likes of Diana Gabalon, Daphne du Maurier, Gabriel García Márquez and E.M. Forster, his body too became taut and wiry by a violent hunger to be loved. And it was upon this track his life continued where stations passed of moments too pathetic to be dredged up, or so pitiless in design they were almost comical to render in the mind. His famine bore a hole in heart, which is why when the first woman who took the slightest interest in him, he married.

She was a friend of Perry's cousin. As her name suggested, Jane was unexciting, ordinary and plump. The lenses in her glasses magnified the crow's feet around her eyes and unkempt eyebrows that rested precariously on the ledge of a masculine brow. There was little in Jane that interested Perry. They bought a small flat within a maisonette that was as dank as their feelings for each other. Mould festered upon the windowsills, around the chrome taps and within their words which they shared little of, save for the habitual need to validate each other's welfare.

"Are you okay?" Perry would ask Jane if neither of them had spoken for a while.

"I am fine," Jane would always reply.

And on occasion Jane would turn to Perry while he read a book and ask, "Do you still love me?" and Perry would convince himself he did and say, "Of course."

When they ate out in a restaurant, Jane would observe the other patrons and earwig on their conversations. She would repeat the dialogue under her breath to Perry to see if he found it interesting, as if the act of mimicry would change them into a new couple. But Perry never enjoyed this and remained mute, his eyes surveying the room to find the hips of a pretty waitress, the bosom of a young woman, or the smile of a lady deliriously in love with the man before her. When they had sex, it was inelegant and passionless.

"You're married, right?" asked Brandon.

Perry assumed he had seen the gold band on his finger and so nodded.

"Things not working out?"

Perry tore his eyes from the paragraph he had glanced and read five times without taking in a single word, the strain of pulling tight his brow quite tiring a task for the afternoon.

"I assume things are not going well at home because of all the chocolates," said Brandon.

The chocolates. In his first week as a Desktop Support Technician at the small but prominent Advertising Company called EcO, Perry had enrolled in a night class aimed at would-be chocolatiers. It was a five-week extensive course covering all aspects of confectionary creativeness, at the end of which each student was given a certificate and syrupy words of encouragement to become the next Willy Wonka. Perry learnt in those rich and sugary weeks that hand-made chocolates contain three times the amount of cocoa used in mass produced chocolate, meaning it was less fattening and reduced tooth decay. The room had to be the right temperature lest it ruin a batch, and that to conquer all the variables one had to be methodical and patient. From the simple soft centres, to the more complex flavoured ganache and truffle, Perry committed himself wholly to each recipe, for to him the monetary value of each perfect little treat was less significant than their service.

"Don't get me wrong," Brandon continued, "for a man of such sour expression and bitterness, you produce the most sweet and delicious chocolate. It's a gift, and one these hips resent you for."

Perry replied, "You don't need to eat the chocolate."

Brandon stopped excavating under his nails and looked to Perry, "And miss out on all the fun. You know she doesn't even see you?"

Perry's faced blanched.

"That you go to the trouble of making all those little chocolates and handing them out to everyone in the office just to get close to Louisa, it's not going to win her over. You should forget about her and set up an on-line company selling your chocolates."

Perry gripped tight his plastic fork and imagined for a moment its prongs piercing the aquatic blue of Brandon's left eyeball.

"Louisa's married, has two children," said Brandon waving the fork around like a conductor's baton. "Though word is the first child was a mistake and the father ran off. Can you believe she's only thirty-five and has a seventeen year old son? He's cute though, the son. Nice bone structure and smoky eyes. Will be quite the catch in a couple of years."

Perry finished off the contents of his tuna pasta, shut the book he was reading and made his excuse to leave. As he walked from the small kitchen area, he heard Brandon shout, "She is too much in love to be bribed, Perry."

The office was open plan, cubicles divided by blue cloth board partitions. Each person of average height when sat at their desk revealed their nose and everything north of that point. In the three years since working at EcO, Perry had learnt to read a person just by their eyes. He had studied the relationship of his fellow colleagues and measured their temperaments and character by the slightest raise of an eyebrow, the furrows on their brow, the narrowing of eye. If a person looked up and to the right they were accessing the visual part of their memory; colours, objects, and movement. If they looked to the right they were drawing from the auditory part of their memory; a song or noise. This optical study outspread into the realms of body language. To publicize one's feeling without words was a poignant act that Perry had mastered, and therefore found consolation in its subtlety. So ardent is infatuation that if not brought to the lips, it will manifest elsewhere. It was knowing where to look. As Perry discovered in a book called, The Heart of Seduction, in the first stages of attraction, a woman's eyes become animated; they widen upon hearing the man's voice, roll upon the punch line of his joke, and catch fire when they smile. They remain fixed and diverge only to assess the attire of the person before them. Among other revealing traits is the gentle lift of her voice while talking, the rise and fall of her intonation auditory gestures that she is enjoying herself. She will play with her hair, and gently graze her hand upon the man's forearm. In the three years Perry had been working on the same floor as Louisa, she once took her designer reading glasses off to acknowledge the chocolate he placed before her. Perry interpreted this as a sign.

Louisa Bracknell was petite and toned. She wore skirts cut above the knee, her shoes patent leather, high heeled and round-toed. The top four buttons of each blouse were virgins, never penetrating the tiny holes that lay across the divide of her modest but perfect breasts. When she clipped her hair back, dark storm clouds of hair the colour of burnt umber swirled upon the nape, her fingers at times searching out its eye. Her step was heavy, deliberate, which considering her size and slim figure appeared inappropriate. Perry, while drinking tea at home and watching his wife finish off an old batch of his chocolates, would later deliberate Louisa's step, and it would be his conclusion that Louisa had grown up within a large house where such noise is absorbed by long corridors and thick interior walls. While alone in the toilet, Perry would rehearse dialogue where he and Louisa would be engaged in unassuming curiosity towards each other. He practiced his smile in the mirror while washing his hands, and would comment upon his shirt as though asked the question by Louisa. While shopping with Jane for food, he pushed the metal trolley around the aisles and pondered over items he felt Louisa would approve of. Sometimes, he placed these items in the trolley, and when questioned by Jane toward the casual purchase, he would comment in the same diffident manner that all he wanted was a change. He would later masturbate in the bathroom before going to bed, the cool vestiges of his mental infidelity dampening his oversized boxer shorts, leaving him uncomfortable and irritated in the night. With the exception of her touch, Perry was as much with Louisa as he was with Jane. And in those moments of reflection, he was happy.

Perry's daily chocolate donations required him to work most nights producing new treats. He followed Louisa's partiality for chocolate by how quick she devoured what was placed before her. For this reason, Perry knew she favoured soft centres to hard, and that her individual taste lent towards flavoured ganache, such as coffee and orange. He would buy slithers of candied orange peel and Florida oranges each week, something Jane detested, but her complaints were of little influence. As Perry mixed the rind of the orange in with extra thick cream, and added the cocoa, Jane would sit and observe his proficiency with the awe of a child watching a magician produce a startling white dove from thin air. At the threshold of her mouth, words were held. Jane did not wish to disrupt the process, or be the one to ruin a ganache with a hollow question. It was easier to eat, and have her words crushed into the sticky mix of cream, butter and sugar, than be spat out, insipid and anodyne. And so the more Perry baked, the bigger Jane became, and in contrast, poles apart from the slender Louisa. Perry began to notice the weight gain and made spiteful comments about her jeans looking too tight, and that she should refrain from wearing roll neck sweaters because it made her face appear fuller and rounder. He would wait until Jane had undressed for bed before entering the room, for fear the sight of her bloated alabaster skin would remain with him into the night, forcing his thoughts from the coffee skin of Louisa's legs. During sporadic trips to clothes shops, Perry would pick out dresses similar in style to those worn by Louisa, well cut, tight and expensive looking, and then grow annoyed when Jane said they would not suit her, or compliment her figure. When Louisa arrived one day with a new haircut, Perry went home that same night and suggested Jane have a fringe, and to straighten her hair. He hovered over articles concerning healthy eating, cellulite control and skin care, and would cut out advertisements for gym memberships and offer them as gestures of concern toward her well-being.

At work Perry's weakness inflated his imagination. Sat at his desk, Perry's attention drifted over the many partitions to where Louisa addressed admin issues on her computer. Songs from a distant radio germinated in his mind and such maudlin reverie took over. It was common during these grand hallucinations for Perry to find Louisa draped seductively upon his desk, kicking her high heel shoes in the air to reveal more of her leg and the darken apex that lay between her thighs. Surrendered from her aubergine wine red lips, syrupy pop lyrics delivered an amatory charge that bloated Perry's heart and his trousers. In apparel of nylon tights, lacy brassieres and warm orange feathers, a chorus line of female colleagues danced erotically in pairs behind her. Natural light shivered under the blanket of striking shadows, of which stage show lights of garish reds, blues and greens lay at their feet in pools. Men of all sizes and ages pirouetted and leaped in the background, while white sheets of paper were thrown in the air to the beat of a drum. Her breath was upon him in waves, a heady concoction of fine wine, orange and promise. She sang and each tormenting word delivered was a fine mist that enveloped him and left him sodden and adrift. And in that moment the office became a tableau vivant, an attractive menagerie of colleagues frozen in time, petrified some might say, so each could witness the offering of Louisa's lips upon Perry's.

Nurturing his feeling for Louisa had for Jane left him indifferent and formal. They sat quietly at the table, and when Jane asked if he was okay, his reply would be frosty and vague. He did not see the fresh vegetables and chicken breast on her plate, nor did he notice the squeezed fruit juice she had poured for herself. As he simmered butter and cream, he failed to realise Jane was gone from the house and that she had left with a gym bag. In the months that followed, the plastic bags filled with Jane's old clothes beside the front door, those too big for her frame, never registered as they awaited the trip to the local charity shop. The fact there were more chocolates at the end of each week left Perry doubting his calculations, not that Jane had stopped eating them. Sat on the toilet one day, Perry picked up a magazine aimed at those wishing to improve their body structure, tone their muscles and radicalise their inner-self. As he flicked through the pages, he did not read a single word, but instead looked at all the pretty women and measured each against the other, and when two or more appeared on the same page, he deliberated over which he would choose to sleep with. Jane did not think to seek it out, but had found contentment in acrylic nails and deep tanning sessions. As the beauticians plucked and shaped her eyebrows, she felt connected to life. Women with carroty skin and flawless complexions would talk to her, and ask about her day. As they filed her calcified nails and waxed her masculine legs, they enquired about her clothes, where she grew up and what plans she had for the summer. She found familiarity warm and exciting. In her weekly aqua aerobics sessions, she grew to know Megan and Stephanie, both of whom had just had children and were hoping to tone up their stomachs. In the changing rooms, they would later exchange numbers and beauty tips, and on a warm day in March, they all arranged to meet for coffee. To avoid any awkwardness, Megan and Stephanie never spoke too much about their children in front of Jane, and would, in the main, refer to their careers and shopping expeditions instead. When talk came around to their associated partners, Megan would tease Jane based on the unflattering portrayal of Perry. "I have a brother who would love to date you," she would say to Jane. "He's very attentive."

Seasons ebbed; each appraised in inches lost and confidence found. From the austere flatlands of dreary conversation and detachment, the landscape of Perry and Jane's marriage began to shift, and from the bleakness came a swell of curiosity that blossomed into mistrust. "I believe this Megan and Stacy are a bad influence on you," Perry said to Jane after she returned from a long run. Jane corrected him on Stephanie's name and retorted, "At least they're having an influence on me."

In an unanticipated change, Perry began to notice Louisa's shape more and more. Her clothes, which he once considered satisfying to his eye, appeared to be struggling as they tried to contain the flesh beneath. The seams were stretched tight as a foreign mass pressed against them. With the excess of chocolates not being consumed by Jane, he had upped the quantity to five a day for his colleagues. As he sat at his desk, he noticed that everyone was looking a little rounder, plumper. People who never spoke to him would pass by his desk, smile and request more chocolate. Soon Perry had a list of names, detailing their favourite indulgence, quantity and when they were taking annual leave so he could bring in more to help tide them over the break. Even the lissom figure of Brandon had cultivated a paunch and flabby chin, a noticeable change even to him. "I look like a Teletubby," he once proclaimed to Perry as he disposed of a coconut truffle. Everyone moved slower, seemed less focussed on their tasks, and only appeared excited when Perry approached their desk with the box of chocolates. Because of her size, the affects were more noticeable with Louisa. The slender legs had gained shape causing her to lumber from room to room, even more so than before, and if Perry was ever close enough, he could distinguish the whisper of her thighs as they relentlessly stroked each other in transit. When he handed her the box of chocolates to choose from, he noticed more concealer and foundation that masked the inflammation of skin. Her eyes were dulled by the sugar and fat, her teeth yellowed by the abuse.

Most nights Perry would return to an empty house. A note next to a casserole dish would be waiting, mostly relating to heating instructions. When Perry and Jane were together, he would ask about her day and she would reluctantly commit to a few sentences, little of which had sincerity. He began to undress in the bedroom at the same time as Jane, and slyly glance to her as she removed her skirt and blouse. Like shifting dust blowing over a cobbled road, her once rutted grey skin had been replaced with a smooth tanned veneer, flawless and toned. He would offer his hand to the beads of her spine while they lay in bed, his touch rendering her cold and irritated. When he found himself alone in the bed, he closed his eyes and saw Jane, naked in all her unassuming beauty. Pressing her pillow against his face, Perry breathed in the satisfying scent of Jane's hair, of expensive serums and conditioners used to add sheen, and without thought his hand would drift beneath his waistband.

Three years after getting married, Perry Rankling fell in love with his wife, and about the same time, she fell out of love with him. He did not see the switch in the track, but he remembered leaving the station, and wondered, maybe, would there be another stop.

Skin

It's the way the world sounds beneath ten feet of water. Or how the piano sounded to Beethoven.

Annie and I have signals. Prompts. For her to shout that I'm pushing too hard, or my lip ring is ripping into her, would be a one-way conversation with a deaf person.

There is no sign language for pain. Only prompts.

One tap on my shoulder means I am okay to keep pushing. Two taps, and my head is close to tearing the skin. Occasionally, I hear the crowd jeering, a muffled noise that his overbore with the sound of my heart beating, and her heart beating. If I concentrate, I can make out words like, "PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!!" "HARDER! FASTER!"

To everyone else in our quiet little backwater, we are normal. The little cobbled street we live on is the same as any other street in the area. We have a window basket filled with fuchsia, honeysuckle and pansies, discoloured net curtains and a big red door. We drive a Fiat Uno, and have a cat called Molly that digs up the neighbour's garden. In summer, we stop and talk to people in the street about the weather and the price of petrol. We walk, hold hands, and dream of raising a family, but at the weekends, we dress in togas, laurel leaves and sandals. At the weekend, we are Sam-Hung and Delabia.

For a small fee, Annie and I will attend your social club, your stag do, your best friend's birthday party. You get Annie first. She will start with a strip show, nothing out of the norm. When undressed, I will hand her a prop: a lemon; an orange; a marrow, working up to a watermelon. We have a great deal with the local grocery shop.

Usually this does it for the punters. They are happy seeing a woman open her legs and consume a small allotment.

On the odd occasion, there is a demand for more.

At the end of the show, I go around with an upturned hat. For a few extra Euros, we take it up a notch. The punters usually cave. What could we possibly do to outmatch a watermelon? Place your money in the hat, my friend, and we will show you. When it's full, I take off my shirt and apply Vaseline all over my head.

Encore! Encore!

It's the way your heart sounds underwater. The way a car alarm sounds to those in peaceful slumber.

They call me Sam-Hung for a reason. I started out in Amsterdam. While travelling through Europe, a friend of mine introduced me to the owner of a sex club nestled deep in the De Wallen area. The friend was an ex girlfriend who could vouch for my talent. I was given a job that night. Nothing too seedy at first: skin only.

Acceptance is applause.

In Amsterdam, the appendage that made you a freak and had previous lovers wince at the thought of it inside them, has all the allure of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or Empire State Building: nobody would believe something so big existed unless you're photographed next to it. To have a stranger stand beside you with it in her hand, a flash bulb go off, a smile...it means so much.

Three weeks later the club owner offered me a full time slot.

The slot belonged to an English girl called, Annie. She had worked in a travelling sideshow before moving to Amsterdam. Families spent their entrance fee marvelling at women with beards and deformed children, and those old enough with an interest that lent towards human performance were encouraged to seek out her show. I heard about her through a friend of a friend. She was reputed to be able to take any man, regardless of length and girth. A few of the Negroes in the sex club were big. A man they named Tripod had split one of the new girls once on stage. But when Tripod fucked Annie, she didn't even let out a murmur.

The night we first worked together, I was nervous. She could tell and held my hand throughout. She was pretty, auburn hair, alabaster skin that had seen too many days on the road. She guided me that first time, whispering in my ear, telling me what to do. I followed her every instruction. Annie didn't make any noises for me too. Later that evening we had drinks. We talked. She told me about her condition. A well-respected gynaecologist had found an abnormality in her vaginal walls, which meant very little muscle tissue surrounded her vulva. When she was twelve, a boy broke her hymen by inserting his father's torch into her. Annie did not bleed. Annie just lay on her back and waited for the feeling of sex to overwhelm her like she had read about in books. It never came. Boys she slept with were either too small or too thin, and after a while, Annie gained a reputation of being a slag. Too loose. Too slack.

Alone in her bedroom, she tried, if only for a moment, to feel the passion and the joy that accompanies intimacy. She began with an old church candle four inches wide. When that didn't help, she used a tin of Baxter's soup, then a mason jar. Her mother's crystal vase given to her for her fiftieth birthday lost its shine. The 2-litre tin of magnolia paint used to decorate the kitchen walls was emptied of its contents, cleaned and lubed. Nothing helped. She turned sixteen, ran away from home, and joined the circus. Isn't that what a freak is supposed to do?

During the week, we walk along the canals, visit the Stedelijk museum and drink coffee in the Bruine Kroeg. We dress in blue denim, Marino lamb's wool and nice Italian leather shoes. We plan holidays to Greece and the Balearic Islands while shop-gazing at the Negen Straatjes.

It's the way a widow's wail sounds to her dead husband six feet under. Or how the world sounds to a newborn baby.

One night a drunken student taunted Annie. From behind abnormal walls of skin, the word whore sounds more like, more. The farther I went in, the less I heard. I then felt three taps on my shoulder.

Prompts.

I withdrew and saw Annie crying.

Back home and Annie is wiping the student's blood off my knuckles and pressing ice against my eye. I told her that the only time I feel safe, and not a freak, is when I'm inside her.

Hold your breath, she said. Be part of me.

One...two...three....

With head coated, I began pushing. The last words I heard was Annie saying she liked me being in her too. Then she tapped once on my shoulder.

It's the way the voices from a rescue team sound to a person trapped under a landslide.

I closed my eyes; her voice suffocated. I heard my breath; smelt the warm flesh of her uterus. I pushed, and kept pushing. Head cleared the vulva, neck too. I pushed my hands up and through, stretching the weakened muscle, prizing the opening wider so it could accommodate my shoulders.

Annie once told me she could not have children. The doctor had used the term, barren.

One tap, and I'm up to my waist. My knees.

Her heartbeat was the only noise, a dull rhythmic thud. I crawled into a ball and rested against the walls of flesh, pushed my head into my chest and brought my knees up.

It's the way sanctuary must be for the fallen.

It's the way life is before it starts.

Morning Birdsong and

the Hell Demons

My father said that the best way to a woman's heart was through her sternum. I took that literally and enrolled in medical school after leaving sixth-form college. The nearest I got to being with a woman during my first four years studying was with Amputee Annie, the torso CPR dummy. We kissed, but it never led anywhere. As I discovered recently while travelling along the M62 motorway, my father was wrong: the way to a woman's heart is not through her sternum, but instead by jamming an umbrella into the chest of a winged demon from Hell.

Let me go back a little. I was taking the trip from my halls of residence at the Queen's Campus at Durham University to my parent's home in Blackburn, Lancashire. I had boarded the National Express just off the North Road with a duffle bag filled with ripe laundry and a few medical books I needed to reference for a term paper. I can't read on coaches, or in cars. The movement and shifting of position brings on nausea so I tend to grab a window seat and stare out into the distance, allowing my mind to wander to strange places and even stranger thoughts. Whereas most people see lines of cars heading in opposite directions while travelling on a motorway, when I look out of the window of a car or coach I see mechanical bugs with big round white eyes and curved spines, ant-like in their single file configuration. I once saw an old couple clogging up the middle lane in a Citron that reminded me of a dung beetle. They looked so frail, and the man was concentrating so hard on keeping the steering wheel straight, that I was convinced they were made of tissue paper and that they slept in a tissue box, holding their weightless hands in the night and hoping to God no one ever needed to blow their nose. The other students say I have no aptitude for medicine, and that I'm better placed writing fiction for people with no sense of imagination. I always agree and tell them I only wanted to be a surgeon because I thought I'd get laid.

From Durham to Blackburn you have to pass the towns of Richmond, Bedale and Ripon leading to a main station in Harrogate. Most of the people that board at Richmond and Ripon are usually morose and over the age of fifty. They carry small misshapen bags that I imagined contain body parts of their spouses and neighbours. Old people are the worse for being overlooked when it comes to murder because they seem so frail and placid, but frankly, the way I see it is, most have lived through a war where killing was commonplace. You can't shake something like that off you. When I see an old man board the coach, and he's carrying a small bag that could probably fit an adult sized head in it, I try to avoid eye contact so they don't sit near me.

If I'm being honest here, and I am trying to be, I hate it when people sit next to me regardless if they're old or young. I will do all I can to seem like the type of person you shouldn't sit next to. Before heading back home I don't shave or shower and I always wear the same T-shirt that says, "On day release from Strangeways". I take my shoes off and at every stop I put my feet against the head of the seat in front and pick at the toenails. And I always, always, leave my bag on the seat next to me with the top open a little so the reek of thirty-day old underpants permeates the air. Sometimes, even with all these factors present, you'll get some arse who just wants to sit next to you. At Bedale, this person was a man who stank of carnival food. He spent the journey to Harrogate eating his fingers. I could hear him chewing the flesh as if he was gnawing on a rack of ribs. Every now and then he'd spit a big chunk of skin out, hitting the back of the chair in front of him. When one piece, which looked like the knuckle, landed on my lap, I said to him, "You'll never find a pair of gloves to fit if you carry on." I was glad when he got off the coach at Harrogate and his stench was replaced with a sweet smell of perfume.

The arm nearest to me was coffee coloured and covered with fine dark hairs that placed her heritage far from the murky shores of England. Around her wrist, which was slight, she wore silver bangles adorned with tiny horseshoes, four leaf clovers and small silver keys. She was superstitious, which meant she had been through some hard times, or had something bad happen to her. I traced her arm to her hand and noticed she wore no rings, nor did I note any discolouration of the skin to suggest she had recently removed one. She was single. At this stage, I had not even seen her face. When she boarded I was too busy watching a fat man in the bus station eating what looked to me like a baby's arm, but was probably just a sausage roll. But from her smell, which reminded me of Hubba Bubba chewing gum, and her Mediterranean hairy arm, I was in love. I wasn't prepared for it. But there you go. That's how it is sometimes. The fact that her face may have looked like a burnt scrotum didn't concern me because out of all the seats on the coach, this woman, whoever she was, chose to sit next to me.

When people ask you to tell a joke, the best thing to do is tell it straight away. Don't put it off, or play it down. The longer you wait, the more the joke has to pay off, and generally, when someone has to wait more than a minute or two, no joke is ever that good. I felt the same about my first words to the woman sat next to me. I had foolishly wasted twenty miles of the journey in silence, picking the toenails off my lap and berating myself for not shaving and showering that morning. I should have started by saying hello, but once we got out of Harrogate and onto the trans-Pennine motorway, the moment seemed to have passed, which then meant the only way I could initiate a conversation was by means of mutual interest or by divine intervention. I knew nothing of life overseas, nor the history of Italians, Spanish or Portuguese, the three main areas I assumed her family has descended from, so it was down to God to play his hand in bringing about a natural turn of events that would help render the words decaying in the back of my throat. But God wasn't around that day, and instead it was the Morning Star, his Fallen Angel who brought us together.

We had just passed the Saddleworth junction close to the village of Dogmael, and was close to what I have heard referred to as the Little House on the Prairie, a small farmhouse located between the two carriageways of the M62, when the traffic began to slow to a stop. I glanced out of the window to the many indolence insects and pressed my eye against the glass to see ahead. I noticed a few people getting out of their cars, pointing forward to a place I could not see. I felt this was a good a time as any to turn to face the woman next to me and deliver a well-observed comment about heavy congestion affecting this particular stretch of motorway due to high winds brought on by its abnormally high location. But as I looked again outside, the people I saw did not appear to be influenced by the wind. Their hair was unmoved, and they were happy to stand beside their stationary cars with no coats. I assumed there must have been an accident ahead, and for some reason I remembered reading about a coach which had been bombed along this route sometime in the 1970s. I didn't wish to scare the woman or bring about mass hysteria on the coach should one of the passengers hear my recount, so I remained staring out of the window, waiting for the right moment to present itself. I did not need to wait long.

There was a lot of commotion coming from the front of the coach that drew everyone's attention from the windows. One man at the back of us mentioned that someone was trying to get in. I stood up slightly so I could see and saw the driver's hand gesturing towards the door in a go-away motion. I then heard the door being struck hard several times. I was about to make a light remark to the woman about the lengths some people will go to not to miss the coach, when suddenly the doors flew open and a man with a red face and panic in his eyes screamed to us all, "They're fucking eating people alive!"

An old lady at the front of the coach, probably from Richmond, scolded the man for swearing, to which he replied, "Turn up your hearing aid! People are fucking dying out there!"

A muscular man with tattoos crawling up his neck got up from his seat and told the man to calm down, and then the driver got out of his seat and began examining the door. I heard the driver say that the door was broken and that the man would have to pay for the damages, and well, this just made him go even crazier.

"I'm not paying for no fucking door!" he yelled.

Another person shouted back, "Double negative, so yes you bleeding are!"

The old lady gasped again at all the profanities and the tattooed guy began pushing the crazy man out of the door.

"I ain't going out there!" he cried.

I'm not a physical man but I thought helping to get the crazy man out of the coach might go down well with the woman. If nothing else, the gesture would allow me to ask the woman to move so I could pass. And this I did, and in that moment I turned to face her for the first time and felt the whole world around me shake and the deafening strike of my heart for she was as beautiful as I imagined. I can't say it was one thing, like her nose, or her eyes, it was the collective configuration of all her features that beset my heart, as if some higher force had moulded them from the most valuable cuts of flesh and cartilage and aligned each without flaw or heedlessness. My legs buckled and I stumbled foolishly into the aisle. I had heard people refer to falling in love as being struck by a thunderbolt, and I figured this must have happened to me. But as I propped myself up, there were other people in the aisle with me, and the thunderous noise that I assumed was my heart beating for the woman was now emanating from the roof.

Extended before me was the bracelet of lucky charms, an open palm of pale rivulets that traversed this way and that to form the words, Love – or so I had rendered this image in my mind.

"Take my hand," she said, "there's something on the roof."

As the woman said this she looked up and I noticed under her chin three tiny moles surrounded by even tinier freckles that if projected in the night sky I'm sure would have brought astrophysicists to tears. Her hand was warm and soft, and while strange a comparison, it reminded me of the soft skin around my penis. The coach shook again and people responded by screaming aloud.

"What the hell is that?"

Before she could answer, the crazy guy was screaming at the top of his voice, "It's not of this world!"

I looked over towards the door; he was half in and half out, his hands gripped tight around the doorframe. The tattooed man was pushing his chest, trying his best to force him out. People were shouting for the man to leave and the man shouted back, "It's got fucking wings!"

The driver was hitting a button on the dashboard to shut the door, but nothing was happening. That's when the tattooed man threw back his leg and launched his foot right into the crazy man's crotch. His hands let go within seconds and I saw him fall out into the road. A few people at the back of the coach cheered, and as a victory salute, the tattooed man raised his hand in the air. I'm sure he was going to say something like, 'Nothing to see here, people,' you know, like they do in the movies, but before he could open his mouth he was blasted with an almighty deluge of blood. The first few rows screamed like a cinema audience watching a slasher flick, and I wondered for a moment if he'd been shot in the head.

Then he yelled, "It's not me... It's not my blood!"

Another set of screams followed when a round object was hurled into the coach and into the driver's hands. He held it there for a few seconds, looking down at it. When someone shouted it was a head, the old woman passed out and I heard someone else throw up. The driver dropped-kicked the head back out of the door like he was passing someone a football, and whoever, or whatever, was out there threw it back within a matter of seconds. From behind me, someone screamed out for a doctor. I heard another person shout, "She's gone into labour!" Just my luck.

I got to my feet and raised my hand in the air, "I'm a medical student!"

I looked down at the woman and smiled. For some reason the whole chain of events, and being the only person of any value in a medical crisis, had driven away my nerves. I set off towards the back of the coach with a poised and confident stride, failing to notice a loose bag that had found its way into the aisle. I tripped and cracked my head on the floor and passed out.

From the darkness, I heard the panting of a woman, and the fusion of worried voices. There was talk of a hole in the motorway. Someone had counted ten creatures, another thirty. Drivers were being dragged from their cars. I heard limbs and heads had been torn off. Others were grabbed and taken into the skies. It was surreal, like I was in a movie. I didn't want to open my eyes to make real the world around me. Then I heard her voice, honeyed and comforting.

"I think he's waking up," she said.

I felt her soft hand on my brow, and then her fingers brush away my hair. There was no fear in me at that moment. I knew beyond the shade of nothingness lay her beauty, and those spellbinding onyx eyes looking down at me. And when I opened my eyes, there was nothing but two legs spread apart and hairy dilated vagina staring down at me.

"Her waters broke when that crazy guy's head was thrown into the coach," said a large man with ruddy complexion. "It was brown, the water. Is that normal?"

I sat up and looked down the aisle. I could see through the front window a swarm of malformed figures swooping through the sky towards people running from their cars.

"What are they?" I asked to no one in particular and I heard the woman's voice again say, "We think they're demons."

I turned and there she was, sat beside the pregnant woman, wiping a small handkerchief against her cheek. The man asked again, "Is it normal?" and I pointed towards the front of the coach.

"Does that look normally to you?" I asked him.

"No," he said. "Not that. Is it normal for her waters to be brown?"

I realised my mistake and ransacked my medical knowledge bank.

"It's meconium." I looked to the pregnant woman. "It means your baby has had its first bowl movement."

The man, who I assumed at this stage was the father, said, "The baby took a shit? That's okay, isn't it? I mean, it's not going to choke on it?"

I didn't want to worry anyone, but for baby to have a bowl movement so early on meant it could be in distress. I told the man it was nothing to worry about and then I knelt before the woman.

"How far apart are the contractions?"

Between panting, she said, "About... two... minutes."

"How long was I out?" I asked the beautiful woman.

"Not long, about ten minutes, give or take a few."

I told the man I was going to have to feel the cervix, and he nodded his approval. The woman was nine fingers wide, which meant there wasn't much time left.

"I take it this is not your first?" I asked the pregnant woman.

"Third... the... other two... are... with... my... mother."

I looked back and the passengers on the coach were caught between the wonder of seeing a natural birth taking place, and the terror of death beyond the window.

I shouted out, "Does anyone have any towels? A pair of scissors, perhaps?"

One woman said he had a pair of nail clippers, and a scarf. Another woman said she had a flannel. I ran down the aisle towards the driver and the tattooed man who were both still trying to get the door shut. I asked the driver if he had a first aid kit, and with his attention clearly fixed on securing the door, he pointed to an overhead compartment where a green plastic box sat. His hands were still bloody from the head incident and I asked if he was okay.

"Will be when I get this door locked."

At that moment, the coach groaned as something landed on it again and everyone screamed. The two sounds were now tied together like the popping of a champagne cork and the ensuing screams of jollity, except there was no joy to be found here. Without warning the door was pulled off and the driver with it. I looked out where a warped creature with a half-goat and half-rhino crossbreed skull and teeth of blackened root stared down at the driver. Through bluish lucent skin, its spine had been pushed out to form a trunk, from which two huge wings had formed. Its torso was human, but the limbs were long and twisted. It bent down and thrust its skeletal hand into the driver's chest, killing him instantly. The whole coach erupted with fear and I reeled back on the spot, falling into the driver's seat. Geezers of blood shot up turning the sky crimson as the demon pulled everything that was once in the driver out. Adrenalin, or pure stupidity, got a hold of the tattooed man and he leapt from the coach and jumped on the demon's horned back. He looked like he was on a bucking bronco, holding tight with all his strength as the demon twisted its gruesome body left and right. He did okay for a spell too, jamming his fingers into its bulbous yellow eyes and throwing a few well-aimed punches into its exposed ribs. But the demon didn't take kindly to this and flew off towards the Heavens, taking the tattooed man with him.

I grabbed the first aid kit and ran to the pregnant woman. She was contracting. The head had crowned. I opened the kit and removed all the gauze and cotton pads. There were a few antiseptic wipes in there that I used to clean my hands. There was also a pair of small scissors to help cut the umbilical cord, or possibly perform an episiotomy if the baby didn't come out quick. The woman was screaming, yelling out in pain.

"What's your name?" I asked the pregnant woman.

The father replied, "Jenny."

"I want to hear rapid breaths, Jenny. Okay?"

"It...hurts," she replied.

"You're doing fine. It won't be long now, but you have to trust me."

I looked over to the beautiful woman and handed her the scissors and the antiseptic wipes.

"Can you clean these, please."

She took them and began following my instructions. My heart ached for her.

"Rapid breaths, Jenny!" I shouted.

Another contraction.

"Now PUSH!"

Shuddering with exertion, Jenny put her all into it. The skin around her hands was bone white as she gripped the ruddy man by his hand.

"The heads coming, Jenny! Keep going!"

For thirty seconds, Jenny was shaking worse than a person with Parkinson's having the biggest shit of their life. After the thirty seconds had passed she fell back into the chair, exhausted. I heard more screaming from the front of the coach. I turned and there was one of those winged fuckers slithering towards the front row of passengers. It was different from the one that had killed the driver and took the tattooed man into the sky. Its head was more fish-like and it had no legs, but instead a long body that tapered off into a tail. It slinked onto the coach like an ancestor of Medusa. Everyone went mental and began running towards us.

"Woah!" I shouted, standing up with my hands held out in front of me. "There's a woman giving birth here!"

A woman holding a child to her chest shouted back, "Then she'll understand what I'm prepared to do to protect my child!"

She was about to say something else but was winded by a man who pushed her to one side. The woman fell into the chairs, falling on her back so her child didn't get hurt.

"ENOUGH!" I shouted.

Rage had taken over me and I saw the red mist. I have never gotten that angry before and when I heard my voice reach the level it did, I wondered if it was me yelling or some over person behind me. I looked around briefly to make sure and my eyes fell to the beautiful woman who was staring right back at me. She had a look that gave me strength I never thought I had. The man who was hurtling towards me slowed briefly. I took five steps towards him before launching my fist and hitting him square on the chin. He hit the ground quicker than birdshit. The pain was excruciating in my hand, but I dragged his unconscious body to one of the spare seats before yelling at everyone, "CLEAR THE MUTHA-FUCKING AISLE, PEOPLE! MEDICAL STUDENT COMING THROUGH!" And the passengers, they just stopped and moved to one side. Guess a few must have read my T-shirt and thought I was crazy, but I felt like fucking Moses in that moment separating the Red Sea, except I was mightily pissed and all I wanted was to kick some demon arse.

The ugly fish-faced demon saw me when all the other people moved to the adjacent seats. It knew why I was there and so bared its long fangs that looked razor sharp. I realised then I hadn't thought this through. What was I going to kill it with, my sweaty feet? Right then I smelt that lovely Hubba Bubba smell, and beside me, the beautiful woman arrived with the scissors in her hand.

"Take these," she said, her breath fell on my neck like snowflakes. She then kissed my cheek.

"Good luck," she said.

I ran to that demon with the biggest hard on I ever had. And I guess seeing a crazy wide-eyed medical student wielding a pair of tiny scissors with a bulge in his pants must have taken it by surprise because it just stayed there. I didn't think about the consequences once I arrived, I just jammed the scissors right in its head. Green ooze spurted out and hit me in the face. I wiped my eyes and saw the demon rising on its tail, making it much taller and more menacing than before. It then opened its mouth to reveal the leftovers of its last victim, an eye, an ear and a gold necklace with a Jesus cross. I looked around and couldn't find a damn thing to use. This was it, I thought. I'm going to die. And what pissed me off more than anything was not the fact I wouldn't finish medical school, or perform open heart surgery, but that I was still a virgin. From one of the seats next to me a hand reached out. In it was an umbrella, one of those big ones with the metal tips. I grabbed it without even thinking and thrust it into the demon's chest. A piercing scream rang aloud and from the opposite end of the coach, Jenny screamed too. And as the demon slipped to the floor, so did Jenny's third child.

It was a girl. As I cleaned the gunk from the scissors removed from the demon and handed them to her husband, I asked Jenny if they had a name for the baby.

"We were thinking of Alice, or Molly."

The father cut the cord and both mother and baby were separated. As Jenny gave her final push and delivered the placenta, I wrapped it in a Tesco bag and said, "So which is it?" That was when Jenny asked me my name. They must have thought they'd be able to abbreviate or adapt my name to sound more feminine, a tribute to the man who helped deliver her.

"My name is, Ralph."

Both Jenny and the father looked at each other and shook their heads. I then looked over to the woman beside her.

"I didn't do this alone, you know," I said tilting my head towards the woman. "I can't imagine a woman as beautiful as she to have a boring name."

The remark brought a little colour to her cheeks and had me wondering if I'd been possessed by a Mills and Boon author. Jenny turned to the woman, her baby pressed against her breast, and asked for her name.

"It's silly," she said to Jenny.

"Please," said Jenny softly.

"But I didn't do anything," replied the woman. "It was Ralph."

Jenny insisted, and finally the woman succumbed.

"It's Morning. See, I told you it was silly."

Even I was taken aback by that.

"Morning?" asked Jenny, and as if not hearing her, I repeated the name.

Morning looked to me and said, "My family name is Birdsong."

Jenny's husband, or boyfriend, or whoever he was, said, "Oh yeah, like the Greens, Jenny. They called their daughter Theresa. It's a talking point, a bit of fun, right?"

Jenny didn't say anything and turned back to Morning.

"It's a beautiful name," she said.

Jenny looked down at her baby and said the name over and over. "Hello, Morning? You're the sweetest, most beautiful girl in the world, aren't you, Morning? Yes you are."

Under my breath, but loud enough for Morning to hear me, I said, "The second most."

We sat for a long time in that coach. Many of the passengers were too afraid to leave so a few of us helped to fix the door. We secured it using nylon tights and a couple of scarves. One of those demons would have pulled it off without any effort, but deception is enough to pacify even the most restless of hearts. I spent a while looking out the front window of that coach, watching the hordes of demons spiralling towards the sky. One passenger was convinced Lucifer had set them free to rein war on God and all the angels. It wasn't a bad theory too when they later explained that this spot was probably chosen because of its altitude, and there was less distance to travel. Whatever they were, they had become bored with us humans and seemed unwavering in their attempt to reach whatever lay beyond the grey skies. As the sun grew heavy and began to sink behind the Yorkshire moorland, fifty or so tiny green trucks appeared on the horizon. As they got nearer we noticed that mounted on the backs were tiny guns. One person yelled it was the army come to save us and everyone rushed to the windows to see. Everyone began to smile and there was a sense of lightness in the air, as if a thick fog had been blown away. It was then I felt her soft hand in mine and her lips close to my ear.

"You saved us, Ralph. You're the hero."

And against the backcloth of a hundred winged demons being shot and firebombed out of the sky, Morning and I kissed, and for the first time in my life, I felt the beat of another heart against my own.

A Neck That's Not Thick

The neck I have you could easily feel each finger meet on each hand if you were to choke me. As you might care to imagine, a neck like mine brings with it more trouble than a neck not thin. I have broad shoulders, strong back, and quite a large chest. But having such a neck makes me appear less of the man that I am.

I know another neck. It belongs to a work friend, who I will call Mark. It sits on skinny shoulders that hang over a sick dog's body with ribs that you could see if the dog hadn't ate for awhile. Because you would need freakishly large circus hands to feel each tip of each finger should you wish to squeeze the life out of Mark, it has caused him to endure less problems than myself. Or so I have been led to believe.

A few days ago, he handed me a book, How to improve your life in 90 days. With spread wide lips that pushed his jaw fully into the full girth of his neck, he told me he's going to do it, Improve His Life. I had to ask where he got the book from.

"The bank", he said brushing his index finger over his overly ripe Adam's apple. I asked why had the bank given him this book and he told me it was a gimmick to help you manage all aspects of your life productively. If he could manage his life efficiently, he could also manage his finances in a similar fashion. That's what the bank told him.

What led Mark to manage his life and finances more productively wasn't so much the book, but his neck. Mark is skin and bones but his neck is thick, so he looks a little bigger in jumpers and heavy knit garments, more intimidating you might say. People who are easily intimidated by others go a little more out of their way for those who are less intimidating.

While Mark read the author's note, I turned on the radio on my desk and heard a clock chime eleven times. One minute of silence for all those who died in the war unfurled after the eleventh. Slicing through the static hiss of radio silence, a lonely trumpet resonated around some structure I could not see. Without care or thought for the fallen soldiers, the person I call Mark said, "So I'm going to do it, manage my life more productively. But maybe in 45 days. I'll skip a few chapters."

My doctor, who has a lightly tanned and reasonably sized neck, tells me there is no operation available.

"Is there an operation to shave a few inches off my jaw, to give the illusion my neck is much thicker than a neck where you can feel each finger on each hand meet?" I ask. He likes me so he suggests I try exercises, or pull in my chin more.

A tripod holds a camcorder mounted on a shelf in a shop window in the local shopping arcade so that everyone who walks past is a television star in a little 14-inch television world. Seeing myself in this little 14-inch television world makes me realise how less thick my neck is than the person who's trying to sell this same camera to a woman holding a child of three in the shop. I try looking at myself side-ways to see how I look in the television and a group of 14-inch young girls dressed in jeans that reveal pendulum hips and tops that look as if a surgeon has cracked open their chests walk behind giggling at me. I scowl back, once, twice and three times over, but this just produces more laughter and a few derisory remarks I care not to remember for fear they'll make me want to take a chisel and hammer to my jaw. I walk away from the shop in the opposite direction to where the girls are walking and the journey home is punctuated with my own self-loathing. "Stupid girls," I say to myself. "Silly, stupid girls."

The shaving clipper hum following the contours of my skull sounds like a thousand bees have landed on my head. The big sweaty fat man holding the clippers hasn't any neck at all. The place where his neck should be is nothing more than a collar of white shirt that hasn't been clean in days. Strands of freshly cut hair clump together on my lap and sit there like miniature nests upon the limb of each leg. There's a lovely change in colour from one end to the other. The darker end is the oldest part of my hair, the same that has witnessed the persecution my neck had brought. The freshly severed ends are where the newborn hair has sprouted and would have to wait at least six months to witness the same hounding. If it was not for wanting to look more menacing by shaving my hair off, that newborn hair would have grown skyward, free from jibes and mockery, free from witnessing moments like the time I was set upon outside a bar for walking my neck home and two men came out of the bar and one kicked me in the leg and asked if I was a pussy. The friend I was with, who had a good strong masculine neck, didn't even have one word thrown at him let alone a foot.

"But this is me and this is my neck," I said to my friend much later in a cab where all I could see of the driver driving us home was a thick neck and curly black hair spiralling out of its nape like bedsprings.

In the barber's mirror, a total stranger stares back. A fledgling's head sits perched upon my neck that's not thick and a wry old smile smiles back at me. I'm reborn. A new man. I pay the barber his money and leave his shop. On the way to work I glare and glower, I snarl and sneer at people who pass. Those who pass don't appear scared, threatened or concerned that this stranger who has my face may be a danger to them or that I may take it upon myself to drive my fist squarely in their face and rip their heads from their perfectly proportioned necks should the urge present itself. They can be thankful at least for living in ignorance.

Back in work and the person I call Mark says I look like I have cancer. Even my boss thinks I look ill.

I check my reflection in the mirror at work, and sure enough, I look like I'm a bandana away from leukaemia, not menacing or surly like I wanted my lack of hair to present my head to the world to look.

In a hardware store on the same road that leads home I buy a length of rope half the size of my body stood upright and a book on how to tie knots. Page thirteen shows the correct way to bend and curl the rope into a noose and I wonder how small I will need to tie the noose so it fits snugly around my neck that's not thick.

"Small," I say to myself whilst threading the rope. "Very small indeed."

Anal Twine

Maggie heard of a behaviour-change concept that happens when you snap an elastic band against your wrist. The sting creates a mental diversion, one that forces your brain away from say, the influence of addiction, the fear of dying, the inner scream of self-harm: the theory is that any behaviour followed by a punishment will occur less often. I asked Maggie if she thought this would help when I have eight fingers shoved up my rectum later that day, and to this she replied, "The technique is supposed to distract your thoughts, so it might help take your mind off the pain. But really, I think the only person who could answer that is a ventriloquist's dummy. Did you sign the papers yet?"

It happens if you get dehydrated. A lack of exercise or not taking enough fibre in your diet causes it too. It happens when your wife moves out and all that's left in the refrigerator is minute steak and twenty two cans of Stella.

I snap the ecstatic band, once. Grit my teeth.

The doctor says, "Fissures, Mr Roberts, are very common in all ages, and are more often than not sighted within the interspincteric groove."

He looks up from my arsehole momentarily to say, "The anal canal."

I look back and nod once. That is pretty much all I can do, save for observing him scoop out a large clump of clear jelly from an industrial sized plastic container. I realign my focus back to the blood pressure monitor on his desk and hear him say, "The skin within the canal is called the anoderm, and unlike normal skin it has no hairs or sebaceous glands. It does however contain a large number of somatic sensory nerves, which unfortunately for you, registers light touch and pain. The anaesthetic will help."

The noise coming from my wrist is Morse code.

A few weeks back: I turned in from a thirteen hour shift driving shitheels and lowlifes to and from the suburban hell-rot of my hometown and my boss smelt whisky on my breath. There was a pair of pink lace knickers draped over the back seat of his cab, which wouldn't have been a big deal had I not had my zipper undone. I knew then, this was going to take more than flowers to win Maggie over.

The doctor says, "Back in 1838, Recamier prescribed the most effective cure for fissures being anal dilation. How's that?"

I assume he means the pressure he is applying, and not my understanding of Recamier's theory. I manage to squeeze a few words of reassurance through gritted teeth.

"Good. Now where was I? Ah yes, Recamier. The technique has undergone various changes over the years, but the principle remains. Two physicians called William Alexander and A R Crapp..."

I muster up the will to ask him to repeat the last name.

"Crapp? Yes, quite an unfortunate name considering his particular area of expertise. Well, both he and Alexander support Recamier's technique, and believe it to be the procedure of choice for anal dilation. I'm going to insert the second finger now, Mr Roberts."

The morning after sharing a quart of Wild turkey with the blonde who couldn't afford her fare, the same who blew me for the tip and let me cum on her knickers, Maggie was getting up for work. We passed each other on the stairs, as we do most mornings. There I handed her the P45 issued by my boss, and one week later, on those same stairs, she handed me the divorce papers.

The doctor says, "Most physicians do not condone more than six fingers, as it is believed four is quite adequate to reduce internal sphincteric pressure. I'm personally of the opinion lateral subcutaneous internal sphincterotomy is just as affective, if not better. But I can fully understand your reservations with rectal surgery."

You don't need your marriage to break down to get constipated, but it helps. In the first few days I was too drunk to realise I hadn't passed anything other than fifty gallons of lager. You don't take in bowel movements when you're riding out the storm – least that's the theory. While tears bled from each eye making the world permanently blurry and askew, I'd commit to the empty spaces of the room words of reassurance, telling myself I was at my lowest ebb and nothing more could go wrong. Then I needed to take a shit.

I've never been able to empathise with the adult movie actresses paid to sit on a 14-inch cock, but I did that day.

As the doctor inserts his third finger, I pull real hard on the elastic band and it snaps. The skin beneath is reddened into a perfect kabbalah bracelet. My worst thought at this point isn't toward the possibility of incontinence later in life due to having my arsehole stretched wider than a doughnut; it's that people on the street may think I am part of the cult.

That's when he says, "Mr Roberts; you do know you've got a piece of twine in your rectum?"

I look behind to see the old man's forehead, a series of pleats stacked on top of each other indicating mistrust.

"In all my years," he says shaking his head.

When a rectal surgeon who specialises in faecal incontinence, rectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease says this, you have to give it your full attention.

I try looking, to catch a glimpse of the twine, if indeed it exists at all. But I can't see anything other than a pair of plastic forceps heading beak first between my arse cheeks.

I ask him if they're necessary.

"These?" he asks. "Don't worry about these. They'll just assist me in clamping open the anus. I think our main concern at this moment is how twine has found its way through your colon. Unless of course it did not go through the colon?"

You tell yourself you're at your lowest ebb and nothing more can go wrong, but you forget there's Hell below ground zero.

This rectal surgeon, one referred by my general practitioner after I came to him about blood-streaked toilet paper, now thinks I'm into some kinky shit. I am not. All I want is the bleeding to stop, and the pain.

I try reassuring him that it was probably my wife who placed it up there, an act of retribution like prawns being sewn into the hem of curtains, or writing your mobile phone number next to the sex cards found in a phone box. I do this for two reasons. The first is to convince the old man I am straight. The second is to add good reason to how the thread ended up there. Maggie finding out her husband has been getting free blow jobs from punters is certain to cause some ill feeling.

He says, "Maybe I should pull it?"

"In your professional opinion," I say, "do you think that's wise?"

He replies, "I should imagine most of the twine has been eroded by gastric acid. I am sure it's only a fraction of its original length. Your poor diet, and the slow contraction of the colon's muscles, could have contributed to the fact most of the twine has not fully been digested."

"But what are the possible complications, if the twine is of considerable length?"

With mouth obscured by the cleavage of each of my arse cheeks, he says, "Worst case scenario is your lower intestine is pulled out with it. The upshot to this is all conventional toilet visits will be negated because we will have to provide you with a colostomy bag." He winks. "But I am sure nothing so drastic will occur. Unless of course we find on the opposite end a kite, or playful kitten."

He laughs a little to himself and what follows is the sharp-eye-watering thrust as the forceps replace his fingers.

A marriage can never break down. Not in the same way a car, or television, can break down. It takes one, possibly both parties, to sabotage a relationship, be that consciously or otherwise. My contribution was to have an affair. Maggie's was to cut herself, and sleep fourteen hours a day.

The woman who became the catalyst to our break-up was a regular pick up. Every morning, as my shift was ending, I drove down Broughton Road to a small cul-de-sac and waited outside a semi-detached red brick house. 6.30am every morning she would leave that house and fill the cab with expensive perfume and polite conversation. She worked in the city, conveyancing, for a well to do charted soliciting firm. She had amazing eyes, dark like coffee beans. She dressed smart, mostly two-piece office suits, blazer and short skirt. She liked me because I was always punctual and knew the side streets that avoided all the early morning traffic. An arrangement was made between us, which meant no other driver could attain her business. I would be hers, and no one else. There wasn't much more to it than that, save for a few pleasantries regarding the weather, or shy comment pertaining to what was on the radio at the time. But it doesn't take long before the surface of civility is slowly scratched away. What lay beneath for us both was simple loneliness, even though we were both linked to other people.

The doctor says, "I imagine the lidocaine will stop you from experiencing too much discomfort, Mr Roberts. The twine is slim, so if anything, the sensation will be more pleasurable than uncomfortable."

I am staring towards the blood pressure monitor again, knowing the old bastard is smirking at my alleged self-styled perversion. No doubt he believes my arse has been home in the past to many objects, most likely a chain of beads, love eggs, or an Action Man doll. I don't believe anything I say will convince him otherwise.

"If you do feel any sharp pain in the lower abdomen, please let me know. Okay, here goes."

Numbed by lidocaine, I feel only a slight resistance, one that arrives when the doc sucks air through his teeth. Each time this happens, he asks, "Comfortable?"

Bent over a desk, arsehole clamped open with forceps while an old man with very questionable breath pulls out an immeasurable length of twine from your colon, you imagine a hundred more suitable terms than, comfortable.

To take my mind away from the incident, just as the elastic band was supposed to, he says to me, "It occurs to me I never finished telling you more of Alexander and Crapp's studies and development of anal dilation."

I ask him to repeat the last name, as it sounds quite an unfortunate surname for a coloproctologist.

He says, "Yes. Crapp. I must concur, like I did moments earlier, it is an ill-fated family name. Comfortable?"

"How many fingers are you up to?" I ask.

"None. Though that's not to say the current dilation enforced by the forceps don't, at the very least, mimic a good three, possibly four."

I feel a slight jolt within my colon and hear the doctor say, "I think I have retrieved enough twine to begin constructing a patchwork quilt."

I'm inclined, considering the nature of my entrustment, if he knows that forceps were never discussed, and more importantly, what function twine has on the healing process.

I look back and the old man peers, suspiciously, from the valley of my rear. He then says, "Twine has no business within the interspincteric groove, nor does it have any relevance to your healing, Mr Roberts."

"What's an interspincteric groove?"

"The anal canal, Mr Roberts. Were you not paying attention before?"

I shake my head, and a swell of humiliating pain radiates from my lower abdomen.

"Is it normal for the fingers of a person to administer such a high level of discomfort, even when the area the fingers are invading is numbed by an anaesthetic?"

"I have no fingers currently in the rectal region, Mr Roberts. What you're feeling are the forceps."

"Forceps were never discussed," I say.

"They were called in when we discovered the twine."

I am none the wiser.

"Mr Roberts, you do remember the twine residing in your colon?"

I shake my head and ask, "In your professional opinion, do you believe the twine to be the cause of my anal fissure?"

He says, "Do you often find it difficult retaining information, Mr Roberts?"

The old man's tone is harder than the stool that provoked this whole ordeal. I tell him there is nothing wrong with my memory, but I am bringing into question his conduct and discrimination towards patients with rectal discomfort.

He intoned, "I can assure you, Mr Roberts, my behaviour is always professional. Obviously the trauma of the procedure is causing you some distress. But I will confess, my comment regarding the kite and kitten was a little inappropriate."

I'm either the victim of a malicious prank set up by Maggie, or the old man is senile. Either way, I ask the doc if he would kindly remove the forceps.

"After much deliberation, I have decided to allow nature and a course of stool softeners help assist the healing process."

"But Mr Roberts, I can assure you..."

"Please," I say. "Would you really wish to have this incident recalled in a medical tribunal, and your good name dragged through the mud?"

I ask him again to the remove the forceps and after a few seconds the distant, but much welcomed, tension of my rectal muscles clamp shut. As I pull up my trousers and secure the belt, I hear the snap of elastic as the doctor removes his gloves.

"I could not retrieve all the twine, Mr Roberts, as it does appear much longer than first envisaged. I have, however, removed as much as time permitted, and placed it in this small plastic container."

He hands me a small receptacle, most commonly used for urine samples.

"It may be prudent to seek further medical advice, should, after passing your next stool, the twine is still evident."

"Sure," I say. "Whatever." I then place the container in my coat pocket and leave.

***

Along with a small bottle of liquid Docusate to help soften my shit, a suggestion was given by the coloproctologist to take up two to three warm baths a day, as the main cause for the prolonged healing time for anal fissures is spasms, or contractions of the rectal muscles. The warm water supposedly helps relax the sphincter and increases blood flow. I'm on my third bath when I reach under the water and feel something graze my finger. I assume it might be a soft slip of skin, or long pubic hair, but as I clamp it between both thumb and finger, I realise it's the twine.

I release a good three inches before deciding to stop to retrieve the container given to me by the doctor at his surgery. I return to the bath and sit there examining its contents. The twine is thin and light blue in colour, and as I twirl and shake the container, a strange distance develops between the surroundings and myself. In the first instance, I appear uncertain of how I ended up in the water to start with. Then, between my legs, I notice a long blue vein vacating my arsehole.

I place the container on the side of the bath and pick at one end of the vein until it reaches the water's surface. After further scrutiny, I realise it is identical to the twine resting beside me. The doctor was right. There is twine shoved up there. I began to slowly draw out the twine, so much that I have to coil the slack around my wrist. As it shows no sign of an end, I stop pulling, reach over to a pair of nail scissors on a small shelf behind me, and sever the connection.

Maggie once told me the only reason she stayed with me was because she never wanted to catch Chlamydia. Being married is supposed to stop the risk of pussy-rot. It didn't for Maggie.

I'm starting to think the constipation is just fate's revenge for my infidelity. In the past, my cock obstructed the course of our happiness together as man and wife, and now the result of a poor diet brought on by divorce proceedings brought on a turd that obstructed my colon. Makes sense.

I look down. Bewildered. Why wrap my wrist in blue thread?

I leave the bathroom in a robe Maggie bought me for Christmas last year, back when I had a job and her skin was unmarked by scar tissue. In the bedroom the curtains are drawn. Dark outside. I check the clock on the bedside cabinet and it reads: 10.30pm. Have I slept a whole day? Probably. With little else to do I mix a little Docusate with seven ounces of milk, drink it, and do twenty lunges, as this helps to stretch the colon muscles and aid digestion. I then lie on the bed and fall asleep.

The blonde and I never worked out. Affairs demand a lot by both involved. They require time and lots of energy. Doing nightshifts for the cab company in my hometown meant I had very little of both. We fucked a few times in some travel tavern on the outskirts of nowhere, and afterwards I'd lie next to her and she would ask silly questions like, "If you had to fuck one animal, what would it be?" Or, "Would you rather be sodomised or have all your toenails removed?"

After she lit up a cigarette and passed it to me, the filter reeking of my semen, I had to leave her.

***

The receptionist with the big tits smiles and says, "Your appointment with Dr Bracknell was yesterday, Mr Roberts."

"That's a mistake," I say. "My GP, doctor Hounslow, referred me. The procedure is scheduled for today, I'm sure of it."

She looks over to her computer screen again, clicks twice on the mouse and shakes her head.

"Our records show the appointment was yesterday, and that you attended. Are you wanting a new appointment, or did you wish to speak with Dr Bracknell?"

An old man with a tired expression walks out from a door to my left, in his hands are brown folders. He walks up to the receptionist's desk and places them in an out tray.

He says, "Can you make sure these are sent down for archiving."

The receptionist agrees and addresses the man, "Dr Bracknell, this is Mr Roberts and..."

Before she can finish, the old man has taken off the glasses and offered me his hand.

"Mr Roberts, how are things?"

I'm taken aback by his informality, but I tell him I'm fine and we shake.

Placing his glasses in the top pocket of a dogtooth blazer, he says, "I'm assuming you wish to see me?"

"I have an appointment."

"Another? I don't believe I..."

He turns to the receptionist who explains the mix up.

Turning back to me, he says, "Mr Roberts, I am going to ask you a question. It may sound a little strange, but if you could indulge an old man, I would greatly appreciate an honest answer."

I nod.

He asks, "Have you any recollection of being here before?"

I look to the receptionist, who seems a little embarrassed, and shake my head.

He asks, "Do you think we have ever met?"

I shake my head.

"Maybe we should go into my office."

The interior is warm, and an expensive looking walnut desk leads me to think he's very good at his job. A display cabinet, home to medical reference journals, encyclopaedias and an internal plastic stomach dissection, confirms his expertise. We both sit and he leans into his desk, both hands grasped.

"I am going to tell you something that may cause you concern, Mr Roberts."

When a rectal surgeon who specialises in fecal incontinence, rectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease, says this, you have to give it your full attention.

"Within the limbic system of the temporal lobe, there is a section of the brain called the hippocampus. It deals with episodic memories, Mr Roberts. When a patient is in the first stages of Alzheimer's disease, this section is affected before any other part of the cortex. The damage sustained to the hippocampus results in the inability to form new memories. Therefore, an Alzheimer's patient, you could say, is lost forever in the past."

"I didn't know anal bleeding was a sign of Alzheimer's."

"I can assure you, Mr Roberts, it is not, and should only be noted for comparison purposes only."

"Comparison?"

"Alzheimer's affects all short term memory, whereas another result of injury to the hippocampus is something called anterograde amnesia, which affects memories prior to damage."

The old man leans back in his chair, studies me for a moment, and then gets up. Taking the corner of the desk closest to me as a seat, he says, "I think you are suffering from anterograde amnesia, Mr Roberts."

"It's the booze. I've been drinking a lot recently because my marriage is nearing its end. Memory holes are par the course."

"Were you under the influence yesterday, Mr Roberts?"

"Probably," I tell him.

"Then you hide it well. During my pre-examination for the anal dilation procedure, one we began but never finished, you answered all my questions with both lucidity and good humour. I have the results here."

He went back around to his desk drawer and pulled a small folder, similar to those he handed the big-titted receptionist. When back on the corner of the desk, he handed me two sheets of paper.

"Is this a joke?"

"I'm a rectal surgeon, Mr Roberts. We pride ourselves on our lack of humour."

I read the paper. It is a series of customary questions regarding family history, average bowel movements, and appraisal of localised pain. At the top is my name and address, and at the bottom my signature and yesterday's date.

"As you can see, Mr Roberts, there is no way I could have obtained this information had you not provided it. And I'm quite sure, even at this stage, if any doubt remains, the indisputable presence of your signature should allay any concerns that I am a joker."

I'm not buying it. Maggie has put this guy up to it. She is obviously trying to portray me in an unfavourable light so the divorce will move swiftly and in her favour. I don't know how she did it, or how my supposed memory loss would help achieve a quick separation, but I can only assume that my reluctance to sign the divorce papers was causing her too much distress and she was prepared to do anything, and everything, to skip that formality.

"Nice try, but faking my signature and trying to baffle me with medical jargon isn't going to get me to sign those divorce papers. Maggie and I still have a chance on working things out."

"Maggie? I assume that's your wife? Yes, you mentioned yesterday you believed her to be at blame for the twine."

"The twine?"

"While performing the procedure yesterday we discovered a length of blue twine at the rectal opening. Least at that juncture I believed it to be twine, but after you left, and your unawareness to its existence seemed convincing enough, I conversed, with much discretion I might hesitant to add, with a colleague from my university days. He is a neuroscientist at the city's main hospital. We spoke at length about episodic encodings, quite frankly a riveting subject within itself, and the role and damage of the hippocampus."

"I took a bath, one I didn't remember running, and around my wrist was a length of blue twine that I don't remember attaching. This morning I found a small container with a shorter length on the side of the bath."

He asks, "One like this?"

The old man reaches over his desk to a small drawer and pulls out an identical clear plastic container like the one I have back home. I nod my head.

"I know this must be worrying, or a lot to take in, Mr Roberts, but I would like to refer you to my friend for further examination."

I ask him why.

"To confirm, or denounce my theory."

"And what's that?"

"Though it is highly implausible, it could be that a rouge cell strand from the neural circuitry found in the hippocampus could have somehow bifurcated and found its way to the colon. Like I say, it is highly doubtful, but at this stage, it's my only elucidation regards your memory loss."

"Repeat that in English."

"The twine at the rectal opening is not twine at all. It is a small strand containing your short-term memory. This strand has somehow unthreaded itself from the hippocampus, and over time, maybe even years, found its way through, and into your digestive system. In short, you're leaking memories."

I laugh, half expecting the old man to join me. But he doesn't. The old fucker's face is as impassive as that bitch Liberty.

"I know how it sounds, Mr Roberts. I am a doctor, and it is not in our practice to speculate so outlandishly. But if you're willing to undergo a small experiment with me, then hopefully, some truth will be found in my conjecture."

The doc hands me a piece of paper and tells me to write on it what I had for breakfast, underneath that, my favourite colour. I have to show him this before I place it into my pocket. He then tells me to remove my trousers and boxer shorts. Behind his desk I see wall mounted certificates, most of which I cannot read clearly, but somehow provide reassurance that I'm not about to be the victim of buggery. Once bent over his desk, he places on a pair of latex gloves and after a few minutes returns to his desk with a small length of blue twine.

"Nice try, but faking my signature, and trying to baffle me with medical jargon, isn't going to get me to sign those divorce papers. Maggie and I still have a chance on working things out."

"Do you know where you are, Mr Roberts?"

"Of course I do. I'm attending a consultation regards an anal fissure."

It then occurs to me there's been a shift, both in time and my position. I look to the chair I should be sat on, and then notice I'm naked from the waist down. Matters of discretion take over and I pull up my trousers within seconds. The doctor is now sat back at his chair.

He says, "Don't be alarmed, Mr Roberts. You're not the victim of any illusory magic, nor prank set up by your wife, Maggie." He points at the chair opposite, and says, "If you please take a seat I'll explain all."

"Go fuck yourself!"

I begin to make my way to the door.

"Please, Mr Roberts, there's no need to leave."

"What the hell did you use on me? Chloroform or Ketamine?

"The answer you're looking for is in your left trouser pocket, Mr Roberts. And of course what I hold in my hand."

I reach into my left pocket and feel a piece of paper.

As I pull it out the doctor says, "Bran Flakes and the colour yellow."

I ask him to explain.

"You ate Bran Flakes this morning, and your favourite colour is yellow."

He gestures towards the paper still folded in my hand. I look down and open it, and there, written in my handwriting are the words: Bran Flakes. Yellow. Underneath is my signature.

"This is gone beyond a joke."

"This is only an estimated guess, but I believe the twine's length is important in understanding how many memories are lost. Yesterday, during the procedure, I retrieved possibly five to seven inches. Shortly thereafter, your cognitive state alternated and you regressed, again, by five minutes. In theory, an inch of the nerve cell represents a minute of your short term memory, hence why I only removed two inches on this occasion, as I have little time in my day to keep repeating myself, even if that person appears to be a miracle of science."

"If all this is true, what would happen if I kept pulling at the twine? How many memories would be lost forever?"

"That's a mathematical and highly dangerous supposition, Mr Roberts. If indeed what we're dealing with here is a cell strand from hippocampus, then like many other cells within the body the length is sometimes greater than the space in which it occupies. My friend, Dr Oberman, would be a better person to converse with on the subject. However, at a conservative guess, you could pull in the region of five metres, to five miles. I'm really no expert on the subject."

There's no use in trying to do the math.

He says, "You could be at an advantage, Mr Roberts. How many people are given the opportunity to eradicate those moments in one's life we'd all rather forget?"

If he's joking, I don't laugh.

When your marriage is drawing to an end, and all you have is the understanding it was your fault, your mistakes, and your affairs that made your wife cut herself and file for a divorce, you take understanding out of the equation.

***

I prepare a bath, one that will help relax my rectal muscles and assist blood flow, a natural pacifier for the constant arse pain that's plagued me since Maggie left. Afterwards I dress in the robe Maggie bought me for Christmas and lie on the bed.

Mounted to the foot-end of the bed is a mains powered Baldor 632E six-inch deluxe grinder that I purchased from a hardware store outlet in the city. It has two 152.4mm diameter base grinders, of which only one will be used, and weighs in at 48lbs. 152.4mm equals six inches, which equals six minutes of memory twine, if the doctor's theory holds any truth. Revolutions per minute for the Baldor 632E is a maximum of 18000. At this setting, I stand to lose 10.800 minutes per 1 minute. In an hour that figure increases to 648.000 minutes, which is four hundred and fifty days of my life gone in just one hour.

The grinder is plugged into a timer, commonly used to switch your lights on and off when you're not at home.

I tie the surplus twine left over from my visit with Dr Bracknell to a length of domestic string. Once the two ends are secure I attach the string end to the grinder with gaffer tape and gather up the slack.

By my watch, in two minutes the timer will start the grinder, and precisely one hour and thirty two minutes later it will turn itself off again.

I won't have any recollection of my visits with Dr Bracknell, or my GP. The conversations about anal dilation and memory leakage will hold no relevance. The job I had, the blonde from the city, the mistakes I made – gone forever. So will be the knowledge of signing the divorce papers early that day and the note I included to Maggie telling her I never wanted to see her again, ever. All the pictures we have together, the address book written by her, the clothes and holiday photographs, I will never know they sit in a plastic refuge bag outside her parent's home.

One minute and counting.

At the end of this, all that will remain is my life before Maggie and I met. The fresh start, untainted by bad memories.

When the grinder stops, and I'm conscious to the world around me again, all I will know of how I came to lose just over two years of my life will be in a note resting on my chest that says:

Cut the twine.

What you can't remember, you don't want to know.

Thirty seconds.

I breathe in. Hold tight the small nail scissors in my hand. In all my heart, I hope the theory of the hippocampus is true. This procedure has been thought out. The realisation of being on a bed with a 115-volt grinder pulling twine from your arsehole is going to be scary for anyone. But if the old doctor got it right, then no sooner has the thought registered in my mind, it should resign itself from memory forever.

A small portable television monitor wired up to a VCR, both set to another timer that starts exactly when the grinder stops. This will play camcorder footage of me explaining to myself how I ended up here, minus the sordid details, and any explanation of Maggie.

Ten seconds.

God granted me a reprieve. Don't roll with the punches, He said. Don't keep your chin up. Don't ride out the storm. Start afresh, came His demand. Change paths. Make a new life!

A smile crawls over my face, and within calmness takes over. And the grinder's motor begins to whirl.

The Hole

The old man awakes me. Half lit by a kerosene lamp, his face dived into terror and mystery, his lawn halved by a cold November moon. From the bedroom window, I watch him dig the earth with a silver spade, opening a gaping wound in the earth's skin.

Three weeks ago, he moved boxes into what was the Connors' house. The Connors' had a dog named, Macy. A six-year-old boy called, James. A rope swing and playhouse. The old man has a rusted truck, the grill busted. A dream catcher hanging from the rear-view mirror. He dragged his life into that dead house while Debussy slowed the world around me to a crawl.

I move the curtain back a little and note a long shadow, warped and twisted, sprawling his garden. He bends to dig and the shadow mutates into a mythological creature: Hydra, Medusa, the Minotaur. When he stands to wipe his brow, out it stretches, reaching out to touch the wooden fence that divides our gardens.

A dead bolt secures his front door. Around the gate coils a thick bicycle chain. A day after moving in, he erected a sign that said, No Trespassing, and carried into the basement a hammer, a ratchet, a saw, and grinder. For four nights he banged the floors, tightened bolts, sawed wood and grinded doors. I heard him wail and argue, screech and holler. No one returned a word, not one note of reassurance, comfort or annoyance. The room was dead, save for the old man's footsteps.

I turn on the lights to the patio and open the kitchen door. I wrap my arms tight around a naked chest and look over the fence. From his neck hangs a silver skull held by a black lace. His boots dusted with soil. His overalls slashed with dark stains.

On the news, they spoke about a local girl called Rebecca. She went to swim practice and never returned. The week before, a young boy was out catching stickleback from Redwood pond. The police found only his rod and half his shirt hanging from a naked briar.

What you digging for? I ask him.

The shovel buries its head in the ground, ashamed.

I say it again, What are you digging for?

He removes the lamp from the branch of a sickly Sycamore, its flame casting a flat, lifeless light across sunken eyes.

Holding the lamp at arm's length, he says, Off to find me the Devil.

A few days ago, the police found traces of blood and a severed hand along the back road leading out to Redwood. When the Connors left, and the old man moved in, three dogs went missing. Mrs Edgecomb's prize azaleas were set on fire and her lawn covered in paint stripper. The grass died in letters, each one spelling out the word, Sinner.

The Devil, I ask.

Yep, he says.

You think the Devil lives in your garden?

He throws me a disdainful look, and says, You think I'm stupid?

I'm about to go back in the house when I hear him say, I'm digging to his home. I'm digging to Hell.

After the cremation of Mrs Edgecomb's prize flower collection, a curfew was placed on every kid in the neighbourhood. Mr Butterworth, who owns the local greengrocers, held a neighbourhood meeting. Three shifts were agreed, morning, afternoon and night, rotating on a daily basis. Every second Wednesday I walked the streets in the afternoon looking for any suspicious looking people. I questioned strangers and told the older kids to stay away from the Redwood pond. Every second Wednesday, I passed by the old man's house at least five times.

What makes you think Hell exists below your garden, I ask him.

He puts the lamp back on the branch, spits a brown ball of flem into the ditch and says, It's down, ain't it? Where the fuck do you expect it to be?

He had a point.

I offer my hand over the fence, and tell him my name. When he picks up the shovel and begins hacking at the earth again, I draw back and ask him his name.

Without stopping, he asks, Did they send you?

I shrug and ask, Who are they?

The fat greengrocer? The widow with the flowers? The neighbours.

No, I tell him. I live next door and thought it was high time I introduced myself.

I know where you live and who you are, he says. Not that I care, and neither should you.

The paperboy and postman, they never have any deliveries for his house. Birds stay off his lawn. If there's heavy rainfall, his garden and drive remain dry as bone.

He digs the earth and I look over to his house. The windows are black as silt, the brick a deep red colour. Blood coloured.

From the corner of my eye, a dim yellowy light illuminates a room on the upper floor. There stands a figure, blurred by lace netting.

I turn back and ask, Your wife?

He stops digging and looks to the house. Turning back, he pulls out an old pocket watch from his waist, checks it against the lamp and says, It's time to eat.

He removes the lamp, picks up his shovel and walks back to the house. I stay a couple of minutes, watching the shadow in the window, watching to see if it moves. I feel the figure's eyes on me, watching me with the same curiosity. A minute later, a hand is upon its shoulder, pulling it back into the shadows. The light dies. The house is thrown into darkness.

The next day the hole is bigger: at least four feet deep and the same across. The old man is nowhere to be seen. I tell Mr Butterworth and we arrange to meet at my place later that night so he can witness the digging for himself.

From eight to late we wait, with breath fogging my pane and silence that pins you to the ceiling. I tell Mr Butterworth about the figure in the window, the noises next door, the banging, the tightening, the sawing and the grinding. I tell Mr Butterworth about the wailing, the screeching and the moaning. But around us we hear nothing more than our breath, and the hint of uncertainty lingering on our lips.

When he moved into our neighbourhood, winds grew restless, lifting leaves from trees not native to our region, and carrying newspapers we never read. One Wednesday I returned from my watch to find the front page of a tabloid caught flapping in a lavender bush near my front door. The pages were spread flat, the headline: Killer Escapes Prison.

The hole is bigger. Neither Mr Butterworth nor I heard digging.

In a dressing gown, I head out into the garden. I lean over the fence, looking down the hole.

Hello! Can you hear me, mister?!

A splinter snags the dressing gown as I scale the fence and drop into his garden. No morning dew dampens my slippers, no flies buzz around my ears. It is a place lost, unwanted and listless. Even the Sycamore is failing, limbs trailing the ground, bark greyed and cyanotic. I lean over the hole's edge. Below is a vast pit of nothingness. The sides descend to a perfect O shape, black like that of an opera singer's mouth at full pelt.

The house. All the windows on the bottom floor are clad in newspaper, the upper set covered in net curtains. I knock on the back door, peer through the gaps in the newspaper. Nothing.

Beside a small hedge sits a coiled up piece of rope. I take one end and wrap it around the Sycamore, throw the other down the hole. I test the strength and lower myself down.

The earth is damp, loamy. My slippers slip and slide against the walls. One falls from my foot and I don't hear it land.

Descend. Slowly.

A small medallion of light hovers above me, of life, my life. The rope, it keeps giving and the medallion of light reduces to the size of a paracetamol.

When I showed Mr Butterworth the newspaper article about the escaped killer, he rang the local police station. To help reassure the neighbours, Mr Butterworth wanted to know the killer's name, his age and what he looked like. He wanted to know if the killer had anything to do with the severed hand and the missing children. The officer on the other end of the phone knew the same as the newspaper. Mr Butterworth explained we were only in possession of the first page so didn't know anything except the killer had escaped from Stoxton Prison four weeks ago.

Cold wet earth enwraps my naked foot as I arrive at ground level. Hesitant hands guide the way. Small steps. I reach out and touch a wall fashioned from what feels like snail flesh. Tracing my hand along its surface, sludge and slime gathers between trembling fingers. I reach a small lip. Directly below is a passageway. For the first time since entering the hole, I am able to see a small warm light glowing in the distance.

As the police officer told Mr Butterworth the details of the killer, I saw his chubby hand grip tight the phone's handset. He never said thanks, or goodbye to the officer. He just placed the handset back down and told me to never mention the newspaper to anyone I knew. And with that he left.

On my knees and hands, crawling through filth and mire, muck and the grunge of a million years resting. Water drips on my face, in my eyes, blurring the light ahead. With head down, my mind wanders to times when there was sunshine and the hint of honeysuckle and jasmine in the breeze brought abstraction.

From black to brown, from brown to fawn and then to a warm russet colour, the floor was a shifting landscape of colour. The skin around my hand is the same.

I arrive within a room with bare wood floors, walls stripped down to plaster and brick. In the far corner is a table home to a small bedside lamp.

The day after the conversation with the police officer, Mr Butterworth's shop didn't open. The sign outside said: Due to unforeseen circumstances, the shop will be closed until further notice. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I stand and stretch. The room smells of morning breath and burnt hair. The light flickers, once, twice and three times before gaining rhythm again. There are no doors, only a window.

Mrs Edgecomb's funeral. The coroner's report said she had suffered extensive internal bleeding. Mr Butterworth knew pretty much everyone in our town, so he spoke with the mortician at the local hospital. He confirmed what the coroner had documented, but added there had been no physical damage to Mrs Edgecomb's body, no bruising, cuts or burst capillaries. The mortician told Mr Butterworth it was as if she'd been beaten to death from within.

Before Mr Butterworth left my house last night, he turned to me and asked if I'd ever done anything really bad in my life.

Define bad, I said, and he replied, Have you ever done anything from which you seek absolution? I paused, trying to remember. He never waited for an answer. Instead, he pulled out a small black gun, and said, In case you need a pardon.

The net pattern diffuses the world beyond the window. I move closer, squint and see a face dived into terror and mystery, a lawn halved by a cold November moon. Over a thin wooden fence, a man stares at me, his arms wrapped around a naked chest. As the old man reaches for the watch in his pocket, my breath turns rapid and sour. The gun feels cold in my hand, the air around me, fetid and warm. The kerosene lamp is removed from the tree and the man behind the fence remains, looking towards me. I think about waving goodbye, but before I do silken fingers tighten around my throat, pulling me back into the shadows. The light goes out, and all at once he reminds me of every sin I've committed.

All at once, he whispers, For the children.

Men of Blood

When the phone rang at 3am, John knew it was the Minotaur. He turned over in his bed but Alison nudged him in the ribs.

"It could be important," she said. "Someone might have died."

No one had died. At the most, maybe someone was hurt. But John knew that whenever the phone rang this late it meant the Minotaur had either been in a fight, or had broken up with his current girlfriend, whoever that was.

"John," pleaded his wife.
John laboured a sigh before picking up the receiver. On the other end, he heard the unmistakeable noise of the Minotaur's breathing.

"So which have you had broken?" asked John, "your nose, or your heart?"

From the other end of the phone, the Minotaur spoke, "Neither," he said. "I'm scared."

***

John had known the Minotaur since they were kids, and in that time he'd never seen him scared of anyone or anything. The Minotaur's family moved to John's street in the summer of 1977. It was the day of the Queen's Jubilee and all the neighbours had dragged out tables and lined them in the middle of the road. Union Jack bunting traversed from gutter to gutter, and when the wind blew, the sound of a hundred rattlesnake tails filled the sky. People wore blue, white and red hats and waved flags and all the women baked cakes and made sandwiches. Everyone was happy and laughing, except for John. John didn't see what all the fuss was about. From what he could gather, the Queen was rich and didn't do much but look down on people who were poor. She lived in a big house in London, whereas John and his family lived in a little damp two-up-two-down terrace with an outside toilet. John was about to go back in his home when a small van stopped at the end of the street. The man behind the wheel sounded his horn and people pointed at the tables and shook their head. When no one moved, the back doors to the van opened and the Minotaur got out. He was only six years old at the time but he was at least five feet tall, and with his horns, you could add another six inches. He had a broad chest covered with course brown hair, arms were thick and muscular, like his legs, and each hand was big enough to crush a human skull. Everyone stopped laughing and looked on in shock as the Minotaur dragged the heavy tables to one side so that the van could pass.

John found the Minotaur behind his house a few days later pouring lighter fluid in a long line near an ant's nest. He watched John approach and didn't think much of him.

"Whatcha doing?" asked John.

"Killing stuff," replied the Minotaur, indifferently.

The Minotaur reached into his pocket, brought out two green leaves, and tore them up between sausage fingers. He sprinkled the leaves along the line, leant down and waited. A black ant emerged from the crack in the earth.

"This 'ere's a worker," said the Minotaur. "It's a worker's job to protect the queen and bring her stuff. In a minute there's gonna be loads of 'em, you watch."

And John did. He knelt beside the Minotaur, consumed by his vast shadow. There he waited in the cool shade for all the tiny worker ants to leave the nest and pick up the tiny pieces of leaf with their pincers. To help coax them out, the Minotaur slammed his huge fist near to the gap and more ants came scurrying out, running around in a frenzy. The Minotaur pulled out a match from his pocket, struck it on the wall and threw it on the ground. What ants weren't burnt to death in the blaze, the Minotaur stomped with his foot.

John asked, "Why kill 'em?"

The Minotaur grunted and replied, "Cos, I hate royalty."

***

The Minotaur had moved into a terraced house, similar to the one John grew up in. He rented it from a Greek guy. John told him how nice the Greeks were when he and Alison spent their honeymoon on the little island of Zakynthos, and the Minotaur said his landlord was nothing but a rich, fat bastard that lorded it up like he was a king.

John arrived at the house at 4.00am. He knocked on the door and the Minotaur opened it with a look of relief on his face. Lit by the sodium hue from the street lamps, the two friends saw the little changes time had assigned to them. John had put on a little more weight around his face, which he put down to Alison's home cooking, and the top of the Minotaur's left ear was missing. He also had a nasty scar running through the tip of his noise, probably due to fighting. The Minotaur showed John into the front room where big boxes were stacked on each other. There was a peculiar smell in the air that Minotaur assumed was the remnants of the last occupants, but it reminded John of the day he went to see his grandfather in the chapel-of-rest, a mix of chemicals and cheap air freshener.

"So what's going on?" asked John.

"Noises," said the Minotaur.

"What kind of noises?"

"Sounded like something trapped under the floorboards, a rat, or something bigger than a rat."

John looked over to the other side of the living room: a large area had been cleared of boxes, and the floorboards had been removed leaving a big dark hole that reminded John of a trendy black rug.

"You've probably lost your deposit," said John.

"Probably."

"Did you find anything?"

"Pipes mostly, and a few wires. I put down some traps and threw in rat poison, but it's made no difference."

"Why not call pest control, get the job done properly."

Awkwardness descended between them, one that stopped the Minotaur from saying, Don't you think I thought of that. Instead, he grunted and asked John to follow him.

"Where we going?" asked John.

"To the basement," replied the Minotaur.

***

Once school had finished, John and the Minotaur didn't see too much of each other. John's grades assured him a place at a university, far from his home, which meant he had to stay in halls of residence. The Minotaur got a job on a local building site as an hod carrier and general labourer. When John left university, he and the Minotaur rented a small flat together. John received housing benefit, which paid for his share of the rent. The Minotaur paid the rest from doing foreigners. It was great at the start and John enjoyed the company of his old friend. The honeymoon period ended in the third month. Cordial and wistful conversations turned serious, focussing less on fun and more on the practicalities of life. John was getting depressed because he couldn't find a job and had no money, and the Minotaur was getting annoyed because he was working his fingers to the bone just to keep them both in food and booze.

One evening the Minotaur took John to a pub on the other side of town to cheer him up. At the end of the night they were outside waiting for a taxi and a man kept looking at John. The man was swaying, eyes wilting under the strain of staying vertical. An attractive woman joined him, and when she passed the Minotaur, he wolf-whistled. The man's indolent state ignited with rage and he ran like a bull towards John, grabbing hold of his coat and throwing his fist towards his head. The Minotaur appeared and grabbed the man's fist in time. Unconcerned about the Minotaur's size, the drunken man turned on him and they both began to fight. John heard the thunderous crack of fist pummelling bone, the tearing of ligaments. John ran into the pub and told the barman to phone the police because someone was going to be killed, but by the time he returned outside, the drunken man had gone, and the Minotaur was sat on the floor, blood dripping from his nose. In the taxi on the way home, John didn't say a word.

The next evening John and the Minotaur went out again for a drink. Nothing was said about what had happened, both opting to sit in quiet reflection. John consumed a lot more than usually and towards the end of the night purposely knocked into an older man at the end of the bar. With furrowed brow, John clenched his teeth together and squeezed his fists into tight little balls. He lent his face into the older man's, goading him to throw a punch, but the older man was not concerned and apologised for bumping into him. John began shoving him, and then a few other people at the bar got involved. The Minotaur came over and grabbed John by the shoulder, apologised to the older man and tried to move John away. But John was adamant he wanted a fight, if not to prove to the Minotaur he could fight, he needed to prove to himself he wasn't scared. A beer mat struck the Minotaur's head and from afar a voice called him a freak. For the first time, both John and the Minotaur were united in their rage. The whole scene played out in slow motion; limbs were ripped off torsos like crab claws at a seafood restaurant. Blood sprayed in jets up the walls and across the optics. Carnage lay in their wake, and when they walked back to the house, both the Minotaur and John laughed, replaying every moment as if it was a scene from their favourite film, Star Wars.

***

In the basement, the Minotaur switched on his torch, the light lurching towards the far side of the room where darkness crawled across the walls like a thousand tiny spiders. As he panned the beam, the batteries rattled in the casing, shorting out the light so the room flared in eerie apparition. The air was dank, and the temperature had dropped enough for John to feel his skin tighten. Various tools were strewn across the basement floor. The nearest to him was a screwdriver, and next to that, a hammer. The closer it got to the hem of darkness the larger the tools became: a saw, mallet, sledgehammer. Thick rusted screws lay on their sides, bent and twisted like toasted maggots. The Minotaur grabbed John's sleeve and pulled him close.

"It's in there," said the Minotaur.

"What's in there?" asked John hesitantly.

"Whatever's been calling me."

John felt the Minotaur's breath fall on his arm in rapid concession. He was preparing himself, bracing ever part of his bulk for whatever lay within the dark. The torch gave out again, and the Minotaur shook the casing. John turned, and in the brief yellowy light that shifted the shadows, he saw another door, one forged from solid steel. Its edges had been struck with the head of the sledgehammer, leaving behind bowl-size dents in the surface.

"It took me the best part of a week to remove all the exterior bolts, but I think I've finally weakened the inner locks."

John stepped back. He didn't want to know what lay beyond that door. It had no influence on his life with Alison. If he never found out what was in there, it wouldn't concern him. He thought of Alison lying in bed. Before he left the house, she had kissed John on the cheek and said that the Minotaur was lucky to have him as a friend. Now all John wanted to do was leave the Minotaur and slip back into bed with Alison, a place where he always felt safe and loved. But she was right. Friends have to help each other, regardless of their own fears and reservations.

***

John had met Alison while in a library searching for jobs. She was reading The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period by Carter Lindberg, a heavy read that intimidated him. To strike up conversation, he asked the librarian for the same book, who made a point of raising her voice to tell him it was currently being read. Alison looked up from the book and that was enough for John to approach her. They talked quietly for over an hour. John discovered that they both enjoyed history. Alison had a lovely smile and when she spoke about Henry VIII, John didn't hear a word because the world around him had dissolved away and all that existed was her smile. They exchanged numbers and John rang her that night, asking questions that made her more endearing, damaged, wistful, tragic, and perfect. Alison was studying history at the local university and hoped one day to be a teacher. John said he had a teaching degree and wanted to be a teacher too, and when she asked why he wasn't, he told her a Minotaur had got in the way. Alison promised John she'd help him find his way to teaching, and she did. When the Minotaur found out John had a girlfriend, he asked if she was good in bed. It had been two weeks and John did not want to rush Alison. He enjoyed her company, and that was more important to him than sex. He told the Minotaur this and he replied, "Dick tease, then?"

All the years of living in the Minotaur's huge shadow, of being the one who needed protecting, finally turned into anger. John threw back his fist and hit the Minotaur's long, solid head. The pain was immense as the bones shook and splintered in his hand. The strike was not expected and the Minotaur stumbled on his hooves. A red veil descended, the world muted by a crimson hue. John launched another attack on the Minotaur, knocking him to the floor, and there he beat his face until those fearless large brown eyes closed. Not once did the Minotaur strike back.

***

The Minotaur grabbed John's hand.

"Bit late in the day to tell me you're gay," said John, hoping the joke might lift some of the gravity that was pushing down on his shoulders.

The Minotaur prised open John's hand and there he placed a cold metal object. The chill went some way to tempering the heat burning up John's palm.

"Take this sword," said the Minotaur. "It's the Greek's. I found it down here."

John looked down at the sword. It was old, and the edge of the blade had rusted.

"What do you expect me to do with this?"

"Protect me," said the Minotaur, and with that, he picked up the sledgehammer with his spare hand and swung it at the door. The earth could have split in two and it wouldn't have made a louder and more terrifying noise as each strike of that sledgehammer. The Minotaur huffed and growled with every beat. John considered how much time would pass before the police arrived. The torch flickered on and off as the sledgehammer made contact, throwing fleeting shadows across the Minotaur's broad and muscular back. The damage to the door was minimal and John was about to stop the Minotaur when an unworldly groan rang out and the door collapsed to the ground. The only noise John could hear was the sound of the Minotaur's breath, and his own heart throwing itself against his breastplate. The Minotaur crossed its divide and entered the room, the light from the torch consumed by the thick cloak of gloom that lay within.

John cried out, "What's in there?" but the Minotaur said nothing. He edged forward, tentatively, dragging the sword behind him and repeated the question, but no word of reassurance returned. John was almost at the entrance when the Minotaur rushed out, forcing John to reel back on his heels.

"Jesus! You scared the crap out of me."

The Minotaur handed John the torch, told him to wait and then ran up the stairs. Light touched the sides of the wall surrounding the door, leaving a perfect rectangle of black at the entrance. Beyond lay terrifying visions of monsters lurking within, an abyss of nightmare and paranoia. He edged further and further back, sword held out in front, and by the time he reached the stairs leading into the room, the Minotaur returned.

"Here," he said, out of breath. The Minotaur unfastened a large bobbin of twine. He made a loop with one end, and placed it over John's hand, tying it around his wrist. He then placed the bobbin on a spike that had been impaled in the wall.

"What's this for?" asked John.

"It's so you don't get lost," replied the Minotaur.

"Get lost? What the hell is in there?"

The Minotaur leaned in towards John and replied, "It's a labyrinth."

***

On the eve of John and Alison's wedding day, guilt collided with John's conscious. It had been so long since the fight with the Minotaur, and John wanted to enter his new life with no bad feelings hanging over him. He rang the Minotaur one Friday afternoon. After a long pause, the Minotaur spoke.

"Hey," said John.

The Minotaur remained mute, save for his breathing.

"Wanted you to know, I'm getting married tomorrow."

There was a pause. "That same girl?"

"Her name is Alison."

"Huh...I'm happy for you both, I guess."

John could tell the Minotaur had been drinking, or was still drunk from the previous night.

"Been up to much?"

"Met a girl myself."

"Yeah?"

"Her name's Destiny. Tits like boulders."

"Nice."

"I think her real name is Claire, but I don't know her well enough yet to ask."

"You still living at the flat?"

The Minotaur's mood changed. "What do you want?"

"What do you mean?"

"Want to rub my face in it, huh?"

"No, not at all. I just..."

"Then what?"

"I called to tell you I'm getting married."

"Mazel tov."

John didn't want to upset the Minotaur even more so he let enough time pass before replying.

"I guess I wanted to say..."

John felt the word perched on his tongue, one that had been lay dormant for nearly two years and now rose like bile through his throat, burning and making his eyes water. Fortunately, he didn't need to say it.

"Star Wars is on TV next week," said the Minotaur. "It's the version with all the CGI crap, but I was thinking of getting a few beers in and watching it."

The Minotaur never went to John and Alison's wedding. And John never watched Star Wars with the Minotaur because he was on his Honeymoon in Greece. But when he returned he rang his old friend and they would talk for hours about what they were doing. Mostly John spoke about his future and how Alison was nagging at him to start a family, something he wasn't too sure he wanted to do until they had enough money. And the Minotaur always spoke about the past, and what they used to get up to. Sometimes the Minotaur would ring John late at night, drunk, and tell him that the girl he was seeing had dumped him for some normal bloke, and that he beat up a random guy to feel better. The next week, the Minotaur had another girlfriend and he was happy again.

***

The labyrinth smelt of loam. It reminded John of the time before the Minotaur and he were friends, when the boys at school would push his face into the dirt and pile on his back until their combined load robbed him of breath. Instead of his face being pressed into the ground, and the weight of half a dozen children on his back, his chest was being crushed by the dark mass that encircled both he and the Minotaur. The second thing John noticed was the Minotaur seemed to have a clear idea of where he was going. He walked with a determined step, and when they arrived at a large wall that blocked them from going any further, the Minotaur instantly turned left or right.

"Do you think the Greek knows about this place?"

"I don't think you can have something this big in your home and not know," replied the Minotaur.

John thought about what the Minotaur said, and realised they had been walking through the network of narrow corridors for a good five minutes. He equated the distance to be at least a hundred metres. Either they were walking in circles, or the labyrinth stretched beyond the boundaries of the house.

"This can't be possible," said John. "We must be lost."

"Isn't that the point?" asked the Minotaur.

John stopped and grabbed the Minotaur's huge arm. "I thought we were here so you could find out what was making the noises; you telling me you came in here to get us lost?"

The Minotaur turned and pointed the torch along the corridor. There was no sign of an end.

"I think we should head back," said John. "Get a better torch, something industrial that will light this place up. We'll come back better prepared. Maybe even bring a few cold beers and a sandwich. What do you say?"

The Minotaur was facing away from John, his gaze firmly fixed to the distance. "Did you hear that?" asked the Minotaur.

John didn't hear anything, and was about to tell the Minotaur the very same when the torch cut out.

"Stop messing about," said John to the void. "Turn the light back on."

The air turned mute. The breathing John could hear was only his own. He reached out his hand and touched only dank silence. He tried walking a few steps in front and felt like he was about to walk off a cliff. To ease his own panic, he announced that he'd had enough and was heading back.

"When you've stopped being an arse, I'll meet you back in the kitchen!"

John turned, and found the end of the twine looped to his wrist. With the hand not holding the sword, he began to gather up the slack, retracing his steps.

"I'm off then," he called out behind him. "If you want to make it back before dawn, I suggest you come with me."

Silence.

Without the torch, steps were cautious and exaggerated. Every damp wall he arrived at felt like the one he had just left. Had it not been for the twine guiding him towards the entrance, he would have been convinced he was moving in circles.

The spirit of the labyrinth's exit pulled the twine taught, and for the first time John saw a faint light pierce the sheet of black before him. His breath faltered only for a moment, but it was enough to allow a noise like that of shifting stone to creep through the darkness. He stopped and turned around, as if the act of facing the direction of the noise would enable him to hear it better. A profound bellow rose in the distance, then a collapse of mass, as if the whole room had been awoke from a deep sleep. John assumed the combination of awkward navigation and a heavy hand had somehow weakened the walls around him. The composition of mortar and lime had perished due to the damp, and his hand, pressing up against each one, had altered their position somehow. One by one, each of the walls that made up narrow corridors to the labyrinth were now crumbling, and as one fell, it caused another to weaken, creating a domino effect. The noise changed. The shifting of stone was replaced with the sound of an animal wailing in agony. John considered the possibility that the weight of the crumbling walls had trapped the Minotaur. John called out, but what came back forced him to raise the sword. The animal was not trapped, but moving towards him. From the deepest recess of the abyss came a rolling growl that travelled through the ground rather than the air. The soles of his feet shook as the monster gathered stride, dust falling from the structure that clung together precariously around John. A foul stench rooted in all evil announced the monster's immediate presence. John dug his heel into the ground and placed his weight behind that Greek king's sword, thrusting it into sinewy muscle and rancid flesh before him. As the monster cried out its final piercing shrill, John's legs gave way and he fell upon its stinking carcass. His chest beat out with waves as the beast's heart retreated into a timeless rest. John called out once more to his friend. He needed light. His hand searched the dirt for the torch. He found it in a pool of blood. Click. A shaft of light drifted towards the nothingness, highlighting dust particles that fell before the beam like a thousand mayflies dancing above a fetid brook. And there, lay prostrate in the dirt, the once brutal and unyielding Minotaur remained still and silent. The Minotaur's final words stirred the quintessence of dust for the final time. "We are all men of blood," he said.

The sword remained with the Minotaur in the labyrinth. The tools left on the floor helped fix the buckled bolts with twisted screws. John ascended the steps and went into the living room where all the unpacked boxes remained. The room had no signs that indicated someone was living there. The walls stripped bare, shelves empty, as was the mantelpiece above an electric fireplace. The only sign of human existence was a small postcard pinned to one of the cupboards in the kitchen. It was of the Acropolis in Athens. It had no inscription on the back.

The last of the Minotaur's words accompanied John on his return back home. "We are all men of blood", whispered John repeatedly, hoping that to hear them aloud might bring new meaning to each. When he arrived home, the dawn sun blistered night's cold skin, leaving it yellow and red. Though his sleep had been disturbed, he didn't feel tired, but instead lighter and more content. He checked his watch: an hour remained before he would have to get ready for work. John spent that time in the car, looking out towards the sky. He turned on the radio, and with perfect timing, the Sex Pistols came on singing, God Save the Queen.

180 Degrees

Shy of Heaven

Frank was sure he'd pissed the bed. He woke to a damp feeling around his crotch and upper legs. Audrey was sleeping peacefully beside him on Egyptian cotton bed sheets that cost close to fifty pounds. She would kill him. He gently left the bed and went into the bathroom. A scent followed him into the room, one like uncooked pastry that reminded him of youth, loneliness and manufactured dreams.

Switch.

The light revealed a wet patch as big as a Frisbee on Frank's pyjama bottoms. His hand slipped under the waistband. It returned back sticky. He paused for a moment and recalled what the Old Testament said:

"If there is among you any man who is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he must go outside the camp; he may not reenter the camp. But it shall be when evening approaches, he shall bathe himself with water, and at sundown he may reenter the camp."

Frank removed his pyjamas and slips, took a gentleman's bath in the sink and slipped back into bed.

In the morning, the sun pierced the curtains, the birdsong prompting him to rub his morning glory along the vertical cleft of Audrey's backside. He kissed her nape gently and slipped his hand down her nightgown. The more Frank spooned the more Audrey shifted her weight further away. He whispered in her ear, "I love you, Honey Bunny", and she replied with, "Your morning breath smells like shit."

Frank and Audrey sat and had breakfast together, neither commenting on the incident in the bedroom. They dressed for work and left and then returned and sat again eating their evening meal, both muted by familiarity. Time came for bed again and Frank splashed a little cologne on his neck, brushed his teeth, and gargled for five minutes with mouthwash. He slipped into bed beside Audrey who was reading her novel with curlers in hair and dressing gown buttoned to her throat. He kissed her cheek and placed his head upon her shoulder, and in time, his hand drifted towards the small paunch below her sagging breasts where it remained for a few more minutes, nervous of rejection. Audrey advanced to lethargy, closed the book, placed on her eye mask and turned off the light, leaving Frank, once again, constitutionally inclined to gallantry.

***

The decision was reckless. Frank never drank during the week. Every evening he returned home from his job making envelopes so he could cook for Audrey. Upon leaving the envelope factory that night, he had descended the factory stairwell and recalled with every step how much he had given to make Audrey's life so very special. There were sixty-two steps in that stairwell, and Frank remembered a display and grand show of affection for each. From the crimson roses placed upon the eiderdown, stem and petal fashioned into her name, to the impromptu trip to Rome so she could see the Vatican, a place she revered as much as life itself. Even the smaller gestures, like how he scraped the dead skin from her heel and cut her toenails every Sunday evening; or how he always opened the door and offered the only chair on the bus, even though his gout would be playing up. Thirty years of marriage, a model husband, never once straying. Sixty-two steps later, Frank decided to get drunk.

From the envelope factory to his home, Frank passed two shops, a Caribbean fast food take away called Jamaican-Me Hungry and a hairdressers called Curl Up And Dye. He took great interest in their names, and once explained to Audrey, albeit too poetically for her, that the boundary of comedy remains feral with the pun. Every Friday he purchased haddock and chips from a chippy called The Codfather, and spent each Saturday morning picking out ripe tomatoes from a fruit and veg shop called Melon Cauli. His shoes were from R. Soles, and all the roses used to sprinkle on the bed as a romantic gesture to Audrey were from a flower shop called Florist Gump. Names became a big thing whenever Frank chose to do anything, which is why that night he felt there would be no better place to drink than in the public house named, Nobody Inn.

A lofty and uncluttered looking man stood behind the bar cleaning a glass, his figure casting a shadow on the wall that resembled more of a tree than the human frame. A widow's peak pointed towards a Neanderthal brow. Basin eyes held no reflection of light, and from a soft, almost feminine mouth, deep ravines ran through chin and cheek like pillow marks. When the barman saw Frank enter, he began pouring a beer.

"It's Frank, right?" said the barman placing the full pint on the bar.

Frank looked to see if he was still wearing his nametag shaped into a little envelope, but it was safely tucked away in his pocket

"Do we know each other?"

The barman smiled, "Less than we will when you've finished that drink."

Frank looked at the pint and settled into one of the seats at the bar. He took a hit and placed it back onto a beer mat.

"Cold," said Frank wiping his mouth.

"German."

Frank was a man hushed by discomfort. Despite the fact that only inches separated his brain from his vocal chords, the distance might as well have been in miles when thrust into polite conversation. He was, by his own admission, a man who chose silence over noise. When he was nine years old, his father bought him a replica Tommy gun and Frank spent the day taking it to pieces so to remove the trigger mechanism that made the gun noise. The neighbours saw him tiptoeing around his back garden later that afternoon with gun in hand, mouth wide open as though screaming, yet mute as a fish. He met Audrey in a library. She shushed him when he dropped an anniversary edition of the Guinness Book of Records. He knew then he was going to marry her. They complemented each other in ways that would puzzle many. They had both owned goldfish that shared the same name, Marcel, after the famous French mime artist. Neither Frank nor Audrey owned a TV. They read. Frank was keen on grand human achievements and extremes of the natural world. Audrey preferred anything with no sex in and lots of misery. In the winter months, Frank walked home from the envelope factory and marvelled at the colour of his skin under the sodium street lamps. Audrey's favourite colour: orange. Both spent, unbeknownst to the other, the first fall of autumn kicking the dying leaves just to hear them shush their reproach. On the odd occasion when they had sex, Audrey never made a sound. At weekends, they spent every Sunday morning oiling the bedsprings. Audrey did not sneeze loudly, but squeaked, and enjoyed the sound of a bath running. Frank liked being submerged in water, the world muted beyond, which is why Frank took the job at the envelope factory. Cutting paper and applying glue to the edge of each tiny envelope is laborious but satisfying a job for one wishing to block the world out. His office was only as big as a toilet stall, enough space for him, a table and chair. On the wall opposite was a small slot where paper was dispatched. Frank took this paper, folded it accordingly and applied the glue to its lip. He never knew where the paper came from and never thought to ask.

"There are usually more people here," said the barman. "Doesn't really get lively in here till after nine. Just last night we had, well, it must have been about six people in all. I was rushed off my feet. But I like it when it's like this. Quiet."

Frank nodded.

"You work at the envelope factory, right?" asked the barman.

"How'd you know that?"

"I'm stalking you. Only joking. I see you pass here every night. Sometimes I'm outside, sweeping the pavement when you pass and I once clocked your name tag. You can also smell the polyvinyl alcohol and dextrin on your coat. Figured you either work at a glue factory, or the envelope factory down the road."

"You're like a regular Sherlock Holmes."

"Not really. I used to work at a place where they made stamps. The same glue they use on envelopes is the same for stamps. You don't forget a smell like that."

"Still, it's very impressive."

"What's really going to melt your head is that I know why you came in tonight."

"Oh?"

"Audrey, right?"

Frank sank into his seat, brow buckling under the weight of confusion.

"I'll level with you," said the barman. "I never worked at a stamp factory, and no, I never saw your name tag. I know all these details because it's in my interest to help you."

"Why do you think I need help?"

"It's a little past six on a Wednesday night and you've entered a pub in your work clothes. It didn't bother you that no one was in here. Generally speaking, any person willing to sit in a pub alone means they're desperate to stay away from someplace, or someone."

"I could be meeting someone here."

"Come on, Frank. You're here because Audrey won't fuck you anymore."

Frank got up from his seat and began to back out towards the door.

"Look, Mr...I don't know what kind of place this is, or what planet you're from, but I don't care too much for your tongue."

"Sit back down, Frank. I'm here to help you. You need to see this as an opportunity. Not many people get chances like this."

"Chances?"

"Consider me like the genie. You know that story, right?"

Frank nodded.

"Well, like the genie I can grant you a wish, Frank. Anything you want."

"Is this a joke?"

"Not at all. But here's the thing: the wish can only help improve the reason why you came in here to begin with. For example, you could, if you wanted, wish for a lot of money, but only if what brought you in here was debt. You could wish for the health of your child, if you came in here because you were depressed after you found out they are dying. You understand? Now, because you're not getting any at home, may I make a suggestion? Perhaps your wish might involve another woman. Like a nymphomaniac, but a classy one."

"No, no, no. I could never cheat on my wife."

"It wouldn't technically be cheating. She would only exist to you. No one else would see her."

"Still, it wouldn't be right."

Frank walked back over to the bar and sat down. He took another drink and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

"The thing is," said Frank, almost bending towards the barman as if wanting no one else in the pub to hear. "I still love her."

The barman gazed at Frank for a moment before replying, "That's sweet, Frank. She's giving you nothing and you still love her. Not many men would be so accommodating."

"I think things would be great if only Audrey was a little more..."

"Horny?"

"Yes."

"Then that can be your wish, Frank."

Frank's eyed widened.

"You can do that?"

"Sure. No problem."

Frank lowered his head, a veil of apprehension etching more lines into his eyes and forehead.

"What is it, Frank?"

"Could you..."

"What?"

"Nah. Horny is fine."

"No tell me. Remember, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You can't have any regrets."

"Well, would it be possible, at all, to make her... slimmer? Not too slim, but you know, more..."

"Amazonian?"

"Do they have...?"

Frank cupped his hands and held them about 12 inches from his chest.

"Hell yeah."

"Amazonian you say?"

"Is that it?"

"Yes. So, what happens now?"

"Tomorrow, after work, you come back here with a picture of Audrey. A recent one. You'll take that into the back room over there."

The barman pointed to a door that said: Restricted – Staff only.

"You'll place the picture on the far back wall. When you do, make your wish. That's it."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Frank finished his drink. He walked home and thought about what had happened in the pub, and while dubious that a simple barman could grant him a wish, there was a part of Frank that wished it was true.

The next evening Frank returned to the pub, which again was empty. The barman was waiting at the bar with a cool beer. Frank walked over, reached into his top pocket, and pulled out a picture of Audrey that he took when they went to Clacton-on-Sea a few months ago. The humidity from the train journey had caused her fine blonde hair to frizz, and the cool ocean wind had puffed it up turning it wispy and translucent in places. The sunlight blanched her skin, and the once youthful eyes had gained more rings than an aged oak tree. When the barman held the picture in front of him his expression took on a mix of repulsion and pity. He handed it back to Frank and walked him towards the restricted door.

"Remember," said the barman, hand poised over the door handle, "place it on the wall furthest away. As you attach it, make your wish."

"Wait. What do I use to attach the picture to the wall?"

"To your right there's a small table when you enter. You'll find a nail and a hammer on it."

The barman turned the handle and opened the door.

The door's hinges cried out like a stomach undergoing the pangs of hunger, and the breath of something nearing extinction floated out of the darkened room and up each of Frank's nostrils. Frank hesitated at the door's threshold, and if not for the gentle push by the barman, he may never have crossed its divide so willingly. The room was very large, much larger than Frank assumed it would be from the outside. The only light came from three exposed bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The walls either side of him were decorated with photographs of faces, hundreds of them, all pinned to the wall by nails. Frank found the table with the hammer and nail and picked them up as he was told. He walked towards the far wall, guided by a runway of sallow conical light. The back wall was far bigger than the two sidewalls. Much higher, too. Dimensionally, it did not fit within the room. The flanking walls were at least half the height of the back wall, yet the ceiling adjoined all three. Frank assumed it was an optical illusion created by the light. Or that the barman had created a kind of narrowing corridor effect like you see in funhouses. Frank walked over and knelt down before the wall. With hammer in hand, he placed the picture of Audrey against the brick, positioned the nail, and drove it through her head. In his mind, he said, Amazonian horny wife. Amazonian horny wife.

***

Frank awoke the next morning to find a vagina in front of his face. It was well kept, the tiny black hairs tapering to a dilated crevice. His eyes widened in sync with the hole before him. From above he heard his wife whisper, "Morning, Frankie" and before he could respond, Audrey thrust her crotch into his face, gyrating it against his mouth.

"Tongue it, honey!" she shouted. "Tongue it!"

Like Pavlov's dog, Frank followed the instruction without question, lapping his tongue into the valley of skin with the expression of a Māori warrior performing a Haka war dance. Frank heard the muffled moaning and groaning of his wife through her thighs, sounds that were alien to him, save for when her IBS was playing up. He moved away briefly to ask if she was okay, and no sooner had his lips left hers, Audrey changed position and climbed on to all fours. It was then Frank saw the real change. Before him were two arse cheeks so perfectly rounded they looked like ostrich eggs. Audrey's arse was usually much bigger, more malformed, like two huge scoops of cottage cheese set upon church candles. At the apex of both cheeks lay the end of her spine, sloping like a toboggan run down to the vale between her shoulders. As she exhaled, the fingers of her ribs pressed up against the skin as though two beautiful hands were holding together her innards. The Gene Wilder hairstyle had thickened and looked more sun-kissed and sexy. Arms were svelte and unblemished. And if not for her familiar masculine voice, which cried out with the directive to lick her arsehole, Frank would conclude this was not Audrey at all.

Frank remained between Audrey's arse cheeks for an additional fourteen minutes. With his tongue cramping up and chin sodden with salvia, Audrey finally turned around and lay on her back, allowing Frank time to see her face. The tired eyes had life, smoky and with a menacing sparkle that could haunt the dreams of many men. She was still in her mid forties, but looked good enough to put to shame most twenty-year-old girls. Her chin was firm, nose less obvious. Lips were plumper and eyebrows so perfectly arched you'd believe they were etched by Greek sculptors.

"Fuck me, Frank. Fuck me like I'm a naughty babysitter."

"But we don't have kids."

"Then fuck me like I'm jailbait!"

"I have to say, Audrey, this is all too much for me."

Audrey opened her legs and Frank's eyes fell to the most beautiful vagina in the world. It was like a flower from an oriental garden that only bloomed every ten years and only for a day. It made him almost cry.

"For this one moment, Frankie, I'm not your wife. I'm your slave. You own every part of me. I am yours to command."

Frank broke his gaze from Audrey's vagina long enough to remember the barman and his words. Not many men get an opportunity like this. Frank moved to his knees and lurched over the perfectly formed effigy of his wife.

"My morning breath?"

"I love your morning breath," she said.

And with that Frank kissed his wife, her tongue beating his into submission. It took a further thirty eight seconds for him realise there was a problem. Audrey looked down at the flaccid cock hanging from Frank.

Grabbing it, she said, "Where's the lead, honey?"

Audrey's hand needed to only brush his crotch in a supermarket and he'd be at half-mast. He returned back to Audrey's face and gave a pathetic look of despair. Audrey interpreted this to mean he needed more help so shimmed down the bed and began sucking on it as if ciphering petrol from an old hose. She nuzzled her nose deep into his ball sack, allowing the warm rapid burst of air to pull tight the skin. She deep-throated and licked his perineum. She tea-bagged and spat spit out along his trunk before sucking it all back up. Nothing helped. Frank rolled over on the bed and looked to the ceiling.

"I'm sorry, Audrey. I don't know what's wrong, honestly. Maybe it's the change in you that's just thrown me off a little. It's an adjustment thing. I'll be right once I've gotten used to it all. I hope I've not disappointed you. Audrey?"

Frank turned and saw his wife on her back, hand a blur between her legs.

"No...Frank....I'm...fine...." she said between deep breaths. As her back arched, and her rubbing reached full pelt, Frank observed a stream of clear fluid arch from her vagina all the way to the headboard. Its power and trajectory made the Fountains of Bellagio look like a sprinkler system. Audrey screamed as though in an immense amount of pain. Frank craned his head around to see if she was okay, and in doing so nearly lost his eye to the violent stream. Two minutes later, Audrey fell back onto a sodden bedspread. The wall above the headboard had a Jackson Pollock design of water patches.

That evening Frank walked back home, taking the same route as he always does. He returned to find Audrey waiting naked on the kitchen table, a large cucumber wedged between her legs. Next to her was a carrot, and next to that a banana. Her right hand gripped tight a courgette, and the other held a leek. Frank dropped his briefcase and stood for a moment in shock. What if he wasn't alone? What if the weather had taken a turn for the worse and one of his work colleagues had offered to drive him back home? But the weather was fine and dry. And if Frank was being honest with himself, he didn't really know anyone at work.

"Audrey!" Frank shouted, "What are you doing?!"

Audrey never hesitated with the cucumber, and replied, "Getting my five a day!" And with that she arched her back and screamed so damn loud it almost burst Frank's eardrum. They did not eat off the table that night, nor any night thereafter. Frank had to sand down the surface before he sat there again. Every evening when they got into bed, Audrey pounced on Frank, rubbing herself up against his flaccid penis. And no matter what she did or said, Frank couldn't rise to the challenge.

Her frustration came out in many ways, mostly hurtful remarks. She'd often say she was going to find a real man to satisfy her, and other times she'd recline beside Frank with the sole intention of shoving various objects into all her nooks and crannies. It got so bad that Frank would wear latex gloves to pick up anything in the house that was phallic looking. Every day, Audrey got hornier and Frank, desperate to assist in any form, found himself more and more turned off.

One afternoon, at work, the small hole that distributed paper didn't send out any envelopes for Frank to fold. He waited and waited and nothing happened. He left the small room and went to find his foreman who then told him there was a problem that couldn't be fixed until the next morning. "Go home," said the foreman. "Spend a little time with that wife of yours." And Frank, never one to question anything at work, took his small briefcase and went back home. He entered the hall to the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle. A distant moaning that was all too familiar drifted out from the living room. Frank removed his coat and hung it up on a peg, placed his briefcase down and sighed deeply in preparation of seeing his once meek and mild wife getting herself off again. He entered the living room and first noticed the television playing a retro porn movie where two overly hairy lesbians were locked together, crotch grinding to the sound of a wah-wah guitar. For a second, Frank was relieved that maybe the noise was not that of his wife but from the television instead, but that quickly changed when he looked over to find his wife's head buried between Sally Honeywell's legs, their neighbour's daughter. Sally was eighteen, fresh back from college for the summer. When Frank looked down, he noted her eyes clenched tight with passion, the young frame heaving and shuddering as Audrey's tongue whipped and rolled around the unflawed vagina. Audrey was dressed in pull-up stockings and high heels, and strapped around her waist was a harness that housed the biggest dildo Frank had ever seen. He cleared his throat, assuming the noise would be enough to arouse them from their state of rapture, but both bodies remained juddering and jolting in unison. Frank coughed, loudly. Sally was the first to open her eyes. Lifting herself onto her elbows, her faced flushed, the colour matching perfectly with the sex rash upon her chest and neck. She looked down to Audrey who was still munching away and pushed her head up. Audrey caught Frank's look of contempt. Frank observed Audrey's lips glistening as though she had just finished eating a doner kebab.

"Hi, honey," said Audrey. "Wasn't expecting you home so soon. You know Sally, don't you?"

Frank found himself offering his hand in a polite greeting, which Sally hesitantly shook before returning into a mortified state of catatonia.

"Audrey, I think we need to talk," said Frank.

"Can it wait? Sally here is so close and I hate to disappoint."

"No, it won't."

"Honey, you're embarrassing Sally."

Sally got up to leave but Audrey clamped her down by shoving three fingers inside and wiggling them up and down. Sally gasped for air and reclined back onto the couch, breathing gaining a healthy and audible rhythm again.

"I'll be five minutes," said Audrey, and Sally raised two fingers in the air. "I'll be two minutes," Audrey restated. "Once I've done Sally, we'll talk, promise." And with that Audrey began grazing on Sally's vagina again. Frank stayed for a moment before turning his back on both women. He waited in the kitchen, listening to the women groan and moan, scream and yelp. He made a cup of tea, prepared a sandwich and ate it while reading the morning tabloid. Nearly two hours elapsed by the time he heard the front door close and Audrey walked into the kitchen, wiping her chin.

"We need a new couch."

Audrey went over to the refrigerator and took out a bag of frozen peas.

"This is unfair," said Frank.

Taking off the strap-on, and placing the bag of peas between her legs, Audrey replied, "You could have joined in whenever. Sally wouldn't have minded."

"I'm less concerned about a threesome here. We're married, Audrey. We took vows."

"I know that, honey, but the problem is, I'm constantly horny. You know how many times I masturbated today before seducing Sally? Eight times. After we stop talking, I'll likely go upstairs and bang one out again."

"I have to say, I do not like this change in you."

"I thought you would have loved it."

Frank thought his inability to get an erection was a transitional thing. The sudden change in Audrey had taken him by surprise. He had tried to stimulate growth when away from Audrey; once in the toilet at home, and once again at work. Nothing helped. Frank had no desire for sex at all. If a pretty woman walked past him on the street, he gave a cursory glance before feeling indifferent towards her tight young body. During the night, he had awaked to Audrey's moaning and felt no twinge or stiffness from within his pyjama bottoms. His libido was lost, and in contrast, Audrey's was on fire.

"It's stress."

Audrey walked over and placed the peas on the kitchen counter. Her hand fell to Frank's crotch and she began slowly rubbing the small bulge residing there.

"I have a great way of reliving stress."

Frank had had enough. He removed Audrey's hand and left the house, slamming the door behind him. He arrived at the pub fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds later. As before, it was empty, save for the barman gleaning a glass behind the bar. Upon seeing Frank, he raised his head and began pouring another drink.

"Not for me," Frank shouted as he approached the bar.

The barman stopped and placed the pint back down. Frank puffed out his chest and slammed his hands on the granite surface. His face was ruddy, a deep vein protruding from his left temple.

"I don't know what kind of voodoo magic you're into here, but I want none of it."

"Things not working out?"

"No, things are not working out. My wife is a sex maniac. She wants it morning, day and night and every bloody minute thereafter and in between!"

"And your problem is?"

"My problem is I let you talk me into turning my wife into a nympho. You know I got home today and she was between the neighbour's daughter's legs?! She's half Audrey's age."

"Nice."

"No it's not nice. It's anything but nice. Audrey was this sweet woman who liked to read quietly and wouldn't say boo to a goose. I've never known a woman eat so quietly. On the weekends, we walked through quiet woodlands and drank tea from a thermos. We talked, but not too much. Just the salient points of her life and mine. She was perfect, but now if she's not tonguing some young girl's hole and screaming the bloody house down, she's sat on the thermos frigging her herself mental!"

"Why not just help out. Get involved more. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"I would but..."

"But what?"

"You know."

The barman shrugged.

"I'm 180 degrees shy of heaven."

The barman's brow puckered.

Frank shifted his weight, cleared his throat and motioned towards his pants with his eyes. "Do I need to spell it out? I'm serving boneless pork."

"Ah, well," said the barman picking up another glass to clean, "there is one way out of all this."

"And that is?"

"You can return Audrey back to how she was."

"That can be done?"

"Yes. All you have to do is go back into the room, find the picture of Audrey, and as you take it off the wall, repent your wish. Tomorrow, everything will be back to normal."

Frank was so happy he wanted to reach over and kiss the barman.

"You can't believe how bad I've been feeling towards Audrey. I really thought it was the end for us."

"I still don't see the problem, but hey, each to their own."

"No. I've realised that my wife was perfect the way she was."

"Okay then."

The barman put down the pint and walked Frank back to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he asked, "You sure about this?"

"One hundred percent."

This time Frank didn't need a nudge or push from the barman; he willingly entered the darken room with great enthusiasm. He passed the table at such a speed he knocked over the hammer and a mason jar filled with nails. The tiny nails scattered themselves all over the floor, the hammer making a clanging noise like a church bell being struck. Frank stopped and knelt down to pick the nails up. He could only see those that had made it into the light closest the back wall. The jar must have held about a hundred. He began picking them up, one by one, and placing them back into the jar. When he reached the back wall, he noticed the bottom layer of photographs. Some were old Polaroid pictures where the person in shot was out of focus because they were too near the lens. Others were from photo booths where a string of four pictures with the same faces, all looked on solemnly. Frank found thousands upon thousands of them reaching so far up the wall they seemed to go on forever. And it was about five layers up he noticed a face very familiar to him. Frank got to his feet with nails clenched tightly in his hand. Behind him he heard the footsteps of the barman approaching, but was so transfixed by the photograph of himself he didn't turn.

"I never worked at a stamp factory, Frank," said the barman arriving beside him. "And I never saw your nametag. I know your name and where you work because they were told to me."

The barman placed his hand on Frank's shoulder.

"I would have told you, but it's not good business to divulge any information about clients. You understand, right, Frank?"

Poppy shapes formed on the floor as blood dripped from Frank's clenched fists.

"I was hoping you'd find the picture while placing Audrey's on the wall. That's why I told you to use the back wall and not the sides."

"You knew all along?" asked Frank, his voice low and beaten.

"It's not like I expected you to walk in that night. You surprised me. One minute I'm hearing about how much this woman really wants her husband to stop pestering her in bed, and the next thing you walk in. Weird, eh?"

Frank turned around to face the barman, glassy eyed and flushed skin.

"She hates me."

"No, Frank. She loves you. It's just the sex part was getting in the way. It's quite ironic if you think about it. She came to me to have your libido turned right down, and you ended up turning Audrey's right up. Can't you see the funny side of that, Frank? The strange thing is, it took a nightmare for you to realise you had the woman of your dreams all along."

The punch was unexpected, even to Frank. He'd never hit a person before in his life. It hurt like Hell, but to see that barman's nose open up the way it did, and him fall to the ground, made up for the dislocated knuckle he later had fixed at the local hospital. Stepping over the body, Frank found the picture of Audrey, and like he was told, removed the nail and repented his wish. He then gave one final look at the picture that sat a little lower down. He remembered the day it was taken. He and Audrey had just come out of the Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota where Frank had spent two minutes in their anechoic chamber; a room within a room. That previous summer it was awarded the quietest place in the world by The Guinness Book of Records. While in there, Frank could hear his heartbeat, blood pulse and the sound of his ear buzzing. In those two minutes, he lost all sense of space and surroundings and was completely detached from this world. It was one of the happiest days of his life because when he returned to Audrey, she never asked what it was like or if he enjoyed himself. She knew because sometimes silence speaks volumes.

Gutterball's Labyrinth

When Milton Ball was seven, his father sat him on his lap and told him he was a mistake. The word was a six-inch nail resting on his heart. The hammer that drove it in was the reason. Milton's father produced a small fire match from his pocket and placed it in a plastic sandwich bag. With the match still clamped between his fingers, he began shaking the bag up and down until it fell off.

"I suffer from what most people refer to as a pencil dick, son," said Milton's father. "More than likely, you'll suffer from the same condition when older."

Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Wild turkey, he went on to say, "To stop some girl's uterus holding more condoms than a Durex dispenser, my advice would be to invest in a lot of elastic bands."

He filled a tumbler three fingers high, took a hit.

"I shouldn't worry too much though; you're so damn ugly you'll probably remain a virgin for the rest of your life."

Milton's father died two weeks later of an embolism. He bent down to pick up a bottle of Remy Martin and never got up. Milton found his father an hour later, face half blackened due to the blood settling. He kicked the body twice to make sure he was dead: once in the arm, the second in the head. Milton then prised the bottle of brandy from his father's hand, took a swig, poured the rest over his father's crotch, struck the same match he used to illustrate his hereditary lack of girth, and threw it on the body. When the firefighter arrived, Milton sat unperturbed on the staircase in the hallway. Feral waves of yellow and red flames crawled up the walls around him, and the only thing Milton yelled to the fireman was, "I'm a big mistake! I'm a big mistake with a pencil dick!"

The fireman who hoisted him up and onto his shoulder never heard a word, nor did he hear Milton cry out when, during the rush to get him out of the burning house, he banged his head on the doorframe.

Fifteen years later and Milton Ball can still feel the lump on his head, and every time he does, he is reminded of how ugly he is, and how wonderful a burning house looks at dawn.

Hector Bingleton is examining the head lump while in Milton's living room. Hector Bingleton is a fourth year medical student who lacks the bedside manner and discipline of his peers, but fortunately for Milton, he is self-important, cheap and lives next door.

"You say it happened when?" asks Hector.

Milton clears his throat, and says, "When I was seven."

Hector refers to one of five medical reference manuals he brought from his home. Scanning the page of Signs, Symptoms, and Diagnoses, he says, "And you say you've been having dizzy spells for how long?"

"On and off, five years."

Hector flicks a few pages and says, "Could be glue ear, but my best guess is it's BPPV."

"BPPV? Sounds bad," says Milton.

Hector looks up from his book and says, "It's four letters, and the first one stands for benign. There's no need to start writing out your will just yet."

Hector is overweight, bordering on obese, which means his face finds it hard to articulate emotion. The raise of an eyebrow or curl of lip that would normally reassure a person a remark was made in jest is almost impossible when your face weighs ten pounds. For this reason, Milton is unsure if he should be worried or not.

Changing the subject, Milton says, "The local kids, they've started calling me Gutterball."

Hector returns to his book.

"It's because I'm always drifting into the road, because of the dizziness. And my last name is Ball."

"You know what people call me?" Hector says thumbing a few pages. "Constipated, because I don't give a shit."

Milton laughs a little.

"Listen," says Hector slamming the reference book shut. "This knock to your head, the one you had when you were seven, it's caused fragments of calcium carbonate crystals called otoconia to break off within the semicircular canals of the inner ear near the cochlea. You don't need me to draw you out a diagram, do you?"

Hector doesn't wait for a response.

"The canals hold a system of narrow fluid-filled channels called the labyrinth, all of which sense movement of the head and help control balance and posture. On occasion, such as an inner ear infection, or head trauma like the one you had, one of these fragments can get into one of the semicircular canals, usually the posterior canal. It's probably been sat there for years, wedged in the labyrinth, which is why it wasn't apparent straight away. You said you've been suffering dizzy spells for how long?"

"About five years."

"Five years ago you must have knocked your head, dislodging the otoconia. Whenever your head moves in certain directions, like bending down, or even turning too quickly, this tiny little fucker bombards messages down the vestibular nerve, confusing the brain that results in a sense of vertigo. That, my ugly little friend, is why you have Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, and it's why I'm going to get a fucking honours degree next year. High five!"

Hector holds aloft a hand the size of a snow shovel. To not cause affront, Milton slaps it.

"Do I need to have an operation?"

"Aside from the face lift? No. There's a simple cure called the Epley Manoeuvre."

"Is it painful?"

"It's just a series of head movements that helps move the otoconia from where it is back into the vestibule." Hector misses a beat before saying, "Even your mother must have found it hard loving a face like that, right?"

Milton looks to the floor and through hesitant breath says, "She never got the time."

***

Milton Ball's gift to his mother for giving him life was to take it from her. She was alive long enough to hold him in her arms, smell his head, and ask the doctor if it was normal for a baby to look so wrinkly. Before the doctor could assure her Milton would gradually iron out, she suffered a major haemorrhage and died. Milton's father, unprepared for the responsibility of being the only parent did what most young men would do and took to the drink.

With no parents left to raise him, the day after the house fire, Milton moved in with his Aunt Bea, his guardian by default. She was a spinster with a skin condition that Milton seemed to aggravate whenever they were in the same room. To keep him happy, and as far away as possible, Aunt Bea would buy him pets, which she made him promise to look after in his bedroom.

***

It's been three weeks since Hector Bingleton performed the Epley Manoeuvre, and in that time Milton hasn't bent down to tie his shoelace, or lie on the affected ear, just as Hector had instructed. Every night he slept upright on a small armchair in his living room, hardly moving his neck at all.

Hector is performing a few routine checks. He first makes Milton turn his head to the right and then the left. He then tells him to look up and then down again. His final instruction is to make Milton bend down, touch his toes and return upright, as quickly as he can. Milton got as far as his knees before the world shifted beneath his feet, forcing him to crash over his coffee table and land face first on the hardwood floor.

Hector rubs his mammoth chin and says, "You've obviously not told me all the symptoms. You can't blame me if you're not being totally honest. Is there anything else?"

Checking his head for blood, Milton says, "I don't think so."

"No headaches? Shortness of breath?"

"I have a headache now," says Milton.

"I'm serious."

As the silence around both men developed, Milton did remember something. "When it's quiet, I hear things."

***

When Milton was eight years old, he assumed animals lived for only three days. Never any sign of escape, dead carcass or funny smell was apparent on that third day. All that remained in the room was an empty hutch, fishbowl, birdcage or kennel. Realising love was fleeting, even at the tender of age of eight, Milton made sure each new animal Aunt Bea brought into his bedroom was adored unconditionally: the small canary had its feathers treated every morning and evening with Aunt Bea's Oil of Olay to make them shine. The hamster had its fur washed with Fairy liquid to keep it clean and smelling lemony. The two goldfish, Salt and Vinegar, both had their scales polished with Brasso, and for the one small chocolate brown Labrador he named Biscuit, Milton fashioned small boots from an old bicycle tire, wrapped them around each paw with twine, and took him for long walks around the local neighbourhood. For each one of those seventy-two hours, Milton Ball gave his all to love and protect each animal before each disappeared. His final parting show of affection was to allow them to share his bed.

***

"Things?" Hector asks. "What things? Do you hear voices in your head? Are you crazy as well as ugly? That's never a good combination, Milton."

"It's not voices," Milton says calmly.

"Good. Best stick with ugly for the time being. Nobody locks you up for being ugly. Though I'm sure a few authorities might make an exception in your case."

"If the doctor thing doesn't work out, you should really join the Samaritans," says Milton.

"I would but I'm not gay. Now, explain the noises."

"I don't know...it sounds like...being in the woods. Would you mind looking to see if I have anything wedged in there? I read that on average we consume five spiders a year in our sleep; maybe one found its way into my ear and is stuck."

"You think there's a spider in your ear... one that makes noises like the woods?"

"Okay, it's probably not a spider, but it has to be something pretty strange if you can't figure it out"

"Who said I couldn't figure it out? It's probably just glue ear, like I said originally."

"Yeah, but what if it isn't?"

"I'm the medical student here, not you. I'll prove it!"

Hector reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a small torch. Twisting the head to turn it on, he kneels down on the floor beside Milton and points the light into his ear.

"What do you see?" asks Milton.

"When was the last time you cleaned your ears?"

Milton is about to apologise for poor hygiene standards when Hector draws in a sharp intake of air.

"What? Is it bad? Is it a tumour? Can you get tumours in the ear?"

"My light... it's gone."

"Where?"

There was a long pause before Hector spoke. "I'm not too sure I believe it myself, but it's gone inside your ear."

***

By the age of ten Milton would go through seven pillows a week, and at least one bed sheet. He'd kneel before his bed at Aunt Bea's, say a prayer to his dead mother and father, and fall asleep. In the morning, he would awake with a sore neck and no pillow. Aunt Bea would ask him, "Milton; where are all the pillows? And what have you done with all your pets?" But Milton never knew the answer.

***

Hector is on his fifth carrot and is ready with a foot-long cumber when Milton tells him to stop.

"How can this be good?" asks Milton, a nervous tremble evident in his voice.

"What's bad about it? Your ear has consumed two bananas, one orange and five carrots."

"That's not what I mean. How is it possible?"

"It's not," he says pushing the cucumber into Milton's ear canal. "But it's fun! Have you a melon? Nothing too big. A cantaloupe will do."

Milton tries to get up from the floor but still feels dizzy.

"Enough, Hector," he says, falling back to the cold floor. "I'm thankful for your help, really I am, but I want to be alone."

Hector lowers his head, a gesture halfway between guilt and contemplation. "You want me to leave?"

"Yes," says Milton.

Hector draws back, as if about to get up and leave, but before doing so, reaches out his arm and thrusts it deep into Milton's ear.

"What are you doing Hector?!"

"Learning!"

Pressing his head against his arm, Hector pushes against the ear and the canal dilates, stretching wide to accommodate his huge head.

"Hector, please don't!"

By now, Hector can't hear him.

A deep mumbling presents itself inside Milton's head. "I'm entering the Eustachian Tube!" Hector shouts. "It's frigging wonderful in here!"

"Please, Hector, come out! How will you finish your term papers?"

Inside his head, Hector replies, "Who cares?! We'll go on the road and make millions!

Milton Ball, the young man the local kids call Gutterball, can see from the corner of his eye Hector Bingleton's boots kicking out as they try desperately to gain the leverage to push his obese body further through the inner ear.

"I can see the semicircular canal!" shouts Hector. "And the cochlea!"

The more Hector pushes deeper down his ear, the dizzier Milton feels.

"Stop, Hector. The room is spinning!"

"I don't believe it!" shouts Hector.

Concerned, Milton shouts back, "What? What can you see?"

There's a long pause before he speaks.

"There's a dog in here wearing boots!"

"What?"

Milton hears Hector coaxing the dog to approach him.

"It's a Labrador, I think."

Milton shouts back, "Is it brown?!"

"It's hard to tell in this light... Wait....I can't be sure but I think there's a canary in here too, and... two gold..."

Milton couldn't catch the last word properly.

"I can't hear you, Hector! Shout louder!"

"I said there's a....with golden scales!....and loads of pillows....all the animals, they all look so...happy!"

Hector Bingleton's voice fades to a whisper and then surrenders to silence. The room is slowly stopping, and since falling to the floor, Milton is finally able to raise his head once again. He shouts Hector's name a few times, but there is no reply.

An hour passes, and then another, and still there is no word from Hector.

***

Milton Ball knelt in front of his bed that night and said a prayer for his mother, his father, and added a special prayer for all his pets and Hector Bingleton. He was sad that he would never see any of those animals again, and in some way, he was sad he'd never see Hector too, but he was happy that though ugly and alone to the outside world, he had within him a beautiful place where no one wanted to leave.

The Whore that Broke

the Camel's Back

If you were there, you'd describe the air in the barn as consuming. It drew water from skin, added weight to limbs, hunched the spine and laboured breathing. Flies would struggle as they flew through its intensity, the measured beats of their wings doing little to influence the mustiness of the hay. Hazel had bathed three times before the midday sun threw its weight upon all and sundry. She applied talc to the creases between her toes and perfume to the pale skin around her neck and chest. The shoes she wore were slight and open, her dress thin and light. In all her preparation, she never gave attention to her eyes, which remained as naked and pure as the day she was born. As if embarrassed by the inelegance that came from its application, Hazel would rub on the lubrication gel to her vagina in secret. Her reddened hands and slender fingers would later glisten when the sun slipped through the slats of that barn. No one ever noticed these details.

A crude pillory fashioned from disused railway sleepers dominated the clearing of the barn. Holes had been bore out of its hinged timber, large enough to accommodate the ankle, wrist, and neck. Its use that day would be to hold Hazel still, and allow the beast advantage without breaking her back with its weight. Hazel knew it was a crucial piece of apparatus, but its presence induced a chill, a feeling so foreign considering the climate. As she ran her finger along the grain of the crossbeam, a stray splinter pushed its way into the skin. She drew in breath and sucked away the first spill of blood that clung to her fingertip like a tired ladybird.

"Bet that's the smallest prick you've ever had?" said a solemn voice from behind her. Hazel turned, a move hindered by the weight of the humidity. Before her stood Boxer Turin, an animal handler with soiled-looking skin, walrus moustache and catatonic expression. In his hand trailed a thick length of rope rising towards a grand and solid neck. Over two metres tall, the camel peered down, picket fence teeth jutting from its lower lip.

Hazel removed her finger and replied to Boxer, "I don't appreciate comments like that, mister."

Boxer Turin's brow caved momentarily to express a look of bewilderment, though this was not immediately obvious to Hazel.

"You think it's okay to be insensitive and disrespectful to a woman? I would imagine that camel has more civility in one of its humps than you have in your whole body," she scorned. Again, Boxer appeared struck by uncertainty.

"Are you deaf?" asked Hazel.

"He is," said the same solemn voice.

Hazel directed her gaze to the camel, who had remained fixed upon her since she had turned. The camel blinked its long blond eyelashes once, and then once more before bearing its teeth. A clumsy smile, you might say. "I meant no offence, miss," said the camel. "When I'm nervous, I have a tendency to say stupid things."

Hazel threw her attention back to Boxer, assuming he was a master of ventriloquism. "That's quite a trick," she said to him, but Boxer did not reply. Instead, he tilted his head slightly to one side like a dog receiving commands from its owner. The camel leaned his long neck forward, exhaling fusty breath upon Hazel's face.

"Boxer here is dumb, too," he replied quietly. "I'm probably the only camel in the history of the world to ever be able to speak with humans, and I get lumbered with a retard."

Well accustomed to the peculiarities of certain animals, in particular their reticence towards intimacy, over the years Hazel had been privy to some strange sounds. To those pertaining to the equidae family, a large proportion of Hazel's time could be spent sitting with the animal in its stable, not saying a word. To gain their trust, she would bring sugar lumps and raw carrots in small brown paper bags, but even then, she had known colts and yearlings to express a keen displeasure toward her company. In moments of distrust, a horse can become agitated and feral. They can strike a human with their hooves and depending upon where struck, kill a person dead on the spot.

One time, while advancing towards a coal-black stallion, Hazel was sure she heard that horse say no. From a faltering whinny that horse voiced its disapproval towards her advances, and to this day she remembers how clear that command was. No. She also once believed a sheep had bleated out her name mid-session too, but as it turned out it was the camera operator asking Hazel to force back her rear towards the animal. It would be strange to concede that maybe all those animals had the ability to converse, but remained dumb to avoid the awkwardness of the situation.

"Say something else," said Hazel to the camel.

The camel withdrew its head so it was looking down upon her. "My name is Horace. I'm a ten-year old Batrican living here with my trainer, Boxer. Before that, I lived with other camels on a farm that overlooked a beautiful wooded estuary. People would come ride me and tickle my ears, but one day some little child stuck his finger in my eye. Hurt like hell. The people that owned the farm had to reassure the family that I was a placid camel and that I normally don't bite. To avoid being put down, old Boxer here took me in. Now my life is pretty dull. I carry Boxer around his land while he collects wood before selling it to folks in the town. I'm what they call a beast of burden."

Hazel ran the back of her hand across her mouth. The salt that had collected upon her skin glazed her lips, reminding her that this was no dream. She drew that same soft hand across her eyes, and in that fleeting moment of blackness, she feared the heat had dehydrated her, bringing on a delirium. As light crawled over the world before her again, the camel form came to life.

"So, what's this for?" asked Horace, looking towards the pillory.

"It'll be used to hold me still. I'm sorry," Hazel said, snapping back into the room, "do you know you can speak?"

Horace's eyes narrowed. "Do you?" he asked.

"Of course I do. But I'm a human and you're an animal."

"I'm a mammal, actually," corrected Horace.

"But it's impossible for a camel to talk; it'd be like, erm..." Hazel stumbled trying to find an appropriate analogy.

"Passing a camel through the eye of a needle?" suggested Horace. "It's improbable, but not impossible."

"You mean you've actually been through the eye of a needle?"

"No, that's impossible. The perception that all animals and mammals that are not human have the inability to talk is improbable, but that's not to say it can't be done."

"How?" asked Hazel.

"First, why do you need to remain still?"

Hazel glanced at the pillory again, then back to Horace. "To avoid you slipping out."

"Slipping out of what?"

"Me."

The revelation struck Horace like a whip to his rear, provoking a sudden jolt that tugged the rope on the end of Boxer's hand. Assuming the camel had been spooked by a noise, one that he could not hear, Boxer ran his scabbed and damaged hand across Horace's neck.

"That's wrong," said Horace. "Does Boxer know?" Horace turned to Boxer. "Do you know about this?" he asked the dumb expression looking up at him.

Hazel interjected, "He brought you here, didn't he? I guess he failed to say that you and I are the main stars of a bestiality film called, The Whore that Broke the Camel's Back?"

"He certainly did. Bad man," said Horace to Boxer. "I thought we were going to feed the ducks in the park?"

Boxer smiled and exhaled a muted whisper of concern. From his pocket, he pulled out three dried strips of jerky and held them up to Horace. "No way. You're not winning me over that way. I'd rather starve to death than sleep with that woman. No offence," said Horace returning to Hazel.

"Am I that repulsive?" asked Hazel.

"No, it's nothing like that. You're very pretty."

"Then what?"

"You're just not my type."

"Camel's have types?"

"You'll be surprised to know they do, and they're mostly other camels."

"To be honest, I prefer horses, but they're paying me double."

"Prefer?" questioned Horace. "You mean you've done this before?"

"I find animals attractive. Don't look at me like that."

"I can't look at you any other way. I have the inability to express emotion."

"Then don't look at me at all."

"If anyone should be offended here, it should be me," said Horace.

"And why would that be?"

"The only reason you're here is because you're getting paid extra. How do you think that makes me feel knowing that I'm not as good as a horse?"

"I said I prefer horses. I don't really know many camels."

"But clearly your predetermined idea of a camel was grotesque enough to warrant subsiding?"

"I assumed you were all unkempt and smelly."

"I'll have you know I bath twice weekly."

"Maybe, but your breath smells."

"That's down to a poor diet of jerky and leaves. Boxer here isn't made of money, you know. Plus, I'm also experiencing a little gingivitis that isn't helping."

"Horses are just prettier."

"My great, great, great grandfather was horse. I bet you never knew that?"

"I didn't. So you're a half-breed?"

"No. A committee got hold of him and the rest is history."

"But you said I wasn't your type."

"True. So let's call it a draw then. Boxer and me will leave and go feed the ducks, and you can go to a stable and do whatever it is you do."

"I don't think the camera man is going to be happy about that, or the person who paid Boxer and me."

"Boxer is getting paid?" Horace looked back to Boxer again and tugged on the rope to attract his attention. "And when were you going to tell me this, before or after I violated this young woman? Boxer, this whole day has me questioning your loyalty to me. I think once we've been to the park to feed the ducks, you and I need to sit down and get a few things straight."

Boxer patted Horace on his nose and smiled.

Turning back to Hazel, Horace said, "We can't do this."

"I'm not happy about it either, but we're here now, and to be honest, I was hoping to buy a puppy with the money. I've had my heart set on this little pug in the local pet store."

"No, you don't understand. I can't do this."

Hazel glanced through Horace's legs, as if beyond she would find a vacant patch of bald skin and scar tissue where an appendage once hung.

"You'll be pleased to know I have all my bits," said Horace, "but that's not the reason I can't go ahead with this. I'm gay."

"You're gay?" asked Hazel, more surprised at that revelation than when she first heard Horace speak.

"Yes. I came out three years ago. It was a surprise to a few camels that knew me, and well, it was a surprise to me. I never really gave it much thought before, you know, sexual attraction. When I lived at the camel farm, they never forced us to mate with the female camels. I knew a few who did, but that stuff never interested me. I preferred to walk in the woods and listen to the birdsong. Then one day, Demetrio arrived. He was a dromedary with wonderful golden hair like shifting desert sands. Long, slender legs and eyes you could swim in. He would run around the paddock every morning and bring in winds that perfumed the air. I would follow him and eat from the same haystacks, and when other camels would go near him, I felt an envy that was all-consuming."

"You're gay?" Hazel repeated.

"I'm opening up here and all you want is clarification?"

"Sorry... Did you ever tell Demetrio how you felt?"

"God no. I was in love. The thought that he didn't feel the same way would have crushed me. No, it was better to live a happy moment within a dream then a life filled with sadness."

"Very poetic. Where's Demetrio now?"

"Still at the farm, I guess."

"Does Boxer know?"

"About Demetrio? No. I think Boxer knowing I'm gay might make him feel uncomfortable."

"So that's it? You're going to live the rest of your life carrying Boxer around his land and feeding ducks when all the while you're hurting inside?"

"What's it to you, anyway? A few minutes ago you weren't bothered about my feelings."

"I just think it's sad."

"Well maybe if I wouldn't have bitten that kid, maybe..."

Horace's voice waned under the weight of torment, and the barn around them creaked under the strain of rising heat. Within a few minutes, three men would arrive, soaked and weary by the same roasting sun. Each would have his own imperfections accrued by age. Fractures within the skin would divide from the corners of one man's eyes to unite again at greying sideburns. Another, the tallest of the three, would carry a video camera in a bag upon his shoulder, his grand height producing a slight stoop, giving him the appearance of man with little self-confidence. The last of the three was swollen, sweaty with hair so fine that when the sun shone through it made it disappear. This same man walked as though a stone had found its way into his right shoe.

None of the three men had children, wives, or anyone who they could call their own. At night, they slept in double beds and remembered moments of their day when they met the eyes of a woman, one who may have taken their money for a sandwich or cool beer or one they passed in the street. The tall man would recall shoes of black leather with thin heels and the pallor of sinew expanding to a defined calf. The smallest man would bring to mind the colour of crimson fingernails as they worked the tense muscles of a willowy neck. The oldest of the three pictured the sharp edge of a protruding hipbone that peeked from a young girl's waistline. And as they drifted into a bleak and dark slumber, each man was united in their desire to see the flesh of a woman, which is why, when they arrived in the barn to find no woman or camel, they turned angry and bitter.

Over the following few days Hazel attended the camel farm Horace spoke so fondly of. She paid admission at one of the two small kiosks that were fashioned into humps cut from sheets of chipboard painted yellow. She walked the three acres of meadowland while admiring the many different camels. From behind wired fencing, she met a camel called Dianna, who had reared three calves and whose wool was used to make yarn. She ran her fingers through the dense coat of Augustus and wondered if the darkness in his eyes was a sign of depression or just a passing cloud that dulled the life within. In the woodland area used for organised treks, Hazel sat under sycamores that overlooked the estuary, allowing her thoughts to meander to Horace and his sad little story of unreciprocated love. From behind her chest, a dull ache forced breaths to deepen whenever she pictured him loitering in the shadow of Demetrio, his hooves stepping gently into the impression left by the beautiful camel.

On her second visit, Hazel attended an organised tour and learnt that a camel's faeces is so dry it can be used for fossil fuels, and that along with their long eyelashes, all camels have sealable noses to help protect themselves from sandstorms. From field to field Hazel ambled, reading the small name plaques that humanised each camel, but not once did she see Demetrio. When Hazel stumbled upon a young woman forking hay into a trough, good manners prevented her rushing in with questions of him.

For the most part conversation circled around the upkeep of the farm and dietary routine, and when Hazel finally asked about the camel who loved to run, the same one Horace had fallen in love with, she discovered misfortune had struck him in the form of myopathy. The young woman lent upon the handle of her fork and spoke with icy detachment about the muscle fibres in Demetrio's legs, how they had weakened and wasted away. The keepers of the farm would find him collapsed in the paddock, the fall sometimes hard enough to break the skin and facture the bone.

Despite the fact that he underwent treatment in the earlier stages, Demetrio suffered horrible cramps as his kidneys failed, and so to avoid any further suffering he was put to sleep. As she drove home, Hazel felt tears running down her rounded cheeks, though she did not know if they fell for Demetrio's demise or Horace's heartbreak.

The private-care surgeons refused her request. It was not ethical nor did they see it humane or functional. Extreme modifications such as the ones Hazel had described required procedures that stretched beyond their professional remit. Their skills were there to enhance the body and face, not to disfigure it. With their quiet and dependable voices, they suggested counselling sessions, long walks and time. But Hazel needed only a scalpel and a steady hand, not advice.

While pleading her case to an Indian surgeon one afternoon, the pangs of desire to amend her simple beauty manifested in desperation, and within that small office with its grand oak table, Hazel opened her legs. Upon the cool, soft leather chair, she lifted the hem of her pale frock and gently ran her finger along the groove of her black underwear. No words were carried on her laboured breath, and no instructions to cease her unashamed exhibit came from the surgeon's lips. His reserved eyes fell to her inner thighs and the thin slip of cotton that hugged the clammy flesh beneath. So pale were her legs under that austere light that the surgeon would later draw no better comparison to that of two ivory piano keys offset by the black.

To ease the process, Hazel descended into a reverie that skewered together images of animals she had known and briefly loved, and so vivid were these apparitions her fingers slipped behind the cotton, revealing to the surgeon the shinny cerise cleft between her legs. Her tongue accepted the polished swell of his penis moments later, absurd as it was, and if not for the rasp of its head against the rippled skin on the roof of her mouth, every part of Hazel would have been numb to the experience. Instead, she endured the disgrace and humiliation and the fetid taste of his semen, because in her mind she justified the act as a means to an end. The surgeon did not share her optimism, and as she wiped her chin with a small white handkerchief, he adopted the same detached tone as his many colleagues and asked her to leave.

Hazel later found through the Internet a private surgery that practiced the physical metamorphosis art of therianthropy. They specialised in turning humans into animals using subdermal and transdermal implants, splitting of tongue or lip, tooth filing and facial piercing to hold fake whiskers. Most of their cliental had been people who had progressed from furry fandom to the belief they were better suited in physical animal form.

The instructions Hazel gave the surgeon were precise and detailed. The humps would be fashioned from large silicone implants used for breast augmentation, placed respectively at the top and lumbar section of her spine. Hazel's top lip would be bifurcated. The cartilage in her nose filed down to make it look flatter and wider. The toes of both feet would be fused together to make hooves and small implants placed around the eye to make them appear bulbous. The pale blue of each iris would later be dulled with russet coloured contact lenses. Thin plastic moulds wrapped in skin removed from her buttocks would be fashioned into triangular ears, and long, yellowed enamel veneers would conceal perfect white teeth. The femur of each leg would be severed to accommodate titanium rods that would allow five inches of extra length, the recovery time of this procedure being the most extensive. Hazel would need to learn to walk, eat and adapt to the outside weather, something she planned on doing with the full body hair transplant.

The money paid --which by all accounts had surpassed that spent by Jocelyn Wildenstein and "cat man," Dennis Avner-- would never be paid back to the bank she had secured it from. As soon as the bandages were removed, and she could carry her weight once again, Hazel Beckett would not exist, but instead a wonderful bronze camel by the name of Carmel would hold the vestiges of her previous life.

Horace was shocked the day Boxer walked Carmel into the stable. What stood before him was a strange hybrid of camel and human. For one, Carmel had not taken to walking on her hands and feet, so instead staggered around like a kangaroo mastering stilts. Her eyes were constantly running due to the prolonged wear of the contact lenses and the long, fake eyelashes. Patches of pale skin were visible behind the golden pelt, and snot oozed from her nose, which she had long given up on ever breathing through again. She was how Dali would have drawn a camel, a surreal manifestation that belonged in another world.

"Remember me?" Carmel lisped between buckteeth.

"If I'm being honest, I don't think I'd forget someone like you."

"I looked a little different the first time me met."

Horace paused for a moment to reflect.

"I know I've done some crazy things in the past," he said with a hint of regret, "and that night I found old Boxer's moonshine is a complete blank to me, but seriously, you're not going to tell me we... you know."

"No, we never slept together," replied Carmel, "but we were supposed to."

Horace approached the figure slowly, moving to one side to allow more sunlight to fall upon her bizarre appearance.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to help me here."

"It was five months ago. One of the hottest days of the year. We were in a barn. Boxer had brought you to have sex with me, but we couldn't because you were gay."

While impossible to comprehend that the image before him was once human, was once anything, Horace finally realised he was speaking with Hazel.

"Were you in a car crash?"

"I could no longer live life as a human. From a child I had an affinity for animals, and it was after speaking with you and visiting the camel farm that I realised I had to change."

"You went to the camel farm?"

"It was as wonderful as you described."

"Did you see Demetrio? Did you speak with him?"

The death of Demetrio had channelled Hazel's own regrets in life and born the idea of her transformation. Alone in her home, she had measured the impact the news would have on Horace and decided that his days thereafter would be tainted by the same regrets she held. Just as a person knows the wind is always there by how it feels upon their face, or how it moves the tall grass, a life without companionship influences you. It drags your eyes to the ground whenever you walk. Colours are washed away. Time turns torpid. Hazel had lived like this for so long she could not remember a time when she had a voice speak to her in the night. Of the four-set dinner service she owned, all but one set had a thin layer of dust. Only one-half of the bed sheet was ever discoloured by perspiration, as was only one pillowcase. A single toothbrush stood alone in its respective holder. A bar of soap would last twice as long. Birthdays were forgotten, holidays never planned.

Christmas was a better television listing, a means to drink more without judgment. Valentine's was deemed a "corporate swindle." The only joy in her existence came from animals. They were undemanding, modest creatures with innocent hearts. Their lives were uncomplicated and blissful in their simplicity. But most of all, they were never alone. And as Hazel sat within her kitchen sipping nettle tea from her one dust-free cup, she knew if she was going to share her life with anyone, it might as well be a talking camel who knew the pain of abandonment. As Boxer Turin retreated for the evening, leaving Horace and Carmel alone in the small stable, Carmel's version of Demetrio's death varied from the truth.

There was no muscle deterioration in her account, nor was there physical pain in his final moments. Demetrio died a different death, one born of loneliness and a broken heart, all of which commenced shortly after the camel they called Horace had left the farm. And in that moment Horace wept, not for the loss of Demetrio, but because he felt complete.
