 
### IMMEMORIAL

D.L. Christopher

This electronic version was published by D.L. Christopher at Smashwords (2013)

Copyright D.L. Christopher (2008)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

The moral right of the author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
For my partner Lisa and for my son Dylan, with love and thanks.

## CHAPTER ONE

Jed had a plan. He had several plans, but this plan in particular, he knew, was about to reach glorious fruition. Jed entered the room of his dissertation tutor with a fixed grin, he knew instinctively he was not there to be praised, but was nevertheless content with the summons.

'Sit down boy,' the tutor was prepared for confrontation and gripped a few pages of neat, double spaced type in fists with whitening knuckles. He began to read aloud as Jed seated himself on the wooden chair opposite.

' _That the world was not a kind and wonderful place before Ernest Featherstone took the lives of two-hundred and fifty innocent civilians will be of no great surprise to anyone with even the most minimal historical knowledge, yet Historians of the last two hundred years have tended to use his actions and those of others as proverbial sledgehammers with which to drive in nails. Just as it is erroneous to fully attribute the rise of the Third Reich to one man's machinations, as though he were some comic book super-villain waging war on civilisation and it's most laudable 'Freedoms' (freedom in its most capitalised form) and not, as it actually was, the natural, though lamentable, conclusion of the events set in motion by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (28th June 1919) which crippled the German nation and left both the state and its people destitute, humiliated and angry._

' _Give me a long enough lever and a fulcrum to place it on and I shall move the world' claimed Archimedes – and this is how we should view the periods leading up to the actions of Featherstone. History is the ever lengthening lever, and on this occasion Featherstone was the fulcrum that allowed history to tip the world on to its side. Essentially it is my belief that the actions of History's most reviled men should not be viewed in isolation as a cause of upheaval, but as a result of upheaval. Just as you cannot reasonably expect to cripple a nation without invoking its ire, you cannot sponsor a fear of 'otherness' (other races, religions, classes) without expecting that fear to become resentment and hatred in turn._

As popular Historian Oscar Gelding once stated (BBC 'Featherstone and the Bomb' 2019) "England was already going to hell, Featherstone merely upgraded the postage." History, after all, is not made of individuals – only history books are – yet "those who don't know history are destined to repeat it" (Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797) and as such it is important not just to condemn the actions of such men, but also understand the history that led to these actions so that we may never see them repeated.

It is lazy both morally and intellectually to presume that any one man could be so powerfully evil (though evil they certainly were) that they can single-handedly change the world and as such we should not be asking who Ernest Featherstone was in isolation, but at which point on history's ever lengthening lever did Featherstone decide to place his fulcrum and why?'

The lecturer looked up with his rheumy eyes half hidden by the thick rims of his reading glasses.

'History's ever lengthening lever? It is morally and intellectually lazy? I must assume that you have written academic essays previously or you would not be sat here now – and oh that you were not,' the lecturer pushed the thick rimmed spectacles back up the bridge of his nose as he laid the sheets of paper on a small occasional table beside his leather reclining chair. Jed remained seated opposite, stony faced as his lecturer sighed extravagantly.

'You are of course aware that my own text Featherstone in Isolation has won awards?' he asked.

'Is it?' asked Jed, trying to stifle a smile.

'Yes it is,' said the lecturer, removing his reading glasses.

'I'm beginning to think, Mr Choudhry, that you are being purposefully difficult.'

'Nah, man, it's just true, innit? It's ridiculous to think that anything happens in isolation, yeah? It's all part of life's rich tapestry innit?' Jed grinned.

'I believe you must be smoking too much of that weed stuff that's floating around the campus. I have to say I'm disappointed. You came here on some very high recommendations from a good friend of mine and I would hate for you to waste your obvious potential on drugs and women, I feel I would be letting that friend down. At the moment _this_ ,' he flicked the paper sheets 'reads more like Hippie ramblings than a serious work of academic Historical research. I think you really need to reconsider your proposition before it costs you your credibility as an Historian.'

Jed laughed. 'Is it, yeah? I think you really need to reconsider your credibility as an Historian before it costs you your ability to create original propositions, yeah? I liked the stuff you did on McCarthyism, but since then you've lost it man. You sold out, yeah?'

'On the contrary, young man, what I have done is learned to operate within the constraints of my field. There is no room in History for conjecture. History is fact because it deals with facts, you'll learn in time...'

'Fuck that, man. That's like saying botany is a lettuce because it deals with lettuces.'

'That's not what I mean. What I mean is that if you wish to be successful, there are certain rules one must abide by and some of the more fantastical whimsy that occurs later in this extract has no place in History.'

'Is it? I don't need to be successful; I just want to be right, yeah?'

The lecturer sighed. 'I'm trying to help you Jed, that's what you like to be called, am I right?' Jed nodded. 'I just want to stop you making the same mistakes that countless promising young men have made before. Pride cometh before a fall, as the Bible tells us...'

'Whatever.'

'Your lack of respect is disappointing. I can't stop you from making your mistake, but remember that you were warned; I intend to pass on this warning to your father and expect he'll also wish to discuss it with you.'

Jed made a sucking sound through his teeth. 'Prick,' he said and left, leaving the door wide open as he did.

#

He left the building in a hurry, he had an hour and a half before he was due in work and thanks to improvements on the tube network, he would have to take an hour long bus journey from Kingston station to Ealing Broadway and then on from there to North Acton, a short walk from which was the monstrosity within which he would spend four hours attempting to sell people who didn't wish to buy, things he didn't wish to sell.

His father thought it would teach him values. What it was actually teaching him was that ninety percent of the population of England were utter cunts when dealing with telesales calls. As a result, he was even harsher with those that dared to call him.

He had been working part time for some six months, his longest job to date, and had seen it break countless others. Any slight chink in his self confidence would have marked him for the same fate. _The thing about people telling you that you're a cunt for four or more hours a day is that it's only a matter of time before you began to believe them_ , he thought. That kind of reinforcement was difficult to ignore and so chatty, lively people entered and the machine churned out pale, timid creatures, no better off financially for their short time on the minimum wage and irreparably damaged by the grinding torture that was the job.

He was doing it to prove a point which made it easier and he continually told his father that he was going to drop out of University to pursue a career in sales. It was working. His father had already made references to the possibility that the job could be affecting his studies. Following the meeting with his dissertation tutor and once he told his father that he had taken on another shift in the glass fronted monument to banality, he would surely see himself banned from working and his allowance reinstated. He would be victorious.

Once scanned and then seated on the bus he began to visualise the event. Fantasy it may be, whimsy almost certainly, but he found these mental re-enactments helped him to focus his mind on the history of the man. He had read virtually every biography, theory and conspiracy about Featherstone's actions and so found it relatively simple to add fantasy flesh to the dry bones that such facts and theories assembled.

He pictured Featherstone poring over electronics texts, learning the trade with which he would soon single-handedly murder more people than any other person in modern English history. In this respect he was not sure which of the images he envisioned was correct: was it the young Featherstone, irrevocably damaged by the loss of a much loved and admired father, or the aging man, bitter and twisted with hatred of the world? He couldn't be sure, but he intended to make educated guesses, and if the faculty didn't like it? Fuck 'em. He was going to be on TV.

## CHAPTER TWO

"Rise and shine Mr Featherstone,"

"Whu..." his throat was dry; the partial word scraped along his vocal cords and rasped through his teeth. It was enough, this grunted acknowledgement, to startle the white clad, cube shaped woman that had been opening the curtains. She told him in hushed tones not worry, but looked increasingly troubled as she began to back out of the room, her eyes fixed on him and as unwavering as her placatory smile until she reached the door.

He was alone.

Carrying out a checklist he found that both arms were working, although sore and stiff and that the same applied to both of his legs. The neck to which his head, he was pleased to discover was still attached, had a limited range of movement and felt as though he were recovering from some form of Exorcist style head spinning.

Then there was his head.

Oh yes.

His head was most definitely still there, though the aching was almost enough to make him wish it otherwise. He was thirsty. Every breath he took was air rasping over the surface of Mars, the stale, dry gusts crossing the barren red plane of his tongue. He looked around the room with the blurred eyes of the newly awake and saw a strangely familiar plastic jug with a blue lid. It squatted on a cheap and frail looking chest of draws to which laminate strips were clinging like drowning men to flotsam, their grip ever weakening and tenuous. Although uncertain as to why the jug was familiar, he was certain that it was empty. There were numerous other ways in which the room was familiar, from the peculiar way in which the dirty yellow light filtered through the lightly browned windows in stripes that seemed more to darken where it did not fall than illuminate where it did, the door which was complete with an anti-slamming brace and one long crosshatched pane, the faded and forgotten floral print curtains were a kitsch relic from a nineteen-twenty's housekeeping manual. It was all familiar yet somehow foreign. It felt as though he were on the set of a much watched film, or like Alice, through the looking glass, peering disconcertedly at the samely different, differently similar world in which he found himself.

He sat up and began consciously not to worry. It seemed a strange thing to focus on, not worrying, as the act began to generate a slowly rising level of panic. _If someone has asked me not to worry; were they, in actual fact, implying that there was something to worry about, but about which they would rather I did not_? _Should I, contrary to advice, be worried?_ He felt as though he should be, but there was a sense of disassociation, a feeling that all he was seeing was unreal and that at any moment the curtains of reality would be drawn aside to reveal the clarity of the world beyond. He waited patiently for this to happen.

He continued to wait for this to happen.

It did not happen.

Lying there in a semi-strange bed in a semi-strange room, he inspected the room with a distant, semi-amused eye, tutting and clicking his palate at the shabby, faded drapes that partially hid the brown window and similarly hued vertical blinds, sliding his eyes with a quizzical disdain over the off-white coloured walls that would die one day of sepsis, if the water stains and grubby marks were any indication.

He waited for the return of the woman in white.

The woman in white did not return.

The thirst was almost overpowering by the time he decided to find the kitchen. He assumed that she was a maid and that he must have stayed there previously for him to have recognised the uniform. He untangled his legs from the firmly tucked folds of the sheets and swung them out over the edge of the bed. It occurred to him that the sheet tucking had been a little obsessive. Perhaps I was drunk, he thought.

He didn't remember being drunk but the two things were hardly mutually exclusive. Had someone left him there tucked up tight in the bed and breakfast of the damned, some erstwhile partner in excess come guardian-angel ensuring his safe-keeping? He found that he could not penetrate the mists. All memories were insubstantial creatures of smoke cowering and craven. He clutched at them and saw them artfully avoid his grasp, the smoke of them coiling around his fingers.

He lowered his feet slowly to the floor, determined to find out exactly what he was doing there. His arms felt shaky as he attempted to heave his weight up and over his feet. The goal quickly became the zenith of an arc, however, and he carried on forward over and then down as his curiously weak legs buckled. The fall seemed to last much longer than it should have and whether it was lengthy or simply proof of the relativity of time, he had broken the woman in white's second commandment and was fully worried as his head hit the floor.

Somewhere in the distance he heard a woman begin to cry, 'Steven,' she seemed to be saying amidst floods of tears 'I shook him. I shook him.'

#

When he came to he was back where he had begun. His mouth was drier still and there was a raw throbbing above his left eyebrow. There were subtle differences in the room that seemed to creep in at the edges of his mind; each difference a needy child of his subconscious, grasping and yelping for attention that their clamour would deny them. He ran the fingers of his right hand lightly from the crown of his head to the tip of his chin; feeling, as he did, the thick mess of hair atop his head, wincing as his index finger grazed the raised lump, experiencing as if for the first time the contours of his face. His middle finger followed the rise of his nose as his thumb and smallest finger traced the sharp peak and trough of his cheeks and all formed a fist as they slowly traversed the thick but patchy beard below. He closed his eyes and sighed low and long.

He opened his eyes.

One of the cloying infant thoughts had screamed long and loud enough, had turned red enough, had stomped and spun and cried enough for his mind to scoop it up into the loving arms of conscious thought. The light had dimmed, but there on the far wall of the room danced a small and flickering rainbow. His mind scrabbled to attach significance to this light show.

It was water.

There it was that the same plastic jug, with the same inconspicuous blue lid, sat upon the same downtrodden, formerly flat-packed drawers. This time there was water refracting lazy light upon the far wall and beside the jug a small plastic beaker. He reached out to the jug at full stretch and closed his thick, clumsy feeling fingers around the clear handle, an arm moulded, sad and immovable, to its torso. He lifted it slightly and felt it slip. A curse ground through closed his teeth as he set the jug down and grasped it in both hands before collapsing back into the bed as water sloshed onto the sheets. He then drank deeply from the spout. The lukewarm, lime-scale rich water trickled from the sides of his mouth and down his chin as he slurped, smacking his lips, eventually leaving the jug empty but for the droplets that still clung to its innards.

Only now, with his body's cries for moisture silenced, could his thoughts and senses begin to synchronise themselves.

There were other differences in the room.

In one corner squatted a commode, in another a bracket held a small, flat screened television, the darkened screen of which, like the black and studious eye of a bird, reflected a miniature room at the centre of which was a smudge of pale pastel that he knew must be himself, the pale pink of skin segueing into the paler blue of his pyjama shirt. He shivered, then dragged his eyes away from blank screen and instinctively began to look for a remote control. He found it a short while later in a pocket attached to the metal head of the bed. Gripping the smug, ergonomic controller like the hand of an old friend he pressed down on the power button and the television sparked into life.

There was just a blue screen.

The next and the next and the next: blue screen.

Then there came news footage and a familiar logo.

#

News is seldom good, but News, the news with a capital letter, is never cheery. The footage of riot-police pressing down upon angry crowds that greeted him did not concern him overly, a part of his brain desensitised by exposure at some forgotten time assured him that this was fine.

It was almost worth watching the scenes of casual police brutality, the lazily thrown truncheon, the nose-breaking thrust and crunch of riot-shield on cartilage was almost a forgivable inconvenience. Enduring the fast moving, jerky, phone captured images of men and women dragged from the crowd with semi-coagulated blood still dribbling in viscous brown ribbons over their tear stained cheeks was almost worth it to hear that familiar, dulcet baritone, that crisp _Englishness_ of the news reader. The reassuringly soft, male voice comforted him to such an extent that the report itself was briefly lost in the space between cochleae and consciousness. He lay back upon the bed and closed his eyes, drifting, allowing the friendly tonality of the voice to lull him, with its traditional, bland, understated descriptions of chaos, into a light daze.

'Thank ye very much fer tha' Jeremy, now befo' we return to oor nightly commentary oor with Bradley Turner...' a voice began, an accent? '... we goo across tae oor sponsors,' it continued.

What sponsors? He opened his eyes and began to concentrate. There began a short film that seemed to suggest life could be immeasurably improved by an increased consumption of a chocolate product. The next proposed that one should endeavour to re-live the 'glory-days' by watching repeats of late twentieth and early twenty-first century sit-coms. He was confused. He seemed to recall that the World Service had advert breaks, was he overseas? Then something even stranger, a bizarrely shaped yet cuddly monstrosity waddled onscreen and began singing at him along with a chorus of small children:

If you wanna grow up strong and you want to sing along

Then you've got to tell your mum and dad that smoking is all wrong.

It jiggled its tumescent rump as it danced around in circles, nodding its head and waving its arms:

Girls you tell your mummy that you want to be a dancer.

That her smoking all those cigarettes is going to give you cancer!

Boys you gotta say that you think football's really cool!

That you just don't wanna wipe and find there's blood there in your stool!

The creature then stood there as a firm, scientific sounding voice informed the viewer that there were, now, less than three hundred days of legal smoking remaining and asked him if he was ready to commit to his recovery. A number flashed across the screen, promising to direct smokers to their local 'quitters club'. Following this, the accented anchor passed the viewers across to Bradley.

'These terrible scenes of civil disobedience are brought to us by our 'roving eyes' in Bolton, Leeds and Newcastle where, following the rioting in Liverpool and Manchester the police have been forced to use tear gas and full riot protocol to quell the escalating demonstrations. A shame though it may be to see these people hurt, the Police Press Commission has released a statement claiming that this action had been delayed as long as possible and that accusations of brutality are unfounded. They suggest that video footage of two police officers, supposedly beating a youth in Manchester can only be staged fakes, specifically targeted effort to further destabilise the current terse relationship between the Police and the public in the run up to the tenth anniversary of the May 3rd Massacre combined as they are with the all too familiar conspiracy stories running in the liberal media this week.'

The day was becoming stranger still. He was uncertain as to his personal news consumption but he remembered a few things distinctly, like VA and VI Day when the government had declared, with much pomp and ceremony and following their decision to level large parts of Afghanistan and Iraq with depleted uranium shells, the final withdrawal of British and American forces, but a massacre? Surely, regardless of his viewing he would remember a massacre?

A schmaltzy fanfare followed this second report and was, in turn, followed by more adverts for products that one could simply not live without.

He changed the channel: blue screen.

The next and the next and the next: blue screen.

He flicked the power button again and the screen was blank once more but for a faded BBC logo in the corner of the plasma screen which burned briefly on and then itself faded to black. He closed his eyes and slumped once again into the soft pillows of his bed. What on earth had happened to the world since he had... what exactly? The thought crossed his mind to try again to stand, but he thought better of it, remembering the lump he had received as reward for his pains.

'Hel...' he choked and coughed as the word stuck in his throat. 'Hello?' better this time. 'Is there anyone... out there?' more coughing. 'I'm really hungry,' more spluttering 'any chance of a meal and some more water?'

He waited for a response.

The entrance of two heavy set men, also in white uniforms, provided it.

They hurried into the room, their eyes to the floor, their thick brows knotted above flattened noses, the muscles in their hands and arms tensing then un-tensing quickly and visibly as they came toward him. They seemed unusually nervous for such large and muscular men, but this gave them no pause for thought as they pinned him to the bed, their fingers, gristle coated concrete strips, weighed heavily on the soft flesh of his arms and thighs. He struggled briefly, cursing them, before he saw a third visitor enter the room.

'This will not hurt, and in your condition is a necessary evil,' said the newcomer, his white lab coat flapping open to reveal a well cut, well filled, dull grey suit beneath. His eyes were hidden behind fading grey transitional lenses that suggested he had recently returned from a spell outdoors.

'I suggest that you do not struggle. You will only harm yourself and we have been briefed, now that you are awake, to hurry your recovery along as best we can. We do not wish to hurt you, but needless to say we will if we are forced, Mr Featherstone.'

He stopped his struggling and lay there, pressed into the soft mattress with his mouth wide open, in stunned silence. He stared at the newcomer's approaching face; the stress of the situation throwing everything into sharp focus. The man's pores seemed to open to gigantic proportions, his grey eyes, a picture of professional detachment, were swirling pools of murky water waiting to drag him under. The needle of the syringe he raised as he ejected the air from its cavity loomed large before his eyes before it plunged down and into the prominent vein in the underside of his forearm. Seconds later, the two large men released his arms and turned to leave the room. Their movements seemed oddly slow and laboured, as though he was somehow removed from the flow of real time. He watched them trail to the door and leave, the first of the two without hesitation, the second stopping dead and, whilst his many doppelgangers caught up with him he turned his head; his eyes flashed a look of cold, time hardened hatred.

'Now, Mr Featherstone, you will sleep again. When you wake, we will... ah... talk about why you are here,' the man's voice had developed a strange echo that seemed to draw out the man's clipped words into a staccato pulse as he produced a small torch from his pocket. There was a click that rattled in his head, then a light. First one eye, then the other, orbs of bright white light lingered on his retina, somehow resembling the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. The blood rushing to his head completed the effect as the throbbing of arteries, veins and capillaries filled his head with what became the growling engine sounds of the approaching phantom vehicle.

He slept.

## CHAPTER THREE

Jed positioned himself on the bus seat with legs toward the aisle, back resting against the window and closed his eyes, his phone vibrating to inform him his fare had been collected. His hand crept to his jacket pocket to lovingly finger the joint he would smoke at Ealing Broadway and the haze from which would blur the four hours of tedium he would endure following a short walk from North Acton to his grey desk in an office that smelled of unwashed arse and stale egg sandwiches and was permeated by a sense of desperation. He inhaled deeply, already feeling the hot smoke in his throat and began to imagine the dramatic sequences that would populate the Featherstone episode of his documentary series on terrorism.

His conscience occasionally pricked him as he planned to sensationalise such brutality for television, but the rest of him thrilled at the possibilities. His father knew people, it was one of the few useful things his father did. One of these people had already expressed an interest in picking up his idea for a designated history channel on one of the digital networks. He was going to make history cool because, fuck it, he was cool, full to brimming with arrogant self-confidence and with balls as figuratively gargantuan as any of the wannabe Jagger's and Morrison's that strutted around Camden, empty eyes hidden behind ludicrously oversized shades and swooping hair-cuts.

He saw with such clarity that it irritated him when others failed to do so. It wasn't all about the money; there were plenty of things he could do that would make him money. He loved history; saw it as a way by which the world could heal. Surely if people understood that those committing atrocities were not fantastical bogeymen with mystical abilities, that they were human beings that shit and pissed and put their pants on one leg at a time like everyone else then they'd lose some of their power, maybe lose some of their allure for future crazies. He was certain that when teaching about Hitler, for example, children should be told about his desire to be urinated upon.

He saw the episode on Featherstone as a kind of David Copperfield portrait "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show..."

He would start from a dramatic retelling of the days before the attack and then in the great Hollywood tradition flash back to birth and, from there, explore not only the personal life of the man but the socio-political and economical influences on Featherstone's life. It had been done before in the biographies of others and as Featherstone was unable to comment, a lot would be supposition, but he wanted to show not only what made a man commit such an atrocity, but also what made the man and he wanted it to reach a wide audience. Maybe his dissertation tutor was right that it was not strictly academic, but if inference from evidence was good enough for science then surely it was good enough for history?

He opened his eyes, disturbed from his train of thought by the fact that the bus had not moved for a couple of minutes, he looked to the driver and noticed with annoyance, but no real surprise, that he was sat reading one of the free papers as every pair of eyes on the bus bored into him with the magnified hatred of the civil and powerless; to say anything would be both rude and a reason for the bus driver to prolong his rest stop. Jed hated bus drivers, feeling that when the floods and snows came, bus drivers would be burned as fuel for having pushed so many people into cars with their surly ineptitude. He deeply wished for some sort of chronic plague communicable only through interaction with the steering wheel of a bus. He was going to be late again, doing the Olympic speed waddle past the call centre manager's desk; head down, hoping no one would notice, invariably being noticed.

Eventually the tension on the bus must have become unbearable even for the driver and the bus trundled back into the traffic to resume its circuitous route to Ealing. Jed rooted his phone from out of his jacket and proceeded to root through his albums looking for a suitable sound track for the journey. The sadist in him suggested he download Wheels on the Bus and broadcast it to the other passengers, but the amusement would have been short lived and followed quickly by a lynching. He chuckled to himself, selected the shuffle function, put in his earphones and returned the phone to his pocket. Ordinarily he would have watched a documentary or listened to an audio-book but he wanted his mind to be free to wander as he constructed his masterpiece. He relaxed against the window and once more closed his eyes.

# # #

BLANK SCREEN.

VOICE OVER

The events that took place today have shaken the world and left hundreds dead and many more are wounded.

Images flash briefly of news footage from the explosion's aftermath.

VOICE OVER

Police are still hunting for the man responsible for the attack but at this time are not ruling out an act of terrorism. They wish to speak to this man in connection with the attack and urge any members of the public who may know of his whereabouts to come forward immediately.

Men, women and children SCREAM and CRY in horror as we watch CCTV footage of ERNEST FEATHERSTONE's exit from the hotel lobby.

CUT TO: BLANK SCREEN.

Sirens WAIL, the sound of multiple NEWS REPORTS mingle with SIRENS and CRIES, becoming an indistinguishable CACOPHONY of sound.

SILENCE.

OPENING CREDITS ROLL.

# # #

Jed's phone interrupted his daydreaming with an ironically selected retro cartoon theme tune which took the place of a nineteen-ninety's dance track in his ears. He berated himself for failing to put on his call divert.

'Answer,' he said into the small microphone built in to his earphones.

'I need to talk to you right now,' his father had little time for preliminaries when it came to conversations with his family's black sheep.

'I'm on the bus, yeah?'

'I don't care where the hell you are; we need to speak right now.'

'Is it? I was gonna call you later anyway, what's wrong, yeah?'

'Drop the bloody charade for Allah's sake; you're from Richmond, not the bloody Bronx. Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to have Bamford keep your place open after you had yourself locked up? Do you have any idea? Do you?'

'Was it lots?'

'Don't you dare be facetious with me young man, don't you bloody dare. I have worked hard to build myself a reputation; I will not have you ruin it for me. What do you think you're playing at? I had your dissertation tutor on the phone, you called him a prick?'

'He is a prick, yeah?'

'That's not the point, he's also an obvious fairy, but I wouldn't want you calling him that either. I want you out of that job, it's affecting your studies and I'm not sure you can do both.'

'But dad, I'm doing really well, yeah? I've just taken on another shift, innit? I think I could go really far, yeah?' Jed was struggling not to smile, trying not to overplay it.

'I will not have a son of mine playing at being a bloody salesman. I've worked hard to give you a chance; I will not see you throw it away.'

'It was your idea though, yeah?'

'Well now it's my idea for you to quit, so quit. I expect it done by tomorrow.'

'Is it? What about money, innit? How am I going to pay my rent, yeah?' he was almost there, so close.

'What are you earning, about fifteen-hundred?'

More like six. 'Yeah, it's about that.'

'I'll pay it into your account on the first of every month. I'll speak to you tomorrow,' his father hung up. He'd doubled his income. He grinned for the remainder of the bus journey and swung himself out of his seat with enthusiasm when he reached Ealing. He skipped off of the bus and went straight into his pocket, straightening out his spliff and lighting it in a fluid, well practiced motion.

Shortly after finishing, he wandered languidly through the station, was scanned, charged the fare and sat on a central line tube train awaiting departure with heavy, drooping lids. He set an alarm twenty minutes ahead and fell immediately asleep, waking if things went to plan, just short of Acton North station.

## CHAPTER FOUR

He heard a shuffling sound outside the room and the clonk-clink of the door.

'Are you awake?' a female voice.

He was awake, but only barely; the sedative he had been given still held dominion over his motor-skills, though behind his heavy lidded eyes there lurked a fully functioning mind. The feeling was an odd one, seeming to reinforce the dislocation he had already been feeling. The drugs had removed him further from reality. First he had seemed to lose the ability to flex all but the most rudimentary parts of his mind, now the same had happened to his body. His eyelids still flickered and his tongue roved; like a caged, demented tiger in the zoological enclosure of his mouth, but the major muscle-groups were ignoring him.

'I've brought you breakfast, Mr Featherstone.'

He tried to sit up, to turn and face this angel, but could not. His body rebelled and he remained static; staring at the pock-marked ceiling where, oblivious to all else, a small house-spider weaved its way between the ceiling tiles and the strip lights. All he could do was to thrash around behind his own eyes and poke his tongue at his teeth. He wanted to scream; to cry out to this friendly voice that he needed help, that he was trapped here, but there was no response. He felt a hand rest gently on his thigh.

'I hope you enjoy it. The people in these rooms generally don't get the good stuff, but I thought you'd need it, what with... well... you'd know better than me wouldn't you?'

She moved her hand along his thigh, smoothing the wrinkled blankets, sending electrical surges up and down his prone body. How long had he been here for this simple, innocent touch to cause such an intensity of feeling? Why couldn't he remember?

Why was she still stroking?

'I don't know if you heard me when I visited, but I wanted to tell you that, well, that I'm so... well...'

Clonk-clink

'That you're what exactly, Nurse Pritchard?'

Nurse? _Nurse_? That voice, the man with the syringe, the woman opening the drapes and this latest woman with her soft voice and roaming hands, of course, he thought.

'Nothing Doctor; I was just thinking out loud,' her voice faded as she retreated from the room. 'I'm sorry. I'll see you again Mr Featherstone,' she said.

Clonk-clink

He was in a hospital. The fear drained from him. He relaxed. He was in no danger. Even the bespectacled injector was not to be feared. 'Praise the Hippocratic Oath!' he thought and must have managed a laugh, the doctor turned his attention on him suddenly.

'Ah, Mr Featherstone you are with us? The dosage must have been slightly stronger than I had thought; you really can't get the staff these days, not with so much choice for the better ones. I can only apologise. Still, it's not strictly necessary for this to be a quick meeting, my schedule is clear today.'

_The more things change_ , he thought; _private practices and hospitals creaming off the talent and the patients suffer._

'It's fine for us to spend a few hours today talking things over. I expect, once you are more, ah... yourself, you will have a number of questions. Frankly, it will be our last meeting for a week, so I am happy to extend it, within reason. Suffice to say, my role has me travelling a good deal, but we shall meet again upon my return.'

The consistent use of modifiers, the constantly implied simplicity would perhaps have irritated him, were it not for the nature of the relationship which acted as a palliative. The doctor was there to care for him, to hasten his recuperation from whatever it was with which he was afflicted.

'Th...' the words were difficult to form. 'Thank you,' he managed eventually.

'No need to thank me; none at all, old boy, none at all, it's my job, after all, my vocation as they say. Now that you're beginning to regain your motor functions, there is some food here for you, courtesy of the young Miss Pritchard. Perhaps you would care to, um... avail yourself of her hospitality while we wait for the sedative to wear off. I shall return in a few minutes and we will begin, until then, _bon appetite_ , so to speak.'

Clonk-clink

He struggled up on to his elbows, his arms threatened to give out at any moment as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. There, in front of him, was an English breakfast of sorts, the eggs were anaemic looking, the sausages burned and the bacon had a rubbery sheen. Despite its appearance, however, it raised a ravenous hunger in him and he tore into it as though he hadn't eaten in a decade. Grease dribbled in thick yellow rivulets from his lips and down his chin as he stuffed the breakfast into his watering mouth until there was nothing left but a pool of oils and tomato sauce on the plate. Sighing and sated, he fell back again into the soft pillows. _Things_ , he thought, _are looking up_.

The food made him tired; he began to drift in and out of sleep. He couldn't be sure how long he waited, the stripes of light that infiltrated the room had remained in almost the same position, but he had no idea how much time had passed when he opened his eyes wide, surprised by the sound of the door.

Conk-clink

'Quite an appetite you have there, it seems, Mr Featherstone. Though I suppose I should find it hardly surprising,' the doctor performed a practiced gesture; he slowly lowered the once again grey, fading spectacles and peered over the top. 'How are you feeling now?'

'Better, thank you. I had no idea how hungry I was,' it was true; he did feel a great deal better. The food and discovering his location had eased his anxiety.

'Very good, Mr Featherstone, very good...' then nothing, he merely retrieved a small electronic pad from his pocket and tapped away briefly at it with a stylus.

'I mean, there're a few things I'm really not sure about, but you know, better though, better than before,' he felt compelled to fill the silence and again was met with the gentle tap-tap of stylus on glass.

There was another pause.

'Better than before what, exactly, Mr Featherstone?' the doctor's voice was completely deadpan.

'Well, you know... than before I felt better?' he volunteered, laughing nervously at his own inability to elaborate for the doctor.

Tap-tap

'And when was that?' again the doctor's voice barely conveyed the inquisitive, as though he expected the lengthy silence that followed to imply the necessity of a response.

'I-I, well, I... um... I can't really say. I just, you know, woke up and now I feel better than I did then. I don't know,' was something wrong? The line of questioning was beginning to unsettle him. What did the doctor want to know? How would this help his recovery and more to the point, recovery from what?

Tap-tap

'What is your first name, Mr Featherstone?' the doctor's question was innocent enough but generated a new level of panic in him.

'What's my uh... m-my first name? I, uh, I... well... my first name?'

Tap-tap

Tap-tap-tap

'That's right, Mr Featherstone, your first name,'

'I don't know,' he felt defeated. There were tears now. He didn't know where they came from either. 'I don't know, I'm sorry, I just don't know, I don't know, I just don't...' sobs racked him, jarring his insides with their intensity; he felt they would continue until he was nothing but a desiccated mound of man.

Tap-tap

Tap-tap-tap

Tap-tap-tap-tap

'There there, Mr Featherstone,' still deadpan, not a quiver of the lip, not a single change of intonation greeted this display. 'Perhaps we should consider taking a break,' the doctor stood and moved toward the door without awaiting a reply.

Clonk-clink

The only sound was that of his miserable sobbing echoing in his ears, a discordant cacophony of sadness.

#

Eventually the sobs subsided and he was able to breathe again. He felt as though the tears had hollowed him out. He sat staring at the wall opposite his bed, watching the bars of light move slowly across the room; absent-mindedly watching the day ebb away until he was roused from his silent, empty reverie by an aching bladder.

'Hello?' he shouted out, hoping for help.

None came.

With less difficulty this time he disengaged himself from the sheets and heaved his legs over the side of the bed. When they were dangling over the edge, he rolled himself onto his front and carefully lowered himself to the floor. He was desperate now, determined to avoid another humiliation. Once on the floor he began to push himself with his leaden legs, to pull with his atrophied arms. Slowly, he progressed over the short distance between the bed and the commode, gritting his teeth as the effort of dragging and pushing his slight frame combined with his need to urinate, resulting in an inexplicably omnipresent pain. He was so close; he could almost reach the lowered seat of the portable toilet. He scrabbled and scraped himself as quickly as he could manage across the rest of the distance and finally reached the seat. He attempted to raise himself up.

He could not.

He placed his hands, one on each of the metal arms and pushed with all of his dwindling strength. He felt a sharp pain as his hand slipped off of the arm into the air. He gasped and slumped against its weighted metal frame. Blood welled in a narrow gash on his hand caused by a sliver of protruding metal on the arm of the commode.

He dropped back against the frame; he would not be able to raise himself up to use the commode. The tears resumed, joined this time with the blood that pooled in the palm of his hands and the spreading puddle of urine that gathered between his legs as he bathed in an unholy trinity of fluids.

#

Clonk-clink

The doctor entered to find him sobbing and recoiled at the acrid smell before turning to the hall, muttering something inaudible to an unseen audience. Stepping to one side, he allowed the two burly male nurses into the room. Again one of them looked to be an entirely blank slate, the other a picture of venomous hatred as they jerked him upright and tore off his damp clothes. The first nurse followed in their wake, carrying a clean set of pyjamas, a bucket and mop. She took a sponge from the bucket and began to drag it without sensitivity over his limp, wet genitals, then over the cut on his hand, making him wince; she then passed the pyjamas to the men and began to mop the floor as the two men forced him into clean trousers and shirt. They then hefted him into the air and deposited him roughly back onto the bed, dragged the blankets back into place and tucked them tightly. All in all, the whole scene could not have taken more than five or six minutes to unfold, after which the troupe marched out of the room.

Clonk-clink

He was alone again with the good doctor.

Clonk-clink

One of the men returned, muttered something inaudible to the doctor; he then handed the doctor a roll of toilet paper. 'In case he tries to shit himself while you're here.'

Clonk-clink

He was alone again with the doctor.

'Mr Featherstone, I do apologise, I understand that little ah... incident will not have helped. Needless to say I will ensure that there is a buzzer installed in the room to avoid any further... shall we say, embarrassing situations?' the practiced look over the spectacles.

'Th-thank you, thank you doctor,' he said.

'That's quite alright Mr Featherstone, quite alright. Now, I think we should return to the matter of your, um... condition. It strikes me that perhaps we should approach what is,' the doctor cleared his throat, this time pushing the spectacles back up atop their perch, 'in essence, a difficult situation more slowly than perhaps we had originally intended.'

'Okay,' despite the doctors continually implied simplicity, he was lost.

'Now,' he paused, briefly pursing his lips in thought. 'Mr Featherstone,' a longer pause, this time his spectacles were toyed with again before they were once more returned to the tip of his nose. 'Where were we?'

Silence

It seemed to stretch on indefinitely. He did not know what was expected; did the doctor just require him to admit that they had parted in the midst of a complete emotional breakdown?

'M-my name?' he said, filling the silence.

'Quite,' he wanted him to continue it seemed.

'I, um, well; I couldn't remember it... still can't...'

Tap-tap

'What year is it Mr Featherstone?' the deadpan voice was beginning to infuriate him. Could the good doctor not realise the stress he was placing him under?

'2018,' the response tripped off of his tongue without him thinking. Maybe all was not lost?

Tap-tap

'You're quite sure?' again, deadpan. Was he right, was he wrong? He couldn't tell \- the doctor gave nothing away.

'I'm certain,' there was no doubt in his mind.

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'How would you feel, Mr Featherstone, if I told you that your name was Ernest?' there was, again, no change in his tone.

'I don't really know, I guess I'd take your word for it. I suppose it must be, if you say it is. I mean, after all, why would you lie?'

Tap-tap

The pad and stylus continued to punctuate the conversation with repetitive question marks, each tap an implied inquisitive.

'Why would I Mr Featherstone?' asked the doctor.

'I'm sorry?' had he made some unforeseen error in his answer?

'Do you think I would Mr Featherstone? It's a simple question,' was that a hint of frustration in the doctor's voice? Was the good doctor losing his patience?

'N-no, of course not, I mean, as I said... you know... why would you? Maybe it would help if you called me Ernest? Maybe it would help me get used to it?' he was desperate to please the doctor, determined to show him that he was a good little patient.

_Ernest_. He rolled the name around his head, it didn't feel right, it chaffed somehow, but then he had not chosen it for himself, it was not important for him to like the name, only to resume his life with it. For better or worse, it was important for him to be Ernest. He smiled self-consciously.

Tap-tap

'You find something funny Mr Featherstone?' his invitation had apparently been declined. He supposed that it would probably be considered unprofessional for the doctor to refer to him by his first name but, despite this, he felt hurt.

'No. No doctor, I-I, that is, I just thought of something, the, um... The Importance of being Ernest... it just...' the doctor cut the explanation dead.

'Do you like Wilde, Mr Featherstone?' again he was dumb-struck by both the question and the flat air of disinterested, detached professionalism.

'I don't know,' another sob caught in his throat, causing him to retch.

Tap-tap

'Would you like to take another break, Mr Featherstone?' a trace of concern in the doctor's voice somehow placated him.

'No. I'm fine. I'm sorry, it's all just... you know, it's hard to get my head around. I mean... well...' again the doctor interrupted, reverting back to the dislocated interrogation, the deadpan inquisition.

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone, quite so, perhaps we should take an, ah... different tact. What do you say?' the doctor did not wait for a response. 'Describe to me how you feel when I say the following series of words: Mother...'

Silence

'Do you understand the request, Mr Featherstone?' again he noted the slightest trace of frustration in the doctor's voice. Was he imagining it? Possibly, nevertheless it unnerved him. He nodded.

'Quite. I shall start again: Mother.'

Silence

'Mr Featherstone, if you are not prepared to take this exercise seriously and provide answers when asked, then perhaps we should adjourn our meeting until my return?' he was not imagining it, the doctor was losing his patience. The tears flowed again.

'I'm sorry, I know you're trying to help, I do want... I am taking it seriously, but you asked me to describe how I felt and I couldn't. I-I, um, I don't feel anything,' his voice was desperate, almost pleading. He wanted desperately for the doctor to understand. 'I can't put it into words, it's not like I don't feel anything at the mention of the word... it's like, you know, it's like hearing someone say something in a foreign language. I, you know, like I don't have any connection to the word at all. No, that's not it, that's not it at all. I know it's a word, I know what it means. I just don't know what it means to me,' the doctor looked at him over the rim of his spectacles and again the grey waters of his eyes washed over him, he opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped.

Tap-tap

Silence

It stretched out like a radial plane, silence piled high upon silence as the doctor regarded him with a quizzical eye.

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'Quite unexpected, quite, quite unexpected Mr Featherstone, you are quite the enigma. An enigma indeed; I shall make my recommendations based upon your performance here today. We have not spent as much time together as I would have liked in this initial session, but as I mentioned previously, it is perhaps for the best that we take things slowly for the time being.'

Clonk-clink

'Ah, nurse, superb timing, here is your bell Mr Featherstone. I suggest that in order to avoid any further, um... situations, that you keep it close and use it at any point, day or night, when you feel you may require some help with your, ah... ablutions, so to speak. Thank you nurse,' the doctor nodded at his underling who promptly left.

Clonk-clink

'As I was saying, Mr Featherstone, we shall resume when I return. We shall begin with an initial period of two-hour sessions once daily, increasing or decreasing as necessity and time dictate, needless to say, I am a busy man. Goodbye for now, Mr Featherstone, I shall see you again upon my return. Until then, do take it easy. Rest whilst you still may.'

Clonk-clink

He was alone again; the only sounds were those of the building; its rumblings and stretches were almost organic. The hospital sounded old and mirthless, as though it had developed a personality to suit its role as a resting place of the sick and dying. He watched as the final two bars of light trundled slowly across the wall opposite his bed and faded into darkness.

## CHAPTER FIVE

The alarm sounded minutes later and Jed's eyes flickered open. The tube train was clattering to a halt at a junction outside of his station. He yawned loudly and stretched out into the aisle; ignoring the disapproving looks of the other passengers he swung himself up on to his feet, performing a Mohammed Ali shoe shuffle in the space between the doors. He couldn't stop himself smiling. Today had suddenly become his last working day; he was nine-hundred pounds to the good, free and victorious. The train pulled into the station, he skipped off and ran up the stairs, into the office, through the scanner and out again into the open air, up another set of stairs and then paused. If he was going to be late today, he was going to be late. He sat on the wall that bordered the station entrance and a piece of waste-ground and took out his cigarettes; he revelled in the disapproving looks as he lit up, inhaled deeply and let out the smoke with a contented, emphasised sigh.

_The final drops of oil are being dragged from the ground, the world is heading toward catastrophic climate change and smokers, not drivers are the pariahs_ , he thought as he caught a look of disgust from a woman carrying a child. If he were to smoke heavily at every person he ever encountered, the likelihood of him giving someone other than himself cancer were slim, yet hundreds of thousands died every year as a result of messed up weather patterns, where was the justice in that? In both cases he advocated the 'carry on regardless' argument, believing that progress inevitably had its pitfalls but also that science would inevitably find a solution if given the money and the time; if something were to be banned, however, he'd rather it didn't affect him. He flicked the cigarette into the waste-ground, briefly wondering how many of the butts that gathered like snow drifts in the corners were his, stretched and headed off down the road to complete his last day, now half an hour shorter for lateness.

He stepped through the scanner at the door to be informed that he was late again (a sixth instance, it advised him in a stern synthetic voice) and proceeded up the stairs and into the office.

'Choudhry, nice of you to join us,' said the office manager with an insincere smile.

'Is it? It's always a pleasure, yeah?' Jed said with a grin.

'You know we'll have to take this into consideration when we determine whether or not we'll be making you permanent...' he let the threat linger in the air.

'That reminds me, yeah?' said Jed 'have you got a piece of paper and a pen I can borrow please?' Jed grinned again as the office manager passed him a pen and paper.

'You know you need to log on to the dialler, right?'

'It'll only take a second, yeah?' said Jed as he scribbled a note.

Dear Dave,

I would like you to treat this letter as written confirmation of my resignation, effective immediately. I would like to say it's been a pleasure, but I would, of course, be lying and now that I no longer sell your products I am not contractually obliged to lie.

I find you, the company you work for and the office in general to be virtually unbearable; the office is filled to brimming with morons (you, for example, are a fine example of idiocy) and find the smell awakens ancestral memories of a plague pit.

In addition, I'd like you to roll this little missive up as tightly as you can and then I'd like you to ram it as far up your big, fat arse as you can manage, I look forward to seeing a picture of your face, as you do so, on the company website.

Lots of Love,

Jed Choudhry

'There you go, you massive, massive, massive cunt,' Jed said, grinned, then flourished the note.

'You what?' asked Dave.

'Have a read; even you must be capable of that, yeah? I'm off for a beer, innit?' Jed grinned again, turned on his heels and left the way he had come. The scanner on his way out informed him that he was taking an unscheduled break. He chuckled to himself as he bounced through and out of the doors, throwing his pass card over his shoulder as he did.

He added another butt to the drift before entering the station and along the platform to the far end, ensuring he would be closest to the exit when he reached Ealing. The way he figured it, he had been paid two days ago, his dad was due to deposit sixteen hundred in his account the following day which equated to a large bag of coke, a quarter of green, a bottle of JD and a messy weekend all round, during which he intended to get laid at least once. He grinned again; he could now safely set aside the faux-dissertation and continue work on his more grounded, traditionally academic piece. More importantly for the moment, however, he was free. He took out his phone and whispered a name into the microphone.

'Hello, hello?' a man answered.

'Alright man, yeah? How's it going?' asked Jed.

'All's well Jedward, all's well. I take it this call means you need me to pop to Waitrose for you again?' said the man a chuckle.

'Oh yeah bruv, I'm running low again.'

'What is it you need my good man, some cigarettes and some Duchy Sugar?'

'Innit, need about forty fags and a couple of bags of sugar please, Chris,' Jed could barely suppress a laugh. His dealer was a Cambridge chemistry graduate that had decided to pursue a more lucrative pharmacology career, even his slang was pretentious: Duchy Sugar was a product of the Duke of Cornwall; the Duke of Cornwall had been Prince Charles; Prince Charles was Charley and charley was cocaine. Rhyming slang four times removed.

'Planning a tea party are we?' asked Chris.

'Of Mad Hatter proportions, innit?' he smirked into the microphone.

'I hope I'm to be invited; perhaps I could arrange a little trip for afterwards? I shall, of course, cover the travel expenses myself.'

'How can I refuse?' Jed laughed. Although the statistical likelihood of their calls ever being listened to was small, he loved the innuendo of these calls.

'Superlative good fortune; then I shall pop out and procure the necessary supplies conducive to a convivial evening of celebration and philosophical discourse. I'll head across to your place at around six if that will be okay?'

'Always a pleasure,' said Jed, but the phone was already dead. Chris enjoyed hanging up on him and every time he promised he'd hang up the next time and failed. 'Bastard,' he cursed, chuckling and resumed his wait for the train whilst emptying his jacket pockets of the dried tobacco remnants that seemed to multiply there between uses. The train click-clacked into the station shortly after and he collapsed flamboyantly into one of the thinly padded plastic seats.

# # #

EXTERIOR: GOLDERS GREEN. PRESENTER JED CHOUDHRY is WALKING along the QUIET SUBURBAN ROAD.

JED CHOUDHRY

It may seem strange to many people that these quiet, leafy suburbs could produce one of Europe's most hated figures, yet nevertheless it was here that Ernest Featherstone spent his formative years. It is obviously not unknown for a member of the privileged classes to murder or to commit any other of the vast array of crimes which the human mind has imagined; yet somehow, for the English specifically, it is difficult to accept that a member of the upper-middle class, an Oxford educated civil servant, could be capable of such an atrocity.

JC STOPS WALKING to face the camera. There is a pause, over which can be heard the sound of birds playfully twittering.

JC

Yet that is precisely what happened. This man, whose life would be considered by most of the world to have been blessed, despite its own tragedies, was somehow driven to murder, with great malice and with exceptional aforethought, the greatest number of people in England's long history. In a single attack he was able to kill more than any Irish separatist group in the preceding thirty years.

CUT TO: A WOMAN writes a diary, the motion of her pen is FRANTIC on the page. A tear falls onto the page, blurring some of the letters.

VOICE OVER (FEMALE)

I'm so horribly down at the moment and neither of them understands. He left me again today, no doubt to see one of his women. I can't bear the way young Ernest looks at me when his father goes. It's as though he wishes me dead. He doesn't understand that I do everything I can, doesn't understand the shame of having to wash his father's clothes when he comes home stinking of those women. I wish I were dead. I wish constantly that I were dead, but I think that he does too. Not for himself, I mean, but for me. I think he believes I'm trying to drive his father away and that if I were dead that everything would be okay. I wish I could tell him, but I'm so ashamed, so very ashamed. I know it's wrong, but I can't wait to send him back to school. I'm such a bad mother.

CUT TO: JC as he SITS on a bench in a GOLDERS HILL PARK. JC LEANS toward the camera.

JC

Featherstone's life was not remarkable in a London plagued with the breakdown of family, his father a philanderer, his mother a bitter and alcoholic depressive. What was different was the boy himself. His teacher's have since described him as an almost eerily alert child, acute and intelligent, not to mention old beyond his years. As an Historian, it is difficult to now tell how many of these memories are coloured by his later actions, but we do know that his mother found him a threatening presence in the house from an early age and that his father cared little for either member of his family. One of the problems that face any critical analysis of Featherstone is that as a fairly unremarkable character there is little historical record and what does exist tends to be second hand and anecdotal. The man is as much a mystery to us as if he had lived a hundred years ago. Nevertheless it is possible to piece together an accurate portrait of the boy and the man using the overlapping shreds of many a torn page.

# # #

The reverie lasted him his whole tube journey and most of the wait for the bus at the other end. He managed to build a single-skin spliff which accompanied him for the remainder of the wait. It was still quite early in the day and he was now at a loose end until about seven that evening which is what Chris always meant when he said six. He had to decide what to wear and get changed, but that could wait until later, he was vibrating with excess energy and as cheerful as he had been in a long time, he decided to go straight home and try to get some sleep, maybe do a little work, but most likely play computer games and smoke until he had to rush around at the last possible moment.

## CHAPTER SIX

The strip lighting stuttered and flickered into life; sickly phosphorescence bathed the room in a pallid light which seemed to alter the room's dimensions. The walls appeared to close in and the ceiling rise, leaving him sat with his arms wrapped nervously around his knees. He was trying to force himself back into his former life, questioning himself intently: What was his favourite food? What was his favourite colour? Did he like Wilde? He tried desperately to project his former self on to the off-white screen of the wall opposite his bed, but was met with the static interference of his own mind.

It will come, he told himself, it relaxed him a little and he sank into the mattress and then into sleep. Somewhere in the distance, the same distressed voice was howling again: 'I shook him, Steven, I shook him.' Was that the doctor's name? Steven? Was he trying to guide this distant woman through her own personal tragedy? He felt warmed by the work of the doctor, no wonder he had seemed so close to frustration, he thought, dealing with such obvious distress must be tiring.

#

His eyes opened and were greeted by inky blackness, he was certain he had heard something. Something that did not quite fit with the groaning sighs of the aged building, but now there was nothing.

Or was there?

It was true that the viscous night had obscured all but the deeper shadows that lurked in the corners of the room, but a smell seemed to fill the room; that was not right, the darkness filled the room, but the smell underpinned it all, had become a foundation upon which thick, sensual darkness had been layered. It had the sweetness of decaying fruit and the musk of sex. It gave the room the air of a harem or brothel, as though sex and fear had been distilled into perfume. It unsettled him as much for its implied promiscuity as for its inexplicable intrusion into his world. These four walls with their grubby marks and water stains, the ceiling with its lonely spider and its harsh phosphor glow, even the squat toad of the portable toilet, they were his. They were somehow safe. Somehow he had built this desolate white room and its terminal furniture into his Englishman's castle and now something had invaded it. Something from a world he could no longer clearly see and was certainly no longer a part of. He inhaled deeply, the decadent fragrance permeating his senses until he was sure that he could not only smell it, but taste it, even see it; the faintly alcoholic taste underlying the sickly sweetness, the reds and greens that raced through the dark as blood rushed behind his eyes.

Schlup

There it was again. Like a plaster pulled from skin, a faint peeling noise less at home in his solitary darkness than even the smell.

Schlup-schlup-schlup

Clonk-...

'Hello?' he whispered. 'Is somebody there?' his mind and pulse raced, who could it possibly be, in this of all places, at this of all times? 'I know somebody's there...'

-clink

Silence

His heart was pounding. He tried to convince himself that this had been just one more symptom of the illness he currently suffered. There had definitely been another person in the room. He cursed himself; certain that if he had only managed to listen more intently that in this all pervading dark he could have heard their heart beat. Halt, who goes there: friend or foe, his subconscious whispered and he was forced to admit that he did not have an answer for it. Could he have been visited by an enemy here? How could he even have an enemy when he was not yet himself, or a friend for that matter? His pulse slowed. His one waking meal would not permit him the energy to maintain such heightened sensation for long and soon he was once more drifting. The thick blanket of the night once more enveloped him.

#

Schlup

He tried to restrain his breathing, certain that a careless breath would once more cause this mysterious creature to take flight.

Schlup

His lungs burned and red waves traversed his eyes, as he strained with the effort necessary to forgo air in the name of curiosity.

Schlup-schlup

He could no longer take the strain in his lungs and he exhaled, it sounded thunderous to his sensitive ears, as though it could have brought down the walls.

'Hello? Look, I know you're there. Please, say something so I know I'm not going mad... more mad... madder, you know; wherever you go from where I am,' he laughed nervously.

Silence

Schlup

Schlup-schlup-clonk...

'Please...' he said, tears pricked his eyes again.

Clonk-schlup-schlup

'I hate to see you like this.' It was a female voice. 'I'm sorry I woke you. I shouldn't have come. I just thought if I took off my shoes that it would, well, you know... it didn't. The truth is I missed you. I visited you every night, wishing I could talk to you and here I am running away. I'm sorry.'

'Wh-who are you?' I mean, do I... did I know you?' he said, feeling strangely disarmed by the response.

'No. Not really, I mean... no, no you didn't. I shouldn't be here at all, really. You must... you have to... look, please promise me you won't tell. I'd never get another job. You promise don't you? Please?' she sounded so young, almost childlike in her pleading. How could he refuse?

'I promise. It's not like anyone's likely to place any stock in what I have to say anyway, but for what it's worth, I promise that your secret is safe.' It felt so odd for him to have to reassure anyone, least of all this woman.

'Thank you. I knew from the first time I saw you that you were really a good man, even before, well, you know. I'm glad I finally got to speak to you. Maybe I could come and see you again, I mean, if you don't mind?' He didn't mind. It would, he decided, be nice to have someone to speak to in these dark times between the questioning.

'Of course I don't mind,' he said, giving word to thought 'I don't mind at all, it would be nice to speak to you again.'

'Tomorrow then?' she queried nervously.

'Tomorrow.'

Schlup-schlup

She kissed him. The nerve endings in his lips seemed to explode with the sensation and again his senses succumbed to the heady, sweet perfume.

Schlup-schlup

Schlup-schlup

Clonk-clink

She was gone.

He was dumbfounded and even less certain now that it had been real than after the first aborted visit. His lips still tingled, the nerves dancing in the embers of that unexpected farewell kiss. She had said she would lose her job; that meant that... yes, the nurse. He thought back to the hand on his thigh. They had to be one and the same; nothing else would so surely explain it. The nurse had risked her career to give a kiss and a fond word to this nowhere man.

For the third time that night he closed his eyes and began to drift again, this time with a smile. Somewhere in the distance a car-horn howled, its tyres screeched, but by then he was already asleep.

# # #

The following day began with a bang or, more precisely, with a crash as a breakfast cart was flung into the foot of his bed. He sat bolt upright, a scream caught in his throat, becoming a strangled croak as he saw the familiar white uniform of the male nurse. Despite his rough treatment the previous day, he felt safe knowing that he was in the care of professionals. The nurse picked up the brown plastic tray on which lay a white ceramic bowl and plate, both of which were covered with white plastic lids, and placed it upon the bed with a crash of crockery. He then proceeded to collect the empty water jug, replacing it with another, the water from which sloshed partially from the spout.

'Breakfast,' said the nurse unnecessarily and was once more behind the cart, wheeling it towards the door.

'Thank you,' he said. Despite the nurse's consistent surly demeanour, he could not feel offended. He was truly grateful for the care that was being provided him.

The nurse stopped at the door, blood visibly rising up his neck and into his cheeks and ears. 'Are you trying to be funny?'

'N-no, I just meant thank you for bringing breakfast for me,' he replied, again he felt as though a rug had been pulled from under him. Was this nurse really so ill at ease?

'I have to do this. It's my job. Don't mean I have to like it. That straight?' his face and neck were now almost completely red and veins stood proud from his forehead.

'Is that straight in your fucking head, mate? So I'll do my job and you'll keep your mouth shut, alright? Remember, you cause me any trouble and I'll do you, I'll fucking do you and not a single person would bat an eyelid. Okay?'

Clonk-clink

He sat in stunned silence. What have I done to deserve that? He thought. In the distance he could hear the meal cart retreating down the corridor and with it its furious pilot.

Weedle-squeak-weedle-squeak-weedle-squeak

Then it was gone.

He exhaled.

He felt as though he had not drawn breath throughout the entire exchange. He could not come to terms with the anger of the nurse. Perhaps he had had some kind of bad news? He tried to find the nurse an excuse, the long hours synonymous with the profession, the strain of seeing the sick that could not get better. Years of that would surely take their toll. He decided that he would attempt to tell him next time that he understood and that he would try to make his job as easy as he could from his position.

With this decision taken he drew the breakfast tray up and on to his lap and removed the plastic covering. In the bowl were the remains of two wheat biscuits in a small puddle of thin looking milk, topped with an illiberal sprinkling of sugar substitute. On the plate: two pieces of dry, brittle looking toast cut into rough triangles and a small sachet of fruit preserve. He noted with a wry smile that there were no implements with which to eat the biscuits, nor to spread the preserve. He plucked one of the biscuits from the bowl and raised it carefully to his lips, at which point it broke in half, sending dribbles of cold milk running down his chest. He placed the other half into his mouth with the delicacy of a connoisseur and chewed the still dry husk into a pulp before swallowing. He then picked the other half off of his chest and, in quick succession, did the same to that and to the second biscuit in turn, pleasantly surprised by the texture, even at the taste, what little there was, of the biscuits and the saccharine aftertaste of the sugar substitute. He turned his attention to the sad little triangles on the plate. Scrabbling at the packet of jam, he began to spread it as thinly as he could with his finger before devouring them quickly, the crumbs sticking to the milk on his chest. Sated, he lay back on the soft pillows and sighed. He reached behind himself and grabbed the bulbous remote, flicked the screen into life and skipped through the blue channels until he saw the familiar logo.

#

The images of England's great and ancient landmarks flashed up on the screen, surrounded by placard toting people, their venerable visages lit and licked by orange flame. To one side stood rows of police in full riot apparel, left arms linked around the shield toting right of their neighbour, their faces hidden behind reflective _Plexiglas_ that gave them the fierce look of men restraining fire behind their visors.

'Riots continued long into the night, yesterday, until the police were forced to use deadly force to suppress outbreaks of extreme civil disobedience. Reports submitted to us since by our sources in Whitehall have stated that there have so far been three police deaths and twenty-three injuries. This abhorrent litany of injury and death has been met with significant reprisals from police and pro-government activists, these patriots have now neutralised some seventy-two terrorists in the Capital alone, though much of South-East London and many areas of the North remain impassable for law-abiding citizens. Needless to say, the continued prompt and decisive action of our government has once again pushed back the boundaries of these so called 'no-go zones' and, in a recent exclusive interview, a leading government minister has re-stated the government's intention to have completely quelled these isolated pockets of anti-government sentiment before the end of the year,' it was the same poison pen propagandist that had been on the previous evening, all opinion and no observation. _Along with adverts comes the necessity to please sponsors_ , he thought miserably.

'In other news...'

He switched off the television. Perhaps he had his answer? Perhaps he had been injured in the early days of this rioting. Even this, however, raised more questions than it answered: was he pro or anti government? Had he even chosen a side? Did he deserve his injury, or had he been the innocent bystander so popular in news stories, the human embodiment of collateral damage? A human embodiment was all he was, an empty vessel, a soap bubble, a shell. The truth was that he could not imagine his reason for being and was beginning to suspect that he did not particularly wish to find out. If he did not think could he simply not be? ' _Si ego nolo cogito, sum ego non_?' as Descartes didn't say.

He began to wiggle his toes beneath the blankets, splaying and closing them, lifting his legs and feeling their lack of strength as the sheets weighed heavily upon them causing his thighs to ache. This was a problem he could address, even if there was no other. The blankets would provide sufficient resistance for now, soon he would be back on his feet and soon after he would walk the hospital corridors and perhaps even into the street where he would look again at the sky that coloured the good doctor's lenses. It would be no simple task, he knew, but if he were to walk the road of recovery, it made good sense for him to have functioning legs. He reached out and once more grasped the plastic jug of water from the chest of drawers. His arms would certainly need work too. He took a deep drink from the spout of the jug, trying not to drink too much for fear of a repeat performance of the previous day. The blood quickly rose in his face, flushing his cheeks as he allowed the self loathing of embarrassment to wash over him. He re-imagined the looks of disgust he had not seen as they stood over him and listened intently to derisive laughter he would never hear, dwelling on the damage he had done to his own self worth, to the chances he had of the doctor or any nurses respecting him. What an idiot he must have looked. How cruel that his first real knowledge of himself should be the memory of lying, covered in his own fluids, weeping like a child.

Clonk-clink

'Mr Featherstone, your doctor has recommended that you're injected with sedative three times daily to help your recovery. I am under obligation to advise you that if you resist...' began the drape opening nurse.

'Why would I resist?' he interrupted.

'That if you resist,' she continued, oblivious 'you will be forcefully restrained by any necessary means. Are you going to be any trouble Mr Featherstone?' He shook his head by way of answer. 'Good. Now, Mr Featherstone, please lie with your face on your pillow, your arms under your head and pull down the blanket and your pyjama trousers.' He did as she asked.

'Look, I'm not going to be any trouble,' he said, his muffled voice given a strange tinny echo by the spring mattress. 'I know you just want what's best for me.'

'I am about to insert the needle, Mr Featherstone; please cough,' he did as he was told and the cough earned him a quick and reasonably painless injection.

'Thank you,' he said, his eyelids were already heavy and weariness suffused his muscles.

Clonk-clink

She left without acknowledging him. It seemed, as the doctor implied, the best staff went on to the private clinics. The nurse had performed her task well, however, and soon after the door had closed, he was once again asleep, his trousers still pulled over his bare buttocks, his face pressed into the pillow.

## CHAPTER SEVEN

Jed ambled from the bus stop to the flat he shared with a friend on Old London Road. His friend was a real Muslim as his father never tired of telling him.

'Why can't you be more like Aadil?' he would ask. Just and upright Aadil, the ender of parties, destroyer of moods, killer of buzzes; he didn't drink, smoke or fuck; he prayed and studied.

Their families had attended Mosque together when they had been boys and they had been friends then. They still were in a way; under the sparse beard there was still a boy for whom Jed held a lot of affection. Aadil's eyes were a watery brown, deep and compassionate even at the age of six. He remembered wondering whether that had been how the prophet's eyes had looked. He had been eleven when he and his faith had parted ways and he had lost his best friend, though neither had fully admitted it, instead they carried on a charade and hoped the other would see sense and abandon their sins or develop some of their own.

Jed would never renounce his faith, there are some things you just don't do and so, instead of being a Godless apostate, he was simply – like so many others he had known – a bad or lapsed Muslim, eternally saveable because he failed to speak the unspeakable. Hs father was a moderate, but there were limits to his patients with his little Jiyad and strained as these limits often were, denial of Allah would see him cast out of the family for good.

Aadil always had a way of making him feel guilty, even on a day when he had been so clearly victorious the thought of getting home to another lecture on how 'excessive laughter deadens the heart' filled him with a sense of dread. His life, whether a believer or not, was forever affected by faith. It was something he had tried to explain to Chris and other atheist friends but they didn't and probably couldn't understand. They were from Church of England or secular families and so the idea that a God could come before family was alien to them, they viewed his secretive atheism as a kind of childish cowardice akin to withholding the fact that he smoked. His God, whether he believed in him or not, hated him and had condemned his soul to hellfire, it was not something his parents, especially his father, could knowingly tolerate even if, deep down, they already suspected it.

He entered the flat with a relieved sigh, Aadil was not in, he wandered into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and then flopped onto the couch, starting up the games console and picking up the remote control for the television and with it a note:

"Verily ye are in an age in which if ye neglect one tenth of what is ordered, ye will be doomed. After this a time will come, when he who shall observe one-tenth of what is now ordered will be redeemed."

I hope this day has come or will come soon brother Jiyad. I will be gone this weekend – be good in my absence and careful in the sight of God.

Aadil

Jed sighed. No-one called him by his name anymore; he had abandoned it at high school after enduring years of torment from children who called him 'Jihad' when they named him at all. It was at that point that he had also developed his manner of speech. He was educated, his family was wealthy and he was Asian, all these had counted against him so he had begun to speak the American slang of the black boys at his school which in some ways camouflaged many of the things about which the other children had made him feel so ashamed.

He cursed Aadil silently; even in his absence he had made Jed feel guilty. He crumpled the note and threw it over his shoulder onto the floor, knowing full well he would pick it up again before his flatmate saw it. Jed switched on the television, picked up the controller and began to kill Nazis.

_It's always Nazis_ , he thought, _never the Japanese_. He knew guilt probably had something to do with it. The Japanese medical experimentation programs at Unit 731 and the cannibalism practiced by prison guards had been every bit as gruesome as the Nazis 'final solution', though less widespread, but the Japanese were nuked and that atomic light had burned itself into the collective Allied conscience despite the fact that similar numbers of civilians were killed in the apocalyptic destructions of Dresden, Hamburg and Pforzheim as by Little Boy and Fat Man. Not that he particularly wanted to kill computer generated Japanese, not that he really wanted to kill computer generated Nazis – he was just as happy with zombies or mutants – he just found it a strange historical anomaly, would the African or Indian games industry one day resurrect soldiers of the English Empire for virtual slaughter? The chances were slim, he knew, but why not?

He spent an hour shooting people online, concealed in woodland with a sniper rifle before he eventually lost interest and began flicking through the enormous host of television channels looking for the tiny, concealed amount of content. The English rioting took up a lot of the news time, which never failed to surprise him, the last riot in London had been weeks ago, but then the news liked to sensationalise things, the north of England probably felt the same as Londoners, bewildered by the constant and overblown reports of violence. Maybe they don't, he thought, maybe everyone is actually convinced that the country is on fire? It must work on some, after all, why else would they continue with the propaganda?

He flicked through the documentary channels, briefly pausing to hear about how the tiny amounts of antimatter that had been produced at CERN and other colliders had led to the current technological race between nations for an economically viable method of mass production. The first nation to produce it in quantity and at an affordable rate would own the stars, they thought, and at the moment the most likely candidate was China – whose strange compromise of capitalism and state control allowed them to pump massive amounts of money into public endeavours and its harsh anti-emigration laws rendered the periodic, recession driven brain-drains that crippled other nation's efforts impossible.

He switched off the television, rolled himself a couple of joints and ran himself a bath, he needed to lift his mood again and saw no better way to do it than to relax with a smoke and a book in a hot bath, then he'd get changed, maybe even surprise Chris by being ready by the time he got round. There was, after all, a first time for everything. He padded through to his bedroom on freshly bare feet and stood in front of his bookshelves. He closed his eyes and selected a book at random: the Quran. He put it back with another pang of guilt and selected a text on Mesopotamia he had been intending to read for months. He found it heavy going, but his conscience seemed to have decided that if he wasn't to abide by his chance decision that it would at least make sure he wouldn't enjoy the alternative.

He shaved, feeling a twinge once more that it was _haram_ and that it was one more reason that Aadil considered him _fasiq_. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled, he was determined to get as messed up as possible, he hated that an imaginary deity still held such power over him and was planning a major act of defiance. He splashed on a liberal amount of aftershave, lit up a spliff and slid into the bath, sloshing water onto the tiled floor. He tried briefly to get through a chapter on Eannatum of Lagash, the founder of the first, short-lived empire, but gave in to his boredom after three pages, marvelling at how anything could remain so dry even in a bath. His mind began to wander again as he soaked.

# # #

EXTERIOR: HARROW SCHOOL GROUNDS. JC is STANDING on the TENNIS COURTS.

JC

It was here at Harrow School that Featherstone boarded for his formative years. It has been a home away from home for many recognisable names in English history, from Robert Peel, the founder of the conservative party and the modern Police Force, to Winston Churchill and has been educating privileged young men since its founding by John Lyon in fifteen seventy-two. However, though it boasts many illustrious alumni, Featherstone's legacy will forever linger as a dark cloud over the sprawling grounds. Featherstone's tutors marked him out as a particularly brilliant, though distant student, showing a flair for learning, but a sullen and uncommunicative nature that left him isolated despite his participation in many of the first selection sports teams.

JC WALKS toward the MAIN SCHOOL BUILDING.

CUT TO: INTERIOR, OFFICE

JC

I'm joined by Alistair Trevena, head of modern languages and former Harrow contemporary of Featherstone. Mr Trevena, you and the young Ernest Featherstone both boarded at Moretons, what are your memories of him?

# # #

It was here that his vision broke down. He had approached many of the other sixty-four boarders that were at Moretons with Featherstone, but almost everyone had refused to be interviewed. All but one and that one was quite clearly insane. He had received a long and rambling letter from one of Featherstone's classmates which basically repeated the more outlandish conspiracy theories word for word. He had not followed it up, despite receiving another two e-mail invitations from the same man, a quick web search revealed that the man had spent several years following adolescence in and out of institutions.

He climbed out of the bath, dried himself off and returned to the living room where he proceeded to hunt through the channels until he found one showing classic Warner Brothers cartoons, he lit another spliff and collapsed into the couch where, a few cartoons later, he was asleep.

## CHAPTER EIGHT

The world swam back into focus some three hours later. He woke bleary eyed and in a pool of saliva, the dried crust of which clung to his chin. He felt groggy, as though his mind had been leaden with weights and anchored in unconsciousness. He yawned dramatically, rolled over onto his back and smiled to find that they had brought him a wheeled table that stretched over the bed and supported two white plates which were once again covered with plastic lids. He wrestled himself into an upright sitting position, eager to see what lunchtime had brought him. Under the first lid were some pale yellow chips, dull green peas and a small piece of battered fish which he found to be more batter than fish and a browning slice of lemon. Under the second was a bowl of thin rice-pudding. There were even utensils. He began to eat, slowed only by the snapping of the knife. Despite the dryness of the main meal, he wolfed it down, pausing only to drink again from the spout of the water jug before he moved on to the watery rice-pudding.

It was not long before the sated, content feeling of a full stomach was required by biology to rectify itself. He felt his stomach cramp and wondered whether to again attempt to reach the commode, instead he picked up the buzzer and pressed it firmly. There was no reaction, at least none that he could hear.

He waited, his stomach now wracked with cramps as his sphincter twitch and eager to betray him.

Clonk-clink

The burly nurse entered, his scowl firmly fixed to his face and stood in the doorway.

'Please,' he said 'I need to... you know, I need to use the toilet. Could you help me?'

The nurse turned to face the corridor and jerked his head back over his shoulder. Moments later he was joined by the other male nurse and the two of them re-entered the room. Gripping him tightly, one under each of his arms, they dragged him from the bed, rucking the sheets as he was pulled like a vegetable from the ground. He was already beginning to feel the movement of his bowels, beginning to feel the loosening of his sphincter and in unison the unravelling of the last twined threads of his dignity. He scrabbled with his pyjama trousers, managing to drag them roughly down over his thighs just in time to allow for the evacuation of his bowels and bladder. He felt a mixture of painful relief and extreme embarrassment; the two nurses had taken a simultaneous step back. He caught the looks of disgust as they retreated behind flimsy looking ventilator masks. He felt a new wave of vulnerability.

'Could I have some paper, please?'

'Writing a novel?' said one of the nurses; he could not tell which, their similarity had increased so as to make them indistinguishable behind the masks. He forced a laugh, hoping they would be convinced.

'Not quite,' he said 'I just need to um, clean myself up.'

'It's next to you, shall I pass on to the doctor that you're having problems with your eyesight as well as your memory?' asked the same, or possibly the other nurse.

'No, that's okay, sorry,' he said, finding the shiny paper roll in a recess to his left hand side, there it cohabited with a tube of sanitary wipes, presumably for washing his hands. He proceeded to wipe thoroughly as the nurses looked on critically; absurdly as though marking him for style. When finished he wiped his hands on a length of the sanitary wipes. What happened now, he wondered, did he hold out his hands like a stranded child to be taken up in arms? Did he wait?

He waited.

Eventually the nurses man-handled him to the bed, he scrabbled with the waist band of his trousers, trying to halt their fall to the floor. Then, having firmly secured him once more within tightly tucked hospital corners, they exited in silence, one of them dragging the commode behind them on reluctant wheels that scraped and screeched across the linoleum.

Clonk-clink

As soon as the door had closed behind them, he began to methodically un-tuck himself by raising and lowering his weak legs, liberating first one side and then the other of the coarse cotton sheets from under the soft mattress. Only then did he allow the tide of embarrassment to rise up his neck and into his ears and cheeks. He needed to put a lot of effort into reclaiming his legs and arms to avoid these feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy. These, how had the doctor put it? Ablutions were things that even animals sought to perform in private and it was his intention to re-climb the evolutionary mountain and, as quickly as he could, ascend to this low peak.

He began to count the lift. If he were to mark his progress he would need to know from where he had started. He gave an arbitrary number to those lifts done prior to the decision, deciding that twenty was neither too small a number to precipitate disappointment today, or too large to cause a future feeling of failure were he to manage less tomorrow.

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

He began to feel sweat on his brow; the sheets seemed to undergo some kind of alchemical transformation, taking on the properties of lead rather than those of the cotton he had begun to lift.

Twenty-seven

Twenty-Eight

Thirty

Thirty-one

Had he missed one, more than one? Why couldn't he focus? He had missed one now, in the opposite direction, thinking when he should have been counting. Would that make up for the number he missed? Was he now behind or ahead? He let his legs drop. Either way he was exhausted, surely that should be enough. Again he assigned an arbitrary number to the exercise and relaxed, content with the day's total of forty repetitions.

Breathing heavily he instinctively reached for the television remote and flicked on the television. The news seemed to have abated, he was greeted with some sort of period drama: Jane Austen, or some such, wherein the female actors devoted themselves wholly, with much skill, to the intense expression of passive-aggressive sisterly intolerance and the deference to weak men that can only truly be maintained by a strong woman. He wondered whether he had ever enjoyed such things but it was enjoyable to see England without the weight of night and fire squatting upon its landscape. He lay this way in blissful indolence as, again, the bars of light and dark made their way around the walls; until the syringe came once more to turn out the lights.

# # #

The light in the room had taken on the reddish hue of evening when next he awoke. The more he thought about his situation, the more he felt as though he had been forced back in time through his own life to that of a new-born child. His inability to freely move about, the assistance he required to defecate. Not a completely pertinent metaphor, perhaps, he had never known a newborn to demolish a filet of fish in under five minutes, or indeed to wipe its own rear end, but combined with his feelings of helplessness and his lack of self-knowledge, he considered it to be a close enough approximation.

He was also beginning to feel a little exposed when he awoke from the injections, his backside in the air and face in the pillow, but he had to admit that he felt refreshed, if slightly groggy upon waking. Again, he retrieved his trousers and began to count out the repetitions as he raised and lowered his legs until once again he was breathless and sweaty from the exertion. He was up to sixty for the day. Sixty repetitive lifts of a rough cotton hospital blanket. It was unlikely to break a 'Guinness World Record', but it was a start.

There was no way he could tell for how long he had been unconscious, but there was no meal waiting for him when he awoke. He was vaguely disappointed; he was beginning to become accustomed to the routine of eating and sleeping. In a room so self-consciously devoid of stimulation, it seemed preferable to being awake for long stretches with nothing but the lifting of cotton sheets and the toad like presence of the returned commode for company. He once again reached for the refilled water jug that had been left, this time, on the wheeled table and noticed he was already much more able to heft its weight to his lips, though he still required both hands. He reached once more for the remote, wanting to check the time on the option menu, for as the sedative leeched slowly from his system he began to look forward to the evening's visit from the barefooted nurse. He pressed his fingers to his lips, somehow hoping to rekindle the dwindled flame of that farewell kiss. Was it wrong of him to have eroticised it? He could, for all he knew, have a wife and children somewhere beyond the vague and faded boundary of the drapes. Surely if I have a family I would have heard from them by now? He thought. It saddened him, in a way, to realise that he was potentially alone in the world; but then it permitted him the layer upon layer of fantasy that he piled upon the barefoot nurse. It struck him at that point that he had never actually seen the woman. He had no knowledge of her but for the electricity generated by that one kiss and the sound she made as she stepped lightly, her feet sticking slightly to the linoleum.

The thought of lips led him again to smoking, he had no idea why this was the case, though he was forced to admit to himself that he had been one of the ever fewer social pariahs poisoning themselves with the tubes of desiccated vegetable matter, arsenic and formaldehyde that had once been de rigueur. How strange that the body could remember things that the mind could not. He assumed there must be somewhere to smoke within, or at the very least slightly beyond the grounds of the hospital and that this would explain the doctor's continuously semi-dark lenses. He briefly considered asking one of the nurses whether he would be permitted to indulge himself, but then the impending criminality of the act was enough to dissuade him. It was enough, for him, to be completely groundless in his own life, without being imprisoned for the attempted murder of himself. He even found himself humming the anti-smoking jingle.

Weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak

Clonk-clink

The syringe carrying nurse entered, forcing the reluctant meal trolley before her. She man-handled the trolley to the foot of the bed, transferred the empty crockery onto the trolley and his evening meal onto the wheeled table.

'I'll be back in about an hour to administer your evening injection, Mr Featherstone, the same rules will apply. I expect you to follow them.'

Clonk-clink

He barely heard her; the smell of the food was causing his stomach to turn back-flips and his mouth to water. He pushed himself into sitting position again and reached greedily for the wheeled table, drawing it toward him. This time there was a cheese and tomato pasta dish and for dessert a small piece of sponge cake. Somehow guilt stole in whilst his back was turned: the country was in flames, by all accounts, with riots breaking out all across the nation, yet here he was eating and sleeping, cosy and cosseted in his hospital bed as others suffered. He kept telling himself that it was all to be dealt with later, that for now the number of leg lifts swaddled in cotton he could perform was more important than the number of casualties in a budding civil war to which he had no attachment. Even if he were to decide upon a side of the fence on which to fall, what good would it be to either side to welcome into its illusory midst this invalid patron for whom a name, let alone a political philosophy, was still ill-fitting?

Whether he managed to convince himself of his moral ambiguity or not, he was hungry and so he again began to demolish his rations, scooping up the pasta with the plastic spoon he then realised had been provided for the sponge cake. The cake he ate with his hands, it was dry and somewhat stale, but heavy and sweet and, with the aid of more water from the spout of the jug, slid down his gullet with ease. He almost pitied others that they would never experience this element of his condition. They would never again taste anything for the first time. Every meal was new. He knew their names, these meals, yet each seemed more exquisite, more exotic than the next. Dry fish, dry cake, watery rice-pudding, viscous pasta sauce and water were to him the finest meals he had ever tasted, specifically because they were the finest meals he had ever tasted. He sat back and awaited the nurse, he was beginning to crave the sleep between meals, enjoying the somnolence that took him away from supervised 'ablutions' and ever repeating reportage of 'civil-disobedience'.

The life of a zoo-bound animal, the eating and sleeping, being peered at was becoming second nature. It was enough for him to know that he was safe and to hope that one day soon he might be returned to the wild.

Clonk-clink

He assumed the position, drew down his trousers and awaited the sting of the needle which was quickly and in silently delivered.

Clonk-clink

There was just enough time to turn himself contentedly on to his back before unconsciousness took him.

# # #

'Are you awake?' Soft yet eager, the question drifted through the dark.

'Yes,' he said, simply. What more could he say? He had fantasised in his brief wakeful moments about this meeting, and no matter how many fantasy scenarios he had run through in his mind, he was still lost. He did not know her intentions; he did not his own intentions let alone those of another and so he said again. 'Yes.'

Silence

'I'm glad,' she said at last. 'The amount of shit they're pumping into you, I was worried you wouldn't wake up,' that word, it sounded so incongruent in that voice. Shit. It added a new dimension to the woman. Not as innocent as he had imagined, perhaps. 'But here you are and here I am...'

Schlup-schlup

'It seems you're ready for me though,' she said and giggled, low and girlish, he could hear her, much closer than before; the perfume once more overpowered his senses, sending fire through his veins. What had she meant: ready? Then he realised and blood flushed his cheeks.

'I'm sorry, I must have... it's the sedatives, I barely have time... I'm sorry...' she shushed him and he fell into silence, embarrassed, and began to pull up his trousers from around his thighs where they still sat.

'Let me,' she said, brushing his hands away. She ran her fingers from his waist down and over his hips, her fingernails leaving tingling trails wherever they went. She pulled up the rear of his trousers then trailed her fingers around the waist-band until they met at in the middle. He gasped. He had tried desperately not to sexualise the action, tried to restrain himself, but the blood had rushed of its own accord and he was fully erect. She didn't say a word about it, although he thought he heard a sharper intake of breath as she held out his waist-band with one hand and with the other she cupped him, squeezing him gently, running her fingers down his full length as she slipped him back into his trousers.

'I'm so sorry,' he said, 'I guess I'm not used to being touched, at least not that I can remember, try not to hold it against me...'

'There there,' she cooed. 'It's okay. I'll take it as a compliment. I guess I've wanted to feel it hard since I laid eyes on you. You had a little more meat on you then, but I can't say I mind,' There it was again, the maddening ardour, was she even saying what he was hearing, or was his mind filling in an awkward silence? He wished to whatever higher power Ernest Featherstone believed in that he could have some confidence in his own senses.

Silence

He could barely breathe. The weight of the quiet lay heavy on his chest.

'Are we... are we married?' he said, he wasn't sure why but his mind had leapt to shatter the quiet with a question from the subconscious. She chuckled, almost patronisingly.

'Not yet dear,' she laughed again. He felt the flush of fresh blood to his cheeks. It had been a stupid question; he'd known it as soon as it had left his lips.

'Then why all this... you know... or am I reading it wrong?' he said.

'Sweetie, I just had your dick in my hand, how could you be misreading anything?' she replied in the same amused tones. The word sent shivers down his spine, in that voice it didn't sound coarse but instead it was somehow erotic.

'I just thought, well, you're a nurse aren't you? You probably deal with that kind of thing all the time,' he couldn't stop the words tumbling out to trip him over.

'In a way,' she said, now sombre, he had managed it, managed to destroy her mood.

'I'm sorry, I've said something wrong. Have I upset you? I-I didn't mean to.'

'It's nothing sweetie, nothing at all. You just made me think about something, but enough about that; how are you dear?'

'I'm okay, I guess. I just wish I knew who I was but then, you know, am I going to like it when it happens? My legs are pretty useless, arms likewise and worst of all, there doesn't appear to be anything on the television,' he smiled in what he hoped was a charming manner, forgetting completely that she couldn't see him. 'It's just occurred to me,' he said 'that I've never seen your face...'

'Is that all you want to see honey?' again that amused tone.

'Yes, I mean, well... um...' _Is this me_? He thought. _Am I really this gibbering wreck, so desperately lost in such a simple conversation_? He knew that he should be making some kind of clever or flirtatious remark; something to heighten the sexual tension, but it was all he could do to stop himself stuttering.

'Turn the TV on. It'll have finished by now, but the blue screen will give you enough to go on. Be kind, okay?' she said, in a tone he knew was intended to be shy, but somehow fell just short.

He scrabbled behind his head for the remote, dropping it twice before he managed to switch it on; the blue screen gave the room an eerie glow, but as his eyes adjusted to the blue tinged gloom he saw her for the first time. Her dark hair was cut into a feathered asymmetric fringe falling across her right eye which, although he could not determine a colour, was large and almond shaped, set beneath thin curved eyebrows and sharp high cheekbones. He followed the lines of her heart-shaped face to a thin and elegant neck. From her neck down, her body was covered in the same white uniform as that of her colleagues: a smock and trousers. Even so, he could make out the subtle curve of her breasts. She must have been able to follow his eyes, she smiled shyly.

'You said you just wanted to see my face.' She laughed again.

'Sorry,' he said 'I couldn't help...'

'Shush,' she said and took his sluggish hands in hers, sitting down on the bed next to him as she did so. She placed his hands under her smock, thumbs touching, and raised them up inside the shirt until they reached her small, firm breasts. She sighed as she squeezed his hands; she ran his hands over them then led his left hand down, under her own waist-band and into her soft, hairless mound. She stood and began to grind against his hand, he was afraid to move it for fear of breaking the spell, but she did not need his help. She writhed upon his hand, moving it as and when she wanted, where she wanted it. He felt her wetness on his fingers, beginning to trickle down towards the palm of his hand. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, tongue almost comically poking between her teeth, moving from side to side. She was moving his hand faster and faster, pressing it harder and harder against her.

She gasped.

She stopped.

She leaned over him.

She smiled.

She kissed him.

'Tomorrow?' she said, but without awaiting a reply, she turned.

Schlup-schlup

Clonk-clink

He was alone again, his hands and lips burning once more with the feeling of flesh on flesh. He turned off the television, rolled onto his stomach and slept.

## CHAPTER NINE

Jed awoke with a start to the sound of the door buzzer. He had managed to sleep for three hours and it had turned six. He leapt from the couch tangling his legs in his towel in the process and dropped to the floor with a thump. He jumped back to his feet, laughing at himself and tried to re-wrap himself in the towel as he ran to the intercom.

'Hello?'

'Ah, Jedward, care to let me in? I'm feeling a touch exposed with all this shopping,' said Chris, yawning.

'I know the feeling,' replied Jed tucking his towel back into place as he pressed the door release button on the intercom. 'Come on up.'

He left the door ajar and raced into his bedroom to find some clothing. It wasn't to be the measured and precise preparation he had hoped for, but he grabbed his most expensive underwear, a pair of baggy jeans, a vest and tight tracksuit top and began to dress as quickly as he could, hearing Chris enter the flat and close the door as he did. He threaded a rather ostentatious belt through the loops on his jeans and added an even more showy watch to his wrist and several silver and white-gold rings on his fingers. He then rooted around under his bed for the carrier bag full of cigarette packets, took out two packets, took a cigarette from one and headed back into the living room, lighting it as he went.

'About bloody time Jedward, I was beginning to think you'd gone back to bed,' said Chris, Jedward was Christopher's little joke at the Anglicisation of his Muslim name, it annoyed and amused him in equal measure.

'I fell asleep, yeah? Three hours in the middle of the day, proper student, innit?'

'Maybe for you, Jedward, I happened to take my degree very seriously indeed,' replied Chris archly.

'Not serious enough to do anything with it though, yeah?'

'As you well know, I deal with chemicals every day.'

'Not in the way your tutors would have thought though, is it?'

'I always told them I wanted to make the world a better place using organic chemistry, what better use of hydrocarbons is there than D-lysergic acid diethylamide?'

'Is it? I have no fucking clue, man.'

Chris grinned and took out a small, tightly sealed parcel from his jacket pocket. 'Merry Christmas, Mr C. That should keep you going for a few days.'

Jed un-wrapped the parcel carefully, making sure not to damage any of the baggies within. Once he had ticked all of the boxes on his mental inventory he placed the package with exaggerated reverence onto the glass topped coffee table, stubbed out his half smoked cigarette and began to roll a joint.

'Cheers man, I'll...'

'Sort me my money later?' Chris finished with a chuckle.

'Nah man, I will yeah? I've got me my pocket money back innit?'

' _The Plan_ worked I take it?' Jed had discussed the plan with Chris so often during discussions of his lackadaisical approach to debt repayment that it had become _The Plan_.

'Thanks to some forward thinking and the finest execution since Charles the First, I'm capable of supporting my addictions, yeah?'

'Super news, shall I expect a cheque for the full amount?' asked Chris, grinning.

Jed furrowed his eyebrows. 'I can't get forty million out of a cash machine can I?' They both laughed, his debts were a running, though friendly joke. Jed passed Chris a spliff and began building another. 'How's the Pharmaceutical Industry, yeah?'

'Booming Jedward, booming; the more unhappy the world becomes the more people want to escape and I happen to have cornered the local travel business, providing the cheapest and most comfortable flights of fancy in the borough.'

Jed laughed. 'Is it? No drive-by's or drug busts? No dawn escapes from the filth?'

Chris looked shocked. 'Oh my, no, not for me thank you Jedward, too much excitement is bad for your health; I prefer to deal with safe, wealthy, cosy and closeted addicts such as yourself.'

'Cheers, innit, you going to be up for Escape tonight, yeah?'

'I'm always up for escape.'

'You know what I mean,' sighed Jed.

'Oh, you mean the palace of pornography? The LED studded, strobe-lit spectacle that is the capitalised Escape?'

'You know what I meant, you dick.'

'Well when you hold me in such obvious high regard, how could I possibly say no? I take it the party's on back here seeing that the Mullah of Misery is away?'

'Come on man, you know I don't like it when you talk about him like that, yeah? He's a good man innit? He's just misguided, that's all yeah?'

'Calm down, dearest, I meant no offence.' Chris laughed and lit his joint looking as contrite as he could manage through burgeoning giggles.

'Prick,' said Jed, looking stern and sucking his teeth before his face cracked into a smile. 'You made it to any of these daily riots?'

'No, I'm afraid not. They all look a little samey to me. It's almost as though they've captured footage of one riot and they just keep replaying the footage. I can't say it interests me to be at something so cliché anyway; besides which, much like cooking and wine, if you want a real riot, you need to go to France.'

'You're not suggesting that our kind masters would lie to us, man? No fucking way, yeah? I should report you for that, innit.'

'Of course not, of course not, of course not. I _merely_ stated that that was what they _looked_ like, Jedward. I _obviously_ wouldn't suggest that, that would be _madness_ ,' said Chris, massively over emphasising.

'I'm glad, yeah? I wouldn't want to think I was spending time with someone capable of naughtiness in thought or action, innit? Fancy a line?'

'I thought you'd never ask.' Chris took a dog eared fifty pound note from his pocket and began rolling it with one hand, still smoking. Jed cut a couple of thick lines on the table. Jed inhaled first, followed quickly by Chris. It was good, but Chris always had good stuff, especially if he knew he'd be having some himself. They both sat back in their chairs and smoked in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the warm flush in their cheeks and the tingling sensation that began at the back of their necks and spread through their skulls.

'Not bad, even if I do say so myself,' said Chris, the familiar grin already spreading across his face. 'Are we meeting anyone else this evening?'

'I fucking hope so man,' said Jed, closing his eyes as a head-rush washed over him.

'I mean anyone we know, cunt.'

'I know exactly what you mean, prick,' Jed laughed 'I didn't get a chance to text or call anyone man, fell asleep once I had a bath innit?'

'I hope you're not trying to get me on my own Mr Choudhry? You should know I don't take favours as payment.'

'Is it? You're not my type, yeah? I've never been one for big tits innit.'

'Fucking fucker, that's low, my breasts are pert, firm even. I'll hear nothing bad about them, it's the second set currently growing between bosom and belly that I'm starting to have second thoughts about. It's an excess of good living.'

'Is it? It's not an excess of Jack Daniels and late night stoner takeaways, yeah?'

'Touché, I have actually been considering a month on some cheap speed to trim down a touch actually, but I'm not sure I could function on an hours sleep a night anymore. I may well have to just keep pulling with my wallet alone and abandon my body as a lost cause; we can't all be naturally skinny.'

'You've seen my dad, yeah? I'm fucked, genetically speaking; I'm going to be a big fat old Asian when I grow up, just like daddy innit?'

'That's not going to do your chances of televisual success much good – the camera hates fat men. Speaking of which, how's all that coming? Are you still emailing that guy?'

'Yeah, you know how it is man; I'm not getting my hopes up but it looks pretty promising, yeah? He's sold on the idea in principle and the subject matter's bound to get people watching, innit, it's all down to the producers though, if they think they can pull in the advertising money then we can start drawing up contracts and stuff.'

'Oh to have an influential father,' Chris laughed.

'Fuck off man; you'd have been in prison by now if your old man wasn't a judge. Remember what you told me you did to that Don, yeah? What was it, twelve grand's worth of damage to the cunts Aston, yeah?'

'Alright, I'll give you that. You know you'll have to stop talking with that ridiculous accent if it goes well? I don't think people will buy a history documentary where the presenter says _brap brap_ every two minutes...'

'I have never said _brap brap_ in my fucking life, innit?'

'Okay, what about a lecturer on history that seems to ask a question every sentence? I know you put it on, you forget all the time. I mean, why anglicise your name and then speak in some bastardised American-English?'

Jed sucked his teeth. 'What you saying man? I should just stick to eating curry and growing a fucking beard yeah? Open a shop maybe? Fucking racist, is that it?' Both men stared intently at each other, their jaws set and eyebrows furrowed. Chris cracked first, choking on smoke, laughing and crying at the same time which then kicked Jed into fits of silent laughter.

'Shut the fuck up and rack them will you, you can even use mine.' Chris threw a wrap at Jed in feigned disgust, Jed set up another two thick lines on the table, they both hoovered them up and sat again in silence for a moment before Chris sneezed , setting them both giggling again.

'We're going to be too fucking wrecked to go anywhere at this rate man,' said between fits of giggles.

'There is no amount of laziness that a good taxi firm and a wad of twenties can't solve Jedward, my good man. Cinderella shall yet go to the ball.'

'Is it, yeah? So what, you're Cinderella now, yeah?'

'No sir, I'm the fucking pumpkin.'

## CHAPTER TEN

The next day followed a familiar pattern; he woke to a flood of light from newly opened drapes and met the day with a mind and body that were recovering from the previous dose of sedative. He ate regularly, drank from a glass, defecated and urinated with an audience, before and after which he was wrenched from and dropped back into bed. He accomplished an impressive one hundred and twenty-seven leg lifts, yet he was still incapable of walking. He realised that the television, what little reception there was in the hospital, was mostly news focussed and that the news itself was concerned primarily with the ongoing rioting. He resolved to ask his nurse what the rioting was about. He assumed that it would be money; a hidden section of his mind informed him that these things always tended to be about money.

He began to record the progress of the light and dark bars that trawled across the room in an effort to keep a track of the daylight hours. When he first awoke in the mornings, the light and dark were in thin lines on the left of the room, by the time the last of them passed the door to his room it was time for his first injection, when he woke the contrasting stripes were in the middle and he had only to wait until they had reached the commode before it was again time for sleep. This third sojourn in the waking world brought him out in the dark, secretive night time that belonged to him and his nurse. He had invested in her all of the positives of his current condition: the safety of his room, the authority of her position and the innate sexuality of her body.

#

The third of his daily injections was wearing off; he began to toss and turn within the cotton confines of the bed, blinking rapidly. Within seconds he was scouting the room, looking deep into the corners for the ever so slightly deeper shadow that would denote her presence, listening intently for the sound her bare feet made on the linoleum. His heart sank. He began to invent situations that could explain her absence: had they been discovered? Had she been taken into some room, sat down with a manager and advised that her fraternisation with a patient was not to be tolerated and that she was released with immediate effect? Alternatively, had he simply burned what bridges he had with his ineffectual pillow talk, his rambling discourse? Could it have been his shatteringly embarrassing query as to their marital status? Perhaps she had been less than impressed with his digital dexterity and had decided to cut whatever losses she may have incurred and decided that she was not coming back. Whatever it was, however, he was certain of one thing: she was never to return except, at an outside, in a purely official capacity as a nurse – both his and, sadly, that of others.

If he had had more sturdy legs, he would have used their full strength to kick himself. His one seemingly amicable human relationship lay in ruin and all because of his inability to think on his feet. He was beginning to regret being Ernest Featherstone. If this was his mind, if this was the way he handled things, maybe it would have been better if he were someone else entirely. He slumped into his pillows, a picture of the most complete despair. He switched the television on and briefly flicked through the seemingly endless channels of blue. He switched the television off again, sighing before rolling over and closing his eyes, wishing only for another sedative injection to take the rest of the day away. He began to drift into sleep.

Clonk-clink

Schlup-schlup-schlup

'I'm sorry I'm so late, honey. I had to cover another shift to make sure I was here for my little visit,' she sounded slightly out of breath and conciliatory, but something inside him was reluctant to forgive her for her imagined transgression.

'I didn't think you were going to come...' he said sullenly, instantly berating himself for his adolescent behaviour, it was as though he wanted to drive her away.

'Don't be silly sweetie, I wouldn't miss it. Even if I hadn't seen what I saw last night, I'd still be here. You know that, really. Don't you?' she sounded almost hurt.

'I, um, I suppose so. Look, I'm sorry, I'm just being silly. Sorry,' he said.

'Don't worry honey; it's nice to know you missed me. So how've you been today? Not too lonely, I hope?' The playful irony had returned and he sighed inwardly, relieved to hear it. He switched the television on again to provide some illumination.

'Not too bad, I've just been thinking about things, you know, well... maybe you wouldn't actually. I don't suppose you've ever woken up not knowing who the hell you are. I've just been wondering about all these riots on the television and whether I might have been at one, and... you know, hurt or something? Do I have kids out there, or a family of any kind? Am I a football or a cricket man; am I a man's man or, you know, a man's man? I don't know, I suppose my past isn't of much interest to you. I'm sorry.' It'd had been a relief to finally voice his concerns, but at the same time he felt even more vulnerable than before.

'On the contrary,' she said 'you're past is important to me, and when you know what that is, we'll talk it through, but for now it's your future I'm concerning myself with, and a very specific part of that future.' There it was again, that low giggle, he felt a shiver run up and down his spine. He thought of a million and one things to say, sweet nothings and platitudes and wonderful words to make her his. Instead, he said:

'What are the riots about?' he kicked himself with every syllable that passed his lips.

'I can't talk to you about that until you've spoken more to the doctor honey,' she said. 'I'm sorry. For now, why don't you let me take your mind off of some of this stuff? Believe me, there are plenty of people that wish they were in your position and could forget the whole mess.'

'I suppose you're right, but it's frustrating, you know? I know where I am, well, roughly, I know the year, the Prime-Minister, you know, I know everything I should know, just don't know why I know it, or, for that matter who the I is that knows it.' He was doing it again. 'I'm sorry. I don't know what comes over me when you're here. I guess I trust you.'

'Good. I'm glad you trust me. I'm glad you feel you can talk to me. It's getting late. I'm going to need to clock out before people start getting suspicious. I'm not an overtime kind of a girl,' she laughed another of her girlish yet seductive laughs. 'Now, you can ask me one more question that I probably won't be able to answer, or you can let me deal with our friend here,' she again moved her hands beneath his waist-band, gently cupping him and began to massage his erection, squeezing and stroking with expertise he would not have expected from her. His breath quickened in unison with the movement of her hands, she seemed to purr, taking almost as much pleasure in the giving as she had in the receiving. It was over quickly, he almost apologised, but she was gone, leaving him wet and breathless and alone.

Clonk-clink

# # #

He awoke energised the following morning noting the position of the light on the wall. He smiled. All, barring his lack of memory, seemed to be right with the world. He began his leg lifts before being gripped with a sudden fervour. For the first time since his first day he cast off his cotton confines and swung out his legs over the floor, he rolled on to his stomach and lowered himself to a squatting position. His muscles screamed in protest, his joints popped and ligaments cracked, but he pushed himself upright using arms and legs in unison. Then he lowered himself and began again, feeling the blood course through him, seeming to feel the oxygen in his blood, the slow release of energy as he struggled vertical.

Weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak

Clonk clink

The drape opening nurse pushed the reluctant meal trolley into the room and, on seeing him at the pinnacle of his laboured ascent, gave a sharp gasp. He smiled at her proudly but she had already retreated from the room, no doubt hastily reporting his fine improvement to the nursing station. He decided to push himself with one further squat.

Clonk-clink

'What are you doing out of bed?' it was the sour faced male nurse.

'Exercising!' he said, grinning and panting.

'Exercising eh? Well isn't that good.' The nurse didn't make it sound good.

'Well, you know, I don't want to keep putting you out dragging me to and from the toilet. You know, I thought the sooner I'm up and walking, the sooner I'm out of your hair. I know it must be a strain.'

'Drag you do we? I fucking warned you. I fucking warned you, I'll show you fucking dragging.' True to his word the nurse grabbed him by his shirt collar and hauled him to the commode where he threw him against the metal framework. He then picked him up and dragged him back to the bed.

'Look, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I didn't mean to upset you,' he said, rubbing his neck where the shirt had bitten into the skin of his neck. 'I was just trying to help. I didn't mean to offend you, I'm sorry.' He was crying again, floods of impotent tears rolled down his red-flushed cheeks. 'I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm...' he trailed off into senseless sobbing.

'I'll make you sorry if you try anything like that again,' said the nurse, clattering together the plate and bowl that would hold his breakfast and slamming them, along with the fresh water jug onto the wheeled table.

Clonk-clink

Weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak

He was alone again and defeated. Was caring for him so awful that they harboured such resentment towards him? He resolved to take his exercise only after he had eaten, he would have an hour or so before the nurse came with his injection. For now he was exhausted and he ate, as ever, with the fervour of a starving child, washing away the food and his tears with glass after glass of water. When the nurse returned, he was in the expected position, more aware than ever of his vulnerability, the nurse simply gave him his injection and left once more, as though the morning's debacle had not happened.

Clonk-clink

#

Two injections later he swam to the surface of consciousness to be welcomed by the womblike darkness of his late night room. He once again performed his squats, finding that he could stand unaided for a few seconds. A new excitement thrilled through his body. How soon could he see the outside? How long before he and his nurse could walk through a park, arm in arm, no longer restricted by the mores and morays of the patient nurse interaction. He shivered, feeling the imagined breeze upon his arms and the fantasy warmth on his back. He returned himself to his bed and tunnelled snugly beneath the sheets.

He waited for her to come.

Silence

She must have been delayed again, he thought. Somewhere in the hospital, she was fretting herself. He smiled at the thought, wondered whether she slept the same blissful sleep as he did after they met. He wondered whether a pillow substituted for him as one did for her when she left; whether she clung to the memory of his touch as he did hers. He could almost smell her perfume in those moments, could almost feel her on his skin, on his lips. He thought back to her words of the previous night and counted his blessings; almost no-one else in the world would ever experience these feelings for the first time again, at least not as an adult. He traced his fingers up and down his body, imagining her hands in place of his own, feeling her dreamed breath on his neck. Where could she be?

He began to worry.

The fantasy scenarios of his abandonment once again crept in like demons to devour his dreams. He was powerless to stop them as memories of his embarrassment repeated over and over behind his eyes. Had the surly nurse confided in her about his childish tears and had they laughed a superior laugh at the weak wreck of a man that lay helpless and hapless along the corridor. He tried to cling to her words. Tried to block out his wicked imaginings in favour of the buoyant memories of her, but soon his memories were caught in the current of his welling despair and dragged further down. He began to attribute double meanings to her words; he inverted her intonation until the life-raft of memory became a weight, a burden of proof as to her distaste for him. It dragged him down and down as he waited...

And waited...

The dark began to pale into grey as he finally relinquished all hope of her arrival. He closed his eyes and drifted into a restless sleep where for the duration of the night his mind tortured him with the laughter of his nurse and her colleagues. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

#

He proceeded through the following day as though in a trance. He performed his exercise routines between periods of eating and sleeping, careful not to be caught again. He was as silent and as weightless as he could manage as he was carried to the commode and back to the bed, he assumed the expected position for his injection with time to spare, having carefully noted the position of the bars of light and dark on the walls of his room. What mostly filled his time, however, were tears.

He wept as he exercised, as he ate, as he received his dosage, all through the day the hot streams of salty tears ran down his blood-flushed cheeks. He divided his time between pitying himself, rueing his naivety and in trying and failing to be angry at her abandonment of him. How could she not have abandoned him, after all? He was nothing and no-one, a palimpsest person that could barely stand unaided. He was repulsed by himself. He abhorred his flimsy muscles and all but blank mind. He wished himself dead. As night drew in, and he awoke from his third dosage of sedative, he urged his body into sleep. He wished, hoping against hope, that he could avoid what had been, until so very recently, the cherished night-time. He held his pillow tightly over his eyes and tried to press himself forcefully back into sleep.

Clonk-clink

Schlup-schlup

Schlup-schlup

'I'm so sorry.'

## CHAPTER ELEVEN

'Fuck me, what time is it?' Chris asked a few lines later, his eyes like saucers, his jaw hurting from grinning and grinding his teeth.

'Eight o'clock man, we need to start drinking or we'll never be fucked going innit? We've got two hours to get mashed and then we'll call a cab, we should still get four or five hours to try and pick up some arse, yeah?'

'Are we coming back here afterward? It seems a shame to waste a free house, after all, how often do you get the chance?'

'We could go back to yours for a change?'

'Mine? God no, I can't be seen having scallywags parading around my front lawn. What would my neighbours think? No, I'm afraid that just won't do at all Jedward.' Chris smiled broadly.

'Hypocrite, you criticising me and you're playing at being the perfect suburban neighbour? That's poor even for someone of your minimal integrity.'

'You forgot to say innit.'

'Is it?'

'Yes it is. Go get the booze will you? I've developed quite a thirst.'

Jed stood, was hit by a head-rush, sat back down and then tried again. He meandered into his bedroom and again rummaged around under his bed until he found what he was looking for, a large bottle of bourbon and two whisky glasses; he wandered through to the kitchen, rinsed the glasses, added some ice and grabbed a bottle of cola from the fridge for Chris before heading back in to the living room to see him asleep in the arm chair, a spliff burning away between his fingers, he stole the joint, poured himself a glass of bourbon and flopped onto the couch, he could leave Chris to sleep for an hour and work on his own alcohol levels before waking him up and forcing some whisky down his throat. He turned the television back on and flicked through the channels to a documentary on the second cold war's arms race and began not watching it as he lounged decadently on the couch, a different drug in either hand. Instead the presenter's voice washed over him, intimating to his disinterested viewers that the second cold war had been brought about by NATO's unrepentant desire to exclude the Russian state from its missile shield program and its unabashed refusal to state openly that the shield was not in development to counter a Russian threat. This time however, the presenter lamented, there had been no Yeltsin or Gorbachev to relieve tensions and so the emergent eastern economies had banded together leaving Europe and the United states in economic dire straits.

Jed changed the channel, the drone was putting him to sleep and the man's delivery infuriated him. It was possibly one of the most important periods of the twenty-first century to date and the man droned like he was reading the football results. He would have to make sure he didn't fall into the same trap. He would be the Carl Sagan of history, but first he had a more pressing ambition, he was going to be the drunkest man in the room. He downed his whisky and poured another, shivering as the warmth spread from his stomach and added another layer of cotton wool to the inside of his skull.

# # #

INTERIOR: Ernest Featherstone's CHILDHOOD HOME. ERNEST'S MOTHER is again WRITING in her DIARY.

V O (F)

Ernie came home from school again today, I know I should be happy to see him, he came full of stories about his high marks and his sporting achievements, but none of the news was for me. He's hardly said a word to me. Is it not enough that I have to be humiliated by his father every day without our son joining in? Why must he hate me? I have always done everything I could to make him happy, he has wanted for nothing his whole life. Today was the final straw, his father has left me. He waited for his son to come home and then, without having spoken to me before, he told us both that he was leaving to live with another woman. The look of joy on my own son's face as I wept reduces me to tears even as I write this. I have let him see his women, I have let him do whatever he wanted and I have never complained, never once said a word to anyone. What am I going to do? He wants to see us both downstairs in a moment. How's Ernie going to react when his father tells him he has to stay with me? He won't take him with him, he's too selfish. He's calling now...

INTERIOR: EF's SITTING ROOM. ERNEST FEATHERSTONE SNR is SITTING in a LEATHER RECLINER. EF JNR is SEATED on the FLOOR. EF's MOTHER ENTERS and STANDS to one side.

EFSR

I wanted you both to hear this; I told you both that I had to think about what to take with me when I leave. I, of course, had to discuss it with my lady friend. I want you to know, Ernie, that none of this is your fault...

We see EFJNR turn to face his mother, a look of contempt filled accusation on his face. His MOTHER looks shaken, but EFSNR does not seem to notice. MOTHER cracks and begins to SHOUT.

MOTHER

Then whose fault is it? Whose fucking fault is it? I have never asked anything of you and this is how you treat me? Is this what I deserve for twenty years of miserable marriage, watching you come home from screwing your 'lady friends'? Is this what I get? Come on tell me. Tell us. Whose fucking fault is it? You bastard, you total bastard...

EFJR STANDS and FACES MOTHER, he is FURIOUS.

EFJR

Shut up mother, just shut up! I want to hear what he has to say. I want him to tell you he's taking me with him. Taking me away from you!

MOTHER begins to CRY and STEPS TOWARD EFSR.

MOTHER

Go on! Tell him! Tell him you bastard! Tell him!

We see EFSR STAND, his arms OUTSTRETCHED.

EFSR

Will you calm down woman? You're getting hysterical! You are making a complete spectacle of yourself in front of the boy. Now calm the hell down!

We see EFSR SLAP MOTHER, MOTHER RECOILS then LAUNCHES A FLURRY OF SLAPS she SOBS.

MOTHER

I'll show you hysterical. I'll show you a spectacle, you bastard. Tell him! Go on! Tell the snot nosed little shit. Tell him! Tell him!

EFJR

Tell me what dad? What's the stupid bitch talking about?

MOTHER SLAPS EFJR before returning her attention to EFSR, who stands RIGID and then CLUTCHES HIS LEFT ARM a look of PANIC and PAIN cross his face and he falls to the floor. EFJR begins to CRY.

EFJR

Dad? Dad? What's wrong? Are you okay? Dad!? This is all your fault mother. All your fault.

CAMERA DRAWS BACK FROM THE SCENE CIRCLING. SCENE FADES TO BLACK with EFJR's LINES.

V O (F)

He's dead. I can't believe it. He's dead and I feel happy, I know that makes me evil, but I tried to help him. I called the ambulance as soon as I knew what was happening, but Jesus help me I'm glad he's dead. The police interviewed me and have decided that they will not be treating his death as in any way suspicious and that barring any additional information from the post-mortem examination they will be citing a heart-attack as the cause of death. This hasn't pleased Ernie of course. He keeps calling me a murderer, keeps telling me I'm happy I killed him. How can I tell him he's wrong? Maybe now that man's influence is gone Ernie will forgive me. Maybe he'll even love me one day, I hope he does. I've always wanted him to be a happy, normal boy. Is that too much to ask?

# # #

The arms race was a period of technological evolution for the whole world and also led to the Russian capture of the fertile Arctic oil fields which allowed the West to stave off the so-called 'peak-oil' problem as Russia increased its production to exceed Middle-Eastern output allowing Europe to pick up the slack as countries loyal to Russia reduced dependency on Middle-Eastern oil. In addition to this, it also encouraged the rapid expansion of the International, now NATO Space-Station which facilitated the deployment of defence and observation satellites from orbit and combated the Russian and Chinese efforts to destroy the unmanned satellite transports...

The television droned on in the background until Jed eventually switched channels again, selecting a music channel that pumped out an approximation of the generic brand of diluted pop they would eventually be wading through if they made it to the club. He yawned and wandered into the kitchen and refilled the glasses with ice and whisky before returning to the couch to construct a couple of spliffs ready to wake Chris. It was nine o'clock. At this rate they'd get to the club after eleven but it was open until four and at least they'd be well and truly smashed by the time they got there. He finished rolling, chopped another couple of lines from Chris's supply and then nudged him awake.

'What? Sorry about that, was I asleep? Of course I was. Sorry about that. I guess it's partially your fault for being quite so fucking boring, but still...' Jed threw a spliff, hitting Chris in the nose.

'Is it, yeah? Fuck off back to suburbia then you fat cunt.'

'Now now Jedward, there's no need for language.'

'Is it? It'd make reading books a lot less interesting, although the book I'm reading on Mesopotamia would be mercifully shorter, innit?'

'I feel the same way about the benzoate salts. Bloody boring things and most of them don't even burn. I mean, what's that all about?'

Jed pretended to doze off briefly. 'Sorry, what was that? All I could hear was meh meh meh meh, yeah? Now hurry the fuck up and start drinking. I want to get out before you turn back into a pumpkin.'

'Calm down dearest.' Chris downed a glass of whisky, sucking in his cheeks and squeezing his eyes closed afterward as the whisky heated his throat, he coughed. 'Happy now?' he asked as his eyes began to water. 'Fill her up will you, and quit your bloody whining?'

'It's about time, yeah? People are going to start gossiping if we turn up at that place sober, innit? Imagine the damage it'll do to our reputation yeah?'

'I don't know about you, but my reputation is that of an elder statesman, respectable, mature, trustworthy...'

'Occasionally found slumped over a table wearing the slices of lemon from cocktails as makeshift ear-rings?'

'Precisely; I'm so mature I decided to get an early night...'

'In a puddle of tequila?' asked Jed, grinning at the memory.

'In, as you say, a puddle, quite rightly, of tequila, indeed; there was a shortage of soft furnishings and I'm sorry to say I was forced to use hard liquor.'

'Surely a soft drink would have been more comfortable?'

'Pedant; be quiet child. Besides, you forgot to say innit.'

## CHAPTER TWELVE

The television flared into life.

I'm so sorry;' she repeated. 'I couldn't get here last night. I wanted to; I promise I wanted to, but... well...'

'What? Does someone know? Are you in trouble?' His misgivings were gone, erased in a sentence.

'No, it's just that, after you were aggressive to one of the male nurses yesterday...' she seemed to hunt for the right phrasing as the sentence hammered into his skull, a staccato pulse of words that made no sense to him.

'After... after I was, um, aggressive?' he asked: a picture of puzzled concern.

'He told me you threw yourself into him, tried to drag him to the floor and that he was forced to restrain you. He said you'd been planning an escape and that he got in the way,' she said, matter of fact, as though quoting directly.

'Threw myself at him?' he stated his crime slowly, rolling the words around in his head, trying to find the correct shaped holes in his mind in which to slot them. 'Planned to escape? Threw myself at him?'

'Are you okay?'

'Sorry, what was that? Oh, yes... no. I'm fine, I think,' he said, numbed by the news of his supposed exploits. 'You know I can barely stand, right? The guy's about twice my size, a nurse caught me exercising... trying to stand, that's all. Maybe he just misunderstood? Maybe I even fell towards him as he came over to me...?' he shook his head.

'Ernest,' it was the first time anybody had used the name so directly; it had the effect of slapping him into focus 'he showed me the gouges on his cheeks. You don't need to lie to me. You really don't. This won't last forever, we'll get through it. We'll be together when it's all over honey.'

'But I... I didn't, when what's all over? Is he going to press charges? Why would I want to escape? I don't understand. He attacked me. He dragged me about the room like a child's toy!'

'Hush, sweetie, it's all okay, I believe you, but hush or someone _will_ find out and where will we be then?' her tone was conciliatory but seemed feigned. It was enough, however, to slow the rising tide of panic.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't know what I've done to him, but he hates me. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He was waiting for an excuse, he said as much to me. I'll be careful. I'm sorry, I just don't know. I don't know anything.' The tears flowed and inside himself he cursed his weakness.

'It's all okay honey.' She was beside him then, holding his head to her breasts as he sobbed. 'It's all okay,' he knew, then, that it would be. As long as he had her it would be fine. He found himself looking up into her benign face, searching out her lips, clinging on to her.

'What's this all about? Why am I here?' he asked, almost pleading with her.

'I can't tell you that honey. You have to find that out for yourself. The doctor will be back tomorrow, he wants to start gradually introducing you to your life. Too much too soon may stilt your progress or even reverse it. I can't take that risk. You know that, don't you?'

'I-I suppose so. I'm just scared, you know? All of this is just so strange. I try to remember, you know? I've just lay there when I'm not with you, whilst I'm eating, or exercising, I try to think back. I remember a time before now. I remember pictures and footage of death in desserts, of pop-singers and sportsmen and women. I remember buildings and street names, parks and pavilions, heaths and hedgerows... but I'm never there, you know? I'm never with people or at places, never watching footage. They just exist. Separate from me, like images of the moon landings, places and times too far away for me to go or to have ever been.'

'It's all going to be okay. It'll come back,' she held him and by degrees he fell asleep.

#

Morning came and she had gone, leaving only the faint residual smell of her perfume to keep him company in her absence. He had slept through the delivery of breakfast however, therefore avoiding any further advancement of his newly minted reputation as deranged. For this small mercy he was glad. His room had also become the proud owner of a chair, seemingly taken directly from a classroom, the scratched, dimpled, blue plastic seat rested on top of a slender metal frame. He gorged himself on toast and preserve then thin milk and squares of a different variety of wheat before performing a series of squats and taking a few halting steps, all the while clinging to the bed for support. Then he waited.

_If_ _patience is actually a virtue_ , he thought, _the Pontiff will have already booked his plane tickets and be winging his way here to canonise me_. He watched the bars of light and dark roam the walls of his room and waited. He remained perfectly still for fear of startling the obviously emotionally delicate and syringe-carrying nurse as she came and took away the meal plates on the reluctant trolley.

He waited.

Clonk-clink

'Ah, Mr Featherstone, it is good to see you, ah... awake. I trust you slept well?' He didn't wait for a response. 'Now, Mr Featherstone, as I told you when last I, um, visited: we are going to be seeing a considerable amount more of each other, for the, ah... short term at least. It is my intention to gradually expose you to facts about the man you are, to see whether we may, um, introduce you to yourself slowly, so to speak. Do you have any questions so far?' After he had asked, the doctor sat down with an audible sigh, took out his electronic note-pad and looked intently at him over his once more shaded lenses.

'No. I understand. Thank you,' he said, the doctor's sun-tanned lenses once more bringing back an urge to smoke.

'Okay. Right, now, where to begin... have you, as yet, seen your reflection Mr Featherstone?' asked the doctor.

'Not as such, I mean, not up close, I can see myself in the screen of the television, which is to say... no.' The thought hadn't even occurred to him, he had no reflective surfaces in which to look in any case, but he was shocked that he had not even considered the notion of checking.

'Well, perhaps we should endeavour to make that our first, ah... step?' Again there was no wait for a response, the doctor simply stood and walked to the door.

Clonk-clink

He waited.

Clonk clink

The doctor had returned carrying a silver shaving mirror, the magnifying side of which, as he seated himself, showed his patient a flash of gigantified pores surrounding a large blood-shot eye of a grey-green colour.

'Here we are,' the doctor said jovially, holding out the reflective silver lollipop as though bargaining with a child. He hesitated before reaching for it, not wanting to seem too hungry for it, but nor did he wish to appear reticent. He took the mirror in a slow, measured movement, spinning the mirror like a thaumatrope.

'Now, before I ask you for your response, there is one other small, um, matter,' the doctor looked down toward his pad as the mirror slowed. 'One of the nurses seems to labouring under the impression that you attacked him,' the mirror stopped, showing him his reflection in full for the first time. He began to giggle and then continued to a full belly-laugh, the doctor looked up from his pad, seemingly startled.

'Something about an accusation of assault amuses you, Mr Featherstone?' the doctor asked, again peering over dirt coloured lenses.

'What? No, nothing like that at all, it's just...' he wanted nothing more than to ball up laughing, but the doctor had distracted him

'I should hope not... just what?' asked the doctor, his interest suddenly piqued his eyes once more on the pad.

'Oh, nothing, nothing,' he said, but there was definitely something.

'Mr Featherstone, you are not being fully, ah... frank with me. For the benefit of your treatment, I need you to be honest.'

'I just... it's just the shock, I'm sure, but. . .'

'What, Mr Featherstone?'

'Well, that,' he gestured at the mirror 'that's not me. At least, I don't recognise him, at least... not yet. I don't know, he just looks older somehow, than I, you know, than I expected,' he said, knowing immediately that he had said something wrong.

'And the assault; am I to assume that that was not you either?' That word again: _assault_ , it rattled around his skull once more.

'The attack _wasn't_ me, it wasn't _anyone_. I couldn't have attacked him if I'd wanted to. Surely you of all people can see that? Surely you can tell that I'm in no shape to go around attacking nurses?' he said, starting confidently, assuredly, but becoming quickly pleading.

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone, quite so, I'd thought as much. He has his reasons I'm sure, though we may never know, some people are bullied, Mr Featherstone, and some are bullies. I shall, I assure you, keep an eye on his future behaviour.' Relief swept over him. He had another ally, another believer that could provide the much needed succour of credence. 'Now, about the man you see in the mirror...'

Silence

Once again, he found himself speaking to plug the gap.

'It's just not what I expected, that's all. I expected a spark, a memory, anything. But all I kept thinking was: That isn't my face, it _can't_ _be_ ,' he said.

Tap-tap

'And what makes you believe this? You mentioned him being older than you expected. Did you have an expectation?'

'Not exactly, no. No, I definitely had no conscious expectation, not one that I could have given you prior to seeing it. I just felt when I saw it... yes _felt_ is the right word; I just had a _feeling_ that something was wrong.'

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'And you _felt_ ' the doctor emphasised the word, almost mockingly 'that this was because of the age of the man?'

'I suppose so. I don't know why, you told me to be honest, that was my honest reaction,' he felt like he had been caught out; unbalanced by another unforeseen twist and turn in the conversation.

Tap-tap

'How old is the man, Mr Featherstone?'

'I don't know, early forties, something like that?'

Tap-tap

'You do him a disservice, yourself, if you don't mind, a disservice. The man – you as it happens – are a mere thirty-eight years old. A young man, by today's standards; it may, perhaps, offer you some insight as to your, um, feeling if we revisited one of my previous questions?' he had the feeling this had been a rhetorical question, but still nodded his assent.

'I asked you, when last I saw you, what year it was, do you remember?' the doctor's rhetorical manner was beginning to give him the air of some sinister competition judge, he nodded again.

'You answered, quite without hesitation, that the year was _anno dominie_ two-thousand and eighteen,' the wait was purgatorial, but the good doctor seemed to be waiting for the nod this time. He obliged.

'What, Mr Featherstone, would your reaction be, where I um, to tell you that in ah... actual fact, the year is two-thousand and twenty-eight. That, for the past ten years you have been, um, in a condition we refer to as, ah... a catatonic stupor?'

#

He sat in silence for what could have equally been minutes or hours. Time seemed to stand still; he could almost see the words leave the doctor's mouth and form rows before his eyes. More and more words, it seemed, queuing up in some mental periphery, ready for some later time at which he would somehow make sense of them. He had known deep down, he supposed. At the back of his mind he knew that muscles did not atrophy overnight, but a decade?

'What do you mean by, um, catatonic stupor?' he asked eventually.

'Widely regarded as a form of schizophrenia, a catatonic stupor, Mr Featherstone, is characterised by a lack of motor-activity and an apparent obliviousness to external stimuli, you were in essence, in an, um, state of complete mental and physical breakdown.' The doctor recited, as though quoting from some internal medical dictionary.

'Is that why I can't remember anything?' he felt as though he were fulfilling his role in a pre-scripted conversation.

'You yourself have stated, Mr Featherstone, that it is not that you cannot remember _anything_ precisely, more that you are unable to place yourself in memory.' He could not remember telling the doctor this, but again mutely nodded his assent.

'Mr Featherstone, you, ah... appear to be suffering from a form of retrograde amnesia of the genus referred to as the _dissociative fugue_ , you have completely excised yourself from history,' the doctor paused, the air of game-show host about him had returned. 'The good news is that this is often a temporary condition. The bad news is that your previous state of catatonia made it impossible and futile to carry out any treatment and, as such, um, your mind has had ample and unchallenged time in which to build its walls.'

'What... you know; do you know what could have caused it?' he was numb, almost as though his treacherous mind was looking to store up as much panic as possible for a single, devastating burst.

'That... is something that I'm afraid I cannot, ah... possibly comment upon for now. Perhaps we shall learn that together. For now,' he checked his watch ostentatiously 'I believe our time together is at an end for today. I will, however, return tomorrow and we shall, um, talk again. Goodbye, Mr Featherstone.'

Clonk-clink

Ten years.

_Ten_ years.

Ten _years_.

No matter the stress, the numb sensation still pervaded.

Schizophrenia.

_Schiz_ ophrenia.

Schiz- _o-_ phrenia.

Schizo _phrenia_.

He went over and over the words, began to invent scenes in which he played out these inferred characteristics. He made of himself a stylised Jekyll and Hyde character, capable of anything. Was he part mild, unprepossessing hospital patient and part raving delusional?

Was it not possible that his very inability to accept this, albeit anecdotal, evidence could somehow be a symptom of the condition his mind denied? Was it not feasible, therefore, that he had attacked the nurse? Would such a thing explain the doctor's seemingly easy acceptance of his story and even his nurse's tone during her reassurances? He had to credit the doctor with one victory however. On reflection he had realised that somehow, and undetected, his failure to recognise himself had paled before this greater incongruity. His maniacal fantasies all starred a man with just such a face. It was as though the ill fitting features had somehow crept through a mental backdoor and past his subconscious censors, forced into place by the weight of a much larger realisation. Whilst his mind and all of his faculties were focused on rejecting or accepting this new information, his new face had permeated his subconscious and had spread from there to hold a monopoly on his identity.

Weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak

This, combined with the doctors repeated affirmation of his name, had internalised the information, confirmed it somehow as fact where before there had been only ill-fitting fictions.

Clonk-clink

How long would it be, he thought, before even this was somehow mundane? Would there come a point in time where he could somehow learn to live in with this knowledge... for that matter, had there been a drug invented in his psychic absence that would negate the necessity to do so? Once successfully diagnosed, would he then be cured by the messianic hand of pharmaceutical chemistry?

Clonk-clink

The thought gave him hope. He saw for a moment the future, his present, as an idyllic place of physic and psychic well-being, a halcyon era of inventive and fantastic curatives stretched before him; but slowly and steadily his unconscious mind betrayed him again and caused the landscape to combust and the healthy, happy populace to pick up placards and take voice. Slowly, and with the catchy anti-smoking jingle in the background they began to clash with colossal police officers with fires for eyes.

Weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak, weedle-squeak

He opened his eyes with a start; there in front of him was his lunch, arrived un-noticed during his reverie. He had completely missed the arrival and departure of a person, had no recollection of the visit. He began to worry that he was taking a backward step, eventually allowing himself to realise that he had simply been distracted.

From the positioning of the light on the wall, he still had enough time to eat and exercise. This he proceeded to do while staving off his randomly firing neurones and doing battle with the fantastical simulations that played on his mind. He ate and drank without tasting, exercised without feeling, achieved without enjoying and relaxed without relief. As the second bar of darkness crossed the door lintel, he rolled onto his stomach and lowered his trousers below his buttocks.

Clonk-clink

Clonk-clink

#

He had once more missed the delivery of his food. He ate again with a methodical slowness and mechanical detachment. However this time, beneath the blackening concerns of his situation, the imminence of her impending visit bloomed in his mind. It was enough to raise a smile, enough to take the edge off of his anxiety. He rehearsed new fantasies as he exercised. This time the star player emoted with his lover, came to a joint understanding and moved through his difficulties and into the exploration of their bodies, their joining taking on a metaphysical importance, suggesting a unity of soul as well as body. He snapped out of his reverie in time to notice the tell tale position of the light and dark bars. Hurrying, he returned to bed and assumed the necessary position for his injection, waiting passively for the oblivion that brought her ever closer.

Clonk-clink

The scheduled oblivion came.

Clonk-clink

He slept.

#

He awoke.

She was already beside him. The smell of her perfume cloying at his senses from the moment he was conscious.

'I'm glad you came,' he said.

'Wouldn't have missed it,' she replied, softly. Had the doctor told her of the day's session? Of course he had, she was a nurse and it would be necessary for her to know.

'Do you really think I'll get better?'

'Of course I do, sweetie. You'll be okay in no time.'

'It's just, you know, I'm scared of what I might do, you know? I keep wondering if I did attack the nurse. I keep inventing evidence for myself. I don't remember doing it, but I keep thinking that it's like that book _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ , you know?'

'Quiet down, honey, don't get so worked up. It's all going to be okay. You're going to be okay.' He believed her. How could he not? She seemed to have an inside line to his desires, knew exactly what he needed to hear. He began, then, to think of her as a kind of guardian angel. A benign and loving being that had taken to watching over him, protecting him.

That night she made love to him, displaying a tender and more caring side than she had previously. Sheathed only in the darkness, they writhed together until the air turned dark grey and she left him to sleep and to dream.

## CHAPTER THIRTEEN

'Where the fuck's the cab, man? Why call to tell you they're outside if they're not outside, by the time we get there the place will be closed,' said Jed sulkily.

'More to the point, by the time we get there, my dick will have shrivelled so much from the cold that I'm going to have an inny,' Chris replied.

The taxi finally crawled around the corner a couple of minutes later by which time the bourbon had well and truly worked its way to the brain.

'Taxi for Choudhry?' asked the driver, through the open passenger side window through which the smell of stale smoke and stale takeaways drifted.

'Yeah, cheers bruv.'

'Pub and club Street Peasant!' shouted Chris with ill advised chirpiness.

'You fuckin' what mate?' asked the driver furiously.

'Pu...'

'Sorry mate, he's a pissed twat, yeah? Don't pay any attention, innit?' said Jed, pushing Chris into the back where he sat, giggling like an imbecile.

'Where to then, mate?' asked the driver.

'Escape please, yeah?'

'That place?'

'Is it? Just round the corner, please, yeah?'

Eventually they rolled up around the corner from the club and Chris rolled out of the cab. Jed helped him to his feet, accepted the twenty pounds Chris gave him and ensured with further apologies that the driver kept the change.

'Come on, man, let's get in before the bouncers notice how fucked you are, yeah?' Chris, however, was busy scrabbling at his shoes. 'What the fuck are you doing man?'

'I need a spliff before we go in and I can't get it out.'

'Is it? Neither of us is going to be getting it out tonight if you don't stop flapping around in the middle of the street like a fucking maniac, yeah? I told you those shoes were a stupid idea.'

'What would you know Vesty McBlingerson, not only are these shoes finely bloody crafted and excessively expensive,' Chris managed to unfasten a hidden compartment in his heel. 'But also extremely fucking ingenious, now straighten your cap and skin up, cunt.'

Jed sucked his teeth and just caught the badly thrown baggie before nipping into a nearby alleyway where he pretended to piss against a wall whilst skinning up in a camouflage manoeuvre that he always found vaguely amusing. He stepped out of the alleyway, spliff in hand to see Chris swaying, drunken and impatient.

'Shall we take a stroll whilst we indulge, Jedward?'

'Kingston has a prom now, yeah?'

'No, but what could be more enjoyable than a quiet stroll up and down this fetid little back street, the smell of piss in one's nostrils, the constant fear of violent crime, it all goes toward giving the experience a most delightful piquancy.'

'You amaze me, yeah? You have no control of your motor skills, but yet you can still talk shit at a speed and length that makes my brain hurt. You're fucking mental, innit?'

'It can't take a lot to make your tiny little brain hurt, Jedward. I shall one day make sure to educate you as much as I can. There's more to the future than the past, you know. Being able to name every known battle of the English Civil War or the names of Prime Ministers is all well and good, but what's the point if you can't maintain an adequate level of drunken badinage?'

'Fuck off; I can also state, with reference to source material, the socio-political impetus that lay behind the formation of the Magna Carta and its subsequent impact on land reform. Just because I'm less competent in the muttering of drunken obscenity doesn't mean I lack repartee. Who doesn't want to know about the increases in taxation levied by England that led to the American War of Independence?' asked Jed as sincerely as he could manage.

Chris raised his hand enthusiastically. 'Me! Me and absolutely everyone else with any sense, that's who. In addition to that, you forgot to say innit again. People are going to start thinking you're civilised unless you're careful.'

'Is it?'

'It most certainly is, young Jedward, now pass that here Humphrey,' said Chris, stealing the barely lit spliff from between Jed's fingers.

'Easy now, you'll need to be able to walk if you're coming back to mine, yeah?'

'Will I fuck, I'll be taking a taxi and you can toy with whatever floozy you pick up in the back whilst I sit in the front and try to embarrass the driver.'

'Please don't, yeah? Most drivers won't pick up here at night, last thing we need is to be kicked out in the middle of nowhere innit?'

'It's hardly the Heart of bloody Darkness Jedward. There are other taxis. Why do you always have to spoil my fun?'

Jed stole the joint back, laughing as Chris flailed after it. 'Because your fun is going to get my head kicked in one day, yeah? You've a screw loose man.'

'Oh, okay, I shall refrain from funning with the help,' Chris chuckled. 'Shall we make our entrance?'

'Fucking hell man, you whine for a joint and then I finally pull it, limp and soggy from your fingers, you start whining to go in? What's that about, yeah? You're a disgrace bruv.'

'God forbid I was your bruv, I couldn't be related to such a boorish ruffian, now stop your bloody protestations and let us go see what we can see, shall we?'

Jed sighed and nodded, taking a few swift pulls on the spliff before grinding it underfoot and following Chris around the corner to the club, he had managed somehow to be upright enough to make it past the bouncers and was through the scanner, queuing to check his coat as Jed walked through the door. He joined Chris in the queue, spent an interminable thirty minutes waiting, then headed through the club, past the semi-pornographic artwork and into the music and the strobes. They struggled through the press of bodies to the bar where there were five bottles ordered for each of them.

'To the table at once, my eyes thirst for lechery!' Chris shouted over the music and began to drag Jed across the room to their usual table, forcing him to apologise repeatedly as they bumped into revellers, losing more and more alcohol as they progressed slowly through the throng.

'You see anything you like yet you dirty bastard?'

'Now now Jedward, less of the language, besides in the name of accuracy I'm a dirty old bastard. Now, shut up, you're distracting me from the cattle market, I can't concentrate for all your yapping.'

'There seem to be fewer people here this time. The place is dying on its arse.'

'No great surprise really. You can't smoke, the age of consent has been raised again, and pretty soon you won't be allowed to take drugs.'

'You're already not allowed to take drugs Christopher dear.'

'No fucking way! I suppose you won't be wanting one of these then?' asked Chris, briefly opening his hand in which lay a couple of pink speckled white pills.

'I could probably be convinced.' Jed smirked.

'Should at least make the music sound a little better, what is it with these places and their obsession with this,' Chris shuddered 'music.'

'Cheer up granddad,' laughed Jed, accepting one of the pills, washing it down with a mouthful of lukewarm beer.

'I'm just saying that not everyone can be placed into a generic subtype, you can't expect that just because...'

'Is it?' Jed was no longer listening, his attention was focused elsewhere.

'... which I think you'll find means that you... you're not listening are you?'

'Innit man, yeah.'

'You're an absolute cunt aren't you?'

'Yeah, bruv, I agree, yeah?'

'You cheeky fucker, you're still not listening. What the fuck are you doing?' Chris looked around the room, trying to spot whatever it was that had caught his friend's attention. 'Oh, that's what you're doing?'

'What?' Jed looked around, startled.

'Don't think I don't know what you're doing.' Chris grinned.

'I have no idea what you're talking about, innit?' said Jed, knowing exactly what he was talking about.

'So, are you going to go over? As ever, shall I be so cruelly cast aside in favour of some blonde floozy?'

'Abso-fucking-lutely.'

'Go on then. I release you,' said Chris, waving his arms in a gesture of imperial dismissal, king to subject.

'Just so you know yeah...'

'Yes?'

'I just wanted you to know...'

'Know what?'

'I just wanted you to know that even though I'll be going home with someone else tonight...'

'Oh for fucks sake Jedward, what do you want?'

'I just wanted you to know that deep down, deep, deep down, that... you're still a cunt, okay?' the two friends laughed drunkenly.

Jed turned away and began to slowly approach the bar. He couldn't believe his luck. There, across from the bar and occasionally stealing glances at him was one of the prettiest things he had ever laid eyes on. Slim, blonde, with dazzling blue eyes, lips the shape of cupids bow and as red as cherries, Jed was spellbound. He approached the bar slowly, feeling his pulse race, the shivers and tingles he always got whenever he was about to try his luck, combined with the first fluttering of butterflies as the pill began to take its effect. He arrived at the bar, shaking slightly and smiled.

'Can I get you a drink, yeah?'

'It's about time; I can't stand around here all night fluttering my eyelids.'

## CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The daylight intensified, leaking light through the windows and bleaching the walls through the opened blinds. He awoke reluctantly. He ate dreamily. He remained still and pliant as he was bathed and changed. He carried a share of his own weight to the commode and again on his return to bed. He exercised. He blithely danced to the familiar beat of the day. She had whispered to him last night, whilst he was on the edge of sleep 'Let it come,' he had not quite known what she had meant then, thought that maybe she had spoken of his dreams. That morning, however, he did know that he would let it come. He would let the doctor do his job, had decided to better trust the doctor's revelations. Like refugees returning home after a war, his thoughts would find a ragged but vacant land, scarred but ready to be resettled.

Clonk-Clink

The doctor breezed into the room, casually toting the blue plastic chair and a small leatherette attaché case and found him smiling and ready to begin again.

'You appear to have had a good night, Mr Featherstone. I had feared that I had, ah... gone too far in our previous session. You have recovered well it seems and you have my sincere congratulations.' The doctor sat himself down and took out his pad.

Tap-tap

'Thank you; I mean, obviously I'm still struggling to get to grips with some of it, but I guess that's all part and parcel right?' he said.

Tap-tap

'I guess I've just realised, you know, that I need to get better.'

Tap-tap

'That I want to get better. I want to be able to leave at some point, you know?'

Tap-tap

Silence

'Very good Mr Featherstone, I'm pleased that you seem so eager to ah... progress,' the doctor adjusted his position in the chair, bowing its moulded plastic back; causing the legs to screech on the floor as they shifted beneath his weight.

Tap-tap

'Now,' the doctor continued 'it's my intention to be honest with you, Mr Featherstone. It is not in my nature to be, um, in any way ah... disingenuous. You have been, since your arrival, a sectioned patient. It is quite impossible for you to leave the hospital, though perhaps you may at some point be considered otherwise...'

The doctor continued to talk, but his monologue had become a soliloquy. Escape. That was what she had meant. He was captive; a rat in a cage. Again he watched scenes of his assault and attempted escape, only this time he felt the nurse's skin breech under the Hyde figures nails, this time the eyes were malevolent, the mouth frothed.

'As you can see...'

'I'm sorry I attacked the nurse, I didn't know what I was doing,' an oral ejaculation, the words spat forward, upsetting the doctor's flow.

'You're sorry?' The doctor seemed to double-take.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

'You're sorry you attacked the nurse. Excellent Mr Featherstone; remarkable progress, do you remember the attack?' asked the doctor.

'No,' he said 'I don't. But, you know, I must have. I want to get better doctor. I can't remember it, but I-I'm sorry and I just, you know, want to get better.' The mingling of self-pity and shame was forcing tears to his eyes once more.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

Tap-tap-tap-tap

'I am pleased to see you some taking responsibility. It is quite possible, after all, for the human mind to perform such tricks, is it not?' The rhetoritician had returned. 'One's acts may be suppressed in such a way that the conscious mind may have no clue as to their taking place. I'm no Freudian, myself, but it is often in cases of violent psychoses that I find myself pondering upon the id, our animal side: the Mr Hyde to our Doctor Jekyll, so to speak.'

'That's how I've been thinking about it,' he said.

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone, quite so, it would seem that we are on the same page. Perhaps, then, we should begin our latest session with some smaller revelations?' No answer was required. 'You may already have wondered, for example, whether or not you have always been, um, mentally ill?'

Silence

'Yes. I-I have.' He dreaded the answer but the question had occurred to him often.

'The answer to that question is, ah...' this time the doctor's inner quiz-show host reared its head 'I suppose, no. I qualify that only with the commonly held belief that mental illness is, in fact, inherent. Up until the event that triggered what may have been a latent illness, you were a functioning member of society. Perhaps this will please you?'

'It does.' He was relieved; part of him had imagined a past of constant hospitalisation, a wasted life spent staring at the world through a fog of mania as his mind wrestled with the constraints of sanity before freeing itself, time and again, to madness.

Tap-tap

'Quite,' was the delayed response 'how, may I ask, has it made you _feel_?'

'Honestly?' he asked, reflectively.

'I would not ask a question to which the answer should be anything but.' The curt response jolted him out of the short reverie.

'I-I, uh, you know. I've felt confused, disorientated, scared, paranoid, alternatively and all at once, but hopeful, too. I guess it's a step on the road, right? Maybe even in the right direction too, you know?' the words tumbled out.

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'You mentioned paranoia?' only the intonation was questioning, it was a statement.

Silence

'Well, you know, just about the past, that's all. What was I like? Would I like me? Was I some utter bastard? You know, maybe not paranoia. Maybe just worry, you know? Yeah, I worry.' He was worried, gnawed at, on the verge of being devoured.

Tap-tap

'There are no, ah... visual or fantasy accompaniments to these worries, Mr Featherstone?' the words were leaden and thudded like wet sand bags on stone.

'No, well, no more than I would think was normal. You know. I'm sure everyone fantasises to some degree? I made up scenarios, but I didn't believe them, you know? I was just thinking in pictures.' How had he been forced on to the defensive?

Silence

The doctor glanced briefly over the rim of his spectacles.

Tap-tap

'We all fantasise, Mr Featherstone? Thinking in pictures? What do you mean, exactly?' The doctor had returned his gaze to the pad and was speaking into his chest.

'Well, it's like, I've been imagining memories. Like trying them out to see how they fit, you know? I've kind of been trying to coax out the actual memories by providing a space for them of the right size, to see if they fit.'

Tap-tap

'What is it that you imagine you did before your, um, episode?'

'Did?'

'Yes, Mr Featherstone; did, the past participle of do: What _did_ you _do_? Before you became, ah... unstable,' replied the doctor, dryly patronising.

'I hadn't given it much thought, to be honest. I've been focusing on things a little more recent, if you know what I mean. My catatonic past, my split present participle, you understand?' He wasn't sure where it had come from, but the doctor's condescension had provoked a terse reply.

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'Sarcasm, Mr Featherstone, is the lowest form of wit,' scolded the doctor.

'Or: _the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded_ – as Dostoyevsky said. I suppose it depends on your view of the world,' again the bitterness flowed freely, causing him to flinch at the sound of his own delivery. 'I'm sorry; I don't know where that came from.'

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

'I see you are feeling a little hostile today, Mr Featherstone; perhaps we should curtail our session for fear of one of your, ah... moments?' The doctor's harsh reminder of his mental state seemed to reduce him in size, he felt himself shrink into the bed.

'I'm sorry. I swear, I don't know what I'm saying, perhaps it's the medication?' he asked, turning the question into a plea for clemency.

Tap-tap

'Quite,' again the doctor regarded him quizzically over his spectacles. 'In that case, Mr Featherstone, I have a few photographs for you to inspect. We have had to piece them together in web-based background checks over the years, but I feel the few I have selected will serve as an introduction. Perhaps they will help you to place yourself at a few of the places you have been imagining so far,' the doctor proceeded to open the attaché case and draw out a larger version of the pad on which he tap-tapped.

'Thank you,' he said, taking what appeared to be a clear sheet of rigid plastic with a black metal trim around its edges. Seeing his confusion, the doctor leaned over him, tap-tapping seemingly at random until an option screen appeared. He dragged the menu cursor down to a line entitled, simply, Featherstone and tapped it twice, with a sickly jingle of accomplishment, a picture.

'I forget myself,' stated the doctor apologetically as he re-seated himself 'simply tap the screen to scroll through the pictures.'

# # #

He regarded the first picture with a mixture of awe and unease; staring intently at the long-gone photographer, was a young man with dark eyes and a smartly trimmed mop of dark hair. Beneath a well defined jaw there was a series of small, pale red bumps, perhaps indicating a recently completed shave, on his forehead were the pits of adolescent acne. The boy held himself as though he had researched photographic deportment in Victorian books of etiquette. The overall effect of the photograph was comic, despite the subject's obvious affectations.

'I look so _serious_ ,' he said, stifling a laugh. 'It's as though I'm trying to be the world's youngest fifty-year old man.'

Tap-tap

'So you recognise, then, that it is indeed you in this photograph?' asked the doctor.

'Well, we share the same face,' he said.

Tap-tap

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone; if you'd like to proceed on to the next photograph?'

He tapped tentatively at the screen. The first photograph slid off of the left hand side of the screen, pushed impatiently by the second's arrival. There he was again, slightly older this time and dressed in a graduation gown with a fur hood and mortar board. In the next picture he was at some sort of party: evidently attempting to appear relaxed he sported a light tweed jacket with a number of badges: a small 'no-smoking' sign and a smaller blue rose, around his neck was a navy-blue tie with seven golden stripes and on his face an expression of barely tolerated joviality.

He continued to tap through the pictures, watching the slow, inevitable progress of years, the fluctuating weight and deepening of lines. The pictures could not have covered more than five or six years, yet it seemed that the affectation of age began to draw indelible lines in the youthful face, as though he had somehow willed himself older. The pictures began again and he continued around this brief and circular history twice more, attempting to pin the pictures onto the empty time-line of his life.

'So serious,' he said eventually.

'Do you have an issue with seriousness Mr Featherstone?'

'No. I don't know, I guess he, I, look quite successful really, what did I study?'

'You read, Mr Featherstone.'

'What... like books?'

'No. You read, Mr Featherstone, you read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, at Oxford University.'

'So I have been in and out of institutions,' he said, dryly. It surprised him somewhat, this implied success, what could have driven such a successful and serious man to ruin? What had finally snapped his mind? Was the doctor right, had it been squatting in his genes like some mental cancer, gnawing contentedly at his sanity, pushing him onward toward some abyssal breakdown, or had it been sudden, a cataclysm that had collapsed the firmament of his mind in a single event?

Tap-tap

'Do you think this levity is appropriate, Mr Featherstone?'

I'm sorry,' the words had just tripped from his tongue, swerving his mental barriers 'I suppose it just shocked me, I didn't mean to be facetious.'

Then perhaps we can continue? How do these photographs make you feel?'

'Sad,' he said.

Tap-tap

'Why sad?'

I must have been very lonely. The way I look in those photographs makes me think that I was never happy, to have such a look. I don't know. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, maybe not enough, but he... I, just don't look comfortable. It's almost as though, perhaps, I have adopted an air of solitude only to be disappointed when I attained the real thing. I think that's sad.'

Tap-tap

Tap-tap

An almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corners of the doctor's mouth. 'An interesting assumption and well put, Mr Featherstone. Do you recognise any of these photographs? Is there anything about them you would like to ask?'

He cycled through the photographs again, this time looking intently at them, inspecting them in detail, the clothes, the hair, the posture, they all fit with what he would have expected of a man that read at Oxford, but still he felt no real connection. Still he felt sorry for the lonely stranger. Sorry for himself. To be this man again would require the affectations to begin again from the beginning, could he do it? Why did I dress myself in borrowed robes? he thought. He shook his head, solemnly.

'No. Not yet, but they will. For better or worse I will be... if I am Ernest Featherstone. I will try to reclaim my life as best I can.'

'Very good; it is much more conducive to our goals here if you remain in such a frame of mind. It will be easier for you, in the end, if you do not resist during these sessions. Eventually you will see the man in those pictures emerge. Gone will be the man that lurks inside your mind and undermines your progress, you will remain Doctor Jekyll, free at last from Hyde.' One day he would be free from hospitals, free from illness and what was more, he could re-invent himself. He could learn from the mistakes he had made in the past and emerge better for it. Gone would be the solitary poseur with his Victorian affectations and what would replace it would be... would be what? What could he really replace it with? Would attempting to learn from the man cause him to once again become him, or could he somehow escape his own patriarchal presence?

'Thank you. I guess I'm just under a lot of pressure. Stressed I suppose, but I do want to get better, I do want to leave here.'

Tap-tap

'I'm certain you will, Mr Featherstone. Before I leave you for the day, are there any questions you would like to ask based upon the images you have seen today?'

'You, um, never actually told me what I did...?' he let the question hang in the air.

Silence

' _Oh_. I am sorry. _Did_? Civil servant, Mr Featherstone. Middling, but fairly well paid. You were a normal man living a normal life. I hope this helps,' the doctor gathered his possessions and his chair and left the room.

Clonk-clink

#

Almost immediately he began to arrange the new revelations in his mind and then began to create a past. He pictured a world of studious endeavour, of practiced expression and fastidious loneliness; saw the man practicing Masonic handshakes and airs of boredom, eschewing the life of a student for an imitation of the University Dons. He was in turns saddened and amused as he pictured long nights with nothing but practiced ennui for company and long days making notations, not on the lectures he attended but on the lecturers themselves. Undertaking a life study of upper-middle class mediocrity, he would attain an upper-middle class degree and proceed, from there, to upper-middle class employment wherein he could put to use his practiced airs and graces.

It wasn't too late though, he thought, he had the rest of his life ahead of him and a blank slate upon which to write it. Even were his memory to come flooding back, there were choices that could be made. He could rise like a phoenix from the ashes of his former life and strive for happiness over image. With these comforting thoughts still fresh in his mind, he rolled onto his stomach and readied himself for the coming injection.

Clonk-clink

Sleep.

# # #

He knew he was dreaming; that is he knew later that he was dreaming but had felt conscious within the dream. He was in a white room with no doors or windows. If his hands had not felt otherwise, he could have believed neither floor nor walls. He trailed his hand along the perimeter, daring the room's geometry to betray this most basic of sense. To his eyes, however, the room was infinite, no architect had corrupted the vast expanse with vulgar vaulting, nor had people or words or thoughts ever crept within to defile with definitions. It was a vast, unending unyielding radial plane of nothing. But beneath his hands he felt solidity, lay his palms upon the smooth hardness of a wall. He let it drop to his side.

_This is my mind_. He thought to himself.

'This is my mind,' he said aloud.

'This is your mind,' echoed the walls, with his voice.

'This is our mind,' added the ceiling and the floor.

He placed his hand against the wall again, fighting off the vertigo that quested up through his body from legs to head.

A metallic blue vein rippled along the wall. He withdrew the hand, leaving a pale blue print upon the wall which quickly faded. He pressed at the wall, the vein pulsed, the blue coloured light proceeding at speed along the walls. This time there was a sound, like music heard over a poor telephone signal. He pushed again, this time he felt it move, almost imperceptible, but movement nevertheless. The blue vein seemed to fracture the room, which seemed to cower away. The lines faded. Left on the wall, beginning some two or three inches above his hands an image began to form. He laughed.

'It's my photograph,' he said.

'It's a photograph,' replied the walls.

'It's a photograph,' added the ceiling and the floor.

## CHAPTER FIFTEEN

'Fuck me man, what a night, yeah?' asked Jed as he stumbled into the living room.

'I haven't the faintest idea,' replied Chris, groaning from the couch. 'Your floozy left in quite a rush this morning though, what on earth did you do?'

'As much as possible innit?' laughed Jed.

'So it would seem. Are you two love birds going to be seeing one another again, then?

'I hope so, yeah, we had fun innit?'

'Oh, my Jedward; my little boy is growing up.'

'Fuck off cunt,' laughed Jed, feeling his cheeks redden.

'Now now lover boy, less of that, besides shouldn't you be making a cup of tea? I'm as dry as the proverbial nun's dry bits.'

'Is it? What's wrong? Have you broken your arms, yeah?'

'Oh no, but I shall need those to skin up. Make tea.'

'You make tea.'

'Ordinarily I would, as you know, but I'm afraid that if I stand up my head will fall off, such is the excruciating pain therein. Make tea.'

'Ordinarily? You're here more than Aadil and you never make a brew, yeah?'

'What a poor memory you have Jedward. I distinctly remember making you a brew in February. Make tea.'

'February of what year?' asked Jed stroking his chin thoughtfully.

'Make tea! If I do not have tea I shall perish!' cried Chris.

Jed retreated from the room to make tea, chuckling as he went. 'Make sure there's a joint for my return, yeah?'

'It's a solid gold, stonewall, one hundred percent deal Jedward.'

Jed returned to the living room a couple of minutes later with two oversized mugs of tea, his without sugar, Chris's with enough to stand the spoon up in. Chris was asleep. It amazed him how the man could sleep anywhere, in seemingly any position. In this instance one leg was draped over the arm of the chair, one out straight, his head lolled at an angle that looked particularly uncomfortable, he had a half constructed spliff resting on his chest which Jed stole as he sat down, he then completed its construction and lay back on the couch.

# # #

INTERIOR: Ernest Featherstone's EALING HOME. We are in the BASEMENT. The footage is JERKY as we see the SHADOW OF EF pacing back and forth around the room.

CUT TO an ELECTRONICS MANUAL.

CUT TO a TEXT ON EXPLOSIVES.

CUT TO a TABLE OF WIRES and TOOLS.

CUT TO BLACK

There is the SOUND of a HEART BEATING.

CUT TO EXTERIOR: GARDEN CENTRE CAR PARK. EF is PACING NERVOUSLY through the CAR PARK towards the store. CUT TO INTERIOR: GARDEN CENTRE CHECKOUT. EF is queuing with a trolley containing THREE LARGE BAGS of FERTILIZER. He steadily progresses toward the till.

CASHIER

You must have some money to need that much fertilizer in London! Where are you based hun?

EF's JAW CLENCHES VISIBLY. He answers and then falls silent, obviously not wishing to converse.

EF

Ealing.

We see EF pay with a card and follow him to his car where he heaves the fertilizer into the boot and slams it shut.

CUT TO EXTERIOR: A DIFFERENT GARDEN CENTRE, we watch as EF walks into the GARDEN CENTRE then emerge moments later pushing a trolley with three more bags of fertilizer.

CUT TO SHOT OF A TABLE: a CREDIT CARD is laid upon the table, then another.

CUT TO: BOOT OF EF's CAR, more fertilizer is added.

CUT TO TABLE: another CREDIT CARD is added to the pile, then another and another and another.

The CAR has become a VAN; we see it fill in jerky shots with bag after bag of fertilizer, interposed with shots of card after card added to the table.

CUT TO INTERIOR EF's BASEMENT: EF is still pacing, we hear muted, indistinguishable talking. It is EF talking to himself as he paces.

MONTAGE OF SHOTS: We SMASH CUT between scenes of EF variously loading fertilizer, completing electronic work and driving. We see in the sections where EF is driving he passes SIGNPOSTS upon which the miles TO THE NORTH are slowly falling.

CUT TO: JC stands outside of the HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

JC

Not a great deal is known of Ernest Featherstone's actions on the day he detonated his home-made explosive other than the time and location of its eventual detonation and its cost in lives, yet in this instance it is impossible to lay the blame with any of the police authorities. Ernest Featherstone was a completely unknown quantity with no discernible links to any terrorist organisations whether left or right wing. He was the quintessential Englishman in all other respects and, though it may be a cliché in cases of extreme violence by an individual, he was considered a quiet, normal neighbour, one described as having 'kept himself to himself'. Nevertheless, the authorities have been pilloried by either side of the political spectrum, the act was immediately seen, in these times of ever rising political and social tensions and financial hardship, as a purposeful act of violence by one side or the other. With Ernest Featherstone currently comatose in a secret location, perhaps we'll never know his true motives, but what we can tell is that it is the most destructive, the most abhorred and yet the most intriguing and divisive act of terrorism in English History.

CUT TO EF'S CHILDHOOD HOME: Once again we are over the shoulder of EF's mother as she WRITES in her diary.

(VO) EF's MOTHER

I've just seen him on television. He's the devil. The devil and I raised him, so many people; so many people. I should have killed him when he was a child. If I'd killed him then those people would be alive now, I wish I could go back, I'd dash his brains out on the floor, had an abortion, anything. It's entirely my fault. I wish I were dead. I will be soon, I've placed this in a place the fire can't touch it because I want someone to know I'm sorry, so very sorry. I didn't know, I honestly didn't know. I hope he dies. I hate him. The smoke has started to come upstairs, so I have to be quick, I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.

We see the smoke drift under the bedroom door. EF's MOTHER begins to race around the room, packing the DIARY into a carved BOX which – from her POV – we see her throw from her window into bushes below. She opens the door where fire licks the walls from down the stairs. She backs into the bedroom once. The camera pulls back and we see her SLUMP against the door and begin to cry.

FADE TO BLACK

SOUND OF EF's MOTHER SCREAMING.

JC

Ernest's mother died in hospital as a result of first degree burns which covered her whole body. Her diary was found in the bushes in the garden of the home she had once shared with her husband and child. She had known her son's face from the footage broadcast across the nation wanting information regarding an unknown man. The shock proved to be too much for her already delicate mental state.

# # #

'Have you gone to sleep? Where's my joint? Why's my tea cold?' asked Chris.

'Whu?' replied Jed. Chris repeated the questions slowly, as though to a particularly stupid child. 'Yes. Gone and, finally, because you were asleep first innit.'

'A likely story – in fairness, a very likely story. Make tea will you?'

'You have a cup there; stick it in the microwave, yeah?'

'Do I have to?'

'You can stick it up your arse for all I care, but I'd suggest the microwave as a starting point.'

'Oh, Jedward, your subtle and understated humour never fails to titillate. One thing I should mention though...'

'What's that, yeah?'

'You forgot to say _innit_.'

'Is it? Fuck off, cunt.'

Chris retreated to the kitchen to microwave his tea; as he did, Jed's phone vibrated and he scrabbled to find it amidst the couch cushions, pulled it from down the side of a cushion and read the message.

'Fuck! Fucking cunt, fucking, fucking cunt, I'm fucked!' The colour had drained from Jed's face.

'What's the matter sweetheart?' shouted Chris from the kitchen.

'Listen to this, yeah? _I'm so sorry Jed, I lied about my age. I rushed out this morning because I was afraid my father would find out, but he has. He snatched my phone and saw the photos. I'm sorry Jed; he made me tell him where you lived. I didn't mean for this to happen. He's going to the police right now._ What the fuck man, the police? I am so fucking screwed. They're going to do me for rape man.'

'Sexual assault at worst Jedward, try not to worry about it. It'll blow over, just an angry father. Can't believe the bitch lied about a thing like that though. Don't worry yourself about it. For now, worry about getting the drugs and me out of your flat before they get here, the last thing you need is to be caught in possession as well.'

## CHAPTER SIXTEEN

'Are you awake?' he felt her breath on his neck.

'Just,' he said. He felt himself smiling.

'Good. I thought I'd missed you,' she kissed his forehead gently.

'Not likely. I don't get many visitors,' he grinned as he reached for the remote control, flicking on the television so as to see her again in its ethereal blue glow.

'I'm glad that's your only reason. Perhaps I shan't come again,' she scolded in a playful, exaggerated accent.

' _What_ _light through yonder window breaks_ ,' he countered, casting his arms out to her mock dramatically ' _it is the east and Juliet is the sun_ ,' he laughed 'Your visits keep me going. If I didn't know you were going to come, I think I'd go mad, madder, you know what I mean,' he grinned and kissed her arm.

'I should hope so too,' the blue light illuminated her smile and formed an electric blue halo around her head. 'How did it go with your session?'

'It was okay. I got a little angry at one point; I know he's just trying to help, but it just gets to me the way he talks to me sometimes. Other than that, it went okay, I guess. I found out what I did before,' he said.

'Really, what was it?' she asked, seeming uncomfortable.

'I was a civil servant,' he laughed nervously 'I realise that some might find that less forgivable than mental illness, but I can change, I promise.'

'Don't be silly. It's a good, secure and respectable job, you could have been a lot worse. Who knows, you might feel differently one day.'

'I suppose you're right, I could have been homeless, a drunk or a junky, worse, a homunky even. I don't know, I'm still frightened I won't like me, you know?'

'I like you;' she said 'can that be enough for now?'

'I'm just scared. You know I could have bizarre sexual proclivities, right? I could be into anything. Will you still like me if I'm some kind of crazy person?'

'I do, I will and you are anyway, remember?' she gestured at her smock. 'Hello? Nurse's uniform?' She used another outlandish accent, laughing like a naughty schoolgirl.

'You're right,' he inhaled raggedly, his face sore from smiling. 'It does seem absurd to worry about sexual leanings and social standing from within an institution,' he shook his head as though ridding himself of unnecessary concerns.

'That's alright; it's the least I can do. After all, what would I do with my evenings if you went back to how you were?'

'I'm glad that's your only reason,' he said, grinning again, she slapped him playfully then climbed into the bed and gathered him to her.

They lay there together in silence. To him the blue light seemed to form a shield through which none of the world's troubles could break. In that room, in that microcosmic world there was no fire, no sirens, no riot shields, no policemen or doctors. There was just the sound of two people's breathing, slowly synchronising, soft and low. They did not speak, did not kiss, disrobe, or press sweating together; instead they held one another and he was happy. He pushed back the thought that she would leave him, tried to avoid the thought that in the charcoal grey of dawn would be written her departure. He nuzzled into her neck; he could feel the blood coursing through her arteries and in feeling this, felt closer still to her heart.

'You okay?' she said.

'Fine, fine, I was just wishing that I could wake up with you one morning. When I think of you leaving me, it's like someone poured lead down my throat, or, you know, increased the gravity by half. I feel like the weight of it could pull me through floors,' he laughed, feeling blood surge to his face as his cheeks reddened and thanked the blue light for the pallid mask it must have given him.

'You're so sweet,' she said, and pecked him on the forehead. 'I have to be somewhere tonight, so I'm going to have to leave a little early. Will you be okay?'

'Of course, yeah, um, I'll be fine. Where is it you're going?' His heart sank.

'Just meeting a few of the girls; one must keep up appearances after all. We don't want anyone getting suspicious, after all,' she hugged him and stood up, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

'I suppose you're right. I'll miss you, though. I'll see you tomorrow though, right?'

'Not tomorrow, hun, I'm sorry. I'm not on the rota and people are starting to wonder why I'm taking all the unwanted shifts. I'll be back in a couple of days, okay? I'll see you then, and I'll make it up to you. I promise,' she winked theatrically.

'Okay. Well. I'll see you in a couple of days then,' she kissed his forehead once more and left the room.

Clonk-clink

He'd come on too strong. He'd frightened her away when he most needed her, now she was going to go out and find someone normal; someone less... less pitiable, someone who could look after her. He was about to lose her, of that he was certain. How could he have expected anything else? Why had he even hoped to keep her? He closed his eyes, allowing the looping tape of his mistakes play on his eyelids, watched himself gushing platitudes, grimaced with every playback, raked himself over coals for every offence.

# # #

He awoke with a start as the morning's television began – disturbed as he was by the apocalyptic jingle of a new day's news. He peered, bleary eyed up at the television, but could make no sense of the words. It appeared to be more of the same, more pictures of barely contained anarchy circled by ragged lines of blue and orange. He sighed and rolled over, shielding his eyes from the seemingly endless rioting and the grey dawn; covering his ears from the nonsensical gibbering of the news-reader. He flicked the television off, aiming the remote control vaguely over his shoulder and then attempted to return to sleep. He could not recover his sleeping position however. His body would only settle in very particular poses and only for seconds at a time. He tortured himself with the preceding evening's events and resigned himself to never sleeping again.

He slept.

#

Another identikit morning of breakfast and bowel movements began, he was bathed and bored. Time seemed to stretch out, taunting him. The light and dark bars inched along the wall until he found himself wanting to get up and push them along. He wanted to somehow regain control, to be able to alleviate the banality of his routine. He could no longer look forward to his nurses visits and even the drugs seemed to have dried up. All that was left was his daily revelation, for better or worse, all he could look forward to was the doctor's pedagogic visits, his rhetoric and patronage. He found himself drumming the fingers of his left hand distractedly and biting the nails of his right.

He winced. He had gnawed the nail of his right index finger to the quick. He regarded it wearily, he watched as a small bead of blood welled to the surface where it sat in obstinate ignorance of physics until, at last and enlightened, it trickled down the rear of his finger, pooling briefly in the creases of its joints before continuing on down. He inserted it in his mouth and sucked, tasting, in his rusting humanity, the end of days. He looked up at the wall and commenced a short tirade of finger muffled cursing as he noted the lack of progress the light and dark had made upon the wall. How could time take so much... time? He continued to suck at the wounded finger until it puckered and creased.

Clonk-clink

The doctor made his standard entrance, his small attaché case resting upon his tired looking blue moulded chair. He pressed the chair into the floor, placed his bag by its side and folded himself precisely into it, ignoring its squeals of protest as he crossed and uncrossed his legs, a drama of comfort attained by slow degrees.

'How are we today?' asked the doctor. It was here; this wished for, attained and now vaguely lamented daily inquisition and exposition. What would he do wrong this time? How else could he possibly damage his relationship with the doctor?

'I'm okay.' He answered finally.

'Good good. How have you been coping since my last visit? You are a little more disposed to, um, cooperation today, I hope?'

'I'm really sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to be uncooperative. I guess I'm finding it hard to adapt.'

Tap-tap

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone, now on with today's, ah... session, I suppose.'

'Why is there only one channel?' Another inexplicable act of self sabotage; perhaps it was a subconscious attempt to derail his own recovery.

'What?'

'Nothing, I'm sorry, please continue.'

Tap-tap

'Why do you ask, Mr Featherstone?' again, the doctor seemed disproportionately angry. 'Do you believe we're hiding something from you?'

'N-no, not at all, I just wondered, that's all. It's just a bit much to watch the riots all the time. I was just curious, then there are the adverts, I don't remember adverts.'

'You tell me you remember very little at all, Mr Featherstone. Is that not the case?' the doctor's voice dripped with a savage sarcasm thinly veiled with professionalism.

'I was just interested. Please continue, I didn't mean to step out of line.' He was shaking, a mixture of fear, frustration and anger at himself and at the doctor.

Silence

Tap-tap

Silence

'For the sake of quenching your, ah... curiosity, Mr Featherstone, the adverts are how that once proud institution now has to fund itself, it is a prostitute corporation. Is that an adequate explanation for you, Mr Featherstone?'

'Thank you,' he said, meekly, restraining the thousand questions that the answer raised, he bit his tongue.

Tap-tap

'We may continue?' He nodded, again unnecessarily, for the doctor was already in full flow. 'It is often beneficial, for patients in your condition, to have them visit places from their past, to help them to place themselves in history, so to speak,' he found a rising well of excitement, he was going to finally... 'Unfortunately, as you will understand, this is impossible in your case, not least because it has been a long time since your, um, episode. Though it may seem, ah... counter intuitive, it would perhaps do more harm than good in this instance.'

His heart sank. Was this the punishment that befitted his impertinent intrusion upon the doctor's stage? To have his hopes built up and so firmly dashed.

'Of course,' he said, his voice hollow, echoing from the pit of his disappointment.

Tap-tap

'I have, therefore, had to procure some documentary footage. It will not, perhaps, provide the same degree of sense exposure as one would expect with the sights and smells of one's home, but it shall serve a purpose nevertheless.'

'Thank you.' He said, watching the doctor rummage in his attaché case. He brought out the large pad with a flourish.

'I think you will find this useful, it is an, um, video montage of my own composition. I believe it is a passable piece of work.' The doctor's faux humility set his teeth on edge.

'Thank you,' he said, accepting the pad once more. The video was already queued.

He tapped the screen.

#

The camera swooped over a vista of white cliffs, rocketing inland over greenbelt, bypassing Ashford, Maidstone, Chatham, Gravesend and Dartford. There then rose up the city of London; the murky twists of the Thames unfurling beneath the mechanical eye. Below it passed the Thames barrier, the Millennium Dome, Tower Bridge, Southwark Bridge, the Millennium Bridge and St Pauls Cathedral. Big Ben was then circled, before flashes of palaces and abbeys flicked past in quick succession, joined by the Houses of Parliament. The light then dimmed and the camera followed the streaking rear lights of cars along another grey ribbon, the M40.

#

The image had frozen; he looked up at the doctor in time to see the pride in the doctor's face turn quickly to embarrassment then return to its normal stony seriousness.

'Damn thing. The blasted computer must have split it into two parts,' the doctor snatched the pad away, tapping at the screen in irritation before returning it.

#

Trees, greens and commons, the Sheldonian Theatre, Balliol College, Trinity College, libraries, row upon row of bicycles, coffee shops, Broad Street, The Kings Arms.

#

He looked up at the ceiling and clenched his eyes, willing it to make some sense, attempting to force himself into the footage. He could almost place himself there, but however hard he tried, he was always superimposed upon the scene as though one could peer around him and see the blank rear of his stick-on presence.

'Are you okay, Mr Featherstone?'

'Yes, yes. I'm fine. It's really good, by the way,' he gestured with his right hand at the pad in his left. 'You've done a really good job putting this together.'

'Thank you, Mr Featherstone,' regardless of how the doctor felt at that time; he could not hide his obvious pride. 'Do you recognise the places?'

'No,' the doctor's jaw visibly clenched. 'That is, not yet. I'm sure I will, I probably just need a little more time. I'm sure I'll get it soon,' he cringed inside. Why do I keep swinging between sycophancy and subversion? He thought.

Tap-tap

'That, Mr Featherstone, is Oxford. That is where you first found yourself and where you should begin to look again. Are you sure you want to remember, Mr Featherstone?' The question speared him to the bed.

'Of course I do. I've told you, I want to get better, I'm sure,' but he wasn't sure. He did not know whether he wanted to be Ernest Featherstone, the lonely classicist, the pillar of middle England.

Tap-tap

'You're quite sure?' a wheedling inquiry.

'I had my first dream since I woke up here last night. Maybe that means things will start to come back to me?' he said, cringing at the desperation in his own voice.

Silence

Tap-tap

'Had a dream, Mr Featherstone? What exactly did you dream?'

'Nothing much,' he said. 'I seem to remember that I felt conscious, if you know what I mean, it was just a big white room. I don't really remember a great deal about it in truth, I was wo... I woke up half way through. I guess it's a good sign, though, right?'

Tap-tap

'Quite. So there were no concrete memories that emerged from this dream?'

'Nothing concrete, I did see that photograph though,' he said enthusiastically. 'I saw the photograph you showed me, I remembered the photograph. Does that mean anything?'

Tap-tap

'Possibly, possibly, you're quite sure there was nothing else?' He was confused, was he to answer in the negative or affirmative for the best? The truth was that he did not quite know whether there was or was not anything more to say. He said nothing. 'Was there anything else, Mr Featherstone?'

He was sure now. 'No. There was nothing else.'

Tap-tap

'Nothing?'

'Nothing.'

Tap-tap

The doctor regarded him for a time over his spectacles a contrived effort to seem to as if inspecting him for the truth. The silence stretched on interminably before being interrupted unexpectedly by the screech of the chair legs as the doctor adjusted his bulk then reached out and took the pad from his lap.

'The next set of images I am going to show you are news clippings from before you, um, suffered your, ah... breakdown. I have ensured that they are merely incidental happenings, mainly those stories reported in the red tops; news that would, perhaps, have filtered into your subconscious regardless of any political or philosophic, um, affiliation. At least that is my intention,' the doctor again and returned the pad.

It was mostly drivel; celebrity sex lauded and deplored, dependant solely on the celebrity's perceived marketability; sometimes as he flicked through the pages he could watch the rise and fall of some dumb creature put on a pedestal which, with so little additional carpentry, became a gallows in weeks. He flicked idly through endless examples of typically pointless English corruption; it was not the ambitious conceits of Russian Oligarchs or the conceited ambition of Italian Patriarchs, but the narrow minded obsequious embezzlement, thinly veiled contempt for the proletariat a staple of the English political classes. He scanned pages of uniform pledges from uniform politicians in uniform suits. It seemed as though, to ensure that the Great British sense of 'fair-play' was ever well met, the country's political parties had spawned a generation of identikit social climbers ever ready to slither, still wet with amniotic fluid, into office. The true face of evil is banality, he thought.

None of it brought anything back. Not the short-lived celebrities, not the rise of the Islamic Confederation or even the 'lamentable cleansing' of Palestine that had precipitated its creation, not the famous sporting victories or the crushing defeats, even the further rise of fundamental Christianity in America, nothing. Page after page, the electronic sheets slipped gracefully over one another with the imitated sound of shuffled papers. He knew the names. He sometimes recognised the faces. Was he to suddenly, like a latter day St Peter on the road to Damascus, experience a blinding revelation when happening upon the outcome of the boat race? He must have sighed.

'Is something wrong, Mr Featherstone?' asked the doctor.

'What? No, nothing's wrong, it's just hard. The only thing I've managed to remember is that news is incredibly depressing sensationalist rubbish masquerading as fact. Sure, there are murderers, there is corruption, celebrities do stupid things, but nearly every day nothing happens. Nothing of note, so when those days come along, instead of reporting the equally newsworthy fact that nothing has happened, they hunt for a gruesome murder in a far-flung place or dredge up a previous scandal that happens to be reaching some sort of anniversary.'

Tap-tap

He had forgotten that this was not a conversation, that he was being watched.

'I mean, it's frustrating that it hasn't helped, that's all.'

Tap-tap

'It makes you angry, Mr Featherstone, to see these news clippings? Do you feel they are somehow attempting to deceive you? That it is a propaganda machine with some kind of pre-conceived agenda?'

'I mean, to some extent they have their agendas, everything with an audience has an agenda. There's no point in alienating your audience, after all. There's no money to be made in the statement of unwanted truths.'

Tap-tap

'So, in essence, Mr Featherstone, you do believe that there is some sort of conspiracy. So tell me, why would they lie?'

'That's not what I'm saying; you're putting words in my mouth...'

'Am I, Mr Featherstone? Or am I just analysing this latest manifestation of your condition?' His condition; there it was again, raising its head to put him firmly in his place. He slumped visibly. A smile briefly played at the corner of the doctor's lips, a victory for his challenged authority. 'I would also prefer it if you would refrain from becoming so excitable. I would not like to see you restrained.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. I just don't want you to think I'm being paranoid, you know? I just thought it was obvious. I wasn't trying to be controversial or anything; I just thought that anyone could see that they, the papers that is, are a little skewed one way or another...'

'If it was obvious and I didn't get it, would that make me inferior to you? Would it make me less intelligent than you? Or am I in some way in on this conspiracy to lie to the public?'

'That's not what I mean at all, maybe I'm wrong, but I wasn't trying to imply that they were lying... more that they were, you know, cherry picking truths? Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right and it is a further expression of my condition, but surely before I can get well both halves of my personality must be remembered?'

Silence

Tap-tap

Silence

'Perhaps there is hope yet for your recovery, though I am a little concerned by these, ah... outbursts of yours. They seem to be increasing in regularity somewhat. I feel you ought to address this attitude you appear to be developing. Nip it in the bud so to speak.'

'I will, I promise. I don't want to disappoint anyone. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I want to get better, doctor. I really appreciate all you've done for me, what you continue to do. It was nice to see the outside world, nice to see grass and sky. Even if it didn't set things back into place, it made me realise how much I want to see them again, and I know that that requires me to get better.'

Tap-tap

'Who are you attempting to convince, Mr Featherstone?'

'Both of us, I guess, to the extent that I'm trying to convince anyone of anything, I suppose I'm trying to convince us both. I want to be well and I want to believe that that is possible. I also want you to believe that it is possible. I guess, above all else, I just want to get out of here.'

Tap-tap

'You will, Mr Featherstone. Of that I am quite sure,' the doctor stood, retrieved the pad and placed it in his case. 'Until tomorrow, Mr Featherstone, pleasant dreams,'

Clonk-clink

## CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

He spent much of the rest of the day on the edge of sleep, never quite in one state or the other, yet he ate and drank, was bathed and dressed, urinated and excreted checking off, one by one, each of the trivial details that were his days on the ward. The doctor's visit had left him numbed and drained. He was frustrated, alone and frightened, missed his nurse more even than he had thought. Nurse Pritchard, how absurd, he thought, to be so attached to a woman he hardly knew. He had not thought to ask her first name, it had never seemed important. It was enough that she was there, flotsam to aid a floundering man. Again began a cycle of self-recrimination, loathing and pity. Was this all he was, this solitary, selfish man with no thoughts for anyone's comfort and well-being but his own. He had had his reasons.

Surely his position excused him?

What a piece of work was this man? To be a hero was to prevail against all odds. To be human was to persevere in defeat. To be a man was overcome ones genetic flaws and triumph over the animal.

_I'm selfish_. He thought.

'I'm worthless,' he said.

'I'm mad.' Tears streaked down his cheeks, leaving salty trails from his tear-ducts down his hollow cheeks, running in the lines from the corners of his mouth before dripping from his chin and onto the starched linen with sullen plops.

# # #

He was kneeling, his head in his hands; he was startled to find himself naked and once more in the white room. He stood; feeling strangely disembodied and regarded himself as though through the eyes of another. He noticed with distraction a host of lacerations on his arms, torso and legs, from which poured an electric blue liquid. It flowed freely down his fore-arms and into his hands, from his chest and stomach into his crotch and from thighs to feet, drip dripping at an alarming speed, onto the floor. His first thought on these strange wounds was not as he would have expected, however, for he simply looked away and into the unfathomable distances of the room, thanking it for its volume, for without it, he was sure that he would drown. It pooled at his feet, spreading lazily in all directions, almost sentient in its slow and yet unyielding progress towards the edges of the room. Then it began to slow further, as though satisfied with its progress and its levels began to rise.

'Who would have thought one man could conceal so much liquid?' he thought as he watched dispassionately as the liquid rise above his ankles.

'Who would have thought you could conceal so much liquid?' replied the walls.

'Who would have thought a man concealed so much?' added the ceiling and the floor.

The fear began to creep in again as his thighs were lost to the growing pool that oozed from a thousand holes in his body, yet he did not move. He knew, instinctively, as he looked around that he could merely step outside of this phenomenon, seeking solace in the milky white expanse beyond. Yet he did not. His curiosity was getting the better of him. He was, on the one hand, determined to stand his ground against this ethereal rising tide, and on the other curious to see whether this liquid that was pouring from him could continue to do so. Was it possible that something apparently contained within him could somehow continue in perpetuity? Was it possible that it could continue when it seemed physically impossible?

The liquid had no such regard for physics and soon it lapped at his stomach, the submerged tributaries were troubling the surface, causing it to ripple and toss like a miniature sea. He momentarily lost his balance, flinging his arms out to both sides to prevent his own submersion.

Beneath his hands was the room's perimeter, again on the other side. He threw himself forward, met the same resistance. The liquid had not chosen to stop its languorous progress. He was going to drown. How could he have been so naive? The room was a coffin filling slowly with this viscous blue. He began to panic, casting himself from wall to wall, trying in vain to find an exit.

He slipped.

His head dipped under the surface as he struggled desperately to retain his grip, thrashing his arms and legs in an attempt to find purchase. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing to be seen, only an impenetrable electric blue.

His foot connected with a wall and his head was above the water. The shape of the room had changed, but the liquid was still pouring forth from innumerable wounds and he knew it would not be long before he was once more submerged. He threw himself against the nearest wall and watched with relief as it rolled back and lowered the depth still further. He repeated it with the next wall and the next and, soon after, he was again ankle deep, but with no sign of a reprieve from the blue liquid that seemed now to be deluging as series of small holes joined into gaping chasms spewing forth vast quantities of the liquid.

He dropped to the floor, exhausted, watching in disbelief as the ichor continued to flow freely. He pressed one of the wounds closed with both hands, willing his body to obey him, to save him from himself. The flow slowed then stopped. The wound had closed.

Physician, heal thyself. He thought and laughed. He began to close each wound one after the other, wherever he could reach. Each one acted the same, the flow slowed, then stopped and then the wound would closed. He flopped onto his back and laughed again, relief and joy mingled in a hearty belly-laugh that closed his eyes and set him rolling from side to side, occasionally he pushed his legs, sending him skidding short distances through the cooling blue. He began to contain himself, drawing in first one, then another and another deep breath, the exhalation of which were occasionally punctuated with brief, quickly subdued chuckles.

He opened his eyes.

There, all around him were line drawn murals where the tide had fallen back. There, where it had been previously, was the same faux-Victorian portrait, its lines beginning to run as gravity pulled upon them, this time, however, it was joined by other drawings. Still life paintings no longer living, of buildings and of people, most of whom he recognised from the clippings the doctor had shown him, lurid, dribbling nudes and c-list celebrities glowered over him, but here and there were unfamiliar scenes: there was a girl holding a doll limply at her side, a terrace of large Victorian houses, a group of men and women, their faces, one and all, Magritted out of sight by a series of surreal artefacts, a strange looking bird gripping what looked like a stalk of wheat. He struggled upright and turned to regard the other walls. There, looking down at him, were a series of faceless people caught in a variety of disparate poses all with one thing in common, the space where their faces should have been.

They were getting larger.

Slowly, as the lines that sketched the outline of their heads began to drip and dribble towards the floor, they left a trail of emerging features.

They were still getting larger.

Parts of some pictures were disappearing at the edges.

They weren't getting larger. They were getting closer. The room was getting smaller. He began to spin around, watching the other walls edging ever closer, again gathering the blue liquid which once more began to rise up his legs.

It was getting faster.

Faster.

The liquid was now again at his neck. He began to scream, the volume in the confined space was deafening, but still he screamed as felt the liquid begin to slide in at the corners of his mouth and down his gullet.

# # #

He awoke with a start, his face covered by a film of grease and sweat, panting heavily and feeling exhausted but happy to be alive, so strong had been the feeling of the dream's reality that he had genuinely been surprised to wake. The room was filled once more with the grey light of dawn, but he had never been happier to see it. He was getting better, deep down he knew that was what it was. Regardless of the doctor's lack of enthusiasm he would soon be ready to rejoin the outside world, for all its smoke filled skies, its flame scarred streets, for all its unrest, its danger, its potential for pain, despite the long uphill struggle he would once again be free to lead his life.

He was filled with a nervous energy, legs dancing a spasmodic jig beneath the covers, his fingers tapping a steady beat upon the mattress and all the while he whistled and clicked his mouth. His mind seemed to be on fire with possibilities. He rolled over in the bed and pretended to sleep until the breakfast trolley had weedle-squeaked in and out of the room. Once it was safe again to move about the room he ventured from bed to wall not entirely unaided, but with increased stability. He knew what it was he wanted to do, but mingled with the desire were a scintillating combination of fear and expectation that caused him to delay gratification.

The thought had come to him immediately upon waking. Though he had used the light from it to mark the hours and days of his rebirth, it had taken him much longer than he now thought it should have done to use it to mark something else. It would provide him with a place, a mark on the map which he could call his own. He may not yet know who he was, but he realised now that it may be possible to know where he was.

He was shaking, as though in knowing where he was he would somehow unlock another important door, break through another boundary behind which, an unknowable number of boundaries ahead, lay his recovery and an eventual, final release. He sat back on the bed and looked at the day's breakfast. He decided to eat the meal before he went to look in order to prolong the moment. He idly, distractedly masticated the dry biscuits and toast, sublimely unaware of their taste in the trance of expectation. Once he had cleaned the plates there was nothing else to stop him. The moment of revelation was at hand.

He stood; the weakness of his muscles combining with the jitters of excitement to vibrate him across the linoleum to the window. He approached with his eyes closed, willing the world to offer him something spectacular when he opened them. He saw, in his mind, vast tracts of rolling green, hedgerows and lakes. He built a picture, in essence, of an England that had not existed for centuries. He took a deep breath and scaled back his imaginings. Instead he saw a cityscape, where across a tarmac parking area people milled to smoke their very last cigarette, and this time they meant it, where the sound of horns abounded in the frustrated cacophony that was the city symphony.

I may just see a brick wall. He thought. I may be in one of those 'H' shaped buildings and may just see, as though I were Alice staring into a looking glass, another window through which will be staring another me.

He felt like an excitable child.

He opened his eyes.

He blinked.

Again.

A third time.

He turned, walked slowly around the bed, sat down and checked off his actions.

He had gotten off of the bed.

Tick

He had walked around the bed.

Tick

Proceeded to the window.

Tick

Closed his eyes.

Tick

Opened his eyes.

Tick

He had seen nothing. There had been nothing there, a luminescent screen, just a milky white light and in front of it a pane of glass. Would it have burned him if he could have touched it? There was only one question he on his mind was: if the light that I perceive as day is really just the light from the screen, then are they really days at all?

He sank into the mattress, he felt as though the experience had been a burglary. He found himself idly punching the mattress, harder and harder, his fists bouncing up then slamming back down, he re-opened the cut on his finger. It was bleeding again, oozing thickly through the small cut.

Clonk-clink

## CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

'How are you feeling Mr Featherstone?'

'I'm fine,' he managed, through gritted teeth, staring straight ahead at the wall all the while forcing down the bitter cud of his anger.

'You don't look fine Mr Featherstone, far from it. I notice you are bleeding; it's not causing you too much discomfort I hope?'

'Why?' he asked, his voice level, but cracking.

'Well, if it were, then I believe I have some anti-septic cream in my bag and possibly a plaster.' The doctor did not wait for an answer and began rummaging around in his case. He took out the pad and placed it to one side before eventually drawing out both plaster and cream. He allowed the doctor to apply the cream and the plaster before stating, as though apropos of nothing:

'Why are you hiding the outside?'

'Ah. I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that. Needless to say we have in no way attempted to prevent you from finding this out. I hope that that will assure you there were no ulterior motives,' stated the doctor.

'That doesn't explain why you've done it.'

Tap-tap

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone, I apologise. The reason is a simple matter of psychology. You see, Mr Featherstone, in treating your condition, and indeed those conditions similar to your own it is vital, um... imperative, one might say, to develop a routine. Your mind is fragile, Mr Featherstone and the world is not the place of consistency that we might like. It therefore occurred to me that it would be most conducive to the recovery of, ah... people in your condition, to recover in a controlled environment. You have noticed, perhaps, that each day is precisely as long as its predecessor and indeed that of its successor?'

A minute or more must have passed.

'Yes. I have,' was all that he could muster in response.

'The reason for that is quite simple. Every day that you have passed in this room has had exactly twelve hours of daylight and twelve of darkness. It has provided you with an otherwise unattainable routine. It is an idea that I first put forward in the BJP, to some acclaim I might add...'

'Is it the same as outside?' he attempted to conceal his rising anger.

'Is what the same?' The doctor seemed quite flustered at the interruption.

'For Christ's sake you know what I mean, don't play the wounded party with me. You know exactly what I mean. Is it the same? Am I living outside of the normal daily cycle? Are my nights your days? Are my days your nights? Is it the same? Is it?' He was not quite shouting, but it was entirely obvious that it was barely repressed.

Tap-tap

Silence

Tap-tap

'I've told you before that if you continue to act up you will be dealt with accordingly. Any further implication of violent behaviour will be met with your equally violent restraint.' He shrunk back into the pillows as though struck.

'Good. I'm glad we understand one another, I do not make threats Mr Featherstone; it would be most unfortunate for you were I to report such behaviour. You have shown moments of good faith, however, which I have found commendable, I shall once again overlook your behaviour.'

'Stating that you don't make threats is in itself a threat,' he sneered.

Tap-tap

'Nevertheless, I can promise you that, if you maintain this behaviour, not only will the aforementioned restraint be forthcoming I will also cease in my efforts. You will lose. That is not only inevitable but any thought, any vague hope that you could succeed in opposing my authority, or recover without my assistance is to be tilting at windmills.'

'Tilting at a wind-mill is permissible if what you see is a giant with a lance,' his jaw was clenched tightly, the words hissed through his teeth. The doctor sighed.

Tap-tap

'Is that what you see me as, Mr Featherstone? Do I appear to you as some kind of ogre, despite my best efforts to facilitate your recovery?' The doctor proceeded on another rhetorical journey. 'Is it not as clear to you as it is to me, as it would be to any other right minded individual, that this is both irrational and against the best interests of your recovery?'

He knew the doctor was right, without him he was stuck, there was no reason that another doctor would not step in to pick up the slack, but it may set his progress back by weeks, maybe months.

'I'm sorry.' He no longer knew if he meant the phrase, its repeated usage having somehow diminished its meaning, but he knew it to be the only response available.

Tap-tap

'I'm glad that you have decided to see sense. You see, what you seem to fail to grasp is that I am here for your benefit. If I choose to walk away you will be on your own.'

He nodded again. 'You're right. It's hard to take all this in. That's all. I guess, I'm stressed, you know?' stressed to the point of tearing out your throat you pompous cunt. He finished silently, relishing the small thrill of this tiny act of unknowable rebellion.

'I suppose that must be taken into consideration. Now, following our traditional early morning interruption we should continue with our session.' The doctor rooted through his case before realising he had already removed the pad.

'How sad that memory is not inherent in intelligence, eh? Today I have a little more from our friends in the news-based media. I fear you may find it shocking, but I feel that it may help to set things in perspective for you.'

When he took the pad he thought he could understand the doctor's reasoning, the news reports, accompanied by a somewhat tinny vocal dub, where indeed lamentable. A steady stream of murders, natural disasters and wars, scenes of yellow jacketed police officers thrashing woodland scrub segued into shakily filmed footage of towering waves and towering infernos which in turn gave way to timeless footage of refugees and the arcing trails of missiles, of crumbled schools and the screaming bereaved.

'I understand what you're trying to do, doctor, but is there no scrap of good news that would serve a similar purpose?' he asked.

'On the contrary Mr Featherstone, I don't believe you do understand my intentions. If you would care to continue to watch the footage, however, I believe that you soon will.'

He returned his eyes to the screen in time to see something that puzzled him. He looked up at the doctor, his brows knitted together.

'It would appear that you have, in fact, missed the most important part of my little, ah... video montage. Permit me if you will.' The doctor said, tapping at the pad, rewinding the video. 'There we are.'

He watched dumbfounded. It was him. He couldn't hear the commentary; the blood rushing in his ears had drowned it out. There he was, walking through a lobby. Around him milled numerous people whose faces had been blurred. He was striding purposefully toward the camera; his head held high, wearing virtually identical clothes to those he wore in the photograph, the same diagonally striped tie, the same severe suit. His mind leapt back to the previous night's dream and the people therein with their obscured faces. Had he seen this footage previously? He was shaking. A noise filtered through.

An explosion.

Screaming.

The shattering of glass.

He looked up, terrified.

'Was I hurt?' He asked.

Tap-tap

'Eventually, Mr Featherstone, but I'm afraid you are missing the logical inference. You were not harmed in the explosion; you made quite sure you were far enough away to ensure that you were not.'

'I-I don't understand what you mean...'

'On the contrary, I believe you know precisely what I mean. However, if for some reason it has escaped you, what this footage demonstrates is that you, that is, Mr Ernest Featherstone, were responsible for the largest single act of terrorism ever perpetrated by an English national on home soil. You are, quite simply, Mr Featherstone, a murderer, a mass murderer in fact.' The doctor's delivery was cold, deadpan.

He couldn't find the words to deny it, the blood rushed again through his ears and although the doctor had continued to talk he could no longer hear him.

It couldn't be true, but it explained everything from the male nurse's threats to the doctor's consistent short temper. Then there was the video, it could have been forged of course, the footage of him could have come from some innocuous excursion, anyone can be made to look sinister given time and editing equipment. Yet he could not bring himself to believe that the footage could have been faked. Why would they lie? What could possibly be worth the effort? He rewound it again and again, watched it over and over; it was his face, the clothes that he had seen himself pictured in. There was only one rational explanation.

'H-How many?' he asked, fearing the answer.

'Two-hundred and sixty-eight dead, a further forty-two injured.'

'Where?'

'A hotel in the north, the name escapes me.'

'Why?'

'That, Mr Featherstone is something we are hoping you will be able to tell us.'

'Surely there must have been some speculation; it can't have been completely random. Does no-one have any idea? Someone must know something.'

'It has been the source of considerable conjecture, I admit. However, as you correctly inferred from the pictures you saw of yourself, you were a lonely man with no real social connection. You cultivated and were immersed in an air of solitude which, it seems, has stymied progress in defining your motives in this act.'

'You said it has been the source of conjecture, what conjecture? What conclusions have been drawn? I need to know why.'

'As do we; in truth a number of different conspiracy theories have arisen from your act; determined mainly by the individual's political loyalties. The pro-governmental believe that you were acting as a terrorist on behalf of anarchist organisations that were growing in stature, though in truth not in violence. The anarchists believe, obviously, that you were hired by the government to defame them and strengthen their own mandate to tighten restraint upon civil liberty. The only person that can truly attest to the reasons underlying the action is the man himself.'

'But I don't remember – are they going to try me for this? I mean, I'm not really the person that carried out the attack; I may share the same face, but I don't have any of his memories, I haven't led his life. I'm a new person, surely they can't, can they?' He was panic stricken, imagining a protracted prosecution. He could have no possible hopes for a fair trial.

'Oh but you are quite guilty Mr Featherstone. You were, of course, tried in absentia and found guilty by majority verdict of an incredibly violent crime; you are serving, even here, concurrent life sentences with no hope of release.'

'You said I'd get out... I remember you saying I'd get out?' He couldn't think, could barely speak, the colour had drained from his face and he was shaking badly.

'Out of here, certainly; if you cast your mind back, is what you asked. In that respect I told you nothing but the truth.'

'You're enjoying this aren't you? You're actually enjoying this? I mean, I don't know anything. I'm not Ernest Featherstone, not really, I just happen to look like him. It wasn't me that did this, it was him.'

'How convenient for you; I suppose we should exonerate every criminal whose crime simply slips their mind? As for enjoying it, my feelings one way or the other do not enter into my diagnosis, if that is what you are concerned with.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest...'

'Suggest what exactly? Suggest that I am a calculating sadist bent upon punishing you _ex-tempore_ for your crimes against innocent men, women and, lest we forget, children? Is that the implication for which you are apologising?'

'Children?'

'Quite so, Mr Featherstone; how very inconvenient for your already tortured, though seemingly newly minted, conscience.'

'But that's it? Don't you see? You know I can't remember before; you know I've developed restraint and a conscience that it would be impossible for me to have possessed before and committed this atrocity. Surely you can tell them I'm not who they think I am? I'm not a monster.'

'Time will tell.' With this the doctor snatched the pad from his hands, replaced his possessions in the case and made for the exit.

Clonk-clink

# # #

He stared at the door for a long time. He was dumbfounded, broken, but worst of all, more terrible than all the discomfort that had gone before, he was a killer. He was a calculating, ruthless and indiscriminate murderer. So much, he thought, for his new life on the outside. So much for his relationship with his nurse, perhaps that was why she had not come back. He could not bring himself to be hurt or angry. If she had found out what evils he had committed, she would have spent her time well, were she to be washing all traces of him from her body and attempting to do the same with her mind. He wished her luck with the endeavour, for he too had been violated by the same killer, only he would never recover, had been penetrated far deeper than she had.

He shuddered, attempting to imagine what kind of a man, what kind of monster could commit such an act, and in whose name. Was he some fractured zealot, earning his place in paradise by carrying out the will of a bloody-minded, vindictive creator? Was it politically motivated? If so, on which side of the fence had the bad apple fallen? Was he defending an all powerful state, or seeking to undermine its creation? Had he just awoken one morning with a thirst he just could not quench but with bloody murder?

Whichever way he looked at the situation, he could find no possible vindication for his actions. There was no possible excuse for such an act of savage and futile carnage. No god worth appeasing could ever ask for a burnt offering of human flesh; no paradise could possibly await a man capable of the blind and awful hatred that would be the pre-requisite for such an act. In the same manner, there could be no ideology worthy of such an action against innocents, left or right, with the best or the worst of intentions it had been wrong and now he had to suffer the consequences though it appeared even the hateful mind of the killer could not come to terms with the action, instead, gestating this new individual who would nevertheless be punished.

He tried to place himself in their shoes; wondered whether, if had he been a nurse, he could have provided care for such an anathema. Could he have bathed and dressed, fed and watered a murderer? Wouldn't it be better for the world if he were to refuse to eat and drink until he faded from the world? Or would that in some way deprive the world of a just and fitting revenge? Perhaps it should be something more dramatic, more violent? Perhaps he could look to break the window and using a shard of the glass he could slice through a main artery and apologise in his own blood for the spilling of other's?

He began to fantasise about the potential murder of a murderer, he could slit his own throat before the arrival of one of the nurses and gurgle 'Out, out vile spot.'

He padded slowly around the room, looking for further inspiration as to macabre materials from which he could craft his demise, began to derive a perverse pleasure as he imagined the world waking to the news that the infamous killer had drowned himself in his own urine, or dashed his brains out on the wall. He could almost hear them mutter that they wished they could have been there, that he deserved it or, amongst the more prone to apoplexy, that they wished they could have played an active role in it themselves.

_If I'd had my way with him_ , they would say, _he would have suffered much worse than he did. Such a shame we couldn't have seen him hanged by the neck, so sad_ , they would sigh, that _we fell prey to the whining of the liberals and can no longer mete out the punishment he should have faced_. Whatever happened, he realised, there would be no absolution; there could be no last minute reprieve and no repentance.

Yet he found himself in front of the window, his vacant gaze returned by the blank white screen on the other side. He gripped the windowsill tightly, then tighter still. _Can I do it_? He wondered. Irrespective of his yearning for forgiveness, could he rescue himself from what could be fifty or more years without hope or happiness? He pulled back his right arm and began bracing himself for the pain that would follow as his fist smashed through the glass and the ragged edges tore through the flesh of his forearm.

He couldn't do it. Cowardice was also a new found character trait it seemed. He couldn't save himself, not even with the monstrously looming stretch of incarceration, not even when he had no real life left to look forward to. First he had sabotaged his relationship with the doctor, then with the nurse and now, when it was really his only option to avoid fifty years, maybe more, of prison, he couldn't help himself. All he needed to do was to put his fist through the glass; the chances were good that even that would sever the veins in his wrist and allow him the only escape he could hope for. Yet he stood looking at a blank screen which for days had deluded him as to the day and night and which, even now, was the only link he had to the cycles that so many others, millions, billions of people took for granted.

He sighed, noticing as he scanned the room that lunch would arrive shortly. He padded slowly around the bed and climbed in between the rough cotton sheets. He had resigned himself to his fate, not through bravery, not to atone, but because he could not think of anything else to do. He rolled over in the bed and awaited the meal trolley, pretending to be asleep so as to avoid confrontation. The meal trolley came. The meal trolley left and later on it did so again. The nurse did not speak and he did not expect her to. Instead he remained motionless in a semblance of sleep, he ran over the day's events between meals he could no longer taste and was too cowardly to refuse, he attempted to come to terms with his loss, for he had lost much more than his innocence, he had suffered to watch the brutal culling, one by one of his every living dream and desire. So he lay still, tortured by fantastic imaginings of the death he had inflicted, watched the bodies and the fragments of bodies pile high in his mind, every hand clutched another and in the glassy eyes of every disembodied head a look of accusatory hatred. All the while he lay and wished himself away, longing to end painlessly and without effort, to slowly fade into the background and then out of the world altogether.

As he drifted off, he once more heard the cacophony of sadness strike up in the other room. I shook him Steven. She screamed. The last thought to cross his mind was a bitter one. Perhaps it is her turn to suffer another day.

## CHAPTER NINETEEN

As with the previous two evening, he found himself alone in the white room of his mind, only this time on the walls were the stains of his previous visits. Vague but still visible where the line drawn reproductions of photographs he had been shown, the gathering of people, the woman and the doll. This time, however, their faces were blurred with the same effect used in the news footage; the blurred faces mocked him and seemed to leer with their warped, smudged mouths as though daring him to do as he had done before; this time, the expressions promised, he would face the consequences.

'I didn't do it!' he shouted to the gallery. 'It wasn't me, it was _him_ , I couldn't have done it, I can't even think about it.'

'It was _him_ ,' replied the walls.

'It was _him_ ,' added the ceiling and the floor.

He took a step towards the wall on which was drawn his jury, it recoiled as though in distaste, squawking a high pitched and somewhat familiar complaint. He ran toward it, all the while imploring, pleading his case and with each step the wall retreated until both were hurtling along an ever lengthening room. He was sprinting, feeling his lungs burn, his legs ache, but on and on they made their cartoonish progress, one was no closer to escape than the other was to capture. Eventually he fell exhausted to the floor and began panting for breath. After a while laying face down, his burning face pressed into the cool floor, he rolled over and sat up, only to see that the wall opposite was only as far from him as when he had begun to race towards his accusers.

'Is this supposed to be some kind of metaphor? Let me guess, you're trying to tell me that I will never outrun myself, right? That I will forever followed by the ghost of that man?' He spun himself around and around, questioning the entire gallery.

'It was _him_ ,' screamed the walls.

'It was _him_ ,' roared the ceiling and the floor.

'It was _him_ ,' first one drawing.

'It was _him_ ,' another.

'It was _him_ ,' the room was filled with the shrieking accusations, each accusation echoed, for each echo a fresh accusation. He continued to spin, watching as the mouths of the blurred faces surrounding him split into gargantuan maws that yelped and screeched and spewed their bile, the blue liquid oozed and dripped, dribbled from their ever expanding mouths and on and on they screamed and roared their accusations until he could take no more. He clamped his hands to his ears, screwing his eyes tightly closed as he attempted to ward off the vitriolic gathering and added his own throaty voice to the cacophony that reverberated around the room inside his mind. He screamed until he had rid himself of air, then drew in a breath and screamed again.

Silence

He opened his eyes.

There, in front of him, where the picture had been was a childish rendering of his window; its warped edges and lack of depth gave it an eerie quality, yet he knew exactly what he should do. He walked slowly toward the drawing, pulling in one painful breath after another, certainty growing as he approached it. He rested his left hand upon the wall where the window's two dimensional sill had been drawn, drew his right arm back with his fingers clenched into a tight ball and hurled the fist through the window's pane. It splintered into jagged pieces. He knelt down and grasped the largest, most jagged shred and clutched it in his right hand, noticing on a subliminal level the blue liquid that frothed from gashes left in his arm by the paper like glass. He stared into its blank, white surface, tightening his fingers around it, drawing out spurts of the liquid from in between them.

He plunged it into his left arm and with a roar of pain he dragged the ragged edge up through the soft, pale flesh of his wrist all the way up his forearm. He took the shard in his left hand and carved the same deep, wavy tattoo in the flesh of his right arm, then did the same in turn to both of his calves. The blue liquid gurgled stubbornly within the gory gorges. He threw the shard furiously to one side and began to tear the flesh in frayed strips from his arms and legs. He tore, shredded and peeled the flesh back, ripping it up and pulling strips from his arms and over his shoulders and back, across his chest, leaving a blue mess where there had once been skin. He unravelled the skin from his neck and tore away his face. Still the liquid did not flow; it languorously oozed and dripped from his limbs leaving new, pink flesh beneath. He flung the sloughs of skin to one side in frustration and watched as the clumps slicked their way slowly down the wall leaving blue trails.

'I tried for Christ's sake, I tried! It wasn't me!' he cried.

'It wasn't us,' replied the walls.

'It was _him_ ,' added the ceilings and the floor.

His heart sank, beneath the skin was more of himself. Was this what his mind was trying to tell him? He thought. That even beneath the skin he was still him.

Music.

The blur-faced crowd were moving in time to a persistent, throbbing four-four beat underpinned by a thrumming bass on which sound-scape was superimposed the thrills and trills of synthesiser chords, seemingly all at once they seemed to notice him and turned as one with arms outstretched.

'It's you!' they cried out.

This time it was him that became the quarry and the crowd a chasing pack, he bolted towards the window which attempted to keep ahead, but he gained on it, drawing closer and closer until he was able to throw himself through, bursting through the paper and through to the outside.

He landed with a thud, winding himself in the process, staggered to his feet and looked around. He was in a city, if it was possible to call it that. It was once more a child's rendering, an unreal city of square automobiles, warped lampposts and stick figures that hurried past with oblong bags or hats that perched comically on top of their round heads. Behind him was a string of listing buildings, across the too narrow road was what looked like a bar, an expanse of pavement and a supermarket. He looked, wild-eyed, around him as stick figure faces contorted their mouths into upside down smiles as he unwittingly barred their progress, he backed away from them slowly, uncertainly, missing the kerb and sending him stumbling backward into the road where there approached another square car at pace. He picked himself up, hurtling towards the bar, threw open the door and fell headlong into the interior where he stayed, face pressed into the floor, gasping for air.

He opened his eyes.

There before him was a wall upon which a group of blur-faced people danced in time to a persistent, throbbing four-four beat underpinned by a thrumming bass on which sound-scape was superimposed the thrills and trills of synthesiser chords, then, seemingly all at once they seemed to notice him and turned as one with arms outstretched.

'It's you!' they cried out.

He screamed and reeled around, looking for the door through which he had entered, but there was none, instead there loomed a portrait of a man in a Victorian pose, his face an almost unrecognisable blurred smudge, but he knew who it was and he knew the face would be smiling.

# # #

There was someone in the room, he did not know how he knew, but he knew. He felt them there in the blank darkness that represented the end of his day. There was no sound but for the humming of a distant generator but for some reason he felt uneasy.

'Is that you?' he asked, hoping that, after all, he was just a little edgy following his nightmare and that it would be at worst no one or at best his nurse come back to visit him. There was no reply. He began to see shapes in the darkness and though he knew that his mind was playing tricks on him, he shivered.

'Hello?' he was whispering, hoping that if there were someone there that they would not hear him. No. There was a definite movement; one shade of black seemed to slither over another. 'I know there's someone there. This isn't funny. You're freaking me out.'

'We wouldn't want that, would we princess?' asked a familiar voice. 'Wouldn't want you to get freaked out, when you get freaked out, you like to go out and blow shit up, don't you?' it was the nurse, the one he was supposed to have attacked.

'Look, I'm sorry; I know you must hate me. I know what you must think, but I promise you I'm a different person. I wouldn't, I _couldn't_ do that... that kind of thing. I'm not the man that did that, at least not anymore. I'm sorry for what he, I mean, I did both back then and, you know, when I attacked you. I want to get better. I just want to get better, I know I'm never going to be forgiven but I'd like to try and atone for it,' he was jabbering, not quite knowing what he was saying.

'How very fuckin' big of you. Very fuckin' big of you indeed! You're gonna go and let us punish you for what you did are you? Well, I've got some bad news for you sunshine, I've got a few mates on the inside that intend to make very fuckin' sure you're punished for what you did. What do you think about that?' the nurse took a step forward out of the shadows, his white face emerging from a sea of black.

'Don't. Please don't hurt me,' he was whimpering, scared for a life he was planning to end just hours before.

'Hurt you? Did you hear that boys? He thinks I'm going to hurt him!' boys, he thought? There were more of them? 'I wouldn't waste me strength mate. I've got a job and I intend to keep it. I ain't gonna end up on the streets for no fucker, especially not you, not when my mates have got so much fun planned for you,' the hatred dripped from every syllable and hissed as their poison struck his ear drums.

'Then why are you here?' he asked, his voice tremulous.

'We're you're going away party. We thought, me and the boys here...' there was a low grumble of laughter from the direction of the door. 'We're here to take you away, what the fuck else? Doctor's orders, he's finally seen some fuckin' sense.'

'Take me where?'

'Take him where?' again the low chuckles; the nurse was obviously in his element, lording it over a weaker man, he could not help but wonder how many other men outside pubs and clubs up and down the country had lay before him terrified as he mocked them from his position of power at the head of a pack. 'You've had your holiday, mate. Now the real fun starts.' Three men emerged from the shadows, each indistinguishable from the next, their white faces gleaming in the dark, shining with malice against their black outfits. They each grabbed a limb and hauled him down the bed, taking care to hit his head at the bottom.

'Sorry, petal. Did you bump your head?' he no longer knew which one had spoken, but again the four men emitted a malicious throaty laugh, his head was spinning and throbbing.

Clonk-clink

They were out in the hallway which was as dark as the room they had left, though through blurry eyes he could make out the edges of a nurses station and a computer. They held him tight, pulled as taught as a climber's rope as they marched along the hallway.

They stopped.

A few seconds later a bell gave a single ping and a bright light flooded into the corridor, he craned his neck to see both where he was going and then where he had been, but before he could take anything in they were in an elevator, large enough for the four men to keep him tightly strung between them, it was hurting, but he choked down his protests in fear of the punishment that would surely follow any voicing of them.

They were going up. It had taken him a second to notice, but they were definitely going up. He felt himself getting heavier, felt the four men savagely tighten their grip on his limbs. He had been under ground. No wonder it had been so easy for them to control the daylight. The lift doors opened to a narrow corridor and bright light, he squinted in the glare as he was rushed by his burley escort along the corridor and into what appeared to have once been a reception area. Now the walls looked stricken with some form of psoriasis and were flaking in patches, the computers, which looked dated especially with their not so flat screens towered over by hulking hard-drives, were thick with dust and the blue plastic chairs were scattered randomly over the grubby, tiled floor. He was hurried towards what he imagined would have once been an automatic double door, but which was held open against its will by wooden blocks. Outside it was daylight. He smiled.

'What you smiling at?' scowled the nurse, who was at his right shoulder gripping his right wrist even more firmly.

'I knew it would be light,' he answered without thinking.

'Well aren't you just the smartest little terrorist?' The nurse's face quickly reddened in anger, as though even this tiny vocalisation had been a slap in the face.

'It just made me smile, I didn't mean to offend...' he didn't finish the sentence; cut off by the impact of the nurse's fist in his temple, he yelped as the pain rippled out in circles from the epicentre.

'Not smiling now are you?' more chuckles from his accomplices. 'Now I suggest you keep the fuck schtum or there'll be a lot more where that came from and every single one of us will be able to tell anyone who asks what you did to deserve it. Alright?'

'Y-yes,' he stammered and then fell silent, flinching in case this affirmation of understanding somehow breeched the deal. The two men at his legs dropped him whilst the nurse and the man at his other arm hauled him painfully upright. He saw them open up the rear of a white van, not an ambulance, but a simple white, unmarked transit with two dirty windows, one in each door. The nurse and the remaining man dragged him, his bare feet grazing the paving and hurled him into the back of the van where he slid across the floor and into the metal partition that would separate him from those in the front. The doors were slammed. He heard the nurse's voice.

'You boys have fun and if he gives you any trouble, kick the fucking shit out the cunt. We'll see you later yeah?' he heard some muffled replies then the opening and closing of the vehicles two front doors. The engine grumbled into life and they moved off.

He lay on the cold, ridged floor of the van for a few minutes, reeling from the blow the nurse had struck him. He felt the van take a right turn, followed by another, then a left. He managed to struggle into a sitting position during a slow crawl forward to peer out of the left of the murky windows. Traffic, he had never thought he would be so happy to see traffic, but it was proof that the world continued. There would always be traffic, he suspected, even after the human race was extinct, they would leave a snaking line of hollow, rusting metal corpses lining the roads in a gridlocked funerary procession. He could see in through the wind-screens of the three cars that crawled behind and was able to make out the black and white smudges of frustration that seemed to rest upon the wheel, eyes squinting against the sun, one set of fists were tightly clenched, set at ten and two, the arm of one was resting on the door working up the cabby's tan, the furthest from him, he imagined were resting lugubriously upon the bottom of the wheel in an act of subconscious petulance against some long forgotten instructor.

He looked to either side of the traffic, on both sides of the crawling road-train were litter lined pavements, cardboard and plastic containers were lying upon the floor staring longingly at faded patches of ground mere feet away where once there had been a receptacle. The thing he noticed last, oddly it seemed to him, were the people. It was as though the city was under siege by a hoard of Dickens Recreationalists intent on modernisation. On every street corner they passed was the sadly ironic spectacle of faded jeans and jaded track-suits, once proud designer jumpers, shirts and jackets within which huddled ghosts of people, they sat and stood and swaggered around drinking from bottles of cheap spirits, smoking cheap fags and pissing idly on signs that forbade vagrancy. There were scuffles and shouts, piercing and boneless estuary accents hollered accusations seemingly devoid of consonants whilst ragged men and women ranged in packs over sun dappled pavements.

Before long, however, another left and a short time spent crawling forward, the faded and crowded elegance segued effortlessly into a current grandeur and the torn clothes of one tribe became the grey-black sartorial pomposity of another. This second tribe, a term he thought appropriate as he felt like an anthropologist on safari through some foreign land, walked with self-important haste, their gaits long, their faces longer as though pre-eminence and financial security were a terminal illness only half accepted and bitterly so. He watched the Westminster Bridge recede past his portrait window on the world, accompanied soon after by Parliament and the phallic testament to wealth that was Big Ben. All the while the plague of poverty that could not have been more than a few miles hence continued to abate and the weave of clothing grew finer, the clothing darker and the inner city became an architectural wave which washed upon islandised areas of greenery, every hulking building and artifice threatening to drown the shrubs and trees in a wash of Gothic and drag it out with a backwash of Bauhaus.

Eventually they stopped altogether and the lack of traffic in their wake suggested to him that they had reached their destination. He steadied himself for another uncomfortable journey, fortified for the insults and the potential beatings. The engine ceased its juddering and the van settled with a series of creaks. He tensed as the door opened and the two men that had remained with him stood either side of the opening. They waited and he regarded their blank faces intently, looking for signs of what they wanted from him.

'Look,' began the one on the right hand side 'we're sorry you took a slap, the guy's a bit of a prick, truth told, mad pro-gov, but they all are aren't they?' a conspiratorial wink. 'You don't have to worry too much. What you did was pretty sick. We don't approve, but we know why you did it, right?' the man on the right looked to his left and with a nod it seemed that all was confirmed. He, however, could not have been more confused.

'What do you mean _they all are_?' he asked, nervously.

'You know, fuckin' civil servants. Man's a cunt, but better than some, I'll tell you that,' spoke the man on the left.

'I thought he was a nurse?' The world appeared to be taking another strange turn and with the way things had gone previously, he was not hopeful that it would be for the best. The men laughed, more than necessary he felt.

'Fuck me; you are in a state aren't you? He is a nurse, when he needs to be, he's qualified on paper if not in person.' This drew a giggle of complicity from his colleague. 'He's a desk jockey most of the time, works for the Police on counter-terrorism strategy, but your doctor asked for him specifically. Look, I'm Will, that there's Tony, we're not your ordinary coppers alright? We've got what the adverts refer to as _sympathies_ ,' the sarcasm dripped from the word as Tony took over the lead.

'Yeah, _sympathies_ ; it's a fucking joke, when you get down to it, it's not like we could ever actually do anything, but at least we can make sure you're alright for your review. We knew if some pro-gov cunt got hold of you that you'd be stitched up even more than you're going to be, might even need a few, if you know what I mean? So we made sure you had someone standing by who wasn't going to kick the fuck out of you.' Tony and Will nodded at one another, obviously congratulating themselves for their act of humanitarianism.

'Thank you. I don't want you to think I'm being difficult, but when you say you know why I did it, what do you mean? I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have no idea. I really don't. Why did I do it?' he asked.

'You smoke?' asked Will, looking a picture of forced nonchalance.

'I don't know, to be honest, I think I may have done; I kind of feel like I did,' he replied, not wanting the conversation to drift. Will handed him an excessively long cigarette from a pack of Super-King's and Tony provided a light. He inhaled deeply and spluttered – the dizzying rush was enough to keep him drawing on its rough, hot smoke.

'Thank you,' he said, his eyes streaming.

'No worries,' replied Will, lighting one of his own and drawing a long deep breath through the smooth white cylinder. 'The way we see it,' he exhaled 'if what they say is true, you were trying to disrupt secret talks between MI5, U.S. and Israeli secret services over the planned invasion of Iran. You were trying to prove a point that England wouldn't be led like tame animals into another war. As we said, we don't agree with what you did, but someone had to do _something_.'

'What about all the innocent people? Nothing could be worth their deaths, surely?' he said, hoping that they could in some way convince him otherwise.

'A lot of people would disagree with you on that. In fact, a lot of people say that that one act is what really kick-started the democracy movement. It served as a catalyst for a chain of events. The sooner we force the fuckers in Whitehall to sit up and take notice, the sooner we can take back what's ours. Unemployment is at twelve million, healthcare has gone, nowadays you either work for the government directly or you sell them their clothes, their books, their televisions or their coffees. We're lucky in some ways to have anything at all; god knows we wouldn't if they knew we had our _sympathies_.' He checked his watch. 'Look, I'm sorry, but we've got to get you in, even now, there's only so much we can put down to traffic, yeah?'

## CHAPTER TWENTY

They walked about a hundred meters from the van to a high, narrow three story house. Next to the door was a bronze plaque with three names followed, each in its own right, by enough letters to suggest an extensive academic career. _More doctors_ , he thought; _perhaps these will be able to see that I'm a new personality in an old body, at the very least a man that has no recollection of a crime his former self committed_. The doorbell was rung once by Will and after a short time was followed by a crackle from the intercom and a buzz. Tony pushed open the door and Will led him through into the converted bottom floor. The female receptionist looked up briefly and gestured in a non-committal way over to a set of stairs.

'Room two. Next floor up,' she said into her chest.

'Cheers,' answered both of his guards in unison before leading on.

'There's nothing we can do for you from here, mate, but good luck, yeah? Here's hoping you won't need it,' they continued their progress up to the next floor, walked slowly to the second and largest of three rooms.

They knocked stiffly on the door and waited. After a short time there was a barely audible 'Enter' and the group did as they had been told. They were greeted by the three doctors behind a long desk at the far end of the room and two separate tables, one of which, the one on the right, the guards sat him behind while they stood either side.

'You took your time,' barked the middle of the three, a greying woman not only her hair; the colour appeared to be seeping into her skin.

'Traffic;' chorused Will and Tony in an almost slapstick fashion, 'It was murder coming over the Westminster Bridge. We were sat there like lemons for an age,' continued Tony solo. One of the other doctors, a ruddy, porcine man, ever so slightly younger, turned to the female.

'It can be an awful time getting across town these days, especially in the middle of the afternoon. One wonders how long before it's quicker to walk,' he said.

'Would you suggest walking a dangerous psychotic across town Phillip?' she snapped, it struck him as unnecessarily short and her reference to him in poor taste.

'Of course not Maddie, of course not, I was simply passing comment. The traffic can be murder at this time of the day, after all,' the pink tinged doctor simpered.

'A somewhat inappropriate euphemism given the circumstances, don't you think, Phillip?' Her colleague withered under a gaze that then turned upon the guards and the guarded. 'Besides, I can smell the cigarette smoke from here.'

The two guards tensed visibly, expecting a tongue lashing which never came. Instead, there was a brief yet sharp knock at the door. The group muttered amongst itself briefly before Maddie again raised her voice and bade the newcomers enter. He turned to the door as the doctor and his nurse entered; he looked at her intently, willing her to cast her eyes his way with some veiled complicity. His eyes followed her on her short journey from door to seat and lingered there as she stared resolutely forward at the three doctors.

'Our little gathering is at last complete, it seems...' said Maddie.

'Apologies, you know how it is, Maddie...' began the doctor.

'Traffic, Charles? Yes, I'm quite aware that the city of London is today at some sort of a stand-still,' Maddie interjected.

He couldn't help but smile to see the doctor cut so easily to size, but chose to hide the smirk behind his hands. A smart decision, as when he looked up, the third doctor behind the long table was staring intently at him, the man was to all intents and purposes a Hollywood re-imagining of Freud, from the small circular glasses to the well trimmed, slightly pointed beard and chiselled features; he exuded psychiatry from every pore, oozed musky psychology like a pheromone.

'Perhaps, if you have all finished, we should begin?' said the third doctor, his voice low and sonorous, matching his appearance. There was a sudden hush as all fell silent, punctuated only with nodded assent. 'Good. Now, Doctor Oliver, Charles, if you will. Could you please explain the reason for this meeting? It all appears to have been a little bit rushed and I'm afraid that I haven't had the chance to look over your report.'

The doctor coughed and reached down into his ever present attaché, pulling out the pad. He coughed again.

'The reason, as I outlined in the report, is that I wish to discuss the progress of my patient Mr Ernest Featherstone. I believe that the time has finally arrived for Mr Featherstone to be moved to ah... more secure premises,' he paused, tap-tapping at the pad.

'I have read the report however, Charles, and I have to say I find it remarkable that you believe your patient to have so fully recovered from what was a clearly documented and seemingly deep-seated dissociative-fugue. Are you perhaps suggesting that the patient was simply fabricating the symptoms of the condition?' asked Maddie, her stern voice echoing slightly in the long room.

'That is, um, precisely what I was attempting to delineate in the report, Maddie. It is my impression that Mr Featherstone recalls more than he wishes to express and that he wishes to extend his stay in medical care in fear of what awaits him during his custodial sentence.'

His heart sank. What was going on? What was the doctor saying? Surely he didn't believe what he was saying?

'What was it that betrayed this little charade?' asked the third doctor.

'He quotes, Geoffrey, quotes repeatedly: Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Wilde, amongst others. He has also, I believe, admitted, though perhaps not consciously, a state of loneliness in his prior state, he has admitted a split personality with violent tendencies and has often appeared uncooperative, even aggressive when asked to attempt to recall areas of his past. There are many things, all of which are, of course, detailed in my report.'

The doctor appeared nervous, yet the shock of what he was saying left him unable to voice the objections that leapt one after another to the forefront of his mind. It was true, at least it was almost true, but skewed as though by a funhouse mirror.

'Do I understand this correctly? Are you suggesting that, in your opinion, a recondite knowledge of literature and a cursory acceptance of his supposed condition somehow amount to an out and out proof of some clandestine plot to undermine Justice Charles?' the capital letter was audible, dripping with irony and incredulity. 'In your opinion, is such specialised knowledge of literature, literature I'm surprised that you were able to identify yourself, common in the PPE?'

The doctor cleared his throat again, quite obviously uncomfortable. 'I did of course run the recordings of our sessions through a piece of software designed specifically to, um, recognise things such as this, I had made sure to mark periods of discourse which I felt may be of interest on, ah... closer inspection...'

'I'm aware of the program; was, in case you're unaware, the consultant psychologist. Do you make all your diagnoses on the basis of what I had to say three years ago, Charles? You also haven't answered my question as to the specific relevance of literary quotation to a public servant...'

He felt a burgeoning humour at his former doctor's discomfort, their mutual distaste for one another and their positions within this particular hierarchical structure were obvious.

'Well, um, he did read at Oxford...' answered the doctor.

'So you have based your opinion primarily upon positive class prejudice and a piece of now outdated computer software? I have to say Charles this is weak even coming from you. I'm not at all surprised you chose to, shall we say: branch out in your career? What surprises me most of all is what possessed the Ministry to involve you in this case at all.'

'Now now, Geoffrey, you do yourself a disservice with such asides, it must be said,' piped up Phillip from the other end of the desk. Geoffrey turned to him, glowering.

'He's right, Geoffrey. You know it as well as I that this is not the time for airing personal grievances,' placated Maddie.

'Thank you, Maddie,' said the doctor smugly.

'I didn't say I disagreed with him, Charles,' she stated simplistically.

'Quite, um, yes, there is, however, one other matter I would like to draw your, ah... attention to if I may?' the doctor smiled cruelly. 'I have brought along my colleague Nurse Pritchard for a reason. She has acted on my behalf in the care of Mr Featherstone when my other responsibilities have, ah... necessitated my absence. She has spent more time than most with the patient and has, along with his trust, gained a few pieces of useful information and, as is her way, drawn very interesting conclusions. Would you permit her to speak?'

'This is not, need I remind you Charles, a time for grandstanding. If the woman's information is pertinent, then she may present it, but I resent the implication by you that she is some kind of ace-in-the-hole,' said Maddie coolly; the doctor nodded contritely.

'I apologise Maddie, it was not my intention to, um, grandstand as you put it. It is merely that I believe the information she will add to the case will enable you all to make a more, ah... level headed appraisal of the man's condition.'

He looked towards his nurse, still hoping for the one conspiratorial gesture that would acknowledge their complicity. None came.

'It is my opinion,' she began, her tone stern and completely professional, containing not the slightest trace of the humour he had fallen for so heavily and so quickly 'in fact, my firm belief is that Mr Featherstone is not only in full possession of his memories but that the stated loss of them is the calculated act of an unrepentant terrorist intended only to avoid the custodial sentence that awaits him following treatment.'

He tried to stand, the chair scraping slightly on the floor, but his two guards pressed him gently but firmly down. She turned to look at him; her eyes were empty of solace, devoid of empathy and instead filled to brimming with contempt. He withered beneath her gaze, all strength fleeing from his body.

'What exactly is it that has given you this impression?' asked Geoffrey.

'He has on occasion intimated as much, made jokes about the atrocity he committed. You see he developed, whilst I was caring for him, the delusion that we were somehow intimate, that I could somehow care for him despite his repulsive and sadistic crime. On one occasion, I was frightened that he would attempt to rape me. Fortunately for me, the muscle wastage that has left the wreck of a man you see here today meant that I was able to repel such unwanted, not to mention abhorrent advances. The patient you see before you, the man, this terrorist Ernest Featherstone is an unrepentant monster that took great delight in attempting to grab hold of my body and is currently trying to undermine our legal system by extending what he believes, and has stated to me, the duration of the comfortable palliative medical care which he now enjoys.'

'He tried to rape you?' asked Phillip his fleshy mandible opening and closing rhythmically in an expression of disgusted disbelief. However, before she could reply to the question, Geoffrey dryly interceded.

'That particular claim is both unsubstantiated and, beyond offering an apparent insight into the man's character, entirely irrelevant Phillip and your response woefully indicative of your own ceaselessly surprising, though perpetual ability to reach apoplexy at the merest hint of the slightest possibility of the vaguest mention of anything outside of your comfort zone.' Phillip gained a further, darker shade of pink, seeming to vibrate.

'What we should, perhaps, focus on is the allegation that this man has admitted to an effort to bamboozle the legal system and pervert the course of Justice by perfectly aping symptoms so incredibly complex as to still baffle not only psychologists but neurologists and neurochemists the world over. Perhaps this should be our starting point?' Geoffrey raised an eyebrow and scanned the faces of his colleagues one by one as if daring any disagreement with his speculation.

'Of course,' another, deeper shade was attained, he began to wonder how long it would be before Phillip would simultaneously have every capillary in his entire body burst giving him a final restive rouge.

'Of course,' chorused the rest of the gathered doctors.

'Good, well then, Nurse Pritchard; perhaps you would like to inform us here, leaving out what Charles here would no doubt refer to as your own _interesting conclusions_ but which are, it seems, just distracting supposition, what exactly constituted these admissions and what form they took? You have, I assume, no revealing love letters in which he dictates the planning and execution of the crime?'

The dry irony of Geoffrey's delivery gave him hope, irrespective of whether it came from his obvious dislike and mistrust of his doctor or a genuine desire to ensure the validity of the case against him, it could prove to be crucial, could even save him from the surly male nurse's promise of a violent confinement in prison.

'They were not concrete, no. I will admit freely that we had no listening devices in the room, no cameras, it was therefore impossible to obtain anything like that which you would feel went beyond my supposition. However, he made advances upon me that were both terrifying and unwanted and though I tried to bare them with a smile, it was difficult. I did so, however, because I could see that these delusions of his may well have borne fruit. So I continued to visit him and they did. He told me that he was glad that he had done what he had done and that he hoped it had and I quote: scuppered the leftist plots to derail the governments with their unholy pacts with Africa, South America and some of the liberal European countries. He laughed that to make an omelette it was necessary to break a few eggs and that future generations would see him as a hero,' she finished with a dramatic flourish, wiping a solitary patriotic tear from her eye and shaking her head solemnly.

'I was horrified,' the doctor placed an arm around her shoulder and whispered what appeared to be conciliatory words in her ear.

'There you see, I hope, why I have decided to withdraw the safety of medical care from this man so soon. Whether or not he has affected a somewhat, um, spectacular masquerade thus far we shall perhaps never know, but one thing is for certain and that is that this man deserves nothing less than to receive the full, ah... extent of his punishment. His coarse behaviour and the wicked discussion of his crime with this nurse leave me no option but to believe that he is fit enough to, ah... bare it,' the doctor scanned his colleagues as though inspecting his effectiveness, seeing two of the three convinced and that the third had grown angrier than ever; he then turned to him and regarded him once more over the rims of his spectacles, his mouth twitching at the corners.

'Perhaps then, now that you have laid all of your cards upon the table, assuming, of course, that we are not to be granted a further late coming, hysterical exposition, we should allow Mr Featherstone a chance to speak, to let us know how he believes his treatment has gone?' asked Geoffrey.

'Really, I don't see why that is even remotely necessary...' flustered the doctor.

'Charles, it is you that seems determined to turn this review meeting into some sort of farcical high court drama, perhaps we should reserve the right to cross examine the witness?' he looked around, receiving reluctant nods of confirmation from the gathered psychologists. 'So, Mr Featherstone, have you anything to add to our little discourse? I noticed you have looked a little discomfited, perhaps you would care to tell us your own version of events?'

He shuddered at the question. Did he have a version of events? If he did, if he were to tell them, would they believe him? Would he, in fact be placing his nurse in some kind of jeopardy? Perhaps she had been coerced? Even worse, what if they had been telling the truth? What if it was all a delusion? What if...?

'I-I, um, I don't know,' he said, simply, after a pause. Geoffrey raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised, silence stretched. 'I mean, if what they're saying is true...'

'If, Mr Featherstone?' asked Geoffrey.

'Look, I hardly think this is going to change anything. The man's obviously trying to undermine me by playing the wounded soldier. This is ridiculous,' said the doctor.

'Be quiet. Just. Be. Quiet. I know you're capable. I saw you at your malpractice hearing, remember?'

'Geoffrey, enough is enough. I think the rest of us are all agreed about what needs to happen, there is no benefit to anybody giving the man a false hope. I for one and I believe Phillip will concur, have heard quite enough. Setting aside your own personal differences, I believe you, too, know what is necessary and if it's all the same to you, I'd rather be done with this whole affair,' a nod from Phillip, Maddie looked to Geoffrey who sighed dramatically and shook his head.

'There is something about this. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't like it. However, on your recommendation Maddie, I shall concede. We will, it seems, back whatever decision for the patient that you feel necessary.'

Geoffrey stood and looked disgustedly at the doctor, then stared quizzically at where he sat, fenced in by the two police officers, as though trying to figure something out and then left without saying another word.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

What followed seemed to happen at half pace.

The door swung closed interminably slowly, the other two psychologists stood, slipped on their jackets, the doctor and nurse also stood. They gathered their respective papers and left the room. The doctor allowed a look of triumph to linger nauseatingly on his face as he exited.

He sat completely immobile staring at the door, unaware of the presence to either side. It could have been minutes or hours but eventually he became aware of a gentle tapping on his shoulder.

'I'm sorry mate, but we have to make a move,' said Tony as he and his colleague levered him to his feet. He felt exhausted, as though the life had been drained from him by the proceedings. He had blown his chance; he could have spoken out, could have tried to play upon the groups distaste for the doctor, but he had stammered and hesitated his way into a prison sentence passed for a man that he could not believe existed.

It all seemed unreal. He could not, would not believe that he had imagined her tenderness, her whispered conciliation, the feel of her on his skin, the smell of her on his fingers. Something must have happened to her, some threat, something. They must have found out about them somehow. Maybe they were lying about the cameras in the room, maybe her denial of their observation was her way of letting him know. He replayed her every stinging word, every stabbing denial, every heart rending omission.

He couldn't blame her for giving in to the doctor's threats, would even have told her to do just as she had, if only he had known. One must be seen being seen she had said, was that her cryptic warning as to her situation? He was convinced that something must have happened to her for her to have so studiously avoided his eyes, as though she knew she was committing a crime, knew she were betraying him.

'You want another fag mate? You look like shit. At least that's one thing you'll be able to have inside, they don't bother to stop prisoners killing themselves. I don't suppose they see a negative side to it eh?' said Will with a forced levity.

He looked up from his feet; they were outside the building once more, he squinted into the dipping sun filled with a strange sense of nostalgia for a sun and sky that he had only ever witnessed once and may never see again.

'Please,' he said, accepting another over-sized white cylinder and then drawing deeply as it was lit for him. 'Thank you.'

'No worries pal. Sorry to see you stitched up in there. I was surprised you were so quiet to be honest,' said Will.

'What did they mean about the bombing being committed to prevent the strengthening of leftist ties? I thought you said it was an attack on the right?' he was surprised by the question; it had seemed to occur to him as he opened his mouth.

'Just pro-gov bollocks mate. Wouldn't worry about it if I was you, it's the kind of shit they're always spouting, trying to make you into some sort of monster under the bed type, you know? They keep trying to brush the whole movement under the carpet, so they make you out to be some rightwing nutter instead...'

'Instead of a left wing nutter?' he asked, his voice was dead, empty of emotion.

'Well, yeah, you know what I mean.' Will replied, looking uncomfortable. 'As I said, I don't condone it, but trying to write it off like that, you know...' Will inhaled deeply, wafting his arm through the air as though to illustrate a hazy point of philosophic conceit.

'Makes it somehow worse?' he snarled in response.

'Look, you fuckin' did it alright? Not me. Why don't you tell us why the fuck you decided to blow a chunk out of a hotel?' Will was obviously getting angry; a red tide began to rise up his neck, he was drawing furiously on his cigarette.

'I'm sorry. That's the problem. I just don't know. I have no idea, no inkling of what in any fucking deity of your choice's name caused me to kill innocent people. Regardless of my reasons good bad or in-shitting-different, I'd much rather it had never happened. Whoever it was that carried out that attack, it is not who I am now. I don't know what has happened to my brain in ten years, but whatever the hell it was it's changed me for the better and now I'm going to be taken away to a prison to suffer at the hands of people who rightly hate me for something I did in a past life, I hate myself. If I weren't already crazy, I would be thinking about it,' he drew on his cigarette, blowing a long plume of blue-grey smoke into the fading daylight.

'S'okay. It must be tough not knowing,' said Tony, Will nodded, grudgingly, seemingly acknowledging that Tony could speak for both. 'I mean to wake up with nothing in your head...'

'It's not even that there's nothing there, I remember plenty, more every day, but nothing about me, you know? It's like there's a gap in my brain where I used to live and I've moved out without a forwarding address.'

'Weird,' replied Will, this time Tony continued their authorised, designated speaker double-act with another nodded affirmative. 'So you have no idea at all? That must be scary?'

'Right,' he replied and seeing them begin to fidget and check their watches, he sighed another cloud and took another look at the deepening blue of the sky. Soon there would be stars, their light travelling from both billions of miles away and from billions of years in the past, most of them now dead and soon he would be too.

'We should...'

'Be going? Yeah, I'd guessed. Thank you. You might be the last people ever to show me kindness. I know I probably don't deserve it, but thank you. I'm, well, ready when you are, I suppose,' he said, the two police officers shuffled their feet, eyes a little downcast, looking oddly boyish for such big men.

'If it's any consolation, we're sorry, right?' said Tony, again looking to Will for confirmation.

'It is,' he replied sadly. 'Thank you again.'

Without another word he climbed once more into the back of the unmarked van and once he was inside they closed the doors with a loud thunk-thunk. _They probably don't want anyone to know they were transporting England's most famous killer since Jack the Ripper around town_ , he thought as he lay himself down on the corrugated floor. He decided not to watch the progress this time, he was already trying to swallow a lump in his throat, the last thing he wanted was to arrive at a prison with tears streaming down his face and watching his dead-man's progress through the city may have proved the final straw. He was already a marked man; he had no desire to show the weakness he felt so early on. It may even buy him a few days, he thought. So he lay, fighting both inertia and his curiosity to stay put in his position on the floor of the van. His life was about to take another turn and he doubted very much that it would prove to be any better for him than any other.

# # #

The journey was long, requiring him to adjust his position constantly to avoid bruises as the vehicle was swung, creaking upon its springs, around corners, stopped suddenly and accelerated unexpectedly. From his position on the floor he watched the blue of the sky dim into deeper and deeper shades, watched as it was struck through with reds and oranges, watched those streaks fade and dull, watched the sky bruise purple and dully diminish until black. Toward the earth there was still the orange haze that rested constantly upon the horizon of the city, but his gaze was fixed upon the pin-pricks of light that flickered in small clusters, forcing themselves through the halo of light pollution to peer like Voltaire's Martians upon the strange planet below.

He was struck by a feeling of displaced nostalgia for a time before memory when he had been able to stare up at these same stars and was free and whole, one in mind and in body. He could not say for sure whether it was something he had actually done, but he felt that he must have, how any free person could not have looked to the stars without the wonder that he felt at that moment seemed inconceivable. The limitless expanse pitted with celestial spheres around which orbited other worlds upon which may have lived other men exactly like himself but for a subtle change in their circumstance that meant he, his doppelganger, was free; but what would a free man need with a dream of freedom? Didn't only thirsty men dream of water? Would it follow that only a caged man would dream of freedom?

He shook the melancholic cloud from his hair, the van was slowing again and a wrenching tightness in his gut told him with sickening certainty that they must be reaching their destination. He shuddered. Whether in name or not, this would be a death sentence. The engine stopped and as it did, it seemed that time slowed once more; sounds seemed to echo long past their natural length, so that the _thud_ of the closing driver side door became _thud-thud-thud-thud_ then more of the same from the passenger side door. The hammer blow sounds were still reverberating in his skull when they were joined by the clicking of the locks on the back doors. He drew a deep breath and time resumed its flow.

'How are you feeling?' The voice belonged to Will, but he could not make out the face, a bright light behind him cast shadows on their face and only their upper lip and philtrum were illuminated by the small orange glow of yet another cigarette, a hand reached from out of the dark holding another orange glow. He took the proffered cigarette and again sucked deeply, filling his lungs with the acrid smoke.

'Not great,' he replied, his small, tight smile lost in the dark.

'These should get you through the first couple of days. You'll be fine, that idiot nurse knows fuck all. You'll be fine,' he was grateful for Tony's conciliatory words, but worried by the fact that Tony seemed to be attempting to convince himself as much as anyone else. He took the proffered packets. Two sets of twenty cigarettes, each in a gleaming faux-metallic blue packet. 'I'm sure by the time these are gone you'll know someone who can pick you up some more.'

'Thank you,' he said, levering himself out of the van. The two men began to walk off into the bright light ahead of him. He followed. They then came, via a short tarmac walkway, to a large metal gate, into which was recessed a smaller metal door. Will pressed an intercom button and garbled a low message into the microphone; there was a clang as the small door opened a fraction.

His knees went weak. Instead of hearing a metal door he heard the final nail driven into the lid of the coffin in which his new life, his new self, would be interred. He noticed eventually that the two police officers were waiting for him

'We've got to take you in, mate. Don't make this any more unpleasant than it has to be, yeah?' said Tony softly.

He started to move forward again; on either side was a wire, chain-linked fence giving the area beyond the appearance of an empty animal enclosure at a zoo. In front of him was another floodlight that blanketed the area in thick, yellow light and obscured the area before them, he continued to walk the slow shuffle of a condemned man. Eventually the three men came to another Plexiglas double door which slid open with a hiss as they approached. They entered the anteroom to find a desk that would have been equally well placed in the foyer of any motorway hotel. The uniformed guard on the other side, however, was not so seamlessly transposed.

'Alright boys?' the voice was lazy and boneless, the man much the same.

'Evening Syd, This is the new boy. His name is Ernest, treat him well, it's his first time inside,' said Tony with forced jocularity.

'Ernest? Bit of a toff name ain't it? What's he in for, fraud? Tax evasion?' The desk clerk emitted a dirty laugh that suggested he knew about these things.

'Not quite,' answered Will handing over an electronic pad, the guard signed the screen with a stylus and passed it back without looking. 'Cheers.'

'Right mate, we'll leave you in Syd's capable hands, he'll show you around. After that, it's up to you. Take care, yeah?' said Tony, he slapped his now former charge on the back and swivelled on his heels. Will gave him another slap on the back and followed his colleague. The doors hissed again, allowing him one final breath of air before it closed.

'Right you are boys, see you next time, yeah?' Syd shouted after them 'Now, let's get you shown around the Hilton, shall we?' said Syd, turning to face him as he levered himself out of his chair and waddled around the desk.

'The Hilton?' he asked.

'That's what I call it innit? Too bloody good for you lot by half. Back in my great granddad's day it was all brick and bars, they shit in a bucket and did what they were told or they took a hiding. Now it's all bright colours, stimulation and reform, all the same animals in different cages if you ask me, but no bugger does. Does nothing to stop them kicking fuck out of one another or coming back a fortnight after they get out, but that's the bleeding hearts for you.' Syd inclined his head, signalling that he should follow and he duly did.

Two swipes of a card and two heavily secured doors later and they were in the belly of the beast. Bright it may have been during the day, but now, after lights out, with just one dim strip light casting more shadows than light, it was effortlessly gloomy. The cells were on two levels and arranged in a circle. A flight of metal steps ascended to the upper level on both sides, in the middle was a circular building of reflective glass.

'What's that?' he said, pointing at the building.

'Guard tower, mate, the prison is based on an old prison design, the panoplicon or something. Only, the fucking bleeding heart's tried to make it fucking pointless. The point of it is, that in there are an unknown number of guards at any point, all watching camera footage of all the cells. S'posed to make the prisoner's think they're being watched at all times, makin' 'em behave, like. Only Europe and the fucking lawyers kicked up a fuss about privacy. Like you lot deserve privacy. Started saying, they did, that you couldn't watch 'em all day as it was breaching their human rights, innit? Fortunately we don't give a fuck. ''Specially since the last election. Told 'em we'd stop, but everyone knows we still do, eh? 'Specially the prisoners,' Syd laughed his dirty, knowing laugh once more.

' _Quis custodiet ipsos custodies_?' he asked.

'Never was one for French mate. Anyway, over there,' he wafted his pudgy arm in an arbitrary fashion 'is the rec. room. Over there,' the same generic gesture 'is the canteen, the hospital and the showers and if you'll follow me, sir, I'll show you to your suite.'

## CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

He followed Syd, trudged up the metal staircase on the left side of the enormous cell block. The cells were dark, but not without movement. Behind the frosted glass windows in the doors the shadows shifted and he could hear the sound of low muttering, tapping and scrabbling. It sent a shiver down his spine wondering what monstrous Caliban's lay in waiting behind the doors. How would an appeal board view the summary execution of a mass murdered when it came time for the killer to discuss his release? He imagined a riot raging like a fleshy whirlwind with himself in the eye of the storm waiting for the victor to rise bloodied and victorious from the battle, ready to claim the right to destroy him and condemn his soul to the pits of an imagined hell.

Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors! Hail, Infernal World! He choked back a laugh. Happy fields, what happy fields?

They continued around the circular walk way until they reached a room completely unremarkable from its neighbours.

'This is you!' Syd said, spinning with agility unbecoming a man of his girth. 'Number one-hundred and forty-five, we of his majesty's prison service, hope you enjoy your stay at his pleasure. In the drawers you'll find a change of clothes in the form of a fashionable pastel pink, one size fits nobody coverall. Your pyjamas will be collected in the morning and will be returned when you, well, in your case, there's no point doing that bit,' Syd chuckled again. He wondered how many times he had repeated this cynical little party piece. The man obviously enjoyed his work.

Syd swiped a card and the door to cell one-hundred and forty-five clicked and swung very slightly inward. He waited.

'In you go boy; I, unlike your good self, haven't got forever,' said Syd.

He briefly wondered how much worse it would be for him if he broke the man's nose. Of all the injustices he felt he had endured, he could forgive most of them, from the doctor's obscene devotion to the brief given him by whichever ministry had done so, the male nurse's indoctrinated ire, to what he now believed was nurse Pritchard's betrayal under duress. This man, however, was a petty sadist. He doubted there was any partisanship, doubted that he was either for or against anything, knew nothing of the crime he had committed, yet the repulsive little man baited him. The moment passed.

He stepped through the door and into the partial darkness on the other side. The door closed with a metallic clang and he was alone. He ran his hands over his coarse beard as he looked around; he was surprised that despite Syd's sarcasm the room did appear to be more comfortable than he expected, the blankets, turned down at one corner, appeared thick.

Beds, his weary mind caught up slowly, two beds. Perhaps he would not be alone after all? The thought thrilled and terrified him; thrilled because he may have someone to talk to who would have no vested interest in his downfall, terrified because the exact opposite may be true. Either way his heart raced as he continued to scan the room. There were two chests of drawers; there was a single desk, a television, a small coffee table and a couple of chairs. What fascinated him the most, however, was the window, an actual window with an actual view to the actual outside world.

He walked slowly over to it as though trying not to scare it away, as though frightened that the window would evaporate. Although there wasn't a great deal outside of the window, there was an outside of the window. There was also a blind which after gazing out of the window for a while longer he pulled down, noting that it completely obscured the light from compounds flood lights, he then put it back up.

There was a chance, no matter how small, that his life had improved, ironic though it seemed. It was a chance unlikely to be disproven until the morning and therefore he decided for short term optimism with an option to extend.

Using the dim light that seeped in from outside he walked to the nearest chest of drawers and began opening them one by one. All but the bottom of the six drawer set was empty, but in the bottom drawer there was, as he had been promised, a set of overly large pink coveralls. He had assumed that Syd had been making another sardonic remark when he had commented upon the colour of the outfit, but even in the dim light it was clearly a powder pink in colour. It seemed to recall something to him; a book, documentary, an article? He couldn't quite put his finger on the source of the knowledge, yet he seemed to remember hearing, reading or seeing somewhere that pink discouraged violence, or may reduce violence in prisons. He wondered whether dressing a sociopath in a pink coverall would be a good thing. Still, the theory suggested that colours were supposed to have relaxing qualities and he could not help but hope that it was correct, he would need all of the calming influences that he could find, and was willing to endure a plethora of pinks, a multitude of mauves, a glut of greens or surfeit of scarlet if it meant he would be even marginally more safe.

He replaced his new outfit in a drawer; this time in the uppermost of the set, then stripped down, folded his hospital pyjamas and placed them on the seat of one of the chairs, which had partially concealed a door. Opening the door with a faint click he was pleased to see a cramped room in which there was a flushable toilet and a small sink. He re-closed the door and padded bare foot and naked to the bed that faced the drawers he had chosen and climbed under sheets as thick and warm as he had imagined.

If unable to regain his memory, then these new circumstances could certainly be viewed as an improvement from those he had endured since waking, and if he did remember? Then at least he would deserve incarceration.

He wrapped himself up in the blankets and rolled over to face the window. The light from the floodlights blocked out the stars, but it was enough for now to see the deep black of the sky. He would be alive to face another day and that was a small victory in itself. Whether or not he made it through the next was a bridge he could cross when he came to it. His eyes watered slightly as he stared intently out of the window, gazing at the sky that he shared with free people, revelling in the shared experience no matter how tenuous his link to them was. However, despite his best intentions, his tired, aching body, his exhausted mind won out and his eyes fluttered closed.

# # #

A paralysing fear had descended upon him. His dream self had grown used to, though not comfortable with the blank room in which his dreams had taken place, yet here he was on the street from which he had already fled. The black and white world which clumsily depicted a row of shops and houses that diminished into the distance on either side, the busy road, plaza styled space, a church, a supermarket and a pub. He noted with fear sharpened clarity that the artist had aged, its skill developed. The houses and shops were no longer awkward and misshapen squares but crosshatched representations hinting at a third dimension. The cars that sped past were sleeker, stylised road vehicles of all standard groupings from double-decker buses to sports cars, from vans to hatch-backs and all with blurring wheels and intuited speed lines that remained constant even when at rest.

He remained stationary for some time, frozen to the spot by the frightening recollection of his last visit to this unreal kingdom, yet by degrees he relaxed and began to observe his surroundings, to notice that the windows bore no reflection, that there was no sun or sky and that when one looked intently at any object, it began to blur as though the weight of his gaze was too much for it to bear. He then noticed the people that populated the place. They marched in rank and file up and down each side of the street, bustling ineffectively to increase their progress, always ducking and weaving through one another to find another obstacle in their paths. The world he occupied appeared almost cyclical, no matter how long he stood there, or would continue to stand there, the flow of people was endless, the same gaps seemed to occur, the same number of them crossed the road from one side, the same from the other until eventually they disappeared from sight around one corner or another. He could not be quite sure they were the same people however, for the thing that perturbed him most in this monochrome world was the very bodies of its occupants. They seemed to be forever in flux. The strange chimeras were neither male nor female, neither young nor old, black or white, instead long hair grew upward into cropped, eyes sank and bulged in faces that constantly varied in shade, noses grew and twisted and shrank back into fat-sunken cheeks, between narrow-wide eyes and above thin-thick lips.

His eyes ached as they attempted to keep track of the ever changing faces in this cross-hatched world. The hairs stood up in the goose-pimpled flesh of his neck and the backs of his hand. His palms began to sweat, as each moment passed he expected the hoard of chimera to turn on him as one and tear him to pieces. He realised over time that they were blissfully unaware of his presence. He was an unseen anthropologist in a world that was cyclical, yet whose denizens were in constant flux. He decided, therefore, to follow an individual as best he could, to see where it was going.

He began to follow the flock and one creature specifically, slowing at times to avoid over taking, speeding up at others to avoid losing track. He danced through the rushing crowd, through the fluctuating shoulders and peering over and around the lengthening and shortening torsos, never losing sight of his quarry. Until, that is, the expanding body of one bizarre specimen underwent an unusually rapid expansion and sent him sprawling. Only then did he notice that despite his rapid progress through the crowd, the distant landscape had remained unchanged.

It was not that he had made no motion forward, merely that the horizon was static, that even though he was a good thousand or so meters further along the road, the horizon had not grown closer, but the buildings had grown smaller, the road was narrower, even the cars and the people, he now noted, had begun to shrink the closer he had come to this ersatz vanishing point. He looked up in time to see what – he could now only guess of course – he believed to be his chosen target disappearing around a corner. He leapt to his feet and forced himself through the crowd toward the corner and followed it around.

He was once more at the beginning, returned to the start. He was an unseen anthropologist in a world that was cyclical, yet whose denizens were in constant flux. He decided to follow a designated individual as best he could, to see where it was going.

#

He looked up; traversing the naked body, onward up into the face of Nurse Pritchard through his heavy lids, then threw his head back in pleasure as she pushed herself down onto him once more. Her small, firm breasts trembled slightly from the impact, she raised herself up once again on her knees and firmly dropped back once again, emitting a low moan, more animal than human, as the flushing skin on her chest began to spread its crimson colour up her neck and into her pale cheeks. She began to rake her fingers down his chest, passionately clawing at his skin and plunging him into her faster and harder with each passing moment. He felt the familiar heat in the tip of his penis that seemed to spread through him. He tried to control it, to fight back the sensation so as not to disappoint her, but still he felt it building and building as she slammed herself down onto him, time and again, faster and faster, clawed at him as she moaned and howled, screamed and grunted her climax as he too came.

She flopped down on him listless and spent. He felt the sweat of her brow mingle with the blood on his chest, stinging slightly as the salty fluid trickled over the scrapes and scratches in his skin. They sighed and panted together as he shrank inside her.

'I love you,' he said, between gulps of air.

'I shook him Steven, I shook him.' She replied breathlessly, her face began to deteriorate, the atoms seeming to lose cohesion as it began to morph into another, another and another face. 'I shook him.' She said, contentedly and slumped, returning her faces to his blue-bleeding chest once more.

He screamed.

#

He scanned the room, the white room with its murals of blurred faces, heart pounding, breath shallow and a terrified sweat that seemed to be oozing from his every pore. He was shivering, naked; the blue liquid was no longer seeping from his chest. He swallowed then drew in a long, deep, shuddering breath. He was willing himself to wake from the dreams, fearing that they were to become progressively worse and wondering against his own common sense whether it was possible to be killed within the confines his own mind.

He knew, deep down, that he just had to ride it out, that whatever happened was an abstract reflection of his subconscious, his mind's ongoing quest to regain its memory, but nevertheless he was unsettled by the route the dreams were taking and reason provided little reassurance. He tried to seize the opportunity this latest relocation had provided, using the respite from the absurdities to take stock of events, but as he dwelled on potential subtexts of the scenes, the scenes themselves would begin to creep in again at the corners of his vision, halting his breath. He pulled his knees up to his chest, pressed his forehead into his kneecaps, willing the morning to come and the dreams to end. He rocked slowly, comforting himself with the gentle motion and tried to think away the smudged faces, the mocking stares of the sketches.

'None of this is real,' he said.

'None of this is real?' asked the walls.

'You are not real.' added the ceiling and the floor.

# # #

He woke covered in a fine sweat, the damp sheets clinging stubbornly to his skin. He peeled them off and lay glistening in the morning light which flooded the room through the open blind. He still retained the sense of unease that had left him stricken in the dream, but refused to see the nightmares as portent or ill-omen. If he were to spend his time at risk it made sense to keep his mind on side and attempt to ignore its tricks and treachery, besides which the light from the window at what could only be seven or eight o'clock was warm when magnified by the window, it was drying the moisture on his skin. He basked in the morning sun for a few minutes before levering himself out of the bed. He stretched, thought it a considerable achievement how strong he felt, how much more stable. Sure he wasn't likely to be winning Mr Universe, wrestling bears or rescuing damsels, but he was beginning to feel more human with each passing day.

With this in mind, he enjoyed his first unobserved bowel movement in living memory and then proceeded to soak the toilet floor as he washed himself with a small flannel and some lukewarm water, then padded back into the room still dripping for lack of a towel. After removing it from the top drawer he concealed himself within the pink coverall, chuckling at the absurdity.

He threw himself with little grace back upon his chosen bed like a schoolboy away from home and lay there luxuriating in the warmth of the sunshine through the window. These were without bars and must have been made from some kind of reinforced glass or plastic, but nevertheless focussed the suns light nicely. He yawned, considered returning to sleep but a hunger began to gnaw at his stomach. The one thing this place lacked, he thought, was the hospital's room-service. Ah, the luxury of nostalgia for institutionalisation and lies, he thought, laughing again. He began to doze lightly, his eyes flickering open and closed at increasing intervals until they remained closed.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

His eyes opened wide in shock.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

A siren wailed somewhere close.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

It stopped. There was a commotion outside of the cells, human voices, more than he had heard at once since he had awoken, alongside them the shuffling of feet. His door clicked and swung inward.

'One hopes you slept well, sir,' the wheedling voice of Syd came from the doorway. 'Breakfast is to be served in the restaurant in short while, it would be best to arrive early to avoid disappointment.' Syd pronounced restaurant without the t, perhaps hoping to somehow further what he no doubt considered the hilarity of his skit upon the humble domestique.

He got up off the bed and exited the room, amazed to see along the walkways and below them the massed and varied shapes of humanity clothed in a uniform pink. Syd was now some way off, no doubt hoping to fill up himself. After an evening of mocking new arrivals, he must no doubt be hungry; it would be natural for him to fill up before he finished his shift. He followed the crowd down the stairs, and allowed himself to borne on the pink tide toward the communal dining area.

It was unlikely that anyone would notice him on this first visit and still less likely that he would be recognised. If the mirrors and reflective surfaces he had so far looked into were to be believed, he was not exactly the image of the privileged terrorist they would have been expecting. He kept his head down and did his best to make no physical contact at all in the press to get to the prison canteen, imagining that if he didn't see or touch anyone, that they may not even notice he was there.

He proceeded along the corridors, seeing nothing but the bottom of the man-in-front's trousers, until all came to a stop. He looked up, the scenery had changed again. Gone were the brightly coloured walls and here was a testament to ergonomic design that made the room look as though it had been intended for over-sized toddlers. There was not a straight line in the room. Instead, the walls ululated, the counters were all curved glass, the stainless-steel tables were fitted with rubber buffers, the seats had smaller matching sets and both were bolted to the floor. At least it discounted most varieties of death by head trauma; there could be no cracked skulls or gaping wounds, only the slow mashing of his brain by repetitive bouncing remained.

The queue for breakfast moved slowly and without incident, each of the inmates were provided with a selection of pork, eggs and beans in whatever form they found most appealing and peeled off to the tables clutching rubber trays and handfuls of condiments and plastic sporks. Remarkably few of them sat together at first, he noted. Only when each table had its alpha would it then receive a beta. Eventually he came to the head of the queue, chose his pork in tube and strip form, his eggs scrambled and his beans fried and headed for a still fairly unpopulated table in the far corner, away from the counters.

He seated himself at the most thinly populated end of the table with a distinct lack of grace, he placed the tray carefully upon the table, then without really thinking about it, attempted to move the chair back from the table to allow him access; he remembered fairly quickly that it was fixed to the floor as his arms strained unsuccessfully. He felt the blood rising in his face, knowing without looking that people must have noticed the incident. He then tried to step over the chair, but caught his toe on the seat and almost toppled forward, managing at the last to catch himself, he stopped himself falling and managed to scrabble onto the seat and force his legs under the rubberised table edge. By the time he was seated at the table his face was hot and flushed. He cast his eyes furtively up and down the table, checking for sniggers to justify his blush but found none. The table was remarkable in its almost total silence. But for the scrapping of plastic cutlery on plastic plates and the monotonous mastication of the inmates there would have been no sound at all, the revelry of the men as they progressed in procession through the corridors had ended completely and the men sat in silence with their food.

He ate his food with a modicum of regained enthusiasm, relishing a variety in food and taste that he had not experienced during the life into which he had lately been born. Before too long, as if by rote or arrangement, men scattered throughout the room would swing themselves around in their chairs, stand up almost in unison and make their way to the corridors, where somewhere at an indefinable distance would begin the sound of boisterous conversation. That first group would not be long out of earshot before another would rise like so many puppets on a single string and walk from the room to that unknown marker at which they would begin their conversations. Eventually he finished eating and began worrying. Was there some kind of etiquette? Should he wait and stand with a group? If he did stand and leave, whether with or without anyone else, where exactly did he go? He made to stand.

'Odd numbers mate,' the man now opposite him whispered.

'What?' he asked.

'You're in the cell next to mine; you're waiting for odd numbers. Next lot are evens, then three minutes after that, it's the odds. Back to the cells...' the inmate fell silent; he waited for him to continue, but the man had returned to his meal.

'Thank you,' he said, simply. All across the room the next even numbered group of inmates stood and made their way from the room, he began to count the seconds until it was his turn. _One little fish, two little fish, three little fish_...

He stood a fraction of a second before the others and almost sat back down, but regained his confidence as the rest joined him. He walked slowly from the room, allowing a gap to form between himself and the others. As he had expected, this group behaved exactly as the others that had preceded them. Upon reaching a seemingly arbitrary point in the hallway, a conversation broke out between the men, about some football team or other. He lagged behind and was no more inclined than he was encouraged to enter into the conversation. Slowly the men branched off toward their respective cells after brief pauses to argue some of the finer points of their dialectic.

He made his way to his cell slowly and as unobtrusively as he could manage. Only when he was back within its four walls did he allow himself to breath properly again, having been drawing in tiny, silent breaths as he trailed behind the other inmates, feeling less like a hunter following prey than how he would imagine an antelope or a gazelle would feel had it by chance happened across a pride of lions. He sat down upon his chosen bed and relaxed. It had been thankfully and gratifyingly lacking in event. He sighed, rolled himself off the bed and hunted around the room for the remote-control he knew must be concealed somewhere. He found it eventually in the top drawer of the set next to his own and when he had it, returned to the bed, flinging himself down upon it once again.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

He laid on the bed, positioning himself in the warm, almost liquid sunshine and basked cat-like in the light. After a short time he flicked the remote control at the screen. The programming gave him an odd, yet definite sense of _déjà-vu_. There was a limited selection of channels, though far more than at the hospital, yet those that broadcast at that time of the morning seemed to share a scheduler, they all seemed to be showing variations on the theme of property which may as well have adopted the uniform title _Briefly Inflating House-Prices_. Before long he was plagued by advertisements, no matter which channel he chose, there were adverts and no safe haven could be found amongst the channels that each hawked its own, demographically directed, aspirational detritus to the masses. He was disappointed with the absence of futurism; instead the adverts were now simply complete with a third level of self deprecating, reflective meaning.

'This is an advert,' said the advert, as it had done in perpetuity since advertising first took to the airwaves.

'Yes, we know it's an advert,' stated its audience, as it had begun to do later on, filled with a sense of consumer ennui.

'Well we know that you know this is an advert,' said the advert 'and to skip a line or two on, we also know that you know we know that you know it's an advert...'

'Well...?' asked the audience, with irritation.

'Well now we know that you know _that_ too!' the advert ended with due cheerful flourish as a car swam away or a mountain became an ice-cream.

Then, on all channels, the strange furry creature returned to visit him, he jumped up, frantically rooted through the pocket of the pyjama shirt where he had put the cigarettes and lighter he had been palmed the previous evening. He stood before the television as the monstrous thing began its song, he lit the cigarette, drew deeply upon it and then, whilst leaning in, he slowly exhaled toward the screen and imagined the creature behind the thick grey cloud spluttering and cursing, dramatically coughing and whining nasally at him. He laughed to himself and returned to the bed, picked up the ashtray on the way, and then flopped himself down. He was lying on the bed, and only half way through the cigarette when he heard footsteps and a familiar voice some way outside the door. Before long, however, the voice became distinguishable.

'This is you!' Syd said; he could almost see the choreographed spinning on heels. 'Number one-hundred and forty-five, we of his majesty's prison service hope you enjoy your stay at his pleasure. In the drawers you will find a change of clothes in the form of a fashionable pastel pink, one size fits nobody coverall. Your clothes will be collected in the morning and will be returned at such a time when you are deemed to have served your allotted sentence. The overalls will, of course, be waiting for you when you return shortly after.' Syd chuckled again. The man most definitely enjoyed his work. Syd then quickly entered the room, put his pyjamas in a sack and left as quickly as he had come. Upon Syd's exit a new visitor, presumably his cell-mate, entered the room.

'Cunt,' said the man, as he strutted into the cell, whilst his gaze followed the prison guard who either did not, or chose not to hear him. Then the arrival seemed to notice him as if for the first time.

'Man's a cunt, innit?' His new room-mate said, as if by way of explanation, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder.

'Definitely,' he stated, worrying as to which expression had won out in the battle for his face; did he look frightened, or was he about to burst into fits of laughter? Worse even, maybe neither had won and he was sat twitching and sweating. His new cell-mate leaned across the first bed and shook his hand.

'Jed,' said Jed.

'Um, hello,' he replied. 'How are you?'

'Me? I'm just fucking dandy, innit? I've just found myself back in this fucking place and I'm rooming with a muppet, yeah? Your brief should be shot mate. Even I could have gotten you off as simple,' the man stared at him in disbelief. 'Nah, man, I'm just shittin'. I'm good, yeah? So you're going to be my roomy, yeah?' Jed asked, suddenly cheerful.

'I, er, suppose so,' he answered, still unsure of himself.

'Right, well, we'd better get it over with quickly then,' said Jed, standing quickly, pulling his hooded top and t-shirt over his head in one smooth movement; he then began to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his low slung jeans.

'Um, get what out of the way?' he said, laughing nervously. There was a pause that lasted far too long for him. Jed's face clouded, and then burst into fresh fits of laughter.

'Shit man, I have never seen a paler face, yeah? That was fuckin' funny, you've got to gimme that, man, yeah?' burbled Jed through giggles.

'Yes,' he said. He had no idea what to say and was worried that he would start to sweat any moment.

'Look man, I'm not after your ass, I was just playing with you innit? Nah, you're gonna see my bollocks at some point, I'm just getting it out of the way early,' said Jed, then stepped out of his trousers and quickly donned the pink coverall. 'You've got to love this colour yeah?'

'Um, it's not a colour I'd have considered, at least not without the appropriate rouge,' he joked, nervously, to his relief Jed laughed.

'Is it?' Jed laughed again 'Good to know you've got your standards, man. Right, now time for the big one, yeah? What did you do, man?' his face must have dropped palpably; Jed seemed to spot it and narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

'Look, I, er... it's a difficult one to explain really...' he tripped over the words.

'Look man, you'd better not be about to tell me you're a nonce, I don't care what happens, I will fuck you up, yeah?'

'A what?' the implication clicked home 'No! No, it's not that, it's just that, well. I'm not really the person that committed it, I mean, I lost my memory and now I can't remember anything about the man that did it, the me that did it, I'm kind of like a different person and this person is really badly sickened by the thought...'

'What are you talking about, yeah?' he asked.

'Well I have absolutely no memory of what happened.'

'What; like amnesia?' Jed laughed incredulously.

'The doctor called it a dissociative fugue. It means that although I retain a memory, I have no memory of myself. I forgot myself, if you know what I mean?'

'That's all a bit mental for me man. Surely your barrister could have gotten you sectioned or something?'

'I didn't get a trial, I don't know why, but my doctor told some kind of medical review that I was lying about my condition.'

'Sounds like you were stitched up man. What was it they got you for? Drugs? Violence?' he raised an eyebrow 'Soliciting? Come on man.'

'Terrorism,' he said flatly, lowering his head. He was going to be found out sooner or later, he thought, he may as well take his chance to convince someone on a one-to-one basis.

'No way, that is a coincidence too far man,' stated Jed as he shook his head. 'What, like threats or something? God-squad?'

He lifted his head to look Jed in the eye. 'I'm Ernest Featherstone,' he said, sombrely.

'Fuck off, man!' Jed roared with laughter. 'You proper had me going! Shit! Ernest Featherstone, the Oxford educated terrorist and perpetrator of the largest single act of terrorism on English soil? You? Did someone put you up to this shit?' Jed creased up laughing.

He was stunned. Of all of the reactions he had envisioned when the moment came that his identity was revealed, laughter and disbelief had not entered into his equations. He had no idea what to say, so he simply waited and stared in confusion as his new cell-mate laughed and shook silently, gulping in breaths of air between fits of giggles.

'Do you always laugh so hard when someone tells you that they're a mass murderer?' he asked in astonishment. Jed walked over to the television and pressed the volume control, turning the volume up to near maximum, so that the excitable presenter seemed now to be howling his effervescent exuberance at the audience. He then returned to sit on his bed.

'Is it? You ain't a mass murderer man,' he curled up laughing once again.

'What, erm, I mean, what do you mean? I've seen the footage, I've seen pictures. I've seen my fucking reflection! I'm a mass murderer!'

'Easy man, keep your voice down. That shit doesn't go down very well even in here. Besides, you are not a fucking murderer,' Jed sucked his teeth.

'What the hell do you mean? Why do you keep saying that?'

'You're _the_ Ernest Featherstone, you?' Jed asked again.

'That's the one.'

'No way man, you've been stitched up.' Jed began to laugh again.

'What do you mean no way? Don't you understand, I've _seen_ the _footage_ , I've _seen_ it. It's me! It's my face. How can there be no way?'

'Look, man, I wrote my dissertation on that whole thing. I know every-fucking-thing about that man,' Jed laughed again. 'You are not Ernest Featherstone; I am fucking telling you man. Born in the North London suburb of Golders Green to Margaret and Ernest Featherstone Senior, the young Ernest was a reserved child at one time feared to be autistic by his mother, herself a chronic depressive who recorded these feelings in a series of what have often been referred to as _obsessive_ (there's a footnote there) diaries which also detail her gradual mental collapse in the year following the attack perpetrated by her son which led to her suicide after she set fire to the family home. His father had died when Ernest was eight years old, of a heart attack, a trauma from which it would seem his son never fully recovered, in fact, from what little picture evidence that remains of Ernest Featherstone the Second, as he apparently insisted on being referred to, he essentially appears to have recreated his father's own distinctively anachronistic Victorian style, creating a personality based almost entirely on affectation and borrowed mannerisms (there was another footnote there),' Jed looked up and grinned.

'What are you _talking_ about?' he asked.

'My dissertation, man, it was about Ernest Featherstone, and you, no matter how much you look like him, are one-hundred percent not Ernest Featherstone.'

'Then how do you explain the resemblance?'

'You're determined to have killed all those people, innit? Look, I don't care who you look like, you could look like Elvis, you could look like Jesus but it doesn't mean you are either of them.'

'So, um, what exactly tells you that I'm not guilty?'

'You've got a fucking accent, man. No way would that geezer let himself speak with an accent, he spoke with the plum so far down his throat that it was peaking out of his arse.'

'Lovely,' he said, wincing at the image.

'Poetry's a hobby, yeah?' said Jed, laughing again.

'So where does that leave me?'

'Still fucked, man, still fucked, yeah? You have absolutely no chance; you're only hope would be a DNA test and you're not gonna be getting that, because no one would ever listen to you. Sorry man, but at least you've got a clean conscience, yeah?' Jed shrugged.

'That's it? You tell me that I'm innocent and then shrug at me?'

'What do you want me to do man?'

'I don't believe you. I don't believe you. You've done nothing but fuck with me since you walked in. So why should I believe you? Why should I believe a word you say? What would a history graduate be doing in this place anyway?'

'Just unlucky man, I'm only in for a couple of months max. They run stings on all the dealers around election time and I got caught out, and for your information I'm going to be applying for a Masters, yeah?' Jed appeared to be sulking, his bottom lip protruding slightly.

'What do you mean before an election?' he shook his head as though attempting to clear it of the excess information.

'Simple man, it pays to have as many liberals inside as they can come election time, so they start to clamp down on the traditional areas of liberal law breaking, you start to see authors and intellectuals facing charges, libel, perjury, drug offences, illicit materials, homosexual congress with men under twenty-one, whether genuine or not, they end up inside. It simply became necessary after electoral reform that they found another way to nullify the votes of undesirables. Prisoners can't vote, so they lock you up, simple as, yeah?'

'Doesn't that affect your education, I mean, will it prevent you from having a career?'

'Nah man, the charges will be dropped in about six weeks; I'm middle class, yeah? The middle classes don't commit crime, not real crime. Last time it was mistaken identity, I got about two grand from a tribunal and an apology. Something will turn up, it always does. It's not as though we have the Stasi or the SS walking around, yeah? No one disappears, it's as it always has been really, the scum on one side, the toffs on the other and a system of ineffectual institutions pottering about in between, never completely failing and never succeeding, thereby maintaining the status quo. Have you never wondered why as the tools for policing become increasingly refined, the paperwork and red tape become more and more prevalent? The police can't be allowed to stop crime; crime is one of the driving forces of English society, it's the same reason for which we fail to legalise cannabis. Despite it being one of the largest potential cash crops since tobacco and cotton. That's why we're about to criminalise a whole new section of society with the ban on tobacco. Prohibition creates a whole new variety of previously unknown criminals against which the government can send an ineffectual police force crippled by their paymasters, yeah?'

'I'm not sure I understand what you're saying...'

'Basically, they want control, right?'

'Yes, but, you know, wouldn't it be better for them to go the whole hog, the totalitarian dictatorship? You know, like you said, with something like the Stasi or the SS?'

'What and risk outside interference? The government already get enough shit off Human Rights Watch, they're not gonna start shipping people off to labour camps, not unless they knew they could get away with it; but these things are slow man and the balance is only very narrowly kept, they move suddenly one way or the other and there's an instant outcry for redress, but if you move slowly, especially in England, no one gives a fuck, yeah? So they keep snipping away, chipping away at rights and liberties and no one notices, or if they do, they don't care,' Jed shrugged once again.

'And you're okay with that?' he asked incredulously.

'Man, it don't matter shit what I'm okay with, innit? It's a force of nature, it don't matter a tiny dogs dick what we do, you can't undo what's gone before without some kind of uprising and it changes too slow for that. One day we'll just wake up and it will be too late to do anything about it.'

'So what are _you_ doing about it?'

'Me? I'm gonna get my face on the TV man! I've got it all lined up with the History Channel; I'm gonna make myself the new face of History!'

'That's it?'

'What do you mean is that it? That's a pretty big fucking career plan.'

'I meant, like, what are you going to do about the stuff you've just told me?' he asked, Jed simply sucked his teeth.

'Nothing, yeah, I've told you, it's too late man. All I'm gonna do is make enemies, no one likes a guy that tells the truth, yeah? People like to hear stuff they already know about; and occasionally new stuff about things they're interested in.'

'Nothing, but...'

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

A new alarm sound cut him off in mid sentence.

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

'Exercise yard man, this is where you've got to be extra careful, innit? No shouting about mass murder and you'll make it back without getting fucked up, yeah?' said Jed, standing slowly he held out a hand to help his cell-mate to his feet.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, the yard is outside innit? It doesn't have the facility for crowd control that you have in here. No air vents for distribution of the sedative gases, no metal doors. Out there all you've got between you and a hiding are your legs. It's a fair old size, so you're in with a chance, but the best idea is to keep your head down, yeah?' said Jed.

Following this advice, Jed turned and began to walk out of the door, casting a brief glance over his shoulder to check that his room-mate was following. With the siren still sounding intermittently, they joined the burbling stream of humanity as it washed through the hallways and out into the open yard. Jed had been right, the yard was expansive, equating to around four football pitches in size and sparsely populated by the prison's residents, there were men kicking about a battered ball using traffic cones for posts, there was a section devoted in a somewhat Americanised fashion to the pumping of ferrous metals and to the basketing of balls, there were swathes of men simply sat in circles on the grass with plumes of smoke rising from them. Occasionally a cigarette would pass between the men.

'Are they doing what I think they're doing?' he asked, astounded.

'Is it? Yeah, depends what you think they're doing, man,' Jed replied.

'That's, like, pot?'

'Is it, man? Is it?' Jed chuckled joyously 'Yeah man, you sound surprised.'

'I, erm, am surprised; I'm also surprised that you're not surprised! Aren't they worried they'll be caught? I mean, won't that look bad on their parole application?'

'Nah man, this place would be damn fool to kick out the weed,' Jed sucked his teeth again 'shame they can't see it this way on the outside, but the more fucked up these guys get, the less trouble they are, yeah? It's all part of the great hypocrisy of it all man, the guards here know not to let a drop of alcohol in here or there'll be rioting, but they know they can turn a blind eye to the weed, keeps these fuckers quiet, innit? But, man, on the outside, they're all like it messes with your mind,' Jed waved his arms around to imply some kind of psychedelic episode whilst pulling a bizarre face, lolling his tongue out of his mouth. 'Shit's fucked man.' They walked across an expanse of grass, carefully avoiding the other inmates.

'So you're saying they basically encourage it?'

'Pretty much,' Jed shrugged 'but then at least it gives us something to do, yeah?' he grinned and pulled a tin from one of the pockets on his coveralls and flourished it as though he had completed a particularly difficult conjuring trick.

'No way,' he said.

'No way?' Jed flashed another boyish grin.

'Where did you get that from? You've been here less than a day!'

'Brought it in with me, innit?' he said, matter of fact.

'What do you mean you brought it in with you? You said you were arrested on drug charges, how have you got drugs with you?'

'I've told you man, they don't give a fuck. There're about ten thousand like me up and down the country who just needed to be taken out of the game for a couple of months, they don't care what we get up to whilst we're here as long as we're here. You get me?'

'I suppose so,' he sighed, he had a lot to learn about this strange new world.

'Now sit yourself down man and let's build us a fat one, yeah?' Jed simply flopped down where he stood and immediately began to construct a large, conical spliff.

'I-I, erm, I'm not sure I smoke that, um, stuff,' he said, sitting a little more awkwardly than his younger cell-mate.

'Man, about an hour ago you were a mass murderer with Oxford honours, you don't know the first fucking thing about what you do or don't do. You've got a long time to ponder the morality of the weed, man, but for now just try and chill out, yeah? I know you've had a shit time, but that rod is way too far up your arse man.' Jed flashed another grin and continued to layer skunk upon tobacco before sealing it deftly, inserting a roach and producing a Zippo lighter from another pocket. Jed twisted the end of the spliff and with great ceremony, bowed his head and proffered the two items to him in open palms. 'After you, my good man,' he said in an outrageously upper class accent.

'Um, thanks, I think,' he accepted the talismanically offered objects and then with one in each hand stared indecisively first at one then the other.

'You put the thin end in your mouth and light the fat-end with that,' Jed pointed at the lighter. 'You suck,' he said finally.

'I know how to smoke...' he started.

'I know, I was just telling you that you suck,' he beamed another boyish grin.

'Thanks again,' he said, then lit up gingerly and inhaled deeply, again he was racked by a mini coughing fit. 'Super,' he said and offered the spliff back to its maker before noticing he was a fair way through making another.

'Yours man, enjoy it yeah. Not all at once though, or you'll be sick, yeah?' Jed said, nodding mock-sagely, finishing the second joint and lighting it in a fluid movement.

He took another pull, and another, beginning to feel his eyelids grow heavy, his tongue thicken, he felt his cares and stresses drain away as he flopped back onto the grass and began to giggle.

'This,' he said between laughing fits 'is fantastic.' He attempted to sit up, but found himself rolling back, giggling again. 'This is great, really great, really, really, really, really,' he burbled, silently shaking with laughter, he liked the way it felt simply to say 'really' and so continued to do so between fits of giggles.

'I think that should do you for a bit,' said Jed exhaling a thick plume of smoke, then laughed 'you're a lightweight man.'

'Lightweight,' he repeated, then breathed deeply, exhaling with a loud _hoooooooo_ 'sorry,' he sniffed and exhaled again 'sorry. I feel really light, actually. I feel happy.'

'Is it? Good stuff, yeah? Have to admit I miss the giggles man, but the buzz is still a good one, innit.'

To him Jed's voice seemed to be stretched, taking on a kind of slow drawl.

'Good?' he barely controlled another fit of giggles, 'Yeah, it's good, good, goody good,' he felt a grin stretch across his face and he was laughing again.

'Is it? So what you gonna do now, man? How you going to keep yourself whilst your here? What skills have you got?'

'Skills?' he asked, confused by the sudden, serious edge to Jed's voice.

'Yeah, man, you're gonna need to offer something to keep the fags coming, especially if you want to see any more of this once I'm gone,' Jed waved his half smoked spliff at him.

'Fuck knows,' he shrugged 'who the fucking fuck knows? If I survive at all, it'll be a miracle and even if I do, what have I got to look forward to? Do I spend the next fifty years sat around in this place hoping that someone will notice I've got a fucking accent?' he started to laugh again.

'I could try and have a word with someone when I get out, yeah? I know a few people you know, maybe I could sort it out with my TV show, yeah?' a glaze fell over his eyes 'Living History, yeah? I could try and bring you to the attention of people innit?'

'Who's going to care though? It's, like, you know, they've got someone inside for what happened, does it really matter if it's the right guy?' he said, shrugging again, it felt as though the joint had distanced him from his problems, he knew it wouldn't solve them but gave him the distance to observe them clinically, almost dispassionately.

'It matters, yeah, I mean it's got to matter, innit?' protested Jed.

'Does it?' he replied flatly 'I mean when has the truth ever gotten in the way of a good hate campaign? Maybe when someone kills me, or I finally die of boredom or old age someone might take an interest and the country might say never again, until the next time. Let's face it, you're right. I'm fucked.'

'Nah man, I'll do it, yeah, I'll do it. I'll hire solicitors, barristers to demand DNA checks.' The sincerity in Jed's voice was moving, but he remained unconvinced.

'Thanks,' he said 'Thank you, I hope it works.'

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

'Time to get back, innit?' stated Jed, solemnly 'It'll be sweet, yeah?'

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

## CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The cell-mates shuffled along amidst the swell of prisoners, keeping their heads down and their mouths closed as they trailed through the corridors until they were back in their room. Whilst Jed immediately flung himself down on his bunk, he found it necessary to spend a little time in the toilet cubicle, since he had stepped inside and into the warmth of the indoors the heat had risen from his feet and seemed to be trying to force itself out of his face. His ears tingled, his cheeks burned and he spent the following ten minutes splashing handful after handful of ice cold water over his face in an attempt to reach some kind of compromise with the temperature, having failed to do so, he sat on the toilet seat with his head in his hands and eyes closed, feeling as though he had pins and needles in his eyes. He breathed deeply and, eventually, the room regained a modicum of solidity, he stood, washed cold water over his face once again and exited the toilet.

'You okay, yeah?' asked Jed smiling.

'Fine, fine,' he drew in another deep breath 'that bit wasn't as fun.'

'I told you you'd had enough man, shouldn't have burned the whole thing. I'm surprised you weren't puking yeah? Take a seat, we've got about an hour or so to kill till lunch, just ride it out till then,' said Jed, his voice lazy and drawn out.

'Oh, I was meaning to ask. Why does no one seem to sit together at lunch?' he asked whilst flopping limply onto his bunk.

'It's not worth it man, you get a few of the long termers sat together, but anyone who wants to get out just keeps quiet in between sessions outside innit? No one wants a reputation in this place bruv; it's one of the few changes in the prison system since the turn of the decade, there's nothing like knowing that if you cause trouble you'll be unconscious in seconds and if the guards take exception to you, that you'll take a beating while you're out to keep you in line, innit? It's made fuck all difference to rehabilitation, but no one really cares about that. Right, enough heavy shit, let's watch some cartoons, yeah?' Jed rolled himself to the very edge of his bunk, grabbed the remote, rolled himself back and changed the channel; Wile E. Coyote was strapped to an oversized Acme rocket and wearing a pair of roller-skates. Needless to say, it ended badly for the coyote and, as it did, Jed burst into laughter and he could not help but join in.

His mind wandered and began to cast himself as the ineffectual hunter chasing the un-catchable prey, constantly outwitted and outmanoeuvred by the truth, but far from depressing him, it merely added another layer of humour to the situation as the coyote shot himself into a cliff face with an enormous elastic band. They both then watched and chuckled through Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones and Jed's personal favourite Daffy Duck, in between which he would flick idly through the channels somehow avoiding the adverts.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

'Time flies, innit?' Jed sighed, levering himself up.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

Once more he found himself filing through the corridors to the canteen with the other inmates. He felt more relaxed with Jed at his side, his presence enough to calm his well earned paranoia. Whether or not he was being naive he couldn't say, but he was prepared to ignore the fact that virtually every other person he had encountered had in some way betrayed him. He seemed genuine, seemed to contain a joy and an ease with himself that he had not encountered since he had awoken.

'Trick is to get in line about ten behind me, that way you'll be able to come over to wherever I'm sat without drawing attention, yeah?' Jed was whispering, head close to his left ear. He purposefully didn't turn to look, but as they drew near to the canteen, as the murmuring of the crowd died down to a stop, he began to slow, dawdling as the line began to form until he was nine places behind his cell-mate. He made his selection from the two choices of meal; he could have had fish and chips, but instead chose a dish of sausages and mashed potato on top of which was glooped thick gravy which resolutely refused to run, instead sitting gelatinously atop the mashed potato, quivering in fear of its inevitable demise. He had progressed no more than a few feet when he heard a raised and familiar voice.

'Oi you there, over here,' Syd's voice caused him to freeze dead in mid stride, feeling a cold sweat prickle on his forehead. 'Yeah you, over here,' he turned and walked slowly over to where Syd was sat, he cleared his throat nervously.

'W-what can I, um, do for you, um, sir?' he said, clearing his throat again, he felt as though there were something lodged there.

'Sir is it? Well, now that's a start for sure! That's what I like to hear,' Syd then leaned over, close to his chest. 'I've had a look at your file, boy, seems like you've been holding on to some very important information. Seems to me like that information should be in the public domain...' Syd left the sentence hanging in mid air, perfecting the appearance of innocence possessed by any good extortionist.

'I-I, uh, don't know, like, I don't know what you mean,' he stuttered.

'Oh, on the very bloody contrary, my son, I think you know very, very well what I mean... Ernie,' then Syd did something that made him even more repulsive, he smiled, his teeth were stained yellow with tobacco and appeared to be growing some kind of moss around the gums.

'W-what is it you want from me?' he asked, he could feel the colour draining from his face and was beginning to regret the spliff, his heart was fluttering rapidly and he felt as though the back of his skull was about to open up and release his terrified brain into the wild.

'Want from you?' Syd laughed humourlessly, revealing his mossy teeth once again, 'I don't want anything from you; I was just offering you a friendly warning, that's all. Of course, my position here forbids me from telling anyone directly...' he let the sentence hang in mid air once more.

'Um, thank you. I, uh, I just want to, you know, just serve...'

'That being said,' Syd interrupted 'these things have a habit of getting out, 'specially in a place like this. Close quarters, cheek to jowl with the scum, news like that can sometimes slip, guards accidentally leaving files open, prisoners overhearing conversations, you know what it's like. Just a friendly warning, that's all,' another mossy grin 'now, don't let me keep you sunshine, off you go,' he turned away from Syd, obeying the command as though it had been reinforced by a cattle prod, he rushed through the room, his eyes scanning for Jed, only to find the accusatory stares of the other inmates, he kept telling himself that it was his imagination, but could not stop himself from seeing enemies everywhere.

After a seemingly endless search he found Jed at last, sat down and whilst shaking, attempted to eat his rapidly cooling food.

'You alright man?' whispered Jed out of the corner of his mouth, he shook his head.

'No,' he said, simply 'not at all,'

'Okay man, look, we're on evens at the minute, see those two lights over there?' Jed nodded over his shoulder; he followed the gesture with his eyes to see two light-bulbs, one green and one yellow, both caged in a wire mesh. 'When the yellow one lights up, we go yeah?' there was silence between them then until the yellow light flickered briefly into life. He stood rapidly and headed for the exit with Jed following lackadaisically behind, ever calm, he thought he heard Syd chuckle as he exited the canteen. He shuddered.

#

A few moments later, walking at a pace that teetered at the brink of jogging, they were back in their cell, he sat down gingerly on his bed and Jed did the same on his, looking steadily at his new cell mate.

'What's up man?' asked Jed, his voice a mixture of confusion and concern.

'He, ah, he told me, no, he threatened me... he...' He was shaking, virtually incomprehensible.

'Hold on, man, what did he, no, even better, who's this he, yeah?' asked Jed, interrupting his panicked babbling.

'He, um, you know, Syd...'

'The cunt that showed me in, yeah?' he asked 'what did he do? You said something about a threat?'

'A threat... yes, a threat, he, uh, he threatened to tell people who I was, he said that he'd found out who I was and that he would, well he didn't exactly say that he would, but he, you know, implied that he would, or at least that someone would...' he was breathing heavily, struggling to make sense.

'Look man, chill yeah? What exactly was said?' asked Jed, struggling to keep up with the machine-gunned words, the rapid staccato beat which seemed to be passing through his mind without leaving any meaningful trace.

'He said that he knew who I was,' he took a deep shuddering breath 'he, uh, he said that people would find out, he said, he said he wouldn't say but that that kind of information had a habit of finding its way out. He's going to tell someone, I know it, then it's all going to be fucked, it's all fucked, I'm fucked. Fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked,' he began to rock back and forth on the bed.

'Is it?' Jed paused and stroked his chin thoughtfully, there was a low grazing noise of skin on thin stubble 'you're just gonna have to deny it man, laugh it off innit? Tell people that you're always getting told things like that and that you're actually in for fraud or something,' Jed nodded, as though satisfied with a job well done.

'It can't be that simple, nothing has been that simple since I woke up,' he said, but in truth he felt a little mollified, Jed's lazy verbiage and mellow delivery had a way of calming him down, a little like the spliff, he thought, Jed didn't rid him of the problem, but had the ability of seemingly reducing its scale.

'It'll be sweet, man, no worries yeah?' Jed then tossed him a cigarette, took one for himself then reached over and lit both, 'best thing for you to do now is take an hour or two's sleep, I know I will, it's best to structure your days, innit? The more sleep you get, the sooner you get out, and you will get out, yeah? The moment I hit the outside, I'm gonna start work on raising your profile, who knows man, you might make a living on the chat show circuit. Quick autobiography and you'll be fucking minted innit?' Jed laughed and he could not help but join in. It was mindlessly optimistic, but somehow he couldn't quite fathom, in that instant he almost believed it to be possible.

He collapsed back on to the bed and before long fell into a dreamless sleep from which he was awoken a little later by the alarm signalling that their attendance was required for the evening meal. They made their way down, fell into line ten places apart, chose their meals, ate and departed. All the while he kept his head down, all the while staying silent. On the few times he looked up, to ensure he sat at the right table his blood ran cold, on every face he saw a cold, hard hatred and on every hand an accusatorily raised index finger. One thing that did set his mind at least partially at rest was that Syd had evidently finished his shift and was therefore not in attendance. Perhaps, he would be safe for another day, perhaps more, it may after all be his day off; he tried to take solace in this possible respite and managed at least to a small extent to do so. They hurried back to the cell.

'Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it, yeah?' began Jed when they had gotten back to the cell and had settled back on to their bunks. 'You know, I think History's due a proper kick off, man. These things go in cycles, innit? You have science, mostly theoretical physics, you get literature every now and then kicked off by a successful series of books, or a popular author, once in a while you get some controversy over evolutionary science as some religious dick who just doesn't get it tries to imagine their way past the evidence of their eyes... shit, you're not religious are you?' Jed asked, seemingly shocked a little by his own lack of tact.

'I hope not,' he said, smiling, 'for many reasons, but I don't know.'

Jed laughed, seemingly relieved. 'Is it, but yeah, man, like I was saying, where's the history revival?'

'You get peaks of interest in archaeology...?' he offered.

'Archaeology is not fucking history, man, its archaeology, you get me? Archaeology is sometimes necessary for the study of history, but only in the same way engineering is necessary for theoretical physics, you don't need to build a rocket for the propulsion equations to be right, you just need it for the equations to be proved to be right, yeah? Same goes for history man. History, with the capital letter, is inference, it's a commentary, and it's the drawing together of seemingly disparate strands to weave them into a tapestry, a new and complex theory of the past, yeah?'

'Um, okay?' he replied.

Jed sucked his teeth again 'Don't give me that shit, yeah? Um, okay?' he said, performing a passable impersonation of Goofy to quote him. 'It's true innit? It took steady, meticulous work to uncover the socio-political picture we now have of, say, The First and Second World Wars, or even the War of the Roses, Hastings and the Battle of Boswell Hill. Archaeology digs where History tells it, yeah?'

'Is that going in your script?' he laughed a little 'what about those dinosaur people?'

'It might, and that's palaeontology, that's different again,' Jed replied somewhat tetchily, then laughed 'it's not so bad is it?'

'It is,' he replied 'what happens when you go?'

'You'll have the TV crews to keep you company, yeah?' they both laughed again, Jed flicked him another cigarette.

'You really think you could help me?'

'I don't see why not, yeah? You're not just wrongly accused, but just wrong. All it would take is a DNA test and they could see for themselves innit? Don't see why anyone would have any problems with that, it's in the public interest. If I can manage to get it on TV, it's a done deal; people love their televisions, man.'

'So, I suppose all I have to do now is survive this place?' he laughed.

'Yeah, man, simple innit? I'm gonna catch a snooze, yeah? I'll be waking up about one-ish for a joint if you fancy joining me? The guards don't really bother in the evening, in case you're worried, most of them are probably asleep.' Jed said and without waiting for a reply, rolled over in his bed and pulled the sheets over his shoulder.

'Yeah, why not,' he replied, Jed merely raised his thumb over his shoulder. When in Rome, he thought to himself and rolled himself in the blankets. He hadn't realised how tired he was until his head hit the pillow.

'It's amazing how much false imprisonment, threats and cannabis can tire...' he was soundly asleep, breathing deeply and smoothly as he pressed his face into the pillow, Jed switched off the television and was not far behind. Soon the cell was filled with the sound of long, deep, seemingly tandem inhalation and exhalation and the occasional grunt as a breath caught in a nose or throat.

# # #

He was stood before a room full of monochrome children, their features refused to remain stable, their heights fluctuated, but this time less than before, if he focused hard enough he could pick out repeating patterns in the features, in the heights; he could almost set them into individual children. They didn't seem to have noticed him, however and they mouthed silent words to one another between morphing lips; he looked down to see in his hands a copy of Twelfth Night in which was written, over and over:

SEBASTIAN What relish is in this? How runs the stream

Or am I mad, or else this is a dream.

Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep.

If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep.

SEBASTIAN What relish is in this? How runs the stream

Or am I mad, or else this is a dream.

Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep.

If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep.

'What does this tell us about Sebastian?' he heard himself say, they had noticed him now and one by one the constantly shifting eyes rounded on him to stare intently. First one hand went into the air then another, then another. Hand after hand after hand after ever changing hand went into the air and then their mouths began to move, all the while changing mid word, mid letter so that they more resembled the maw of some gargantuan deep sea fish, its jagged, fraying edges undulating with the changes. Then there came the sound.

'Sir!' said one of them in thirty voices.

'Sir!' said another in thirty more.

'Sir!' began the next and the next, each adding some thirty voices to an ever increasing maelstrom of noise, until soon there was no way to make out the words, it sounded as though he were in the midst of an enormous flock of screeching birds, the dissonance drove spikes into his temple.

He put the book on the desk in front of him and began to walk slowly to the door. His head was throbbing, he felt a little sick, but walked fastidiously, slowly along the corridor outside. He was thronged on either side and from all angles by more running, fighting and falling children. Looking over his shoulder, a mistake he thought in retrospect, he saw the children from the classroom behind him pour slowly out into the hallway and begin to follow him, still hailing him in their many voices. He began to walk faster and faster, he did not where he was, but his feet seemed somehow to know to where he was going. As the children behind him walked through the hall, they alerted more of the ever changing children to his presence, before long the shrill cacophony was too much for him, clamping his hands over his ringing ears he began to hurtle through the halls. Without knowing why, he careened around the first corner, then another and another, down three flights of stairs, taking five and six at a time, then onwards out of a large set of double doors and into the bright sunlight outside. It burned, so much brighter, this Technicolor world of azure blues and the dazzling golden sunshine. He shut his eyes instinctively and missed the small steps outside of the door which sent him tumbling, his momentum causing him to roll and roll in the sunlight.

He came to a halt on his back, his entire body feeling grazed or bruised or both, but he felt grass beneath him and by slow degrees the heat of the sun seemed to serve as a balm for his wounds, he opened his eyes and felt a pleasant haze descend on his mind.

#

He took the spliff from his mouth after inhaling deeply; filling his lungs with the pungent smoke he smiled. After a few moments he exhaled, occasionally blowing smoke rings in to the luxurious, cloudless blue sky. He could hear voices, clear voices, single, definable voices in conversation. A smile spread slowly over his face, somewhere nearby there was a stereo playing something old, classic rock, perhaps Jeff Buckley or Radiohead. He returned the spliff to his mouth and took another long pull; he closed his eyes again and began to listen intently to the conversation. There seemed to be four distinct voices, two male, two female and all discussing something quite intently which he could not quite make out, but their voices were somehow familiar, and just listening to them speaking, despite being unable to grasp what they were saying, left him feeling content and secure. He continued to draw deeply on the joint, holding it in until his lungs began to burn, then releasing another and another blue-grey cloud into the sky. He stretched out, popping stiff ligaments, straining sinew, spreading the warmth through the rest of his body, allowing the haze in his head to travel to the outer most tip of every finger and toe. He noticed then that the talking had ceased, it took him another moment for this to sink in, he yawned long and loud, there was laughter from the gathered voices.

He levered himself up unto his elbows, his eyes still squeezed shut, stretched and yawned again. He reopened his eyes, squinting in the bright light from the sun. When they were able to focus, he did indeed see four figures, all turned to face him, the blank, milky ovals where their features should have been continued to shake in a parody of mirth. He was frozen, the laughter continued unabated from the blank faces. He cast his eyes around the circle, from one to another, the laughter stopped and one of the female creatures leaned over him, placing her hand on his forehead, it stroked his hair softly, leaned in and clamped its mouth, overgrown with skin, into his own, pressing in on his lips with passion, stroking his cheek as it did so, then it held him close.

'It's okay,' it said, softly, consolingly 'I shook him, Steven, I shook him.'

#

He clamped his hands over his eyes; his stomach was heavy, his chest aching with some unknowable grief. He was crying, around him a pair of long, strong arms, attempting to console him with pats and strokes. He did not know why he was there, but he was as sure as he had ever been that there could be no consolation. Whatever he had lost would leave an indelible mark upon his life and so he sobbed and mourned for a lost world that would never come again. He looked up through tear filled eyes and into the face of a man, also crying, though gently, the man obviously longed to be able to take away the grief of his charge and the lines of grief were joined by those of frustration at his own inability to do so.

'Hush, little man. It'll be okay.' the man sniffed, could not suppress another flow of tears which rolled slowly down the man's cheeks. His chest ached further at the man's discomfort and together they were both shook by more tears. 'She loved you very, much, okay,' said the man 'she didn't mean to leave you; she didn't mean to leave us on our own. Please don't cry little man, please don't cry,' but the man, too, kept crying and crying and murmuring softly 'she didn't mean to leave us, she didn't mean to leave us, she loved us; she didn't mean to leave.'

#

He awoke in his bed with Jed stood over him, his cheeks hot and wet with tears.

'Spliff?' Jed asked, solemnly.

'I think I saw my father,' he replied, still confused by sleep.

'Is it? Definitely cause for a spliff if he was anything like mine, yeah? Come on bruv, let's get you up, couple of tokes on this should get rid of the dreams, yeah?'

'Thank you,' he said, his voice cracking slightly 'thank you so much,' he dried his eyes and cheeks on the pillow case and then rolled himself off of his bunk and trundled over to the window, which Jed had opened to its maximum five centimetre gap before handing him a joint and lighting both of them.

'Try and get most of it out of the window, yeah? There's taking the piss and there's taking the piss, innit?' said Jed. He nodded his understanding and consent.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Once he had returned to his bunk he slept a deep, dreamless sleep. He awoke to a room bathed in sunshine; another beautiful day was in the process dawning and for the first few moments after he woke, he was more than happy to greet it. Only after a glance around the room and sufficient time for the real world to seep back in did his personal grey cloud emerge over the horizon. He was still in a potentially hazardous situation, in a potentially precarious place, surrounded by potentially dangerous people and there was no way out. Unless, unless... he turned over in the bed to see Jed sprawled out over his bed, one arm hanging over the edge, unless Jed was as good as his word.

He was reluctant to take another risk with what were now rapidly depleting reserves of trust, but there was something about Jed, a charisma that made him ultimately convincing. Regardless of how it would eventually turn out, he decided to take comfort that there was one other person in the world that believed for whatever reason that he was innocent, even if he would ultimately do nothing to help the, at least he was prepared to consider doing so.

'Chuck me a fag, man,' groaned Jed, writhing and stretching on the bed, he fumbled in his coveralls and produced two of the oversized Richmond's from the packet he had been given on his first night, it hit Jed on the left shoulder who then retrieved it with his left hand, shortly after the smoke began rising, he coughed wetly. 'Fuck me man, these are harsh, yeah? Fuck me,' he coughed again and sat himself upright, 'morning bruv, sleep any better at the second attempt?'

'Much better, much... thanks,' he said, lighting his own cigarette and coughing his own appreciation.

'You said last night,' Jed stood up, turned the television back on and flicked it back to the channel with the cartoons. 'You've gotta love those cartoons man. You said you saw your father. Was he a stern man dressed in Victorian style clothing with a moustache?'

'No,' he said and dropped his head at the memory 'no he wasn't and I have a feeling my mother is dead.'

'I fucking knew it!' Jed stood and danced a small jig. 'Yeah, boy!' then he stopped, his face dropping and quickly. 'Shit, man, I didn't mean, I mean I wasn't celebrating, you know, yeah?'

'It's okay, I suppose it's not as though I didn't know before, but it's weird finding out, I don't know, you know? I suppose I just imagined I'd have parents... I guess I have absolutely no idea what my memory has in store for me, maybe I should stop wishing so hard to get it back, hey?'

''S all good, man, the sooner you get your memory back, the sooner we can get you out of this place, innit? All you need to do then is get yourself manned up for the cameras, innit? A few curls for the girls, yeah?' Jed laughed another of his joyous laughs.

'You trying to say I'm weedy?' he asked, smiling.

'I'm not trying to say you're weedy man, I'm saying you're a weed, innit?' he laughed again 'get ready for breakfast man, it's almost here. I for one am fucking starving, yeah,' Jed danced around from foot to foot, rapidly inhaling from another cigarette 'I'm telling you man, the food in here is much better than it is for a struggling academic, no matter how close he is to making TV history.'

'All completely worth it then,' he said, sure enough a few minutes later, the siren sounded for breakfast and they headed off once again for the canteen.

#

The morning meal, as it happened, was virtually without event, the same selection of meat was available accompanied by the same selection of eggs, in the company of the same potentially volatile criminals whom, he was fairly sure, would enjoy nothing more than to stomp him in to oblivion the moment they learned of his alleged terrorism. Therefore the operation was carried out with his head tilted down to the floor where he noticed many an uninteresting black smudge, seemingly from bygone days of moveable furniture and maintained with a fastidiously minimal cleaning regimen.

On the rare occasions he did raise his head, to move out of the way, around someone, or to lookout for Jed, he attempted to avoid eye-contact until such moments arose when it was unavoidable to do so. One such moment arose as he incorrectly predicted the chosen direction of someone walking toward him; he stepped one way, the same way as his counterpart in what then became an excruciating, artless thirty second dance, before he shrugged, made a swerve to one side, an accompanying tsk sound and gave what he hoped was a placatory smile.

In reality the smile, due to nervousness, made him look mildly deranged, which in this instance saved him from the punch in the face that his fellow inmate had, until that moment, considered providing. It seemed he may live another day: there was no sign of Syd and beyond basic background paranoia, there seemed to be nobody that could be viewed as being more intent on killing him than the previous day. He was delighted to be able to make it to and from the canteen with all bones intact.

'See, man, no worries yeah? Nothing gonna happen in the canteen, the wardens would break out the gas masks as soon as look at us, yeah? If anything, it's a rock steady room man, it's got full riot protection, sealable doors, ventilators pre-stocked with anaesthetic gas, if I were you man I'd take your sheets and build a fort in there,' said Jed.

'Cheers, that makes me feel great, you know?' he replied, smiling 'I don't need to worry, because if anyone tries to kill me, I'll be asleep during it anyway, right?'

'That's about the long and the short, man. Good news, yeah? I know if I'd just had my ribs broken, anaesthetic gas would be pretty fucking high on my list, innit?' Jed flicked him a cigarette and again lit both. 'Serious though, yeah, it's outside you need to be careful. If that fat cunt was gonna sort anything out it would be out there where they could do you without intervention.' All of a sudden he was bright and cheerful again 'stick with me kid, you'll be just fine.' Jed winked dramatically and burst into laughter as he flung himself on to his bunk, apparently executing some kind of American wrestling move on his pillow as he did so.

They sat then and discussed cartoons; although Jed spoke for the vast majority of the time, he did, however, find himself able to chip in from time to time as they discussed the ins-and-outs of what Jed called the 'classic cartoons', the political messages that lay beneath the surface of the cartoons of the fifties and sixties, they talked about music, about Buckley and Zepplin, about John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton, Jed attempted to explain why rap had lost his respect when emancipation was replaced as a driving force by tax evasion and how he had found rock music through the guitar solos of David Gilmour.

Their conversation meandered all over history, music and literature, he found himself discussing literature with passion and more fluidity than he had managed since he had awoken in the hospital room. It amazed him how the books and authors tripped off of his tongue, how lines he could not have attributed to an era flowed out of him attributed to texts. He was astonished how easily it came back to him, without realising, without thinking; he found a part of himself that he had not previously imagined. It caused him to smile thinking that in two days he had gone from a mass murdering civil servant to an unknown literature buff with an accent.

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

'Time to go outside, let's get us some fresh air,' said Jed accompanying it with another overly dramatic wink.

'Sounds like a plan,' he said, sighing.

Waaaaaaoooooooooooaaaam

# # #

The sky was a deep blue as they stepped outside. Neither he nor Jed was able to stop smiling as the heat from the sun and the gentle breeze hit their skin. The grass had been cut the previous evening, it had faded in the heat taking on a yellow-brown hue; the remnants of cut grass littered the field. There were a group of inmates playing football at the far end, whilst several dozen more lay languidly in circles, their coveralls peeled to the waste, smoking thick joints with their eyes closed. In other areas, the basketball nets were in use and a group of gargantuan men stood around, egging each other on to further and further heights of masochism with larger and larger weights.

Were it not for the twelve foot walls that enclosed the spacious yard, the occasional latticed shadow of a chain link fence and the dress code, it would have been possible to mistake the grounds for a park. Until, that is, one looked closer to see the disproportionate number of shaven heads and the complete absence of women. Nevertheless, he could see that the summer months would see this part of the day, provided he managed to survive it regularly, as his clear favourite, regardless of how long he was in prison, he would at least see the sky and that cheered him somewhat. It would not, as his mind had instantly pictured it, be a spell in gaol spent alone, in squalor with nothing to eat and drink but bread and water, he would not gaze through high bars or from flea-filled mattresses, he could be comfortable within reason, perhaps if he behaved well enough he may even earn privileges, books, writing materials through which he could live vicariously.

'What a day, yeah?' said Jed, he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, he proceeded to do a number of quick star-jumps, sprinted on the spot and, as other inmates avoided him, glowering at him on their way out, Jed stopped still, grinned and made his way out to the field, looking as though he was barely containing himself from breaking into a run. 'C'mon man. We haven't got all day,' Jed laughed again as he trotted out over the grass to meet him where he had slumped to the floor and instantly begun skinning up.

He sat down facing him once he had caught up, 'How do you stay so... so, you know, happy?' he asked, his voice betraying the absolute incredulity Jed's enthusiastic cheeriness inspired in him. Jed simply whistled a tune, still looking down at the spliff he had begun to roll. He stared at the top of Jed's head quizzically until he looked up, grinned and handed him a joint.

'Always look on the bright side of life, innit, yeah?' Jed flashed another grin and began to roll another joint.

'That's it? That's your advice? No transcendental meditation, no positive visualisation, you look on the bright side? You're a mental aren't you? You can tell me, you know? You are, aren't you?' he tried to keep a straight face, but found himself smiling.

'Is it? You're one to talk, memory man,' Jed sucked through his teeth and laughed again 'nah; you know what I'm saying, yeah? Life gives you a lemon...' he quite audibly groaned before Jed was able to finish.

'Christ mate, did you, like, swallow the Oxford Dictionary of Mindlessly Chirpy Clichés or something?' he asked.

'Sticks and stones, my friend,' was Jed's only reply as he lit both spliffs and reclined on his free elbow.

'Sticks and stones, really?' he asked in mock horror.

'Yup, sticks and stones will break my bones, but whips and chains turn me on,' said Jed archly, they both burst into laughter, he found himself coughing clouds of smoke, his eyes watering.

'Okay, well, fair enough. I wasn't expecting that,' he said 'I'll give you that one, that's from another kind of book entirely.'

'My favourite kind of book,' Jed laughed again and patted him on the back 'you okay? Don't die on me now, bruv, the fun's just starting.' he raised his eyebrow at the remark and stared bleary eyed at Jed.

'Fun, you are joking, right?' he spluttered.

'Joking? Me? Never,' Jed laughed again.

'You are a crazy person – without a shadow of a doubt. Has anybody told you that before?'

'Many, many people, you can start with my parents and work your way on from there via every other person I've ever met. It's not stopped me yet, yeah?'

The allotted time out of doors passed all too quickly and again he found himself starting at the sound of the siren that indicated that they were to return to their cells. He stood a little too quickly and the resultant head-rush combined with the light-headedness from the joint caused him to take a couple of stumbled steps backward. By the time he had regained his balance and had managed to somehow slow down the spinning world Jed was a hundred meters off, waving him to hurry up.

He raised his hand to indicate understanding and began to follow; soon however, he was surrounded by a mass of fellow inmates as they funnelled back into the building. He attempted again and again to force himself through the throng, but every time he gained an inch, the crowd pressed in and he was forced back further and further.

Seemingly from nowhere a hand gripped his throat and wrenched him backwards before he managed to make it inside, his eyes closed reflexively, when he opened them again, he was inches away from the blood shot eyes of his assailant. The eyes receded slightly and the red face, criss-crossed with burst capillaries and thick blue veins brought to mind some kind of reptile, an effect reinforced by the smell of rotten meat on breath that hissed between yellow, uneven teeth. Beyond the head were three other virtually identical hard-men, each equipped with the shaven head, tattoos and thick trunk of their office. Even in the pink coveralls, these men did not appear to have diminished in their potential or appetite for violence.

'We know all about you,' the man's voice was little more than a low rumble, he felt as though he would pass out as the hands tightened 'an old mate of mine gave us a little heads up. I've got some news for you boy. We're gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna bite your fucking nose off. You and your queer little mate have had it in here, you get me sunshine? We don't like faggots and we don't like kiddie killers. You and your mate had better get your fucking in while you can. When we're through with you, you won't know which end to shit out of.'

As suddenly as the red faced man and his friends had appeared, they were gone. He collapsed to the floor and attempted to regain his breath. His eyes were streaming and he could still feel the fingers around his throat. Scrabbling to his knees, he gasped as the world slowly crept back. He heard Syd's distinctive chuckle somewhere in the distance and wished him dead, wished that it could be him to do it. The pleasure the man seemed to be taking in his torture repulsed him, not only because it was a sick game being played out with him as a reluctant pawn, but also for the fact that he doubted Syd's motives. Syd wasn't punishing a terrorist, he wasn't avenging dead civilians; he was torturing the weak, trying to break him, not because he thought that he was Ernest Featherstone, but because he could and for that he hated him.

He imagined the look that Syd would wear as the knife went in, the mixture of pain and surprise that would struggle for control over his bloated features, how the fleshy mass of his face would contort with the realisation of his mortality, how it would wrinkle and crease as the stages of grief flitted quickly through his mind in the little remaining time afforded it. He coughed and spluttered again before finally managing to stand, then struggled back through the eerily empty corridors in a daze back to the cell.

# # #

Jed started as he entered the room, sitting bolt upright on the bed. 'Fuck me, are you alright? I was wondering where the hell you'd gotten to, yeah? What happened?'

'Syd's done it. The fucker's done it. Everyone knows. Everyone fucking knows. I'm fucked, I'm fucking fucked...' he stalked up and down the room, jabbering expletives.

'You're gonna burst a blood vessel if you keep that up. So he's done it then, he's let it slip? It makes things a little trickier, but we're just gonna have to be more careful, that's all, it's not the end of the world, yeah?' Jed's placatory tone this time failed to reach him.

'I don't think I'm the only one Syd's been stirring it up for Jed, I don't think I'm the only one in trouble here,' he was beginning to hyperventilate.

'Is it?' Jed looked more concerned than he had expected 'What's been said, yeah?' he asked, slowly, deliberately.

'The guy was strangling me! He was screaming in my face that he was going to bite my fucking nose off, whatever that means, Syd was laughing in the background...'

'I meant, what did he say about me?' Jed seemed anxious.

'He said we'd better get our fucking in whilst we still can. He seemed to be convinced somehow that you were gay; he didn't seem to approve that's for sure. Neither did his fat fucking mates. The bald cunt just grabbed me from nowhere; I can still feel the fucker's hands on my throat. What is the problem with these people?'

'They said I was gay?' Jed asked; his face looked drawn, surprisingly ill at ease.

'What? Yes. Fucking Neanderthal took a break from threatening me to call you a faggot. Wait. Hang on. You seem a little more worried by this than I expected. Am I missing something? What's wrong?' his voice steadied, the curiosity prompted by Jed's reaction had distracted him from the assault.

Jed seemed to start as if awoken from a dream 'What?' he said, smiling nervously 'nothing's up, yeah? Just thinking innit? Just thinking, yeah?'

'Fuck me! It's true isn't it? It's true, you're not here for the drugs at all are you?' he was stunned, it seemed that every time he settled upon a version of the world, it contrived to rearrange itself again beyond his comprehension.

'Well, I may have, um, stretched the truth a little, but, well, it's not really the most popular of pastimes now is it? Not really the kind of thing you let slip to a new cellmate is it? So where do we go from here, I suppose the weirdness starts, yeah, the strange looks, the silence, the putdowns?' Jed seemed different, somehow shrunken, as though his normal effervescence had disappeared.

'Why would I get weird?' he asked.

'You know,' he stated.

'What about it?'

'Well, it tends not to go down particularly well these days.'

'Well, it seems to me then that losing my memory may have found its uses after all,' he smiled and tapped his head 'a remarkable lack of preconceived ideas.'

Jed laughed 'Difficult to preconceive something yet to be conceived, yeah?'

'You'll not find many pre-pregnant women, certainly, only un-pregnant women. I don't give a fuck which side your bread's buttered, I would, however, prefer to stay alive. It's that little problem that now besets us both. How do we stop the baldy brigade breaking our collective neck?'

'I'm guessing that offering my services is probably not going to get us out of this little pickle?' laughed Jed.

'You're probably right, I'd assume they already know their Nazi history,' he replied, raising his eyebrow in mock disproval.

'Nicely avoided double entendre there, we'll make a man of you yet, sir,'

'The first entendre was easy; it was the second that took all the effort, but what do we do? There appear to be several rather large, less than gentle men with a deep seated grudge against us, it would also appear that they are prepared to do pretty much anything to give us a bad time. In addition to that they have the backing of a guard. This could prove a problem for us, you know, a really major problem, a really majorly major problem.'

'So you think it may cause us a problem?' asked Jed with an expression that did its best and failed to imply a degree of seriousness in his obtuse question.

'No Jed. I believe that if we offer to give them our pocket money for a month and all our conkers that they will leave us alone,' they both laughed.

It seemed an absurd situation, that from the darkness of whatever sleep he had endured until recently, that whatever degree of revelation he had, whatever the level of personal danger he had come to find himself in, he was still able to laugh. It didn't seem to matter that his life could be drawing to a somewhat messy conclusion, he was still grateful for these brief moments. Regardless of where the humour came from, he thanked a lengthy list of fictional characters that it came at all.

'So what do you suggest?' asked Jed.

'I have absolutely no idea. I was kind of hoping you would have a plan, you seem like the planning sort, you managed to get through another term in this place didn't you? You must have had a system; you must have had some kind of scheme going? What did you do last time?' he asked.

'Well, I told people I was in for drug offences and managed not to piss off any of the screws enough to have them broadcast my offence to the other inmates. I'm guessing it's probably a bit late to put that plan in to action this time. I mean, we could give it a go, I suppose?' they both laughed.

They both realised their position was untenable, it was now just a matter of when and not if the men would attack. They were trapped in a speeding vehicle over which they had no control and no real idea as to its direction. Information can be passed from one person to another in silence, in a fraction of a moment and with only the slightest flicker of an eyelid, this brief happiness was shattered. Both men fell silent, their heads lowering.

'Ciggie?' asked Jed with a forced levity.

'Absolutely,' he replied 'I believe that may be the best idea either of us have had all day,' Jed flicked a cigarette at him and seemingly in unison they took out lighters, drew deeply and exhaled unhappily.

'What now then buddy boy? Lunch time is fast approaching,' said Jed.

'Well I don't know about you, but I'm not particularly hungry. Do we have to go?'

'It's not absolutely necessary, but then I'd much rather be beaten to death on a full stomach. At least I might be able to throw up on them or something. How about we just leave it a little late and try to avoid them?' asked Jed.

'I suppose it's a plan and in the absence of anything better, I vote for lining our stomachs in preparation for the worst. We may as well go on a full stomach.'

'Is it? Good thinking, yeah? For now, I'm gonna take a shit and get a wash. My mother was very clear about leaving a clean corpse and as I have no underpants to change, I intend to risk death with a fragrant undercarriage. I'm hoping things will look a little better afterwards, maybe you could do with the same? I'll even loan you my flannel.' Jed grinned and headed for the toilet.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

They spent the time that preceded the call for lunch in a manner that was rapidly becoming routine, almost comfortable. They smoked virtually continuously, to the extent that he found himself forced to query the seemingly limitless supply of cigarettes. Jed tapped his nose, winked his eye, laughed then explained that he always ensured he carried a near ludicrous quantity of cigarettes to any court hearing on the off chance that things would turn out less than well for him. He approached his sentence relativistically, he explained, as a kind of inversion to the plan formulated by Joseph Heller's Dunbar. He attempted to remain occupied at all times in an effort to provide time with a much needed kick in the backside. He went on to explain that it did not work.

They settled on their bunks, reclined on their arms, to watch an animated display, though perhaps better referred to as an 'exposé' of the inherent failings of the renowned ACME brand, producers of consistently unpredictable novelty rocket and roller-skate combinations.

'It's not easy, you know?' said Jed during an advert break.

'It doesn't look it, mate, by all accounts that poor coyote should be dead or at the very least involved in a multi-million dollar law suit against his mail order company...' he replied, attempting overly weighty comic gravitas.

'Is it, yeah?' Jed laughed 'nah man, I'm serious innit? I'm twenty-two years old and I'm serving time for a drunken fuck with a guy just two years younger than me. Now here I am worried about how I'm gonna survive on the landings because the cunt's dad didn't fancy having a queer for a son, yeah? I'm here for sexual assault and some fat prick has spilled the fucking beans in here. It's a fucking nightmare, yeah? I mean, how is it you can decide where your political allegiances lie, drink and fuck like good heterosexual rabbits at sixteen, but if you enjoy a bit of buggery you're somehow less capable of making a decision as to where you put your cock? How is some sixteen year old Muppet more mature than a twenty year old, privately educated Tory Minister's son? I mean; private school? The fucker was primed for it, yeah?' Jed heaved sigh, lowered his head, raised it again and grinned 'had a cracking arse on him though,' Jed smiled, smacked his lips mock provocatively and chuckled.

'Worth six months?' he asked jovially.

'Fuck it, everybody's gotta have some down time innit?' the alarm for lunch rang.

'How long can we leave it?'

Jed glanced up at the television 'Daffy Duck says fifteen minutes,' he said as, onscreen, the black and orange duck bounced and leapt around whooping and wailing and striking poses.

Eventually, once they had been reliably informed that that was indeed 'all folks', both he and Jed made their way on to the landings and joined a much thinner crowd as they made their way, winding through the corridors, to the canteen. Casting glances around him, he noted uneasily that the inmates with whom they were walking all seemed to be wearing the same furtive expression he had no doubt he would have seen in his own reflection. About the men he travelled with there was the air of prey and they moved with a slow, gracile precision, as though at any moment the flight mechanism would kick in, sending them running into the cover of long grass.

It seemed to him as though the modern façade of the prison was crumbling away and that through the cracks he could see the seething mass of directionless anger and machismo which was barely contained by the thinning walls of twenty-first century luxuries and pseudo-scientific initiatives and strictures. In his mind's eye he saw the oozing atavism forcing its way through the fractures, allowing a ghostly nineteenth-century gaol to impose itself upon the present.

He shivered.

'It's freaking me out, too,' whispered Jed over his shoulder 'it's as though the universe knows something we don't and isn't telling.'

'Great. That's just fantastic news,' he replied in the same hushed tones 'another loop I'm being kept out of. As if it wasn't enough that my brain was keeping secrets, now an anthropomorphic Universe is getting in on the act. Fucking typical,' he rasped.

'It seldom rains but it pours,' chimed Jed.

'Fuck off,' he replied with a grin; they had reached the final corridor before the canteen as they spoke. 'Here we are: the lion's den.'

'Do you feel like you've got a steak necklace too, or is it just me?' asked Jed.

'Steak? Man, you're lucky, I'm carrying a mixed grill and, just in case they're Roman lions, a crucifix for garnish.'

They allowed themselves a brief pause to draw breath before entering into the final stretch of the journey. Their hearts beat faster and faster as they approached the doorway, then they were out in the expanse of the canteen hall. A sense of exposure swept over them, but was quickly replaced with relief as first spotted a guard they did not recognise and a series of empty seats and tables. It appeared that they would live to fight another day, though, as if to balance their good fortune, the food was lukewarm and the normally thick gravy had become more viscous and clotted. Despite this, never had two men so enjoyed a meal. They felt as though they had narrowly escaped the gallows and neither putrefying protein nor cold carbohydrate could spoil the thrill it had left them with.

The room continued to empty as they ate and, by the time they stood to leave, the room appeared even more cavernous than before and their footsteps, even in slippered feet, slap-slapped echoes into the distance.

'It seems like the lions had already eaten innit?' Jed whispered as they made their way back to the cell. All around was the low burbling of televisions and lower conversation. Their nerves jangled as they twisted and turned through the halls, walking with their breath held as they made their way up the stairs and back to their room. He felt as though his lungs would have burst had they taken any longer, his breath forced its way through his lips as he reached the cell with a sound like a rapidly deflating tyre.

'That was a long way from being fun. A long, long way,' he sighed, raking his fingers from forehead to chin.

'You're telling me, yeah? Fucking hell, one loud noise and I would have literally shit myself, man!' answered Jed.

'You're the lucky one; you'll be gone before me. I'm here for the rest of my life. I hope when I get my memory back there's no-one waiting there with an: I told you so, having advised me in the past that it was rude to finish other people's sentences,' he grimaced as he finished speaking.

Jed looked long and hard at him. 'Man that is poor, yeah? I know you have memory troubles, but even you must know that there's no place in the world for that joke.'

'Okay, so the act needs work, but it's not like I won't have time to practice, not to mention the fact that I have a,' at this point he performed a drum roll on the door frame 'captive audience.'

'Get out, yeah. Go on, just leave,' Jed laughed again 'I'm beginning to have second thoughts about you, anyone who can put me through that little number is capable of almost anything.'

'Now now, there's no need for that. You'd better be serious about getting me out or there'll be much more where that came from,' he said.

'Is it, yeah? I thought we were friends, yet here you are making threats. Nah, man, I am serious. After all, all it'll take is one simple DNA test and you're free. The way I see it, yeah, if I can kick up enough of a fuss, they're bound to test you to shut me up. You might even get compensation or something. The law might be bent, yeah, but surely it wouldn't knowingly keep the wrong man inside. It's happened before innit?'

'I hope you're right, like, but not much has gone my way so far and today hasn't really been the greatest indicator of a sea change.'

'You're ever the optimist, yeah?'

'When you've technically only been alive for about a fortnight and have, in that time, been beaten, betrayed by a woman, accused of murder...'

'Mass murder...'

'Okay,' he said with a wan smile 'mass murder, beaten some more and had your stand-up routine roundly criticised by a bloody philistine, it's difficult to be a glass half full kind of guy.'

'True say man, true say, but where exactly do women come into this?'

'Let's just say that I was fucked and fucked off.'

'What, here?' Jed's face wrinkled with a mix of surprise and distaste.

'No, not here, you are a mental? It was at the hospital.'

'No way, really?' asked Jed, incredulous.

'I told you, it's been a very odd couple of weeks,' he sighed.

'Come on then, what was she like, what was it like?' asked Jed, smirking.

'Ah, a gentleman never tells.

In actual fact a gentleman will only ever tell that they will never tell, when on closer inspection it turns out that telling is perhaps the only certain thing that will follow such a statement, provided the gentleman in question is provided with an eager enough audience willing to demonstrate the required level of persistence. As such, he explained the strange night time visits, her seeming knowledge of Ernest Featherstone's past, her eagerness to give herself to him and her eventual betrayal at his meeting with the other doctors. Jed 'oohed' and 'ahhed' in the appropriate places, sharing enthusiastically in the surprise he felt at how events had transpired, at other times he tutted and sucked his teeth in dismay, but at all times played the part of a perfect audience as the story unfolded.

As he told it, however, he began to notice inconsistencies pointed out by Jed and he was forced to begin to question his own memory. The way his mind had ordered events seemed to make little sense, she had made reference to information she had had no right to know, in addition, her conversations with him seemed on recollection to have been mentioned by the doctor.

A leaden weight of paranoia seemed to rest on his chest. Naivety, he knew, was most commonly a lack of personal experience expressed in an outlook on life which made him a prime candidate, yet he still found himself querying his own version of events, attempting to shuffle the loose deck of cards that was his memory in order to somehow retroactively justify their actions.

His anger grew as he realised point by point that no matter how he ordered his memory, there were still inconsistencies, still overlaps in their knowledge that should not have been there. As his ire grew, he felt the blood rise up his neck and into his cheeks, felt it roar in his ears once more.

'You know what the worst thing is?' he asked through gritted teeth, 'There's not a single bloody thing I can do about it all. I mean, who's going to believe me? The phrases: I've been framed guv'nor and I'm innocent I tells ya, were hackneyed and unbelievable back in the last century. They're certainly not gonna save me from a kicking are they?'

'Probably not man, that shit's mental. You've got some fucking luck, innit? I mean what the fuck? It's a bit fucking surreal for me, yeah?'

'I'm prepared to bet my sentence against yours that it's a whole lot more fucking surreal for me,' he said, laughing bitterly.

'Nah, I'll take my beatings for being queer if it's all the same to you,' replied Jed, handing him a cigarette and lighting it for him almost tenderly, 'I'm sorry man, I'm so fucking sorry.'

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

'Time flies,' said Jed with a wry smile.

'I was under the impression that that was only supposed to happen when you were having fun?'

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

'Are you saying I'm not fun bruv? You break my heart,' Jed shook his head with mock solemnity 'that's cut me deep, man, real deep,'

He couldn't help but laugh. 'Thank fuck I ended up with you in here, Christ knows what would have happened if I'd been stuck with one of the baldy brigade. I'd be dead of either boredom or foot in head disease.'

There was a long silence and neither man could look the other in the eye.

'Time to take another roll of the dice,' he said, his voice hollow. Without another word, both men stood and made their way out of their cell to join the rank and file of the other haunted looking men. They dawdled through the halls in silence; aware that their luck in avoidance could only last so long and silently whispered prayers to themselves that it would last just a little longer. Again they paused at the final corridor to draw breath.

'Look man, if it all kicks off an alarm will be raised. Hold your breath and run, okay? The room will be locked down, sedative gas will flood in and the guards will mop up. If we can stay out of the way for long enough we'll get out alive, yeah?' Jed's voice shook.

He nodded slowly. 'Thank you,' he said, simply, and they both headed along the corridor and once more into the vast space beyond.

They weren't there.

The relief they felt was once more palpable, but somehow not complete. Deep down, they crossed another meal time off of a finite list. Every time they felt this relief from then on, they knew, it would mean that they were one closer to an inevitable confrontation, one which they were ill-equipped for and almost certain to lose. Both men independently, and in silence, speculated on the amount of damage it was possible to inflict on much stronger and more violent men with the tools at their disposal. Sure the plastic cutlery was brittle and light weight, but aimed at the eyes or throat? How much force was it possible for their, frankly, weak arms to put into the wielding of a rubber tray?

The answers did not give them much heart, balanced as they were with the much greater estimates it was possible to make of their potential foe. Every ounce of strength that they could pack in to a swing, every forceful press of a plastic shard was amplified as much as tenfold, in their imagination, when it was in the hand of an assailant.

They collected their cooled food in silence.

They traversed the room in silence.

They took to their seats in silence.

They looked at their plates in silence.

Their stomachs were knotted, their mouths dry and their minds filled with grim imaginings of the manifold ways in which a man could be made to die. How could they eat meat when they could so soon and so painfully be reduced to nothing more. No words passed between them, but with a single, furtive glance they reached a consensus. They had made a mistake. The same feeling he and Jed had discussed previously washed over them once more. Something was about to happen and it was unlikely to be good.

They were not alone it seemed, he cast his eyes quickly over the room to find that the expressions of those around them had also sagged, their sporks had stopped moving. The universe most definitely knew something and certainly wasn't telling.

He felt as though the temperature in the room had dropped by a few degrees, a feeling shared, he thought, as a shiver seemed to pass through the now almost entirely silent room. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck, his muscles clenched. Another quick look between the two was enough to tell them that they were thinking the same thing. Without waiting for their allotted time, they stood up, leaving their food almost untouched and with a deep breath, they both turned to leave the room. His heart had begun to feel like a pneumatic drill attempting to force its way through his ribcage, he found himself continuously licking his lips, failing to moisten them with a tongue that felt as dry as sandpaper.

They began to make their way from the room, quicker than they had entered; hoping desperately that they would somehow miss whatever event they felt was somehow now inevitable. They passed the loan guard and felt, whether imagined or not, the weight of his gaze on their backs and rounded the rubber ended tables before eventually passing the serving area, their hearts now beating hard and fast in their throats, one more turn and they would, if necessary, be able to run back to their cell.

They rounded the corner and their hearts sank like lead weights.

Their knees weakened.

There, stood before them were the four bald, goateed men. They did not look pleased. They did, however, look more than eager for violence.

'How long did you think you could avoid us, faggots?' asked the seeming head of the group, 'you didn't think you were gonna get away with it did you?' there came a low, humourless chuckle from the man's throat, they did not feel like laughing.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They began to back into the canteen, their eyes fixed on the four men, every muscle tightened and primed to flee. Every step back they took, the men took another forward. The situation seemed poised, as though at any moment something would tip the balance and fracture the delicate peace that had descended. The only sound was the slow, shuffling retreat and advance of the groups. It seemed to last an eternity, but then it broke:

'Oi! What's going on, what are you lot doing back here? Fuck off back to the cells, or the doors come down,' shouted the guard. The silence shattered. He and Jed turned on their heels and ran into canteen, swerving around tables

'I said, get the fuck out!' the guard headed towards the alarm on the wall and broke the glass.

Screeeeeeeeeeeooooooooaaaawwwwwwwwww

Screeeeeeeeeeeooooooooaaaawwwwwwwwww

The alarm's shrill warning resounded around the room; the guard's baton had not yet cleared its holster when he was felled by one of the men, the fist crunched into the guard's jaw, sending him sprawling across one of the dining tables. Somewhere in the distance there was an electronic hum and the clunk of metal. The shutdown was in operation. All through the room, men hid themselves under the rubber edged tables, leaving the room clear for whatever was to happen.

He drew in a deep breath and Jed did the same, watching as the four men advanced on them slowly, confidently, like tigers cornering prey. They were slowly running out of room into which they could retreat and the men continued to advance, drawing closer and closer. The hissing started and through the vents in the walls began to pour an off white gas. On seeing it, the four men turned and Jed seemed to come to some kind of decision. It had happened before he could really understand what was going on, but Jed leapt up on to one of the tables, hurtled toward the man closest to him and kicked him square in the face with all his might, the man's head jerked back and he crumpled to the floor and stayed there.

'Fucking leg it!' screamed Jed, covering his face with his sleeve. He wasted no time in complying and hurtled past the three standing men, swerving to avoid the grasp of one before hurtling off in the direction he had last seen Jed, the gas hung thickly in the air and his lungs were burning and straining, his eyes watering. The men were once more advancing, but their movements were now laboured. They were breathing heavily and first one, then another dropped to the floor. There was another metallic clunk and through the gas and the tears that blurred his vision, he saw them burst into the room: four black clad, gas mask wearing guards. The vents went into reverse and began to clear the gas; the one remaining man stumbled on, his face a portrait of murderous intent. A guard drew his baton and the man dropped to floor, the guard then turned to face him, its shape was unnervingly familiar and then there was darkness as a crimson spatter arched from his badly split lip.

#

'Are you okay?' Jed's voice penetrated the darkness.

'Whu?' he asked, or at least tried to ask.

'You're okay man, looks like you took a crack off of someone, but they've stitched you up, you should be fine, yeah,'

'It hurts,' he stated as he attempted to wake up.

'It will do. You look like shit, by the way,' said Jed.

'Cheers,' he replied, finally managing to open his eyes 'it's darker than I expected.'

'Innit; we were out for about four hours. All the cartoons are finished,' Jed pouted.

He smiled and instantly regretted it. 'Don't do that again, please.'

'One good thing about it though,' said Jed with a grin 'is this...' he produced two spliffs, somewhat thicker than normal 'I've been awake about ten minutes, thought you might need it when you woke up.'

'Fuck yeah,' he giggled and grimaced again and rolled himself out of bed. 'I can't believe you kicked that guy in the face.'

Jed laughed loud. 'Fuck me; you're not the only one, bruv. I was so shocked when I woke up with clean pants, yeah? Come on, let's get these smoked yeah, I'm fucking bursting for a slash and I wanna get a bit of this in before I do.'

'How the fuck did you manage to get out of there without, you know, a firm hiding?' he asked, accepting a light.

'I made it about two steps after I got off the table innit; I tripped over some guy hiding under it, took a deep breath and was out cold before I hit the floor. There ended my heroic last stand,' Jed laughed 'the next thing I know I'm back in my bed and I'm missing a slipper.'

'My hero,' he said 'seriously, thank you though, my mouth notwithstanding, I'm in pretty good shape, I doubt I would have been if it hadn't have been for your action hero impersonation.'

'It was nothing, really, I was just running and his face got in the way,' Jed grinned, delighted with the praise.

'Modest too,' another painful smile 'does that count as one – nil to us? If so, how fucking angry are they going to be about that?'

'Yes and very,' Jed replied with a grimace 'who managed to give you a slap?'

'I've got a funny feeling I know, but it was one of the guards...'

'Syd?'

'I think so, I haven't seen any other fat fuckers walking around in uniform but, you know, I can't be sure.'

'Man's a cunt, innit? I mean, in the first place you've gotta be some kind of prick to do this job anyway, but to turn it into some kind of sick game is way beyond psycho, the guy has so many screws loose, I'm surprised he doesn't fall apart.'

'It's a fair summation of events. Don't you need to piss?'

'Like you wouldn't believe,' said Jed.

'Go on then, fuck off, I'll be okay for a minute,' he said, Jed nodded and retreated to the toilet after stubbing out his spliff. He was left alone and his thoughts immediately darkened. Sure, they had survived this first confrontation, but it had been more luck than good judgement and he still had a possible fifty years, maybe more. Jed may have good intentions as to revealing the travesty of justice that had left him there, but something told him that somebody, somewhere, probably already knew the truth and that it was of no great importance to them.

Not for the first time he began to wish he had never woken up. Had he remained in the catatonic state from which he had recovered, then he would never have been subjected to the indignities he had suffered since. He certainly would not have had such a sore lip. He put his hand to his mouth, it was quite swollen.

'I thought you said you'd be okay? The black cloud over your head was starting to force its way in to the toilet,' said Jed, relighting his spliff.

'I was just thinking it would have been better if I hadn't woken up. Neither of us would be in this situation if I were still a dribbling vegetable,'

'What, and miss out on all the fun: the thrills, the spills, the constant fearing for our lives? Why would you change a thing?' Jed chuckled 'Seriously man, this shit's fucked up, but if I can help it, it'll get better, yeah? We just have to get through it.'

'How, I mean, really, how are we going to get through it?'

'We're going to have to kill them.'

'What?' he asked and laughed nervously.

'I said: we're going to have to kill them, innit? It's them or us, yeah, and I'm not over keen on the second option. Now get some sleep, you're going to need the rest. We'll talk about it some more in the morning, yeah?' replied Jed.

'You can't be serious!'

'Not to get all Hollywood on you, but: deadly.'

'How can you say that? You've lost the fucking plot. One action man moment doesn't make you James fucking Bond. How the fuck can we take them on? There are four of them and two of us, and I don't know about you, but I really don't think I'm as experienced in the ways of violence as they are.'

'Maybe not, but they're stupid, yeah, and we're not; now get some sleep, I've got an idea, yeah?' at this, Jed climbed into bed and seemed to have no problems falling almost immediately asleep. He shook his head in disbelief, then followed suit. The day's events must have taken their toll, he found himself drifting off almost straight away.

# # #

His eyes flickered open, he felt strange, still stoned perhaps. The back of his head tingled almost as though he had an itch on the inside of his skull. What surprised him still further was how little his mouth hurt, how little it was swollen. He raised himself up on his elbows and glanced around the room. Empty. Jed had gone and yet again he was alone. The whole room was eerily silent. He would not have noticed it but for its absence, but the electric hum of the strip lighting had ceased, along with the background murmur from the rest of the building. He stood up from the bed and headed to the window, the world outside was a blank page; it had simply ceased to be and in its place stood the endless, luminescent white plane of his mind.

He was dreaming again.

He took a deep breath and turned his back to the window, struggling to fight back the now all too familiar sense of rising panic. He continued to breathe steadily: revelations or no revelations, whether or not the dreams represented any real danger, his dream self was deeply unsettled, no longer at all certain that regaining his memory was in anyone's best interest, whether it was in fact worth the resultant anguish that set in upon waking.

The television burst into life with a cartoon fanfare.

A picture flickered into focus on the screen.

It was him. He watched himself beaten, drugged, dragged across the hospital room, mounted, transported, locked away, strangled and betrayed, all layered upon a selection of comedic brass arrangements.

He shivered.

Unsettling him further still, the footage ended with the usual ' _That's all folks_ ', only the voice had changed, no longer was the phrase cheerily stumbled over, instead the voice had been that of Syd, hard and spiteful. He did not like the implication, nor did he appreciate the brevity of the main feature. He left the room at something just short of a jog, feeling that he would be more comfortable as far from the cyclical, mocking refrain that continued to issue from the television in Syd's mocking voice. He began to walk as calmly and as slowly as he could physically manage, scanning the dreamscape as he did, trying to remain in control of his runaway imagination.

He found himself heading, by force of habit, toward the exercise yard, his legs leading as his mind focussed on other things. Perspective seemed to make very little sense. At times it seemed that the corridors he had come to know stretched on endlessly, the next moment he would unexpectedly reach the end of a hall and have to retreat. He could not tell how much time had passed, but eventually, up ahead of him he saw the open door to the yard and beyond it the playing field. He began to speed up, heading toward the open air.

A hand around his throat dragged him back and threw him up against the wall, pinning him there by his throat. He looked through tear filled eyes at his assailant only to be met with the oversized cartoon head of a coyote.

'I shook him Steven, I shook him,' it said.

#

'We're gathered here today to commemorate the life of David Watson, devoted husband and beloved father of Steven who, after so much heartache, has at last joined his dear wife in the arms of our saviour Jesus Christ. At this most trying of times our thoughts must be with the son that survived him,' the Priest intoned the eulogy in a placid, detached tone that he found difficult to listen to. He stood, causing much turning of heads, and began to walk slowly along the aisles to the exit at the rear of the somewhat shabby crematorium chapel. Tears of sadness mingled with those of an impotent anger as he left.

He felt punch drunk, reeling with the loss, yet hurting from the decision made by his father's family, against the wishes of himself and his father. He had been overruled by distant aunts he barely recognised and was unable to prevent this false, sanctimonious display of what his father had called 'mumbo-jumbo' and was therefore unable to say goodbye to his father in the way they had both wished.

He headed out into the car park and lit a cigarette, sitting down on a bench that immortalised the name of a person long forgotten. He sagged as though eviscerated, drained of all energy as from inside the chapel there came the sound of sonorous organ music. His brow creased, although it was being played largo as a kind of dirge, the music was unmistakeably written as an arrangement of arpeggios in a major key. He swallowed hard. Looking around, the car park seemed to fade, as though superimposed on another landscape. Almost invisible was the outline of a lattice, chain-link fence. The scenery pulsed, as though both worldviews were competing to be reality.

His stomach churned and convulsed, a sudden and almost overwhelming nausea had swept over him. He could feel the bile rising, could taste the bitter, metallic taste of digestive juices in the back of his throat. He threw himself from the bench and on to his knees.

#

'You okay, sweetie?' there was a lilting female voice at his shoulder, but his head was spinning and he couldn't quite make any real sense of the words. In addition to the wrenching of his stomach and the pounding in his skull, the voice seemed to be competing for his attention with a violent, throbbing bass track that held dominion over his ears and jarred his internal organs. He had no real idea where he was, or why he was there, instead, his mind focussed instead on the painful lurching of his stomach. He vomited again.

A pair of hands ran gently through his hair, pulling the lank strands out of his face and back over his shoulders. 'You bring it on yourself you know?' said the unseen female, carefully stroking his head.

'Whu?' was all he managed in response.

'Mixing your drinks like you do, there are no prizes for the first person to be violently sick you know? At least, not at the house parties I've been to.'

'Sorry dear,' he said in the most incongruously sober voice he could manage, the voice laughed, it was reassuringly warm and musical, seemed strangely to soothe his stomach and head.

'Don't worry, silly, just try and stick to weed and water for the rest of the evening, okay? I'd like you to be conscious at the end of the evening.'

'Yes dear,' he replied in the same, overly enunciated voice 'of course dear.'

#

The white room was no longer white; instead they were covered by a confused mass of moving murals which left him with the impression that each of the individual walls had a minimum of four or five separate video projectors aimed at it. The images overlapped, coalesced and lurched wildly across the walls, hurting his eyes as he attempted to make sense of them, to disentangle the interwoven strands of images.

The noise began to rise slowly, beginning with the throaty rumble of Tom Waits' Alice which drifted in from some unseen surround sound speakers; this was then followed by the murmuring of one barely overheard conversation, then another and another and another, until he was enveloped in a roar of indistinguishable noise and motion.

'Stop it. Please stop,' he cried out 'please, please stop!'

'Stop it?' asked the walls.

'We cannot stop it,' asserted the ceiling and the floor.

He clamped his hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the terrifying sensory overload, but slowly and by degrees the images began to break through and play the footage upon the back of his eyelids, the noise, too seemed to then disregard his hands and, instead, originate inside of his head. He sank to his knees and curled himself up, throwing his arms over his head.

# # #

His eyes flickered open, he felt strange, still stoned perhaps. The back of his head tingled as though he had an itch on the inside of his skull. What surprised him still further was how much his mouth hurt, how much it had swelled. It felt as though it was on fire and, as such, his first sound of the day was something akin to whurgle and his first action was to firmly re-close his eyes. Once he had managed to suppress the urge to scream, an effort he had undertaken more to prevent his lip splitting again than for any other reason, he raised himself up on his elbows and glanced around the room. Empty. Jed had gone, he was alone. From somewhere in the room, however, there was a muffled rattling.

'Hello?' he enquired of the room. There was a further rattling, then silence.

'Hello?' he asked again, this time drawing a sharp breath as the pain in his lip pulsed yet again and again there came a rattling and again there was a brief silence.

'Ah, good morning,' said Jed emerging from the toilet 'how are you feeling today? You look like shit by the way.'

'Cheers,' he said, managing something half way between a smile and a grimace 'it's strange you should mention that, I mean, maybe it's a coincidence, but I feel a little like shit too. Funny that. What was all the rattling about by the way?'

Jed looked a little sheepish. 'Um, toilet's broken; I was just trying to flush it. It's probably best you give it a bit of a wide birth, yeah?'

'Thanks for that,' he said, wrinkling his nose to impart both his distaste and his desire to move on from the topic quickly.

'No worries, yeah, it was a public service announcement, innit?' Jed grinned.

'How long have we got till the next showdown?'

'About an hour I reckon, probably best to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. Who knows, maybe they'll have forgotten all about it. Live and let live, yeah? I don't think they'll wanna have another go indoors at least,' he unwrapped another packet of cigarettes, flicked one over at him, took one for himself and deposited the wrapping in the plastic bin under the desk. 'Just in case they do, you want me to cut some eye holes in this bin? Could make for a useful helmet, yeah?'

'Har-de-fucking-har,' he said 'it's alright for you; you were saved by clumsiness and good fortune...'

'Hey, that's unfair, yeah? I blame ill-fitting slippers and unconscious bodies...'

'Okay, you were saved by ill-fitting slippers and unconscious bodies, maybe if I had that kind of luck it would be you needing the helmet, I think you owe me a favour...'

'What, for being the most unlucky person in the room and thereby ensuring that you took the beat-down not me?'

'Precisely,' he said, nodding assent.

'Fair enough, I mean, you are pretty fucking unlucky, innit? Thank you for all your help, I appreciate it, really I do.'

'You're quite welcome.'

Jed burst into raucous laughter. 'Fuck me, man, very funny. A shame it's quite so true, really, innit?'

'You're telling me? If this lip is anything to go on, by the time you get me out, it won't be chat shows that will be clamouring for me to appear, but film companies looking to remake Frankenstein and The Elephant Man without having muck about with expensive prosthetics.'

'A job's a job, yeah? You've got to roll with the punches, although not too much, or you'll miss out on that lucrative film career, innit?' Jed laughed again and then sighed 'you're gonna have to be careful, though, yeah?'

'Were you being serious last night?'

'Serious? Me? About...?' Jed sounded almost offended at the implication that he was anything less than perpetually insincere.

'You know what,' he replied.

Jed turned on the television and sat down on his bunk. 'Yes. In a way, I was. I'm not sure if I could actually do it, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't, but yes I was serious.'

'But what good would it do? We couldn't manage all four and even if we did, the only thing that would happen is that you'd have your sentence extended.'

'Self defence, innit? And I'm hoping we won't have to get all four, just the main monkey. I'm hoping the others will think twice once they're a man down, yeah?'

'And if they don't?' he asked.

Jed shrugged. 'Then at least they're a man down, innit? Anything's better than where we at right now, yeah?'

'Just promise me you won't do anything stupid, okay? I need you on the outside working to get me out, not locked up in here for some stupid mistake you made whilst trying to stand up for me.'

'Standing up for you? I think you're forgetting a very important piece of the puzzle here, yeah? They're not exactly thrilled to be sharing accommodation with a gay either, innit?' said Jed, he looked pained, as though this was the final straw, as though with his planned action he would kill not just one man but all those men that had gone before, every man that had tried, or succeeded, in making him afraid for being who he was. Jed's jaw was set and he knew there would be no talking him down, so he didn't try, in fact, he felt almost proud to witness the moment.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

'Let's go then, yeah?' said Jed, nodding, hauling him to his feet.

Wraaaaaaaaahhhhooooooow

'What, without my helmet?' he asked.

'Afraid so, yeah, you'll just have to bob and weave innit? Float like a butterfly, yeah?'

#

He felt oddly secure walking abreast with the new incarnation of his cellmate, he felt as though Jed's very presence erected a protective wall around them that no Neanderthal could tear down. His mouth throbbed again as he set his mouth in a thin, if misshapen line and followed Jed into the canteen.

Initially, he was surprised by the quiet of the room, even more absolute than before, this was then replaced by a chill as he spotted the sentinel presence of the guards that lined the walls at approximate two meter intervals, they seemed to shrink the vast room, their black uniforms, their masked faces and hands twitching over batons created a sense of claustrophobia that sent shivers up and down his spine, freezing him to the spot. The next feeling was a palpable relief. There would be no chance that anything could erupt within such tight restraint; he could only now hope that it would last. He was jolted slightly by a low whistle from Jed; he looked round to see him smiling slightly, to receive from him a wink that said in no uncertain terms that they would be okay.

They took their food, took their places, ate and stood again without a word. Not wanting to push their slim and failing luck, they did not look around, kept their heads down, focussing on the small good fortune that had finally come their way and attempted to make their escape a clean one. Unhurried, eyes intently staring into the middle distance they made their way from the room, every breath shuddering, every fibre of their being aflame with expectation of the worst. They approached the exit feeling lighter with every step until they were restraining themselves from skipping; they had survived another morning and had a few more hours to enjoy before fear once more took dominion over their minds.

'Don't worry boys,' a voice thick with the distortion of a gas mask drifted over their shoulders. 'It's early days, you'll have plenty of time to meet your pals,' a throaty, dirty chuckle followed, rendering the need to check its point of origin utterly pointless. He shuddered. Distorted by the mask or not, it was unmistakeable, the final laugh, both literally and metaphorically, belonged to Syd.

The walk back to the room was despondent. They felt their hopes had been dashed as thoroughly as if they had been attacked again. The promise of violence to come hung over them like a Damoclean sword and had quashed the rising sense of good fortune that had pervaded their silently consumed meal, they returned to the cell and each collapsed on his respective bunk with a sigh.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The time they spent in their cell seemed to pass in seconds rather than hours and those seconds passed in silence. Gone was Jed's normal good humour and in its place was a stone edifice. Jed had decided upon his course of action and was now preparing to follow that course unswervingly toward its end. When the alarm eventually sounded Jed simply stood, helped him up and left without looking back. He shivered, no longer at sure that he could keep a grip on a rapidly spiralling situation. He followed Jed at a trot, still barely keeping up with the brusque pace of his cell-mate as hr twisted and turned through the corridors and out into the fresh air.

They weren't there. He sighed with relief.

'Time for a spliff then Jed, my boy?' he asked with a forced joviality. Jed flicked him a pre-rolled joint and lit one himself, still standing. 'Aren't you going to take a seat?'

'Nah man, I'm a bit tense yeah? Just gonna stand for a bit, innit?' Jed kept checking his pocket, pacing back and forth over about a meter of grass.

'Just chill out for a bit, they're not here. Who knows, maybe they won't even bother, maybe that kick in the chops you gave one of them was enough?' he said, his voice hopeful.

'I don't think so,' said Jed flatly.

'Why the fuck not?' he said, almost pleading. 'Stranger things have happened. Maybe we're just on a lucky streak, okay? Just sit down.'

Jed sighed. 'I mean, they're here.'

The four men were approaching slowly all in a row. Jed lit his spliff and stood staring them down as though attempting to intimidate the men with an act of defiance worthy of cinema. They watched the men approach; he struggled to his feet, swaying as he did. His mouth was dry; no matter how often he swallowed the dryness was travelling down his throat.

'Come on, man, let's just run. By the time the fat fuckers catch us the guards will be ready, okay?' he said, his attempted levity betrayed by the quiver in his voice. Jed was unmoved, seeming not to hear him. 'Jed. Jed, please, let's just run, okay? Jed?'

'It won't stop bruv. It'll never stop,' he sounded distant, checking his pocket once again; 'they won't stop until we make them. I'm gonna make them, yeah? I'm gonna fucking make them stop.'

'It's not worth it, Jed, they're not worth it. Please, let's just go. While we still can. They'll fucking kill us, Jed. They are going to fucking kill us. Please, Jed. Please?' Tears pricked his eyes; the feeling of impotence was total.

'They won't stop. They've never stopped. I'm sick of it, yeah? I'm fucking sick of it and now I'm going to do something about it for once in my fucking life,' Jed turned to look at him; he almost failed to recognise him.

The men were almost upon them, and it was all he could do to stand, as if frozen in fear he waited for their arrival. As they drew closer and closer it became apparent that Jed's kick and landed well, one of the men was wearing a purpling bruise on the left of his face, neither it seemed, had one of the others fared any better in his encounter with Syd than he had. The man's left eye had almost completely closed over with swelling and was split and stitched. Nevertheless, it appeared that they regarded the injuries as little deterrent from fresh violence.

'Oi, you fucking faggot. I'm gonna make you so fucking sorry you ever set eyes on me you cunt. I'm gonna rip out your queer fucking throat,' the man with the bruised cheek was screaming, spittle flecking his lips. The three other men clustered around him wearing looks of sullen aggression practiced since adolescence.

'If it helps,' said Jed, mustering a levity that surprised him 'I'm already extremely sorry I set eyes on you, it turned my stomach so severely I haven't been able to eat since.'

Bruised cheek snarled. 'Fucking smart arse, I'm gonna fucking kill you,' the man's face was crimson, veins bulged on his neck and forehead.

'Anything's got to be better than standing here listening to you at this range, your breath's rank bruv,' again Jed's seemed surprisingly blasé in his delivery, all the while his right hand was rummaging in his pocket.

Bruised-cheek growled and leapt at Jed, grasping him by the throat with a force that almost sent them both to the ground. Jed's hand flashed from his pocket to bruised-cheek's throat. Bruised-cheek's expression changed almost instantly, there was a wet, sucking sound as he released his grip on Jed's neck and stumbled back a few paces clutching his neck. Jed stumbled back himself, clutching something a bright red in colour in his right hand. Bruised-cheek withdrew his hand from his neck and inspected it, it was dripping, a thick scarlet liquid spurted from where his hand had been, pulsing, arcing bright red liquid over a surprising distance. A crowd had appeared as if from nowhere, gasps spread through it as bruised-cheek's eyes widened in panic and alarm, turning toward the rest of his group, spraying blood, from the severed carotid artery, in a circle that traced his movement in burgundy upon the green-brown grass.

The world sped up as bruised-cheek hit the ground with a thud. The other three were upon Jed in a flash; one hurled himself at Jed's stomach, audibly knocking the air from him and began to punch him in the face, each punch producing an unexpectedly loud sound like the tenderising of meat. The others focussed their energy through their feet, stamping and kicking the now unconscious, prone body of his cell-mate, he heard sickening cracks as ribs broke and saw his friends face disappear beneath a red, clotted liquid, then saw it deform as cheeks, nose and jaw shattered and splintered under the impact of slippered feet, the fabric of which sent spatters of hot blood into the gathered crowd. Some inmates were screaming, some moving towards the men, attempting to drag them from Jed's inert, misshapen form.

He couldn't move, felt warmth spreading outward from his crotch and knew he had pissed himself. He tried to block out the sight, but only succeeded in watching the sickening display replayed on his eyelids. He vomited, adding his own contribution to the blood soaked earth, his eyes stinging as the bile forced its way from his mouth and nose. He screamed between gasps of breath, between fits of vomiting. Then he was just screaming, screaming and screaming. Why hadn't he tried to help? Why had he just sat there, pissing himself?

The crowd parted, between the inmates marched a group of guards. First they stopped at the virtually eviscerated bruised-cheek, checked his pulse and shook their collective heads, then moved on to Jed. The poor, warped figure, splayed out as he was upon the ground was checked himself in turn. Tears welled in his eyes as one of the guards picked up a limp arm, held it between thumb and finger and after a couple of seconds dropped it, lifeless, to the floor. The guard shook his head and stood. Somewhere in the distance ambulance sirens wailed their distressed approach.

He began to scream afresh, couldn't breathe, the weight upon his chest seemed to be crushing him as over and over he screamed out, unaware that the split in his lip had reopened and was pouring blood over him and into his mouth. He was screaming from a pain that had no home in his body, all he knew was that he had lost Jed and with him hope. Eventually a paramedic sedated him. The darkness closed in.

# # #

The rest of the day was passed in a total, oppressive silence. He had awoken in pain, having had his lip sutured once again and with a fresh coverall folded neatly on what had once been Jed's bunk. He could not bear to look at it. Every time his thoughts drifted back to Jed fresh tears welled up in his eyes. As a result he spent the day curled up, naked, in the foetal position on the bed; occasionally he would smoke a cigarette. The guards came and went, bringing meals and then returning to take them away again unnoticed and untouched.

He was wracked with guilt, his stomach knotted tightly, unable to reconcile his actions with those of the man he had lately imagined himself to be, unable to tally them with the man that Jed had been, a man who had risked and had taken from him a life that had still held such promise, simply because he had had been unlucky enough to be chosen at random to share his cell.

Through inaction, through his very existence in the world, using Jed's own good nature he had murdered him. The deadly weapon had not been his, it had not been intentional, but he had murdered him nevertheless. He cried until he was no longer certain for whom he was crying, whether it was for Jed or simply for the loss of him. His own cowardice and selfishness astonished him. He tried desperately to rationalise it by returning time and again to the fact that he had tried to stop him, tried to deter him, drag him away from the confrontation. He had not really taken him seriously, after all, he had not imagined that anything could cause such a gentle and joy filled man to go to such lengths, to do what he felt he had been forced to do. He could have checked out the toilet, could have realised sooner what Jed had taken from its inner workings, that fateful length of thick wire with which he had killed and for which he had been killed.

There was so much more he could have done, that he should have done, but he hadn't and now he was alone again. He was without his only friend, his only ally, without the only person that had genuinely tried to help him. He was without his only hope of getting out. He was finished, as good as dead and as silent and lonely as the grave. The circle of recrimination continued perpetually in his mind. It was his fault, but he had tried to talk him out of it. He hadn't realised how serious Jed had been, but he hadn't tried hard enough to find out. Around and around and around it went, the cyclical series of accusation and excuse interspersed with grisly flashes of Jed's lifeless, blood and mud streaked, misshapen features which peered at him in memory like Banquo from beyond the grave, filled with accusation and disappointment as deep as the hell he had consigned him to.

It amazed him how elastic time appeared to be. With Jed it had always seemed as though the hours were speeding past at a rate almost impossible to observe, yet now he could not help but feel that the blur that had been his brief time with Jed had already been surpassed in length by the first hours of his absence.

Every action was qualified by his death.

He smoked a dead man's cigarettes.

He was forced to use a toilet which, though repaired, had provided the tools with which Jed had wrought his own demise.

He walked the floors of a room which he had once shared.

Every movement he made, every sound he heard, cigarette he smoked, meal he ignored, he made it, heard it, smoked it and ignored it alone. The absence of his former cell mate seemed a presence itself, a shadow that darkened the room and everything within it.

One thing that had surprised him, on reflection, was that Syd had not yet arrived to gloat over the first stage of what could now only be a total victory. He hoped that it reflected some kind of punitive action caused by the death on his watch, but he held out little real hope. Those who made a career of cruelty were seldom punished, he thought. It seemed to him, in fact, that power gravitated to those able to wield it with the most force and the least conscience, whilst innocents were scythed down before the unstoppable, belching, machine-like behemoths that were the world's prized institutions. He found himself currently stood directly in the path of one, with no escape.

Once again he found himself watching the light fail, counting ceiling tiles and awaiting an unavoidable, unknowable fate over which he had no control. He was exhausted, defeated, but more even than the trials he had endured, what had really sapped his strength was the incontrovertible evidence of his own short comings.

He was weak, he was feeble but worse even than that, he was a coward. Even with all that had happened he felt that he still cried more for himself than for the only man that had reached out to him during the strange new life into which he had been thrust. For that reason he loathed himself and that loathing in turn generated more self pity, more tears, more recrimination and the cycle began again in seeming perpetuity.

'Out, out vile spot,' he said aloud and to nobody, then felt foolish and pretentious.

Was this really the man he was, this wretch without honour or grace? A man who wept for himself when he should have been fighting for himself and others? He was all ages of himself at once, the naive child, the struggling adolescent, the abject adult, but for him, unlike those who are granted the gift of ageing in mind and body simultaneously, his adolescent self, the child that dwelled within him, that had hoped for so much more, could not be saved the disappointment of meeting his broken adult self. Little by hateful little the idea he had had of himself was falling away like so much rotting meat from a carcass at which time they were then devoured like sweet meats by the carrion crows of his own self loathing. No longer could he hope to discover, in the recesses of his locked and bolted mind, a proud and noble man, instead he now prayed that things could get no worse.

He may not have committed the crime for which he was being punished but he had certainly committed his own. There could, in his opinion, or at least of that part of himself that stood in judgement, be no punishment, no flagellation from himself or from any other that would absolve him of his sins.

After what seemed like aeons, having watched the tectonic movement of shadows across the wall, having witnessed the glacial progress of the sun through the sky, the darkness of night descended on his small corner of the world. He told himself that he would never dream again, that he could never again close his eyes without seeing Jed's lifeless face, that the pain of loss was a spear in his side that would forever forbid sleep, but soon enough his eyes grew heavy and he began to drift, his lids flickering closed from time to time only to spring open moments later to regard the room with suspicion and fear.

Part of him knew that attempting to remain awake was another effort at penance, that because he could not bring himself to end his own life violently, that he was seeking, instead, to die by slow, almost unnoticeable degrees. Even his suicide would be that of a coward; minimal effort, suitably over dramatic and easily foiled. He was pathetic, he thought to himself: pathetic, disgusting, cowardly, and selfish.

He slept, his cigarette burning to ash between his limp fingers. For a short while he tossed and turned, writhing beneath the sheets as though for the audience that his subconscious felt needed to see a suitable, external demonstration of the wrestle with internal demons that would haunt his sleep, then he lay almost perfectly still and slept.

# # #

He awoke with a start; a noise somewhere in the room had roused him. He raised himself up on his elbows and glanced around the room. It was pitch dark, empty, the room was eerily silent. He would not have noticed it but for its absence, but the electric hum of the strip lighting had ceased, along with the background murmur from the rest of the building. He peered around in the darkness, but it was thick, total, there was no light to give anything shape. He held his breath, tempting the mysterious sound out from its hiding place in the shadows, but to no avail. Perhaps he was dreaming again, he thought, in which case he should do whatever felt natural, for regardless of his seeming free will in dreams of late, he had no doubt that events took place in an order that had little to do with any action on his part, if not, then he should, in any case, attempt to sleep, if only to preserve himself from an uneasy night filled with dark imaginings, paranoia and the dull ache of his split lip.

He rolled over in the bed, pulling the covers tight around him and closed his eyes to ward off the strange atmosphere permeating the room and to avoid having to stare into the dense blackness that filled the room. His eyelids grew heavier, his thoughts more dislocated. His eyes flickered closed, his breath slowed, regulated itself and he fell asleep once more, the sound of soft snoring mingling with the darkness.

'I must say you seem to sleep remarkably well for a man in your position, old chap,' a voice from the dark.

He sat bolt upright and again scanned the room, his eyes were wide but he was completely unable to penetrate the darkness to the source of the sound. It had to be Syd, who else could it be? Finally the bastard had arrived to gloat over Jed's death and his own pending demise, but the voice was different, the manner of speech too. His breathing quickened along with his pulse. If it wasn't Syd, then who could it be?

A light flickered near the desk, a fluorescent tube powered up; he clenched his eyes as the light dazzled him with its sudden luminescence. Green and red specs flared up behind his eyelids, stubbornly refusing to disappear as he attempted to blink them away.

'Sorry about that old chum, thought I'd shed some light on the situation for you, so to speak, hope you don't mind,' the voice came again, but his eyes were still bleary from the shock of that sudden illumination.

'What's happened to the power? Where are the lights?' he asked, attempting somewhat pointlessly to shield his eyes, for in addition to his squinting, his vision was impaired further by his arm.

'What happened to the power? Well, old soul, there's been a little bit of a mishap with the generators, it seems. The main and the backup generators have been mysteriously sabotaged by some irresponsible person or persons unknown. I expect some poor bugger will be in for quite a dressing down when the news gets out. Heads will roll my boy, of that you can be sure,' for all the attempted humour, the voice was flat, over enunciated and somehow insincere.

'What's going on? Has Syd sent you? What are you going to do to me?' he asked, his eyes were watering, his mind sluggish and his tongue thick from sleeping.

'Syd?' there was a pause as though the man were wracking his memory. 'Oh, the fat old fucker that runs the place? No, not at all old fruit, I couldn't bring myself to be in the same room for long enough to take the request in the first place. Repulsively fat, though he is, it's the fact that he smells oddly of damp towels that really puts me off.'

'If not Syd, then who has sent you exactly?' he blinked and through watering eyes could just make out a shape dressed from head to foot in black, though he seemed, strangely, to be carrying a pair of white training shoes.

'You poor old sausage, you still have no idea do you? Still, I suppose it's just a matter of time and therefore just as well I should pay you this little visit.' The man sounded genuinely sympathetic, the first real trace of any emotion in his voice he had heard so far.

'I have no idea about what? What's just a matter of time?' He sat up further in the bed and blinked his eyes until the room resolved itself. The fluorescent tube must have had an opaque rear, for in perching himself on the desk behind it, the man was still in shadow, concealed from view.

'You have no idea about anything at all, not that many in your position could be expected to,' the man tutted sadly 'those bastards really made quite a mess of that lip, didn't they? Still, by all accounts you got off pretty lightly, so I guess you shouldn't complain, eh old chap? It could, after all, be worse. One mustn't grumble.'

'It could be worse could it? I'm not fucking sure about that, I'm in here for something I didn't do and my only friend in the whole world was murdered less than twenty-four hours ago, I'm having a bit of a fucking shitter to be honest, so please, really, please explain to me how exactly it could be any fucking worse, maybe you'll give me a whole new fucking lease of life. Now if you're here to cheer me up then I reckon you're pretty much out of luck,' he said bitterly.

'Well, you could be dead old man; at least you're still breathing, that's a bonus I should say. Shame about the boy, though...'

'Shame about the boy, is that it? He was brutally fucking murdered...'

'I know, and his father will be terribly upset. Could make things difficult for the PM, his father's a Labour MP, although I don't suppose you'll have known that, the boy always seemed to treat his privilege as a burden; that God awful patois, for example, absolutely ghastly way for an educated young man to speak.'

'Look, if you're not going to tell me what you want, will you please just leave me in peace, I want to go back to sleep.'

'Not poss, I'm afraid chumley. Rather a few things I have to do before I leave. Besides, I thought you'd be rather keen to know what this was all in aid of, why I'm here, why you're here. You know; the whole kit and caboodle, so to speak.'

'Who are you? Do you spend all of your time tormenting innocent people with life sentences or have you taken up the sport just for me?'

'Oh dear, quite an attitude you have there. Further proof if any were needed that not everyone flourishes in adversity.'

'Just fuck off will you. Just fuck the fucking hell fucking off. I'm sick of it. You want the truth? I'm not even sure being alive is a good thing anymore, so if you're some kind of doctor, therapist or whatever, then maybe you should just give in before you get started, I don't want to flourish in adversity, I don't even think I want to live in adversity, okay?'

'Jolly good, although I think you'll be interested in knowing one or two things.'

The man stepped forward and into the light cast by the fluorescent tube and held out his hands in a somewhat placatory fashion, as though requesting just a few moments to convince him that there were still things that were required to be said.

There was no real convincing necessary, his eyes were wide, his breath caught in his throat. His mind's initial instruction was to scream, but having been unable to breathe it was an impossible task and instead he sat there on his bunk, pop-eyed and spluttering as the man slowly lowered his arms.

'I take it you'll have no objections if I stay for a brief chat before I have to be on my way? I told you I was here to cast a bit of light on the situation and I must tell you that I am a man of my word. So, any questions you're burning to ask so far?'

There were questions. Numerous questions, but asking them was thoroughly beyond him. He had not yet managed to catch his breath from the initial shock. The room darkened and he fainted back onto the bed, leaving the man stood there smiling slightly, his arms now back at his sides.

# # #

The walk along the Uxbridge road was a fairly pleasant one despite the heat. Between Ealing and Acton there was little but A-roads, dual carriageways and tube stations, but every so often a common or green punctuated the greyness like small green islands in a tarmac sea. On days like these he took full advantage of these oases. Forgoing the journey on the famous, if sticky, sweaty and packed to bursting London buses he chose instead to walk the three or four miles home, his tie removed, his natty suit jacket slung over his shoulders in a manner that would have been cool some thirty years previously, but instead drew giggles of derision from the scantily clad teenage girls and baggy trousered boys he passed on the way.

When he reached one of the green commas in the endless grey sentence, he laid his jacket upon the ground and rested himself whilst he smoked his umpteenth cigarette of the day, secretly revelling in the looks of horror and distaste this garnered from the _neuveau-riche_ , pseudo-hippie mothers and the uniformly casually clothed 'new-man' inheritors of the metro-sexual throne as they shielded their precious children from his smoke by moving them closer to the carbon spewing traffic. Of course he would never smoke near his own little bundle of joy, but he was loath to have the outdoors taken away from him now that he could no longer smoke in his own home.

Work was beginning to grind him down. He'd never taken the whole 'stresses of teaching' stuff seriously, how bad could a job possibly be that had twelve weeks holiday a year? But between reviews, directives, initiatives, management tuition, performance coaching and training days his job proper had ended up more as a hobby for which he had worn out his enthusiasm. He had dreamed of passing on his passion for literature to others, of being one of those inspirational pedagogues that transformed the lives of their pupils, but it had turned out that that particular style of teaching had been made virtually impossible by compulsive box ticking. In addition to the thick barriers of red tape there was the syllabus. Endless reams of novels and poetry deemed classic more because of their age than their content, taught against his will to children that learned against theirs until it became a matter of teaching the correct answers to questions in a subject that he firmly believed had no correct answers, or even correct questions. Not only that, but he was forced to teach two sets of answers, one for the female oriented exams, and their examiners, and one for the male exams and theirs.

His career was going nowhere; promotion was dead man's shoes with no provision for hastening the vacation of said senior's footwear. That, combined with breakthroughs in gene therapy and synthetic organs meant he could be looking at being sixty or seventy before he even managed head of department.

He had just stopped at the field near Ealing Common tube station when he felt his phone vibrate. He sighed. He knew before he read it what he would say, it was bound by tradition to be another rambling guilt trip about his absence from the house. Alice had not taken well to motherhood and her fascination with celebrity mothers had meant that her own failure to recover from the pregnancy, her sallow cheeks and dark circles, had left her more despairing than perhaps she would have been had she not filled the house with magazines celebrating, one after another, amazing tales of celebrity weight loss.

Her friends had not helped, their youthful status updates detailing their carefree drinking and seemingly endless sexual encounters left her feeling tired and old. He knew all this, knew it and still could not bring himself to help. In truth their marriage had been failing before she had conceived, yet they continued to try for a child despite this, in the hope that the shared creation of a new life would somehow bring them together. It hadn't. Instead he spent more time at work, volunteered for extracurricular duties, played five-a-side football with the male halves of four other failing marriages and he drank. Boy could he drink. He had thought for a time that drink and drugs were things he'd grown out of at university, yet here he was, the father of a one year old child and just the previous weekend, he'd been snorting coke off of a cistern somewhere on the Tottenham Court Road with an estate agent, a solicitor and their balding executive drug dealer, four men squeezed into one cubicle, greedily eyeing one another, ensuring that no-one inhaled more than their fair share.

The message asked simply: _where are you_? Yet he found himself getting incredibly angry with her. He knew she was worried, that she was desperately unhappy, yet he was furious that she would dare to impinge on his time alone. Growling slightly, he thrust the telephone back in to his pocket, stood up and determined to catch the bus the rest of the way to speed up the journey. He'd think up some excuse on route for the delay that would give him the upper hand in the now almost inevitable confrontation that awaited him at home, something with a crying child that was also good for his promotion prospects and would maximise the guilt she would then feel at questioning his absence. In the end she would relent and he would go out again, returning early the next morning, if at all. She had been so full of life at University, now she was hollow and hateful, drained of life through her endlessly leaking tits.

He remembered one occasion he had arrived home unusually early to the sound of the child screaming from upstairs, he had thrown down his bag and marched up the two flights of stairs to the main bedroom only to find the baby screaming blue murder from his basket whilst its mother wept on the bed, her legs in stockings and her stomach showing beneath the silk slip he had given her one Valentine's day a few years ago which, it seemed, had gotten stuck as she was attempting to pull it on. He wondered how long she had been sat there weeping. He hated her then and had found it difficult to believe that he had ever felt otherwise. He had simply turned on his heels and left without a word, she had phoned him an hour later, hysterical, he had hung up the phone, finished his drink, then another and another and had slept on the couch when he had finally returned home.

Eventually the bus arrived, he boarded and felt the now familiar vibration of his phone as it added the cost of the journey to his phone bill which would rise as the weeks went on until it reached the value of a monthly, then yearly travel pass. He settled into the one remaining seat and took out the electronic pad to which his pupils had that day uploaded their essays on Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ , he held out little hope that he would come across a _meisterwerk_ in amongst the incessant drivel he was forced to sift through year in and year out. He was two thirds of the way through a particularly poorly constructed essay on the role of gender in the play when he noticed that he had missed his stop. He swore under his breath, packed the pad back into his bag, exited the bus at the next stop and headed home.

He passed the rows of shops, passed the pub and headed across the plaza that lay outside the supermarket, five minutes later he was walking the tree lined road that led to the home he shared with Alice.

He slotted the key into the lock with the now familiar sense of foreboding he had every evening when he returned home, pushed open the door quietly, hoping that the silence on the other side of the door indicated that one or both of them were now sleeping and that maybe he could even sleep for a little while on the couch before the inevitable row commenced. The hallway was dimly lit, the Victorian terraces of the area having not been designed with the twenty-first century space and light fixation, hence he didn't notice her standing there at first. His jaw clenched in anticipation of the accusations that were sure to come. When they did not, he began to look a little closer.

She looked more tired than he had ever seen her, her body seemed an empty shell and her eyes were glassy balls. He began to panic, his feelings of the last few years washed away by a wave of worried compassion.

'Alice. Alice, what's wrong? What's happened honey? What's the matter?' he asked, his voice quivering. Her glassy eyes flicked briefly towards him. Then he saw it. Hanging like a rag doll from her left hand, it quivered slightly in rhythm with her shaking, but there was no doubt in his mind as to what it was.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The moment he came round from the faint he knew the man in front of him immediately. As the fluorescent tube illuminated the aquiline features, the deep set grey-blue eyes, as it shone off the well kept dark hair and highlighted the hollow cheeks. He was stunned. It had never crossed his mind, would never have occurred to him that it was even possible, yet here he was, this ghost of Christmas past stood before him and as solid as the walls. He must have performed two or three almost cartoonish double-takes before he was at all able to say what was on his mind.

'M-my face,' he stuttered.

'My face, I'm afraid, old chap, at least originally. Not entirely dissimilar from your own I must say, but it is most certainly my face.' He found the man's tone incredibly smug, but nevertheless the words penetrated.

'Then how, I mean...' his brain could not perform the necessary acts of agility required of it to successfully communicate under the circumstances.

'Thoroughly simple exercise my good man. Your identity card provided all the necessary information physically, and a quick overview of your government file provided the necessary information personally. It was, as they say, elementary, my dear Watson,' at this the man laughed, over-pleased with some unknown witticism.

'Personal information?' he asked, still reeling from the man's appearance.

'Indeed. An orphan, no real family or friends, we thought for a while that your wife and child would prove difficult to deal with, but it has to be said your quite beastly behaviour resolved that matter for us wonderfully and completely without the interference that would have been necessary otherwise.'

'My wife and child... then the dreams...'

'Oh I'm quite sure I have absolutely no idea what it is you've been dreaming my good man, I mean we know more than perhaps would be considered our fair share, but we're not mind readers, not yet at least,' the man laughed again.

'You said that my face was not dissimilar, what do you mean?'

'Quite simple, I'm surprised you haven't caught up yet. You see, you were such a close match that it required very little work, but even the closest double is fairly easy to tell apart from the reality, so it was necessary to carry out a small degree of modification and I have to say, where it not for that ghastly lip of yours, I believe I'd struggle to tell us apart myself.'

'Then it's true? I'm not imagining it? You are Ernest Featherstone?'

'In the flesh, Steven, my good man, in the very flesh,' he answered with the same smug air of self satisfaction.

'Steven?'

'Of course, I do apologise, you are, in actual fact, Steven Watson, an awful teacher, a worse husband and from what I hear, still an appalling friend.'

'Why me?' he asked, pathetically, hurt by the last, fresher accusation.

'The question I believe you should have asked there, my friend, is simply: why not? I mean to say, we needed a fall guy, so to speak, and for fear of mixing my metaphors, the cap fit. Charles, of course, did some splendid work bringing you up to specification, but you were as close as we could have hoped.'

'Charles?'

'Oh yes!' the man sounded genuinely pleased 'You met one another, of course. Not the best psychiatrist, but the malpractice suits gave him the push he needed to become quite the plastic surgeon, although plastic surgery is such an antiquated description for what it is they do now. He encouraged a bit of bone growth in your cheeks and your brows, tinkered with the gene that controlled your hair and eye colour, some fine, intricate work, but the foundation upon which we built our success was entirely your own.'

'I'm so glad,' he snorted.

'Oh don't be such a spoilsport.'

'If you could do all that, then why did you need to start with such a close fit at all?'

'Oh you know how it is with gene therapy, the more you tinker the more that can go wrong, and we didn't want to end up with some tumescent monster, after all. What kind of unnecessary botheration that would have caused.'

'So you were all in on it?'

'Of course not, just Charles, his daughter and my good and dear self.'

'His daughter?' he feared the answer.

'Yes, my-oh-my did she go beyond the call of duty. You see, you really rather disappointed us by pulling through. We were almost certain that you were a goner, as they say, but here you are. So we attempted a few little shock treatments, you know, tried to pop you back into that snug little coma, or whatever it was, but no, you're a persistent little devil, I'll give you that.'

Steven held his head in his hands and began, not for the first time that day to weep great and salty tears of sadness and frustration.

'Oh dear me, old boy, come on now, that is most unbecoming.'

'Unbecoming?' Steven looked up in a rage. 'You took my life from me for no other reason than because you could. I've lost everything. I don't deserve this. I'm not a bad person, I don't deserve to be treated this way, Jed was right, when it comes to it, they'll test my DNA and one day, maybe not now, maybe not soon, but one day they'll know that I was innocent.' He was almost screaming.

Ernest chuckled. 'I suppose they'll know it for the rest of their lives?' he asked, performing an awful Bogart impression. 'I hope you don't think you're dealing with rank amateurs Steven, old chap, we have your biometric data remember, the DNA evidence was all yours of course. Besides, it wasn't all for nothing. In fact it served its purpose awfully well actually.'

'Purpose... so it's true, you were trying to stop a popular uprising?'

Ernest laughed derisively once more. 'Uprising,' he seemed to roll the word around on his tongue, 'absolutely not old chap. We intended to inspire fear, and not just on one side, on both sides, I can tell you we inspired a lot of fear.'

'That's it? That's fucking it? That's why you ruined my life? That's why Jed was killed?' Steven was furious.

'Oh, I think you'll find you did a fair job of ruining your own life my good man. It saved us a good deal of effort as it happens, although we had to move things along at a fair old lick, I can tell you.'

'What about all the others, all those innocent men women and children that you killed in cold blood?'

'I'm sure you've heard the phrase _collateral damage_? Well, that's exactly what they were, the needs of the many, as they say.'

'The needs of the many required you to kill all those people? What about your mother, didn't she kill herself from the shock?'

'They certainly did and as for my mother, the old bat always was a shilling short, so to speak,' Ernest laughed again.

'You have no remorse, none at all?'

'Needs must old soul, needs must.'

'What are you doing?' Steven asked, noticing that Ernest had begun to remove the laces from one of the training shoes.

'I'm about to make sure that Syd gets in to an awful lot of trouble. The man really bloody annoys me, so I thought I'd make sure I fucked him over at the same time,' replied Ernest, looking up from the shoe, grinning.

'As well as what, exactly?' asked Steven, fearing that he knew, all too well, the answer to that particular question.

'Well, I was rather hoping you wouldn't just come out and ask. It rather takes the shine off the surprise, bad form old man. Since you ask, however, I'm afraid I'm about to kill you and make it look, as convincingly as possible, like suicide my old chap.'

'Oh,' was all he could manage.

'You see? Aren't you sorry you asked?'

Ernest chuckled as he removed the lace from the shoe, he then wrapped one end around each hand and pulled it tight, then he looked up and grinned.

'Now old chap, I'd appreciate it if you weren't to struggle, you've been quite enough of a nuisance already, if you relax it'll hurt less, well, that's not strictly true, but it'll certainly hurt me less,' Ernest smiled again.

'Can I ask one question, please?'

Ernest checked his watch, though Steven doubted he could have seen it clearly in the poor light. 'Okay old fruit, I suppose it can't hurt.'

'What happened to me? What happened to my wife?'

'That's two questions. Tut tut. I'll let you off on this occasion, however. Your wife committed suicide, a terrible bloody mess as it happens. You did quite a job there, old chap; she went berserk with a kitchen knife, blood everywhere. You, on the other hand, ran straight out of the house and into a road. Thump, a car ploughed straight through you. Carried straight on too, the bastard, not that the police looked too hard for the driver, we'd mopped you up off the pavement before the ambulance arrived. Now, if I may continue...'

The fight had gone from him, the shock of the revelations, Jed's death, the appearance of this strange double, all of it had proved too much for him and now that he had lived this short time as a coward, he was about to die a coward. He slumped forward, all energy gone as Ernest placed the lace over his head and began to pull it tight. The lace bit into the flesh of his neck and immediately he felt his breath restricted and then impossible.

'If it makes you feel a little better, Syd's life is going to be made a living hell for this. You're basically a political prisoner, a lot of people hate you,' he laughed 'well, me, and for you to be allowed to get off so lightly, well, it's going to cause a bloody shit storm, if you'll excuse my language.'

Strangely, as darkness crept in at the corners of his eyes once again, it did make him feel a little better. The bastard would get his, too, a shame it had cost so many so much.

Instinctively his hands shot up to his throat and began to claw at his throat.

'Now now, old chap, no struggling as we said, please don't make this any more difficult than it needs to be,' Ernest tightened the lace around his neck; tighter, tighter, tighter he pulled it until eventually the struggling stopped.

The last words that he heard, as he faded away, did not come from the room, but from a long ago past, from a time immemorial.

'I shook him Steven, I shook him,' she had once said, and in a way he was glad that it was finally over.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D.L. Christopher lives in Liverpool, England with his partner Lisa and his son Dylan. This novel is his first. Though he continues to search for a mainstream publishing deal, he has been buoyed by praise received from readers of the electronic version of this novel and is nearing completion of his second full-length novel. He very much appreciates your support and very much dislikes referring to himself in the third person.
