An ending fitting for a start.

BANG

BANG

CRUNCH

SLAM

Oh no, he is home. It’s time. Not again I won’t, no.

Its five to midnight and he has been drinking steadily since two pm. Personally I couldn’t give a fuck about football, but I listened alright, I had asked my boss at the shop if we could have the radio on to hear the match. It was 2-0 to ‘us’ at half time, things were looking rosy, dad will be happy as a pig in shit tonight, I thought.
I loved it when Dad was happy drunk, he would roar with laughter, slap me on the back and even embrace me sometimes, problem was, he didn’t know his own strength and would squeeze all the air outta me. His cheeks would be blushed bright red, making his weather beaten face appear like one of those bitter old red crab apples, the red spidery veins on his face more apparent when he was on the sauce. He’d burst through the door, pissed as fuck and do a victory dance up the hall and into the kitchen, he would kiss Mam and sometimes slap her arse which would make her giggle and me feel highly fucking uncomfortable. He would ask me to fetch two tumblers, pour us a bitter each and tell me to roll him a fag, do myself one while I was at it. I always felt honoured in an odd way as I lit both roll ups and passed one to him. My dad was not perfect, hell no, but when he was like this he was my fucking king, I his willing servant. We would sit there in front of the Rayburn, the wooden chairs pulled up close, one on each side. A basket of logs between us, and he would give me the highlights of the match. Like I said, I couldn’t give a fuck about football like, but fair play to the old bastard, his enthusiasm was catching, he would get so passionate, he would be spitting bitter all over the shop, his roll up always getting too soaked for him to get a drag out of it. Mam would always have a go of getting him to fill his belly with something to soak up the booze but he never did. ‘Fucks sake Erryl, I ad a pie at half time mun, fuck off and let me tell the boy ow it was yeah?’

But no, it wasn’t meant to fucking be tonight, the pricks must have spent quarter of an hour congratulating each other and sucking each others cocks at half time cos when they came back out they got their fucking arses handed to them. ‘We’ lost 4-2. My boss knew the score, he looked at me and shook his head, put his hand on my arm and said ‘here you go kid; you get on home and take a pouch of baccy for your Da, alright?’

Mr Griffiths was proper old school, only eight years older than my Dad mind, but God, he looked proper fucking ancient! Not just that, every time he moved, he would accompany it with a groan. He had different groans for different things. If he was reaching for his mug of tea it would be a UuuuPargh, if he had to reach a higher shelf for one of the shrunken grannies he would make an EeeeUghh. The most painful though, was when he had to stoop to pick up the mail from the floor in the morning, the noise he made went right through me, so much so I always tried to get there before him to collect it. Sometimes though, he would already be hobbling to the letter box and I knew it would bash his pride were I to overtake him. He would part his legs just before the descent to the wiry brown welcome mat. He looked like John Wayne with Parkinson’s, his legs juddering, his long bony fingers shaking as he began to bend at the waist. His spine would make such clicks they were audible from the end of the store. They were the intro to his hideous soundtrack... click click clunk ArghhhUghUghFfffffffuckingBasterinThing! I don’t think the posty had a fucking clue when he dumped his postmarked load through the slot that he was delivering an old man his own personal Everest.

Slipping on my coat and scarf, I grabbed a small pack of Drum off the shelf, thanked Mr. Griffiths and headed out the door, the brass bell above the door clanging as the door shut behind me.

The cold air stabbed at my lungs like minute frozen hedgehogs, I knew I should have brought my gloves, its bastard nobblin’ out here. I head across the street to where my bike’s chained to some railings, my fingers are stinging already, by the time I start fucking about the keys and the lock they feel like some other cunts hands, the sensation of burning more powerful than my capacity to actually use them. I get there in the end though and relock the freed chain around the railings. I quickly use my sleeve to wipe the seat and set off up the street.

I stood up to go up the hill, didn’t really need to, my calves were more than capable of powering me up the hill sitting down, but I kinda like the way the bike swings from side to side with every rotation of the pedal this way. My heart would be thudding hard under my jumper by the time I reached the top. At this point I always came to a stop, checked for cars coming up the hill stretching out beneath me and if the road was clear I would start pedalling like fuck. It doesn’t matter what mighta been going through my head before I reach this point, when my knees are jutting up and down like well greased pistons and I am forced to stop pedalling, there is no fucking feeling like it in the world. The wind fills up my coat, my eyes start pouring like an ugly bird at a wedding and all the crap in my head is blown out, thoughts fly the fuck off and somewhere in the whooshing, soaring, chaos my senses become sharp and my mind becomes still, burdened no more. It’s even better when you got your ass on the saddle and someone else is pedalling, we used to do that a lot me and my brawd. The reason it was better was cos when he was the one pedalling and watching out for cars I could shut my eyes tight, grip on tight and let it all happen to me. I dunno how I managed to trust anyone enough to put my life in their hands like that, but if my Da was my king, my brother was my fucking God. It wasn’t like I thought he couldn’t fuck up, it’s that I didn’t care if he did.

Get your head in gear boy; we are nearly at the crossroads, start breaking. My knuckles are killin me, I am sure one just fucking creaked then, Shit! I will be like Mr. Griffiths before I know it. The breaks squeak, its embarrassing mun, been meaning to sort that, fucking sieve for brain. I hear a beep and I pull closer to the edge of the road to make room for a few cars to pass, don’t recognise the first two, but the third is being driven by my uncle, he isn’t any relation to me like, he is a retired publican from the village. First landlord to retire round ere they say! All the rest died with their name still above the door, too partial to gulping away their profits. But here he is now, Uncle Tudor, can hardly see him over the wheel, he is another one who has shrunk with age. I wave frantically, leaning into the road, he sees me at last and indicates before pulling in, scuffing the curb with his back wheel. Silly fucker, you would think he could drive by now. I pull up beside the driver door and he winds the window down a bit, Christ he is out of breath!

‘Tudor! How are you? Where you coming from? Have you heard?’

‘Alright son, don’t mind if I sit by ere in the warm does ew?’

‘No, course not Tud, you stay warm butt, colder than a witches tit out here!’

‘I just come from yours as it goes, yer Mam said you would be back soon but I wanted to get home before it got dark see. Your mother had the radio on yeah, we caught the result. Erryl, I mean yer Mam, phoned Glenda down the street, there is a bed made up down there for her, just in case. She said you can ave the sofa if worst comes to the worst. You alright son? You look like a rabbit in the headlights?’

‘Aye, I’m alright Tud, better get back to Mam; she will be having kittens’ ‘Take care Tudor!’

He starts winding up the window, his face all serious, then changes his mind, opens the door and shouts after me as I am cycling away ‘Don’t let him hurt her boy! Not again, you hear me?!’

I didn’t answer, just carried on pedalling like fuck, through the crossroads, past a row of shops. The last one was the butchers, I slowed down to see Mr. Evans and his son, both clad in stained aprons, pulling down a carcass off a hook in the window. I nod as I pass and Tom, the younger of the two, smiles. I dunno how they do it, they work hard every fucking day, one of the dirtiest, smelliest jobs around, yet they always seem so fucking cheerful! I couldn’t be doing with all that dead flesh myself; I love to eat it like, but would rather not see it till it’s on the plate, maybe with some gravy and some mash. Dinner- not death.

I recall my dad telling me how before cows are slaughtered, it’s best to not feed em for a day and to keep em as calm as you can. Apparently, they taste like shit otherwise. Funny that, suppose you are tasting their fear.

I shudder at this.

Tudors' words are still ringing in my ears. My heart is pumping underneath my jumper again and I take a big gulp of icy air and think - no I won’t, not again Tudor. That cunt has swung his last blow.

Hidden.

I do not exist.


Rose exists now. She sits by the bonfire, fountain pen in one hand, dense letter paper in the other – only the best will do, the written version of an oak coffin for me. How thoughtful.

She waited until New Year's Eve for this severing, as if that date, decided by caucuses of men long before our time, could really help her cleanly cleave the old from the new.

Her handwriting comes out jagged, jumping between the lines, like when you're a kid and you try writing with the wrong hand, just to see if you can. I can still see my spidery style underneath, though; perhaps when all her bones have healed completely, she will write like me again. It might be the one change she forgets to force on herself.

I am Bözsi Emma Callahan, she writes. I am nineteen. I live in Stevenage.

Liar.

I am Bözsi Callahan. Me, not her.

Bözsi from a woman who looked after my Hungarian mother when they were in the camps; Callahan from my Irish father; Emma so that I had a normal English name to turn to if I disliked my Hungarian name.

But Boz suited me well. An odd, boyish name for an odd, boyish girl. I was never what you'd call pretty – all wide features in a narrow face, coke-bottle glasses, and a gap between my teeth that was supposed to bring me fortune. Still, I was complimented on my smile a lot – told it transformed my face, made me seem like the kind of person you could say anything to.

And I was that kind of person. That was one of the things I knew was true about me: good old Boz, friendly old Boz, could fit in anywhere, anyone would talk to her, had friendly conversations with stockbrokers and market traders, cops and robbers, voodoo doctors, circus freaks, nuns –

And one man who likes to kill.

The pen staggers across the page again:

My parents were Kristina Kovács Callahan and Anthony Paul Callahan, and my sister was Mariska Louise Callahan.

The bitter, the blithe, and the innocent, all to be cremated for a second time.

I got 5 As at A level and 13 A*s at GCSE.

I was in the papers and everything, put in by my school, to try to detract attention from the rest of the year's terrible results.

That success was why he targeted me, of course. He liked to skim the cream of the crop. I still don't regret doing well.

I like debating, parties and travelling.

Huh. That's the kind of thing you'd write as a French exercise, introducing yourself to a potential penfriend – except that it actually all means something, to me.

To Rose it means nothing. It is a description of a stranger. She balls the paper up – like it's a mistake, disposable - and throws it into the fire, near the edge so she can watch it burn.

The paper greys, curls up on itself like an animal in pain, and collapses.

And it's all gone – the family, the grades, the likes, the name, me.

Now she speaks aloud; her tongue, missing its tip, slurs the Ls and Ss a little, and her voice is husky, thanks to his poisons; my best friend wouldn't recognise her if she cried for help.

I am Rose May Oliver. I am eighteen. I am the Mother of Harry, Grace and Maia. I live in Cornwall. I like gardening, DIY and sport. I am Rose.

Her voice rises with the last sentence, resolute.

Even in this changed body, slim from starvation – thanks to him – and breasts swollen with milk - also thanks to him – I can still feel my own heart beat, fastened by the flames. The beat doesn't feel any different just because it's now in a woman who has a new name and history.

Rose stands up and brushes the cinders from her dress like a heroine in a fairy-tale. She looks like one too – blond hair (dyed to hide), grown long in the months sleeping at the hospital; tiny button nose (to hide, yes, but also because of the acid); perfect teeth (all crowns, on the stumps he left behind). Now her face truly is transformed. It's pretty.

It doesn't look so open and friendly any more, though; I couldn't imagine people wanting to tell this face secrets – it seems too full of its own.

At least when I look at the children born by her, due to him, from that one impregnation, I can see my father in the boy, my mother in the girls. I can see me in them as well as her - Rose. The English Rose. At least she didn't choose the name herself; that was chosen by the people who placed her under protection.

Rose, who is so quiet. Who hides from people. Who constantly glances round her, with those newly-working lasered eyes. Rose, throwing feed to the hens, strapping beans and strawberries to their stalks, bent over a car engine, instruction manual next to her, its pages held open with a spanner and marked with oily fingerprints. Rose, who is always alone but for the babies; they never leave her sight, except when she has to sleep. Then she lies between them, hand reaching out to touch the further one.

It's as if she's afraid that he's out there watching her, waiting for the second she drops her guard, then he'll magic the children away in an instant. But he would never be that subtle, and he would never pass up the chance to take her too.

She is like that fairytale heroine in a deeper way, perhaps. After all, she is a work of fiction. She is trying to protect her children and herself from the ogre, the beast, the fair-haired, stocky man, him, who killed so many, but that I escaped from - the one that I, with my useless eyes, could not see well enough to identify.

I'll help her.

But I won't help her for herself – I'll help her for me.

I do not exist. But I am not dead. And I will return.

Of Celebrations Past and Present

I walk gently along a path through a forest. The sides of the path lined with bluebells, their stalks and leaves not quite distinct, the many flowers often blending together into one. I stop and turn, waving my hand through them. At times I can feel their petals, at other times, they are gone. I move my hand nearer to the ground, trying to grab one of the bluebell stalks, but it wriggles as I grab it, evading my grasp.

Sighing, I stand up and walk to the end of the path, which is increasingly changing from fresh mud to a rather more malignant black, manmade ooze in parts. I tread carefully to avoid getting the ooze on my feet. The path leads to a building plastered with ancient posters, their text and pictures long faded away or torn off, mostly advertising concerts or films. To the left hand side of the building is a door. I push it open, and it leads into a front room with bare, paint-spattered floorboards, tatty armchairs, and bookcases scattered with browned pages torn out from books many years before. I reach for one of the armchairs. It feels soft and familiar, so I sit for a moment, and then get up and head out of the front door of the building, which leads out onto a main road. As I walk, I sense a woman I once loved, standing somewhere near me. I cannot see her clearly, but then I feel her smiling at me, her eyes shining with the expression of a love and a desire which has lasted throughout the ages, but I still cannot see her or touch her.

“I can’t remember your name,” I say aloud.

She begins to reply, and I walk towards her, and then she is gone, the air empty and desolate.

“Why do you live in the past?” a new voice booms out, as if speaking directly inside my head.

I turn around, trying to find the speaker, but there is not a soul in sight.
I walk along the deserted street, past shops which initially appear attractive, glittering, enticing, in every case revealing themselves as broken, empty, shattered glass on their floors, the clothes muddied and torn, the food squashed, rotten, useless.

I hear noises towards the end of the street. Shapeless forms approach me, and without warning begin firing guns. I duck into one of the empty shop fronts, watching as a pitched gun battle breaks out between what I can only surmise are two separate gangs of warring criminals, rejoicing in their freedom in this lawless land.

“The past is but a failed state,” the voice comes again.

I feel an invisible hand pressing against my face, and then a sensation as if goggles or glasses of some kind are being removed.

And then I am here, sitting on a sofa in a sterile, white office. Before me stands a woman in a white suit, her blonde hair tied back, holding two pairs of large, bright red glasses in her left hand.

“It’s OK,” she says, noting my disorientation, “You don’t remember where you are, do you? I’m Doctor Eislemann, your psychiatrist. I’m here to help you.”

She is right; I do not remember. Whatever technology is contained in the glasses, it took me to a world so strange and real that it’s made me forget the reality of the present.

“Why do you live in the past?” she asks me, “As I said, it is a failed state. And, as we saw just then, even the things about your past which were good, you cannot hold onto them now. Like a crumbling utopia, they are gone, vanished, dust. All you can do with the past is leave it behind, move on. It has nothing to offer you.”
Fragments of my life begin to come back to me, although I still cannot relate them to what I saw when I had the glasses on.

“What was that?” I ask.

“That was your emotional sense of your past, how you imagine it deep inside, what it means to you. It was made real via our technology.”

“Who was the woman I thought I saw?” I ask.

She replies, and then seemingly decides to ignore my question, “But, now that you’ve recovered, and I can see you aren’t suffering from any kind of negative reaction to our treatment, it’s time for part two. Come this way.”

Dr Eislemann leaves the glasses on her crystal-clear desk and walks to the left, touching the smooth wall in front of her. A hitherto-unseen doorway opens onto a rubbery walkway which leads up to a platform. I follow her to the platform, which has a glass wall up to just above waist height, topped by a metallic handrail.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“You’ll see. I’m going to take you to some places from your past. For real. And since it’s Christmas tomorrow, I believe something seasonal is in order.”

She reaches to the floor and presses a small red button. A column rises from the floor, dotted with buttons and a small screen.

She turns to me.

“Where to begin,” she thinks, looking at me in the same way that a teacher might a five year old pupil.

“Ah yes… Holi.”

She types a date into the small keyboard just below the screen, and the glass behind us closes, and everything outside our enclosure becomes increasingly blurred, until it is at once everything and nothing, I feel sick, disorientated, confused, and I then, out of nowhere, I get a feeling of my mind, retracing the steps, going backwards, and then I see a blistering blue sky, and a beautiful panorama – and suddenly I am back there, in a previous moment of my life, floating just behind the person I was…

I was in India, in the hill station known as Almora. It was a quite remarkable place, a retreat in the foothills of the Himalaya, built by the Mughals long before the British ever set foot on Indian territory, as a place to go for respite from the summer heat. I was staying in a delectably nice guesthouse with a huge sign outside saying ‘Smile: A curve that can set a lot of things straight.’

I’d been there a few days, and it was early March. One of the hotel workers was a grinning Nepali guy who sold me hash. I spent most of the time getting stoned out of my face with him and my other travelling companion, a posh Scot from Edinburgh.
On that particular day it was Holi, the date special to Northern Indians as it marks the point in the year in mid March when the weather turns from deceitfully temperate (and really no hotter than England at the same time of the year) to boiling hot, almost overnight.

I’d woken up, noted the snowfields of Nanda Devi, the highest peak in the British Empire, glittering away against a deep azure sky as they always did, rolled a joint, and wandered into town. It was a day which has always stuck in my head, all the shops with their shutters down and windows bolted up, the only shop which rather conspicuously stayed open being the ‘Government liquor store’, which already had a small queue forming as I walked past towards the central square. As I wandered, it felt as if a giant whisky bottle had been emptied over the town during the night, as almost every man I passed appeared astoundingly drunk. With inebriation well under way, they could get working on the main day’s activity: throwing paint over every passerby imaginable. As the hash kicked in, I grew increasingly paranoid, and retired to my room to sleep awhile.
- --

And then I was back on the platform, standing next to Doctor Eislemann, looking out at the deep black nothingness encountered by people passing between times in history, seeing the vastness of the Himalayan setting we had been visiting, for a moment, as seen through a window in that great big black wall, and then vanishing altogether.

“Take a moment,” said Dr Eislemann, “That day is important to you. Why?”

“Well,” I replied, “It was a beautiful place, Almora. I dream of it often.”
“Why do you dream of it? Could you live there your whole life? Do you really think so? I think that you would slowly go insane, until the reason why you had come to be attracted to the place had long gone, and you were clinging only to a memory and not a life.”

“Anyway,” Dr Eislemann said, “Where now… Ah, I know!”

As she typed a new number and location into the console, she looked at the black void outside our glass platform, then back at me.

“Always best not to linger,” she said, “People who spend more than ten minutes out here have been known to crack up. Spending more than a few minutes in a go in a temporal void puts a huge strain on our mental and physical well being.”

I braced myself for the sickness that had arisen the first time we had travelled, and then Dr Eislemann pushed me off the platform, which had materialised outside a squat, bungalow-like house. It was situated next to a small pond, from which young children were occupied fishing for xiazi, or freshwater crayfish. From the moment I saw the house , the sense of longing within me became greater and greater. I walked through the door in my former body, which opened into a room rich with memory, its walls brown with the smoke of hundreds of years. To its right was a disused washing machine and an ancient bike, rusty and battered, and above that, portraits in black and white of two elderly Chinese people, who I took to be the paternal grandparents. A man is standing next to the table, setting out glasses full of Chinese wine next to empty plates and chopsticks. He turns to look as I walk in, his wide face lit up by an extraordinary smile.

“Ah, Max!” he booms. He points to the table, which, as I now remember, has been used to make an offering to ancestors via wine in the cups and theoretical food on the plates. Once that has been finished, it’s time to eat.

The bedroom door to the right opens as I sit down at my table. A woman, late 20s,
thin, worried-looking, walks through the door and sits down next to me. She reaches over and brushes her fingers against mine.

“Darling,” she says, “it’s time for dinner.”

Her touch is extremely cold, and then she moves her fingers away.

We all sit down at the table and begin to eat. As I sit, I feel as if I am coming out of my former body, and at once I am standing at the other side of the room, looking at my former self, dressed in scruffy black trousers and a huge blue coat (the weather is icy-cold in this region of China during the winter).

I wondered if the people sitting at the table would recognise me, and to test this
question I shouted my own name aloud, but they appeared to hear nothing, although my mother in law, who appeared a more weather-beaten replica of her daughter, did cast a brief, curious glance towards the coarse wooden doors where I stood.

“Come, Max,” Dr Eislemann called, beckoning me back over to the platform. I walked onto it, slipped back into the void, and then, several headrushing moments later, were back in the corridor outside her office.

As we returned to our respective couch and desk, she asked me how I felt. I was still thinking about the two places we had visited, the two celebrations I had witnessed, and in particular the piece of the past which had showed my family in another country, far far from where I assumed I was now.

“It’s funny,” I replied, “Even though when I awoke on the couch I barely knew my own name, by the time I got to those two places, it all started coming back.”

“What’s your emotional reaction to seeing those two places again? Let’s start with Almora.”

“Incredible,” I said, “When I saw that blue sky, the Himalayans splashed against it in all their grandeur, and the smiling faces in the streets, I was taken back there so quickly.”

“Whenever we try to scan your brain for celebrations you’ve attended, that one always came up the quickest. Why do you think that is?”

“Well,” I replied, “those two times in my life, I feel, were important to me.”

“Right. But you couldn’t live in them now. Imagine sitting, freezing to death, during the Himalayan winter. It’s all very well, always looking back to that time in your life and placing such importance on it, but things change. If you’d been there forever, you’d have ended up a burnt out old hippie. And as for your inlaws’ ancestral home-“

Dr Eislemann pressed a button to the right of her desk, and an image came up on the wall above of the field I had just been looking at, except that in place of the small village of bungalows which I had seen, and walked inside, there were now rows and rows of western-style ten storey blocks of flats.

“You see?” she said, “That house doesn’t exist now. Your old family in China, they don’t live in that place any more either. It’s long gone. So why do you cherish it so?”

My own memory was still weak and fractured, but I conjectured as best as I could.

“I can imagine, no, I know, that that was the house my wife grew up in. We used to
go there during Chinese New Year holidays to visit. It just felt so familiar, so real. The first place you took me, that looked spectacular, but I didn’t relate to it in quite the same way.”

Dr Eislemann gently nodded her head in approval as I said, this, making notes on a sheet.

“Now,” she said, “As well as always living in the past, there’s another issue, which hampers and handicaps you every bit as much. Come this way.”

She walked to the other side of the room from where the time travel platform had been. An opaque button was set at head height against the wall’s white background. She pressed it and a door whirred open, leading down a long , seemingly endless corridor decorated with paintings denoting subjects which one might associate with aspiration: wealth, cloudless skies, perfect sunsets, superficial beauty, beaches, expensive cars, helicopters.

“Where does this lead?” I asked, curiously.

Dr Eislemann remained tight-lipped, as the corridor seemed to go on and on forever, until finally it ended in a large oak door, incongruous in this sleek setting.
“Go on,” she said, “Go through the door.”

I opened it, and instantly a wave of warm, lush heat hit me. I walked out onto a beautiful scene: a beach, the sand white and powdery, with clear, deep blue sea and palm trees. I looked back to the doorway, hanging there like a portal. Dr Eislemann smiled and said ‘Just walk around. Then you’ll see it.’

The beach was lined with bungalows and guest houses, many of which had little bars on the beachfront where people in various states of hippyness lounged, drinking beer, smoking joints.

I wandered along it for a while and then decided to go into one of the bars. It was
a big place, with a dancefloor. It was early afternoon, though, so nobody was actually dancing. I had to do a double take when I saw the barman – it was myself.
On first glances, the life I was living looked extremely attractive – I was suntanned, thin, happy looking. Later, though, as it grew dark, things began to get strange. I looked on in horror as I coped with issues such as police appearing out of nowhere and demanding ‘special payments’, as well as local crooks and gangsters doing much the same thing.

“Seen enough?” a voice came from behind me. I turned round to see Dr Eislemann standing there, still wearing her heavy white doctor’s outfit despite the heat.
“Come, let’s go back to the office.”

I left the bar and returned to the portal. The corridor seemed much shorter walking back, and I was sure that some of the paintings had changed.

Sitting back at her desk, Dr Eislemann asked me what I thought it all meant.

“This is the future, right?” I asked her, “I’ll be doing that in the future?”

“Yes,” she replied, “And this doorway demonstrates exactly why you can’t live in the future. Just as your mind always being stuck in the past means that you can’t enjoy the present, you’ve spent far too long daydreaming about ‘owning a bar on the beach’, and it means you haven’t made enough of your life in general. Furthermore, the fact that what is clearly a fantasy so quickly turned out not to be the completely happy life you have envisaged, demonstrates that you really can’t build things up to be something they aren’t. Everywhere in life there are problems. Reality is not like a dream.”

I nodded, starting to understand.

“Now,” she said, “I have one last door for you to go through, and then our session will be over.”

She pointed to the door immediately behind her desk. It was metallic, framed by a lit-up beam which glowed from the inside.

“Where does that lead?” I asked her.

“The future,” she said.

“But you said I shouldn’t live in the future, only the present.”

“Ah,” she replied, “The future I showed you before, that was not the real future. That was the imaginary future dreamed up a million times in your fanciful head, the one that you will never actually attain because you do not live in the present. The real future is out there, through that door. Yet to be discovered.”

“What will I find?” I asked, “Where are my family? Who was the woman I saw in that vision? Is she my wife?”

Dr Eislemann fell silent.

“I am a therapist,” she replied, “Not a marriage guidance or relationship counsellor. Step through that door and you will find it all out there.”

I walked towards the doorway.

“When you step through that door, the last remaining vestiges of negativity, desire, preponderance towards over-dreaming, will be erased from your mind. You will be starting again from a clean slate.”

“Will the knowledge be erased too?” I asked, concerned, seeing as my old memory was only just starting to return.

“No,” she replied, “We are not memory-thieves. Unlike others who sometimes visit
your people.”

“By the way,” I asked, “Where are you from?”

Again, she refused to give me a direct answer, stating simply that “someone you know and love paid for our treatment. Now go.”

“Fancy a beer?” I asked her.

“No!” she replied, “Good lord, no. I don’t fraternise with my patients. Now go. Go in peace. It’s all waiting for you.”

“What is?” I demanded.

“Life.” She said, “Life is waiting!”

With that, I got the impression she did not want to answer any more of my questions. I stepped towards the doorway and walked through it. I felt a sensation of being cleansed, purified, wiped clean, as I did so. Beyond the doorway all was white and misty, and as I transcended its boundaries, I saw a road, black, clean, unmarked, the road which led into the future. As I stepped onto the road, her words echoed through my head one more time.

“Life is waiting.”

SuperDarren!

>SuperDarren!

The first time Darren flew, he ended up breaking Nigel Simpson’s nose with his bum.

One moment Darren was standing arms akimbo at the top of the slide, surveying his kingdom of Deneholme Park, and the next he was several feet higher, so high that he could see right over the wall into the convent school’s garden.

He spent a few moments half-heartedly gawking at the girls running around in their tartan pinafores, and then his gaze wandered. Unfortunately, this view took in his feet and the lack of solid ground beneath them. After some Wily Coyote scrabbling, he was plummeting towards Nigel’s upturned O of a face.

Fortunately, this meant that the only witness to Darren’s newfound supernatural powers was now unconscious on the playground tarmac.

The other kids all assumed that Darren had leapt onto Nigel on purpose – Jason Lewis even claimed he’d heard Darren shout ‘Geronimo’ and everyone agreed, as they always did with Jason. Even Darren’s brother Lee joined in, unenthusiastically, though he gave Darren a funny look, as if wondering whether Darren had finally picked sides after years dodging around in neutral territory.

Nobody offered the injured boy any help at all, because it was nerdy Nigel Simpson, the school boffin, and something about Nigel made him a natural target for everyone – even the school hamster peed on him at every opportunity. If you were going to splat bum-first onto anyone, it would be Nigel.

Nigel’s parents didn’t agree. Neither did Darren’s. As punishment, he was banned from the park for a whole month. Naturally, he stomped around saying it wasn’t fair, because the world would come crumbling down if ten-year-old boys took their punishments with equanimity, but in reality he didn’t mind. It gave him an excuse to stay at home alone and experiment.

His second flight was from the coal shed roof, a whole four feet high. Even that close to the ground, Darren felt the same inner lightness that he’d had on the top of the slide. All his worries were still there – the stolen Jaffa Cakes in his wardrobe, the way the dog had been limping lately, Jason Lewis’s occasional snide comments, Jason Lewis’s occasional friendly comments, everything – all pressing down inside his body, heavier than his bones, but the rest of him was so light that he could carry those worries away, no problem.

He could do anything.

Except stay in the air for more than a few minutes. Darren was proud of his stunt-man landing.

On the first of November the Indian Summer sky had switched to a grey the colour of a dead TV screen, and it stayed that way till well into the Christmas holidays, but that only meant that fewer people were outside to see Darren’s battle with gravity.

The tallest structure in his small world was the Gothic spire of Deneholme Parish Church, covered in scaffolding for as long as he could remember. He hadn’t been inside the church since he was christened, but still, as he approached it he felt a lurch of fear in his belly.

Even the wind had stopped, like it was holding its breath. Darren remembered his Nan just before the family holiday to Benidorm: ‘If God had meant us to fly, he wouldn't have invented airplane food.’

All the way through the airport his Nan had been moving her hand from head to heart to the other side of the chest to her tummy and back again. Darren did his best to mimic the ritual, changing the order around sometimes in case he’d got it wrong, then put his gloved hand on the frozen metal scaffold and pretended it was all as easy as if he was on the monkey bars at the park.

At the top of the spire everything seemed brighter, not crowded in by the shadows of the ordinary buildings below. The world was at his feet. Darren had stepped out into the air before he’d even realised that he was definitely going to do it.

When he stayed afloat, he looked at the clouds and imagined a white-bearded old man giving him a nod, a wink and a thumbs up.

Yes!

Darren had never felt such pure happiness. His worries were now as heavy to him as a pack of Maltesers would be to a giant.

The God-cloud separated to reveal a shard of sun before an ashtray-coloured cloud shrouded it. Darren sank slowly towards the Earth, barely having time to take in the sights before his trainers hit tarmac once more.

Flying became easy from then on – or, rather, floating. No matter what Darren did, he drifted with as much control as the autumn leaves around him – only less colourful, his grey school uniform camouflaging him against the sky like a toilet roll tube in a puddle.

After dark, when he had to be indoors or his Mum would start phoning round his friends, Darren pored over comic books with an intensity that surprised his parents. He had never really been into reading before, not even comics, but they decided that it was a good thing, since the more words he saw, surely the more he’d learn.

On parents’ evening, Darren’s teacher, Miss Davies, agreed – Darren no longer stumbled or made things up when reading out in class, and, true, his stories included the words bam and kapow a little more often than necessary, but he would grow out of that in time.

Growing out of it was what Darren feared most. If his comics had taught him anything, it was that superpowers often start when you’re a kid, but they don’t stop. He pretended not to know that his comic book heroes usually got their superpowers shortly after they grew hair in strange places and developed an interest in girls, not when they were still young enough to be playing with Lego. He decided not to remember that comic books weren’t real.

He hid his face and his voice behind The Incredible Hulk issue 223 and tilted his chair rebelliously on two legs against the wall. ‘It’s not just a phase,’ he grumbled.

He heard a cough from nearby and glanced up. Nigel Simpson was sat bolt upright opposite Darren, clearly about to speak.

Darren turned away with deliberate rudeness. He certainly was not going to talk to Nigel Simpson about how great reading was – Nigel’s main topic of conversation - and he definitely was not going to notice that Nigel Simpson was also reading The Incredible Hulk issue 223.

For Christmas, Darren’s parents excitedly wrapped up a Spiderman costume and not two, but three hard-backed annuals, pleased that they were able to get their younger son a present he would surely adore.

Darren did grin with delight as he unwrapped his annuals, and tried to keep the grin in place as he unwrapped the Spiderman costume. There was no hiding from his Mum and Dad, though; they said nothing, but hurried on quickly to Lee’s new Sega game and digital watch, trying not to show their own disappointment.

When they were both out of the room making tea and having a quiet smoke, Lee leaned over and asked him what was wrong with the costume. Darren fingered the polyester material morosely.

‘Spiderman can’t fly. He’d like to, but all he does is swing around on those stupid webs that look like snot. I bet I could do that if I could snot hard enough. Bet even you could.’

That, of course, led to the brothers having a ‘how long can you make your snot’ competition. Mum ordered them out of the room, disgusted but privately amused, while she cleaned the carpet. Lee immediately ran off to try out his new game.

Feeling guilty about his ingratitude, Darren decided to change into the Spiderman costume and go for a wander in the garden. Nobody else would be around, and maybe he could give the whole Spidey thing a go; at least Peter Parker didn’t wear his y-fronts outside his tights.

It was a beautiful sunny blue-skied day, the kind that often seems to come at Christmas when everyone’s hoping for a white one. After a quick nose around to check that none of their neighbours had come out into the cold, Darren shot his arm out like in the comics and zoomed towards the garden shed.

And over it, then over the fence, then over the alleyway, then over the corner shop roof, narrowly missing the TV aerial, and on and on till he was hanging in the air higher than any of the buildings in Deneholme. Even the church spire was a flat slate square from up here. At last! God really must approve – Darren got to do this on Christmas Day!

He continued rising up, more slowly now, till it wasn’t fun any more and he started to fear that God liked him a little too much and was planning on taking him to heaven as a Christmas present for himself.

And it was cold. The Spidey costume covered his face, but Darren hadn’t been able to do the back up on his own and his bum was starting to freeze. He’d heard that people often pooed themselves when they were scared. Would his poo freeze as it hit the air, then hurtle to the Earth and hit some innocent, like perhaps that poor berk Nigel Simpson, causing death by turd? That would be a, well, crap way to go.

So would falling from this high up. Darren chanced a look downwards. He must be at least a million miles up by now.

As if sensing his feelings, the bright sky began to darken. From somewhere over near Darren’s house, which was smaller than a Monopoly house from here, a monstrous anvil of a cloud was marching towards the flying boy like Miss Davies when she caught you picking your nose.

The very sight of it made Darren’s powers grow weaker, and the ground came closer, closer, like a zoom on a TV show.

He flapped his arms wildly, then tried pointing his arms like Superman, then attempted a glide, and even tried to think happy thoughts. Nothing helped, just like it hadn’t all those other times.

Wondering whether his grieving parents would bury him in the Spiderman costume, and whether they’d ever forgive him for ruining Christmas, Darren gave up, lay on his back with his costume flapping loose, and spread his arms wide, freefalling.

The sun, still bright in this corner of sky, almost blinded him. Instinctively, Darren flung his hands in front of his eyes. As his arms moved his whole body spun round, but he thought that perhaps the wind up his bumcrack was rushing more slowly now. He moved his hands away from his eyes, facing up to the sun again, and felt himself come to a standstill.

Gingerly, he tweaked a little finger to the left. His body jerked left with it as if pulled by string. To the right, the same happened. When he made a sweeping movement with his whole hand, he swung around in an arc like footballs always did when he tried to kick them straight. For a while Darren forgot he was still several buses high, and swung himself left and right, forwards and back; if anyone had seen him they’d have thought him a kite.

Excellent. That was horizontal movement sorted. Now, how about down? With the greatest of care, and muttering ‘pleasepleaseplease,’ Darren pointed his fingers slightly towards the ground.

First his body turned into a standing position, and then he seemed to be moving, but so slowly that he didn’t want to jinx anything by being overconfident.

It wasn’t until the corner of his eye saw a shocked round O of a face in a window that Darren was sure it was definitely working. He grinned, but at that moment the wind gave a strong burst, lurching him towards the wall. Then the dark anvil cloud got fed with looming and came crashing right down into Darren’s portion of sky, cutting out all light from the sun.

He ended up tumbling noisily into a greenhouse full of Christmas Roses. The framework caught at his cloak, and he had to tug at it to let himself drop the last couple of feet, landing on a floor covered with glittering glass and crushed scarlet petals.

All wondrous joy at the experience of controlled flight was chased away by fear of being told off. How could he possibly explain smashing someone’s greenhouse when he didn’t even have a football as an excuse?

To top it all, he must be miles from home. He hadn’t aimed in any particular direction, for which he now cursed himself. Darren pelted towards the fence, scrambled over it, and dashed along the alleyway in any old direction.

Years later, he realised that his long run home had probably only taken about ten minutes, going on where he’d landed. His Mum had lengthened the time in her head too, though, going on how much she shouted at her ungrateful son when he finally reappeared at the back door, shivering, damp and smelling slightly of urine and garden centres.

It would have been easier if his face had show his genuine regret for the distress he’d caused. All his face showed was the joy of sudden realisation as he looked at the half-lit sky.

Back at school, Darren spent every spare moment in the library, looking at the geography and science books. Nope, nothing in there about sunlight affecting the ability to fly. Those scientists knew nothing.

Here was something, though:

Lapland, mythical home of Father Christmas, is so far North that, in June and July, the sun never sets, turning night into day.

The library was busy that dreary wet playtime – even Jason Lewis was in there, flicking through the most disgusting bits in the Guinness World of Records, surrounded by his henchmen, all shaven as bald as their Dads. But Darren was in Lapland. Well, almost.

Oh, what a magical place that would be! He’d be able to swoop and soar any time he wanted, at least in the summer (in the winter he’d go to Florida and live at Disneyworld), with no mean clouds to stop him! Maybe there were other people there who could do the same as him.

Maybe Darren was a secret Laplander, adopted by his English parents after his real mum and dad got murdered by a cumulonimbus. Maybe he would meet lots of other flying people one day, who would teach him to use his powers for the good of mankind. Oh yes. Darren nodded wisely to himself.

He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of a drawn-out sniff behind him. Only Nigel Simpson had a nose that bunged up all year round, and the smash last September hadn’t helped. Still feeling noble, Darren turned round with a smile.

‘Hey, Nige. Um. You know. Sorry about falling on your head before.’ He’d apologised at the time, but they both knew he hadn’t meant it.

Nigel screwed his hands together nervously. ‘That’s alright. I know it was an accident.’ He continued staring at the floor, at the bookshelves, at anywhere but Darren. ‘That’s a good book you’ve got there, but if you really want to know about Lapland, you should try that one.’ With his head, he nodded towards one of the big books that wouldn’t fit on the normal shelves. ‘Lapland is the main exporter of …’

‘Oy, Daz, what you doing talking to Ni-gel?’ It was Jason Lewis’s voice, with more projection than an opera singer. Nigel didn’t have a teasing nickname – simply saying his own real name in a certain tone of voice was enough, which was much worse.

Jason beckoned authoritatively. ‘Come over here and have a butcher’s at this woman – biggest boobs in the world!’

Now that was tempting.

Darren looked from Jason to Nigel and back again. There was Jason slouching on the best beanbag, surrounded by the coolest boys in class, with a book that promised naked women.

And there was Nigel, hands still twisting together, something green blooming out of his bulbous schnozz, a ‘good work!’ sticker on his jumper that was so well-ironed it had creases.

There was a spark of hope in Nigel’s eyes as he looked directly at Darren for the first time.

‘He’s helping me with a project for Miss,’ Darren called over to Jason, then, heaving the big Finland book in his arms, he whispered to Nigel, ‘here, let’s nick this and take it to the classroom – you can get away with it.’

The spark of hope had disappeared from Nigel’s eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered.

Darren was reminded of his parents, and the way their faces had dropped on Christmas Day when the joy they’d anticipated had shrunk into mere polite thanks. This was a test, he knew it. He could fly so high that his bum froze – he could do anything.

‘And … And Nigel’s an alright bloke, really,’ Darren said, loudly so that he couldn’t pretend anyone had misheard. ‘He’s my mate.’

There was silence, for once, in the library, as Darren left with Nigel. Equally quietly, Nigel stopped twisting his hands together, and passed something to Darren: a little piece of red cloth that still smelt of Christmas Roses and the ozone from the clouds high above Deneholme.

‘Thanks,’ said Darren. ‘It’s great to have someone who knows. Maybe even … super.’

He cringed at his own pun, but Nigel laughed out loud for the first time since Darren had known him.,

Cold

Get up.

Get up.

Your ankle hurts but there’s nothing broken. If it is broken then you die. You don’t get to die. Other people die, not you.

Get up.

Now run. That’s what you came here to do now do it, run. You are at least three miles from home. It is at least minus five out here. You are wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. You don’t think you need to run. You think you’re fine and you’ll get home in your own time, or maybe you won’t and that’ll be fine too. You remember hypothermia don’t you? Scotland, out in the woods, soaked to the bones. Trying to roll a cigarette because everything was going to be fine if you only had a cigarette to smoke. Never mind the pounding rain or the fact your hands don’t work anymore. Just roll a damn cigarette. Well if it weren’t for her they’d have found you sat against that tree still holding your sodden rizla packet and dead as the dirt. And that was July, it’s December now. You may think everything will be fine if you stay here a bit longer, if you take your time. That is the cold lying to you. Fire stands there and tells you it’s going to kill you. Cold tells you everything will be fine. Everything will not be fine. The cold is lying. Move.

The pain is not there. The pain is a lie. The pain and the cold are the same thing, they only win if you let them. You are slowing down. Do not slow down. It is dark out here. Nothing but the moon. No lights because there are no people. It you had the breath left to shout nobody would hear you. It’s one in the morning. You’re in the middle of nowhere. There is nobody. This is between something and nothing, between you and the cold. When you’re home you can have a cup of coffee and leave the oven on with the door open. You can be weak when you’ve finished running, you can be in pain when you’ve finished running. You can call yourself an idiot for coming out here. When you’ve finished running.

This is not the worst of it. Everything you have lived through, everything you have seen, it’s not the worst of it. There is trouble coming. Trouble with no sympathy for the weak. And you’ll want to give in then too, you’ll want to fill your pockets with stones and walk into the sea. You won’t get to do that either. It isn’t you that matters. It’s what you can do for them. We will be outnumbered, we will be outgunned. We will be cold and hungry and hurt and grieving and still we won’t get to stop. You will not need to be strong and you will not need to be fast. You will need to be stronger than a human can be, run faster than a human can run. You will need magic on your side, you will need the storms and the seas on your side. Because we will win. Maybe we will pay with every drop of blood in our veins but we will win. It is the way of things that we must win. Humans are not prey, they are the servants of no-one. If we do not win then we are not human. But now, before the war, before you get to see the sun rise on the day we beat them, before you get to see tomorrow’s sun rise, you have to run. This is good practice, for now at least. You have to run.

That must be the first mile down. If the pain carries on increasing at the current rate you should get there well before you black out. Some of the numbness might be fading now. Your mind is clearer. The silhouettes of the trees are definitely trees again now, they are not people or animals or anything in between. You are definitely here and you are definitely running. Still not fast enough. The cold wants you to think this is all a dream, that the ground and the frost is a warm bed. If you lie down there now you will wake up back in your warm bed because this is not real. This is not a dream. If you lie down now you will wake up in the next world. If you slow down now you will not speed up again. It will take some time for the cold to finish you off, but it won’t feel like it. It’ll feel like the briefest moment. It will feel safe, it will feel warm. It will feel right. It is not right. There is no safety that you do not earn. Keep running.

You love the cold. You love the cold because it thinks it can beat you. You love the cold because you know you can beat it. The cold is a warm blanket for you because you’re a stubborn little fucker and you’re scared of comfort and you’re scared of weakness. So you should be. Comfort is another lie, weakness is not an option. Show some of your strength now. With each stride push harder, stretch further, move faster. The moon is right above your house. It is a lamp that warms your skin. The closer you get, the warmer you will feel. Keep running. Watch the line of the future in front of you, see the sine wave your legs make as they flow through the air. It stretches out behind you and before you. That is the path of least resistance, the way the world wants you to move. The wave can lift you, it can take the strain. But you must do as the wave says. Keep running.

It’ll be downhill all the way soon. Blood seems to be flowing properly now. Maybe the feeling in your fingers will come back in a minute. The pain has stopped getting worse. The wave is still there. The moon is still there. I’m not saying you haven’t got yourself in trouble here, but you’ve done stupider things than this. Stuck halfway up a cliff with no ropes or gear and clean out of up, down and sideways. That was stupid. You don’t really think about it but you could very easily have died that day, out in the sun. But you didn’t panic then. Acknowledging that you’re in deep shit isn’t the same as panic. If you had panicked you’d have let go and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. They might never have even found you. They might have found you and assumed that you’d jumped. The fall might not have killed you, you might have just laid there broken on the sand waiting for the tide to come in and finish you off. That was probably stupider than this. That doesn’t mean this wasn’t stupid. That definitely doesn’t mean it’s OK to slow down. But there are precedents. You’ll get home and think no more of it, just like you always do. You won’t be moved to suddenly sort your life out or start achieving things. You’ll sit around waiting for the universe to sort everything out for you. Everything will be as it should be. But all these little things, all the patterns of your life and all that’s happened before will be gone if you don’t keep running. It’s barely even difficult any more. It might even be doing you some good. But it is still very cold out here. You’re still nowhere near anyone who can help. You’re still dead if you stop. You might be able to walk the rest of the way and not freeze to death, but you’re still dead if you stop. Keep running.

If you told her about this do you think she’d be impressed? She might just think you’re an idiot. She’d probably think that you were exaggerating horribly. People don’t die of exposure in rural Wiltshire. The distant lights of Swindon are glowing in the clouds behind you. This is a place where people die of boredom. The elements don’t get a look in. This is recreational fear you’re indulging in. Just stop running now. It can’t be another five hundred yards. Just stop running and walk. If anything you’re too hot. A cup of coffee and a fag when you get home and you’ll be right as rain. Stop running and just walk, you’re being foolish.

Here we are then. That was fun. Same time tomorrow.

A seasonal tale

The first sign that Enrique Fidesco had of anything untoward was the sight of Angelo lying down in a corner of the field, gazing at an open Spanish Dictionary in a manner which suggested he probably wasn't about to chew it to pieces. Although, when he looked back on the whole sequence of events later, there had been many such signs, which he had ignored.

The second sign was when Enrique took the President of the San Sergio Bullring to look at his prize-winning herd. Up until then, Enrique had considered Angelo a rather bog-standard Toro. He wasn't weak, he wasn't small, but he wasn't especially strong or muscular either. He was just ordinary.

So when Angelo wandered up and started talking, in perfect Castillian Spanish, about how hot it was and how it would be a good idea to go down to the beach, Enrique was at a loss for words. The only thing he could think of was to pretend that nothing had happened. He hastily walked the President away from his field and asked if he wanted something to eat.


The San Sergio Bullring wasn't the biggest bullring in Spain. But they were regular customers. And Enrique had to keep his customers happy. So when the President asked whether he could buy Angelo for his "fighting spirit", Enrique agreed.

Now, a week before the big day, Enrique was starting to regret the decision. They had come to a mutual understanding, and it would be a shame to let that go.

"What actually happens in a bullfight," Angelo had asked, when Enrique had gone to give him and the other bulls some feed.
Enrique had been so gobsmacked that he'd stood there speechless for a several minutes, before eventually telling him to "Read some Hemingway". That, he had hoped, would be the end of the matter. He thought that Angelo's power of speech was probably one of the periodic pangs of guilt he had for breeding bulls for this purpose, and thought no more about it.


But it hadn't been. And now, staring across the field, Enrique was filled with panic. This morning, he had almost thought of ringing the San Sergio Bullring and telling them that his bull could talk. But that thought had been hastily put to one side, because of two reasons.
1) The staff of the Bullring would think he was insane.
2) If they didn't think he was insane, the animal rights activists - and the media - would get to hear about how he willingly sent a bull which could not only understand but could speak Spanish, to die in the ring.
Neither of which were particularly appealing prospects.
"You know," Angelo said, in between two mouthfuls of grass. "I don't like this Hemingway guy."
"Why not?" Enrique asked dumbly, and pointed at the novel lying on the grass. "Where - where'd you get that?"

"Look what he says," Angelo said. "He says: I must say that of all the animals I have observed, none has less expression in its eyes than the bull. I should say, changes its expression less; for the bull’s is almost always that of brutal and savage stupidity. What a prick, eh?"
"Well," Enrique said. "That's one way of looking at it." He did not add that when he looked across at his herd, he frequently had very similar thoughts to old Ernest, wondering almost every day why he had not taken the job in the IT Company he was offered a few years ago, and with it, the girl of his dreams. Still, he couldn't complain.

"So," Angelo said. "Tell me what happens in a bullfight. I stopped reading at the "savage stupidity" part."
"Well..." Enrique said. "Well..."
He did not add that so far, he had only been to one bullfight, and had left halfway through. He preferred to send others to "represent" him as a breeder, but it was actually because the whole process made him feel sick. He was happy to eat beef, but he stopped short at bullfighting. He did not like to give too much thought to the deaths of animals, whether it was on his dinner plate or for entertainment of a few sadists, as he thought of most of his customers. Maybe it was an unethical stance, but it was one which was - sort of - working for him. Yuck.

"Never mind," he said finally. "You'll find out when you get there."


A week later

The heat is stifling. The dust in the Arena has been raked over, the blood from the events of the day before washed away. In the silence you may be able to feel the presence of the participants of various fights, bellowing in pain, or screaming for help after being speared by the horns of an angry bull.

There are six bulls in total. Killed by three matadors, or at least, that's the plan. Beyond the arena you can hear the sounds of an animal rights protest. Enrique has a front-row seat, sweat dripping down his face, as the first bull steps out into the arena. He is feeling weak with anticipation and apprehension. On one hand, being rude to the matador might end Angelo up with an even more painful death than he would already. On the other, Enrique would be famous. The guy with the talking bull.

He imagines himself flying around the world with billions of dollars. "You're the guy who taught his bull to talk like a human, isn't that right?" "Does he speak English?" For a moment, he imagines that Valeria, the gorgeous Moldovan girl at the American IT firm, knocks at his door and invites him to leave this shitty ranch in the middle of nowhere and go and live with her.

On the other hand, Angelo might not say anything at all.
The Paso Doble starts up. The first bull starts to run around a bit. The Matador steps out into the ring - god, what an arrogant prick this guy is, Enrique thinks, having had the misfortune of being invited to a banquet where he celebrated killing a hundred bulls. A bit like Angelo. Maybe they'll get on with each other. Maybe once Angelo has seen the Matador, he will stop criticising Enrique's dress sense. "Put on something a bit smarter! We're going to a bullfight!"

Poor bull no. 1, Enrique thinks, trying to force himself to look at the carnage in the ring, and remembering what exactly it was that made him so reluctant to go to any more corridas. He gets up. It's too bad, that being a VIP spot, there isn't a hot dog stand or something nearby, he thinks. The VIPs get brought their own hot dogs.
"Very graceful, no?" the President says. "You must be proud. Your bull performed well. One of the best I've seen."
"It's not my bull," Enrique says. "Got a few more to go." Angelo is Bull no. 4. Great, so I've got to sit through a few more of these and not only that, but pretend that I'm enjoying this "fine art". Maybe talking about how gracefully the Matadors stab the bull will prevent me from actually having to look, Enrique thinks.

An hour later, and time for Bull no. 4. I can go after this, he thinks, feeling violently sick. Come on, Angelo. Come on. Maybe we can both go home. Maybe we can have a drink in a bar afterwards. Maybe I'll invite the Matador as well. If he's still alive.

Angelo comes out, to cheers and then gasps of horror and dismay.

The President gasps. He stares at Enrique accusingly.
"What?"
"Look what he's wearing."

Angelo is decked out in a sparkly blue suit reminiscent of a Seventies TV presenter. The hair by his horns is spiked like a teenager's. As the Matador stares at him he looks around dismissively.
"Can we change the music?" Angelo says, loud enough for the whole crowd to hear, as the crackly Paso Doble is piped around the ring. "I mean, this is shit."
"Wha'...what did you say?"
"You know ... something like - the Eye of the Tiger. That would be better."
"No," the Matador says, gazing at Angelo with a look of confused terror, and half-heartedly waving his cape around. "No. No. It wouldn't."
"Why not? What music do you like then, Westlife or something? You can't tell me you enjoy this garbage?"

The President of the Bullring turns to Enrique with a look of fury. "What...what...what did you do?"
"Nothing," Enrique says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, as he begins to hear shouts of "This is a travesty!"
"I didn't do anything..."

When Enrique stares into the ring, he sees the Picador approaching Angelo. I hope he remembered my advice about the Picador, he thinks, as the stupidly-dressed man waves his lance around threateningly. Just don't go near this guy.
"The weather isn't the best for this sort of thing, is it?" Angelo says, with one eye on the blindfolded horse. "That hat and everything. Your horse must be hot."
You idiot, Enrique thinks.
"Yes, I bet your horse is hot. Very hot indeed." Angelo speaks sleazily. He turns around and winks at Enrique. Goddamn it, guy, step away from there! Get back from the Picador, what did I tell you before?
"You must agree with me about the music, yeah?" The Picador doesn't reply. The audience are on the edge of their seats. Some of them are horrified.

"Yes," the Picador says finally, after about a minute of opening and closing his mouth again. "I do. Let's change it to something else."
"What?"
"I don't...know. Maybe Girlfriend by the Killers."
"I've heard that song a bit too much," Angelo says. "How about one of the 90s club classics, you know, like Moving Too Fast..."
"I don't care! Go away! Stop talking to me! Stop! I don't care..." The crowd watches in amazement as the Picador almost falls off the horse. His face has turned a horrible colour.

"We should put this bull back in the pen," the President says. He picks up his whistle. Enrique is sitting forward, trying to listen to the "conversation". Out of the corner he notices a cow who looks suspiciously like one of his dairy herd, standing patiently in one corner. She has a flower on one of her horns. Enrique keeps quiet, in the hope that nobody will notice. Near the cow, he can see a television crew approaching. Maybe it's because of my prize bull. I'm going to be on television. I'm going to be rich.

"Hang on," Angelo shouts, up to the VIP box. "Guys?"

Enrique watches in horrified fascination as Angelo puts his head through a hole in his blue sequinned suit and emerges a moment later with a few small darts and a samurai sword, which looks suspiciously like one Enrique ordered off the internet a few months ago, but which never arrived.
"Guys? When do I get to use these?"

"Good God," the President says. "Get it out of here! Just get it out!"
"I did my research for this bullfight thing," Angelo says. "I've got all the gear. I want to use it!"

The next moment is one that Enrique, and everyone else watching, will wish to forget for ever, as Angelo charges towards the Matador with the darts in his mouth. The Matador's screams in pain as the darts fly into his back, and then the sword ...
"No! Not the sword!" the Matador yells, as he falls to the ground. "No! No!"
"Well, why not?" Angelo says. "I thought this was meant to be a fight to the death between man and beast?"
"Yeah! But - ow ... ow ... ow ... not like this ... ugghh..."

It's like a car crash nobody can look away from. Which is sort of the point of a bullfight, Enrique thinks, trying to think about something philosophical to distract from the bloody scene in front of him. A scene which he, as the breeder of this bull, will be held ultimately responsible for.
"I didn't know he was like this," he gasps to the President. In all the time he "knew" Angelo, he knew nothing of his murderous tendencies. He thought that he was just like any other bull. Where did it go wrong?


But when Enrique turns his attention back to the ring, Angelo and the cow who came to watch are both gone, leaving only the dying Matador in the centre, and his shocked and astonished entourage.
"I think I better go," Enrique says. "You know. The bull. I need to find him." He gets up, but instead of looking for Angelo, sprints to his car, and once inside, presses the accelerator down as hard as possible, driving at full pelt across the countryside. Trying not to look at the cows. Maybe this could be the start of a new life ... yeah, right. On the run. He'll go back home, collect his things, and go somewhere, Brazil or something, change his name ... and try never to think of this again ...

I badly need a drink, he thinks, after three hours of driving, unable to bring himself to go home or even to stop anywhere. He stops outside a small bar on the outskirts of a village he's never heard of in his life, and walks in.

His heart plummets when he sees Angelo and the cow who appeared at the bullring, in the corner, enjoying a bottle of beer between them. The talking bull who could have brought him such fame has become a liability. Unable to stop himself, Enrique walks over to their table.
"Angelo, what in God's name were you doing there? You killed the Matador! And now you're sitting down and drinking beer!"
"I know," Angelo says. "It's good to even things up occasionally. I bet it was the most entertaining bullfight anyone had ever been to. Isn't that what they're always talking about? The element of surprise. The element of danger."
"Yeah," Enrique says. "I guess. But ... where did you get the darts? And the suit?"
"You'll see," Angelo says cryptically. "But how about we get pissed first, eh?"

Moon over Chisinau

Voroshilov was not looking forward to New Year. He found all public holidays difficult, they were for married men, those with families, not for a bachelor like himself. They were long grey days for him, holed up in his apartment with the wireless, attempting to read a novel and resist the lure of the bottle. He had few regrets about the choices he made in life, but those he did posses would return in those lonely hours.

He did have some family, a sister in Smolensk, his fine young nephew Alexei whose photograph took pride of place on the bureau. But they had never been close and there were too many years between them now, he had seen her perhaps half a dozen times in twenty years. It was a lonely existence, the life of a Chekist, but it was the one he had chosen, and for all their faults, all the mistakes the Committee for State Security had made, he still believed he had done some good.

So he had taken the assignment off Artemieva and enjoyed the younger mans relieved smile as he realised he would not now miss his children opening the gifts Father Frost had left for them beneath the Fir Tree. He collected the files and equipment he would need and instructed his secretary to make the necessary transport arrangements.

He had been fortunate enough to have travelled extensively within the Socialist Bloc but this would be his first visit to the Moldovan SSR. He boarded the sleeper at the Kievskaia station and settled into the compartment for the fifteen hundred kilometre journey to Chisinau. Despite his experience of long journeys twenty seven hours in a stuffy compartment was still a trial. He was polite to his travelling companions but made it clear he was not interested in their small talk. They were soon merrily drinking and playing cards and ignoring him. He spent the time sleeping and studying the reports the directorate had managed to put together and staring through the windows at the snow covered plains. He was heading to wine country; it would be a much pleasanter assignment if it were summer he thought ruefully.

It was warmer than Moscow when he arrived, a few degrees below freezing, a thin carpet of snow lay across the City. He took the opportunity to stretch his legs and walk around the centre before making his presence known to the local Chekists. It was an undistinguished Capital, a provincial city with little of interest for the visitor. A rather attractive nineteenth century Orthodox Cathedral and City Hall but like so many Soviet Cities it had been extensively damaged in the Great Patriotic War and it was mostly hastily constructed modern concrete buildings that lined the broad avenues.

Eventually he tired of the snow and boarded a tram to the local headquarters. The carriage was filled with workers, many had been drinking and were laden with bags and packages, it was only two days until the holidays and the city was in a good mood. The people were different here he observed, far fewer Slavic faces; they were dark like their Romanian cousins across the border.

Eventually he found the undistinguished grey building on a quiet side street. The sole agent on duty was offhand, almost insolent. Like many who had lived through famine Voroshilov was a small wiry man. Balding with watery, blinking eyes behind thick spectacles. He knew he was physically unprepossessing, a fact he had used to his advantage many times against those who underestimated him.

He took his credentials from his inner pocket and lay them quietly on the desk before the agent, who blanched and stuttered a welcome before showing him to an comfortable leather chair in an impressive office and offering him coffee or local brandy before rushing away to call his superior. Voroshilov remained polite, he did not admire those who attained a degree of responsibility and then used their power to tyrannise their underlings. They call themselves socialists... he thought.

The local intelligence chief soon rushed in to the office. A large man, the crumbs down his front and the alcohol on his breath indicating he had been dragged away from a good dinner.
"Comrade!" he said heartily "An honour!" A political animal rather than a policeman Voroshilov thought, a breed there were far too many of.
"I am here on the most pressing business" he stated curtly as he presented his credentials, senior enough for the local man to agree without demur.
"Whatever you need Comrade" he said nodding vigorously. An agent of this importance was not welcome in his fiefdom and the sooner he was back on the train to Moscow the better. "You have our complete cooperation".

He refused offers of vodka and food and gave the shaken fat man a list of resources and records required by morning before being driven in a battered old Moskvitch to the Orbis Hotel where his secretary Anna had arranged a suite, He never slept well on the first night in a new bed and he stayed up into the early hours, sitting in an armchair thinking. Four bodies found in as many weeks, the local police clueless and blaming a madman or an animal of some kind. The events had been noted by one of the analysts employed to monitor local police and intelligence reports for unusual events and who had dutifully reported the spate of killings to the twelfth directorate.

He awoke at dawn and after a breakfast of coffee and black bread and cheese he was driven to the site of the most recent murder. He inspected the frozen crime scene thoroughly, it was in an isolated area of a large park close to the city centre, The snow was stained pale pink, the local Police had belatedly followed Moscow’s instructions and covered the scene with a tarpaulin to protect it from further disturbance until he arrived, but the snow was so churned up by the struggle and the boots of the police that there was nothing it could tell him.

He visited the mortuary where the unfortunate victim lay. The attack had been brutal, much of the face had been devoured and the chest ripped open, the internal organs and entrails gone. Voroshilov saw the victims hands were a bitten bloody mess; the poor fellow had attempted to defend himself. It was hard to believe that a human being, even an infected one, had done this but he had seen worse, he had seen many terrible sights in his years in the service.

He surveyed the other three crime scenes. The first two were on the fringes of the City, in a vineyard and in an alleyway behind an apartment block. The third victim was found in the grounds of a city high school, they had only recovered half the poor caretaker; the rest he surmised to have been eaten. One did not have to be Ivan Putilin to work out that the perpetrator was growing bolder, venturing further into the city in search of prey. Each killing had occurred in the hours before dawn, like many predators the infected hunted under the cover of darkness.

He contacted the directorate and informed them that this was indeed a suspected outbreak rather than the work of a conventional murderer. They spoke with the Interior Ministry so that by the time he visited the city police headquarters the Chief of Police was expecting him. A wiry, intelligent man there was no false bonhomie for the visitor from Moscow. Voroshilov guessed a military background as he watched him bark out orders to his men, ordering the requested files to be found immediately and arranging for him to start interviewing the officers who had worked on the cases.

He called Anna at the Lubyanka.
"I have spoken with the Romanians" she reported "as ever they are as closed mouthed as they can be without displaying outright hostility. Our assets there have been far more helpful, they have discovered that the Securitat have been investigating a similar string of crimes around Iasi".
"Thank you. Ask our friends in Bucharest if they can obtain any more information" he said before replacing the receiver in its cradle. Probably came down from the Eastern Carpathians he thought, later there would be time to attempt to retrace its journey East in the hope of identifying the initial point of infection. Despite all their good work over the preceding decades each time they thought they had extinguished this contagion it would break out again.

At least the killings so far had the hallmarks of a single perpetrator; the victims had been fortunate enough to have been slain outright, the infection had yet to spread. It was his charge to stop it now, before some poor soul survived an attack and became infected themselves. In Siberia he had witnessed how the situation could escalate if it wasn't halted at the earliest opportunity. No one wished to have to return to the days of mass culls.

He again worked late in to the night poring over case notes and maps of the City, attempting to triangulate the possible lairs. Unlike with the Nightwalkers there was no cunning beyond the bestial amongst the infected, no higher thinking. The Academy of Sciences were sure of this, one of the few things they were certain of despite the considerable resources they had expended since Khrushchev’s day in studying the disease. But it chimed with his experience. If there were some vestiges of humanity left he had never witnessed it.

The next morning he again called for a car and driver. This time his ride was a smart new Volga, the station chiefs own he suspected. The fat man was determined nothing uncomplimentary would be reported back to Moscow. They returned to the vineyard where the first victim had been found and he instructed the surprised driver to rendezvous with him at the final site in three hours and began to walk. He had wrapped up for the conditions, felt lined boots, his greatcoat with the astrakhan collar, a fur hat and leather gloves. He was feeling the chill in his bones as he got older. The shrapnel in his ankle collected as a boy soldier in the fighting outside Konigsberg ached in the icy cold. He wondered how long he had left in the field, the Deputy Director was already making noises about him retiring from active service and becoming a controller. He had himself noticed that his physical reactions weren't as fast as they once were but assured himself that skill and experience more than made up for any slight slowing in reaction that came with age.

He could have been in the suburbs of any soviet city he thought as he trudged through the endless estates of large concrete apartment blocks set along wide tree lined boulevards. Like so many cities Chisinau had lost most of its housing stock in the war, the authorities had to throw these homes up as fast as possible. Still they were decent enough he thought, far superior to the peasant’s hovel he had been raised in.

It was just over a kilometre from the vineyard to the second crime scene. The victim, a local baker, had been found disembowelled behind the building in which he lived. It was literally on the edge of the city, backing on to open country. The schoolyard where the unfortunate caretaker had met his demise was deeper into the city. Trudging there he realised what a green place Chisinau must be in the warmer months, there were many small parks and derelict spaces, allotments and gardens between the blocks. He imagined the predator flitting between them in the dark, prowling the fringes of habitation in the dark hours before dawn, gradually growing bolder, and each night venturing a little further in as the citizens slept.

The weather and the incompetence of the local Police meant there was no remaining physical evidence at the sites, but he had not expected there to be. It was the feel of the place he wanted to experience, the lie of the land. Like all good hunters he needed to get into his targets mind, see the world through its eyes and from there hope to predict its behaviour. That was how his grandfather had taught him as they hunted deer and game in the Pripet Marshes many years before, learning the specialist skills which would later make him such a valuable servant of the state.

He returned to headquarters and commandeered an office, sending out for newer and more detailed maps and firing questions to the intimidated agents concerning each locale. With a metal ruler and mechanical pencil he drew lines connecting the crime scenes identifying at least a dozen possible hiding places, undoubtedly many more if one took into account abandoned buildings and overgrown spaces not shown on the maps. Each would have to be searched; they would harrie this beast into the open.

He looked through the last month’s crime reports. He should not have been surprised that no one had connected the murders with the recent spate of livestock killings; he was all too familiar with the incompetence of local Police Departments. He leafed through recent missing person reports, at least too were possible victims. both respectable family men who had gone missing in the early hours, both residents of the Eastern suburbs. He sent officers to interview their families and tentatively marked their last locations on the map. He knew its hunting ground, now he needed to locate the lair.

The following morning was New Years Eve. He was still asleep when a banging on the hotel door announced a break in the case, the discovery of a fresh cadaver. It was an hour after dawn when he arrived; the blood stained snow strewn with the half eaten remains of the victim, a local indigent according to the police.

They had made an effort to preserve the scene this time, determined to impress him with their professionalism. They had cordoned off the small park and had already started going door to door. He inspected the remains, ordering that no one touch anything until the photographer arrived to document the scene. Then each recovered body part would be carefully packed and sent to an address in Leningrad for further study.

The directorate did not simply exist to exterminate the infected, its remit also involved the study of the disease, the attempt to discover as much as possible about its nature and origins. It was notably more successful at the former than the latter he thought cynically. They had provided the specimens, both alive and dead but in twenty years the brains had failed to discover any more than you could learn in half an hour’s conversation with a veteran field agent.

Still, it was 1970 he thought, it was a new world. If they were ever to triumph over this disease it would be through the rational application of scientific methods, not through peasant folklore about full moons and silver weapons. He cursed the stupidity of the world which meant their activities must be conducted in the shadows, but he understood the political realities which necessitated the secrecy.

This condition had been eradicated so long ago in the west it had become myth. The Capitalists were shameless; their propagandists would stop at nothing to discredit the workers state and would enjoy a field day using this medical emergency to accuse them of backwardness. The CCCP must maintain its dignity in the eyes of the world, the many achievements of the Party must not be allowed to be overshadowed.

The dog handlers arrived, the canines agitated before they even got out of the van. He had seen this reaction before, the scent of the infected infuriating them. They ran around barking and snapping at each other and their handlers who desperately tried to calm them enough so they could get the scent, they headed eastwards barking uncontrollably until they lost the trail in the freshly falling snow. He wondered if it was worth wiring Perm to send him experienced Siberian trackers but decided that he needed to capture the beast now and it would take days for them to reach here.

He went back his car and studied his map of the city, marking off the latest killing.
"What is this area here?" he asked the driver, pointing to a large blank a little to the East of the line he had drawn between the most recent crime killings. The driver studied the map.
"An old cemetery" he finally said, shrugging. "Jews".
"Drive" he ordered, signalling the men to follow him.

A Jewish cemetery, he thought. Chisinau had been occupied by the Germans during the war and its large Ashkenazi population exterminated. There would be few grieving relatives left to tend the graves, few visitors. The perfect place for a den.

He felt an old pang of regret at the mention of Jews, remembering the old Rabbi in Czechoslovakia who long ago who had helped him deal with an infestation of Nightwalkers, and his doughty daughter, by far the bravest woman he had ever met. He had been a fool to let her go; there had been no other since.

The graveyard stood in one of the workers suburbs surrounded by a high masonry wall. He ordered one of the men to cut the large padlock that locked the gates; he did not have the time to wait for the key holder to be found. The Jews must have been quite a presence here once, he thought, surveying ranks of overgrown broken tombstones dating back centuries. A grey stone passional crowned with a fine cupola stood in the centre of the graveyard surrounded by skeletal birch trees. This was the place, every instinct honed in thirty years tracking the denizens of the dark screamed out to him.

He ordered the men to draw their weapons and to shoot on sight. He was not going to attempt to capture this specimen with these amateurs; he recalled the infected little girl he had once encountered in the Tomsk Oblast, she couldn't have been more than seven or eight. Out of sentimentality they had tried to capture her and two good men had lost their lives before he had ended her misery with a bullet to her head. He only hoped he could finish it today without losing any of these men. They had no idea what they were about to encounter.

He instructed the Police Chief to surround the small building with his men.
"With me" he told the local Chekists. They kicked the rotting wooden doors open. A rush of fetid hair hit them; the animal stink of the place told him they had the right place. Shafts of light fell through the broken roof; the interior was a tumble of smashed furniture. The remains of an old fire and the number of smashed bottles indicated that indigents sheltered here at times. One of the agents shone a powerful flashlight around the room and he could hear gasps as the beam alighted on a large pile of gnawed bones, some still bearing telltale shreds of cloth.

"It's here" he whispered, stepping into the room, signalling the others to be silent. He stood stock still, every sense alert, ready to react to the slightest murmur or movement in the air. He spun around as the sound of a window exploding outwards and frantic gunfire shattered the silence.

A bullet slammed into the wall six inches from his head as he leapt out of the door.
"Idiots" he cursed the panicked policemen as he took aim and fired at the wild figure attempting to scramble up the wall, they followed his lead and started firing in that direction, one of their number lay unmoving on the snow, his head half ripped from his shoulders. A bullet hit the beast in its shoulder and it fell out of sight behind the tombstones. He reloaded.
"Circle" he barked at the men, signalling them to move into position to entrap the target. This was the truly dangerous point, when it was injured and at bay. They approached carefully, Voroshilov using hand signals to move the men into position. He remained calm despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Suddenly a cry as one of the men was knocked backwards by the beast, he saw the figure darting between gravestones from the corner of his eye and swung around firing, he never ceased to be astonished by their speed. They pursued it firing, he bellowed orders for them to maintain a safe distance and attempt to encircle it, They had it trapped now in a corner of the cemetery and it bounded between and over the tombs in a desperate attempt to escape. It must have taken a dozen bullets before it fell, a half starved filthy wild haired man, patches of thick matted hair covered its body and thick yellow fingernails and sharp canines grown inhumanly long.

"Careful!" he yelled "Careful!" as they gingerly approached. He kept his pistol fixed on it, alert for any movement, the slightest sign of animation. They were only a few metres from it now when in one blindingly fast movement it threw itself into the air at a young policeman who fired blindly into its stomach. It twisted like an angry snake across the floor in front of them; he saw into its red angry eyes as he jumped backwards just a fraction too slowly, he felt its teeth tear through his boot and sink agonisingly deep into his foot. He pointed his weapon down and fired, blood and brain splattering his trousers as its skull disintegrated.

He sat down heavily on the edge of a tomb.

"I am infected with a disease termed Lycanthropy" he announced calmly to the shocked men. He gave the local station chief a number in Moscow to call immediately, handed over his gun and took off his signet ring; dictating the address of a synagogue in Prague it was to be sent to. He ordered himself handcuffed and gave strict instructions to the nervous agents on how he was to be contained until a specialist recovery team arrived.

His blood felt like it was boiling, he was hot, disconcerted, somewhere deep inside him he could feel a fury rising. His head was pounding. He knew the infection had already spread to every part of his body. He had often wondered what it was like to be infected, whether the self died or a small part of ones consciousness remained beneath the bestiality. He noticed the men had formed a perimeter around him, good, they were learning. He was dimly aware that the Police Chief had taken charge and he approved, the old military man would be capable of controlling him until help from Moscow got here.

It would not be long now. The Police Chief leant down and whispered in his ear.
"I could shoot you Comrade" he confided "we will say you broke your restraints. Better that than becoming like him" he indicated the bloody corpse on the floor.
"Thank you my friend" he said "thank you. But I have spent my life in service to the people, I have the heart not to fail them now" He could hardly think, his head was swimming. Why were his hands tied? His last conscious thought was that the moon still hung in the pale morning sky and a horrifying realisation that the distant howling he could hear was coming from his own violently writhing body.