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.

Merry Fucking Christmas

‘Who the hell would want to kill bunny?’

The question facing me on a crisp December morning as I watch forensic elves take hair samples from the wall and share glances that would kill a puppy. They aint happy. Buns was a name, a furry shoulder to cry on when the going got tough.

The scene was normal, a full palm tree sprouting from the floor and a half dozen chocolate wrappers strewn around the 8 by 5 apartment. What wasn’t SOP was watching weeping elven SOCO’s picking Bunny-skull from the rear wall. No TV. Bunny was a reader with no time for the movies. Maybe she’d have seen the whack job coming if she’d bothered with those gangster flicks.

‘I got an ear! Friends and romans I have an ear!’

The soggy brown backed item dangling from the latex gloved hand was stained vermillion on the inner white. I watched a stripy stockinged fuckwad bag it like he’d won the contract for the Lucky Charms cereal adverts. Easy. This one didn’t know bunny. Just another stiff.

I took myself off a 150 year case for Bunny. The White Rabbit had his fingers in every pie you can think of, and I was a week from presenting his ass for supreme violation by the court of fiction. But someone had to take down Bunny. Sweetest archetype you ever met. Eostres own kid and a mother to anyone who came calling. No doubt that bleeding heart is responsible for the bleeding throat wound. Trust. You want to play that game then someone will fuck you.

‘What are you thinking Jack? Don’t pull that close face on me’

I preferred him without the heart. Tinman got wiser than his paygrade.

‘Motive. Who wants Bunny off? It’s not slotting in, rust-ass. She was literally a perfect and blameless gal’

As he wiped down his steel hands I noticed a ring-dent on the wedding finger. His eyes tracked to meet mine with a slow squeal of rust.

‘Dorothy left me again, so ignore it. Bitch’ll be back as soon as the Red Shoes run her back home. As for Bunny, well SOMEONE is making a play for Easter obviously. She wasn’t killed for her shit, right?’

Right. A five dozen stacked crates of chocolate and two bales of shredded bedding paper. It ain’t the haul to be aiming for.. This shit was ideological.

Tinman had forgotten me, poking those steely appendages into the gaping stump that once held the head of our Easter Bunny. In my concentration I’d let slip a chill, but pulled the hoar frost back to the sarcastic handclaps of several pissed off elven forensic boys.

‘Weeeell, ho fucking ho’ he whispered

‘What’

From the throat wound a nasty sliver of metal, about a hands length, soaked in blood and upwards curving

‘Let the motherfucking slieghbells ring my friend. My Strawman wouldn’t have the heart to pursue this at this time.’

Semi frozen blood stained the sliver.

‘You’re saying this was the Fat Man?’

Another rusty creak made an impression of a smile done in metal.

‘Oh yes. This is Kringles work, Just surprised we don’t have the usual hoof-mark to the forehead. Rudolf is a vicious piece of shit. Nothing you can do Frost, you know he’s got his power on this time o year’

I feel my ice crackling along the carpet.

‘EssCee can’t always hide behind the presents. One day, he eats his last fucking pie.’

In The Valley of the Treaclers

In The Valley of the Treaclers
“There! Do you see it? Some three hundred metres or so to the southwest?”
I looked across the valley to where Verhasia was pointing, at a temple on a hillside swathed with wispily-stalked, lilac-and-indigo, three-headed plants. These were known as Treaclers. They were immensely rare in our kingdom and could only ever be found in the most remote valleys, if you were very very fortunate. The plants were usually picked, their thousands of lissom, wafty stamens dried up and crumbled, and the powder used as a cure-all for known diseases, injuries, afflictions and ailments.
A few years before, as a sixteen year old, I had stood outside the town hall and seen a skinny, long haired young traveller of around 18 with the whole world at his feet, just back from a trip to some far-flung shores, who was standing on the steps of the main bank with his bowl of ground-up Treacler Stamens and sprinkling it on a number of patients. Each paid him 50 pounds for his treatment, which was really very simple. I watched in wonder as a stump grew back into a hand, as a seriously nasty case of leprosy vanished like the early morning mist at rush hour, as a veteran with only one surviving limb was suddenly sprouting like a tree and leaping around like an acrobat. I had so much admiration for him, the wonder he had brought upon our society with his discoveries, and my lustrous teenage soul desired greatly to be his lover, as handsome as he looked then, although I cared not for his newfound wealth.
For a short time, he became famous, rich and popular. He made so much money from his miracle powder that he was able to make any social connections that he required. In the end, he became a rather sad shadow of what he had been. I remember seeing him one day several years later, grown bloated and still dining out on what he had achieved in the past. Where once his kudos and influence had been nation-wide, now he was a sad joke surrounded only by hangers-on and wealth-seekers, his paunch grown beyond all previous memory, his face bloated and reddened by drugs, booze and success. His early vigour had inspired me to seek to become an adventurer when I got older, just as his later plight was a constant reminder to strive to always keep walking onwards, never stand still.
For years people from our lands have subsequently been trying to find more Treaclers. For the most part, the powder was found very very occasionally on the black market. A dose suitable for re-growing an amputated arm could be bought from the scumbag Varhars (a truly ugly and vicious race, part human, part donkey, who ran most of the drug, sex and pornography trade in my town) on Keraddi Street, on very rare occasions, for around 50,000 pounds.
Verhasia was my old school friend and fellow human. She had grown up in the tropical south and moved to my more temperate town at the age of eleven. While adventuring, scouting for herbs and treasures, slaying Vicious Creatures and so on were all mostly still seen as the provenance of men, well, Verhasia and I, we were so famous that everyone knew us, everyone wanted to be our friend. The men all wanted us, and so frequently failed in their drunken attempts to charm us that they frequently assumed that we were lovers, which was generally either a flight of fantasy or a sad explanation for their own failure, but in truth a lack of understanding of the fact that we were simply too preoccupied with our only love, which was adventuring, travel and the road.
“Well,” Verhasia said, “I make it your turn.”
I looked at her, the way she so often managed to smile in a manner which was at once mischevious and accusatory.
“I went into the caves of Alp-You to retrieve the harp of golamander,” she said, “That paid for our house on the seafront. I got the treasure of King Hil the Fifth from the snatches of the evil metal maze which protected it. All you did was guard the entrance. I’m in credit, my dear. You go and get the plants.”
The truth was, as much as people thought we were inseparable, near-sisters or even lovers, we tended to argue a lot, bicker, and had come close to fractious separation on innumerable occasions. We needed each other; it was a friendship of convenience more than anything. Each of us would be nothing without the other, and we both knew it.
“OK,” I said, “You stay here and watch the hillside, I’ll go and collect the stamens. It looks a very impressive haul. Honey, we’re going to be even richer than before. Who do you reckon is guarding them?”
She smiled, nodding knowingly, saying nothing
I made my way through the clutter of dead Jilandertree stumps that lined the hillside. They were the most valued and precious trees in our kingdom, and I noted the way they had been brutally hacked down, cleared without a second’s thought; clearly the Treacler farmer had been planning a huge, ambitious expansion of his little empire.
But the latter point irked me so. From the expanses of the plants I had seen from up high, this was no ordinary operation, and it might well involve some very sketchy people.
I marched through the decapitated forest carefully checking left to right as I did so, my eyes peeled for Sythian horsemen gangsters, who I knew roamed these parts freely, or for Elvan assassins, distinctive in their red and black cloaks. None emerged, and all was silence.
And then I heard it as I got nearer… a sound as which very few people had ever even heard, that of thousands and thousands of Treacler plants blowing gently in the wind. The plants, you see, in many ways resemble musical instruments than any conventional member of the plant kingdom. The stamens of a single plant are like thousands of finely tuned violin strings, each producing a unique, individually incredible sound which when blended with the millions of others all around it, resembles aural paradise.
I stopped, dead in my tracks, a few metres from the purply-blue hill I had been approaching, forgetting my purpose, why I was there… the only thing which mattered any more was the music. I sat down, crossing my legs, placing my backpack on the ground and casting my belt to one side.
“Entrancing, isn’t it?” a voice came to my right as I leant back, propping myself up by my arms and gently swaying.
I looked up to see who had spoken. Standing before me was the largest, darkest Scythian Horse I had ever seen, its eyes sunken and pale, its six legs shoed in the most elegant manner in gold and lithantium-embossed spirals, although lacking a rider. That was unusual. The Horses and their Riders were almost never separated. Individually, one was always just an ordinary six-legged talking horse, while the other was just a bog standard human. But when the Scythans were riding their horses, they combined into something quite awe-inspiring, terrifying even. Ten Scythan horseback riders had, in the past, taken down entire mechanical armies from the North Western continent, destroying machines which only wizardry or an act of god could reasonably be expected to combat.
“You here alone?” the horse asked, snarling now.
“Yeah,” I said, “Why?”
“She’s not gonna like it, mate,” he replied, “You thinking of stealing our crops?”
My mind was already entranced, and it was becoming ever more truthful.
“To be honest with you,” I replied, “I had been…”
The horse eyed me, gathering its top right hand hoof up slowly, as if pondering its next move, but then it looked over its left hand shoulder. I was too entranced by the music to see a large angloid male, his skin metallic and grey from the living metal he was formed out of, his four arms clutching two pairs of semi automatic crossbows, which were loaded with black azamus darts. I’d been shot with those before.
He walked towards me, the darts aimed carefully at my head. When he reached his horse’s side, his six legs went through a familiar insectoid motion, arching downwards and then propelling him atop his horse. From there, he continued to aim the black pointed darts at me.
I knew there would be no escape, even if I had managed to escape the bewitching entrancement of the music, but I had to try to fight, try to break out of it. I reached for my sword, but as I did so, he pressed the metallic trigger on his crossbow, and I felt nothing more.
Being under the spell of an azamus dart is horrendous. Your body freezes up and goes numb, but after twenty minutes your mind reawakens, except that it no longer remembers quite who or what you are.

It’s great on the estate, yeah!

  
I live in a towerblock, one of seven on the estate. I'm on the tenth floor, so I get a good view across town. I like it when it rains– the droplets hit the windows and the city is blanketed by this leaden pall. Sometimes I feel like God looking down on his creation– all scurry-scurrying out of the wet. On the mad days it rains like thunder, and the leaves swirl up off the trees, like being in a snowshaker. The cars swish through the rain, and sometimes there are sirens.

It’s strange living here. Nothing is explained, you just hear what happened. Some guy got kneecapped outside the neighbouring block a year ago. I heard the shots, but never found out more. Just some guy got shot, probably a turf war over drugs. Another time, I go out and there’s a body, covered by a clear plastic tent. Lots of dibble around. A jumper– I don’t know who or why. Somebody jumped.

A woman jumped from my flat ten years ago. A friend didn’t like her nailvarnish, and she went off out the window.

Sometimes life is as hard as nails. 

*****

My neighbour comes out of his flat– and there’s a SWAT team there, assault rifles raised, with the head guy banging on the door next to his. He quickly jumps back in, and shouts to them, ‘hey, I need to get to work now. In three seconds I’m coming out, ok?’. They let him go and wait for the lift while they hold their rifles pointed squarely at the door.

Like I say, you get to hear what happened, but you have no idea why it did.

*****

Billy and Steve

They came round unannounced with the crack and h. We did them together; me for the first time; learning how to chase the h around the foil, how near to hold the lighter, and Billy showing me how you make a crack-pipe out of an empty can of Tennants. I also learned that cigarette ash, not usually highly prized, becomes a valuable commodity when smoking crack. All-in-all, it was very educational.

And then they drove me crazy– both talking at me at the same time, for a full hour. It was like Crack-rant Hour on Junkie FM. I am cursed to be a listener. On my left was Billy, (mad man), who was frantically informing me about a secret weapon that the military were developing that would melt all the metal in the world, including the fillings in your teeth. On my right, Steve spoke more slowly and philosophically, though no less passionately, about the need for a fairer society. 

Later though, they came down; we all went out for a walk and ended up sat under a tree in a small park, talking gently, almost reverently, about life, the universe and everything. A silvery plane flew high overhead, sharp against the azure sky. The Evening Star appeared slowly as the daylight dimmed, and it was beautiful. It was perfect.

*****

yeah, I'm getting closer, he said, I know I don't have enough pills right now, and I'm too scared to jump- can't slash my wrists- it's too painful, and anyway, you have to keep re-opening the wound- I can't do that…

I stopped taking my methodone– I’m gonna save it all up and when I’ve got enough I’m gonna down the lot

if I drink a bottle of vod plus the meth, that'll do it…

*****

He come round for the first time, and proceeded to try and rip out my bathroom plumbing. “Look at this, man, it’s worth money! That’s copper that is!”

*****

The Gift

Billy sez to me, “I knew this guy, Cal, in one a the homes. E was tryna kill ‘imself wi pills. E sez to me, “Billy, I feel bad, I wanna die.” I looked at what e ’ad, an I sez to ’im– “that won’t do it mate– y’need more pills than that. What y’wanna do mate, is string yrself up, that’ll fix it”

So next day, e comes to me, an e sez– “Billy, come ere, I wanna show yer sumfin’”… an so I follow im, an e goes behind 'is bedroom door an sez “wait here, I got sumfin I wanna show yer”

So I waits there in the corridor, an e goes in ‘is room, and then I hear this kickin’– e’s doin the Tyburn jig agenst the door… y’know, kickin it an that. E ‘ung imself from the A-shape metl frame above… y’know the bit of metl that closes the door?– e ‘ung imself from that, kickin agenst the door as e died

That was ‘is gift to me…”

An me, listnin, I sat an I sed nuffin’. “You ‘eartless fuckin cunt” I thought…

******

“Quick, close Heaven– Paddy’s coming!”

This morning I went out on the estate- had a chat with the old Irish Christian guy with the thick white beard, who sits drinking on a bench. It might sound like I’m using a lazy stereotype, but his name really is Paddy. 'I'm livin on Faith' he says, in his thick brogue, an I think, 'nah mate, you're clearly livin on Special Brew'

I like Paddy- he's always goin on about The End Times, it’s funny. He’s got a proper hard-on for the Book of Revelation.

He gets real boring after about ten minutes though- he just never shuts up. He’s one of those people who are well into their monologues, and skillfully stonewall any attempts at a conversation by not leaving any natural pauses in their speech whatsoever. A cunning trick. Like I say, I am cursed to be a listener.

If there truly is a Heaven, Jesus and the Saints will soon be sorry that they let bigmouth Paddy in!

*****

Notice on the messageboard-

"good loving homes wanted for 3 gorgeous golden labrador pups. Very playful, free to caring owners. Tel- 0795----------

PS- remove my notice again and i'll break your legs”

*****

What she said

“They phone me and they phone me– why? I have nothing to offer. It’s like the heroin lure, the bait; the trap is set. I wonder if I’ll ever get off it now. When I stopped, it was for Luke, and I stayed off for him. Now I’m just another of the lost souls, sucking, sucking…”

He died; her only child bleeding to death in her arms. So many years ago now, but the grief never leaves.

She sucks on the pipe, and chases the small brown blob across the tinfoil, catching the blue-grey smoke that rises off it like a comet’s tail.

“They phone me and they phone me… more rarely now. I think they’re giving up. Everyone tells me that I should get out more, that it’s not good to lock myself away, not speaking to anyone. Who would I speak to? All I can think about is the past…”

*****

The sunrise is beautiful over the estate, viewed from here on the tenth floor. It comes in, shining yellow, or orange and pink in high Summer, rising over the Pennines, blasting the angular grey concrete with magical light.




This is a work of fiction; any similarity between characters alive or dead is purely accidental.

In the Neighbourhood

You alight at a stop you haven't visited in almost twenty years. You immediately notice the changes; the wooden bus shelter is gone, replaced by an ugly perspex oblong box. The trees have grown, they're saplings in your memory but now they are almost full grown. Physically the small shopping precinct remains the same; a quadrangle of single storey red brick shops with benches and shrubbery in the centre and a covered walkway on each side to protect shoppers from the rain.

You're reassured the Co-Op is still there, though its smaller than you remember, but many of the other shops have changed hands. The florist is gone, the video shop has become a take-away and the Ironmongers one of those pound shops festooned with cheap plastic goods from the Far East. The chippy is still in business under a new name and the hairdressers remains. You can’t help but look through the window as you pass half hoping one of the girls is still working there, but you don’t recognise any of the faces.

You cross the car park heading for the estate where you spent the best part of your teenage years. From a distance it is exactly as you remember it, modern townhouses clustered closely together, each home one of half a dozen slightly different designs. They were brand new when you first came here a quarter of a century ago, but as you get nearer you see the changes, an extension here, a new fence there. They look lived in now, weathered.

You weave your way through the blocks. You still remember each alley and shortcut, strange what stays with you. You stand before your old home, it hasn’t changed except for the addition of a satellite dish and a double glazed front door. Back in the day everyone still had the blue wooden doors put in by the Development Corporation. Your heart misses a beat when you realise the trellis you and Dad put up beneath the kitchen windows one summer Sunday afternoon is still there. Mum never did get round to planting the roses to grow up it.

Mum and Dad. They had broken up just a few weeks after you had left for Uni. You had been shocked. All those years they'd been keeping it together just for you, and you had no idea. You had never noticed their unhappiness, you'd never heard a cross word between them. You wonder if you could ever be so selfless.

With the house gone there had been little reason to come home, you kept in touch with your mates for a year or so, kept promising to come and visit but you'd got so caught up in your new life in the City; and the truth was you couldn’t wait to get out of here, couldn’t wait to get away. You didn’t have an unhappy time here, but it wasn't the best days of your life either. Mostly it had been a bore, a waiting room for adulthood and real life.

It's difficult to understand the nostalgia you've been feeling for this place over the past year, so strong it sometimes keeps you awake at nights. You hardly thought about the place for so long. Yet there you'd be, a couple of bottles of chardonnay the worst for wear, watching old pop videos on YouTube and fighting back tears for what once had been. Perhaps it's ageing, you reason. Looking at forty, you can feel youth ebbing away; and your impelled to grasp for a time and place forever out of reach now.

You stare up at your old window, wondering whose bedroom it was now. You remember how you had painted it brilliant white with a black blind and black duvet and that black ash furniture that was so fashionable back then. You'd thought it was so cool. You see a face peering out of next doors window. You wonder if Rosie still lives there but turn and walk away, you don’t want to see people, just places.

You walk on through the estate. You were in your twenties and far away from here when you realised each block was named after a Kent Village; Cranbrook, Davington, Halstead... the more idyllic the name the rougher the block it seemed. You come out on to a cycle path and follow it past the converted barn which had held the youth club. You remember the Discos, the highlight of the month. The excitement building as the day approached, all pooling your money to buy cider and cheap cigarettes. They had been a laugh though they invariably ended with the girls in tears as the boys fought or one of the younger kids was rushed to hospital to have their stomach pumped.

Eventually you reach the school. It’s much as you remember it, the leafy red brick campus and the large library and sports centre shared with the community. Rather a decent school looking back, you'd been happy enough . You’re curious whether any of the staff are still here from those days, perhaps one or two of the younger might still teaching. You walk up to the library and gaze in through the plate glass; you'd spent so much time here. No one had heard of the internet in those days and if you wanted to know about something you had to look it up, and you'd been one curious kid, obsessed with science. You hadn’t been a swot though; you’d managed to combine your interest in physics and chemistry with being one of the boys, a bit of a jack the lad.

You resist the temptation to go in and wander across the playing fields, remembering the sports days and the games lessons when they'd make you play rugby in the rain. You're pleased to discover the gap in the hedge is still there, kept open by generations of dog walkers. You clamber through and walk down a gap between two houses into a street of thirties semis. You’re coming into the old village now, over a thousand years old but swamped by the suburban red brick estates of the eighties development. You wonder if the bitter division between the estate and the village kids still exists. It had ended in punch up's on more than one occasion back then.

You walk to the village green, fiercely preserved in the face of urban sprawl. You cross to the Three Horseshoes. It had been a real old mans pub back in the day, stinking of stale tobacco and beer. It was very different now. The inside had been gutted; the old division between the saloon bar and lounge was gone, replaced by a big open space with dark hardwood floors and pricey designer furniture. It’s early for lunch, only just gone midday and you’re the first customer. You take a table by the window and ask for a menu.

You enjoy a light lunch of salad and a glass of very good Pinot Noir. You gaze at the whitewashed thatched cottages that surround the green and the Norman Church at one end and wonder if there were any working families left in the Village, properties must cost a fortune. It's picture-postcard pretty, Claire would love it here.

You know she was hurt when you told her this morning that you wanted come here alone, despite her protestations that she understood. Coming back had been her idea, she talked a lot about the future and you suspect she thinks the past is holding you back. You'd resisted the idea at first, you had never been one for revisiting old ghosts, but eventually you agreed. Telling yourself it would be good to see some of the old places, see how things had changed.

You stroll down through the village and across the main road to the lakes. A chain of large man made pools in parkland, they had featured heavily in the advertising when the new suburb was first built. If you grew up anywhere it was here. Memories cascade out of the past; the long summer days lying beneath the trees, the chilly autumnal nights when you’d light a fire until the Police would come and chase you away. You remember the winter the Lakes had frozen and you’d dared each other to walk out further and further on to the ice until you’d all scrambled off in panic as it began to shift and crack around you, Danny C nearly drowning after diving in off one of the small bridges and smashing his head on a rock, Stephie Jones, her black hair swept back and her dark eyes twinkling in the moonlight.

You sit down on a bench. It's almost painful to be here, all those memories, all those years ago... You wonder for the hundredth time where everyone is now, what they're doing, what they look like. Probably married with wives and kids, working in the building trade or the engineering plants. Sometimes the urge to start googling their names, or to join one of those sites for reuniting lost friends is almost overwhelming, but you never do in the end. It wasn't them, it was you. You had changed so much, how would you even begin to explain your life now to them?

'You've changed' had been a bad thing to say when you were growing up, a charge uttered in anger, almost an insult. You'd never understood that attitude, wasn't life about change? growing, evolving, moving on? They were good people here, your people you think as you head back to the precinct, decent people. But you could never have been yourself in a place like this. Too small, too insular. They would never have understood, you'd have forever been a talking point, a freak. And you'd have been so alone.

You walk back to the precinct and wait for the bus back into the city centre. It's full of kids on their lunch break running and shouting and generally running amok. You feel such an identification with them, for a moment at least you are one of them, half expecting Nathan or Jonesy to come screeching around the corner on a stolen mountain bike or Fat Phil to wander nonchalantly out of the chippy munching on a saveloy.

Your reverie is ended with the growing realisation that a couple of boys are sniggering at you. Hardly a new experience but it's always unpleasant. You're relieved when the number twelve pulls up. You think you look fairly good, tall and slim and you’re meticulous about your clothes, hair and make up. But sometimes people catch on, something in the set of your features, or the timbre of your voice or the way you move gives it away. You are so much more at ease with yourself than you were in your twenties, when you first started living as a woman. It’s been over six years now since the final operation and you feel comfortable with yourself in a way you never had before. You’re happy now.

Claire is waiting for you at the hotel surrounded by the detritus of a boozy lunch; she’s sipping on a gin and tonic and flirting with the outrageously handsome East European cleaning the tables. You sit opposite her and order a drink. She looks at you expectantly.
"How did it go?" she asks. You take her hand in yours and stare into her big grey eyes.
"Good” you tell her, squeezing her hand. “It was interesting to go back”. She smiles, waiting for you to elaborate
“I've come to a decision" you tell her "There's nothing I want more than for us to have a baby”

Green, Black, Red

Little towns breed stories. There aren’t enough people in these places to come up with a consistent idea of what makes sense and what doesn’t, so people tend to simply watch what happens and call that normality. They don’t ignore the important bits like other people do. Our town is a bit further away than most from the troublesome influence of civilisation, in fact it is the only town on a little spit of an island twenty miles or so off the coast. Still part of Britain of course, in the same way that the moon is part of the Earth.

Here to illustrate my point are three stories from a single year in our town, the year 1985. A birth (or two, or maybe not) a marriage and a death. We’ll start with the green ink, and the marriage of Jonah and Wilma.

Jonah was a boat captain, provided you can be a captain when you’re the only person on the crew. Naval technicalities aren’t my strong point. Wilma was the chef at the local pub, Cthulhu’s Arms. Foolish romantics to the soles of their boots, the two of them decided to marry on the spot where they had first met. They had first met shortly after a shipwreck, or rather during it. Some of the boat was probably still showing at the time. This was before Jonah became a boat captain of course, in fact it was that very shipwreck which created the vacancy for a new boat captain, and indeed a new boat.

Jonah and Wilma had been the only two survivors of the wreck, the latter having hauled the unconscious former ashore with biceps she’d honed through years of dragging barrels up from the harbour. The place where their eyes first met (Jonah’s eyes were somewhat unfocussed at the time, largely because he’d only just started breathing again after a break of a couple of minutes) was Satan’s Toe, an uninviting pinnacle of silverish-green rock trailing out in the wake of the narrow, slithering peninsula which pointed back towards the mainland. Satan’s Toe could be reached on foot once every six months, for a period of roughly four minutes, during the very lowest tides of the year. Could is an important word here.

The day and the hour of the ceremony were chosen by the sun and moon rather than the bride and groom, but happily they selected half past eleven on what turned out to be a very pleasant May morning. The man from the coastguard did a briefing beforehand for the assembled guests. Attention was drawn to the slippery nature of the rocks which had to be traversed to get down to the waterline, as well as to the highly temporary nature of the causeway which led out to the Toe itself. The priest was doing press ups on the beach and muttering to himself as quickly as he could in rehersal for what would have to be a very rapid service.

The outward journey passed without incident, save for several nice dresses becoming shredded by barnacles and a number of top hats being swept away on the wind. One of these was later spotted adorning a rather dapper-looking seal. The causeway appeared exactly when it was supposed to, presented like a wedding gift by the parting sea. The ceremony itself was beautiful. History records that it was rather too beautiful in fact, and the guests stood so long sharing the blissful tears of the newlyweds that everyone forgot all about the sea. Until, that is, the sea reminded them. Jonah and Wilma were once again the only survivors, washed ashore with smiles on their faces. It seemed they didn’t even realise they were wet, and they hadn’t noticed the screams at all.

It was a beautiful ceremony. Everyone on the island says so, even though nobody who is still alive was actually there. They know because they’ve all seen the photographs of the event framed and hanging in the dining room of Cthulhu’s Arms. Nobody is quite sure how the photographs succeeded in remaining extant while the photographer himself did not.

Now we come to death. As my grandfather used to say, we all have to go some time. Better to make it count. If you’ve got any soft tissue left then you’ve not tried hard enough, he was often heard to insist. Recognisable bone fragments are understandable but still best avoided. There’s nothing much to be done about the teeth though, all you can really do is try and ensure that each of them is as far from the others as possible.

Dear old grandad got his wish. An artillery shell removed him from this plane of existence as comprehensively as he could ever have hoped for. He wasn’t in a war or anything, the shell had landed next to him in Normandy some decades earlier. He had taken it home hidden in a bundle of looted fur coats and kept it ever since, a reminder of the litle bubble of good luck in which he had drawn every single breath for forty years. An admirable gesture from a certain point of view; a nod of recognition, if not thanks, to such fates as might be passing.

The only regrettable thing was Grandad’s insistence on keeping the bloody thing on top of his drinks cabinet. Never a man to let that last drop of whisky linger on the nozzle of the optic when it could be in his glass, it was grandad’s overenthusiastic jiggling of a spent bottle that finally roused the shell from its slumber and burst the bubble, settling the score at last. You may well ask me how I know all this. Well, in the crumbling wreckage of his house they found a glass tumbler, unbroken and containing a generous measure of Tallisker and a single human tooth.

Finally to birth, to red ink. The birth of a force of nature, the birth of a Valkyrie. Apparently it never even occurred to her parents. Looking at the two of them I could well believe that. Valerie Kerry, her name was. And from day one they were calling her Val. If they’d tried to think up something like that they’d never have been able to. Serendipity runs in her family. That might seem like a good thing but she’d be sure to tell you that a happy accident is still an accident. Depending on the nature of the mishap you may only be happy about it because of the lingering concussion.

Valerie Kerry carved a little hole in the world and tumbled into it one summer’s day in that already eventful 1985. I wasn’t there at the time, but it’s one of those things you can picture in your head knowing that what you see is prety close to what happened. She would have been born with the flowing red hair, that much is certain. A little tangled, unavoidably, but pro-vitamin glossy and glowing like a glitterball made of grass snakes. I expect she probably opted for a simple, loose dress of some sort. White wouldn’t really be appropriate in the circumstances, dark green is more her anyway. I doubt she’d have bothered with a speech. There was probably little more than a yawn, a cursory wave of the hand and a murmured request for some comfort or other, a blanket or a brandy and babycham.

Young Valerie spent the next three weeks killing time, but she did so in the grip of a certain sense of unease that she’d have been unable to put her finger on even if she had learned to control her fingers properly by that point. She wouldn’t have known it yet, but the world was incomplete with only her in it. The parents, sundry relatives and harried medical professionals that swarmed around her were a tiresome irrelevance. Like ghosts but without the advantage of novelty value. I couldn’t bring myself to look on at this dreadful situation and not do something to help. When three weeks were up I finally came to join her. Arriving naked, bald, slime-soaked and with a lamentable lack of grandeur, I squared my shoulders and began to prepare myself for what lay ahead.

Naturally I don’t remember the details of those first few months of our lives, I only know the broad narrative structure of it all, the bit left intact in between the islanders’ collective memories. It doesn’t really matter how we first met. It’s safe to assume that the conversation wouldn’t have sparkled. Passers-by would not have felt that they could see history being made. Two babies in two prams, pausing opposite one another for a minute or so while their mothers talked. No angelic choirs, no scurrying thunderbolts, no line-dancing lepers. There would have been something though, a cloud briefly obscuring the sun like a little cosmic wink. A pigeon flying away for no reason. A car swerving into a barrier two hundred miles away. Something.

Because in amongst the stories and lurking gently beyond the reach of words there’s one thing that really stretches credulity; one thing that alludes to real magic. Even out here nobody can see it. Against all logic, three weeks late and via a completely separate family, an only child was given her twin brother.