Molly Cutpurse 

 1 

FILMS I HAVE SEEN 

What have I become? Before tonight, I imagined I was kind. Perhaps 

even someone with a degree of compassion. I give to charity when I can. 

I kiss babies when I have the chance and my policy, of Eastern flavour, is 

to harm no one, a policy which, because it works for billions of others, is 

good enough for me. 

It is twelve twenty five after midnight in Leyton, a dry part of Newham, 

East London and I am benight on all counts. I am driving back from a 

West End film and a late delicious Indian dinner when there is a 

disturbance to my right. 

Twelve or so ‘men’ but with the brains and demeanor of children are 

running jingoistically. Six white and six black. The blacks following the 

whites. 

I stop and watch as a tall black guy (I’ll call him Mr. Tibbs gone wrong) 

violently throws milk crates to the ground and, still at this point, I think 

its just high spirits. A drunken commotion. Surprisingly though, he 

creatively turns a crate into a shield and materialized a long piece of 

wood. He charges then. 

All the time the white men are trying to get away but an explosion of 

violence occurs right there in the middle of the road, on a crossing if you 

please! 

The compounded imagery was too much and I thought of a film. Zulu. I 

counted. Five, six, seven, eight, nine blows with the wood on one white 

man’s head (let’s call him Noel Coward) and everyone was twitching, 

darting into the action for a swift kick then back for safety. Mouths 

opening and closing, shouting, screaming. The opening from Romeo and 

Juliet. A badly choreographed corrupted ballet. 

Their shouting seemed important but I could not hear them because I had 

the volume of my stereo up quite high. Like everybody does. For those 

interested, it was actually Beethoven. Let the synchronicity not be lost. 

Now all this time, Noel Coward simply protected himself as best he could 

but then, reasonably, he broke away from his daytime self. With the help 

of others, rationality was lost and he degenerated and backslid just a 

smidgen down that evolutionary ladder to a mindless, merciless, 

uncivilized churl. Any modern film will do here. By this time, I had my 

window open and had heard a grunt of “You got my meat” or something 

lexically similar. 

Mr.Tibbs gone wrong’s testicles were squashed by powerful blows from 

soft trainers, if that be possible. Several it looked to me. Blood was 

broken and teeth flowed. Or was it the another way around? Whatever. 

Help came from other sources (presumably from the same public house 

or breeding kebab shop) and the worse case of violence I ever witnessed, 

erupted not fifty feet from my bonnet. Other cars stopped of course, their 

owners (like me) safe, making the most of the late night entertainment.  

In less than a minute though, it was over and they vanished like a red 

mist, before 007 could get there, trawling home, probably to beat their 

wives or girlfriends and sleep in their dustbins. 

The traffic moved but I remained motionless, replaying it all, every blow. 

It was as endlessly fascinating as a dead bird might be to a five year old 

child who has just discovered that death exists. But because it was also a 

drama of mean proportions and unimportance, it was pathetic.  

Oh, but come on you say. This has been happening since we grew a 

brain. I remember my brother telling me about the Sixties (I’m not old 

enough to remember it myself you understand) Mods and Rockers on 

Brighton Rock. “Hundreds of us” He used to enthrall “Bottles, bricks and 

knives-go well after twelve pints!” Bless him. He is over fifty now, bald 

and has difficulty holding a pint let alone drinking twelve. 

Yes, I comprehend that. I understand the mentality of those unaware 

enough to climb out of their own early conditioning. I accept their laziness 

and unwillingness to change. I understand the alcohol and drug 

influences, the boredom, the brute within us all, ready to pounce after 

nine blows to the head.  

I personally like to think that my own screaming mad shadow side would 

rear up long before nine blows but that is my imagination and indignation 

working. No, I understand all that. 

What I cannot discern though is my unabridged apathy, my soul utterly 

empty of compassion as I watched the comic cloud of the terrible fight 

spilling closer and closer to me.  

I am usually emotional. Very as it happens. But tonight, I felt nothing. It 

was just another film and an ill made one at that. Too much action and 

not enough plot. Mesmerized as I was, I wanted to switch over, make a 

cup of tea and do something else for this had become boring. 

But here was humanity so unhappy, so stupid that they might have 

difficulty reading about themselves, bleeding, bruised and sliced and 

diced before my eyes and I felt nothing. 

Perhaps it was because I imagined myself surrounded by Tacamahac 

trees and was reminded that this was how a population in a jungle 

behaves. Naturally. Perhaps while fighting for food. Or pita bread and 

lamb even. You see, I joke. I cannot feel sympathy. 

I sat in mesmerized fascination, within the safety of my steel chariot and 

felt nothing. I did not care what they were doing. I did not care how much 

they were hurting, bleeding, or crying. I did not care what they were 

feeling. All I cared about was myself and my lack of compassion. 

So is this it? Racial fighting over bacterial-laden kebabs? On an inner 

London street at night? Nothing new here. The only thing born was a twin 

reflection. How did I get to think like this and what have I become? 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2

Just an evening out. 

Like water running through fingertips, a pair of black nylon stockings were 

drawn over recently waxed legs and fastened to a suspender belt of the 

same colour. Rising from the edge of the bed, Gillian took matching bra 

and knickers from a cream coloured drawer and pulled them on, adjusting 

the knickers in a major effort to hide the tiny bulge of his powdered 

penis. 

A full-length mirror to his left showed a disconcerting, and perhaps to a 

stranger’s eyes, worrying picture. Without his wig; three quarters female 

and a quarter male. A composite of two fragmentary images. At twenty- 

nine, most of his natural hair had been lost. Now, because of what 

remained and shortened by a weekly application of an electric razor, 

Gillian used the power of his imagination, pulled in his belly, pouted his 

lips, widened his eyes and tried to look coy and sensitive but only 

achieved the appearance of an improper nun. 

The bedroom, his boudoir, was bathed in the fragrance of flowers and 

essences. The last rays of a setting sun cast a parallel light, illuminating 

not only his cigarette smoke but also a haphazard array of shoes, 

underwear, dresses and coats. The carpet upon which he had liberally 

dusted himself with talcum powder after his bath also bathed in this 

pleasing evening glow. Automatically, Gillian choose a skirt and 

complementary blouse to complete his dressing. By the time he had 

combed and brushed his wig, adjusted his clothes and painted and fixed 

his face, the nun had been exterminated, along with the life-long habits 

and persona of a man. Earrings were chosen, rings, a necklace and a 

broach for his coat baptized the image. 

The emergence of this butterfly yanked and transformed the estate agent. 

Instantaneously, the male was gone, replaced by a twisting scented 

flower who’s every influence and manoeuvre was feminine. But as Gillian 

had been dressing this way since he was sixteen, each touch, each action 

was graceful, uncontrived and unconscious. 

Her nails were painted last, a deep blood red. Then, as she sipped a gin 

and tonic, money and documents were transferred from wallet to purse. 

The time was six fifteen when the sun disappeared. More perfume, a horn 

sounding from outside her house, minor adjustments and smoothing by a 

mirror next to the front door and three minutes later she was with two 

friends in a taxi on their way to the West End of London. 

The cab driver had seen it all before. Not only did he often get the job to 

pick up from Gillian’s Parliament Hill house but being a taxi driver in 

London for thirty-five years, he had often picked up fares who were 

dressed in the opposite sex’s clothes. It was their attitude and the way 

many of them behaved he liked; not loud or abusive but, rather, well, 

lady-like in an old fashioned way. In his mind, many of them behaved 

better than women. Deeper than that, many of them reminded him, in 

attitude only, of women that he himself had once dated. 

Gillian and her two friends were not silent tonight though. Not loud but 

definitely not silent. Sat next to her was Gale. As tall as Gillian but 

painfully thin, she gripped a handle with one hand while simultaneously 

sweeping dark curls from her face with the other. Because virtually every 

bone in her rather large hands and wrists were prominent, she usually 

wore dark elbow length gloves and so her entire wardrobe pivoted around 

those gloves. Tonight, she wore a long dress of black velvet, an item 

which the third member of the cab had advised her not to wear because it 

was not a cold evening. 

Gale’s face, or rather her makeup, was from a different time. Older than 

Gillian by twenty-one years, she had somehow resisted the natural 

evolutionary urge to update herself. She still wore the same style of 

makeup, clothes and hairpiece she first used when she had started to 

dress in women’s clothes. Even when she decided to take everything a 

stage further and become a transsexual, nothing in her appearance 

changed. Existing only on a small inheritance, she tended to buy at 

charity shops, many of which carried Seventies clothes and shoes, even if 

they did not mean to. 

But I am not writing about fashionable Seventies clothes but the type a 

suburban woman might have worn. The housewife’s choice from the 

‘Carry on’ films. Clothes with a style about them that rendered the woman 

instantly identifiable as being a mother with little cash to spare. But 

indifferent to her out-ward appearance, Gale was a mathematician and 

spent part of her week reading, visiting museums and probing around the 

dusty old book shops in WC1 looking for out of print volumes. 

As you would possibly expect, her face was rather on the gaunt side. 

Viewed from the proper angle, and, at a glance, you could be forgiven for 

mistaking her for what she could really be; a middle-aged spinster who 

taught mathematics. Her face bore the tiniest of scars; the result of 

hundreds of hours under the needle in her bid to remove every trace of 

her former beard. That was long ago though and because of that 

determination, she now only needed the slightest trace of foundation and 

a smear of colour on her lips to look passable. 

She and Gillian had known each other for over eighteen years. Gillian was 

the only one who had been by her hospital bedside as she slowly slipped 

into unconsciousness under the influence of a dripping sedative, prier to 

having the ‘Cut and Tuck’, the operation to remove his male genitalia and 

replace it with an artificial vagina. Seven years ago. The operation 

eventually changed her character beyond all measure. Within a year, she 

had become lively and almost passionate about life. She had even had a 

relationship with a man, test-driving the newly acquired apparatus. 

Her voice was inherently strange though. It still had a hint of the bass 

undertone of a man but it was fully femininely modulated as taught by a 

speech therapist; the hesitancy of answering, the last word of a sentence 

inflected upwards, her habit of not interrupting.  Because she was often 

mistaken for a man over the telephone she avoided using that instrument 

whenever she could. Unfortunately, she also had developed the unsocial 

habit of sub vocalization so she talked nearly all the time, her thoughts 

only to herself. 

Gillian’s sonic communication was pure male though. Although not of the 

barking pub type, she was conscious enough to lower and soften it when 

dressed but because she had not been professionally trained, it came out 

breathy. She too had taken on the characteristics of how she thought 

women talked and the result was a falsetto being an amalgamation of a 

boy and a doll. When Gillian talked, people noticed. 

The third member of the cab lived in Gale’s house. She rented the top 

floor from her and had been there for nearly two years. It was a 

relationship based on income really for they had virtually nothing in 

common besides their interest in woman’s clothes. Gale secretly wasn’t all 

that keen on her lifestyle for Martina was a drag queen. She earned her 

living doing cabaret in the gay nightspots of the capital and she didn’t 

have an off button. 

She was the youngest and loudest of the three, having just turned 

twenty. Knowing she was gay from the age of seven and suffering a 

hideous childhood because of her natural effeminacy, she blustered her 

way though life with sheer arrogance and power having discovered that 

was the best way to cope. Martina’s personality coalesced into a dark and 

narrow world. She suffered the attentions of straight people only when 

she had to, discerning them with an ease that comes from suffering. She 

had the instinctive and protective nature of a lion, even when she was 

drunk, which was often. Gillian had noticed, when out, how often she 

would sit and glare, eyes flitting from one person to another as if studying 

her next meal. Always on the lookout for the next insult, the next verbal 

blow. Ready to go into battle. 

She was not afraid of a fight either as the other two had noticed during 

their time with her. Martina was a born scrapper whether dressed in 

woman’s clothes or not. If she had been born fifty years earlier and not 

been gay, she may well have been a docker; a hard drinking slugger. But 

in this life she was tall and well proportioned with small features ideally 

suited for her profession. She sought and then choose the drama. She 

loved to be on display, to trumpet her sexuality. She affirmed her 

outpouring on every level not caring who was within her vicinity. Both 

Gillian and Gale thought her dangerous to be with at first but her 

tempestuous declaration of herself also allowed her considerable gift of 

repartee to be on show as well. She was a born storyteller, a natural 

joker, and a clown. Those in the cab, including the driver loved her for it. 

She wore pants in the brightest organza and a see-though top showing 

her ample silicon breast implants. She had her own hair, which was 

flavoured dark red, and her generous lips matched that colour. Her eyes 

were flame red too in three different shades and as she sat with her back 

to the driver, well aware he could smell her fifty pounds a bottle perfume 

through the crack in the glass, she fluttered her eye-lids and puffed 

irrelevantly on a glittering cigarette holder looking with mock disdain 

upon the people they passed. 

“Look at that waist!” She pointed, smoothing down her own. “Darling, 

shouldn’t be allowed on the street!” 

Their destination was an art gallery in the Cromwell Road. Martina’s 

boyfriend owned it and tonight he was putting on a display by new gay 

artists. With each painting selling for a minimum of a thousand pounds, 

the chances to rub shoulders with the rich and, possibly, the famous, the 

prospect of exotic food but really, just simply a different place to be seen 

in, Gillian was looking forward to being there. It would be an exiting start 

to the weekend. 

As Martina had ordered the cab, she sprang out first and tossed a tenner 

to the driver, ordering him “Not to spend it all at once darling” Then with 

a provocative wiggle of her backside, she minced her way into the gallery, 

one arm akimbo on her hip and the other, with the holder, waving already 

to a friend. 

“Aaaaagh! Darling” She screamed to the first pretty and much painted 

lady she met. “Mwah, Mwah, Mwah! Oh you look so gorgeous sweetheart. 

Love that colour. Where’s David?” 

“He’s seeing to some drinks darling.  Are these your friends?” 

“Oh yes. Now, this is Gillian. She’s so...hot.” Martina smoldered like a fire. 

“And this is Gale, who taught me just simply everything darling about 

comedy!” 

As about seven pairs of eyes suddenly focused on us, particularly Gale, 

for a second, nobody spoke. Gale looked uncomfortable and anyone could 

see the puzzlement in people’s eyes as they fished for the explanation. 

Seeing Gale’s dark, quiet ungainly, dour figure next to Martina’s bright 

explosion of colour and energy, nothing made sense. 

But suddenly there was a crack of laughter. 

“Oh, fiddle de de! I was joking babes. No, Gale lives with me and now I’ve 

got to find David...” 

With her stilettos tapping and clipping on the polished wooden floor, she 

minced away to the back of the shop leaving Gillian and Gale alone for no 

one had bothered to remain with them. 

“She can be a bitch sometimes Gale.” 

“It’s just her, I’m used to it.” 

“You ought to stand up for yourself.” 

“No, what’s the point? That’s Martina for you.” 

The emotional atmosphere in the gallery was cold. As if anyone wishing to 

be there ought to provide his or her own form of heating in the guise of a 

warm personality. Couples strolled around aimlessly, drinks in hand, 

some looking at the pictures on display but others mostly using the venue 

as a meeting place. 

It was a frothy mix. From middle aged mustached men in leather pants, 

most of them eyeing each other rather than the artwork to the opposite 

extreme; floating brigades of lace and flowers, like bees, flitting from one 

person to other and not paying much attention to anybody. Beside her 

self, Gillian only spotted two other transvestites present and as they were 

arguing hotly with, Gillian presumed, the owner of a picture, she decided 

not to introduce himself or herself for the present. Neither of them could 

see a woman anywhere but the evening was still in its infancy. 

“I’ll get us a drink.” 

When Gillian reached the drinks table, she found the choice staggering. A 

small, chatty man was serving and he gave her a smile. 

“Oh Sweetheart, look at you. What carriage did you come from?” 

“Actually, it was a taxi.” 

“What can I get you darling besides me?” 

“You’re very sweet but I’ll just have two G and T’s please.” 

“Not both for you surely!” 

She was still smiling. “No. I have a friend.” 

“You are looking so gorgeous darling.” Then with a minute lifting and 

shaking of his head he made a demand. 

“I’ll serve you if I get a kiss.” 

Gillian’s smile grew broader, showing more lips. 

“And I’ll give you a kiss if you’ll show me where I can hang my coat up.” 

“Darling, it will be a pleasure, allow me.” 

The coat and the kiss exchanged, Gillian walked back with her two prizes. 

“You made a friend quick enough.” 

“He was just so camp, bit of a sweetheart actually.” 

“I see. I’ll get the next round.” 

Now feeling she were part of the greater whole instead of being an 

outsider, Gillian began to lead Gale into the heart of the gathering 

stopping occasionally to examine the works of art, positioned correctly 

under pointed pyramids of light. All of them without exception depicted 

sex in one form or another. Whether it was fruit, as oranges 

masquerading as a pair of breasts or a banana caricature illustrating 

something else or simply coloured mud smeared upon a canvas describing 

forms of making love, Gillian thought it all highly weird. Patterns of large 

pink dildos, gaping shadowy holes and sprawling hairy thighs. There were 

pen and ink drawings of highly distorted orgasmic faces; renderings of 

acts of sodomy; ill defined painted chains and whips in grim and crimson 

epitomizing the cruelty done from one section of society to another. The 

nucleus of every artist there, the meat, was painted with the groin. Each 

one thrust itself at the onlooker in a self-discovery of joyless torment. 

“Where’s the landscapes Gillian?” 

She giggled then. Gale had this ironic and much buried ability to make 

her laugh. 

“They’re awful aren’t they?” 

“Not the most uplifting of pictures I’ve ever seen I must admit.” 

More people continued to trickle into the gallery and Gillian noticed, for 

the first time, two women, obviously with each other but desperately 

trying not to be. She recognised one of them from a news program and 

nudged Gale. 

“Is that who I think it is?” 

“Yep, always thought she was. I love her. Maybe I’ll get to speak...” 

“In your dreams Gale. Yeah, she’ll want to chat to us won’t she? Gale! 

Close your mouth, she’ll see you.” 

Smart 120 beats per minute dance music flooded them both at that point 

and Gillian felt the place come alive with the arrival of it. Even over that 

though, she could still hear Martina’s voice travelling around the three 

rooms. Darling! and Aaaaagh seemed to be her main introductions and 

endings with sometimes a, 'fabulous' thrown in as well if there was the 

merest chance of anybody starting to speak seriously. 

The smell of poppers began to pervade and complement the room. 

Cheques were written, glasses dropped, wine spilled and people 

disappeared into the toilets. Martina’s boyfriend, a curious 

 

What happened next? E-mail your version to Jean.

3.

No Lamenting Here. 

I swung my full and rich blood-red cape across my wide bony shoulders as a 

defense against the settling low evening sun as I left my tiny shop in the 

precinct of Grays in Essex, inserted my spiky key into its rusty lock and 

twanged it shut. The weather was quite foul on this celebratory weekend of 

Jevil, hot, light and sticky and winter seemed only a dream away. Why our 

Saviour did not choose to die during a more pleasant time of year, I never 

understood. And never questioned it aloud either. But I should not 

complain. We Vampires have many things to be grateful for, so it is not all 

hope and light. 

My name is Broakcan and I am eighty-six this summer. Born in the 

beautiful and fearful occult shadow of night, which accounts of course, for 

my clear tight pale skin, dark strong hair and my angled physique. Full-

bodied suckling added my growth, made my eyes the colour of carmine and

my sharp teeth as edgy as nature. I snort. I work. I’m keen. A perfect 

specimen for my race. Strong, virile, bull-like yet lean, powerful and 

untamed...just as my wife likes me. 

Yes, Quella my wife, whom I am about to meet. What a female herself! A 

crown of two thorns, part human creature, part Vampire, a deep orange 

edible source of a woman. Full breasted and bloodied, her red milk runs 

from her nipples like no others. Fountains of goodness. Our children are 

cursed I tell them. Cursed like no other and I order them to be grateful but, 

as you will discover, often they are not. 

I have two. A boy and a girl. The female already has had coitus I am glad to 

tell but the boy Lavis... What a disappointment he has grown to be. Two 

years younger, sure and intelligent but he shows no interest in our beliefs 

and to be clear about him, sometimes I wonder where he gets his strange 

ideas. A lamb within is so strong it is difficult for my ever patient Quella to 

get him to suck real nourishment with us instead of that heathen and 

impure vegetable scum he nibbles on. He has no stick. His balls are watered 

and I have seen his eyes glow with some unearthly light sometimes when 

the sun is high. He’s sickly, weak and, as much as I love him, for he came 

from me, hopes he will die and leave the rest of us in peace although with 

the luck Heaven has given him, he’ll probably outlive me and my allotted 

quota of centuries. The times I’ve caught him studying over his prescribed 

reading times for school when he should be hungering, simpering and 

yelping with his friends like a normal young vamp I cannot tell you. He is, 

in short, an embarrassment to my family name of Jaspetic. 

But my female... Wasis gave away her virginity at school during her one- 

hundredth and eightieth dark moon and I remember the pleasure my wife 

and I felt over our evening meal the evening she told us. As usual for her, 

she described in detail the physical event itself and what the half-Vamp was 

like. As I soaked up blood from my plate with some soft cow’s skin, I could 

not have been more proud, especially when she told us that he had to be 

taken away by his friends to a clotting house for a transfusion because she 

had soaked and sucked him just about dry. I remember that feeling only 

too well in the early days of my courtship with Quella although, she still 

bleeds me well enough, sometimes more so if I am rough and take my 

time. 

I am meeting her and the nestlings at Kaveller’s restaurant in the High 

Street and it’s only a short walk. But long enough to be fair pestered by 

young people imitating humans and their behaviour. They look completely 

stupid I must say with their human-like masks and gracious platitudes and 

I was about to mention that I don’t know why the parents allow them to 

do it when I remembered that Lavis dresses and acts in a similar manner 

nearly all the time. Really, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that he’d 

prefer to be a human rather than a member of Vampire Sapiens. 

I can see them now through Kaveller’s green front window waiting for me 

in our usual area and I reached into my pocket, withdrew a pleasant-

smelling horse’s nail and slipped it into my mouth. The last thing I ate was 

some baked cheeks for breakfast and besides being hungry, I had a feeling 

that my breath was unpleasantly sweet. No need to put Quella though 

that. I could see already by the way she silently sat, her chin resting lightly 

on four fingers, that she was not amused by Lavis' appearance. Wasis was 

softly scratching her mother’s long and lean arms with a hard red fingernail 

in a drifting sort of way but was equally silent. As much as I loved my 

family, I wasn’t looking forward to outing. I hate these family traditions 

that insist we eat out on Human night. Perhaps when the nestlings leave 

the home we'll have an end to it. 

Kaveller’s was a family owned business and served good wholesome food, 

nothing special or fancy, although Sertis Kaveller had been known to boil 

a whole carcass or two for a festival or a Union. Unusual, I can tell you for a 

man who insists on his food cold and wet but business buys business so 

they say. Moreover, it was Kaveller’s ability to serve nourishment beyond 

what he would normally eat which made him an elegant businessman. 

He was a dark red glowering sort of a man, eternally locked away in his oily 

kitchen, huge-bodied with red-wide-mouth and lips from years of eating 

flesh and bits of bodies. When called out or visited, he would usually be 

chewing the gristle off a stick of bone or sucking at some other organ. 

I kissed Quella, glad to have her scorching red lips touching mine and I 

know she smelt the horse’s nail. Her teeth also tore at my lips, gently but 

long enough to silently imply that she wished we were on our own. 

But we were not. Wasis and Lavis looked their usual bored selves. Both 

were dressed unusually. Even for them. Wasis was in the sinful colour of 

white for a start and that overrode any sort of unflattering style that the 

garment was in. Which was short and cut away from both legs. She looked 

like a tramp not a Vamp and I looked away quickly, shaking my head, glad 

we were in our corner. Wasis...After I looked him up and down in silence, 

Quella and my eyes met and she was as shocked and felt as hopeless as 

myself as I showed a face of extreme disappointment. Before I sat, I could 

not contain myself. 

“What in the name of Hell are you wearing boy?” 

He never answered as the question was rhetorical but let me describe it. It 

was a suit. A thin, pale blue, single-breasted suit. Underneath he wore a 

plain white shirt and a dark tie. A glance down under the flaxen table and I 

saw brown leather shoes. Lace-up shoes. Plain. His face was covered in 

white makeup, lightening the obits of his eyes and rosy cheeks sank his 

pallor into humanness. He looked outrageous. I sat. 

“You are walking home on your own, because I’ll be blessed if I’ll be seen 

with you in the street looking like that.” 

“And he's ordered a plate of vegetables.” 

“And you let him Quel?” 

“The boy’s old enough to do what he wants Broakcan. We cannot force him 

to eat what he doesn’t want. It's only a phase. Let him be.” 

“It is not a phase mother! I’ll want to look like this and wear this forever. Its 

smart and everybody of my age is doing it.” 

“Its sick Lavis and you are embarrassing the family. I’m telling you again, 

you are not walking home with us looking like that.” 

“I don’t care.” 

I smacked my fist down hard on the table and for a second, just a second, 

the conversation between the thirty or so Vampires, which were eating 

there, stopped. 

“You bloody well will care when I stop your allowance boy and you’re eat 

properly if I forbid any vegetables to be brought into the house.” 

“Then I’ll starve and die father..." 

"Lavis?" Quella's arm reached across and gently placed her long forefinger 

quietly across his mouth for she could see their food arriving. 

"Hush now. Broakcan? I ordered your usual." 

I was grateful to see it and Savne, one of two waitress' and Sertis' only 

daughter, eased her way through the crowded tables and, as head of the 

family, had my starter served first; Magryana. A steaming warm bowl of 

kidney, liver and nail bits. My wife and my daughter had chosen thin spits 

of undercooked red muscle prepared in a sauce I could smell but not

identify. 

My son had ordered water and he sat there as sullen as ever. When the 

first morsels touched the insides of my mouth, it became awash with saliva 

and for a moment, until I first bit into a wedge of liver, I forgot about him 

and his fixation with being human and turned my attention to my host and 

the mysteries, which made up his menus. 

What was that special ingredient that Kaveller used to turn something so 

plain and almost vulgar, into a dish so tasty? I could smell that what I was 

spooning into my mouth was a mixture of human, pig and chicken but my 

tri-forked and rasped tongue hinted at something else. Something 

 unidentifiable. For the moment. Perhaps I would ask Sertis for a tour of his 

abattoir out the back sometime. Perhaps I might see or identify something, 

a bag, a horn, a leg...some hair...anything which might help solve my 

problem of how Sertis had managed to turn something so bland into a dish 

so exquisite. 

But I knew holy well that he would never tell me. He would never betray 

the recipe to an outside family member. Propriety would have dictated that 

he would have slit the throat of every live animal and human that he had 

out back rather that reveal that. As the offal and the magic ingredient slid 

down my throat, my often scarlet imagination suddenly pictured Lavis, four 

hands width higher than he was in real life, in a dark cape, a strong jaw 

jutting, eyes black as a ravens, nails as sharp as an eagle and teeth as 

sharp as mine, standing proud and tall with a magnificent crop of long dark 

hair standing next to Savne Kaveller in the House of Conjugation, their 

Union about to allow him in to the inner sanctuary of the dark secret world 

of Sertis' kitchen... 

But Lavis spoilt even that by coughing on a piece of turnip. Being the 

closest, Wasis slapped him on his back and cleared it but it brought my 

attention back to the table and the four of us continued eating silently. In 

the background, a trio of mournful violins filled in the atmosphere. I cast 

my eyes over what the nestlings ate, slightly annoyed at the extra cost of

Lavis' meal for Kaveller, I knew, had to buy those revolting and colourful 

knots in since his growing licence to farm them out back had been revoked. 

And that was only recently, a few months ago I believe. A half woman, the 

type we are supposed to socially accommodate nowadays, obviously one of 

those New Age types, a vacuous person of probably of no merit 

whatsoever, complained that she could taste blood in her clear vegetable 

soup. An inspector was called; an examination took place and some blood, 

mostly human for dark's sake was discovered to be seeping through some 

earth where it had been seeping through to the vegetable patch. 

Unfortunately, the examination of his wild yard did not stop there for 

several bodies; both human and animal were found in various decomposed 

states. Some dead and others in the process of. Those that were dead were 

taken away for examination and those that were not he was told to destroy 

immediately which he did. 

Thankfully, Sertis was allowed to keep those although he was given an 

outrageously huge fine some weeks later when it was discovered that the 

dead human bodies contained a number of viral organisms. However, as 

most of us are immune to many of those, virtually everybody I spoke to 

could not see the point of judging and punishing the owner of the grill 

house. Except the point really was to bring even more attention to those

kill joys who seem to excel nowadays in upsetting the traditional values so 

many of us hold so dear. 

And unfortunately, I was sitting next to one of them. Even though he was 

my son, I had no idea what he wanted to do with himself. He was so 

strange! As I glanced at his powdered face and suit, part of me felt like 

eating him and that would dispose of the problem. However, as we are not 

allowed to do that (not since the law was changed a hundred and fifty 

years ago anyway) and after suffering his weak ways since he was a sickly 

child, I had run out of solutions. Probably he would leave and fall in with 

some bad lot. I guess he would be dead within a few years. 

The main course arrived and its fragrance filled our part of the room while 

Lavis covered his white nose in a mock act to annoy me I imagine. Strange 

boy because he used to love this dish when he was younger and before he 

had these irrelevant and homeless ideas put into him. 

Our main meal arrived, a combined dish, Posryava, steaming hot, on a 

burnt black bone dish of ribs, edged together to make a seal and was as 

huge as a pig's belly, oval and deep and partitioned out into three 

compartments. On the right were a heap of golden tongues, eyes and 

genitalia of every different species of animal and human we were legally 

allowed to eat. To the left were dozens and dozens of mouth-sized grilled 

portions of animal and human meats, each with its own wooden forked 

stick ready for dipping in the deep brown oily sauce, which moved gently 

about in the middle tray. As Savne gently placed the feast on our table, at 

least three of us licked our lips with anticipation. Lavis had to wait another 

few minutes before his muck arrived. 

We three proper members of my family did not stand on ceremony. Sticks 

were taken; meat jabbed, dunked in the mouth-watering brain, white-

blood and bone sauce and ate. A previously ordered bottle of warm mixed 

blood wine accompanied our meal and after satisfying my hunger with a 

few first pieces, I lifted my glass, noticed how opaque and clingy it was, as 

it should correctly be and smiled at Quella. 

“To you my dearest. May we live forever in propinquity” 

“You are getting weak and emotional Broakcan” She smiled with a slight 

grimace, her earrings glinting in the glowing green light of the fire 

smoldering and occasionally flickering in the hearth. But I could see she 

was flattered and her already stained lips became infused with the gently 

effervescent quality of the wine. It made her and her irrepressible long dark 

hair look even more beautiful than she already was if that were possible. 

Lavis’ food arrived and the way Savne banged it down in front of him 

should have warranted some sort of reprehensible reply from me but I 

hadn’t the mind to do it. Were I serving, I would have done the same. 

Quella had also, upon her early arrival, ordered side dishes of eggs and part 

of the joy of this particular meal, or one way of enjoying this dish, was 

cracking them apart with our front teeth, ripping off their tops before firstly 

fully immersing the meat from the plate into their yolks before then

plunging the morsels into the sauce. It was a savage way to eat and not 

altogether fully accepted by the so-called more refined members of those 

we ate with occasionally but we liked it and we spent some moments

snorting our way around the table. 

I was on my third egg when it happened. My normally silent boy spluttered 

violently and stood, his chair flying backwards as he grasped his own neck 

swaying gently as if a breeze was about him. It was a surreal few 

moments, this suited boy spoiling our evening. 

He quickly fell to his knees crunching his chin and breaking the sharpest of 

his upper front teeth on his own china plate as he crashed downwards 

taking most of our food with him. There he was, covered in mostly monk 

and animal body parts and still. We were told later that his immediate 

unconsciousness had a great deal to do with his non-recovery for if he had 

been able to cough, it may have been quite possible to loosen the offending 

chunk of undercook carrot.

It is now a week later and Lavis has arisen, deemed not to be allowed to 

continue, something I did not contest at the enquiry and therefore been 

sold on for meat. The white service at the disassembling theatre went well 

enough and many came. Some were even his friends. It is ironic that my 

useless offspring’s life, such as it was, was ended by the very same mad 

and insane habits which he senselessly promoted. Before he rose, it was 

my duty to read the address but there was no prosody of sorrow within my 

voice. 

My friend Sertis Kaveller found himself under investigation once more but I 

did not press charges and nor did Quella impress on me the need to. For I 

also knew how she felt about her only son. The truth was, he was just a 

wicked and evil boy and he deserved to be sold on. However, as I made it 

clear that he was to be sold on outside of Grays, at least there will be no 

possibility of any part of him entering into me when we visit Kaveller’s 

again in two weeks time for Quella’s one-hundredth birthday. We do plan to 

have another son one day. 

4.

Revenge.

 

It was the look he gave me. That was the look that destroyed me. I waited for the hurt to go away but it didn’t and I don’t expect it ever will now. That look is imprinted on my memory, as if a hot knife had been dragged over soft butter. Indelible.

The modern fixation of ballroom dancing should not instigate cold-bloodied murder should it? No, I think of gracefulness, swishing pretty dresses and elegant curved arms and backs. Not conducive to murder I would have thought. Not conducive at all. However, the tight rhythms of foxtrots, waltzes and tangos only remind me now of the tight thin wire I’m going to use to garrotte his fucking fathead off.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I acquired the ability to dance more than forty years ago and people regard me, as I regard myself, as a man of manners and letters with a clearly defined sense of honour and dignity, which unfortunately, occasionally goes out of step in our modern world.

It was my mother who originally insisted that I pop along to the local church hall, saying it would be good for my social development. I disliked it intensely for while my old school chums were out having a good free time making nuisances of themselves as boys should, I was knocking knees with the elderly, the bony, the baneful, the unfriendly, the fat and the plain of face. However, after getting physically close enough to women of my own age, close enough to smell their inexpensive but teasing perfume, I understood the usefulness of the art and persevered.

Moreover, after a while, I did understand what my mother had been driving at for it did turn out to be a clever way to meet and talk to women. Perhaps her aim was to prevent me from becoming that which society struggled so hard for me to avoid; bachelorhood. Although my dear Mama is still alive, enjoying the remarkable age of 104 in private care, I’ll never know now.

Yes I warmed to it eventually, enjoyed the company of those in the scene and welcomed the sociability of those who found me bearable as well. Many of their personalities I’m glad to report were like mine; dapper, primp and proper.

And, remarkably, considering my leg situation, I found that I was not too bad a dancer at all. I didn’t have a natural brain ready for dancing but I made up for that by practising night after night until my feet were sore.

After a few years, with young Elsie, a wonderful and elegant young lady whom I was honoured to square up with as a permanent dancing partner, we even won several cups. Not for a first prize of course for I was never that good on account of my ever so slight limp which only ever plagued me in the coldest months, the sloppy result of a mean rugby scum when I was thirteen, but I, and by that, I really mean, Elsie and myself, earned ourselves several second places in the tournaments we undertook on both a local and regional level by the time we were in our mid twenties.

The most agreeable and extreme of those times was some thirty years ago now, once even reaching third in the Huntsmare Southern England Challenge Cup for our Argentinean Tango for which we were, at the time, extraordinarily proud. Our local group or club still has the cup in its possession because a slightly younger couple won it that evening for their Rumba but our names are still indelibly etched on it. I wonder how much it will be worth tomorrow?

Yes, the world of ballroom dancing was a civilised world within a world at the time and I embraced it with enthusiasm. A world of English tea, thin sandwiches, polite conversation, goodwill, humour and gentle competition, the kind which one never finds exhausting but simply serves to gently push a chap forward, to excel more.

Beside myself, in our small ensemble, there were a number of fellows. Mostly about my age, which, in a dozen week’s time, will be seventy although, that information is a little redundant now. Recently, each of us has slowed down and lost some of the edge of our performances that we used to give but as our partners have also matured alongside us, our aging muscles never worried us as I’m sure, it never worried the ladies concerning our abilities either.

Away from the dancing we, and by that, I mean Elsie and I felt a strong bond to three other partners to the extent that we would spend birthdays, bank holidays and other special occasions together. We were known as the QLBG or the Quick Legs Barmy Gang and the eight of us spent many, many happy times together in our early halcyon days, whether that be on holiday together on the Isle of White or sharing a Christmas dinner with some or even all of their families.

Two of the partners were really that; partners as in man and wife but the other pair were, like Elsie and I, just good friends. I’m sure wherever she is, Elsie would not mind me mentioning this now, so long after but she and I had spent one glorious (I thought) night making love one Christmas about thirty-five years ago when we were far younger and foolish but our brief and ardent love came to nothing in the pale light of the next day. We both agreed, in the most embarrassing of ways that it was probably the dark sherry in the works Christmas punch that caused us to be so reckless with our emotions. It was only my second time and apparently, her first and to my knowledge, her last. I sometimes wonder, if it was me that put her off sex for the rest of her life. I’ll never know now.

Did I acknowledge that we worked at the same furniture factory? That was where we met. Myself as a production manager and she a typist and it was myself that first invited her along to dance. As mentioned, our indiscretion never happened again and the incident eventually forgotten. At least by her although she remained a bright star in my heaven.

So despite my learning to dance for one reason only, that was the only time that my original intention bore any fruit. For nothing intimate had ever happened before, not even a kiss with a spare woman, and certainly, nothing ever happened again intimately.

Elsie and myself still spent a great deal of time together growing almost like a married couple ourselves but a couple who lived apart. For as much as I lived the gay bachelor life, she remained a spinster in name and manner if not in traditional disposition. For she was a jolly old thing, always laughing you see and it's a terrible loss that I now mention her in the past tense. I ate and sometimes even stayed overnight at her house several times a week, sharing my pension to help with the food bills and when the incident happened I, at last, found myself at my most protective.

Two of our close friends had died within the last ten years, both, thankfully I suppose, married to each other. In fact the six of us, which remained, were not surprised when Frank went some three short months after June because they had been terribly close. Like a pair of swans they were.

But it broke us as a group and we found that the demise of perhaps the two strongest characters amongst us was just too much. For one good reason or another, over the course of two years, the two other couples left the dancing club and retired, one pair even going to live abroad, leaving Elsie and myself as the oldest couple on the floor.

And that’s where the problem lay. My age. I had more than my fair share of Victorian values pumped into me as a child as one might expect in someone of my years but however much I tried to temper that with the modern age, I could not.

Manners to me are everything and almost on a daily basis, I could see the personalities of those around Elsie and myself being eroded by the lack of them. It was the young men of course. The-out-of-towners. You could recognise it before they even opened their mouths, in the flamboyant way they wore their suits and then, having finally preened and groomed themselves into a fluff, the way they took themselves onto the floor.

I had been taught to make sure one’s partner was comfortable and that to obey the social etiquettes was paramount but these upstarts seemed to have no common decency within them at all. Moreover, I heard a vicious rumour that many of them did not actually enjoy dancing with women, which was a serious accusation to be levelled at anybody.

I have failed to mention the growth of our club which is not terribly important to the telling of this story but nevertheless over the many decades that I was a member, it did of course grow considerably, going from strength to strength until we had over three hundred members. In fact, by the time the Quick Legs Barmy Gang finally dissipated, some forty years after we met, I was enjoying Presidency and the club had moved into ever-spacious premises over four times.

At the time of my main incident, we were allowed to meet on the first floor hall of a cosy but modern school at the back of the town hall, a place with a smooth wooden aged oak floor, a modern kitchen and even a public address system for our music. So we were more than content and the rent was agreeable to the extent that I did not have to increase charges which was tolerable to our more elderly friends.

However, that was until recently when ballroom dancing became popular once again because within a few weeks we were inundated with requests to join our cosy little club. Apparently then, it became the thing to do but it only, in my opinion, brought nothing but undesirables to the scene. Especially those undesirables about which I have already mentioned. There were a few complaints but as the young men did nothing wrong, at least not in the form of being accused of troublemaking although they were certainly accused of a few other things, there was little my small management committee could do.

However, as their numbers swelled over the course of a year, naturally their confidence grew until many of them began taking to the floor quite openly with each other. This eventually became too offensive as many of our members imparted to me and over the course of a few months of the early part of last year, I would estimate that perhaps half of our current members declared that they would not be renewing their membership. This was a terribly fractious blow. Not only to the group for we relied on their membership but for many of them personally as well for socially, many considered the group to be a second home to them.

Complemental to this state of confusion and disorder, there was the incident in the front ladies cloakroom one Saturday evening, which Elsie should really explain, but as she cannot, I will do my best.

Three of my most elderly lady members, each of them in their eighties, spoke to me in some distress one evening imploring me to send someone into the ladies powder room to eject what they thought was a man. This so astonished me that I immediately thought that they were playing some form of practical joke but the intensity of their indignation convinced me quick enough that they were not. Thinking back, I should have realised immediately for old Mrs White was incapable of understanding humour on any level.

Calling Polly, the twenty something granddaughter of Hilda who sat on the door issuing tickets, I sent her in to see what was what and within moments, the poor young thing came out with cheeks as red as a pillar-box.

There certainly was a man in there she informed me...dressing as a woman. At which I lost no more time and ordered that a policeman be summoned without delay. However, before he arrived, the female impersonator appeared, much to our surprise in the hallway and flashed his ticket under my nose demanding to be let into the main hall which I resolutely refused of course.

An argument then sprung up between myself and the preening ruffians who were already inside. His friends. Elsie, who had become aware of the commotion, thankfully came down from organising the music to support me, as did Hilda. As there was not a single chance of myself allowing the young lad inside dressed the way he was, although I offered to return his entrance fee back, our confrontation was black and prolonged until two policemen arrived and dragged him away. Neither Elsie or myself ever saw him again.

However, things did not quieten down that evening and with hindsight being a wonderful thing, I should have closed down the evening altogether.

The pederastic men could not blame alcohol for their behaviour for Albert and Mary behind the bar told me afterwards that they had not drunk that much. No, I think it was sheer bloody-mindedness that ruined the evening for me and changed the course of my life.

It was about nine o'clock when it happened. I was taking a break, letting my leg rest for a few seconds and was taken the time to sort out the following month’s program when Eric, our music man put on a Charleston, manly for those younger members.

As the tune proceeded, a fair amount of merriment ensued which was good for everybody but then a shadow began to cover my table and worse, my foot was suddenly trodden on. As I already had a hammertoe, you can imagine the pain that caused and my body reacted suddenly and instinctively by kicking out. By the time I looked up, a fat brute of a man stood over me, his belly almost filling my field of view. One of the pederasts. It was then that he gave me that look.

It was one of abject disgust, as if he were looking at someone else's vomit, laid bare upon his own chest. Not a startling type of look. More like one he carried around with him, to be brought out on special occasions. It was a trained look. I was sure, in an instant, that he had spent many hours or even days perfecting it. Sneering and repulsive. Such utter buried venomous anger.

With this on his face, he magnified its effect by bending down until he almost buried his face in mine. He became so close that, without my glasses, I lost focus of his puffy and bloated skin. If you kick me again, he warned, then I will get very nasty. That’s all he said. Each word was deliberate and spat. My world became him and in those few seconds, nothing else existed. In a heartbeat I went from being a man to becoming a victim. From behind him I heard some laughing and one of the owners of one of those laughs touched his shoulder.

So with his insistence ringing in my shocked ears, he lifted himself up and resumed to make a fool of himself at a dance in which he was so clearly not cut out to do. But as he was, and I hesitate to use the term dancing here, moving and jiggling with three or four far younger men, the laughers, I felt instinctively that I should keep my peace.

With the help of a friend, I limped outside to our foyer and Hilda ordered me a cab assuring me that she and her husband Eric would see to everything. My excuse was that my foot was playing up. Gratefully, they believed me and within five minutes or so, I was being driven away after kissing Elsie goodnight.

I did not sleep. Not one second. That night I hurt him, stood up to him, wiped the cruelness from his face, humiliated him, beat him down, made a laughing stock of him. Over and over. In different scenarios and places. I acted for the men who could not. I broke every rib, every bone, smashed every muscle, beat him to a pulp. Beat him so thoroughly that he would never be able do what he did to me ever again to anybody else. I sent him away in a wheelchair. In my imagination I broke his brain, his spirit and his soul. Despite not sleeping, the following morning, I was exhausted.

That might have been the end of it had it not been for yet another incident which occurred at the very next dance. To this one I was late and it was almost eight thirty by the time I had arrived.

But what greeted me was not a hall full of dancing merriment at all but the sight of Elsie on a stretcher immediately before being driven away to hospital with an injury on the right side of her face the size of a small oval dinner plate. Her new gold dress was soaked with blood. Down past her waistline. Loads of it and I panicked, not understanding what could have caused such an injury. Her pearls were soaked in it.

I am unhappy to report that my Elsie died during the night. From an embolism the doctor said. She had not regained consciousness so that was both a blessing for her yet a tragedy for me as I never got to say goodbye. The factory girl I always loved.

The next day, despite being in shock, I took myself off to Hilda and Eric’s and gave them the sad news. From Hilda, it spread around our small community like wildfire and a special notice was sent out to all members whom I thought relevant giving details of her funeral and suspending the club until further notice or at least until after she had been laid to rest.

So it was a month until another club night occurred and I publicised it well. I wanted to for an evil plan had found me. The local police had of course made a complete investigation into the events of that awful night but found nothing out of the ordinary. They concluded that she had slipped in the ladies powder room and caught her face on one of washbasins as she fell but I became convinced otherwise.

No one unfortunately saw it happen but a set of thoughts began to grow within me and I came to some firm conclusions based upon events, which were only known to me. To begin with, that night in the foyer with the boy dressed in those ridiculous clothes, Elsie almost had a straight-up argument with the brute that I was to face just a week later on the edge of the dance floor. Then, earlier that week, she had come home in floods of tears, extremely distressed saying that the very same bully actually pushed her whilst leaving Mr. Jackson’s, the chemist whilst she was out shopping. When she remonstrated with him and his friends, the fat one, as she called him, pushed her again causing her to stumble and hurt her shoulder against some ill-placed railings belonging to Brunsford Junior School. It was at that point, she said, that he advised her to never set foot in the club again because they were going to take it over and that had frightened her more than anything else. By the time she reached home, she could only manage a little more than gibbering until I forced some brandy inside her. This was bullying on a monstrous scale.

So I was convinced that the fat man was to blame. No, I knew it. I knew it in my heart and as I stood around her grave and watched her being lowered into it, knowing she was inside the dark oak box, I vowed there and then to extract my revenge.

My friends wondered why I continued with the club so quickly. One even took me aside and gave me a bit of a friendly talking to but I simply assured him that I was well, that I was grieving in my own way and that I knew that getting the club back in business would probably be the best thing that Elsie would have wanted. He believed me and my acting performance surprised even myself for as a child, I even made a pig’s ear of a sheep in the nativity plays at school.

That evening went smoothly enough and the fat villain turned up with his sodomitic friends as usual. I kept a low profile though. In the middle of my grieving for the only woman I had ever loved, I had done some research. I had read forbidden books, which I found in the most revolting of bookshops in London’s West End. I had learnt of their history and of what the latest English law said of them. I did not dance that evening myself but firstly preoccupied myself with other mundane duties before excusing myself telling Hilda I had the beginnings of a cold coming on. She understood completely of course.

However, once home, I dressed in darker clothes and slipped out of my driveway in my old Ford and waited some two hundred yards away from the school entrance for the crowd to fall out and dissipate.

It was not at all difficult to follow the fat man and his group for he and four others took a cab and headed North. Keeping as discrete a distance as I could comfortably manage, I followed them out towards Wembley where the cab pulled up outside an exquisitely beautiful Victorian double-fronted house and the five of them piled out. After the cab had driven away, two of them left immediately, walking down a hill leaving the fat one and two of his cronies chatting by the side of the road.

Whether by luck or design, I was not seen, able to position my small car behind a curve and a few trees and I was able to perfectly spy on them through my binoculars, which I had brought along for just that purpose. As I watched, I pulled a thin grey blanket around me, brought to keep my circulation going.

They spoke for perhaps five more minutes underneath a streetlamp which happened to be outside the house before there was a kind of muted hug between the fat one and the others but then he was suddenly on his own and walking towards me, obviously heading home by himself.

I ducked down, covering myself and the ruse was successful for he passed my car with only the clipping of his shoes sounding out in the still night. After he passed, I rose, uncovered myself and saw him disappear around a bend. I opened my car door and crept to the bend, edging around it, following him. As it was, I did not have far to go to test my nerves.

He entered a large shabby house, perhaps Edwardian, perhaps later and as he disappeared inside, I crept to the other side of it and slowly walked past. Soon the sight of the top right windows becoming illuminated rewarded me and the shadow of a fat person became silhouetted against them. Now I knew.

Crossing the road, I walked back and with my heart in my mouth, walked to the front door, which was not such a bold thing to do really as it was inky dark and there was plenty of cover provided by trees and bushes.

I saw four buttons. Four flats. One and two would be ground floor so the pig either lived at three or four. It was enough for one evening. The drifting sound of a band came to my ears and from the general direction above me. Enjoy it for now fat pig I mumbled.

I was back again at six the next morning and now, what with autumn leaves filling the road, a gusty wind tossing them and everything else about and some gay sunlight, not only did I feel stronger in my purpose, as if the day was energising me, but happier somehow.

Again, I had not slept but I had planned. And also done something that I had not done since leaving the Army; I had shaved off my moustache. I had to admit, it did take a few years off me and with my father’s old cap pulled down close over my eyes, my appearance was greatly altered. Altered enough for me to trail the pig by bus when he left for work. Altered enough for me to follow him to the West End and wait for him while he took in a show, altered enough for me to stand one person away on a packed tube train as he rode home.

I had learnt the graceless art of garrotting from a sergeant when I was posted to Kamptee in central India when I was a very young man but apart from using the technique on two guards one eerily chilly night when defending an outpost, I had never again felt or had the need to put his deft instructions into place ever again. Until I felt the heat from Frederick Mosley’s fat body radiating into mine as we eventually stood next to each other on that homeward bound train.

He was over a foot taller but that didn’t concern me. Horizontally, we are all the same height. I spied on him continuously after that first day. I kept watch on him the next as well as he visited a clinic on the Holloway Road. That sort of clinic as I found out. I catalogued his movements for over two weeks as intently as I was taught in the services. Even to the extent that a few old friends began leaving messages with a neighbour for they felt I had been rather lacking concerning my duties to the club.

The day before I took his life, I visited Elsie’s grave again in a state of abject misery. I could feel her calling, urging me to not do it but I admit, I was possessed and haunted by this arrogant fat pig of an animal. He may have looked human-like but secreted within, he was a dull and brutish creature. I was convinced of it.

Over and over, I told her, what right had he to cause such misery to another? Why did people like him turn living into such a thoroughly unhappy experience? I placed a small bunch of pink carnations tied with red ribbon on top of the small mound of earth, it being too early yet for a stone and stood, apologising as I did. See you soon old gal I said.

One routine of Mosley was to visit his local fish and chip shop about three times a week which mostly accounted for his adiposity I suppose. I knew what he ate as well and knew that he would stop outside the shop and eat three chips before hurrying back to that first floor flat.

Well, after settling my affairs, by simply writing a few letters that evening, I decided that it was time. There was a slight drizzle in the air but it didn’t bother me at all. Indeed I thought it helped because people would be too occupied with themselves to bother about what I was up to.

I allowed him those three chips, glorifying in the knowledge that they were to be the last three things that he would enjoy. Not the fish. Not tonight.

He entered by his front gate as usual and all seemed normal except that I was waiting for him behind one of the sycamores. He passed me and I clenched the two by two length of wood fiercely in my brown leather gloves and swung it with as much force as I could muster at the back of his legs. He collapsed immediately, almost silently. The wrapped up fish and chips disappeared to one side.

As if fifty years of living had not passed at all, I was on him in a flash, the wire pulled from my clenched teeth, expanded to its full length of eighteen inches and in a second had found its target. Although he had fallen on his side and I was straddling him, his rabbit eyes found me and even then, to my slight disappointment, I don’t think he knew who I was and because I never said a word, he obviously had no understanding of why I was doing this to him. But he knew I was taking his life. His eyes told me that. There was a small amount of struggling, nothing that bothered me but the process did last about a minute.

After, I felt a little disappointed with myself. I decided to leave the head on after all, figuring out that the lady who occupied the left downstairs flat, a pretty young thing called Elaine who worked at a local unemployment office, didn’t deserve to see the inside of him. Bad enough, I thought that she had had to stomach the outside on a continuous daily basis.

The rain increased and continued as I rose away from the corpse and I felt a great weight lift from me. I also felt some five or six years old again and my head was flooded with sunshine and light, of memories when I was in my old school playground, this time proudly thumping the bully’s nose instead of cowing like some jackass while being laughed at by everyone.

He looked dead enough now. Frederick Mosley’s fat body lay still. He was a stone. I brushed myself down and made myself as presentable as I could then rang the four doorbells. Soon, a pale young man from flat two answered in his dressing gown. His mouth dropped open about three inches when he saw what I had done. Call the police please I said. They are needed.

Because of the circumstances, which I fully intend to be expiated, insanity was not an option that was offered to me and neither would I have taken it had it been offered. For to do so would have been to negate that which I did. Which was to rid the world of a beast, an abhorrent bully. He was a crime against peace, a lowlife and if my old life had to be sacrificed in order to stop his younger one from doing any more harm, then I was prepared to take that option.

This I explained in my defense, such as it was but I expected no quarter and received none. With England on the brink of a world war, the judge said, the country needed every young man to help fight the Nazis. And therefore, the old fool said, you have disgraced and threatened the safety of England. And with those words, he declared my fate.

That was three weeks ago. Now I have one night left before my appointment with Pierrepoint but I am quite calm. Staff here at Pentonville are kind, I have a photograph of my Elsie at about the time we were passionate with each other and whom I am looking forward to seeing again and I have rid the world of a bastard, a bully and a whore. I have the Governor’s assurance that the little photograph, all I have of her, is to be buried with me. There are worse ways to end one’s life.

5.

Smith

A flutter of gulls pecked and jabbed, wrenching her from sleep, her second favourite place, to its opposite. From within the warm contours of her bed, she imagined she might be home again. Safe.

For pities sake; let me be home again. Let the birds be real, not paper-white imitations, which float from the ceiling, just outside my window, nesting, raising young. And cool, knife air. A paradise beyond glass. With space to stretch and friendly, knowing people. Cider and beer people.

Give me my homely rug to watch the sea on, splay my feet in the sand, dig down as far as my wrists, smell the dried seaweed, hear the ocean speak and touch me in the summer. I’m not asking for much. Just grains and water.

But this sea is too near, too rhythmic and the gulls too plentiful. She doesn’t know any of their names. Unrecognisable friends. Unfeedable friends. Friends who don’t realise they’ve been captured for eternity for the purpose of my pleasure.

She claps her hands and the crying ceases, the laser powers down, the C.D. still on standby, part of her alarm. At the silence, the distant but ever present growl of the background noise she hates, fills her like a grey pudding. She arches, stretching two thirds of her muscles, then flops back for one final opportunity of laziness before she powers herself up.

Slipping on the congeries of books and writing paper decorating the floor, she reaches and lights her first cigarette, then makes coffee. Already she can hear the laughter of the occupants of adjoining rooms. Braying and cackling. Throwing water; having fun. Her showering takes her briefly back to dreamland, standing in steam until she can no longer see. Filling her mouth and feeling the fingers of it run down her slight belly. Water again. Salt, the preservative. Her ocean. Her real home.

She snags two pairs of tights before the third fits decently. She loses her watch for two minutes. She counts her loose change, enough for snacks. The room in disorder yet she knows where everything is because it’s so mean. A cave concealing a star. No perfume. Flags of knickers hanging on a short line. An empty aerosol. One sock. No time to clean, to Hoover, to suck up the overnight stale feminine air. She opens the window instead. Just a short kiss.

There is no photograph of a lover to streak a finger touch onto before she gathers her keys and leaves for duty. The unfolding of the day is tiring. There are bitter comments in the corridor about working hours, pay, conditions but she leaves the philanthropical work to the gin and tonic people. Already in her uniform, she joins others of her year, exchanging frushing comments, which seemed to go well with the aging hospital she works in.

And now the woman is awake. Fifteen days sleeping and one scorched shin. One of the bullies, (Her semplice for consultants and doctors) whisky people, had placed the woman called Smith in her charge but instead of welcoming the extra duties as any good nurse should, (She had read that somewhere), she was pregnant with resentment. For over two weeks she had gazed at the slow breathing enigma. The woman on her own. The coma victim. The island.

Though she had not perceived her as that simile for if she had, she would have recognised herself as the sea, that very quality she wished to be near. But this is simple poetry and I mention it because this nurse of ours, she loves the words. In this dénouement, this will become clear. Pretending to be a gull, off duty, she writes of love. In coloured pencils to illustrate her feelings, to give depth. For meaning. For clarity. For sanity.

There was a pallor about her charge, which suggested nothing to her but the white dead flesh of a bird rolling achingly with a low tide. Smith’s face was bland. Always in the same position. Never moving. No poetry. She liked the stubborn patients, the fighters. Those who thought what was best for themselves. The freedom fighters that argued with the doctors, who smoked in the corridors, who ate what they shouldn’t. But it was a pencil line between the humble and the mercurial and she had learnt to recognise and reflect both parts as mediator and carer.

What was built as a healing sanctuary was in fact, a constant war zone between the Thor God bullies and the occasional reckling creatures, which entered there. The true skirmish, against disease, she thought, was secondary most times.

And now the woman is awake. She thought it again to herself. A positive step forward for she had talked. Why had I been so ill disposed to her? The glass of water, the pill were mechanical devices. But it was at the end of a long day. Now, here she is again and already she has learnt to pull the cord for assistance. Dust? What was that? Didn’t she have enough to do without answering stupid questions? Smith deserved to be here, in this metropolis. Her lack of memories reflected the black hearts around her.

And these are the nurse’s thoughts, not mine I hasten to add. What is she called? I cannot tell you her name but I’ll name her after my granddaughter who, from her already introspective nature, is sure to grow up resembling her. Alice. Wicked Alice. You’ll understand later.

Alice took readings from other patients. Dying people, some with only days or weeks to live but only the unemotional sea had the power to make her cry. The sea was the only entity that had ever witnessed her tears, her loss. That’s why she loved it so much. It was food in her veins and away from it, she hungered badly.

Once a month she would go home to Cornwall for a long weekend breaking speed limits to get there. Her invalided mother half knew why and left her alone, selfishly alone, on the curving shoreline which backed onto their house. For hours, no matter what the weather, she would sit on her rug with her bottle and glass of lemonade, ignoring the pleas from friends to socialise. Only after darkness came would she allow herself to eat. For her spiritual batteries came first.

She snags her tights, the white ladder curving up beyond the helm suggesting her shoreline. She feeds, washes the unwashed, a servant to the unpaying. The coffee at the break is cool, its dark taste unbroken by sugar. She is called to deliver here, administer there. So many duties. Written, physical, trying to maintain the promise she had given a year ago to do her best, to care. A dutiful angel. But she is a dark bird.

She enjoys the habits of no one. She sits in sheltered corners. When walking, she fingers the paper and pen she always carries in case a line occurs to her. She is like Smith, isolated. The difference being, one moved and the other didn’t. And yet she maintains her popularity through her duties. Whatever she feels personally, it would be incogitable for her not to put the patient first.

She has distinction. Her sense of honour is clear and that’s reflected by her persistence and dedication. The work ethic. Father’s work ethic probably. Yes, I’ll come clean. It was for him, her fellow observer and companion of the sea that she had shed so many tears for. For some people recognise sorrow and grieve. Others diminish themselves by quickly forgetting but our seagull lover and poet, whose father taught her all their common names by the time she was six, lost something more than her dad; she lost, and recognised that loss when it happened, a teacher and mentor for and of life.

And now she paces a corridor repeating just those names; Sabin-Glaucous-Herring-Ivery-common in a dark trance until she joins the doctor who was about to see the woman Smith.

Psychogenic amnesia, along with psychogenic fugue, multiple personality, and depersonalization disorder, is characterised by sudden and usually impermanent alterations in the integrative functions of memory, consciousness, and identity. The most frequent type of psychogenic amnesia is localized and involves an inability to recall the events of a limited period immediately proceeding, during and/or after a disturbing incident.

Psychogenic amnesia involves loss of memory for selected events for any period of time or for all personal information about one's life. Psychogenic or hysterical amnesia is caused by a repression of undesirable thoughts and impulses, or a need to escape from situations perceived as unendurable.

Most amnesic disorders do not occur in isolation, but are usually accompanied by bewilderment, disorientation and loss of intellectual functions. The course, duration, and reversibility of the disorder vary greatly, depending on the condition that caused them.

Smith lay with the appearance of a dog in pain, suspicious. They had not spoken when Alice re-entered her room, some secret marital telepathy working for them. As professionals do though, she ignored her feelings and Smith until the moment came when, turning from adjusting a small part of the window, their eyes met.

Their lie was gigantic. The grey pudding was lifted from her stomach by Smith’s persona, now greater than the void she portrayed. The room ballooned with ambiguity to Alice. Underneath her fingernails, she could feel Smith as lines of energy both tempting and exciting. Nearer the bed, the worms spread up her arms but they didn’t eat her flesh, they calmed, subdued and conveyed the impression that her body was in direct contact with warm salty water. She was aloft. Drunk with dreaminess. A gull soaring effortlessly over the rolling ocean, moving through one of her own pieces of poetry. Alice looked with the same stare she reserved for the green sea, honest, open and without concern or smile, met the woman’s face and was propelled, like a hung woman, back to duty.

But she was unable to speak. Her hands came to rest on the bed, fingers interlocked white until Smith’s gipsy face jerked aside then the magic, the indoctrination and the tie, and they were the words Alice would use later in her diary, left as a sudden draft hit her legs.

The doctor swept in, with a criant of a waistcoat, barking generically into a mobile phone with enough energy to boil water followed by Alice’s immediate superior. Alice fell back with an accustomed movement, her pace automatic whenever in a God’s presence. He snapped his phone shut, took the chart of the patient and with greedy eyes, studied the times and temperatures. The zigzag manifestations of the woman before him. When he spoke it was altisonant as if he were a boy doing man’s work. He coughed, tried again.

“Good morning, and how are you this morning?”

This double use of one word had a submarine intelligence to it. The use of seniority and ‘snap to’ obedience. It was a well used if unconscious way of manipulating patients but with Smith, it was no tactic because, for her, there were no social rules.

“Who are you?” She demanded.

“I’m Doctor Chan. How are you this morning?”

What other morning did he feel she should talk about?

“At ease”

“We’ve given you the title of Mrs. Smith but can you remember your name?”

Her silence trapped him. He wasn’t used to that weapon as an answer.

“I see”

Here, the slope of his professionalism dipped slightly and he coughed again.

“Nurse, close that window please, too cold in here”

I suppose he had to reinstate himself to somebody and the youngster was as good as any. In fact, was the only one because to pursue, or vent his farouche on Alice’s Ward Sister would have been singularly unadvisable. With twenty years of experience over the doctor, she stood like some ancient general, silently awaiting the next patient, the next call the next battle, the next war. Chan, untiringly and irritatingly, continued with his unaware battle plan.

“You were brought in two weeks ago... by the police. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head slower than a puppet, the mole of a mouth remaining closed. But she had hungry eyes he noticed. They flicked and probed, entered and saw, understood and digested. What are they trying to learn he wondered? What can she learn with those eyes that she cannot gain by speech? This became no frustrated scene, yet neither, because of Chan’s impatience, was it necessarily a healing one.

Through his eyes he viewed the cur, making split second decisions, forming medical judgments. He ordered further tests; a scan of the upper thorax and skull, blood and urine. More medication, exercises, rest. The lieutenant was doing what he could but felt torn between his manner and expertise, adequate for the purpose and, in point of fact, to any senior staff who, impossibly, could have been watching from a cirrus view and the three-bandit woman who secretly knew better. He blustered with the confidence of a lying child. His image intact yet smudged. Undone somehow. A fallen pride as he took refuge in science. Yet he knew. Their three fold feminine silence told him he had judged and was undone. Inadequately and painfully perched on a hypothetical test-tube (A fence is an awkward place to sit) he felt the grand unstoppable motion of science grind to a halt simply by their profound silence, for there was knowledge in their composure, which he could not comprehend. Perhaps, not unlike the silence of a womb before conception takes place. Given the chance, their triple presence, he knew, could heal Smith. But perhaps I am the only one noticing this? I doubt it for Smith understood. She didn’t know her name or who she was but she understood what she was. It took no memories, no talking, no shaster. Just a view point. An observation. Elevated above the others. An awareness and a means. She knew.

I don’t need your help anymore.

And in between the doctor's corporal mutterings, he was unconsciously asking for what she had. But he was not capable of making a deal for, although his consciousness had been alerted, in the time it takes to give an injection, he had already forgotten and missed the prize. But she hadn’t. This woman who lay before them like a fallen movie star... or a rising one. She had one question.

“Will I remember?”

The books of science fell open again and Chan began to read, comfortable once more.

“Yes, of course. It will take some time, every patient is different but we have estimated your condition and there are positive signs you will make a full recovery”

“How did I get here?”

“Accident and Emergency. You don’t remember that?”

“No”

The stock of answers fired its last shell.

“Sister, please see that the results reach my office as soon as possible. I think the quicker we know about this young lady the better it will be for her”

“Of course...” She assented with a nod.

It was Smith’s ‘look’, which focused him even though she was gazing at the apple tree again. Yes, he wanted her to look at him, acknowledge him, appreciate him but also, it was the other reason. What was that? He didn’t know. He felt as a man might feel in the presence of a ton of gold. It’s yellowness drawing him away from all reason. No, he had to leave and forced his shoes to move. From behind him though, she touched again, the loudness of her voice firing into his back.

“Who are you?”

Did you notice any dichotomy between the Smith of when I began this piece and the virtually silent woman later? I did, and I must concede that, already she has passed out of my control and therefore I must pass from my well meaning, but opinionated plan, to include the River of Mankind. Where laws of commiseration are produced electrically within our skulls. Where we attempt to explain the unexplainable and fix the seemingly impossible. Where our hearts rule supreme. The roaring lion.

The woman Smith is an enigma where she lays. For what is a person who has no memories? She is flesh, bone, and brain-no different to a cat. But she can talk, but talk about what? She can only ask questions and answer about how she feels. But isn’t this what we do as well?

She has no shadow this woman. No depth or breadth. The sun shines through the giant window but nothing is revealed. A glass lion. We need shadows to know who we are, so we can recognise those aspects of ourselves, which reflect those whom we interact with. She has had the top levels removed from the cake, the sweet bits. The thick sugary marzipan. Perhaps the best bits, the tastiest bits, the nicest bits, the appearance and what we meet now are the meat and bones of a human. The work horse. The imaginary electricity. Can Alice see the spark? I think so for her behaviour indicates this. The woman Smith doesn’t need to be powered up but she needs to become habituated.

Marzipan controlling the cake? What a ridiculous concept. Yet I feel attracted by the use of the simile. It works for me. And I’m writing this. The River of Mankind; I’m attracted by that phrase too. Smith’s memories have not disappeared, I’m sure of that but they have become inaccessible and surely, for her, that amounts to the same thing.

She asked for help twice then wished it no more. Why? I want to report that I haven’t the slightest idea and that shouldn’t satisfy you if you have a brain. I shall spare you writing to the publishers but beware-I could be lying. Well, I could couldn’t I? I have my memories to draw upon.

She begged for help out of confusion and who has not done that once in their life? There was a residue on waking, not of memory but of thoughts. An inner workshop, which told her something, was wrong. A flat earth for her. She abided by those thoughts and it brought confusion and battle. Mental blood. The Blood River of Mankind. Getting better.

Her soul cried and no one paid attention. Then she slept. Perhaps something similar happened half a million years ago, before fire and the wheel were conceived. Before we developed sticky sweet things. The grain of mud within our skulls palpitates and makes us what we are? We think we control it just as I thought I controlled the woman Smith but I do not anymore.

I have nice ambitions for her still. Perhaps I want her well, fully recovered, eventually to marry Doctor Chan and have two nice children, perhaps like my own two. That would be nice. Or perhaps I might take revenge on hospitals in general and have her burn the entire edifice in a blaze of author-like vengeance. But what of the gull loving nurse?

It doesn’t matter what I want because you and I are connected to Smith and it doesn’t matter what you think either. Near you, there is a Smith, or a Jones or a John or Jane Doe and that bloody Blood River of Mankind connects us all. If you are alive you have no choice in the matter.

It doesn’t matter whether you live in a cave or a Cave, Smith can find and alter you. She can paint you as red as she wants, she can fly to you, she can feather the grain of mud behind your eyes because her boundaries have become unlimited. She can think of anything she likes. My boundaries are set by memories. Everything I experience is compared to my past. Smith is in a unique position. Not having any vagil memories, she is free to explore what is happening outside her in a manner that makes childhood seem like a prison cell.

No concepts to hold her back. No rights or wrongs. The energy of the world lay bare. God in fact. And she can believe it. Does this sound crazy? Or monstrous? Whatever you think, I’m still struggling to free myself from the huge blob of marzipan stuck on the outside of my brain. It’s yellow too and paper thin. Context or cortex?

I imagined I was in control of this story. Certainly, it’s early days and I didn’t intend an explanation such as this so early on but I did, as it happens, think it would be written sooner or later. Why? Because it is in the nature of things. The building rises too high, the tunnel too long, the story wrongly told, the baby born of the ‘wrong’ sex. Very little is accomplished as it is conceived.

Marzipan is earth and material bound you see, thoughts are not. Human being’s sweetness is but a covering, hiding blood thoughts inside. I must live no matter what. I want that food. I want to survive. I want. Period.

But that blood river flows and flows, growing, learning, becoming another thing, activating an unknown awareness within us. And so it should otherwise we, as a species would die out. It seeks to know. It finds cracks and exploits them, breaks them. It works out different, new and exiting ways to deal with the complex world. It doesn’t get taught, it learns though experience and all I can maintain is the river, in the form of the woman Smith has found a better way. Through accident, grand design or chance and through losing whoever she was and whatever she knew, she is about to change the lives of those around her forever.

What controls her, controls me so if you don’t enjoy this tale then don’t point your finger in my direction. Try yours. I am bits and bytes of a living machine, one with fingers. Within the blood red River of Mankind, I am but a pin splash. Eventually we will all change from ape to man to Smith.

There hung, a residue of fear in Smith’s room when the army had departed. Alone, coping with it, she ate a little, her jaws biting with an unaccustomed movement and responded to the arcing sun, taking much delight in the curious photons, which struck her face. Time to describe it I think.

Or perhaps not. I’ll let her keep that feminine mystery at least. Already I have given you two clues and that is more than she would care to offer you. She has been physically probed enough for a lady. Exposed enough. Seen naked before too many people like a frozen statue in a museum. Robbed of her last secrets. You want a mental image to work with? I’m sorry; I cannot provide you with one. Ultimately it doesn’t matter but if I am to be allowed to coax this story along, I have to give way to precedence.

So the warmth of the long day was beneficial because she needed to be stroked lovingly. Her hand found the scorched shin and cupped around it lazily, pictures of white Camelot knights in her head. Where did they come from? But she knows things you see. She fathoms how to talk, listen, eat but she has no personal identity. No form on which to rest her pleasure. She can remember the objects but not the original context about which they were learnt. She knows pain. She remembers who is in charge of the country. But she cannot remember the name of her last lover-or the first.

Now you wish to know her age as well? I cannot say. Younger than me, older than my grandchildren. Yes, she is a lady and with that appellation, goes all that comes with it. But she is auburn and when that hair is washed well, she will be a signal, a beacon, and an emitter of pheromones. That hair, as I see it now, excites even me. I think it’s the hair at least. Like a dark hillside.

She advances. Rolling and deliciously sighing in the bath of sunlight. The soap is her hands, the bed her sponge. An unknowing smile crosses her wide lips, three clues now. I really must stop. The smile is just for pleasure only, simply entertainment. I know it’s not for me. I think.

Then she becomes an author’s nightmare; she does nothing. There is duration in the room, if not passing time. She crosses from the mundane to the supernormal, that primal region of non-thinking where worry ceases to exist, where she, as a pilgrim, feels peace.

The abrasive row beyond her door and window fades, melts, and disappears as her features softened. The cup of skin drops to the sheet, it’s work done. She lays in repose, dormant to stimulus, everything becoming secondary. I thought she never minded me being there. The observer. I should have known better for her left cheek acknowledges my presential blue-electric haze far in the corner by turning and she sees me clearly but is not alarmed.

I seem peaceful enough to her. I pose no threat but I am a disturbance. Like a photon myself, I upset balances as I gather information and, I repeat, I am needed there if I am to tell this story but the woman simply named Smith tells me to leave.

She knows what I am about. She knows my agenda and recognises why I am there but “Give me some slack!” I hear laughingly and I obey. Even I am not immune from her. There is no use pleading and I don’t really want to. I am content to leave. She knows I will be back. She needs a storyteller. I float away, merge into walls, and disappear into air.

And reappear here. The vegetable matter of this human is close to extinction. Oxygen is available and pumped to the lungs. Its atoms restrained from joining their cousins in the air by a clear plastic cup held loosely by more plastic looped around her delicate white head. Her semi-bald plate is withered with white loose hair. She was as those whom you yourself have seen. As a buoyant child, she could have never envisioned ending her days like this. This once vibrant woman once bore sticky children, had sweated life into the world. Now the world passed her open door. Most had given up on her.

Look closely and you will see she is weeping. Shall I tell you why? Because she is desperate. She has a pain of separation, one that denies her illness, and one, which cannot be controlled by the hospital staff. It is not their fault. It happens. Water drips from her eyes, onto her cheeks, collects at her mouth, follows the smoothness of her chin, and falls, to disappear and evaporate over time. One though can only see the manifestation of her mind close up for she shows no other sign of anguish.

But she drifts. The mechanical world is heard as a far away cry, a cacophony and the farther she retreats, the clearer she can hear the woman Smith talking. It is her comfort. It is home to her. It is holding one of her children for the first time. It is when mother came when you called, when she comforted you. The big human. When she made the world’s terrors go away. Can you remember? Probably not.

To be factual, the dying woman has the room next to Smith but her body is not calling. She herself hasn’t yet risen but she senses the life expectancy in spite of the opaque wall. It is a dark painting of red and she knows something is too wrong. She anchors to move, places her feet on cold ground and breathes as the blood flows to different places. She moves to the door. No one sees her slip into the lady’s room. There are still three of us.

Can you juggle? I can. Taught myself the rudiments of it one rainy afternoon with help of a book. Quite amusing really. It is an excellent way of exercising and it took time for my brain to adjust, but suddenly the magic happened and I actually had three balls in the air momentarily. Amazing. My dog thought I was crazy but it was equally amusing to see his eyes rolling around like a lottery, trying to follow everything. But it happened when I ceased trying to control everything. Odd, because I was in control.

And here was better magic. Magic, which just happens given the chance and the will.

Smith made it to the window and allowed it to open before she took a cold hand but the moment before she did, the middle-aged woman opened her eyes. The voice was so faint I had to stretch.

“You came”

“I heard you call”

“Thank you for coming”

“You’re not alone any more”

“What’s your name?”

She smiles.

“It doesn’t matter who I am, only that I’m here”

The mask is scraped off, helped by Smith who then tends to those tears, mopping them gently with her sleeve. The woman’s eyes roll, not unlike my dog’s did, but with far more astonishment and a great deal less speed.

“I heard the nurse say I won’t live long”

“You’re still alive”

“While you’re here...”

“Give a voice to why you cry”

“I cannot, you have taken away the pain”

“I have made it bearable”

How did you know I ask? How did you do that?

How did you learn to juggle? She replies. I have no answer. The painting turned pink then ceased to be anything during those moments. Death retreated, escaping by the only exit available, through the narrow slit of air. The scythe gone, Smith stroked her companion’s cheek and forehead as though she were dusting. The woman cried no more. Indeed, colour began to appear, her neck became fishing rod straight, her breathing manageable and deep. And with tender eyes, the woman whom the hospital had given such a common name, did the most uncommon of things; She wept for a stranger, her profulgent energy encompassing them both.

The reason for weeping was known. She felt the sick woman’s tunnel of despair caused by the loss of her family and her impending death from the tumour deep in her head. She felt also the tired old story of a husband too fatigued to be with his dying wife all the time because of duty to children, work, travelling.

The ill one had become completely incoherent two weeks before. She had not recognised him, had argued, thrown a fit and he had wept himself. Trying to hold life and limb together. Trying to satisfy everybody but himself. A hopeless case he was told. Only a matter of time.

We are so very sorry.

Twenty-four years of marriage. His guilt too; separate hostile, selfish thoughts of what he would do after; what would become of him.

I watched and didn’t understand what was happening but knew something profound was. It was paralleled by an event, which took the form of a tiny bird, a blue-tit, appearing at the window and from which began to herald a tiny song. Unafraid, it stood on legs of matchsticks and filled the room. The notes drove away the final pattern, the vitality which death left behind. Bouncing through the room, they acted as templates for a greater future.

Now both woman were still as if they had known each other all their lives. Smith charged and magnetized the air with her presence. Her stillness changed everything. Her stillness, not emptiness, allowed the ripe cancer cells a chance to form elsewhere. She had talked to them like a child, offering another way out other then death along with the woman. They had acquiesced, greedy by their nature.

I watched with profundity for the stillness became an open space, a door into another world. We reach so often for the magnificent but many of us do not attain it. We try for the complex and for what we think is right but we are often perplexed. She tells me, metal cannot heal because we are not made of it and a wound can only be healed by its cause. But she doesn't beg me to listen because I am willing.

The woman’s husband comes, a dark larrikin figure in the doorway, at first afraid of the stranger but as Smith releases the healed woman’s hand and retreats, his call to the nurses to explain his wife’s lucidity, allows her time to walk stealthy back to her room. She hears the hug between them, the kissing, and his bold questions. A miracle he believes. A spontaneous regression he is told. The woman momentary forgets about Smith in her joy. It is the way of things.

There exists the need to tell a story. Some emergent property within us all has this craving to communicate, as much as a gull needs to fly and a ghost to haunt. And words are not the only way; Communication is simply being. Unlikely as it seems and contrary to common belief, communication is within the mind of the receiver not of the source. Smith wishes me to write about the deeper aspects of communication, beyond verbal, beyond the obvious and I protest against this but from the precision of her extraordinary mind, I manage to grasp that she discerns the situation better than I.

This is not an intellectual exercise I suspect. I am not wholly writing these words because I imagine she has a superior view simply because she has misplaced her memory and therefore, most of the conditioning she has learnt. No, it is not just that. It is more. So much more. When I focus I see naturally with my eyes but she, who right now, is staring deeply at me, sees, in the sense of gathering information, with her whole self. So it cannot be seeing you say? Not in the sense most of us use the word. But what other word can one use?

She gathers information about the world. She hears but it is not enough to explain her knowledge. The sum of her senses is less than the totality of her awareness. She is an inverted black hole, giving out rather than sucking in. She is expansive, her cognitive felicities reaching far beyond my own tiny skull.

She sits small on the bed, yet encompasses me. It is not a cloud which touches me, neither a hot or cold or vapor, yet it is the most intense omni-directional field of force I have ever encountered. I concentrate a little, beginning to understand. What I feel, and even that is not the correct word, is not part of her but part of my own precious self. Yet without her, I would not feel it. She is not even a catalyst for this event. Yes, she manifests it. It originates from her in a local sense but it is not of her. From it she reads me like a nationwide directory. I am drawn in. I begin to fathom what she herself knows. A knot untying. A picture being drawn. It is not her eyes, I am sure of it but my mental process tells me otherwise.

And now she rises from the bed, coming towards me. Communication plus. She takes my invisible hand, guiding, slowing me down. I ask myself how can I feel her touch? Her hand is small and tender, no muscles required for the task. A supermarket child’s hand. What vestige of control I have here disappears immediately. Like giving in to sleep, I fall from intellectual grace allowing a crowd of images to jostle for space in my mind, keeping me from real unconsciousness.

Some I recognise but most I do not. They have no reality, in the sense of being part of my own memories but seem to be representations of emotions, which I have felt in my past. Bullies depicted as thunderclouds, my first sweetheart as a quickly moving animated stick of rock, when I became separated from my mother, a desert. The range of images was stunning, their meaning, seizing. My life in miniature, unfolding. Held in seconds, perceived in moments. But now I must do a doubtful thing. She insists but meets no resistance from me.

“An image of everything possible. That’s so wonderful! Can she be such a teacher? Every possible condition exists! Has always been so. We swim in choice. I have to choose and keep choosing. My choice denies all other possibilities. No one will interfere. “Make a choice” she implies. “Don’t be afraid. Know what I want. Commit to it and condense into me”

I am not fearful yet I remain aghast at this woman whose extreme discernment understands so completely. Tears come yet they themselves are being showered on me. My discovered beauty allows me to see. I am shouting within my mind; Let me have the world as I am. Let me relinquish whatever I have to. Yes, to choose a new reality. I confiscate that possibility. I choose to be. No expectations. No inhibitions No pain of judgments.

Choosing from millions of coloured raindrops. I am choosing all the time and I forget what I embraced. I am so powerful, I create my entire world! Smith sees past who I thought I was to the core of what she really is. She grasps any condition my mind can have. She, and now we, are powerful enough to create or destroy our world. I am at the centre of everything as we all are. I don’t question her anymore. It is all that matters for nothing else has any reality, any substance. Only my world is real and I can choose how it should be. I can choose anything. The past and the future are not real. Help me believe what Smith is allowing me to feel. May I never forget it. I remember myself as first mover first lover, first choice. Everything starts from myself”

For myself, this intrusion into the story was not my proposal. Certainly, the concept is far from normal but what is conventional about this woman? She allows bleeding wounds to be closed by her presence. Old and imperfect craters in the body from which our life force drains. This depletion halts within the panorama of her loving integrity, taking unpretentious form as much as goodness simply issues forth from a breast.

I wish to ask her questions which cannot be answered but she has separated now, is sitting by the window, allowing the yellow light, battling through the falling rain, to sparkle on her face. Has she forgotten who I am? What she just did? Somehow I don’t think so for I am sure she can still see me, my reflection merging with the dark trunk she is gazing at. Something tells me it is time to leave now and even as I have this thought, what I see begins to fade, as if I am leaving heaven behind...

... I open my eyes in apperception, not in relief may I add, and the heaviness of a close Greek evening replaces Smith’s cool hospital room. My hands tremor slightly as I reach past my monitor, to a white painted clay tray where tzatziki, pitta bread and an iced carafe of white wine stood. They had not been there an hour earlier. I pour, take a sip and while picking at my fingernails, read the contents of chapter eleven describing my time with Smith.

As measured by the great circle method, I am now approximately 1300 miles away from the rain-soaked day. I had returned from being an observing cloud, to flesh and blood, mince and form, quicker than a breath. Now, the achingly white walls of my apartment, offering no respite from the heat, blind me.

I finish the tumbler in one swallow. It tastes refreshing, even though it burns. I reach for another but, halfway to my lips, my shoulders dip and I am weeping hopelessly. What is this now? But I cannot stop. I feel ashamed, hoping no one can hear me. I don’t want anybody, not even Apollo, the busy Greek God who purifies men of their guilt, to see me like this.

Beyond my window is a bay of white sand, dotted with sun worshippers. Distant yells of children and play reach me. Incongruous, unappealing noises. The smack of water and the double drone of distant tzintzikas, invisible in the olive trees outside, distance me further from the crises I have been witness to.

There is no breeze this evening. On this tiny island there rarely is. We often sit immobile, products of Madam Tussaud, brain idle until the winter rain washes the oven heat away. I frequently yearn for a natural spring to bathe in, a sandy bottom and slippery rocks but it is, after all, my own choice to be here. I take responsibility for living in paradise.

Zakinthos is only one of the many thousands of Greek islands to be blessed or cursed, depending on one’s disposition. It offers a balm to many and I feel Alice could find a home here if she knew it existed. She might object to the lack of familiar wildlife but once one lets the quiddity of the country into one’s self, it can be like being reborn.

The caring, long-lived islanders with their modest products and the regular scorching summer season play a necessary part of course but that is not the whole of it. There is holiness to the islands. A symbiosis one can experience without kissing the ground. I’ll add that I feel Smith may find it pleasing here too but as I ground my palms into my eyes, I feel that wherever she was might blossom into nirvana.

My wife enters. Heard the crying I didn’t want her to hear and approaches me. She says nothing, draping her warm bare arms across my back, steadying me. She licks further tears, the salt pleasing, and the motion effortless. Loving in the Greek manner, she folds herself around me. A calculating stillness with every heartbeat.

Each evening Maria devotedly reads the chapters I prepare, marking, stroking, and dotting with her damn red pen. The pen I both loath and love, for it shows not only how consistently inept I am but leaves in its wake possibilities I had never even imagined. Mediterranean wisdom is a bargain and offered freely. Maria cleaves through complexities and heightens the ordinary to the extraordinary. Beyond her olive skin is a Goddess in human form, no Smith perhaps, but a close living relative.

Her embrace stings my eyes, sets me off again and her fingers, which do so much hard unnecessary manual work, reach down to cross over my heart. She sways, taking me with her, my head bowed and jerking. A song is softly sung. A ballad, it’s notes occasionally clashing with the constant hum of my computer’s hard drive.

She returns to the Greek and I let the unknown words sooth me for I still haven’t bothered to acquired the subtleties of her language despite the years I have lived here. Her English perfectly counter-balanced my laziness you see. All the time my eyes are closed for I have no need to see. When one is held close by a tongue this soft and as the fragrance of her jet hair, smelling like no other part of her, cocoons one, then what use is sight? She obscured the polished walls, took me protectively into her womanhood.

She says nothing in between the verses but continues to sing while wiping away my streaming eyes, now with her hair. She asks nothing but pours more wine, dipping her finger into the clear, singing liquid pausing, as only the Greeks can do, before she massages it across my lips, paying attention to the dry areas at the corners. I shift my weight, laying back, the tears drying now.

“Thank you” I breathed when she had stopped her song.

“I love you”

“What should I be without you Maria?”

“A writer still”

“Something happened. I made Smith. . .She made me. . .”

I was without a demon in my body. The dark secrets of a drowned man exposed and evaporated. I was less and, through the process, became more. Maria touched my mouth again, this time with a vertical forefinger, stopping the words.

“Let’s enjoy the sunset”

6.

The Brown Experience.

Steve ground his teeth so hard that their screeching woke Tracy unnecessarily earlier than her usual eight am. After elbowing him cruelly, which gave her ears some relief; she lifted herself out of their huge bed and struggled, zombie like, eyes partly closed, to the double doors, which refused to open automatically.

She sighed, rolling her eyeballs heavenward before yanking at its tiny underused crisis handle. An appendage so minuscule that as she pulled, her fingers slipped and the metal tore away the tips of two of her carefully curved plastic fingernails. Now she did more than sigh. Grunting somewhat, as the suction from the pneumatics resisted her as it released itself allowing her to escape the cloying dark room, she heard her husband’s molars begin to screech again.

Coffee was waiting for her. At least that machine understood her needs she smiled and after pouring a dark strong cup, sat at their long high breakfast table, her two hands supporting her chin, her long and thin jewellery-festooned fingers stretching up nearly to her eyes, her thumbs locked together near her throat.

She remained like that for a few minutes until the sleep fog lifted somewhat then picked up a remote and aimed it at part of a plain wall directly in front of her, at the same time lifting the white coffee cup to her well-formed, groomed and wealthy lips for the first of several hot and bitter sips.

By the time, she dropped the cup back down onto its coaster, a detailed but too-glossy, simulated female anchor television presenter with an unruly hairstyle and too much make up had read the main headlines which consisted primarily of the furore about Mrs Petal, the new Prime Minister and her vicious attack on the opposition’s recent disgraceful behaviour.

By the time she took more sips and devoured half the cup, the early news was already switching to an outside broadcast where a real live person was braving a snowstorm, commenting on how much more snow that region was to expect in the next week. Despite the hullabaloo that her shrill voice brought into Tracy’s morning, the freezing woman’s unnatural excitement drifted over her, touching nothing.

Because this was the day. Today was the day Dr. Brown; their Nigerian surgeon was arriving for Tracy and her husband. Snow wouldn’t stop him. Not the amount that the chilled anchorwoman was cheerfully babbling about anyway. Poverty, although not an issue with Tracy and Steve, would not stop him arriving either. Politicians a while ago had had their say and the opposition had lost. The NHS was a wonderful thing.

Now, she glanced at a glowing warm picture of an ice building, December’s visual representation of winter on her calendar and pleasurably noted the crossed off X’s and how they stopped at today. She nearly shivered with excitement despite her blue kitchen being a pleasing temperature.

More hot sips of acrid coffee took her mind briefly away from the achromatic weather but not for long. Despite the brightening darkness outside and the everlasting gloom which winter brought, she noticed the whipping effect of snow flurries even from where she sat. A carpet of softness and white furriness had settled over their carefully manicured lawns and extensive gardens during the night. Coffee in hand, she crossed over to the glass and pressing her small pretty plastic nose against the cold pane, she smiled delightfully. No, they would still get though. This wasn’t so deep. After noticing what she wanted to see, she returned to her stool and muted the television, enjoying the rest of her coffee with only the early morning soft and white visual peace outside as company.

The kitchen was well appointed, unusual considering the type of people they were and given what the essence of a kitchen must supply. A comfortable space though and now settled, she did not want to move but eventually, a familiar nagging, full and bloated feeling moved though her lower half and although she foolishly tried to ignore it, she knew that was impossible. How she wished it was a week’s time.

Now she clenched her teeth while a distressing yet depressed feeling fled over her until, to a mute yet another joyful weather woman, this time apparently describing the UK’s weather, she uneasily removed herself from the stool again and walked a few paces past the perpetually open door of the kitchen into a darker lobby. With a swish of another door, a door that never, amazingly, failed to work, she walked into an already brightly lit clinical area, which smelt overwhelmingly of pine leaves and flowers of some unknown and man-made forest.

Poporee was everywhere. In every assorted colour and mixture. In every glass and china plate and bowl. The sweet and cloying smell was almost suffocatingly overpowering. Their bathroom was spacious and completely covered with large white plain glazed tiles from floor to ceiling, which perfectly matched the white and dense shag pile. One huge mirror reflected her thin body, slightly trembling under her nightdress. The white sink was plain and functional. Everything was functional. The gold taps glinted. The disinfected lavender soap in a pinkish translucent plastic bottle welcomed her as the only colour. The white bath was huge, oval in shape and sunken.

Equidistant as it was possible to be from those items of bathroom furniture and the only door, the horror sat; the lavatory bowl, Lifeless and white as death next to its nemesis, the bidet. Beside it and plugged into the only electrical outlet in the room, was a pre-programmed deodorizer, squirting out puffs of radiant freshness every seventy seconds except when it detected the presence of a warm body and increased its output sevenfold. Somewhere above her, twin fans began their silent business of extracting air.

By the time, Tracy had finished glaring at the lower part of her body in that mirror, a process she was looking forward to never doing ever again in a week’s time, the deodorizer had squirted out six invisible puffs of happy scented perfume.

Finally, after checking and manually locking the door against any intrusion even though only her husband was in the house, she lifted her nightdress and tugged down her knickers before uneasily lowering herself on its pre-warmed plastic and spotlessly clean white rim. As tense as hell, she took a highly scented and warm white towel from a nearby rack and pressed it hard against her mouth and nose. The effect of sitting, announcing the increased weight to the control system, which governed the waste system, began a hidden DVD player and Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ sounded loud and clear, its dark tones at odds with the barren room.

She was nervous now, her bowels, aware that it was time, were beginning to expand and she had to remember, as she had to remind herself every morning, to control her breathing and take in large gulps of air and not to descend into panic, which was a place she could so easily go.

The towel smelt wonderful of freshly cut spring flowers and as her anus expanded, she tensed her open legs, knees and toes as she imagined the nausea and overwhelmingly sickening odour, which was probably already enveloping her. She was, as always, grateful for the music although Steve’s choice that day was not one she herself would have chosen. He did have a sense of humour though it had to be admitted.

As her body began its natural process, expelling its ordure, a frisson of hateful electricity stirred its way up her spine spilling across her rib cage, causing her nipples to rise and despite the temperature of the well ventilated room, caused virtually all of her skin to experience goose-bumps.

With long drawn out breaths and by holding her breath at the fullest capacity of her lungs, the abhorrent process was eventually over. However, upon it’s finishing, her bladder sought release as well and began its own process.

In her unending imagination she knew how, what she had done and what she was now doing sounded, knew that anyone even just outside the closed and fully locked door, would be able to hear if they wanted too despite the volume of Wagner and she shuddered perhaps for the tenth time as she waited for it all to come to a hideous end.

There was some minor panic after her bladder had emptied because it had not been unknown recently for her body to have another go at passing yet another motion. Which was why she regulated and monitored her food intake with almost mathematical precision, working out, to the nearest gram, her intake based upon her dynamic output for the previous day. It was true to say that after twenty-three years of married life, her best friend was not Steve but her small pocket Delimiter, a specialised medical and nutrient counter.

That first time she had felt the need to go again, she was horrified and that very day had fired off an e-mail immediately threatening a law suite despite having used the device and their service with a great deal of success for over five years. Steve’s own Delimiter had never gone wrong she argued but as Microsoft patiently explained, the science of faecal and urinal matter calculation was one in which development was always taking place and after assuring her that it would probably never happen again, she retracted her legal threat and her demand for a refund and calmed down.

Already, and this was two years ago, she had in mind their newly offered alternative and it was with increasing surety that she looked forward to the day when that might take place. For Steve as well as herself. As Tracy tensed her fifty-year-old legs and stood up gently, she never dared for one moment to look down or behind her, least she saw the dark horror, which nestled at the bottom of the pale blue water.

She, keeping the warm soft towel covering her face with one hand, easily moved a step to her right at the same time smacking a glass panel with her other free hand, which simultaneously released an overwhelmingly large volume of water into the toilet bowl, as well as starting up an extra two fans hidden in the ceiling, sat down on the bidet still clutching the towel to her mouth and nose.

Immediately, the unit recognised her weight it began and sprayed her with a gentle stream of temperature-regulated and scented water while she closed her eyes in deep relief. The horror, which she dreaded at the beginning of each day, was over. Forever now.

Outside of the white room and after she had spent over ten minutes washing herself, mostly her hands, Tracy was now undoubtedly a different woman. She hummed a nonsensical tune as she dressed before treating Steve to a coffee as he lazed in bed. It was now nearly nine and in the freezing December day, daylight, thanks to the new daylight saving times, was just beginning to enter their bedroom, cold and dull but nevertheless, welcome. They enjoyed seeing how deep the snow had become overnight for their large estate was now spotless, a white cold expanse drifting in central Essex.

Tracy never joined her husband for another coffee unless she was desperately thirsty and then her unit only advised pure water, perhaps because of an unexpected exertion for instance.

However, nothing of that sort was to happen that morning or indeed for the next forty-eight hours for all their activity had been scheduled with precision weeks before. More so than on any other day.

For instance, neither of them, besides their one early morning cup of coffee, was allowed to drink anything else except double filtered water. Moreover and more importantly no food had been allowed either for the last twenty-four hours but that necessity didn’t worry them at all. The fast they had had to endue was even pleasurable. The pain of hunger, they felt, easily outshone the misery of their morning abolitions.

They were to remove any nutritional implants before the great man arrived, complete their assigned exercise format for the day and rest thoroughly. These were specific instructions coming from Dr. Brown, their surgeon because he had a known habit of surreptitiously checking the health logs of patients that he was going to operate on, a habit his insurance company insisted upon after his seventh year of surgery, owing to a patient dieing on his mobile operating table.

Both Tracy and Steve had been on this famous surgeon’s long waiting list for over eleven months and so it was with some anticipation that they enjoyed that quiet time together on their bed, their arms linked in agreement, watching the snow getting deeper and deeper.

Until Steve himself sighed deeply and Tracy knew what that unhappy sound meant. It was his time now. He rose and moved towards the door and immediately he did, any warmth for him evaporated like ice on a hot day for she was well aware of what his body was about to do and it was almost unbearable. In her mind, he shifted from being her husband, her lover, and her partner to a hateful biological mechanism that did something unmentionable and irredeemable. She became angry as if it were his fault.

After he left, she dressed quickly in slacks and a loose top and, given the choice of walking on a treadmill or shovelling snow for an hour, she opted for the latter and pulled on a cardigan and her favourite pair of boots which had seen better days but today, she thought, was a day whereby she didn’t care less about what her postman thought. She would shovel snow and clear a path for Dr. Brown’s air-surgery craft.

He was scheduled to arrive at four that afternoon and as he always brought his team with him, the operations would begin at six after prepping his patients at five. By then, the surgeon would have all the information he needed, his team of seven expert assistants and nurses would be up and running with all the programs and permissions needed and all would be in place.

A reporter was supposed to arrive to cover it but due to the weather closing in and a report of a far more interesting operation on the other side of London, which eventually appeared as ‘Man has mucus plug problem solved’, the editor of the Evening Standard decided to go for the nearest and, quite frankly, the more interesting story.

For although the procedure which Tracy and Steve were to undergo was fairly new and innovative, it was hardly, as the editor explained to one of his reporters who was, at the time, staring dismally though the snowflakes touching the windscreen of her car wishing the damn man would make up his mind, cutting edge. And there he was right of course. A man with excessive mucus did top it and was more newsworthy to the general public.

Bowel and large intestinal removal, although pioneered several years ago as an adjunct to cosmetic surgery, although completely out of the development stage, was still an oddity but an oddity which was becoming ever more popular as more people discovered that they were becoming ever more distanced from the processes of their own bodies.

In the larger and more famous cities of the world, although it was not yet commonplace, it was seen as the next big thing to do for ones own satisfaction; to replace the foul, maculate and physical process of defecating and urinating by the sanitised process of the urinary drain and the clean and hygienic process of the sterile bag.

‘This eliminates the animal within’ so the public program had informed them. ‘It enables the patient to go about their daily business unencumbered by the very worse that the body so seemingly haphazardly produces’.

As well as the three-hour operation, what was known as a CR (a Compelling Regulator) would be fastened at the end of the small intestine and that had the effect of only allowing waste to flow when the user was asleep. This was, of course the icing on the surgical cake, as the user did not have to wear the equivalent of a colostomy bag during the day.

So after clearing snow for fifty-one minutes for Tracy and sixty-three minutes for Steve, they spent a quiet day. Resting, reading and slightly excited but not by too much. They planned to celebrate their last use of the unmentionable room in two weeks time with a celebratory meal but in the meantime, they enjoyed the day almost breezily and around three fifty five in the afternoon, listened intently for the NHS helicopter.