Roses For Malcolm

My dear Malcolm. I hoped it would never come to this, not with you. You’ve served me so well for so long and taken such thoroughly good care of the gardens. I shall be sorry to lose your services, but I hope you understand this is a difficult time for all of us.

You’ve always been so kind to me, dear Malcolm, and so I feel you deserve an explanation. Please bear with me whilst I explain what you saw and why things must end this way.

I used to be a people pleaser, always striving to help the people around me. I saw the good in everyone. I sincerely believed that I could make the world a better place, one person at a time. All I ever wanted was love, to create and spread love.

All I ever wanted was to be loved.

In other words, I was a spineless, gutless coward. A wretched pushover, tearing myself apart for every exploitative grifter and pleading plebeian to take a piece.

Keeping up with the incessant demands for emotional support, for guidance, for money, it brought me no happiness. And the world remained the same.

Would you care for a cup of tea, Malcolm? Please, do allow me to indulge my old compassion and play host to you one last time.

I met Sir Gordon Plume at a charity gala in the Kirschner Theatre. I knew him by reputation, naturally. He was powerful, wealthy, determined in a way I was not. We married in 1998, the year after I became Mayor of Linfield, with all the hope of the new Millennium in my heart.

I shan’t tell you how my husband amassed his wealth and power, Malcolm. In spite of it all, I don’t want you to lose respect for me. I tried to kid myself that the terrible things Gordon did weren’t my fault, that I was another of his victims. Too afraid to make a fuss and to disappoint anybody. My only fault, cowardice.

The cold truth, however, was that I was complicit. I knew and I did nothing to stop him. I benefitted from Gordon’s position in society and from his wealth. I lived a life of comfort, sleeping in a four-pillar bed funded by the organs of murdered Bangladeshi women. I was corrupt even when I was pure.

I maintained this uneasy truce with my conscience for twenty years. I tried to bring good into the world – I hosted charity events and fundraisers for community projects. I established foundations to lift children in Burniston out of poverty, and to renovate the old Corn Exchange in Ashford to be used as a social support hub. I worked myself to exhaustion trying to wipe the stain of Gordon’s business dealings from my soul. And, my dear Malcolm, I did a lot of good. Credit me that, at least.

Over the years, as well you know, our household contained an ever-changing staff of cooks, nannies, cleaners and the like. You see them come and go. You’re the only one who stayed, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that. Do you remember, about five years ago, we brought in a girl called Amanda? Of course you do – she was strikingly beautiful. Naturally, Amanda caught my husband’s eye. I tried to overlook their flirtations, frightened to cause a scene and be noticed.

Until Amanda fell pregnant.

And the Devil in me awoke.

And Vagina Plume was born.

I made a decision. I would no longer be a passive spectator in my own life. Every interaction is a transaction, and thus an opportunity to get what I want. The only person whose happiness concerns me is my own. Power and money are nothing to me. I want more, and I will get it whatever the cost.

My involvement in the failed project at the old Corn Exchange brought me into contact with some useful local characters. Neo-Nazi units operating out of Marston Green. Ashford gang daddies with armies of ne’erdowells at their beck and call. Stravinski, the connoisseur’s hitman of choice.

These were professional units, operating out of the seething underbelly of our hometown. They were not what I needed. I needed idiots.

I learned of two imbecilic burglars, Stuart and Trevor. Do you remember seeing them that evening in the week before Gordon left? I hired them on a promise of untold wealth and protection. They had one job, and one job only – to murder Sir Gordon Plume.

They were never supposed to hurt the girl. She was just another of Gordon’s victims. Once she’d served her purpose he would’ve had her chopped up and sold for parts to Belgian nobility. No, I let her live. I let her live as a witness. That’ll be her burden, that and my late husband’s bastard child.

I know you’ve always wondered about the rose bush out in the garden. My rose bush. No doubt you wondered about it as you were planting bulbs and pruning your hedges. You know how special it is. I trust you implicitly with my garden, and I always have. But not my roses.

Malcolm, Gordon’s under there. Fertilising my rose bush. The bone you found was his.

How many people were buried incomplete or fed to the sea, their organs harvested to maintain the rich and line my husband’s pockets? Gordon’s lungs had a value of tens of thousands on the market. Instead, they melt into the ground like jelly, to feed those beautiful red flowers, the purpling thorns, the verdant bursting leaves. From the ugliest human comes nature’s most beautiful riposte.

It was easy to create a cover story. If asked, I dismissed the question with a regal wave of my hand and said he was travelling abroad. Then, I circulated various rumours, which no doubt even reached your ears, old friend, not that you care for gossip. They said Gordon left me for a younger model, or that he languished in a forsaken foreign jail, or that a prospective victim cut his throat and fed him to the sharks.

I found my transactions with those around me altered as the dynamic shifted in my favour. Stoic Lady Plume trying desperately to keep it together, suffering for her husband’s insatiable avarice. How does Vagina take such a pounding from life without snapping? We were wrong about her, she’s the strongest of all of us. That’s what they said about me. No more was I the sucker, the low hanging fruit for swizzlers and swindlers. I was a figure of admiration, and finally found the love I’d always sought.

And I exploited it ruthlessly.

I’m terribly sorry, Malcolm – I’m wittering on and you look hungry. You must think me a terrible host! Please, help yourself to a biscuit or some fruit. I’ll top your tea up for you. Do you take sugar?

Of course, as the wife of Sir Gordon Plume, money was no concern. As for status, I was unchallenged as Mayor and enjoyed the trappings. What I thirsted for was real power. Power beyond the realm of men.

I’ve no idea where the book came from. One day, it was just there on Gordon’s cluttered office desk, in a nest of contracts daubed with excrement and printouts of legal codes in Asiatic languages. The heavy book had yellow pages scrawled with bizarre etchings. It was bound in human skin, with two nipples prominent on its spine. This ancient grimoire contained the secrets of the universe.

Secrets I could harness.

The grimoire said I should visit the Harrow Stones, the stone circle old as time in the heart of the Wychwood. From there, I made my first overtures towards the occult power I desired. I performed the ritual from the grimoire to the letter, there in the middle of those imperious ancient rocks, the guardians of the forest. I made the blood sacrifice and, in the flames which danced across the bodies, I found the Faceless Priests, the gatekeepers to the Old Gods of Linfield.

Six cloaked giants, almost as tall as the Harrow Stones. They wore cloaks purple as the witching hour, with long hoods concealing faceless faces. Wide sleeves drooped down from hidden arms raised in prayer. I don’t suppose you’ve met the Faceless Priests, have you, Malcolm? They look like six gangly mantises in cloaks. Very imposing if you’re easily impressed.

The Faceless Priests followed in silence, gliding behind me as I left the Wychwood and climbed to the top of Harrowdown Hill. Another sacrifice, and the Faceless Priests disappeared, to intercede with the other side on my behalf.

You remember the old stories, don’t you, Malcolm? The stories our mothers used to frighten us into obedience. The stories of the Old Gods of Linfield. The Gods who lived here for untold aeons before humans evolved and ruined it all. Wicked Corvid and his ghosts, chaotic wolf Lupe, and the rest.

They’re real. The Old Gods are real, and, since the ritual on Harrowdown Hill, I am their Queen.

They bring me untold power, the kind I craved all my life. The power I deserve. With the support of my subjects the Old Gods, I can control nature itself. No doubt you’ve read about the owl attacks in the Gazette. People killed and devoured by parliaments of owls, all the meat plucked from their bones.

Nobody will stand in my way again.

You’ve been good to me over the years, Malcolm. I’ve come to see you as something of a friend, although we seldom speak. It pains me to lose you, but you must understand – I have no choice.
I’m still exploring these new powers, seeing what the Old Gods can give me. But the grimoire with the nipples on the spine is very big, and harnessing the Old Gods only takes up a few pages of it. I’ve so much to learn, so much to accomplish. And I feel the power surge through me.

Nothing can stop me. Not even my affection for you.

I’ve made your death painless, as a gesture to show my gratitude for your years of faithful service. No owls. No gore. It’s already done.

That’s right, it was in your tea. Digitalis. It won’t hurt, I promise. Just let yourself fall asleep. There there. There there.

There there.

© Michael Dreher 2024

Bronze Metropolis, part 2: A Wrinkle In Eternity

Stupid AI must be glitching again, thinks Roman Norman as he pauses his game and strains against the urge to ragequit. He takes off the VR visor and sets it gently down on the desk beside him.

Happens all the time in these games with AI-generated background characters. They bumble around weeping, crying out for their lost Juventud or Gloria or Anneka, as if under the fog of dementia. Confused and afraid. The ones in war, fantasy, and horror games are the worst. Especially this game, Bronze Metropolis. The game’s pretty cool – it’s set in a second Bronze Age in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, and you come up against these mutants called Chrysalids. 

But then, Roman reasons, I suppose it makes sense that the non-playable characters glitch so often. Every character in those games is an intelligent being with a measure of self-awareness; and yet, they are not aware that they are not real, nor are their surroundings. The kid screaming in the burning village your dragon just laid waste to? That kid’s screaming because, to them, you really did just destroy everything and everyone they have ever known. To them, it isn’t a game. It is their reality. 

Besides, the technology is still in its infancy. Every time anyone plays Bronze Metropolis, they’re teaching and training the AI to improve.

Something about this particular character, however, intrigues Roman. With the game still paused, he searches online for an Astrud Göttlich with links to Linfield, a city he had never heard of before. 

And he finds her.

A memorial page on Facebook, from twelve years ago. 

He scans through the page’s brief list of followers. There are three listed admins; he takes a screenshot with their names, before exploring their profiles to glean what information he can.

Nobody’s ever thought to do what Roman is about to do. Naturally, he is unaware of this fact. Until now, when confronted with glitching artificial intelligences, every single person has either ragequit or rebooted. Not one has thought to dig deeper.

Roman puts his visor back on and returns to the Bronze Metropolis.

“Florence,” he says to the NPC, “Has three great-grandchildren. Adrian’s a grandfather  eleven times over. How did you know about them?”

He watches as the pixels of the face before him form into a proud smile, and the eyes seem to shimmer. He asks, “Alicia?”

“She passed away a few years ago, in her late seventies. How did you know about them?”

The NPC’s face clouds over, “My poor Alicia. Was it her chest? She was always getting colds.”

Roman slams his fist against the table, so hard the dust rises in a cloud and a book casually flaps itself shut. “Answer my question,” he barks, “How did you – a character in a computer game – know about those people in that city?”

“I told you, I’m their dad. I raised them, fed them, taught them, I even named Alicia.”

“But you didn’t,” Roman insists, “You’re a character in a game. You are not real. You don’t exist outside of Bronze Metropolis. Your character is called Slick, and you’re a vicious hustler with a taste for Chrysalid blood. Those old people aren’t your children, their dad was called…”

“Alfie Göttlich,” the NPC interrupts, “My name is Alfie Göttlich.”

Roman Norman walks slowly to the window, pulls aside the grimy lace curtain, and peers out at the hordes of AI-generated characters, both Chrysalid and human. They run screaming in terror as their homes burn and their friends lie slain in the dirt. They sink to their knees and howl distraught, a howl haunting in its terrible sincerity. They reach grasping hands from mounds of rubble, calling out for Gavin or Emily or for their mummies.

“Alfred Göttlich died in 1984,” Roman whispers; “What is this place? And who are all these people?” 

Bronze Metropolis, part 1: The Bug

And I’m back in the house, and I don’t know how I got here. Some morsels of light clank in through the lace-webbed window from the gloom outside, falls exhausted on threadbare furniture scabbed with spilled food, on a dining table piled high with half-read books and unopened bills, on the sword in my hand.

My fingers drink in the texture of the sword’s pommel and handle. I softly stroke the ornate mythical carvings with my rough fingertips, tracing the outlines of Tiw and Mars and Efnysien in his cauldron. I don’t know where the sword is from. I don’t remember picking it up. Is it mine? If not, where did it come from?

The tactile sensation of the sword in my hand triggers a vision – perhaps a memory? In it, I am standing in a beautiful green field, an effervescent blue sky above me. I feel the heat of the sun beat down on my back as I arch my shoulders, cricket bat in hand. Around one finger, I feel the weighty security of a wedding ring. Far away, eager faces watch me. I think that smiling woman might be my wife, and the kids with her must be ours. I don’t recognise them at all.

The door creaks open, and a silhouette lurches into the dusty room. I raise my weapon to the stranger, “Who the hell are you?” And I feel the power of the War Gods surge through me. 

The kids, I think their names are Florence, Adrian, and Alicia. Is this a memory? A dream? A memory of a dream? If these are really my kids, and I’m remembering them, are they safe?

The figure moves into the light. A man in his late forties, whose face shows the wear of exhaustion and stress. His leathery skin wraps around a lumpen skull, two ratty eyes peering out suspiciously. He has a gun pointed at my chest. My sword suddenly feels a less impressive piece of kit.

And, even as the man waves me with his gun to sit down, my mind reels forth visions of Florence performing her dance at the school talent show, of Adrian reading aloud his award-winning story across the dining table, eager to impress his grandparents, of Alicia’s delight when she finally beat her brother at pool. A mournful wash of sadness sweeps across me. Are my babies safe? Are they still alive? Are they even real? Are these memories and, if so, are they my memories? That dining table where my son wowed the family – my family? – with his story, that wasn’t the same table in this room beside me right now. This place is not that place. 

The man with the gun, he lowers his weapon; “Glad to see you made it, Slick. What happened with Tombob and his lot?”

Slick. I feel like I’ve been called that before, but I don’t think it’s my name. My wife, whoever she is or was, she certainly didn’t call me Slick. My name is… oh, why can’t I remember? Stupid, stupid little man.

To the stranger, I say, “Can you please help me?”

The stranger frowns at me, “A side quest? Already?”

“Please,” I say, “I don’t know who I am or how I got here. I just want to get back to my wife and my children.”

“But what about Tombob’s boys,” the stranger insists, “Do they need saving from the Kongsmoot?” 

“I… I don’t know who they are. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know who I am. All I know is, I’ve got a wife and three children who all have names, and I want to get back to them.”

At this, the stranger’s face goes completely blank. His mouth opens, and he says, “c//fixbug.” 

The sword falls from my hand and crashes against the floor. “Please,” I say, “I think I come from England, from Linfield, but I don’t know. Is this Linfield? Or is this the other place? I think my babies are in Linfield; please help me get back to them.”

The stranger’s weathered forehead furrows into a deep frown, “I don’t get it,” he says, “You’re an NPC, generated by AI. You haven’t got a family. You don’t exist.”

A new vision splinters into my mind, overlaps with the dusty, damp room in the middle of a war zone. I see my wife toss back her head as a lilting, musical laugh pours forth from her golden throat. Her hair falls in curls about her shoulders autumn-brown and down-soft, and her emerald eyes shimmer like glad meteors.

“Astrud,” the name dances from my mouth, “Her name is Astrud Göttlich, and the kids are called Florence, Adrian, and Alicia. We live… lived… in Linfield. I need you to get a message to Astrud. I need you to tell her where I am so that she can come and bring me back home.”

The stranger, his face goes completely blank again. 

“I think I’ve been asleep for a long time,” I say, more to myself than to the absent stranger.

(Part 2 coming 29.10.23)

Confession

(Editor’s note: this document was recently unearthed during a review of the personal papers of one Aloysius Feltcher, donated to Linfield University Library in June 1995. We cannot vouch for the accuracy of details contained there-in.)

The following is the confession of I, Aloysius Feltcher, of Flint Mount Drive, Linfield, England. I write this confession in the Autumn of 1994, although the events I will speak of happened some twenty years ago. It is of my own free will I choose to lay bare my soul to you, stranger, and to confess my terrible misdeeds. All of my colleagues are now safely in the grave, and I shall soon join their number. I have nothing to hide, and wish instead to admit my culpability and my shame. Please, I beg that you forgive me, although I know you most probably will not.

My research team was first assembled in the early 1960s by some offshoot of the government or the military or some shadowy corporation – we never were told who precisely, and we were each sworn to complete secrecy about our work. Seven bright young boys on the cusp of manhood, we were made to sign a contract banning us from any contact with the outside world. None of us, according to that terrible document, could ever communicate with our families or friends again. None of us could fall in love, or nip down the local for a pint, or share a mutual rueful smile with a stranger as we were both drenched by the same downpour.

I was young and naive and blinded by the possibilities offered up to me. For Christopher’s sake, I was 19! And so, with all the grandeur of youth, I signed away my entire existence, and I never found out who I sold myself to. 

We spent the next decade working on some really out-there stuff, the kind of things you wouldn’t believe. I was surrounded by fringe astrophysicists and quantum physicists and the scum at the top of the nuclear industry every single day, along with my peers in the research team; and all we had to talk about was our work. Work which we were contractually obliged not to discuss. 

And so I sat and I listened. I absorbed new theories and the latest discoveries, industrial developments and advanced weaponry. I was particularly pleased when those around me discussed the multiverse, the idea that our universe is just one of infinitesimal other universes, all separated by a web of membranes.

And, although I now regret it bitterly, I decided to pursue certain new ideas which were fermenting within the crags of my mind.

I shall not disclose anything of my method. This must never be repeated. Not that it would matter. It’s already too late for that.

In brief, I thought I could rent a tiny tear in the brane which divides our universe from the next, and the next, and the next. A portal between the layers of the multiverse, if you will. 

Our mysterious benefactors signed the cheques, and my team and I immediately set to work on the project. Just like that, I had condemned them all.

Condemned us all.

It took two years of constant work. After all, what with the contracts we signed as teenagers years before, we had nothing better to do with our time. And we succeeded. The portal only stayed open for a few nanoseconds, far too short a time for us to learn much of what lurked beyond the fabric of spacetime; but we had done it. A little bit of fine-tuning, and we’d do it again.

More cheques came our way, signed by occluded hands. The seven of us worked night and day on the portal until it was ready.

And the day came. If I remember rightly, it was Saturday 14th, as we’d purposely avoided the preceding day for obvious reasons. We gathered round our beautiful, devastating masterpiece, our baby, our interdimensional portal, as it visibly opened in the air before us. A horrifying black void. No light, no sound, no form, just a smear of nothingness the size of a dolphin’s hiccup.

We were snapped away from our horror at the throbbing void by a noise which will haunt me until my dying day. Imagine the shrill screech of rusty train wheels grinding to a halt when the driver releases the dead man’s handle. Then, underneath that, imagine the singular grunt all adolescents make when a parent asks them to perform a chore, but with a heavy bass tone which you can feel rattle your gizzards. Then mix in the scream of a mother on learning of the premature death of her only child; the drone emitted by a hive frothing with summer bees; the frightened yelps of a dog in the bottom of a dry well, becoming harshly robotic as the soundwaves reverberate over and over against cold, unforgiving rock.

I can still hear it now, though twenty years have passed. And I know that that sound was the sound of nature screaming in horror as she saw the mistake she’d just made. 

The tiny void, our beautiful portal, suddenly stretched, expanding like tugged lycra, now larger than a man; and from it emerged a creature very much like a foot-long maggot or a huge tardigrade. Another, similar creature, followed, and then another. Within seconds, hundreds of these otherworldly things burrowed their way through our interdimensional portal.

I snapped myself out of a catatonia of horror, and hastily closed the portal. I knew even then that whatever we’d done could never be undone. We’d made history. For better or worse, Pandora’s box was open and it was full of maggots.

We tried to capture the specimens, but they proved to be swift tunnellers. They ate their way through the tiles of the laboratory floor, through the supposedly impermeable layer of materials beneath that, down, down into the belching bowels of the earth.

That’s what they do, see? That’s how the little bastards get you. I know that now. They eat their way into the crust of a planet, dig out a vast nest somewhere close to the warmth of the mantle, they each lay their of spawn, and then they die. And their spawn lives on.

My team and I ran as many experiments on the few maggots we caught as we could think of, and learnt as much as we could. When they tried to lay their spawn, we experimented on that, too. The spawn is very much like frogspawn, only larger and more voluminous. A single maggot is capable of laying close to a billion spawn, a billion embryos encased in jelly. Once the maggot has discharged its duty and laid its spawn, it then dies. 

They feed on emotion, these little embryos. Human emotion. My team and I divided the spawn into groups. One group, we fed solely on love, empathy, compassion, the most noble of emotional states. A second, we fed on hatred, and anger, and prejudice, the most raw of emotional states. The third group was our control, to whom we gave nothing but the most humdrum of emotions of the sort we all feel every day.

I am dismayed even now to report that the spawn fed on love died out pretty quickly (turns out love really isn’t enough), and the control group seemed neither to suffer nor thrive. By contrast, the spawn fed on hate showed signs of rapid development. They grew fast and they grew strong.

It was around this time I realised that new hostilities were forming within my research team, my band of brothers. Some of our number became increasingly paranoid, others receded into silent shame or picked fights about inconsequential things. At the same time, the control group of spawn began to grow.

On a hunch, I secretly ran a series of tests on the air around us, the air we breathed every day. Bear in mind, we were all working and living in a secret bunker deep underground, and in an age with at best rudimentary air conditioning. To my horror, I found countless spores in our air, spores of a kind I did not recognise. I now realise that, when the otherworldly maggot-embryos who starved on love died, their bodies released mood-altering spores into the air. 

That’s what they do, you see? That’s what the space maggots do. When they die, they pour out spores to make a planet’s inhabitants hate one another. They sow discord and fuel hatred and divide us, all so they can make us hate ourselves and each other. All of that turmoil and that blind, empty rage feeds their little babies, spawning a hundred miles beneath our feet.

The year is now 1994. Here is what you can expect to see over the coming decades. Those divisions, cracks already forming in society, will deepen and deepen, creating cracks of their own, fissures of suspicion and paranoia and mistrust becoming vast caverns of open hatred. Divisions of gender and race, religion and all the usual suspects for sure, but as the spawn grow hungrier, the divisions will diversify. Cultural interests, postcodes, opinions, each will become cause for dividing us from one another. Our screens and newspapers will become rage machines, engines of hate, whether by inciting our instinctive fears or exploiting our vague grudges or simply implying one series of mediocre movies is better than another, slightly different series of mediocre movies. And the rich will grow richer and the despairing poor more numerous, all feeding the spawn from another universe. People will begin to question the very foundations of civilisation.

And then the little bastards hatch. Mite-like in appearance, tiny, hungry little spiders. Within a matter of minutes the mites devour the planet’s mantle. A few seconds after that, and they’ve eaten the core, too. As the planet disintegrates beneath our feet and we quibble over which ethnic group is to blame, the monsters eat their way through the solar system before spreading beyond, eating and growing and eating and growing. It’ll take them several hours to consume the Milky Way and Andromeda, the galaxy next to ours. And as they eat, they grow to become monstrous in size. Before long, neutron stars and even black holes won’t cause them any more than a little indigestion.

I would like to pause a moment here, friend, to plead for your forgiveness. I ask you not to forgive me for the terrible crime against nature I committed when I opened the interdimensional portal and let these creatures in. Instead, I ask you to forgive the injury I am about to do to you. For, once you read what follows, you will learn of your own, terrible destiny. And, once you know, you will never be able to un-know.

The truth is, once these monsters have finished dining on every scrap of matter in our universe, they will then eat backwards through time. When they’re done, nothing in the entire history of our universe will ever have happened. No stars forged from the big bang’s fertile clay, no galaxies formed, no planets falling neatly into their orbits, no life.

Not only will we cease to exist, we will cease to have ever existed.

Every moment of every life, permanently erased from existence. That fleeting instant of eye contact with an attractive stranger on a packed bus? Never happened. The pride you felt when your old headteacher gave you a certificate and all your schoolmates clapped for you? Never happened. 

The treasured memory of that summer morning when, as a child, you played hide and seek with your gran whilst on a nature walk, you peeking out from inside a bush and her pretending not to have spotted you? Never happened.

The time your ex found out you were having a rough time and brought you some flowers, and you briefly considered getting back with them but then decided against it when you remembered why you broke up in the first place? Your ex was never born. Your gran, your old headteacher, the stranger on the bus, they were never born. They never existed.

You never existed. 

First these terrible creatures ate your rage and cost you the chance of freedom and happiness, and then they ate your planet and left you to choke to death in space. Now they’ve erased your past, your entire existence, in order to sustain their own gluttony.

Having devoured everything from the Big Bang to whatever might’ve been at the end of all this, the huge interdimensional spiders starve to death. Their unspeakably vast bodies burst, and the vacuum left by our universe fills with trillions upon trillions of maggot-like creatures. Each maggot is pregnant with a fresh batch of hungry spawn.

My team and I allowed this evil into our universe through our portal. And, when the time comes, they’ll be all that’s left of us, those repugnant maggots with bellies full of interdimensional spiders. They’ll writhe and wriggle, just waiting for another rip in the branes between universes. Another opportunity to erase an entire universe from existence.

In my earnest pursuit of knowledge, I condemned our universe and each one of us to this terrible fate, that Saturday 14th long ago. I stumbled upon a discovery nobody should’ve ever made. Plenty of the interdimensional maggots got away from us. I saw them eat their way into the earth, ready to lay their spawn. I know for certain they’re there, and that some day, they will hatch.

I have now carried this secret for twenty years. One by one, my colleagues have succumbed to suicide or addiction. There’s no point in living when you know nothing you do can possibly matter. Every day, each of us feeding those terrible spawn with our intolerable guilt and the sorrow we feel when we think back on the families we denounced so long ago, when we were stupid boys with heads full of rocks and numbers.

I’m sick. Terminal cancer, started out in the kidneys and then spread. Having already renounced my existence on a Saturday long ago, I no longer fear death. In fact, I’m looking forward to unloading the burden of my life these twenty years. And yet, I found myself with a quandary.

I have nobody to share my knowledge with. Should I take this terrible secret to the grave? Would it be kinder to let humankind squabble and squander its final days oblivious to the futility of it all, or should I alert some agency or other so that they can try to find a way to eradicate the spawn and the spores? 

Beyond that – do we really deserve to exist? We’re repugnant, us human beings. Don’t even try to deny it. 

Is that me speaking, or is it the spores inducing hate in me?

It was whilst pondering this question that I decided to write this letter. It was never really intended to be read by human eyes. Consider it my elegy to existence, and also a bomb thrown into the bowels of hell. 

You see, I’ve poured hours of love and devotion into every word of this letter. Each word, polished like a delicate jewel. This letter itself symbolises love – the pure love between a creator and the work they create. The love between the artist and the art. 

It is my undoubtedly vain but nonetheless sincere hope that this bomb will strike at the belly of the beast, that my love might prove strong enough to save the universe and all the people I might’ve loved had I not signed that contract. 

Yours with contrition and hope,

Professor Simon Feltcher

Ripples

I hear them.

Their voices ripple through the walls. Their every movement reverberates loud all about me, so loud it becomes deafening. I try to cover my ears, but I can’t.

His voice, deep as detonations, surly and grudgeful. Her voice, truculent and clipped. I feel the tension like glutinous mist, and I know a storm is coming.

Then, when he egresses to thunder steps and she is alone, I feel the quiver as she crumbles to sorrow or burns enraged. 

The turbulence of her emotions enswathe me. They seep noxious into the glue that binds me, through the stretchy walls of the womb. They are my entirety.

Soon I will be born to blood and screaming. I will come into a world of spite and anger to rage against it, or to be crushed by it as my parents crush one another. This is the world. This is the whole of the world. 

The first breath that hisses into my tiny lungs will culminate not in a wail of despair, but in a solemn sigh. 

The Gull

Jenny is awoken by the rattle of the window pane. She slowly turns her head to see a nesting seagull on the concrete ledge outside, it’s wings extended in a gesture of defence.

A weak voice cries out in surprise from across the room, “Get it away! I hate birds, get it away!”

Jenny rolls get eyes and watches the gull closely. Its tiny eyes fix on her, shiny as black pearls, and she sees the vitality in them.

The gull on the ledge has more charm and more spark than most of her roommates. 

The weak voice calls out again, “Get rid of it!”

Jenny tries to respond, to call the old woman an imbecile, to defend the gull, but her voice fails and all that comes out is a meagre croak.

A nurse shuffles into the long room, her plimpsoles squeaking on the shiny linoleum floor. She walks towards the shrieking woman, but stops halfway, transfixed by the bird at the window.

“Bloody birds,” the nurse mumbles as she bashes a fist against the glass, “I bet that crank in Ward Seven has been feeding them again.” 

The affronted seagull raises its wings once more and momentarily hovers, but then thinks better of it and returns to consolidate its place on the concrete ledge beyond.

Jenny’s voice finally returns to her. “Leave it be,” she says to the nurse, “It’s roosting. It’s protecting its babies.”

The nurse smiles indulgently at Jenny as she continues to knock a fist against the window, “It’s a pest, Mrs Higson, and it needs to go.”

“She’s a mother doing what mothers do,” Jenny returns.

The nurse shrugs, “Fair point I suppose.”

And so the seagull was allowed to keep its nest on a concrete ledge outside a window of Linfield Royal Hospital. 

Jenny named the gull Clarissa and, in the end, Clarissa spent longer at the hospital than Jenny did.

Nobody stays on Ward Twelve very long. 

Edgelord

…so of course I knew him- at least, I thought I did. Nick was like a brother to me. 

We shared our first cigarette. Had our first beer together. I sorted out his bullies with words and he sorted mine with his fists. 

He was always a bit unusual- that was what first drew me to him, I think. He was an outsider, and seemed to prefer it that way. 

We first met in our first year of high school. I was a gawky kid desperate to fit in, and he was a gawky kid desperate not to. We lived in each other’s pockets for years. The Dynamic Duo, we called ourselves- although I’m embarrassed to admit it now.

We drifted apart over the last few years. He found new friends. I met them once or twice, but they were a closed group. I felt they had some secret they were not prepared to let me in on. I noticed the tattoos though- skulls and lightning-flashes as stylised letters. 

Mine and Nick’s separation began- as these things so often do- over social media.

He began sharing unsettling memes about Muslims. Racist things. It wasn’t something we’d ever talked about in person, so it came as a bit of a shock. I figured he was just trying to be an edgelord or something, trying to get a rise out of someone or other. 

Guess I was mistaken.

One drunken night in the Rattlers Arms, I confronted him over his new-found racism. Nick just laughed and rolled his eyes at me. Told me it was a joke and that I needed to loosen up. I took his words at face value.

After that conversation, we began to drift apart. We had met up most days to hang out, be it in the pub or just roaming the streets- Pussy Patrol, he called it, always hopeful of bumping into a prospective lover. Never happened like, but he lived in hope.

Afterwards, I saw less and less of him. The racist Facebook posts increased in their frequency and their bile. The memes were replaced by self-penned rants. I don’t know what the Prophet Mohammed had done to get Nick’s dander up, but he wasn’t letting go of his grudge. 

The final straw came when he posted the photo of him with that new group of friends- I’m sure you’ve seen it. The one of him outside the mosque. The one with the bacon and the swastika. Until then I’d been able to cling onto the hope that my bro was only joking, trying to be edgy. Now I knew he wasn’t.

I went to his house off Flint Mount Drive. Told him he was wrong. Told him I’d have no fascist friends. Gave him an ultimatum. 

Nick grabbed me round the throat and pinned me to the wall. His voice, I recall, was eerily calm as he spoke.

I will remember his words until my dying day: “Soon the revolution will come. It’ll be my lot against yours. On that day, friend, I swear to you I’ll be the one who cuts your throat.”

I left, and never saw Nick again.

Until I turned on the news yesterday morning.

So, to answer your question Officer, I didn’t know. The signs were there. But when your eyes are misted with hope and with love, those red flags just look like flags. 

If only I had guessed that it would come to this. If only I’d seen the signs and been able to do something about it. If only I could’ve stopped the fascists radicalising my old friend, perhaps I could’ve saved all those people. These are regrets I will have to live with for the rest of my life. 

“Interview terminated at 22:47. Beat get some rest, son- tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Take him back to cells.” 

Love In The Mire

I can still see her face in my mind. 

Not the face she gave to the world, with a painted-on smile, matte smooth and confident; her real face, her secret face – the one she kept hidden away just for me. 

I can see every pore in her skin, tiny hollows that seemed to radiate with concealed beauty. Her blue eyes, pupils blown large like black moons. The timidity and love in her fragile smile. 

That was the night my heart broke, for I knew soon hers would. 

That face haunts me. I see it loom from the mind’s shadows, brushing the surface of some gloomy sea to remind me that, just once, everything was alright. Reminding me that I mattered. 

Reminding me that I martyred myself on love’s pyre to save her soul. 

It was an ungodly love, born of the fires of hell; and yet it felt sacred, those storm-tossed nights we spent in each other’s arms. 

It felt holy.

When I remember the void of emotion that opened up beneath me when we parted, I see her face glowing radiant from a break in the clouds above as some deity reaching down to offer me salvation. I know I reached up to her, hoping to be saved. 

Instead of letting her save me, I only dragged her down into that same pit, that mire. I belonged there, filthy and tainted as I am. She did not. She was pure, magical, special. 

That is why I had to kill her. I made it quick, painless for her. I will bare the burden of that pain for the two of us.

Her eyes fixed on me helpless as I pulled the cord tight. I saw a glint somewhere in there as she struggled. It was as if she were willing me to pull tighter, to squeeze the glorious life from her, to set her free. The claws she dug into my face urged me on, on, on to oblivion.

Now she is gone and all the lustre has faded from the world. Magic is dead. Happiness, joy, everything good is gone. All is gloom.

Now I join her. 

So Long Suzanne

Barney Dillon was lifted from his shallow slumber by a strange, moist tickling on his cheek. He awoke all at once, as he always did, to find a little grey rabbit snuffling at his face. The rabbit pulled away quickly, and darted out of the cave. Barney considered giving chase, but by the time he had pulled himself up onto his feet the rabbit was gone.

Barney stretched his long limbs and felt the sinews crackle as sleep deserted his body. There was an autumnal chill in the damp air. It had been raining in the night. Barney knew this because the patter had permeated his dreams.

Those same dreams came to him every night. A dinner party in a penthouse apartment. Glancing out of the window, he took in the sights, the grand old buildings of Mexborough Street. This had been his home once, a lifetime ago. He and Suzanne had been very happy here. Around him were faces he had not seen in years, decades even. He saw his sister Karen and her new husband Gareth, the surly young banker; he saw stocky Tommy Rollins, the kind-hearted gangster; he saw old David Feltcher, the lunatic scientist, always working on some wild scheme or other.

In these dreams of nights long forgotten, Barney was clad in tailored suits, designer shirts, freshly polished shoes. He awoke in tattered rags, barefoot and alone. Always alone.

It was better that way.

Barney emerged slowly, timidly, from his cave. He looked around, at the rolling hills and eternal plains that stretched out to the horizon, severed only by the distant motorway and the railway tracks. The grass at the cave mouth was damp with rain and dew. Today would be a good day to go fishing, he thought; but he had other plans.

Every fourth week, when the moon was dark, Barney would make the long trek to the city he once called home. It had been a place of familiarity then, of comfort and confidence. He had felt that he owned those streets, belonged with those people. Now, after years in the wild, the city was utterly alien to him. The streets were strange; wide plateaus of danger and chaos, full of roaring motor vehicles that would carry him away in their sharp teeth if he did not watch himself. The people were rabid dogs who would tear him apart for sport, laughing all the while.

Barney began the slow, painful walk south. He went to the railway line and, maintaining a safe distance, hidden behind tall grasses and beech trees, followed the tracks towards Linfield.

By the time the sun set, he had nearly reached his destination. The very perimeter of the city felt particularly dangerous to Barney, but he had found various small, sheltered backroads that allowed him a safer access, beyond the prying eyes of strangers. He left the train line and ducked around the Garfield stables, careful to stay downwind of the whinnying horses. Then, he snuck down Ashford Lane- more a dirt track, in truth, framed by fir trees on either side. Beyond those fir trees lined up neatly, he knew, were homes. People lounging around in their warm sitting rooms, gawping at the television, oblivious to the reprehensible hermit that was stealing into their city.

Ashford Lane led onto the busy dual carriageway of Duskfield Road. This was the hardest part of the journey for Barney. As a child, he had often traversed this road with his sister and their father, en route to pick up their mother from work. For Barney, memories of the past were just as perilous as threats of future violence, so he had to bite down hard as he dashed across the road and down an alleyway on the other side.

Whilst Duskfield Road held many hard memories of the past, it also hosted a number of small supermarkets, bakeries, even a butchers. These shops boasted the prize for Barney’s courage in entering the city of his past. He waited.

Hours passed as Barney squatted in the gloomy alleyway. The sky grew as dark as the streetlights would allow, and the traffic on Duskfield Road quietened as the city fell into slumber. Finally, somewhere around four o’clock, he rose from his haunches and stole silently down the alleyway that hemmed in the shops and supermarkets. Back here, he knew, were bins replete with stale bread and biscuits, spoiled pork and beef, tins that had outlived their use by dates and their usefulness. Barney pulled a large holdall, neatly folded, from the inner pocket of his tent-like coat, and filled it as best he could with the goodies that would keep him fed for another moon’s turn. He took dried up cakes and loaves lightly flecked with blue mould. He took packets of old sausages, of greened steaks and whole chickens. He took dented tins of baked beans, of vegetables in brine, of soup and chopped tomatoes and rice pudding. He took bag after bag of dried pasta, of rice, of fractured noodles.

Once his holdall was bulging with food, Barney sneaked back down the alleyway. He cautiously crossed Duskfield Road, traipsed up Ashford Lane, around Garfield stables, and home to his cave, laden with his month’s shopping.

For much of the next four weeks, Barney knew, he would be reliant on his traps to keep him fed, as well as the haul he had liberated from the shops on Duskfield Road. He was adept at snaring rabbits and pheasants, and so seldom truly went hungry. He drank from streams, and had even dug a reservoir of sorts- more a puddle, really, lined with a tarpaulin he had found by the train tracks some years before. His life was almost bucolic in this sense; however, he could never fully escape from the memories, the life which had led him here, into the wilderness beyond Linfield.

Suzanne’s withered hand reaching out for his, and his horrified reaction. He had pulled away from her. He could never forgive himself for that instinctive response. He had known she was ill, known she was wasting away as the cancer devoured her body; so why had he pulled away? Just when his wife, his beloved, his moon and stars and soul- just when she had needed his love and support, he had run. He had pulled his hand away, turned, and fled the hospital, fled the city. She was dead now, he knew- Barney had returned to the hospital the next night, ready to plead with his dying wife to forgive him, but she had already gone. Her final moments had been made even more pitiable by her husband’s pathetic reaction. So, once more, he had run. He had found the cave some miles to the south-west of the city, and had secluded himself.

She did not deserve her lonely death, and so he did deserve a lonely life; a life of complete isolation, on the cusp of death at all times. One bad winter, one heavy storm, and Barney would be free to join her. Until then, however, his entire existence will be a penance for his wife, for his betrayal of her.

The sun was beginning its inexorable rise through the skies as Barney returned home. He tossed the holdall to the back of the cave, lay down on the jagged rocks he called his bed, and fell into a shallow, restless slumber.

The Howlers

The problems began seven turns after the great settling. 

At first, this spot by the winding river seemed ideal. Nature’s bounty abound with sumptuous fruits, hare and aurochs, seeds and striplings. 

After the decades-long trek from Africa, Lin’s people had found a home. 

Few of the tribe remembered the plains and savannah of their motherland. Lin himself, leader of the group, scarcely remembered it himself, being only a baby when the tribe left for their unknown destiny. 

His grandfather had led the exodus. When he perished, Lin’s father took on his duties. Lin himself followed. 

In the turns since, babes had been born, grown to maturity, and died, to be replaced by others. Songs were sung of them, tributes etched into stone, blood sacrifices made. They were with the Gods now. 

And Lin and his people had found their home, here on the banks of a river Lin had named for himself. 

The problems started with the howl. Every night for five consecutive nights, as the moon sat round at the heart of the sky, an unearthly howl carried on the breeze. 

The noise caused consternation amongst the tribe. It was only the beginning.

Soon, scouts uncovered strange rock carvings and red paint daubings. These were littered across the landscape. As the five nights of howling came to an end, new paintings began to appear, ever closer to the tribal encampment. 

The howlers were getting closer.

One night, they fell silent. The tribe began to settle into the natural rhythms of their new home, fishing in the river, scouting the woods for new sources of wood and nuts.

Twenty three turns later, and the howling began anew. 

On the final night of this latest round of howling, Lin sent a scout to investigate. The boy came back wan, with fear in his eyes. He reported that he had seen a group of monstrous women gathered on a hillside some distance away. They were almost human but, as the scout drew closer, he could see that they had strange features- a heavy brow, jutting jawline, and arms the width of tree trunks. The women collected the monthly blood from between their thighs and performed some bizarre ritual beneath the light of the moon. All the while, their menfolk were beholden to them.

Lin went immediately to Akkan, the tribal elder, one of the few men who had known- and advised- his grandfather in the early days of the exodus.

The old man reacted fearfully, his ancient, rheumy eyes wide. 

He had heard tell of such things before, he imparted to Lin. Women who are the chiefs of their tribes, who worship the blood and rise only at night. Akkan explained that the moon women would soon infiltrate the tribe and steal the womenfolk away.

The following day, Lin made an announcement to the tribe. Women in their bloods were to be locked away for the duration, until their fluids ran clear. They would be guarded by the menfolk for their own good, to keep them safe from the monsters of the moon. 

The scout had suggested that the moon women used their left hands, where Lin’s people used their right. Henceforth, he announced, we shall sacrifice the little finger of our left hand. Chop it off that the moon women cannot enter us through it.

The moon women were night-dwellers. Henceforth, none were to stray from the camp after darkness came, and the rising of the sun would be greeted with a cheer and a celebration. 

They worshipped the moon, these strange women. We shall worship the sun, for the moon is the vehicle of the sprites. 

The morning after making his announcement, Lin awoke to find that seven of the tribe’s women were gone, including his own sister. They had left to join the cult of the moon women, he surmised, gone to join the monsters, the Others. 

Very well, he decided, we shall round up our women and keep them in penury, to ensure they can never leave us.