Published by Repeater Books

An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

Unit 11 Shepperton House

89-93 Shepperton Road

London

N1 3DF

United Kingdom

www.repeaterbooks.com

A Repeater Books paperback original 2021

1

Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Copyright © Lee Scott 2021

Lee Scott asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

ISBN: 9781913462574

Ebook ISBN: 9781913462635

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books

Thanks Mum.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No Vacancies.

Roadless closes

abandon your vehicle at its feet and continue on yours

where the weeds burgeon through every crack

where the streets are held together with white tiled alleyways

with wobbling metal handrails

with shadowy corners hiding from the quiet roads above

with grass verges hosting 1970s-built concrete monoliths

where cocktails of native hedge plants fight for space in the

gaps of the chain-link fence

There are no vacancies here

The town is full, mate.

The Town.

The town is full.

And not with money.

A lucky person might pluck the odd piece of shrapnel from the side of a stranger’s couch but it would never be enough to feed the cat and the kids. But then, what do you expect? This is a place that has only existed for forty-odd years. And if this place could speak for itself, that would feel like a good excuse. If it was a smarter, more sentient town, it would tell you that it didn’t ask for this, that it is only forty-odd years old and that there are sixty thousand of you. And the town would stop there, because this town would be smart enough to know when nobody is listening.

Here the men work in factories and the women go to college to become beauticians... and then work in factories. To secure a job at one of these factories, you’re required to complete the registration process at one of two local recruitment agencies. Most of the recruitment agents themselves eventually get confused onto the production lines of the same factories. Those poor recruitment agents, daring to think on the cusp of the outer centre of the box, let go due to a “lack of work.”

“Don’t worry Peter, yeah unfortunately what you’ve always known would happen has happened. You no longer have a place with us here at one of two local recruitment agencies, but it’s not the end of the world, mate. We’ve had words with a few people, actually, full sentences were exchanged on your behalf. And guess what? We’ve managed to get you a job in one of those terrible factories you yourself promoted with such optimism. What was it you told that fella the other day? That was it, you said, and I quote: ‘This factory is a true and absolute delight and any man or woman lucky enough to secure a job here is in fact a man or woman worthy of envy!’ You told him the townsfolk would worship the ground he walked upon. Well lucky you, get ready to tread upon your own hallowed ground Garry… Sorry, Pete, Pete? Either way, Garry, mate, if you hang on in there without literally hanging yourself, you’ll still have a few years left when you get out!”

Garry or Pete (or Pete or Garry) in the Unmade Movie of his Life.

LONG SHOT/EXTERIOR

Garry (or Pete (or Garry)) stumbles out of the building confused, tie loosened, shirt untucked, beaten, head down. Usually he would drive home in his fancy company car. But thankfully the good people of one of two local recruitment agencies have relieved him of the keys, saving him any unwanted future hassle. His usual radio chart music-assisted ten-minute journey takes him an hour of silent trudging.

INTERIOR GARRY OR PETE OR GARRY’S HOUSE

In through the already wide-open door of his wonky redbrick house, ignoring his wife Denise and the filthy children sitting in the living room as they ignore him back, he marches straight up the stairs, penguin dives headfirst through the window directly at the top, hits the paving in his back garden and shatters into a thousand pieces as his wife sits watching four different soaps simultaneously, one on TV, one on an iPhone, one on an iPad, one on a laptop, all volumes turned up to 1000, screaming incoherently at the filthy children as the filthy children scream incoherently back.

FADE TO BLACK

The next day after dropping the filthy children off at what the locals call a “school,” she realises she hasn’t seen Garry or Pete (or Garry) that morning.

EXTERIOR PETE OR GARRY (OR PETE’S) GARDEN

WIFE:

“Where are you P… Garry?”

She asks the clouds through squinted eyes, standing on the patio, plastic brush in hand, not realising she is in the middle of sweeping him into a dustpan.

RAPID MONTAGE

Denise shrugs and gets on with her day, week, month, year, life. Meets a new Garry or Pete, the filthy children eventually begin calling “Dad” while she goes off to her factory job, strutting to the bus stop full of vigour and pride, the townsfolk staring their envious stares, whispering their envious whispers as she passes them by, like a ray of morning sunshine behind a breaking cloud.

EXTERIOR BUS STOP

ENVIOUS WHISPERER NO. 1:

My god that’s her! That’s that new agency staff member down at whatever that factory is called next to the other factory where all the factories are. God I am envious!

She struts on by, dreaming that one day, with the right lack of education and a bit of misguidance, the filthy children will also be struck with enough luck to join her and their de facto father at one of several other miscellaneous factories.

Swan Songs.

Pete or Garry or whatever his name actually was, was not as rare a case as he should have been. Pete, let’s just settle on Pete, was actually one of many lost to the top window of their two-storey terraced houses, never to be seen or heard from again. Wiped from the collective consciousness of the town. That is until their unconsenting resurrection amidst the memoirs of the making of the greatest rap album of all time. Swan Songs is what it was to be called. Leonard Swanson — Swan Songs, perfect! A great name for a great album by a guy called Leonard Swanson.

I decided against following in Pete’s forgotten footsteps, although I admit my decision-making has been described as hasty even on a good day.

The town had a knack for swallowing you whole but I planned to unsettle its guts enough for it to spit me back out at such a speed that I could burst through the borders of any obscure neighbouring settlement I pleased.

I grew up there in Church Town, kicking a football across its bumpy surfaces, through its peculiar streets, along the raised concrete walkways of its flats, drawing on its walls and climbing its stone bridges and trees, mazing my way through nettle bushes to hide from its residents.

A town built in a typical concentric fashion only with its central district being the old church responsible for its creative and apt name. As a kid I would amuse the drunken punters outside the Queen’s Legs with comedic tangents such as, “if its centre point had been something more worthwhile, such as the shopping centre, would the town be called Shopping Centre Town?” to bawls of laughter and splashes of golden lager, and “if it were the statue of a long-dead historical figure, Long-Dead Historical Figure Town?” met with equally enthusiastic chuffs of chortling.

I would keep this routine going until the jolly drunks would hustle together a pound amongst them and send me off inside for a coke and a packet of crisps. “Go ’ed Leonard lad, go get yourself a coke,” they would say, shooing me on.

The hill atop which the church was built was christened with an equally creative name: Church Hill, because it was a hill, with a church on it. Church Hill and its church could be seen from pretty much anywhere in the town, providing one had their eyes open and they were looking in its direction. The sight probably would have been impressive at some point in history, but by this point it was just a thing that was there.

And down the hill, navigating the alcohol and concrete, the drunken chortles and grit and idle hooded teenage rebels and grafting parents, past the smoking pensioners and gossiping neighbours and alleyway drug deals, an unusual sound could be heard through good ears and followed to 32 Bromley Close.

If you were lucky enough to be let in by an unsuspecting resident conveniently heading out to work as you were standing at the door to the building, the sound could be heard in higher definition and followed further to door number 18. Behind it sat I, Leonard Swanson, on the edge of my bed in the cramped studio flat I had confined myself to for most of 2004, ignoring the church on the hill and its surrounding delights.

I hammered and bashed pieces of music equipment together like a lunatic child with a box of Mega Bloks. Wires manically criss-crossed the room, a minefield of records, CDs, cassettes and plastic things that made noises if you struck them in the right way. A manic home recording studio held together with tape and string.

In it was a dented third-hand SM58 microphone clipped into a leaning mic stand held together with a shoelace and a tea towel. Taped to the mic stand, twisting around in front of the microphone, a pop shield fashioned out of a metal coat hanger and a pair of tights, the excess of which dangled below. If you were able to follow the XLR cable held into the SM58 output with duct tape, it would take you to the back of the Numark mixer where, for once, no tape was needed to hold anything in its place. The face of the Numark mixer, however, with its missing screws and volume fader, was a different story. Mummified in a variety of adhesive tape — the thin red kind, the standard transparent kind, even the grey electrical insulation kind. The knobs and remaining faders all poked through. The only reason I knew the brand of mixer was due to the back being free of tape. I was never sure as to why it was covered in so much tape, but this is how it was given to me and how it remained.

A phono-to-1/4-inch jack cable with a 3.5mm jack adapter connected the mixer to the mic input at the back of the PC tower, which ran off a cracked copy of Windows 2000 and stood to the side of the CRT monitor. Both the tower and monitor were tobacco-stained-yellow and outdated even in 2004.

The monitor, without its stand, sat directly on top of an old-style 90s twin-cassette deck. The tower, with its side missing, exposing its noisy innards, took up the remaining space between the cassette deck and the edge of the desk. To record vocals without the noisy mechanical interference I would be forced to shut it all down, allowing it to cool off. An hour of nervous ticks and impatient pacing later, with the computer loaded up and ready to go, it was a race against time before the malfunctioning robot sounds returned.

In front of the PC monitor and tape deck was a temperamental M-Audio midi keyboard controller I had actually purchased from a shop brand new a year or so prior. On each white key was a small strip of masking tape with the notes written on them. Underneath the desk, on the dusty worn-out grey carpet, a cheap belt-drive turntable vaguely borrowed from a friend of a friend whose name I had long forgotten.

A single four-foot, floor-standing vintage Sony tower speaker stood wedged between the desk and kitchen worktop. Due to only having the one speaker I would usually work in headphones, occasionally lifting them from my ears to hear the bass out loud or to write.

Taking up vital food prep space on the kitchen worktop to the right, the only piece of equipment to make it through the home studio adhesive-tape-free, was the MPC2000. A beaten-up, classic sampler and sequencer, originally released in 1997, that I only ever powered up to record the drums I had programmed on the computer. I liked the way it made them sound but could never concentrate for long enough to figure out how to use it as it was intended.

In the opposite corner was an old fat-back grey TV which sat slumped at an ever-increasing angle due to the plastic box it was slowly sinking into. Three empty DVD cases that used to sit on top of it had, at some point, slid off onto the floor where they remained until I moved out. The actual DVDs themselves lay on top of each other on the window sill to the right: They Live, Being John Malkovich and some French time-travelling movie I didn’t understand but for some reason found myself grunting at quite regularly.

A head full of haze had to navigate such terrain with extreme caution until every potential hazard had been thoroughly committed to muscle memory. However, even an expert could occasionally be brought crashing down to Earth by a newly introduced dirty dish or upturned plug.

The unusual sound spilling through the cracks of Flat 18, 32 Bromley Close, the beginnings of the greatest and only rap album Church Town has ever produced. Songs obsessively under construction in my live-in-laboratory. Some good, some great. The great songs were put in one pile as album contenders and the good songs thrown into another. Every now and then I would peer into the “good songs,” pick one out and decide it was great but not the right type of great required for the final album. These particular good songs I had upgraded to great, albeit not the right type of great, would then be put into their own, new pile. This new pile, the great-but-not-the-right-type-of-great pile, would very slowly and meticulously find itself drip-fed into the digital consciousness of the internet. Usually via Myspace.

A day or so after uploading one of these songs, my internet was cut off due to an “unpaid bill,” they said. “Oh well,” I thought. Although I believed the song was now great, I didn’t hold much faith in the people beyond Flat 18. I imagined the song would simply be forgotten like Pete or Garry.

Who knows, maybe it was all a waste of time? But then again what is time if not something to waste? Surely it’s not any more a waste of time than anything else?

A few foggy weeks down the line I stumbled my way into enough funds to reconnect the internet. I wouldn’t have bothered had I not decided I must upload another one of those good, now great, but not the right type of great songs. Obviously I could have gone to a friend’s house and used their internet, but back then was not the time for friends, my friend.

And just like magic, the internet fairies had the little green modem lights dancing once more. To my surprise the song I had uploaded to Myspace a few weeks back seemed to have become quite popular. Racking up over 8k listens and a bunch of downloads. Clueless as to how, I wondered what it was about a song called “GENPHARM” that people found endearing. Or maybe they didn’t find it endearing at all, maybe it was just odd enough to peak a certain type of weirdo’s interest. Maybe the lyrics had nothing to do with why people liked it, maybe it was entirely due to the beat.

The beat was relatively simple. A pitched down, fuzzy lo-fi, synthetic string interpolation of Vivaldi’s “Spring”, repurposed from the outro music of a menial daytime TV talk show. I recognised the Vivaldi melody not because I was any sort of classical buff but because I had spent many hours listening to it while on hold to the Jobcentre. The quirky talk show version of “Spring” had already been floating around my peripheral consciousness since accidentally unmuting the TV several days before I managed to capture it. Finally, when I noticed the talk show was on again, I snatched the mic from the stand and rushed over to the TV. Kneeling in front of the screen with no idea when it would end, I held the microphone out like a religious offering for the TV Gods and captured its message for potential monetary gain.

Daytime talk show music chopped and slowed down to 83bpm, I dragged in a pre-recorded drum break from a 70s funk record. The break was then lovingly dismantled and chopped into pieces: kicks, hats, snares and put back together in its new form. “BOOM BOOM CH, B-BOOM BOOM CH” and so on. I filtered out the low ends of the daytime TV music and loaded a long-isolated bass note into the M-Audio midi keyboard I could barely play. After an hour or so, punching every letter on the keys over and over, I fell upon a sequence of notes I was OK with. “That’ll do,” I said to the computer screen.

And the bulk of the instrumental for my future Myspace two-verse story-rap classic was laid down.

The story, in short, was about a line-picker in a factory owned by a company called GENPHARM that secretly manufactured the lifeblood for a race of blurry-faced green creatures only the protagonist could see. The workers were led to believe they were manufacturing and packing Salbutamol, which apparently is something to do with asthma but don’t quote me. For the most part, the people of the lines had no clue what was in the little vials, and most did not care. By the end of the song the protagonist would discover what GENPHARM was really up to but anticlimactically didn’t seem to find it worthy of uproar, choosing to simply quit and move on, leaving his fellow line-pickers behind to obliviously feed the blurry green bastards.

A story for all ages, a new-age Slick Rick “Children’s Story” only for paranoid young adults who smoked too much weed. A story somewhat inspired by the veteran factory workers of Church Town — to and from work they would go, tired-eyed and weary but somehow never defeated. They quietly took their seat on the bus of a morning and evening. Rubbing away the condensation to stare out the window at the blur of tall bushes bordering the bus road along the circular route. Taking breaks to look into the interior of the bus at each stop in order to nod and smile at whoever climbed aboard.

People like that were always popular in places like Church Town. They were not popular in the cool-kid-at-school sense, they were popular because they had seemingly always been there, they were part of the fabric. The type of pure-hearted characters that never had a problem with anybody and knew most of the people in their town by name. Church Town, though small when compared to some other places, was no hamlet. There were several huge estates, crammed full of people, some of them identical, so these characters and their acute facial recognition abilities are not to be scoffed at. They were the type of characters that could be spoken of to people that didn’t know them personally but would know who you were talking about in a couple of key signature descriptive cues. They would nod their head and say, “Oh that guy, the one that’s always on the number 1 bus going to and from work?” And you would say, “Yes”.

What really piqued my fascination was their willingness to drag themselves off to the same menial work every day, twelve hours a day, for decades. They would of course seem completely OK with it. And they will seem OK with it until the day retirement is forced upon them. The sudden cold-turkeying from the routine they were so heavily addicted to for all those years almost always sends them into an early grave. Although we all know what really killed them, “forced into retirement” is never listed as their cause of death. It would undoubtedly read something like heart attack or stroke.

Bi-weekly drunken stupors at their favourite local would be a perpetual highlight of their able-bodied line-picking years. Several pictures of them in their favourite local with their favourite local people could be seen stuck to the mirror behind the bar they used to stand in front of. And that is where their photographs would remain, smiling down at all who wandered through those doors, pint glass raised at the camera person, toasting to those left behind to carry on the tradition. At least until the inevitable closure and burning down of the premises.

What is it that happens to the mind of a person for them to submit to such mundanity and not only be OK but possibly even happy with it? Between the alcohol, weed and conspiracy videos I was regularly consuming, I had become secretly suspicious. Dark forces were at play. I was increasingly sure of it, especially around 4am. And it was those suspicions that sparked the “GENPHARM” song. Originally I jotted the idea down as a regular non-rhyming short story, but I had no clue what to do with it other than read it over and over to myself, so I turned it into a Myspace alternative rap hit.

The nerdier underground rap fan could analyse the lyrics and break them down to fit whatever theory they related to. Stumbling upon all manner of meaning and metaphor that, depending on how cool an idea it was, may or may not have been intentional. Looking down their noses, they would feel such extensive analysis granted them the right to pretentiously proclaim their naysayer friends “just don’t get it!” if the song was not to their taste. On the other side of the spectrum, the casual rap fan could simply nod their head along to the weird beat, catching the odd lyric but never really overthinking it.

Either way, I didn’t really care what other people thought, or at least that’s what I told myself.

When sifting through the waveform of the TV recording, I heard some vocals I didn’t realise or had forgotten I had captured. I sped it up to its original speed, “well looks like they’re here!” exclaimed the obnoxiously cheery talk show host to the prompted delight of the studio audience. A perfect fluke! I thought, a great clip to break up the two verses seeing as I had no chorus. I looped the talk show host up four times, pitch-shifting it to sound even creepier than it already did. And for the outro I let the crowd’s applause play out as the beat faded beneath.

While capturing the talk show music, my phone rang and I dropped the microphone to the carpet and answered it. In the recording you could hear my quiet mumbling in the background “yeah, uh huh, yeah, OK.” While distracted by my riveting phone call, the talk show had transitioned into what sounded like a live advertisement for the next programme, an excitable posh male voice informing viewers to make sure they stay tuned! “We’re down here in West Sussex baking ca…” suddenly they were cut off by a brash cockney man. “They’re using our bodies as vessels!” the cockney man shouted. At this point some sort of tussle must have ensued as the posh man joined in with the yelling, “Get off me you blooming pillock!” they demanded, before the cockney man told him to “Shut up wanker.” At this point it cut to the studio where the man and woman co-hosts laughed off the strange outburst, apologising to the viewers and informing them they would be right back after the break. And the recording finally ended.

I wondered what the hell the cockney man was on about and thought it was a shame that it didn’t fit the track. Shrugging, I filed the sample for possible future use and made a mental note I would forget to read.

After listening back to the song a couple of times, I decided it actually was right for the album after all. Maybe I was letting the popularity of the song dictate how I felt about it? “I thought I didn’t care what people thought?” I either said to myself or thought.

I read through the messages in my Myspace inbox. Overzealous show promoters aggressively demanding I travel to their remote towns at once. I would be paid in booze, drugs and a night on a bedbug-ridden mattress somebody dragged in from the street.

Offbeat intellectuals wishing to inform me of my greatness. Despite their terrible spelling and complete lack of grammar, I believed one’s true intelligence could be gauged by how they felt about my rap songs. Who cares if their messages read like insane dyslexic text speak “oi dick ed ha ha, ye juz want u 2 no u gr8 musci i like bro wen u cm to ‘insert obscure town here’?”

Beat makers with names like HardBeatz and UKRAPBEATS telling me I should rap on their beats. Other aspiring rappers with names like Verbal this and Lyrical that, telling me I should collaborate with them. I wasn’t a fan of people telling me what I should do, so I closed the internet.

Days would roll by, demoting and promoting songs from one pile to the next. Occasionally stopping to re-check my Myspace messages in hopes that the heads of Universal or Interscope had personally reached out. Instead, I was bombarded with more and more personal messages from other, lesser, want-tobe rappers. One name in particular began to stand out simply due to the sheer amount of messages they had sent. They called themselves “V3” — apparently located “just outside London,” they too rapped and produced and aggressively claimed that “our styles would mesh perfectly”. Each of V3’s twenty-odd messages worked up to asking me to check them out and or collaborate with them. And although I silently applauded them for choosing a name without Verbal or Lyrical in it, I was still unimpressed with their alphanumeric pseudonym and chose against dignifying their requests with any action or response.

Eventually, consciousness would be lost and found on either side of the darkness. In those days, dreams were few and far between. I am unaware of any reputable studies to back up my claims but I am certain my dreams were suppressed by my avid cannabis consumption.

I regained consciousness at the latter end of the darkness. Perched in front of the computer, somehow still upright and ready to continue where I had left off. The spliff would be relit and the action would commence. Dipping into the “right type of great,” aka the album contenders pile and coming up with the pettiest detail to obsess over for the foreseeable short-term future. Months were lost in the placement of a singular hi-hat or subtle percussive sound. Once I found the strength to pull my head out of one particular rabbit-hole, I would bury it firmly into another.

The rewriting of a specific word would lead to the rewriting of another word and another word until I had rewritten the whole thing. After these painstaking rewrites I would return to the first rabbit-hole, this time deleting the hi-hats entirely. The kicks, snares and any other bits of assiduously placed percussion would follow. Sooner or later the rest of the instrumental would succumb to the same fate. Starting from scratch time and time again.

And with every rabbit-hole thoroughly explored and excavated, it was only right I gave the original version one last chance. And in a short snippet of no more than twenty seconds, I would realise I preferred it in its original form. My instinct was to abort and dispose of its unwanted bastard children, but I eventually opted to file them away in yet another pile, “the alt versions” pile, to pick apart down the line.

I drip-fed a few more songs to the internet via Myspace. I was less concerned with the petty details of the songs residing in the “great but not the right type of great” pile. This lack of concern allowed me to let go. A couple of these songs did OK but none as good as the first one. I wondered if I would be an obscure alternative hip-hop one-hit wonder of Myspace? I asked myself why people didn’t warm to the new songs as much as “GENPHARM,” but shrugged it off as a lack of intelligence on the world’s behalf. This was the right attitude to have and I would have to keep it if I was to make it in this cutthroat industry, I thought.

Unfortunately, the album was to be put on hold as the insidious Jobcentre advisors had finally lost their patience with me, one even going as far as informing me they had had enough of my shit. I would be forced to sign up to one of Church Town’s two recruitment agencies or I would be starved of weed money.

GENPHARM.

A year or so later and still album-less, I found myself standing at a grey conveyor belt, my identity somewhat obscured beneath the beard snood, hair net and baggy lab coat. My time was mostly spent picking up vials and putting them down in piles. I despised those insidious Jobcentre advisors and held them responsible for my aching sides. Nonetheless, I, like most, began lying to myself and others. “Maybe it’s not so bad,” I would declare upon my debut glimpse of my first payslip. “£403!!” That was more money than I had ever had after one week’s work, the only money I had ever had after one week’s work! And then I understood why those veteran factory workers were so popular in places like Church Town. I imagined I would become very rich there, possibly even learning to enjoy my own bi-weekly drunken stupors in my local.

Being a novice in the experience of such optimistic daydreams and subtly aware dark forces could still be at play, I thought it would be best to hold onto at least a small dose of suspicion. After all, recruitment agents are slippery. It would be most wise to distrust them even if what they are telling you is the truth.

The second and third payslips would come up shorter, both clocking in at around £200 due to shift rotation, before returning to two weeks of £403. I could actually maybe buy things with all of this money! I was living relatively cheap and smoking less weed which meant I had enough disposable income to spend on beautiful things I did not need. Though I never did seem to find the time to spend it on such things I remained briefly optimistic.

“GENPHARM isn’t so bad actually!” whomever asked would be told.

With another shift on the line behind me, some months down the line, fidgeting in the dim orange street light, I stood over the cash machine on some dark corner. Once confident the coast was clear, I slid in my debit card and punched the numbers. I brought up my balance and almost fainted in disbelief. It seemed a cruel trick was being played on me; the cash machine wanted me to believe I was sitting on just over £1000. Suddenly realising they could be watching, I pushed the cancel button and snatched my card on its way out of the reader. Hood up, hands deep in pockets, I cut a scurrying silhouette as I went off down the street, eyes darting to the floor as cars passed.

Once the paranoia wore off, I allowed a morsel of logic to travel over the hill of anxiety — the cash machine may have been a rare honest one. I guess when you have no time to spend your wages and you neglect the piling debt at your door, saving is easy. And with that, I told myself, the album can wait a little bit longer. Greatness shouldn’t be rushed.

Every day, minutes before clocking in for my twelve-hour shift, I would rush into the building late or just in the nick of time, depending on which way you swung. Brushing past everything between me and the changing room, usually just a wall or two, I would pant and struggle to go on. Mustering up the strength, I replaced my scruffy green jacket with a lab coat, baggy enough to comfortably wear for the day. Flimsy white hairnet pulled over my cranium, flimsier white shoe covers over my trainers, tearing the anti-tear soles.

Naively believing the struggle had had enough of me, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the full-length mirror. The invading patches of scraggly facial hair conquered and settled on my disappointed face. It was not a fashion choice, but a statement of neglect. All of this meant I would now have to fish out a beard snood from the basket. The snood made my face itch and twelve hours, minus breaks, is a long time to endure an itchy face. I had no one to blame but those insidious Jobcentre advisors.

Clad in the apparent necessary GENPHARM accessories, I left the changing room toward the factory floor. And as per usual, one thousand ideas for lyrics would enthusiastically bump their way through my mind. Security pass in hand, I huffed and puffed and beeped myself through the last security gate. Through the gate, thumping the sanitiser pump, unable to commit all one thousand ideas to memory, I submitted. The mass of ideas would fade away in unison as I strolled across the huge, sterile floor to machine ten.

My arrival time was viewed as morally incomprehensible by my fellow workers. The last man standing from the shift prior would be right at the end of their tether, burgundy-faced and trembling. Forced to await my “just in the nick of time” arrival, they would hiss as I tapped their shoulder, finally relieving them.

Arriving five minutes early for a “smoother shift transition” was just “the right thing to do,” Denise would remind me daily. “If the right thing to do is arriving earlier than I am paid to in order to pick things up and put them down for twelve hours, then I am happy being wrong,” I would have said to Denise had I thought of it at the time. Instead I usually just stared into the machine room over the conveyor belt in silence, swiping up vials.

The Factory Floor.

“Sapnin Denise, sapnin Greg, sapnin Joe, alright Robert?” I said, still rubbing a massive dollop of hand sanitiser into the dry, cracking palms of my hands. Denise reeled off her daily spiel, urging me to arrive earlier than I was supposed to. The others nodded and grunted.

Robert, a veteran of the lines, was expertly swiping up a strip of ten vials and checking the contents while breaking them into two smaller strips of five, stacking them onto the crate at his side and throwing the excess plastic over the conveyor belt into the blue bucket. “Alright Leonard,” he said without looking up, swiping up another strip and another. A delayed response to my early greeting or maybe just the start of something new.

One thing I knew about Robert for sure is he was never a recruitment agent. He was a good man. Or an alright man at least. If pushed, I would admit that I didn’t know him very well, but I am sure that if I did, I would tell you he was alright. Robert, the factory elder, with his missing front tooth and full head of brilliant Dulux white hair. Some would ask if that is enough to know a man. And my guess would be yes.

“Alright,” I responded.

“Twenty-five years,” Robert continued on, still expertly swiping up vials and stacking them. “Twenty. Five. Years,” he repeated. I waited for him to indulge me with more context. “Twenty-five years I’ve been here.” I hoped he meant at the factory and not on Earth. If that’s what that place made of twenty-five-year-olds I would have been morally obliged to incite a violent riot. “Twenty-five years I’ve been in this place,” he added, as though he read my thoughts. His eyes left his work momentarily as he nodded at me.

And he returned his attention to the vials in his square, leathery hands. I nodded to myself, “Wow,” I said, wondering why he chose me to single out and burden with such information. Maybe he had noticed me moping around, dragging my feet, slacking off. He could see through my cheersome greetings, he knew what I was really thinking. Was he really telling me to straighten my back and lift my chin and to stop being a fanny?

Either way, I felt as though his ability to be OK with two and a half decades of soul-crushing mundanity demanded respect. And respect it I did, why wouldn’t I? I had respected lesser feats. Robert was an alright man.

Making sure no one was looking, I scooped up and discarded entire strips of vials, flinging them into the bucket to avoid having to break them up and stack them. Maybe corner-cutting is the art I really excelled in.

Realising Robert hadn’t responded to my “wow” and added no other context to his statement, I threw a sideways glance in his direction. He of course was too preoccupied to notice. I glanced over Robert’s shoulder and caught Gregg’s eye who smirked at me. Now I felt as though they were all in on it. And I would have felt awkward had I not been so tired. Too tired to feel anything other than too tired to feel anything but tired. Survival of the first wave of sleepiness would eventually result in the madness bubbling up from deep inside, kickstarting a second wind, I just had to keep my eyes open.

I soldiered on, throwing strips into the bucket instead of separating and stacking them, occasionally scratching at my face beneath the snood. Denise walked down the line with her clipboard making notes. I began doing the job properly as she approached.

Glancing at the clock every few seconds, my first coffee and cigarette break flashed through my mind. There it was always a lot more exciting than in reality. Pre-GENPHARM life, I was no fan of coffee, but at that point depended on it like a car did petrol or a crackhead did crack and so on. I imagined sprinting at unfathomable speeds into the canteen upon dismissal, blowing the door off its hinges, taking out several tables with it as it flew across the room, smashing through the windows opposite.

I would poke a hole in the top of the fridge-freezer-sized coffee machine with a single giant finger, snatching it up from the floor with a giant hand, glugging the boiling hot coffee straight from the hole. Once drained of its coffee, the machine would be disposed of and crushed like a juvenile downing a can of coke in one, dropping it to the concrete and stepping on it with one foot in an act of pointless, unwitnessed rebellion. Sometimes, things are worth doing just for the love of it. That’s real art. Everything isn’t for everybody.

This thought made me tired, thoughts made me tired. My temporarily raised shoulders slumped into their natural resting position once more. Body set to auto-sigh, I sighed at the fact that I sighed. Bored of sighing, I tried to think of an alternative, something different I could train my body to intermittently do, not only out of pulmonary necessity but to emote feelings of boredom. Now this thought made my eyes close and my head drop. Suddenly I felt a strange sensation in one of my nostrils, as though a tiny insect had crawled inside carrying a ball of dust to tickle the inside of my nose, which in turn made me jolt upright and sneeze violently. My head threw itself left and right, making sure nobody had witnessed my very fleeting visit to the land of nod. I broke out into a nervous whistle, a slower version of Vivaldi’s “Spring.”

This whistling would prove to any onlookers that I was fully awake and attentive. Suddenly I noticed a cluster of vials had packed up on the conveyor belt and got stuck in the PVC strips at the opening of the machine where it spits them out. This happened several times per shift and, seeing as on that occasion I was closest to the top of the machine, apparently it was my responsibility to notice and report it. By the time I had noticed, two engineers were already on the scene, fiddling around with the machine, frantically producing a variety of tools from their metal toolbox, waving their arms and pointing.

It took a few minutes for them to fix the problem and the bald one of the two, a man called Bon Jovi, temporarily turned his eyes red and orange with fire while he looked through my soul. He knew I was the cause of this minor inconvenience and he wanted me to know that he knew. I shivered and pretended to check the floor for something that wasn’t there. They called him Bon Jovi not because he bore any resemblance to Jon Bon Jovi, famous frontman of the band Bon Jovi. No. This Bon Jovi was a lanky, bald man with no eyebrows or facial hair who claimed not to have alopecia although I’m pretty sure he definitely did. He was either very old and looked young or young and looked very old. Bon Jovi had been tagged with this name ever since Greg, Robert and a couple of fallen comrades I had never had the displeasure of meeting executed a perfect wind-up on the poor angry man.

One innocent enough day, Bon Jovi was walking by them, minding his own business, singing under his breath. All I know is it was a song by some band that 100% was not Bon Jovi. Greg, Robert and the fellas, of course, knew this, but one of them decided (it is disputed who made the first move) to wind him up by saying “Argh, I love Bon Jovi” as Bon Jovi was singing. To which Bon Jovi of course confusingly informed them of their error. “It’s not Bon fuckin’ Jovi,” he snapped.

The fellas wouldn’t have it and kept at him, each taking turns to freestyle their own reasons as to why it definitely was Bon Jovi. Reliving and sharing false memories of fictitious Bon Jovi concerts in which the band performed their greatest rendition of their most famous song (the one Bon Jovi was singing while walking by). Bon Jovi, GENPHARM’s Bon Jovi that is, became increasingly irate. As legend has it, his beady, colourless eyes burst into flames as he invented several new curse words no man has been able to get their tongue around since. Gregg told the story as though it was one of the main highlights of his entire life, and it is a great highlight, to be fair to him.

The thought of this man with suspected obvious severe alopecia screaming about the band Bon Jovi over and over had Gregg in hysterics, snotting beneath his beard snood and apologising. Denise would finally intervene, “What the fuck you laughin at you shit?” she would say somewhere between joking and definitely not joking. We all knew she had aspirations of one day becoming floor manager and really meant “Shut up and get back to fucking work!” And get back to work we did, but not because of Denise and what we thought she really meant but because we wanted to. It’s true nobody wants to do that, but it’s better than admitting we were doing as we were told.

We hadn’t technically stopped working anyway, Denise!

As you well know, providing the machine is spitting out vials, we can’t ever stop, Denise!

This is a twenty-four-hour three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day operation, Denise!

We were still swiping up vials from the conveyer belt and slapping them down in piles, albeit sloppily with minimal attention to the contents of the vials. Which, we were told, could be deadly! But we were still working.

Work.

We worked the line in groups of four, sometimes five or six but never more than seven. Some of us would pick up the vials, check that the liquid inside them looked like the right amount of liquid, whatever that was, and then put them down in piles. Piles of vials. Some of us would then put the piles of vials into boxes while checking one last time that the liquid inside the vials in the piles looked like the right amount of liquid, whatever that was. Vials in piles.

Vials in piles, slotting together like a toddler’s game. Only this game burns your hands after a while and shouldn’t be played by toddlers. Still, at least our burning flesh smelled of the supposedly scentless hand sanitiser we were forced to slather our palms in fifty times per day.

“What actually is the right amount of whatever this liquid is?” I would ask myself like a cartoon superhero spelling it out for the viewer. I held a strip of vials to my eyes to investigate, what is this shit? I was told at one point but I wasn’t listening and never really bothered to ask again. We were always being told if the dosage inside a vial was a tiny fraction of a millilitre off, somebody could die. No, somebody would die and it would be an all-the-way-dead type of death. Worse than normal death. This didn’t seem to mean much to anybody except Denise. When Denise wasn’t causing an unnecessary fuss — checking, then double and triple checking everything, she was talking about double and triple checking everything — occasionally she would blabber on about how grateful we should all be for being forced into a job at such a fine establishment. Once she even spoke about the family that owned GENPHARM: the famous Bestard family. The modern face of the company, heir to the throne, was Rich Bestard VII. I asked if the VII was initials for something, much to the subtle bemusement of Denise. Yes, I knew they were roman numerals but it paid to feign stupidity around her. “Oh yeah? Please, tell me more about the Bestard, fill our empty stupid heads with your Bestard knowledge.”

The latest Rich Bestard was the middle-aged, modern face of GENPHARM. A supposedly relatable playboy, known for dating several household names in the UK, such as whatever her name was from that soap. He even made several appearances on daytime TV talk shows, the type of shows where guests are dragged in by their collars and shoved onto a sofa where they are left to be cheerily questioned and overthink their arm movements. He would tell us his apparent favourite football team and name-drop the latest indie band popular with university degenerates. Such a relatable Rich Bestard.

She told us how he was a handsome man, blonde hair, strong jaw. Tall, at least while standing next to vertically-challenged talk show hosts. By then his hair was apparently thinning, but he suited it if you were to ask Denise, who claimed it made him more “manly.” I nodded along, egging her on. “Yeah? Sounds like an err, proper fella.” Tell me more Denise.

“Oh yeah, he is,” Denise would respond. She reminded me of a time I had seen him on a television set on wheels the boss had rolled in to deliver a special personal message to a man named Chris who had been working at the factory as a line-picker for three hundred years.

I suddenly remembered the event clearly. I was annoyed because I was supposed to be on my break. That minor inconvenience was the tiny snippet I needed to kickstart the rest of the memory. Instead of puffing on a fine, disgusting cigarette in the smoking area, I was somehow forced to witness one of those green blurry-faced things thanking a man whose name they couldn’t remember without glancing down at the piece of paper beside them. He blabbered on and on, with strange guttural inflections, each word sounding like it had to slip, slide and then force its way through gunk and spit. Retching with my hand over my beard snood, I shook my head and looked over at Chris. “And with that… I say thank… you! Errm…” the green blurry-faced man slowly garbled, glancing down at the piece of paper beside him, “Chris…” He glanced down again. “McCall?” he finally forced out as though it were a question. You could clearly hear someone behind the camera whispering “yes” too. Chris McCall, a man to whom I had never spoken but had regularly seen on the circular bus route, was very happy with Rich Bestard’s acknowledgement and that’s what matters I guess.

Chris was a plump man with bulging eyes, he smiled a lot and was possibly in his sixties, but who cares. Maybe he didn’t have bulging eyes now I think about it, he could have had no eyes, I can’t remember. One thing I do remember is nobody else acknowledged the fact that Rich Bestard was a green blurry-faced bastard. I was confused maybe for a second but instinctively realised I had been bestowed with the burden of being able to see them for what they really were. Yet another minor inconvenience in my life. Eventually Denise’s voice would fade out and I would return to mindlessly burning my hands over and over.

We stacked the boxed vials in piles onto a big plastic pallet. Once they were stacked, twelve boxes high and six boxes across, they would be clingfilmed while someone was sent to retrieve a forklift trolley. This was my favourite thing to do. I liked to find the longest route around the big white-walled factory and navigate it like a curious pirate that has no idea what he’s really doing. I whistled Vivaldi while I peered into every crevice, pressed every button on every wall and looked through the glass window of every machine room. Sometimes when I found a trolley, I hid it and returned to the line to apologise to Denise and tell her they were all in use. She’d console me and tell me to check again in five. During those five minutes I did my best to avoid working, looking off into distant sections of the factory floor, concerned and eager to somehow catch sight of a trolley. Dead on five minutes I’d wander off to check again while someone was in the middle, “… twenty-five years…” of talking at me.

Retrieving my stashed trolley from the big metal pipes I had hid it behind in the far corner of the factory, I returned to the line like a hero. I told Denise and the others a long story about how I’d had to do this and do that and walk through this fire and that fire. When I had finished my war stories, I told them I’d take the boxes, not to worry, condescendingly patting Gregg or someone else on the shoulder. By this time, they had almost stacked and clingfilmed a second crate. Happy days, worry not people of the line, I will take care of this, continue with your vial games, it’s all good.

I pushed the boxes around the factory floor past the other lines, toward something that looked like a big spaceship airlock between the regular factory ground and the Quarantined Zone. The massive plastic garage-like door automatically lifted as I approached; I dumped the boxes and dragged the trolley out of the airlock, glancing back as the door lowered behind me. A couple of middle-aged blurry-faced green bastards wearing white helmets and blue human overalls scurried inside, bumping shoulders, one of them checking the piece of paper stuck between the boxes and cling film, scanning the code with a beeping, white futuristic sci-fi device as the other kicked an imaginary victim and cursed, disappointed that they hadn’t got to scan the code. A different-shaped creature wearing the same overalls entered the room driving some sort of advanced wheeled version of the forklift trolley but I didn’t stick around to witness what happened next.

I didn’t even want them to know I knew what little I did. I was curious to see what was on the other side of those doors though.

The Break.

Eventually it was my turn to take a break. We took them one at a time if there were four of us on the line, two at a time if there were six. I had quit smoking cigarettes two years before but started again just for something to do on my breaks. We had two small breaks to smoke and go to the toilet and a third longer break to eat and smoke and go to the toilet again.

I hadn’t given up on making the greatest rap album of all time, but I was finding it hard to complete it. My pockets were full of bits of paper and my Nokia phone text drafts were also bursting with lyrics and ideas. Phones were forbidden on the factory floor. If I had an idea for a lyric, I would repeat it over and over in my head, and if it somehow hadn’t escaped me, I would rush out on my break to write it down. Writing on the phone was a struggle but I guess somewhere deep down I must have liked doing things the hard way. I would write lyrics in text messages then send them to myself, and because most of the time I had no credit, they would save as drafts. I would then edit the draft further and it would automatically save. There was probably an easier way to do it but I never stopped to figure it out.

Every now and then on the rare occasion my phone had credit I’d accidentally send some weird snippet of a rap verse to the first number in my phone. It would end up in my sent folder and I’d struggle to copy it back to the drafts. One time I got a text back asking me who I was, but I ignored the question because I wasn’t sure. On that particular day I had remembered to bring a pen with me; my pockets were always bulging with bits of paper to write on. I pulled one of these bits of paper out and scribbled a bunch of stuff I had been thinking while walking around the factory pretending I couldn’t find a trolley:

Shi(f)t Work.

The night shift: 6pm to 6am, three days in a row, followed by two days off. Sleep all day, wake up in the evening, then have to be up to start an early shift: 6am to 6pm. Force your body-clock into the opposing time zone for two days in a row, followed by three days off, then force your body-clock back into the opposing time zone again ready to start back on reverse night shift: two days late shift, three days early shift. Repeat, repeat; if you can.

Some people seemed completely fine with all of this. They were conditioned for that life, and I envied their ability to go home and not commit murder. Murder wasn’t something I myself had dabbled in either, but I felt as though I wouldn’t be able to hold off for as long as the rest of them. I had too much ego to be good at switching my sleeping pattern every few days in order to pick things up and put them down for twelve hours in a giant white room. A part of me thought I was too good for that. I am a fucking artist, no, an artist with an e on the end, an artiste! At first, after the third night shift, I’d go home and sleep all day, but I found it impossible to sleep early the day after in order to be ready for the 6am start so after a while I just stayed awake: “Well, if I just do an all-nighter, I’ll fall asleep early tonight.”

That never worked but I never learned. After a couple of months, I felt like I was losing my mind, even more than usual. By the time the early start came I was running on around four hours of on-and-off sleep. As soon as I sat down on the line, as those hot plastic vials of mysterious anonymous liquid tumbled down the grey conveyor belt into my burning hands, sleep was suddenly the easiest thing in the world. The monotony, the faint buzz of the lights thirty feet above my head, the clanging of distant machinery, Bon Jovi and his sidekick running in and out of rooms with grinding machines spitting out hot plastic. You see that once it was somewhat interesting, but two thousand times per shift and it becomes as boring as everything else. You pray for the machines to stop being pathetic and up their game, spawn some massive hot plastic tentacles, swing the maintenance staff around like medical factory-themed ragdolls, something!

Sleep was a sackable offence, usually implemented immediately, but somehow I’d always wake up just before getting caught. I would never sleep for longer than a few seconds, but it became a constant fight. I guess I didn’t have to worry too much as Denise was always too preoccupied to notice me nodding off and the boss wasn’t the sharpest bulb in the wrong kitchen worktop draw.

The Boss.

One of the older men in the factory told me that the boss, whose real name was Tracy Stephens, was teased as a boy for “having a girl’s name.” They went to the same secondary school and he had it bad. Unanimously disliked by all students; a prefect, teachers’ pet, snitch, etc. Despite all of that, I’d have still probably felt sorry for him had I never met him. Tracy was most definitely an unfortunate man; I’d bet the ugly tree which he fell out of toppled and landed on his head as he hit the ground.

However, sorry is not what I felt. He was an entirely unfair man who would treat the agency staff like the shit we were and appeared to never really be doing anything. Occasionally, from his comfy leather chair in his office, he would peer over his clipboard through the window, his gozzy eyes spinning around in his milk-bottle glasses that were held onto his balding head with elastic bands. A man who was both fat and skinny at the same time. He didn’t seem to have much facial hair but for some reason still wore a beard snood.

He wasn’t the boss boss; the boss of all bosses, no, of course not. A man that spends a large portion of each shift in his office, dropping his pen from behind his ear then clambering onto all fours to pick it back up and rising only to find he has now left his clipboard down there in its place, could never be a real boss. This man was an upwardly brown-nosing cretin that suddenly felt important because one of Rich Bestard’s underlings decided this particular upwardly brown-nosing cretin was ready to do whatever he was told to do for as long as he was told to do whatever he was told to do. He had already been broken in and pre-programmed due to his previous ten-year stint as a line manager. Plus, apparently, beneath his beard snood, his breath smelt like faecal matter. The perfect candidate.

As I was sitting on the line ignoring the contents of the vials, Tracy Stephens, the big fat skinny boss, blindsided me. Dropping his clipboard at my feet he knelt down to pick it up. I frowned and looked down at the top of his round bald spot. “Yeah?” I asked as he eventually stood upright. “You, you can’t have that day off you wanted,” he responded and walked off. I’m not sure I even asked for a day off, but I was angry that he had said no either way.

I threw a strip of vials at the window of the machine room in front of me. Fuck this, I thought, “I should punch you in the teeth!” Hmm, had I said that aloud? I shook my head and rubbed my blurring eyes. The scene in front of me became clear. Not only was the chubby-fingered yet twigletboned, brown-nosing cretin not waddling away from me, I was actually standing outside smoking a ciggy… So, on top of everything else I can add sleepwalking on the job to my growing list of mentally unstable quirks. Rather than worry, I reached inside my pocket and pulled out a handful of paper. I shuffled through it until I found the piece I was writing on earlier, and scribbled some extra notes:

And now my break was nearly over. Time would drag, but never when I was on my break. I thought about Tracy and imagined sellotaping him to the floor so he couldn’t move while I hung his pen and clipboard just out of his reach and mocked him. I thought about Robert and his twenty-five years and shuddered. Robert was alright, and although I can’t remember what, I think he might have taught me a thing or two about a thing or two. Maybe he had taught me not to take on any more useless information? That would explain my hazy memory of his teachings. I shuddered some more.

My shuddering was interrupted by a fellow worker I had only seen in passing, from some other distant identical line in the factory. As he appeared, I jumped out of my skin but my innards refused to follow suit. Those days I was too tired to jump. He lit a ciggy and stepped into the smoking shelter, which looked like a see-through plastic bus stop. I stubbed my half-smoked ciggy out in a hurry and left in case he tried to spark up conversation.

Only six hours left and I was out of there, I thought. Then back to the line I went with sore eyes and a migraine I would have off and on for that whole week.

Leonard in the Sky with Diamonds.

Sitting uninterrupted for two hours or so after not sleeping for two days, picking up plastic vials and putting them down, my idle daydreams started to feel more like hallucinations. Although it felt more like I, sitting on the line, tearing pieces of hot plastic apart, was the hallucination. Whatever it was, this hallucinatory episode wasn’t particularly eventful; looking out of a grand window with a ground-floor view into brilliant green fields of close-mown grass, good enough to carve into a hundred bowling greens for the ageing population of its nearest neighbouring village. An encirclement of tall trees kept the fields hidden from any potential geriatric invaders.

The room was never fully visible to me. It felt as though I was merely peering through the eyes of something else, seeing only what they were choosing to look at. But the feeling of it all, of the room, felt familiar, almost like it was a part of me.

I snapped back to what might be reality and shrugged it all off as a combination of sleep deprivation, boredom and the fact that the entire place was white and windowless; a blank canvas for the mind to project itself upon. The faint sounds of the factory: the quiet clicking of something stuck somewhere underneath part of the conveyor belt, the distant incoherent shouts, the mechanical humming, a creative mind could become entranced and imagine all sorts.

The shrugging off of this episode was futile as it soon crawled its way back into my mind, which then began to drift into a new daydream. I left my body on auto-pilot to pick, pull and stack hot vials while my internal dialogue began to offer up various possibilities as to what it all meant.

Like, maybe this isn’t even my life. Maybe this is like… an alternate reality, or one of many in the multiverse, being played to the real or another version of Leonard Swanson by what a simple man, Robert say, would call “God,” acted out in real time, glimpsed only in short intervals at the discretion of the holder of the remote in order to keep the real or other version(s) of Leonard in line, tuning in at various moments to show him what not to do. The fate to avoid.

Yeah. That time I bit another kid’s face to see what would happen when I was four? The time I burnt my neighbours shed down with a friend and hid in the woods to watch when I was ten? The time I stole all them Curly Wurlys from the nice man’s shop while he was in the chippy opposite talking to the pretty woman behind the counter when I was twelve?

“This version of Leonard, this line-picker, is who you would be, had you been adopted into a poor working-class family in some nowhere industrial new town of the north. However, make no mistake! You could still very well end up merging with this timeline if thou keepth fucking about!” shouted God in the plump face of the well-fed real or other Leonard.

But. Then. I think. What about the time I saved that kid from being flattened by that bulldozer? Or all the times I would help the old lady carry her vintage designer bag full of bricks across the road? I bet they just so happened to never tune in during those times! Yeah, turn away when my good side is on display, God! Or whoever is holding the remote!

And finally it was time to leave. Robotically and devoid of thought, I vacated my place on the line and headed toward the changing room where I clambered through diligently, shedding my uniform as I went. Snatching my things out of my locker, I asked a fellow worker if they could spare a painkiller for my migraine to no avail and left.

The Town: A Walkthrough.

Full speed ahead through the door into the brightness of the 6am daylight. I took big strides across the car park towards the security fence, suddenly being zapped with a battery full of energy, forgetting my head hurt. Slapping my pass on the scanner, I pushed my way through the big metal turnstile and into the world beyond the factory. It’s a thirty-minute trek home starting with a secluded pathway lined with litter. Scanning the floor as I walked, I spotted a discoloured lager can with what I recognised as the old, early 90s design, and I wondered if the person that drank it was still alive. “Maybe… but maybe not,” was my guess.

The pathway is sandwiched between woodland and a quiet section of one of the busways. To my knowledge, in Europe at least, these busways only exist in this town, allocated solely for busses, creating a simple, convenient way for locals to travel between estates and go to and from the factories and the single shopping mall. The town planners were originally hailed and thought of themselves as geniuses for this ground-breaking idea. Occasionally a member of the outside world would accidentally find themselves driving along the busways in their stupid little cars, much to the amusement of the locals.

Eventually the woodland would break, making way for the first estate I had to pass by on my journey home. This particular estate was crammed full of brown, trapezoid-shaped houses squeezed between narrow single-lane roads and unkempt greenery. The roads led to dead ends, so any vehicles travelling along them were occupied almost exclusively by fellow factory workers at the tail end of their own journeys home. I stuck to the path on the side of the busway to avoid having to make my way through the maze of the first estate.

Leaving the brown houses behind me, I would then be met by another small section of woodland, its edge home to even more old rubbish, blown down the stretch of busway and settling there. Rather than follow the busway, winding off into the adjoining estate, I cut through the trees and popped out at the top end of a different estate. This one was made up of long rows of grey pebble-dashed terraced housing, each row separated with small grey pathways, each section surrounded by flats, also grey and pebble-dashed, six or seven storeys high, connected to more and more sections of identical flats by concrete bridges. It is possible to travel along the walkways of these flats for miles. I could almost exclusively hear the birds chirping in the trees dotted throughout the estate. It was all very lovely until a local smackhead emerged from the stairwell of the flats, shouting back at someone, wherever they are, before turning their attention to me.

“Robbie! Robbie!”

Rob the Bike.

“Robbie! Robbie!”

Now, I know my name isn’t Robbie, but my instincts told me he was definitely talking to me. My instincts told me that because that’s what I told him and his friends my name was during a shrewd business transaction I had made with them a couple of days before. I shook my head and continued on my way.

“Robbie!” he shouted again, gaining on me.

I snapped my head around to face him, red eyed and annoyed. “What the fuck? Why are you even out at this time? Surely you don’t have a job?”

“Aw, don’t be like that mate I just…”

“No man.” I can be as charitable as anyone but not with that guy and not on that day. I would see him all the time, that is whenever I left my flat. Shadily creeping around, a floating set of beady eyes beneath a baseball cap. Always popping up out of dark corners unannounced trying to sell me things. On top of that, I suspected it was him and his junkie mates that nicked a neighbour’s mountain bike the other week. The fact that I bought it off them for a tenner was the basis of my suspicion. I was merry, walking to the shop to top up my supply of microwavable slop when they jumped out of nowhere desperately begging me to buy the bike they had obviously just stolen. The day after this impulsive but smart investment, while riding the stolen bike to work, I was forced to once again play the role of hero. I pondered the idea of riding right past the owner as he shouted over joyfully, “No way Leonard! You found me bike!” with a strange mish-mash of a northern accent, waving his floppy arms about like a fat madman. I thought about sticking up both of my middle fingers as I sped by no-handed in an effort to avoid being typecast as “hero.” In a moment of weakness, I skidded the bike like a pro and screeched to a halt at his feet as he thanked me with tears in his eyes.

“No way Leonard! You found me bike!” he said again through his tiny mouth, delighted, his faith in humanity restored. A single fat finger wiped his eyes and his two front teeth stuck out like a beaver as he rested his face and shook his head with joyous disbelief.

“Yeah man, ha,” I played along, “yeah, I found some degenerate riding it down the flats the other day, I knew I recognised the bike.” I did not recognise the bike but he didn’t know that. “Yeah, so I was all like, ay that’s err, that’s… err… ’s? Bike?”

“George’s! Haha,” he laughed, assuming I was joking because I had seen him practically every day for the last six months and he had possibly told me his name several times before, and apparently even more times growing up. Anyway, never mind all of that, I thought, and soldiered on with my Oscar-worthy performance. “Just messing George mate! So yea I was all like, ‘Ay! That’s George’s bike, give me it at once or I’ll deck you I will!’ He proper shit it like, dropped it right there and scurried off down the corridor of the flats like a rodent, an err, a mutant junkie rodent,” I said, pointing and acting out the scene with my hands. My gullible neighbour George ate it up like it was one of the daily McDonald’s Happy Meals he still ate despite him being a middle-aged man. He even went as far as insisting I joined him for a cup of tea. I glanced through his open door into the dark hallway littered with boxes. “No,” I said.

The instinctual bluntness of my response caught our happy old George off-guard and he physically stumbled back a step. I almost felt bad for him. “Oh, didn’t mean to be rude mate I just… hate tea,” I explained, turning my back to him, accelerating away on foot, checking the time on my Nokia phone as I was now sure to be even later for work than I would have been had I still been riding George’s bike. “Thanks again Leonard!” I heard him say, now from some distance behind me as I power-walked away.

“Fuck off will ye!” I growled, lunging my face at the junkie who now finally got the message, swapping “Robbie” for “Jesus!” as he scurried off like a mutant junkie rodent, feeling hard done by.

Home Sweet Home.

I cut through the last row of houses and jumped a fence, landing in another small strip of woodland at the bottom of the estate. I kicked my way through the long grass and weeds and pushed away the low-hanging branches of sticky leaves. Once through to the other side, I could see the small cobblestone bridge over the canal in the distance. I crossed that bridge when I came to it and plodded my way down the old stone steps to the dirt path I would follow for the remainder of my journey home.

And it was always right at the end of the journey, at my door, that I would suddenly become desperate to rid my bladder of whatever toxic chemicals I had consumed throughout the day. I fumbled with my keys, dropped them and picked them up from the doormat cursing, sweating and jumping from foot to foot. Of course, in such scenarios the key never fits into the keyhole on the first try. I cursed louder and louder until it took pity on me and unlocked. I sprinted down the hall to my studio flat, throwing my palms out in front of me to stop myself. More fumbling, more sweat. Keys find themselves on the floor again. I would be forced to consider writing my name in a cocktail of toxic chemicals right there on my own door but would almost always, by sheer luck, manage to unlock and open it, curses turning to thanks as I run to the toilet.

On this occasion, upon finishing my expertly aimed chemical weapon release into the toilet bowl, a creepy surge of anxiety filled my body. I hadn’t heard my front door close! Ordinarily it would slam behind me, rattling the building. Momentarily frozen, I clenched my fists to try and compose myself, then spun around in case someone or something — sorry, some thing — was behind me. Nothing, no thing, phew. I tiptoed to the open door of the bathroom and leapt out, landing in a karate stance. My coat had fallen from the back of the door, preventing it from slamming. I dragged it in with a foot and glanced out; a blurry face was peering through the gap of the door of the flat opposite. “Fuck!” I shouted vaulting backwards, heart racing from the surprise. I locked my door and laughed it off.

Ciggy in mouth, I microwaved a shrink-wrapped plastic bowl of colourful rice-based slop. My throat was dry and the cigarette made me cough but I fought through it. The cardboard coffee cup with its own rich ecosystem evolving inside of it would provide a scenic grave for the butt. The microwave dinged to let me know it was time.

Slumped in front of the TV, wolfing down clumps of plastic rice, I flicked through the channels, refusing to settle on anything for longer than a second. Frustrated and flustered, I gave up on the microwave meal, turned off the TV, dropped the remote control onto the carpet and lit another ciggy I didn’t want.

Writer’s Block.

I don’t think I ever truly felt what writers describe as “writer’s block.” If I don’t feel like doing something, I just tend not to do it. That said, aside from the odd phrase or interesting word some thersitical old drunk had insulted me with, I hadn’t made note of anything for quite some time. According to the old drunk it was because I was a stupid, shit Sassenach and we’re all as stupid as each other down here in this stupid country.

One beer later that evening, before I forgot, I wrote “stupid shit” at the top of a blank page in my notepad. Even though these words were not exactly new to me, I enjoyed the way they sounded together, they looked good side by side, and I felt like it might kickstart a new verse. The problem was I just didn’t feel like writing anything else and had already committed to this “I don’t get writer’s block” shtick. Shrugging as though I cared not, I told myself I didn’t even want to write anyway, closed the notepad and drank a beer.

Two beers later that same evening, I decided to switch on the computer in order to go through the piles of songs. They were categorised in folders titled “good,” “great,” “great but not the right type of great” and “Swan Songs Definites,” although the “definites” could be taken with a giant-handsized pinch of salt. Turning the monitor and keyboard to face the bed as I didn’t have a computer chair, I sat down and slid my legs under the little desk it sat atop, resting my feet on the turntable beneath it. I listened to a bunch of songs in the “good” pile and promoted one or two of them to the “great” pile. I listened to a bunch of songs in the “great” pile and demoted one or two of them to the “good” pile.

I listened to a bunch of songs in the “great but not the right type of great” pile and most of them were as great as I remembered them being. Then I came across a song I had no recollection of making. It was titled “Robbie Hood.” The beat was simple but effective, a whooshing synth loop from the intro of a funk song I recognised but couldn’t quite put my finger on, layered with sparse drums and a singular bass note. The lyrics were all vaguely thematic, making a few random left turns here and there, but it all sounded great, I thought. I nodded along like a fan listening to their favourite rapper’s new song for the first time. I constantly pulled it back to catch lyrics; something about buying second-hand shit off smackheads, being an unintentional Robin Hood that unwittingly paid for stolen goods then returned them to their rightful owners, being the estate antihero, snatching and disposing of someone else’s Happy Meal for their own good.

It was a short song, clocking in at around two and a half minutes. I listened to it ten times in a row and decided it was the right type of great after all and I promoted it to the “Swan Songs Definites” pile. What was I thinking? I thought.

I went through some beats I had already made to see if I could find anything that would inspire me to turn these latest notes into a song but nothing stood out.

Maybe I could force myself to make a new beat? Maybe if I made a beat, my brain would kick into gear and I’d finally finish something new? With that in mind, I flicked through several old 80’s Japanese experimental industrial cassette albums I once ripped to the computer but had never thoroughly delved into. After ten minutes of flicking through an array of hisses and manipulated car horns panned to the left while a high-pitch voice shrieked in pain on the right, I gave up.

Maybe something was happening on the internet. I clicked on the little blue “e” icon for Internet Explorer which immediately filled the screen with pop-ups, forcing me to individually close them for the next five minutes. Once the last pop up was dealt with, I typed in the address for my email and waited it out while it loaded against its will. Finally I logged in. Nobody I cared about ever sent me emails but what else am I supposed to do when I am not picking up and putting down hot plastic vials? I sat there for some time, deleting emails; show requests, collaboration requests, etc. I came across something with the subject “Ever thought of writing a book?” “No,” I responded to myself but opened it anyway.

Inside was a message from a man claiming to be a writer. He also made the bold claim that I too could be a writer. His blind optimism had me believing that upon writing that email he, like me as I read it, was drunk. He told me he was a fan of the songs I had uploaded to Myspace and asked if I had ever written “prose/fiction” or had “any interest in real forms of literacy beyond writing stupid shit at the top of a notepad”. I responded to the email immediately, hoping he would still be drunk when he received it:

Hello, yes, like you, I too enjoy the benefits of alcohol on a wednesday afternoon mate. To answer your question, yes.

I have written many things, I have been considering moving my lyrical talents into the world of real writing so this has come at the perfect time fo

I zoned out at that point and realised I had sent the email before I finished it:

perfect time for me* sorry, my cat walked across the keyboard.

I didn’t have a cat but if I did, I imagined that’s the type of cat I would have had. I would have called him God and stood at the door of the building screaming his name as loudly as I could at unsociable hours to give my neighbours a heads up on what they were dealing with. Thinking about God, I sat waiting for a response for what felt like an eternity before falling backwards onto the bed and doing the sleep thing.

The next morning I woke up to my daily workout routine of one sit-up to my desk where I nudged the mouse to bring the computer back to life. The drunk man from the book publishing company had responded. He said something about something else and asked if I could send him some of my writing. But other than “GENPHARM”, the short story I had turned into a song, and the notepad full of random lyrics and bizarre tangents about nothing, I hadn’t really written much of anything else. I could have just sent him the GENPHARM story but the last time I read through it, I realised how poorly written it was and didn›t want to ruin the rap adaptation for him. Regardless, I responded to the email:

yes of course, I will send you something.

Well, seeing as I couldn’t write lyrics, I thought why not try and make a bold foray into another form of creative writing. I took a healthy swig of warm, flat lager from a can that may or may not have been moonlighting as an ashtray. Feeling confident, I cracked my fingers and regretted it, shaking my hands in pain, “ow!” I moaned. I did some light stretches of the neck and arms and told myself I was the great Leonard Swanson and then I began my first masterpiece, making it up as I went a long, right there in the email:

Day 1.

Our soon-to-be hero found himself throwing thick, slime-green alcoholic substances in the general direction of his wretched piehole. Dave, as we will call our future superman for the time being, spent most of his time filling his piehole with pies, whole. So to discover him hunched over a sweaty old wooden antique table in the Queen’s Legs slurring into a chipped ceramic jug was a rare sight. A sight I would regret cursing the skies I was ever forced to set my eyes upon. I traipsed towards the bar, pushing my spectacles back up the bridge of my nose after bumping shoulders with some mumbling green, blurry-faced bastard. I did not apologise, nor did they.

The anticipation of reaching the disgusting LED-lit mahogany bar became intense. The room appeared to become longer with every step. Anxiety kicked me in the balls, I blurted out a panic-stricken noise in falsetto that sounded like my poor soul had finally figured out how to escape. The middle-aged, balding, bare-knuckle-boxing barman seemed to understand. He communicated this understanding with a toothless grin followed by a wink that made me convulse as I parked myself on the least wonky bar stool. The toothless grin became wider as he slammed down a small glass of what I could only assume my earlier squeal had translated to.

I chugged down my own slime-green alcoholic substance, grimacing in the darkness of the ceramic jug as I held it over my face.

Dave (or Norman as those who knew his mother called him, and everyone in town knew his mother), was a well-established sluggard. An obese, wobbling, rotten, algae-ridden creature, so vile my gut would spit acid up into my oesophagus at the mere sight of him. But such complete ugliness engaged one’s instinctive curiosity, so I found myself staring at him as he sat belching in slow motion to a chorus of angry ageing drunkards gargling their jugs of slime.

Eventually the gargling made way for deep guttural cackling and this bothered me enough to break my morbidly curious stare. Norman (formerly referred to in this story as Dave) was chugging down his thick, green slime juice like a gargantuan baby with a bottle.

How could any divine being plague its own world with such a blemish? As I was asking myself this theological question, I heard the squelching sounds of what could only be Norman (formerly Dave) attempting to clamber to his feet, chair falling behind him. I turned to him, making sure to relax my eyes so they became unfocused and nervously raised my empty ceramic jug, which cracked slightly as my grip tightened around it. He teetered toward me, thighs audibly chafing as he did so.

I dabbed away beads of sweat from my wrinkled brow with the sleeve of my navy blazer, hoping the gluttonous, wobbling green blur would pass me by. Then, suddenly, there was a sound reminiscent of the popular story of the psychopathic giant that swung a sperm whale round by its tail and slapped it against the surface of the ocean so hard it exploded. The room filled with laughter. Cautiously I turned, afraid of what I might discover.

Norman (formerly Dave, etc.) was lying face-down on the beige and gold patterned carpet, and he too was laughing. Looking around the room, I wiped the concerned look off my face and did the only thing a man in a cheap navy blazer with ill-fitting grey trousers could do in such a situation, I joined in! I let off a deafening, fake, sharp squawk of laughter while banging my ceramic jug against the bar for some reason. Nerves, perhaps? I laughed louder and louder, squawking like a possessed golden pheasant as though in competition with the rest of the animals. I turned to the bar and slammed my jug again, this time so hard it shattered into pieces.

And suddenly the room fell silent.

All laughter ceased. With my wart-filled palms up and above my head to signal my apology, I realised I was staring at a rather malnourished old man who was dressed like a farmer with his muddy wellington boots dangling from the barstool. Something about the way this old man looked at me, jug halfway between table and mouth, sent shivers down my gelatine spine and scared me to the core. With all my might I managed to focus and shape my face into a sorry smile, nodding to show him I was no threat.

The demonic old farmer twisted his skinny body, hung down from his barstool and dropped to the floor. He reached deep into a small duffle bag and pulled out a scythe way too big to have been in it. “What the hell is that thing for?” I asked, the beads of sweat on my forehead joined together as one, forming a waterfall.

He edged closer and closer, dragging the rusty scythe behind him, scraping it across the paper-thin carpet. In a telepathic plea for help I made eye contact with the terrified barman but he looked away. Jumping off the stool I retreated with my hands out in surrender, “Look sir, I didn’t mean no offence when I looked at you with my eyes, and anyhoo, I apologised with that smile I did, the only trouble I want sir is the trouble of having too much delicious green slime to chug, the type of trouble you represent is the type of trouble I do not under any circumstances want to engage with, good sir, take mercy.”

Suddenly he lifted the massive scythe and cackled, his skinny neck bulging, his eyes bursting with red and grey specks. I closed my eyes and tensed up, waiting for the scythe to swoop down at my neck, detaching my perfectly spherical head, but nothing happened. The room around me was quiet. Slowly, I peeled my eyelids open one by one to find Norman standing in front of me. He fell forward again, this time squashing me beneath him. I wriggled my way to freedom and sat up. Norman had stepped between the evil old demonic farmer’s rusty scythe and my neck, catching the blade in the impenetrable saggy flesh of his back. The room once again burst into laughter. The farmer suddenly became less menacing and joined in with a laugh of his own.

I rose to my feet. “Another of your finest delicious green slime please bar man! And whatever Norman is having!” I confidently shouted and pointed a long wiggly finger at the laughing mound of flesh still face down on the floor.

In a state of drunken hysteria, I crushed my empty can on the desk, collapsing it into a flat disc, laughing as loudly as I imagined the patrons of the Queens Leg’s laughed at Norman. I slapped the crushed can off the desk like a hockey puck and moved onto slamming the computer mouse, accidentally clicking send in the process. “Damn it.” I wasn’t sure if I had finished, but then again, I wasn’t sure if I would have ever finished, so I decided everything had worked out for the best and turned off the computer.

Back at the Factory.

The next day before I left for work, I checked my email in case the drunk publisher had responded. They had not. Oh well, what does a book publisher know about writing anyway? I was back to it in the factory, picking things up, putting them down; the usual.

Robert apparently had a doctor’s appointment but would be joining us a few hours later, leaving us a body short for half the day. This made the job almost impossible and the boss would be forced to join us on the line. He spent most of his time awkwardly attempting to flirt with Denise. A match made in hell.

I’d watch him sloppily scooping up the vials up from the belt, barely glancing at the liquid inside, passing them back to Joe — a quiet, clean-shaven, slender man whose small head of hair seemed to stand up without chemical assistance.

Overall, Joe didn’t look like much, with his sunken eyes, bony shoulders and protruding Adam’s apple. The thing about Joe was, I happened to have inside information that he killed a man in the 90s with a phone receiver. He served around eight years, when he was set free after it was decided he had in fact acted with reasonable force or something. Whether he meant to do it or not, when he looked at you, you looked away. Or at least I did, sometimes. He didn’t say much of anything while sitting on the lines but on that day I could tell he was irritable. Every time Tracy passed a strip of vials behind him, Joe would snatch it from him and mutter incoherently to himself.

“Alright Joe?” I said but my attempt to lighten the mood only startled him, as though he was fully immersed in his own hallucinatory experience and I had just shocked him back to this version of reality. He looked sideways at me and said nothing. I looked away and pretended to check the contents of a strip of vials. I imagined Joe finally losing it and tearing the beard snood off the boss’s face, causing the entire factory floor to come to a sudden halt as the germs from his mouth escaped, infecting everyone and everything, turning them into pools of green slime for the bare-knuckle-boxing barman of the Queens Leg’s to serve his thirsty customers with.

Later that shift I found myself sitting in the canteen alone, staring through the window into the half-empty car park beyond the security hut. I started to feel depressed, perhaps due to the fact I had still not finished my album, a year and a half had passed at that point, maybe longer. All I wanted to do was return to my studio flat, close the curtains and ignore life beyond those four walls. But life kept breaking in, forcing me out into the wild, where I would walk to and from the factory. I placed my hands on my forehead and rubbed my eyes, wishing I was back home. I imagined finishing my album, masses of groupies throwing money at my feet, trophies presented to me in the street at random, free food. And I didn’t mean like the type of free food I used to get when I was in school, I’m talking high-end Michelin what’d you call it restaurants, the type of restaurants that force you to pronounce the word “restaurant” with a French accent. They would serve cuisine I didn’t understand and would probably spit into a napkin while no one was watching. I imagined myself rolling up the carcass of some rare sea creature in that napkin like a dead body in a carpet, dumping it under the table of the private VIP booth I was sitting at with my women friends.

Just as I was about to imagine the next dish I would spit out into a napkin, I felt a sudden jolt, like when you’re on the cusp of sleep and you’re hit with the sensation of falling. Only rather than waking up, I was teleported deeper. I was back in that room again, looking out of its grand window into the brilliant green fields surrounded by a border of trees. This time I could make out a human figure in the distance walking slowly towards the window I was looking out of. I could feel myself tensing in a vain attempt to gain control over my host, desperately trying to sneak a look around the room while it was distracted with the human approaching outside. Against my will I was now peering down into a cup full of tea in a green slimy hand — I hated tea and my hand was definitely not green and slimy. Vision now obscured by the mug in my face, I could hear a loud retching slurp as though it was being played at full volume in my head. Unable to scream out, I desperately tried to pull away, then just like that I was back in the factory canteen spitting tea onto the table in front of me. Perplexed, I sat back, fists clenched and full of sanitiser I must have forgotten to rub in.

Confused, I poured the mystery tea into the coffee machine drain and threw the plastic cup in the bin next to it. Rubbing the sanitiser into my palms, I was met by Robert at the canteen door. He looked dazed. “Robert, you alright?” I asked.

He looked down at his hands as though they didn’t belong to him and touched his face, then returned his eyes to mine and squinted like he was having a hard time seeing. “Yes, I am alright… our kid?” he responded. Robert was a fairly old man but he had always seemed pretty sharp to me. Maybe he was sick. “Doctors go OK?” I asked. “Doctors?” He responded as though he had no clue what I was talking about. “Doctors, yes, the doctors went OK, yes, sound mate, err, sound lad,” he robotically responded. He was acting like a different person; he went from an old Scouse man to sounding like a man doing a bad impression of an old Scouse man. Either way, I was creeped out, man.

Side-eyeing me suspiciously as he shimmied around me and into the canteen, “I err, am going to get some dinner,” he said, facing away from me.

“OK, see you back on the line then?”

“Yes,” he said.

I stepped around the corner, standing up against the wall, then leaned sideways to spy on him through the small window in the door. He walked into the middle of the canteen, stopping to investigate himself further, looking down at his legs, feeling his arms and hands. Then suddenly he clutched his head as though in pain. I reached to push the door open to offer him some assistance but before I could he ran across the canteen and out of the fire exit, albeit slowly like an old man whose legs are going. Regardless of his lack of pace I felt he was too fast for me to follow. Once through the exit, he clumsily clambered over the waist-high wooden fence, hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes. “Ouch” I said aloud as he brushed himself off and hurried away through the bramble and gaunt grey trees into the night.

I shook my head and left. On my way to the changing rooms, I stopped in the hallway at a long line of portrait photographs — each Rich Bestard spanning back maybe six generations. Blurry-faced and green with bits of flabby flaps of skin bursting through the seams of their suits. Watches clinging on to their wrists for dear life. I scratched at my head, not because it’s what people do when thinking, but because I had a genuine itch. Possibly psoriasis. Ever since I started working there my skin had become dry and sometimes scabby. I don’t know much about skin disorders but I blamed the Bestard family and I punched one of the portraits in the face for emphasis.

To the left of the changing room, just before the Bestard portraits, was an unlit hallway. I saw it every day but had never paid it much attention until then. At the end of the hallway was a double door. To my knowledge, no worker I had ever met had ventured beyond those doors, so I had no clue as to what lurked beyond them. I took another look at one of those Rich Bestards and decided that today was a great day to take a small detour down a dark hallway.

I yanked at the lanyard around my neck and pressed my pass on the scanner at the side of the mysterious double doors. It responded with a small beep I recognised as “not today mate.” The red light remained red. I reached out in the dark with both hands, tightening my grip around the industrial steel door handles, giving them a shove. The doors must have been weak and old as they flew open with ease. I stepped back, alert, ready to innocently sprint to the changing room if an alarm went off or a laser gun dropped from the ceiling, but nothing.

I stepped into the dark, windowless room, closed the doors behind me and let my eyes adjust. Through the glass I could see Gregg at the end of the hallway heading to the canteen, probably to tell me to get back to the line while he takes his turn poisoning his lungs. I turned my attention back to the room; it was empty except for a scattering of leaflets spread about the squeaky white epoxy floor. Kneeling down I picked up a leaflet and held it up to the windows of the doors so I could see it better. On it was a silhouette of a person with a geometric pattern spiralling over their head, on the other side it said PEEPHOLE CORP in capital letters. I folded it and slid it inside my tracksuit pocket, then creeped across to the next set of doors. These doors didn’t even require a pass. What type of Mickey Mouse operation is this? Security needs a serious upgrade, I thought. Not even one laser gun or camera, at least that I could see. If they were to have caught me, I believe they would have been forced into promoting me for exposing their flawed system.

I slowly pushed the next set of doors open and tiptoed along another dark hallway that split off into two more hallways, equally as dark. Peering down the hallway to the left I could make out a red light coming from beneath the single door at the end of it and headed towards it, neglecting the hallway to the right which had no ending in sight. Fuck it, I thought. My creeping turned into a cocky walk; I couldn’t be bothered concentrating enough to move stealthily any longer. Arriving at the door, I tried to push it but it was locked. I pushed my pass against the scanner by its side but it didn’t work, as expected. I could hear sounds coming from the other side, a strange humming overdubbed with a bunch of guttural voices, spitting and stammering as they attempted to form words.

Well, I’m here now, I thought, might as well conduct a thorough investigation. I thumped my hand against the door with the bottom of a fist and the strange sounds on the other side ceased suddenly. I thumped again and waited. Ear pressed against the cold metal, I could hear scurrying and slurping whispers, like a crowd of people trying to quietly suck the last drops of their Ribena cartons through straws while attempting to conversate.

My patience had worn thinner than Rich Bestard VII’s hair so I tried one last time. THUD, THUD. “I know someone’s there, just open the door man!” And finally, some security I thought, as I could hear what sounded like a metal chain being removed. I clicked my fingers to the rhythm of the beat in my head as the key on the other side slowly turned. “Come on, come on,” I urged them on. A blurry face peered up at me through the crack in the door, I shoved them out of the way as I squeezed through the gap and into the room.

It was packed wall-to-wall with blurry-faced green creatures, cramped together, shoulder to shoulder. Several exposed lightbulbs dangled from the steel beams above and their blue overalls appeared black under the red light but I recognised them from my outings to the airlock. I tiptoed for a better look.

“What the fuck are youse doing in here?” The smell suddenly hit the back of my throat and nostrils. “Wow,” I grimaced and coughed and held my nose. “Is this like… what you lot do for fun or what?” I asked, to no response.

They all stood quietly, facing forwards. I could hear their gurgled breathing and the rustling of their overalls as they fidgeted and pushed against each other. I shoved my way into the room, holding my breath and stopping at intervals to tip toe and look around. “Come on, move over man!” I pleaded, nodding at the blurry faces as I squashed between their fat fetid bodies. Somewhere in the middle of the room I managed to win myself an inch or two of space. “Why are you all so quiet?” The room once again refused to humour me. “OK, OK, nobody wants to say anything? Alright then, let’s see.” I snatched a strip of vials out of the hand closest to me, this time a slightly less plump one. “What’s this then?” I knew what it was, it was a strip of those vials I was forced to pick up and put down all day, but why were they holding them?

Shoving my way further into the room, glancing down at their hands, they all seemed to be holding them, some held more than others. A particularly large creature held at least a dozen strips in each hand with a few more packed into their pockets. “You’re a greedy one, aren’t you mate?!” I laughed then grimaced at the stench. He clutched the vials to his chest like I was child services and he was holding a baby I had come to steal. He shoved backwards, knocking into another creature who finally broke the silence. “Watch it!” they said. Well, sort of. That is definitely what they were trying to say. “Yeah, watch it!” I repeated, turning my attention back to the less plump one. “What… are… you… doing… with… these?” I asked, slapping the strip of vials on their blurry head to emphasise each word.

My interrogation came to a halt before I had a chance to implement the techniques I had learnt watching an MK-Ultra documentary. A loud disgusting slurp coming from the corner of the room grabbed my attention. I painstakingly shoulder-barged and squeezed my way to the source of the sickening slurps. “What the fuck?” If it wasn’t so cramped in there I would have fallen backwards at the sight. A particularly large creature was slumped on a bench against the wall. In his flabby green hand he held a big transparent gun-like device which was loaded with a strip of vials he was shooting directly into a giant slimy mouth on his midriff. His fat, pimply tongue stuck out and flapped beneath. I leant in to examine it closer. “That is fucking disgusting man!” Suddenly something occurred to me. “Wait, you don’t talk out of those things as well, do you?” I looked around the room at the other blurry-faced creatures. “Oh shit!” I blurted out realising why it was so hard for them to talk.

“If none of you are going to say shit, I’m just going to get off.” Shoving and pushing my way back out of the room I arrived at the door I entered through. “Well, see you then,” I said, stepping into the hallway and instantly throwing up. The creature that had opened the door finally tried to say something. I turned slightly, lifting my head with one hand on my knee and the other on the wall. “What?” I asked.

“Doh… D… Don’t…” they slowly stuttered, trying to answer.

“Come on man, it smells so bad, hurry up.”

They pulled their overalls open like Clark Kent would to reveal the S on his chest, only this thing revealed its flabby stomach mouth. I recoiled as it pushed out a sort of slimy rubber cork with its tongue, splashing slime and spit into my face.

“Argh… fuck.” I threw up again.

“Be careful man, please!” I pleaded with a hand out.

“Don’t tell,” they finally said, this time a lot clearer.

“Yeah, whatever man, I don’t even know what you’re doing.”

I returned to the line. Denise wondered where I had been and why I looked even more pale than usual. “Err, yeah sorry, felt a bit sick like, threw up and everything,” I shuddered. What those things were doing really was none of my concern, I just wished I had not forced myself to watch. I felt like the stench was still stuck to me. Damn, why didn’t they just tell me what they were doing? I might have just left them alone. This time curiosity didn’t actually kill the cat but it ruined their appetite.

Giant stomach mouths plagued my mind as I indiscreetly threw whole strips of vials into the bucket. Come on thoughts, I thought! Think of other things! I tried to concentrate on something else — that room from my hallucination, with its grand, expensively-framed window. I remembered my hand was green in the last one. What was my mind trying to tell me? Suddenly I could hear music in my head — a muffled version of a classical Vivaldi piece; the same music they used to torture you with when phoning the Jobcentre for a crisis loan, inevitably getting put on hold for hours.

Finally, I realised (or at least I thought I did) the main cause of my consternation: the fact I had succumbed to working for someone else. In my childhood I made extra money by selling stolen confectionaries. In my early teens I moved on to copying and selling the latest movies from my local video rental shop. At seventeen I moved out of my mum’s house, declared myself estranged and managed to sign on to the dole. For the next few years I did nothing but write and record rap songs using an old family PC I inherited and a bunch of bits and pieces friends of friends had lying around.

I was nostalgic for my unemployed years. Daydreaming a happier dishonest remake of a time I was probably equally as anxious. Yes, I had less money back then, but what is money when you earn it feeding those green blurry-faced bastards? “Exactly,” I answered myself out loud.

I dropped the strip of hot vials I had just scooped off the conveyor belt and shed my hair net and lab coat right there on the spot, and with it my current bout of depression. “What are you doing, Leonard?! No! Nooo!” Denise screamed frantically, hands covering her mouth in disbelief. “Code red, code red!” Someone else shouted in the distance. I turned to see Tracy standing at the door of his office trembling in fear, “Put the… put… put the net and coat back on at once!” he stuttered. Pacing towards him, my possessed smile evolved into a demonic laugh. He retreated into his office, locked the door, dropped the blinds and peaked through them.

Without breaking stride, I kick the door off its hinges, sending him flying backwards, flinging his clipboard into the air. “Please Leonard!” he desperately begged upon hitting the ground. “Shh,” I demanded calmly, stepping over him with a foot either side of his shoulders. Reaching down, I grabbed him by the collar of his lab coat, stood him upright, then frog-marched him out of his office onto the factory floor. I stepped on the back of one of his knees and he dropped to his shins and squealed like a scared piglet. In the distance, a group of green blurry-faced bastards had gathered inside the airlock to watch the commotion, climbing over each other for a better view. I held off for a few more seconds, making sure as many people as possible could bear witness to my last hurrah. “Leonard, it’s not worth it!” Denise pleaded one last time. “It’s OK, Denise.” I took a quiet, calm breath, reached across Tracy’s face and tore his beard snood off, holding it up above me for all to see. The room gasped simultaneously. Tracy wriggled frantically, taking hopeless gulps of air, clutching at his neck with one hand, grabbing at the legs of the line pickers who shook him off and told him to get away.

I exited the building for the last time and kicked my way through the security gate. The security guard shook a fist in the air, shouting about something. I gave him the finger over my shoulder and a majestic pale horse happened to appear, so I mounted it and galloped into the rising sun as I imagined the scene behind me dramatically exploding, escape pods full of blurry-faced green bastards shooting into the sky.

The Shit: A Monologue.

After going AWOL mid-shift, Leonard arrived home around midnight. He had executively decided he would never step foot in that place again. The key found the keyhole first try and he stepped inside, feeling powerful. He walked into the middle of the room, stood with his back straight and his shoulders slumped, outwardly embracing his contradictory nature with barely opened arms. He looked left and right at his empty Church Town studio flat. Clearing his throat, he closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath then slowly re-opened them. The room was suddenly full of murmuring blurry-faced creatures, quietly talking amongst themselves, their hearts throbbing through their green chests, their chairs creaking under their weight. The stench was overwhelming and would require intense concentration if Leonard was to get through it. He balled his hands into fists and placed them on top of the podium. The room got quiet. One of the creatures elbowed another one awake. Leonard Swanson began speaking:

“The problem with people is, sometimes, a lot of the time, I just don’t like them very much. People get in the way when I’m going places, sometimes without them even being there. Some people hold onto you even without any physical contact, dragging you back into dark corners you didn’t even know you had been in until you return and see your name written all over the walls. The biggest mistake one could make is forgetting about all the shit you’ve stepped in on your way to wherever you are now. It doesn’t matter if that place is your desired location or not. You have to always remember the shit. Yes, some of the shit may have actually biodegraded and therefore no longer be there for you to step in but some places just attract more shit, so for want of a better phrase ‘you can never be too careful’.

What if you need to go back for some reason? Maybe you took a wrong turn at some point and without realising it stepped in some shit you could have avoided had you remembered where you came from. In such situations even the smallest almost-but-not-quite-forgotten debt owed to you by some down-and-out old acquaintance you haven’t thought about for a long, long time can become a huge burden on what remains of your soul. The cheapest knock-off version of the devil wouldn’t be interested in its remnants even for free so you should quickly rid your mind of any thought of selling it. Souls, not worth the bodies they’re attached to, metaphorically or otherwise.

At times like this, people believing in such tomfoolery is almost enough to make you down and smash a bottle of tequila over the first person daring enough to use their mouth to say things like words. If I myself were to slip up and utter one of these words, make no mistake mate, I am not exempt. It wouldn’t even be classed as self-harm, more like self-induced justice! It would actually be looked upon as an honourable act and applauded as such. The bottle may even be replaced if the barman/woman/person knows anything about anything. The bump, blood and headache are a fair sentence for such utterances.

Words, not worth the air it takes to vocalise them, not worth the paper they’re written on. Imagine a world of absolute silence, communication devolved into simple hand gestures and head nods, mostly to warn others of the shit ahead. A man who can see the uncharted shit in front of them and remember the shit they have previously stepped in on their way to get to wherever they are has real, true and honest potential. Only someone of this ilk can truly navigate themselves and others around the shit that lies ahead. Brown-nosing through the shit will only get you so far before the stench gets too great for anybody to ignore.”

The room exploded into cheers, sputtering and spitting, flabby green hands slapping together. Even though no one had understood what he had said, it inspired them regardless, and they collectively decided that was all that mattered. Leonard stepped back from the podium and slammed a tray of slop into the microwave with his back to the room. He smiled at himself in the reflection of the microwave door then turned away to begin packing while the slop heated up.

Purgatory.

I would be the first to admit that I perhaps lacked all of the information required to find myself feeling such a way, but I confidently believed society’s expectations of its oblivious civilians were obsessive and archaic. My refusal to submit and adhere to its feudal rules had kicked me back into the dark and dingy corner where, unbeknownst to them, I was comfortable. A man should not have to work to remain alive simply because the collective conscience of the law-abiders expects him to. We all have our expectations shattered at some point and maybe the people that aren’t the man refusing to give up should stop being so spoilt.

The world wasn’t beaten and bludgeoned into what it is now just for a bunch of men in suits to tell us our limitations. I wanted to fly and travel through time and unmask evil at every corner. I wanted to live in a world that was beaten and bludgeoned at my own hands.

And oh, how the world would judge those of us on the outside. How much easier it would have been had my self-diagnosed neurological disorder been legitimised by professionals. A get-out-of-jail-free card to smugly wave in the fed-up faces of critics exasperated with my inability to fall in line. “Lazy shit! Why can’t you just do what we do?” they would inquisitively enquire. “Get a job, tramp!” seething model citizens would demand, shaking their children with one hand, pointing at me with the other, “That is what not to be!” they would spit in the innocent faces of their trembling offspring, venom sure to leave a lasting impression. Sometimes I would growl and bark at them in response, other times I would hock on the pavement to assert dominance. And plenty of other times I didn’t hear them.

And there I went with my paranoid shuffle and beetroot eyes. Forever clearing my throat and overthinking it. Maybe it’s worse than a neurological disorder? Maybe I should diagnose myself with something more critical?

Big John.

Most of my former belongings were now on display in the window of my ex-local Cash Generator, one of the many predatory pawn shops for the desperate and deranged spread all over that sleepy town. The only things I didn’t try and sell were the clothes off my back, a couple of outfit changes, some notepads, my Nokia phone and a couple of hard drives. These hard drives were bursting with all the music I had been working on for the five or so years prior, which probably amounted to over two hundred songs, maybe more, but still, no greatest rap album of all time. I collected my remaining things, shoved them into a big black Nike holdall with a broken zipper and skipped off into the night.

An old friend I grew up with but didn’t see very much by that point kindly said I could sleep on the sofa in the living room of his small one-bedroom flat on the thirteenth floor of a high-rise in Liverpool for a couple of weeks. He was a well-liked, small-time criminal known around Church Town as Big John, a name he was christened with as a child when he was the tallest in his class.

He grew up in Church Town but moved to Liverpool when he was twenty, and although he didn’t grow to be a particularly tall adult, the “Big” part of his name was still apt on account of him being built like an oak puncheon barrel. A kind-eyed, wide-shouldered man with a Moko symbol tattooed on his neck to commemorate his grandmother, a Māori woman that migrated from New Zealand with her European husband in the 60s. How they ended up in Church Town is beyond me, and probably them, but thank God they did or I wouldn’t have had a sofa to sleep on in its closest neighbouring city.

Big John worked for a bigger, older, lesser-liked criminal known as Cotty — a small, scary man with piercing eyes and a murderous streak. Cotty took a shine to Big John after he witnessed him successfully fight off two older kids, both of whom worked for Cotty, selling weed in Church Town. By that point Cotty was in his late twenties and had already been in business for a decade.

A couple of weeks later Cotty was sitting in his car when Big John rode past him on his bike, delivering newspapers. Cotty drove after him, shouting him down, shoving a bag of money into his chest. He could keep it if he taxed a rival small-town drug dealer. Big John said OK without much thought. It was better money than his paper round and maybe if he got in Cotty’s good books he would be able to save up for a car. Eventually Big John would move on to running Cotty’s weed dealing operation in Church Town and eventually he bought that car — a black 1981 Ford Escort XR3i in perfect nick, paid for in cash. He did well but Cotty felt Big John shone brightest when taxing his rivals, so he gave the weed round to a newer recruit, giving Big John better paid jobs, which led to him robbing betting shops in various surrounding towns. I would ask Big John why he didn’t just rob betting shops of his own accord and keep the money for himself but he would laugh it off.

I would learn that Cotty had someone that would be paid to provide detailed information via various bookmakers they would also cut in. The information was vital as betting shops would change their collection day on a weekly basis to lessen the odds of being robbed when they had the most cash on the premises. Those would be the days Big John would be sent in. The money would already be bagged up, counted and ready for him to enter, flashing a replica handgun at the inside man and exiting with the pelf. They would only choose betting shops they deemed lacking in security, with a place the various getaway drivers could park out of sight, usually around a corner or across a road in a neighbouring estate.

The prize would be cut a few ways with Cotty taking the lion’s share even though Big John did the heavy lifting. I suppose he wouldn’t have known what bookies to rob and when if he did it like I suggested? Then again maybe John just needed to think bigger and realise his true potential.

So there I was, grey jogging suit, gloriously lounging in Big John’s tiny flat. Smoking weed on the sofa, daytime TV providing me with all the inspiration I needed to continue tapping ash into the plastic tray of half-eaten microwaveable slop. The daytime in Big John’s flat was my domain as he would be out and about doing whatever it was he did.

Using his unloved laptop sitting on the coffee table, I connected to the painstakingly slow internet, eventually logging into my email. Scrolling through weeks of newsletters I didn’t sign up to and offers I didn’t want, I was slightly enthused to find the drunk book publisher had finally responded. I speed-read my way through it. “Blah blah blah,” I said and lit the end of the badly rolled spliff in the corner of my mouth. He apologised for not getting back to me sooner, followed by what I assumed was a long-winded excuse. Finally, at the latter end of the email he told me he quite liked my freestyled story, though I sensed a smidgen of doubt in his text when he concluded by asking me if I had anything else I wanted to show him:

Why yes of course, I will send you something shortly — a thing I finished recently, like, really recently…

“This guy is taking the piss,” I said to myself as I clicked send, crushed the roach of my badly rolled spliff into the slop and began typing.

The Last Ralph.

This story starts as many before it started: with a man attempting to reinvent the wheel. “Finally there will be a wheel,” he tells us, or himself at least; a wheel “that will stop going around in stupid circles!”

The man telling himself this is called Ralph and Ralph is entirely sick of going around in circles. He sits as he does most days: perched on the slippery edge of his rickety desk chair, fighting with gravity and madness, fragments of his potential magnum opus scribbled on bits of paper strewn across the desk in front of him.

Above the desk is a small brick recess window and now and then the odd sunray breaks in and navigates its way through the maze of cobwebs. Ralph leans back in his chair to catch one of these stray sunrays with his forehead. Just a small blast of vitamin D would be enough for him to complete the remainder of day 999. Full steam ahead he goes, scribbling away into the night, occasionally standing to fix his ever-fading lab coat and walk around in squares. He puffs chest, throws back head, clenches one fist, clenches another, says no it will never work, says yes it will, pushes glasses up brim of nose, jumps back into chair, continues scribbling.

At midnight a digital alarm clock shrieks violently.

“Yes, yes, enough,” Ralph says, “I’ve heard it all before.” He slowly forces his body upright to mute the racket, his bones creaking and cracking like a house expanding as it heats up.

Picking out a thimble-sized piece of chalk from the gutter of the suspended chalkboard, he rubs out the number 999 with his sleeve, writing 1000 in its place. He takes a step back, looks at the number and smiles proudly.

His beloved workspace/home/everything is lit with twenty-two ragtag lamps, their wires entangled in a complex web. He makes his way around the room switching off the first twenty-one lamps before sinking into his dilapidated armchair.

Removing his glasses, Ralph takes a deep breath and, while gently rubbing the bridge of his long, hooked nose with a stubby finger and thumb, places them on a pile of upturned plant pots to his side. Now it is time to bask in the spongy comfort of the greatest and only armchair in his old, cold, brick shed.

The shed was always cold but throughout the day, when not slumped in his comfy armchair, Ralph was too busy scribbling to notice. To combat the temperature of the night he would pull up the thick dusty blanket from the footrest in front of the armchair to his chin. Once the chain dangling from the twenty-second lamp over his shoulder had been pulled, the room would plunge into darkness and he into an instant slumber. If you were a fly on the wall of Ralph’s brick shed, you’d be forgiven for believing every day was a duplicate of the last.

However, tonight, for better or for worse, would be different.

On this night Ralph tossed and turned in his armchair, unable to rest as he ordinarily would: with ease, after a hard day’s scribbling.

Rolling his head from side to side, stretching out his legs, a peculiar feeling came over him. Something in the air felt different. He fidgeted some more, freezing suddenly, completely silent, intently listening, breath held. His senses tingled, informing him of possible movement outside. It felt close. His thoughts raced as he fought to gain control of his mind; perhaps it is some sort of animal? You still do get the odd one of those around here this time of year. If not an animal, a change in wind? Yes, that will be it, wind.

He allowed his lungs to deflate via a slow and tired sigh of relief, but suddenly the air changed again. Something still wasn’t right and the length of poor Ralph’s sigh was sadly cut in half. More movement, this time even closer, succeeded by what sounded like faint whispers. He froze once again, listening even harder, trying to work it all out. With his hopeful wind theory now definitively debunked, panic set in.

Who knows about his work? He questioned himself internally. Nobody, surely? Surely nobody knows of a man that nobody knows of ? One that lives somewhere nobody could tell you? At the bottom of some old lonely geriatric farmer’s land? In a brick shed? Even the geriatric farmer had long forgotten Ralph lived in the far corner of one of his fields, encased in a cage of unkempt bush beneath a copse of old oak and wych elm, the surrounding farmland left to fend for itself for over a decade, which was around the last time Ralph saw another human.

The fear crept up through his bones, with all of his strength he forced as much of it as he could back down before it strangled him. Some fear would be needed, of course, but too much can cripple a man. Slowly, he stretched an arm down the side of the armchair, walking his fingers down the upholstery en route to the stone floor below. Always listening, eyes fixed on the shadow of the door, just in case. He reached further down until he felt the cold metal barrel of his shotgun sticking out from under the chair. Wrapping his fingers around it until his grip was tight enough, he began to slowly lift. Carefully, making sure not to knock the gun against the pile of plant pots.

Success! Shotgun in one hand, Ralph quickly but quietly reached for his glasses with the other, placing them on his face, adjusting his position, ready and wide-eyed in the dark. Waiting, with the weapon he kept loaded at all times, raised and aimed at the door.

Suddenly Ralph felt more confused than scared as he heard the quiet jingling of keys cautiously being pushed into the keyhole. Ralph knew his keys were hanging on a hook above the door. They were always there. Plus, he could just about make out their shape in the dark. Perhaps a previous tenant of the shed? Wait, Ralph, you built this shed!

Mouthing curse words he hadn’t uttered since a teenager, grip around the shotgun tightening, he could hear the key slowly turning, clicking open the lock.

Ralph leaned forward ever so slightly, the door flung open! He squeezed the trigger but nothing? Impossible! he thought, squeezing again, now aware he was aiming at two silhouettes in the doorway, their backdrop lit by the bright full moon, and again nothing. The shotgun was always loaded?

“What the hell is going on here? Who are you?” Ralph shouted. He didn’t bother trying to climb out of his chair as it would have been a slow and awkward struggle to lift the heavy blanket and keep hold of the shotgun. One of the silhouettes stepped inside.

“What do you want? I have nothing here!” He pleaded, squeezing the trigger again to no avail.

The silhouette reached behind the open door and flicked on one of the lamps. The corner lit up, revealing a man, same build and height as Ralph, wearing glasses like Ralph and a lab coat like the one Ralph wears.

Ralph was completely frozen, untrusting of his eyes. A second man stepped into the room and knelt down to turn on another lamp but the bulb popped as he flicked the switch. “Damn it, I should have known,” the second man said, now reaching for a different lamp. He looked over at Ralph who was sat, jaw agape, blanket still over his lap, clutching his empty shotgun.

“Have you still not sorted this lamp out? Just plug it in there!” the second man said, pointing down at an empty plug socket on the floor.

Now that the scene is sufficiently lit, it is time to reveal that Ralph is in fact looking at two more Ralphs. Interesting, thinks Ralph.

“Interesting” said Ralph, our Ralph.

“Yes” said the second Ralph, as he looks at the third Ralph, who nods in agreement. They all nod in agreement.

“OK, to save any extra unnecessary confusion here, my name is Eighty-Nine, this here is Ninety and you are One Hundred. However, while we are here at your point of the line in your section, Ralph, we will respectfully refer to you as Ralph, OK Ralph?” said Eighty-Nine, formerly referred to as second Ralph to Ralph.

“What the hell is going on?!” Ralph said.

“How do you not…”

“Now, now, Ninety, give Ralph a moment” said Eighty-Nine, cutting Ninety off before he could make things worse.

Ralph vaguely understood what was going on, but due to his lack of sleep, felt a tad hazy and needed some help kicking his brain into gear.

“But how did you…?” asked Ralph, looking down at the empty shotgun now sitting in his lap.

“Ah the shotgun, yes,” Eighty-Nine said, motioning a hand towards Ninety, who in turn said “ah yes” while digging into the pocket of his lab coat to reveal the two missing buckshot shells.

“We snuck in a couple of hours ago when you nipped out to the toilet,” he told Ralph.

“Fascinating,” said Ralph, starting to understand what was happening.

Eighty-Nine and Ninety nodded at each other, awaiting further input from Ralph — soon to be known as One Hundred, the other two Ralph’s hoped.

“So, it worked?” Ralph finally said, stealing a fleeting glance at the scraps of paper scattered over the desk and floor.

“Not quite as you thought it would, but yes,” said Eighty-Nine. “You see, the science is wrong, all wrong, completely and utterly, absolutely, just entirely inaccurate, every single thing you have scribbled down; utter nonsense.”

“What? Well how then?” asked Ralph.

“Ninety?” said Eighty-Nine, nodding for Ninety to take over.

“Well,” Ninety said, stopping to clear his throat and nod back at Eighty-Nine. “You see, all it required to finally stop the cycle was a certain very specific level of madness. Too little and your signal would have gone unseen, too much and it would have wiped your section off the line.”

“Madness?” said Ralph.

“Yes, let me explain,” Ninety responded, looking over at Eighty-Nine, beginning to feel frustrated.

“The difficulty is, Ralph, exactly ten Ralphs must all achieve the exact same level of madness at the exact same time in order for another Ralph from a different section to travel to them. We receive a pop-up notifying us of potential Ralphs that are about to reach the appropriate level a few hours prior, all on this little thingy-doodah I have here,” he said, pointing at and showing Ralph the little thingy-doodah he was holding in his hand. He rotated it so that Ralph could see it. It’s about the size of a mobile phone and, actually, it is a mobile phone.

“That’s just a phone!” snapped Ralph.

“Ah but, it’s not just any phone, no sir, it has been adjusted so we are able to locate potential Ralphs as they approach the exact level of madness required for us to travel to their point on the line of their section of reality.” He flashed the phone again, touching the screen as if he was giving Ralph a demonstration of how it works. But the screen was black and it appeared as though the phone wasn’t even switched on. Ralph acted as though he didn’t notice.

“Section?”

“There are realities within realities, Ralph. Within one line of reality is many nearly identical realities, the only difference really is time. We have found that time gets ever so slightly slower at every ten points of reality along the line. We call each branch of ten a section.” Ninety paused to let Eighty-Nine chime in, “So some Ralphs find themselves arriving at the perfect level of madness but at the wrong time, those Ralphs are unable to ever stop the cycle,” he added.

“Ten? Why ten?”

“I guess mathematics isn’t the universe’s strong point after all; the ten times table is much easier to work with,” Eighty-Nine said, laughing condescendingly at the stupid universe. Ralph was fine with this particular shortcoming of the universe as conveniently mathematics is not a strong point of his either.

“So, why me? Why not one of the other nine Ralphs that reached the appropriate level of madness in this section?” asked Ralph.

“Your point on the line was simply the closest for us to jump to,” answered Eighty-Nine.

“Hmm…” Ralph had finally started to feel like it was all sinking in.

“And if you haven’t worked it out for yourself yet; I am Eighty-Nine because I was the eighty-ninth Ralph to reach the level, and this is Ninety because he was the ninetieth, etc.”

“We are now all what we call: On The Level,” added Ninety.

“On The Level,” repeated Ralph.

“The first Ralph figured out that he could travel to different realities using this thingy-doodah,” said Eighty-Nine, pointing towards the mobile phone. “He met Two and together they met Three and Four and so on and so forth.”

“Where is One now?” said Ralph. Eighty-Nine and Ninety looked at each other sombrely. “One is long gone,” said Eighty-Nine. “Disappeared with the rest of them.”

“What do you mean disappeared? Where?”

“Nowhere, they just disappear”

“Why?”

“Well…” said Eighty-Nine

“Those are the rules,” Ninety continued. “When the first two of each ten Ralphs meet the first two of the next ten Ralphs they just disappear, right before your eyes, no puffs of smoke, no special effects, just no longer there, gone.”

“Well, why don’t you all just stop?” Ralph asked, puzzled, but kind of already knowing the answer.

“Think about it Ralph, you already know!” they both answered perfectly in sync.

Ralph felt like he was beginning to absorb the knowledge of the ninety-eight Ralphs before him but his mind kept tripping up, the disruption to his usual daily routine knocking him off centre.

“Wait, if I am One-Hundred, where is the ninety-ninth Ralph?” asked Ralph.

“He is waiting in the Other Shed,” answered Eighty-Nine.

“Where is the Other Shed?”

“It’s in the Other Place,” said Ninety.

“Where is the Other Place?”

“We haven’t got time for this Eighty-Nine!” snapped Ninety. Eighty-Nine held his hand out and motioned for Ninety to pass him the thingy-doodah. He brushed a finger across the screen and glanced at it.

“It’s OK Ninety, we have time,” said Eighty-Nine, looking down at the blank screen.

A surge of energy ran through Ralph’s body. His eyes rolled to the back of his skull as he clutched the arms of the chair. Every single piece of random nonsense he had applied to the scraps of paper over the last 999 days flashed before him for no reason.

Ralph jumped to his feet, leaving the blanket and shotgun to fall to the floor. For now, he understood it all. Eighty-Nine and Ninety would cease to exist upon delivering the one hundredth Ralph to the Other Shed, in the Other Place. This is how it has to be. If they fail, they have to make another jump. With each jump they lose more and more potential Ralphs and are forced to jump further. No Ralph wants to be the first Ralph to fail, and as of yet none have.

Although Eighty-Nine and Ninety will physically cease to be, they both understand that their collective knowledge becomes absorbed by the remaining Ralphs. Thus, in a way, they feel they will live on.

“There are no more sections beyond my section,” said Ralph, breaking the silence.

“We know,” said Eighty-Nine and Ninety at the same time.

“I am the last Ralph, aren’t I?” Ralph didn’t look up to see them nod at his question, for he already knew the answer.

“OK, enough of this, to the Other Place!” said Ralph.

Eighty-Nine swiped the screen of the thingy-doodah and typed in a bunch of random numbers until suddenly it spat out a brilliant white light that hit the ceiling and walls, exploding into a plethora of abstract shapes of a thousand colours that began crawling down to the stone floor beneath their feet. The light met in the middle of the room and, upon connecting, let off a chorus of shrieks like one hundred digital alarm clocks at midnight. The shapes intertwined and burst outwards, covering ten universes for a fraction of a millisecond before pulling back together in an instant, settling into a perfect jet-black square.

Ralph peered into the square. It was the most brilliant, pure darkness he had ever seen. Suddenly a tiny morsel of light crept into the centre, which began spiralling downward in a funnel, like it was collapsing in on itself. The other two Ralphs jumped into the darkness without hesitation. As each passed the border of the square it let off a noise like a speeding car beeping its horn in the distance. And they were gone.

The one hundredth Ralph knew what he had to do. Underneath his desk was a box of buckshot cartridges. He reached down and picked it up with both hands, placing it on the chair next to him. He filled his pockets and kept two cartridges in his hand.

He loaded the shotgun, cocked it, took one last look around his cold brick shed and shrugged. The square closed up as he disappeared into it and the room fell silent.

Big John Continued.

I peeled myself off the screen of the laptop, each column of my spine individually protesting as I attempted to straighten them out. My attempt to return to life as an upright citizen proved futile as the twinges and cracks became too intense, forcing me to fold into a slightly less agonising hunched position. An extreme close up of my fingertips, calloused from typing, filled my vision as my body settled into its new form. Eyes cowardly closing as my face pressed into my palms. In the darkness I imagined life as a hunchback man, scrawny arms poking out in front of me, pushing my four-wheeled, tartan-fabric shopping trolley through the streets of Church Town, every bump in the path potentially fatal. I would rely heavily on my fading memory to navigate my way around the shit, eventually walking into a square-shaped black hole and disappearing into what those outside the black hole would assume was my demise.

Before my Quasimodo-meets-northern-industrial-newtown fate became a reality, I managed to peel my eyelids apart and fling myself sideways onto the sofa, stretching my legs out as I fell. Next, my arms followed suit, stretching out over my head. Body now slightly ironed out into a somewhat still alarming but regular-for-me posture, I snatched the laptop from the table and dropped its burning underside onto my lap.

Ignoring the heat, I obsessively picked at a crumb lodged deep into the crevice of some neglected molar, frowning confusedly at the muted television providing the only light in the room beyond the laptop screen. This evening’s programming: an epilepsy-inducing precursor to the reality show-based future that would eventually be forced upon us.

Fingers cracked and ready, back as straight as it can go, I began scrolling through the barrage of unread emails, selecting and deleting pages at a time. On the third or fourth page, however, in a moment of weakness, I decided to open and read a couple of them. Both of which were show requests, one of them offering real money, cash money, in hand! £200 plus travel and a bed in some stranger’s house. Going against my better judgement, I decided to take them up on it. Pawn shop money down to its last few dirty notes, what did I have to lose?

Four weeks rolled by like lazy tumbleweed. Muted mind-numbing television shows provided the permanent backdrop, day and night, for my static sofa adventures. In the evenings Big John cracked open expensive bottles of whisky with names he probably pronounced wrong. While pouring the finest brown liquor into a couple of posh glasses, he enthusiastically told me why each whisky was so great. I nodded, taking sips, grimacing and agreeing on the tastiness of their varying flavours, which Big John told me were smoky, malty, fruity, etc. Whatever, I thought, they all tasted the same to me. My palate lacked the sophistication required to really enjoy the taste of posh whisky but I enjoyed the effects of any and all alcohol, especially when free, so I did not complain.

When Big John was tipsy, he’d share details of his secret dodgy dealings, most of which were criminal in nature. He didn’t tell me to brag or boast but, for some peculiar reason, to ask me for advice. “What do you think lad?” he’d say in relation to something I had no knowledge of whatsoever. For reasons I am unsure of, he had always thought of me as somewhat of a wise albeit misguided soul, and his confidence in my intelligence often brought out moments of inspiration. Suddenly I was able to string together long parables, full of big words I didn’t know I knew the meaning of, holding my glass out for a refill while I connected dots that had no rights being connected. “You know what I’m saying?” I said, taking a sip of whisky after a long, wise tangent.

“I think so you know lad,” Big John would respond, nodding his head, ponderous and reflective. After a few glasses John flicked a fat bud onto the table in front of me and motioned for me to do my worst.

On one particularly rare occasion, with just the right amount of weed and alcohol in my system, I even rose from the sofa and presented John with the PEEPHOLE leaflet I found when I was creeping around the GENPHARM factory. Reeling off a thousand words per minute, filling him in on every detail, my run-ins with the green blurry-faced bastards, their disgusting belly mouths etc. Half listening, he took the leaflet off me and studied it. “Weird,” he said, handing it back with a shrug.

“You should chat to Mike about that shit, lad, he’s well into his conspiracies and that, and also, cut down on that shit,” he said, pointing at the spliff in my hand.

“Mike?” I asked, blowing smoke out and coughing. “Mike who?”

“I don’t know his surname to be honest lad, I mean, he’s Smithy’s uncle like so maybe it’s Smith,” he said while opening a different bottle of whisky he described as floral.

I laughed, assuming he was joking, but he was deadly serious.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Which one what?” Big John replied.

“Which Smithy?”

“Damien Smith, the Smithy!” he said, as if there weren’t several Smithys from our childhood.

“Oh, yeah, well, I do know that Smithy obviously but nah I’ve never met his uncle,” I told him.

Big John was still seemingly puzzled that I had never met Smithy’s uncle Mike. “Can’t believe you’ve never met Mike you know lad, proper thought you would have,” he reiterated, unconvinced.

“Nah,” I said.

“You sure?” he said again.

I almost wanted to say “Oh that Mike?!” as enthusiastically as I could to shut him up but he shoulder-barged that thought out of the way, avidly attempting to jog my memory against its will like an overzealous personal brain trainer.

“Cockney fella?” he said, unable to let it go, “Gold tooth? Worked in the Queen’s Legs years back, when our Ma’s would drink there, you’d have met him a hundred times lad, I’m telling you.”

“I can’t remember him man!” I said, now visibly irritated with Big John’s insistence.

“Well, whatever, anyway, he was in town a few weeks back, ran into him and his Smithy down the pub, he got proper bevvied and started chatting about all of that shit,” he said, pointing at the leaflet.

A couple of silent minutes passed.

“The leaflet’s real,” I muttered quietly, shaking my head.

“What did you say, mate?” Big John asked as I offered him the spliff, which he took and re-lit.

“Nothing,” I said, looking up at the TV to witness a green blurry-faced woman bursting out of her tiny bikini, ungracefully rolling around on wet sand, seemingly seducing a gang of dim-witted human men-children. My eyes closed.

And my stint on Big John’s sofa came to an abrupt end the following evening. Exhausted from doing nothing all day, I had fallen back to sleep in the afternoon, somehow both squashed into and sprawled out on the two-seater sofa, one leg hanging off the side and a half-smoked spliff hanging out of my mouth.

Big John came crashing through the door. I jolted awake, dropping and batting the spliff from my mouth into the air. He ran to the window, peeking out through the gap in the curtains. Unsure whether to retrieve the spliff and smoke it or to be worried about whatever John seemed to be worried about, I opted to just sit there, looking side to side like a tennis umpire. “Hmm.”

“Len, you’ve got to go lad,” he said, still looking through the gap. “Shit, shit!”

“What’s happened man?” I asked, rising from my stoned slumber, slowly leaning down to retrieve the half-smoked spliff.

“Ah man, the bizzies are outside, they chased me back, I thought I lost them but they clocked me, you should bail before they bomb in here lad.”

“Fuck.” I dropped the spliff and rushed to collect my things.

John rang Cotty and started whisper-shouting down the phone about how the bizzies clocked him or something. He stuck his hand out to fist-bump me. “Be careful,” he said.

“Yeah, you too man, good luck,” I said, still half asleep.

His front door clicked shut behind me, I took a moment to gather my thoughts. The wailing sirens in the background sounded like they were getting closer. I took the shaky elevator to the bottom floor, staring at myself in the mirror. Suddenly within a flicker of the dodgy elevator light, my face was a blur and my skin green and wart-ridden. I tried to curse but the words wouldn’t come out. I held my hands out in front of me, looking at them through the mirror.

“Ff… fuh…” I struggled, but my favourite F-word refused to leave my mouth. I punched the mirror in a panic, causing the glass to shatter into a thousand 8-bit pixels. The rest of the elevator fragmented along with it and disintegrated, leaving nothing but infinite darkness in every direction. And yet I could still see myself clearly, as though under a spotlight with no beam. A subtle buzz increased in volume, surrounding me. I recognised the sound of humming GENPHARM machinery. What if I am still on the line and I had just nodded off and dreamt all of this? Like a really shit predictable fantasy film trope? Something in the distance below my feet accelerated towards me at a worrying velocity. As it came into focus I made out a Persian rug floating between four walls sparsely covered with framed art. I looked up, something else was dropping at great speeds from above. When it was close enough I could clearly see it was the ceiling — white, lined with exposed dark, wooden beams. In the centre hung a bronze mini-chandelier. I tensed up and closed my eyes tightly beneath the blur, with my head in my spongy, wart-filled hands, awaiting impact. Surely I would be squashed and explode into blood-coloured pixels.

I opened my eyes and I was looking out of the grand window of the wood-panelled room, no longer in control of the body I was in. In the distance I could see the perimeter of trees at the end of the fields.

Suddenly the ding of the elevator reaching the ground floor brought me back. “Fuck!” I said, finally getting the word out, satisfying my soul. The door opened behind me, I checked and double-checked my face and hands in the mirror and rubbed my eyes, opening them as wide as I could to make absolutely sure I was not green and blurry. Satisfied, I spun around to stop the door from closing and stepped into the quiet lobby, past the grey, wall-mounted letterboxes and out of the main door.

Two empty police cars were parked outside. I wondered if they had tricked their way in and used the stairs as I was coming down in the lift. At the end of the car park I turned back and looked up at the thirteenth floor to check if I could see Big John’s flat. I think I knew which one it was, but either way the curtains were drawn. “Damn,” I muttered to myself, hoping Big John would be OK.

June I.

Carrying a holdall containing all my worldly possessions, I found my legs dragging themselves through the streets of some obscure north-eastern town. I’d been there for a lot longer than I would have ever imagined. I had never imagined I would have ever been there at all, come to think of it. Either way, that still equates to me being there longer than I had ever imagined. It had been nearly a week since I had performed at a small capacity venue there, with an even smaller capacity in attendance.

Those who were lucky enough to witness the show seemed to enjoy it at least. Before my performance I poured half of a litre-bottle of Coke out into the sink backstage and topped it up with vodka. The venue was some sort of small independent theatre sometimes used to put on small acts such as myself, usually on a weekday when nobody cared. I was relieved it had a backstage area but irritated by the other three people I had to share it with. Even if one of them was my allocated local DJ, seeing as I didn’t have my own at that point. His name was Sadsack. DJ Sadsack. I wondered why, as he was annoyingly unsad. I could out-sad this guy at my happiest, I thought. Plain black beanie pulled over his curly black hair, he smiled with perfect pearly white teeth through a thick beard and offered me a line of cocaine. I declined, “Not tonight.” He instead offered me some weed, which I also declined. I had a rule in my head that I had made up that day: I would only drink before and during a show for memory reasons. I tended to forget things when under the influence of anything but alcohol.

The performance itself was quite good from what I can remember. The liquor hit me harder and harder as it went on and after a couple of songs the crowd seemed to fill out. DJ Sadsack turned out to be some sort of wizard, telepathically reading my mood and performance, dropping out the beat exactly when I wanted him to, without being prompted. He juggled the intro to “GENPHARM,” which I performed towards the end of my set, much to the delight of the forty-three ticket holders that knew the song. Even the twenty-six random walk-ins, most of whom had zero clue as to what was going on, seemed to be energised by the enthusiasm of the other, albeit heavily intoxicated, members of the crowd. And everyone, including myself, was equally impressed by DJ Sadsack’s beat juggling and scratching skills. He played my set off two CD-Rs, flicking between them for a seamless mix. He also used two traditional Technics turntables for good measure, cutting rap vocals and random sound effects he had brought with him in a record bag to make everything seem more theatrical.

I performed the three songs I still liked on my Myspace page — “GENPHARM,” “Robbie Hood” and “June” — and a bunch of other unreleased songs from the various piles I had them stored in. I even freestyled over a couple of instrumentals I made that I had pre-instructed DJ Sadsack to mix together. He performed some of his super DJ scratching wicky-wickyshit and, all in all, everybody was happy.

Before stepping on stage, I instructed the lighting guy, who was also the soundman, to turn off all the lights when I said “Fuck you and goodnight” to conclude the show. During the blackout I intended to disappear backstage like a ninja, but as the door flew open the light from the green room lit up the entire scene, allowing the audience to witness me toppling down two small steps into a fridge, head-first, cursing at the world.

I was too drunk to allow that to be the end, so I let the door slam behind me, picked myself up, grabbed a couple of cans from the fridge and slid back out onto the stage with my hands raised. Everybody cheered and laughed together like one big happy family of strangers while DJ Sadsack blasted out the ODB song I had instructed him to play for my outro. Blood poured from my forehead while a couple of people took pictures with their throwaway cameras. I contemplated hitting myself in the cut with one of the cans to make it bleed even more impressively, like an extreme backyard wrestler would do, but somewhere in my subconscious a quiet sensible voice advised against it and I exited the stage, this time in a more elegant fashion.

The promoter handed me a little brown envelope containing my money and thanked me. He told me how much he loved the music and begged me to release more. I said the album is coming soon and thanked him for having me.

He went to walk off. “Wait, wait,” I said, “no offence, but I just want to count the dough.”

He turned and said, “Of course man, yeah.” I counted it in front of him twice, both times were short £20. After I finished counting the second time I looked at him like Bon Jovi once looked at me for not reporting a jam in the conveyor belt.

“Oh, oh, what, sorry man, wait right there.” He tried to leave again.

“Yo wait, nah” I responded, “I’ll come with you.”

I followed him out to the smoking area, where Silver, which is what I noticed people were calling him for some reason, found a golden-haired friend and quietly informed him of the envelope’s missing £20. The friend looked at me and embarrassingly whispered an apology. I don’t know who the golden-headed friend was or why he was apologising, but I said it was OK. He told me he would be right back and ran off into the venue, to find my money I assumed.

Silver smiled awkwardly, “Sorry about this, man. Dan can’t fucking count or something!”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

We waited in the smoking area. I declined on the numerous offers of cigarettes, spliffs and drinks from fans. Most of them seemed to sense I was having issues with the promoter, a few of them even walked past calling Silver a “dickhead”. Maybe he had a reputation for short-changing people or maybe that was just another nickname.

I was getting impatient waiting for this friend, who I assumed was Dan, to return. Silver got more and more anxious, looking at his phone and checking his wristwatch.

“You not got the time on your phone nah?” I asked him.

“Err, yeah man, aye, yeah, just yea err,” he clumsily responded, looking over my shoulder and back at his phone which started flashing, “One sec mate, one sec, one sec.” He answered his phone while turning his back to me with a finger in his free ear so he could hear whoever had rung him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying and I didn’t want to know unless it was about the whereabouts of my £20.

As Silver was lost in a long, mumbled conversation on the phone, a girl who was standing alone worked up the courage to approach me. I don’t think she was particularly starstruck or anything but I still had blood on my forehead and probably looked like I was ready to snap and exterminate Silver at any moment. She introduced herself as Laura.

“’Sapnin Laura, nice to meet you, I’m Leonard.”

She giggled and said “I know, nice show! You’re really talented. Silver being a dickhead is he?”

“Thanks, and yeah,” I said.

I noticed Silver possibly trying to sneak off in my peripheral, “Ay! Where you going man?” I pulled him back by the collar.

“Err sorry man yeah, I’m just going to get this guy, he’s not picking up his phone.”

“What? Well who the fuck was you talking to then?”

“My mum, man,” he said.

“Huh?” I said.

“OK, one sec,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Oh… OK” he said.

He hung around anxiously while I continued my conversation with Laura.

“I like your hair,” I told her.

“I like your face,” she said, and laughed, adding, “I must be drunk” at the end.

“At least I know it’s not green and blurry,” I responded.

She kept touching me, subtly brushing my hand with hers and leaning in as she spoke. I think she was naturally a redhead but had dyed her hair black. The dark hair and pale, freckled face made her teal eyes almost intimidating. She was very casually dressed, wearing a dark hoodie, tight jeans and tennis shoes with little makeup on her face — a bit of red lipstick and mascara is all I could detect. Her hoodie was baggy but I could still see the outline of her breasts poking through. She caught me glancing down at them and tugged at her hoodie accentuating their shape even more.

“Hurry up,” she told me, biting her lip.

“I know,” I said.

“Silver!” I shouted, standing no more than three feet away from the anxious university student, startling him into nervous laughter.

“Just messing,” I said. The smoking area had emptied out but the music was still pumping from inside the venue. Laura calmed the situation slightly by grabbing my hand to gain my attention, “You want me to get youse a drink?” he offered.

“Fuck it yeah, go ed then.”

She asked me what I wanted.

“Vodka,” I said.

And she lifted her hoodie above her arse and glanced back as she wandered off to get the drinks, leaving me alone with Silver. I started to weigh him up: goofy teeth, stupid blonde student hair-do, a few spots on his face, weekend hip-hop clothes on a Thursday, all thumbs with a resting gormless face. Clearly uncomfortable playing the role of rap show promoter. Bless him for trying I guess but still, I was annoyed and wanted to leave. He was skinnier and shorter than me and his friend was skinnier and shorter than him. So at that moment I decided I would fight both of them if they didn’t pay me in the next ten minutes. The clock display on my phone read ten to midnight, thank God, I thought, mathematics is not my strong point. These pair of bumbling bellends have until midnight!

Silent, subtly swaying, vodka in my blood, stomach rumbling from hunger, checking the time to see how long Silver and Dan had left until their assassination. Occasionally I glanced up at Silver, who awkwardly looked down, left, right, anywhere that wasn’t my up-close and personal vantage point. He was clearly already watching me when I wasn’t looking. Maybe he was weighing me up too? Maybe he had a countdown of his own going on? Maybe, if I didn’t give up and leave, he was going to produce an expertly crafted samurai sword from thin air and chop my head off, leaving me to die £20 short.

I checked the phone again, four minutes left.

I whistled Vivaldi to myself.

Three minutes left.

I glanced up to try and catch him out but he looked away too quickly.

Two minutes left. I pondered offering him a gentlemanly warning, maybe explaining what was about to happen to him and his friend if they did not produce my missing £20 or an expertly crafted samurai sword.

One minute.

Laura reappeared with my drink and told me she’ll be right back as she has to go and say bye to her friend. As she disappeared into the venue, Silver broke the almost ten-minute silence.

“Trouble her, man.”

It must be midnight now, surely?

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Aye, just, Lau… Laura, yeah, trouble her like man.”

“Trouble? What type of trouble? What do you mean?” I asked, clearly now frowning and annoyed.

“She shagged her best mate’s fella and brought him here to see Johnson & Johnson and started a big fight and then after that, after the fight and all that like… she just like left with Johnson.” He giggled like a schoolboy. I was unimpressed.

“Who the fuck is Johnson & Johnson? And how do you know which Johnson was which?”

“They’re rappers, man,” he told me, “they’re brothers and that, twins like, actually.”

“Twins?” I asked, perplexed as to why he found himself inclined to blabber such information. Bring me my fucking money you little weasel! I thought. If anything, his outburst had just made me realise I was making the right decision. The clock on my phone told me it was now the wrong side of midnight, I put it in my pocket and rolled up my sleeves.

“OK then, fuck this,” I said, when, what do you fucking know? Just in the nick of old father time the other one, Dan, with the golden hair, emerged from wherever the hell he was, flapping a £20 note around like the winning ticket. He was out of breath and red-faced.

“Where the fuck did you go to get that?”

“Argh man,” he said, catching his breath, “fucking… cash machine man.”

“What, was it in a different town or what?” I said, Dan laughed at my question.

“Nah man, I went to like five different ones, none of them were fucking working man!” he said.

And then I decided to forgive them both. Dan didn’t seem too bad at least. I laughed and loosened up, “Ah, alright then, all good man, nice one lads,” I said. I put the £20 note in the envelope with the rest of the money, shoved it into my pocket and zipped it up.

I went inside to thank DJ Sadsack and get his phone number in case I required his services down the line. While doing so I told him of another show I had booked, he immediately and excitedly told me he would get his friend to drive him down to DJ if I wanted. I explained to him that I was supporting someone else I had never heard of and was only getting £150 for my troubles. The annoyingly unsad Sadsack cut me off as I went to explain further. “It’s alreet, man,” he said with his weird Scottish-Geordie-yet-slightly-American-sounding accent. “I dunee need money, I’ll get ma mate to drive us doon pal nahmsayin?” he said, and I said “Yes” and “Sound man, thanks, if you don’t mind like?”

“Nah man, it would be an honour pal,” he said. He turned to the man with a shaved head standing next to him, and spoke in another language — Polish I would have guessed but it could have been Klingon for all I know. Then he turned back to me and said, “Yeah, ma good pal Oscar here will drive us, no problem.” I spudded them both with a tightly-clenched drunken fist, thanked them and left for the world beyond the green room.

At some point I looked down at my phone and discovered not only the time, which was 8pm, but the date which was Wednesday the something. The show was on Thursday. Now unless I had travelled back in time, which I wasn’t entirely convinced was impossible, I had been there for nearly a full week. My next show was a couple of days later in London and I was being guided to the local train station by Laura.

She told me she was glad her pushy friends, who had naively sung my praises, had strong-armed her into coming to my show. Claiming prior to then, she had never actually heard of me, the great Leonard Swanson. Either way, I didn’t trust her and by the end I was glad to be leaving that hell hole. Though it probably wasn’t even entirely her fault. If I had delved deeper into her psyche, I’d have probably concluded the town in which she had been confined to should really bear the brunt of the blame. A town even smaller than Church Town. Miles of red brick terraces in every direction, all roads leading to the same McDonald’s drive thru. A person in a place so devoid of character didn’t stand a chance, in their mind their only option for escape is fantasy and lies.

We arrived at the train station, she kissed me on the face and said “Bye Leonard, that was fun.”

“Yeah, thanks, I mean yeah, in a bit.” I responded and walked down the platform as far away from the ticket man as I could get. I hopped aboard and stumbled through the carriages to a table seat where I threw down my bag and sat against the window. The table and my forehead became close acquaintances for a while. The train rattled out of the station and I felt someone join me at the table. I considered never picking my head up again.

Picking my head up, I locked eyes with the girl who had decided to join me. She smiled and I sort of smiled back. She was early-evening, face-moisturiser-advert-model pretty. Attractive in a nerve-racking if-she-looks-at-you-too-long type of way. I looked around the train as casually as possible. There were empty seats everywhere. Why did she sit there? I thought. I tried to steal a glance without her noticing but she caught me and smiled again. I smiled back and kind of shrugged as if to ask her if everything was OK.

Suddenly she started talking, “Are you Leonard Swanson?” she asked.

Taken aback by her question, I looked around like I was being pranked.

“Yeah?” I hesitated, shocked by her knowing my name.

“My friend Laura is a big fan! I was supposed to go with her to your show the other day but I had to look after my sister.”

“Laura yeah? Ha,” I said quietly, Laura! I knew I couldn’t trust her.

“Did you meet her?”

“Yeah, I think so, maybe.”

“Black hair, freckles? She has the most amazing sort of teal/green eyes?”

“Ah yeah, nice girl,” I lied.

“Yeah she’s the best!” said the girl.

“Ha, anyways, yeah, I can’t say you missed much to be honest,” I humbly informed her with an undetectable sarcasm.

I didn’t ask but she told me her name was June anyway, I reintroduced myself as Len or The Great Leonard, I told her she could choose one. Many words were exchanged as the train chugged along. She told me about her life in London and how every day it took her an hour and a half to travel across the city to her job, almost the same length of time as the train journey to London from wherever we had just been. The thought of anyone having to get up to go to work made me shrink into my seat. I thought about my ex GENPHARM comrades. As I was on that train to the capital, pretending to listen to June, they were unwittingly picking and packing lunches for those green blurry-faced bastards. A double shot of vomit pushed its way up through my oesophagus and into my throat which I swallowed before glancing at June and nodding mock-attentively.

Her voice was soothing, I could have pretended to listen to her for all eternity, if only I didn’t have to do this show in London! I thought and muttered incoherent curses under my breath. When she figured out I had nowhere to stay in London, she kindly insisted I stayed with her, there was plenty of room in her place, she said, and I “have nothing to lose”. I don’t recall if it was she or I who had suggested I had nothing to lose but I wish I could because if it was her, I would be inclined to believe I was manipulated and everything that was about to follow was a lie.

At that moment my biggest concern was the money in my pocket, I only had £20 left from my small performance fee and it was Wednesday. Although I was unsure.

“Is it Wednesday?” I asked June to make sure.

“Yeah,” she responded, with enough confidence for me to believe her.

As I feared, it was Wednesday. This was bad because I had no other money until my next show somewhere in London on Friday.

I studied her face while she looked out of the window. I could see nothing bad but her kind offer of a place to stay was still met with hesitation, she could have been some sort of sociopath or something for all I knew. I wasn’t too sure what a sociopath was but that did nothing to calm my nerves. If anything, my lack of sociopathic knowledge just enhanced my worries. On top of that I didn’t even have any weed or alcohol. At that point I was almost certain she was either my soulmate or a telepath because as soon as one of my internal voices finished saying the word alcohol, she responded, without looking at me, “Let’s go to the train shop and buy some alcohol.”

Suspicious, but thinking fuck it, I have nothing to lose, I followed her down the wobbling carriages.

She grabbed one small bottle of white wine and three small cans of beer from the display fridge and placed them on the counter. I stood there silently, watching the green blurry-faced shop assistant. Floating above the blur was a baseball cap that probably bore the logo of his overlords. If only I could visualise the logo I could figure out who they were and write them a stern letter letting them know I know. She put the money in the little fella’s fat hand. It was full of what looked like hand sanitiser he hadn’t even bothered to rub in. The coins slipped right off his palm and onto the floor but the note stuck right to it. June didn’t notice but I did, and that poor bastard probably knew. I glanced back as we walked off, noting his refusal to pick up the coins. He must have been waiting until we’d left as he would have had to buckle his knees backwards in order to bend down to scoop them up, and even though at that point we both knew I knew, he didn’t want to give me the satisfaction. And I don’t blame him.

Back in our seats opposite each other, June tucked her long black hair behind her small, slightly protruding ears and told me more things about herself. Her grandparents were from a small island “sort of near Australia” or something. Whatever her roots, she looked sort of like Pocahontas but in her early twenties and with freckles. I began to zone out, not because she was boring but because that room with the grand window was pulling me in against my will. I could feel it. My hands turned green, I tucked them under the table out of sight. Squeezing my eyelid muscles, possibly slobbering as I clenched my teeth together and growled under my breath and for the first time I successfully fought it off.

June seemed oblivious, she was now tipsy and slightly more animated, her voice got louder, but I still found it relatively soothing for a voice. I could no longer keep still, the thought of that room, coupled with the incoming threat of the ticket fella. My eyes darted up and down the aisle. June reeled off questions, I said yes, no, what about you? I twisted my neck over the chair and turned back to face her, yes, no, what about you? I turned again and suddenly the ticket fella appeared, harassing an ageing translucent woman with a cold. Probably demanding she hand over her self-respect, drop down and give him twenty on behalf of whoever he worked for. She sneezed and coughed as he said “Bless yoooouuuuu” with even more o’s and u’s than that. She apologised as she fumbled around in her bag for her ticket. He studied it for a moment, peering at her over the top of it and, once satisfied, he smiled widely and called her darlin’ and left her be, continuing on his annoyingly merry way, confidently swirling his hands around, loudly clicking his fingers and whistling, saying things like “Thank yooouuuu love” and “Thank yooouuuu sir”. We were next. He made his way down the aisle. Flailing limbs bouncing off the odd blurry head and dusty seat as he wobbled closer.

Finally, the moment I feared: he was stood, looming over me. The train suddenly got dark, the lights went out just as we entered a tunnel, possibly to hell.

“Gooood evening,” he said, as the orange tunnel lights whooshed by, “tickets pleeeease.”

June already had hers ready and held it up to his face with a polite smile. He inspected it and inspected it some more, from varying distances and angles. Satisfied with her tickets authenticity he shrugged, smiled and said “OOOOK” and scribbled on it, “Thank yooouu love,” he said enthusiastically.

Then he moved onto me, I tried my best to become invisible.

“Ticket?”

I looked up at him, expressionless.

“Err” he said.

I said nothing.

With his forearm resting on the chair next to me he leaned in and began talking. “Look…” he started, but I was busy analysing potential escape routes. Trying to think about how to blag my way out of a potential fine or ejection. If I could cry on command, I would. A glorious stream of tears would have powerfully rolled down my cheeks from my bloodshot eyes while I told him how very sad I was. “I am very sad because I am on the wrong train, hell was not my desired destination!” And I would also have said something like “Please just let me off, I will work the kitchen if I have to, wash the dishes I will, I will even go and pick up those coins that slimy-handed green blurry bastard dropped. I will go and do it now.” I stood up, ready to do it, then I realised I couldn’t actually cry on command and tell him how sad I was and why. Damn. I collapsed into my seat, defeated, but I still had my anger. At that moment I thought how great it would be if murder was legal as long as it was me committing it. Society is a joke, I thought.

“Look mate, whatever, I have no money so…” I finally said, looking up at the ticket fella, hoping June’s sense of hearing had momentarily malfunctioned.

“Well, I’ll have to contact the BTP and have them remoooove you at the next stop,” he informed me.

“What’s the next stop?”

“Milton Keynes, sir, the only stop before London sir”

“It’s the last train!” June said, confirming her hearing was indeed still fully functional.

“Damn” I whispered.

“I would pay but I don’t have the right card on me,” she said sadly, and I shook my head at her.

“Nah, don’t worry, fuck that,” I said, defiantly.

“Can’t you just let him off, please?” June pleaded with the man.

“No I’m sorry love, I can’t just go letting people…”

“Well, I have no money mate so I don’t know what to tell you, I am very sorry.” I butted in.

“Well, I am also very sorry but this is not acceptable. Yoooouuuu leave me no choice but tooooo…”

I jumped in mid-extended “oooo” because who knows where it would have led too.

“Yes, yes, OK, I have no money on me right now,” I said as the cogs in my brain audibly ticked, almost too loud for the thoughts I was trying to make sense of. And I could see numbers and equations I didn’t understand floating around in front of me, muddled up with rap lyrics and the sad, gaunt faces of my former fellow line-pickers. Suddenly everything exploded into a brilliant orange and the lights came back on as the train exited the tunnel with a deafening swoosh.

“Is there any way I can use my bank card but you hold the payment until Friday or something? I have money going in on Friday.”

“Well the payment will take three days anyway sir, so yes sir.”

“For fuck’s sake, OK, do it then, how much will it be?”

“The entire amount of whatever you’re going to get on Friday of course, sir,” he said.

“You know what, fuck you, kill me now,” I might have said.

At that point in time I expected things to be free except when they were things I was selling to Cash Generator. He responded with something about treating staff with respect and something equally as pointless involving the police. I handed him my card. I would have just taken my chances in Milton Keynes but I had no knowledge of Milton Keynes other than its name.

He fed my card into his greedy, salivating machine. I punched in my pin number and waited, taking aggressive swigs of beer. Finally he handed me the tickets, which I slapped onto the table like a very competitive, solo game of Snap.

June politely said “Thank you”.

“I didn’t do anything, you paid for the drinks,” I responded.

“Not you,” she giggled.

Well, at least I haven’t lost my ability to make pretty girls think I have a sense of humour, I thought to myself as the ticket fella disappeared into the next carriage

“Wait, don’t thank that guy, he’s a nob ‘ed, he probably ate his own family,” I said. She giggled more and snorted a little bit then laughed at her snort.

“While they were alive and screaming,” her laughing grew more animated “erm, he had a baby, a newborn, all cute and like, you know, innocent and what have you, and yeah, he just like, bit its head clean off in front of his infant daughter, and she was like old enough to understand what was happening sort of but too young to have really lived…” This time she looked out of the window and took a sip of her drink. I felt calm again.

“Soz about that,” I said, either in regard to the drama with the ticket fella or for burdening her with the knowledge of him cannibalising his own baby.

The train sped along, clanging against the tracks, metal on metal scraping and grinding.

We arrived in London at around 1.30am. June hailed us an expensive taxi and demanded it to take us to where we wanted to go, which apparently was a house she shared with six other people. All six of them were unfortunately still awake when we arrived. We burst into the kitchen and they were sitting around a big white table they probably scavenged from a skip. They were sipping wine with their legs and arms crossed and they had high pitched voices and were all talking at the same time. Mellow guitar music played in the background.

June introduced me. I lifted my hand into an awkward wave and said nothing. A guy I’m sure had a name asked me if I wanted some wine, I declined. He said “Hmm,” and offered me some whisky instead. I nodded. He said “Ice?” I nodded again, “Thanks,” I said. He gave me the whisky, I drank it. I didn’t really like drinking whisky neat back then but it did the trick and I at least knew what to expect thanks to Big John. “Floral” I mumbled. They continued their talk. I looked at June, she smiled at me.

“Leonard is a rapper,” she said to her friends. Why did she say that?

“Oh, are you? Very exciting,” somebody said.

“Err,” I said.

“Are you any good?” somebody else said.

“Well I mean like…” someone said in my voice.

“He’s brilliant,” June announced, “really good.”

“Just don’t ask me to rap or I’ll kill everyone.” Everyone stopped talking and then they all laughed. Apparently they thought I was joking but at the same time they took my warning serious enough to comply with my request. I started to warm to their grating voices, the whisky was probably to blame. We drank for a couple of hours and I even started talking to some of them without being prompted.

It must have been around 6am, the mellow guitar music was still playing. Most of her housemates and extras were still drinking around the table. I looked over at June from across the room where I was sifting through the small collection of CDs. She was nodding off. I laughed to myself, half at June headbutting thin air and half at what I had deemed a terrible taste in music. She caught me looking at her and smiled but just with her eyes then managed to stand and orient herself. “OK, good night everybody, I have an appointment in the morning, night!”

Everybody said good night. I stood there holding a stack of terrible CDs in my hand and an empty glass. Am I supposed to also say goodnight to her? I thought, but she walked over and grabbed my arm.

I nodded and dropped the CDs. “Ah sorry,” I said as a couple of them definitely shattered on the tiled floor.

“It’s alright mate,” a well-spoken male voice declared from somewhere behind me.

June waved off the broken CDs and said “fuck it,” and pulled me out of the room. I swiped up my bag from the bottom of the stairs and followed her up. She closed her bedroom door behind us, slipped off her black dress and fell down onto her bed face-first. She wasn’t wearing a bra and still had on her knickers, socks and white Nike trainers. I raised an eyebrow and asked if she was OK to no response. I was envious of her ability to sleep with such prompt professionalism.

I ran my fingers across the books on the big brown wooden shelf opposite the bed; a bunch of things about TV production and film, a couple of Stanley Kubrick books and some autobiographies. She was a runner for a late-night TV show, the type that airs when normal TV has ended. Something to do with a digital roulette wheel and a woman with a twinkling eye shouting enthusiastically into the camera. June’s dreams were much bigger than late-night TV though. She wanted to make movies and I admired her ability to think beyond the borders of her drab, uninspiring town. June! I liked June, maybe even more than the month.

The next morning I woke up fully clothed on top of the duvet. June had left for her appointment. It was sometime in the afternoon. My head was pounding, nothing out of the ordinary. Forcing myself to my feet I fought against invisible forces and pushed my way down the corridor to the toilet. The house seemed quiet and I could smell garlic and eggs rising up the stairs. My stomach was still rumbling but tiredness defeated hunger.

I pulled the chord to turn off the bathroom light and headed back to June’s bedroom. Considering the fact that six people lived there, at least half of them students, it was surprisingly tidy. Even the bathroom smelled nice. Weird, I thought.

The bedroom door slammed itself behind me and I leapt back onto the bed. This time I stripped down to my boxers and climbed underneath the duvet. After overthinking everything that had previously happened in my life up until that point, I finally fell into a deep, cinematic sleep. I dreamt of Joe, my old friend from the factory. Alright, Joe wasn’t exactly my friend per se, but friend can be such a fickle word. Maybe if he knew he’d be starring in a Leonard Swanson blockbuster, he’d have dropped his guard a bit more.

Joe.

Years before he worked at GENPHARM, Joe was known in criminal circles as a top robber. He was also known to squares as a man you don’t look at for too long unless you wanted to commit suicide by Joe. Back then he still wasn’t much to look at — slim build, baby-faced, Adam’s apple like a golf ball in a condom but as legend has it, he was deceptively strong. Arm wrestling men twice his size became somewhat of a Friday night tradition in the Queen’s Legs. Church Town’s long list of gym buffs would line up, skipping their usual locals in order to seek out the twig-armed kid with the strength of an ox. Joe retired unbeaten.

Anyway, as the story goes, one unfortunate day a local lad known as Stanley McElroy was in the pub with his cousin Larry, who also lived locally, and Larry’s father, Stanley’s uncle, Little Macca. Although Little Macca grew up in the area, he wasn’t familiar with Joe as Little Macca was sent away when he was fifteen. By that point Little Macca had already gained somewhat of an undesirable reputation. On his twelfth birthday he stole a car and drove it into a phone box to steal the change. He got away scot-free even though everybody knew he did it. He would beat up the other children on the estate and convinced them he would beat up their parents too if he found out they told on him. Children would return home crying, battered and bruised, and even though it was obvious who was responsible for their child’s beating, no one ever said anything.

The nosey auld women of the neighbourhood would talk amongst themselves. “The little shit,” they would say, but only ever under their breaths.

“Oh yes, he stole old Vera’s Escort he did.”

Their husbands would shush their already quiet gossiping. “Keep it down will you woman.”

“But Ron, someone is going to get hurt.”

“It’s none of our bloody business Linda!” Ron would bark, then shush himself for allowing his voice to hit unsafe volumes.

The women would move their gossip to the back garden and sit around the patio table lighting their Benson & Hedges King Size cigarettes.

“Honestly girls, Vera loved that car! It was the only thing her beloved husband George left behind!” Linda would whisper to the others, getting louder and more animated as she spoke, eventually shushing herself before Ron intervened.

The reason they were so scared to speak at a normal volume was due to Macca’s father, infamous local criminal figure Big Macca. Chewing a cigarette with a hair lip and slicked back blonde hair, he had a scar on his cheek and many a moon ago was bullied as a child on the account of his lip and height. Big Macca, like my old friend Big John, vertically at least, wasn’t actually that big, 5’7”, maybe 8 on a good day and in the right shoes. He always wore suits and never had an ordinary job as far as anybody knew. When Big Macca was twenty-two his young wife Lydia, who had just turned eighteen at the time, gave birth to their first son, Nick McElroy, named after his lovely father. It didn’t take long for his mother to affectionately start calling him Little Macca; he was the spit of his father, minus the hair lip.

When Little Macca was three years old his father’s criminal past finally caught up with him and he was dragged out of his house in handcuffs in the early am. Rumour has it that it was for “years of organised criminal activity,” but no one knew the specifics. People would gossip and make their own thing up. According to one particularly imaginative couple, he was an international jewel thief taking refuge in a council house in Church Town so no one would expect a thing, except them and the detectives that arrested him of course.

He was released from his cage when Little Macca was eleven but by that point it was already far too late. Little Macca was a stocky child with big shoulders, as strong as a Rottweiler, and he used his strength to get whatever he wanted from the other children on the street. After demanding they let him use their bicycles he would ride off on them for days at a time. He would wind up the neighbours’ dogs and throw stones at the neighbourhood cats. People were so scared of the McElroys that they would just grin and bear it. Lydia was blissfully unaware of her little angel’s extracurricular activities and would wave at her cowering neighbours every morning when she walked Little Macca to school or let him out to “play.”

At that point in time people still feared Big Macca, but no longer for his organised criminality. The fear was now solely due to his unhinged alcoholism. Forced to swap his alleged international jewel thievery for a mind-numbing job at the local power plant, he plunged into a deep dark hole of depressive bitterness. He would bet his entire wages on the horses and batter anybody who dared cheer as they won and he lost. Big Macca and Lydia had two more sons and by the time Little Macca was fifteen, Big Macca died of forced retirement, leaving Little Macca to spiral even further out of control. He was expelled from two schools and caused trouble everywhere he went. His distraught, grieving mother could no longer handle his delinquent behaviour, so she sent him to live with her brother and his wife somewhere down south.

When Little Macca was forty-something, his poor mother became a victim of her own stress, they said. Died of lung cancer “even though she quit smoking fifteen years ago!” is what Linda would have whispered to Ron had they still been alive at the time. Little Macca was back in Church Town for the funeral and begrudgingly promised one of his brothers he would visit more often. Two weeks later he did just that.

Little Macca’s dear mother Lydia had managed to buy their council house in the early to mid-90s, using the money she was mysteriously given once a month from an unrelated relative. She left the house to her eldest son Little Macca, who planned to sell it as soon as he could. He hated Church Town and most of the people in it, he wasn’t even too keen on his brothers. However, he was fond of his nephew Stanley, son of his youngest brother, also called Stanley. On the rare occasion he did visit, he would take his twenty-something nephew out drinking in the Queens Legs, along with his own son Larry.

Larry had moved to Church Town with his mother, who had grown up in the area and ran away with Little Macca in her late teens to get married, only to divorce him when Larry was no older than eight. Little Macca wasn’t fond of his son Larry and thought he was too much like his moaning mother Sandra. “Stop fucking moaning will ye Larry, God you’re as bad as your fucking mother,” he would spit, slamming his pint onto the table and lighting a Regal cigarette. Stanley would laugh at Larry, which Little Macca liked. He would offer Stanley a cigarette and then say to Larry, “I’d offer you one but you’ll probably run and tell your mother like a little snitch!” Stanley would take the cigarette and light it while laughing at Larry some more. Larry would seethe in silence, knowing he was helpless.

Across the room sat a young Joe who was in his early thirties at that point. He was sitting at the end of the bar by the payphone, waiting for it to ring. Despite his reputation as the unbeaten Friday night arm wrestling champion of the Queen’s Legs, he was a quiet man and for the most part did his best to avoid conflict. However, on that day, he grew increasingly annoyed with Little Macca’s obnoxiously loud banter. Every time he slammed his pint down onto the table and swore, Joe would jerk and frown. Eventually the phone rang. Joe picked it up and began quietly answering “Yes, OK, yes, no, OK.” Little Macca slammed his pint again. Joe jolted and swore to himself, “No not you, yes, no, some cunt in here,” he quietly explained. Little Macca’s pint slammed again, and again and he roared and snorted.

“Why are you such a fucking pussy!” He was shouting at his son Larry while his nephew Stanley keeled over with laughter. Little Macca just kept on slamming the glass and Joe could hardly hear the person he was speaking to. “No, hold on, I can’t hear you, one sec,” he placed the phone down on the bar and looked over at the barmaid who stopped hanging wine glasses above her head and pleaded to him with her eyes. She clenched her teeth and moved her eyes to the men at the bar mouthing “uh oh”. All four men turned discreetly to watch as Joe approached Little Macca’s table.

“Scuse me mate,” Joe said politely. Little Macca continued slamming his glass in a rowdy guffaw, choking on his cigarette. Joe cleared his throat with a fist pressed to his mouth. He took a sharp breath through gritted teeth and rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb. “Excuse me mate!” he said, this time loud enough to be heard over the noise. Little Macca took one look at him, then turned to his nephew and son and laughed condescendingly.

“Is this your girlfriend Larry!” he screamed and burst into a deafening roar of laughter while slamming his fist and glass onto the table. He returned his attention to Joe. “Can I get you something lad? Why the long face? Fucking hell is your ma as much of a moaning old cow as Larry’s?” he laughed again.

Joe just stared at him and waited.

“What?” Snapped Little Macca and the grating laughter finally ceased. Joe broke eye contact, shook his head and sighed in disappointment. “Oooh!” Little Macca continued with his eyebrows raised and the tips of his lips pointing at the floor in mock fear while he wiggled his fingers out in front of him.

Joe cleared his throat for a second time. “Do you mind keeping it down please lads, I’m trying to talk on the phone and I can’t hear a thing.”

Little Macca rose to his feet. Little only in name, he stood at around 6 foot 2 and must have weighed about seventeen stone, mostly fat, but could still throw his weight around with the best of them.

“What did you just fucking say?” Little Macca boomed. “Do you know who the fuck I am?”

Joe took a deep breath, clenched his fists and turned his back to return to the phone.

“Don’t fucking turn your back on me you little rat!” Little Macca screamed and he picked up his empty pint glass and smashed it over the back of Joe’s head. Joe tumbled to the floor, landing on his face. Stanley and Larry jumped to their feet.

“Dad, stop!” Larry pleaded.

“Shut up you or I’ll put you down there with your little rat girlfriend!” screamed Little Macca. This time Stanley did not laugh.

“Ar, come on Macca,” Stanley said, glancing at Larry, “he’s had enough now, let’s get another pint. Come on Wendy,” Stanley said to the barmaid, “pour us another three pints will ye please, thanks love.”

“Fuck off Larry, I mean Stanley! This little rat should buy this round seeing as he ruined the last one!”

“We had already finished our drinks, Macca,” said Stanley, glancing at Larry again, who was now visibly panicking.

Little Macca knelt down next to Joe who was lying on the floor holding the back of his bleeding head. He whispered something only Joe could hear then stood up and brushed the dust off his jeans. As he did so, he stepped on the back of Joe’s skull and twisted his foot. Finally, Wendy begged him to stop, “Please Macca, just stop or I’ll have to phone the police!”

“You’ll phone the police will ye Wendy? You know what happened to the last rat who told the police on a Macca!!” Little Macca screamed at her. “And don’t any of you old withered little prunes get any fucking ideas either! I’ll impale the lot of ye!” he said, and all four men turned back to the bar and sipped their drinks like nothing was happening.

Little Macca removed his foot from the back of Joe’s head. Joe hadn’t said anything but was wriggling about enough for everyone to see he was still alive. Little Macca sat back down and put a cigarette in his mouth. “Right, who’s got me lighter… Stanley?” he said, clicking his fingers. Stanley passed him his lighter back and took the cigarette he was angrily thrusting at him. Then he forced a cigarette onto his son, commanded he “stop fucking shaking!” And lit all three.

“Where’s those drinks Wendy?” He shouted with his back to the bar. Wendy jumped at the sound of his booming voice and got to it, pouring three pints, making eyes at the four men at the bar doing their best to ignore her. Joe had clambered back to his feet. He stumbled over to the phone and picked up the receiver from the bar. “Sorry, I’ll ring you back,” he said and hung up. He wiped his bloody hands on his jacket, took it off, rolled it up and dabbed the back of his head with it. With an eerily calm demeanour he placed the jacket on the bar and turned to face Little Macca. Stanley glanced over at him with his eyes but pretended not to see him glaring over. Still visibly shaken, Larry glanced up too only he couldn’t help but glance up again and again.

“What are you two puffs looking at?” said Little Macca, turning around to find Joe standing at the end of the bar staring right at him. Little Macca burst out in deep guttural laughter.

“Well look who’s come to, just in time to pay for our drinks!”

Joe continued to stare.

Little Macca picked up an empty glass and rose to his feet knocking over his chair. “Come on then!” he screamed and started towards Joe. Without looking, Joe reached behind his back, picked up the phone receiver in his bloody hand and yanked it out of the wall. He snarled and ran at Little Macca, leaping through the air like an anime Samurai. With the receiver clenched tightly in his fist, he pushed Little Macca’s head back with one hand and brought the phone down into his windpipe. Little Macca stumbled backwards, his grip around the glass loosened and it smashed at his feet. In vain he tried to take a breath but it felt like someone had shoved a cork into his throat. Desperately, grabbing his neck, dropping to his knees, he tried to speak but nothing came out. Larry and Stanley clambered to their feet, “Dad!” shouted Larry. “Macca!” shouted Stanley. They leapt over to their father and uncle, he was still somehow on his knees, eyes wide in shock as he began to splutter and vomit blood.

Wendy ran upstairs to the house phone to ring for help. The four men at the bar sat stunned in silence. Little Macca started to feel limp, his whole body felt enervated. He let go of his throat and threw his head back. He managed to force out the saddest, most desperate sound as he looked up at his son Larry. Larry was crying and screaming at his dad, but Little Macca could no longer make sense of words. His ears felt as though they had burst and life began to fade. Everything became blurry, he closed and opened his eyes to try and focus them but it didn’t work so he closed them again but this time they were too heavy to open. It was as though his brain had forgotten how. His mind speedily travelled to a thousand places in strobe-like flashes, he imagined crawling under his childhood bed in an attempt to escape the horror. Suddenly he could see his mother’s feet, she was frantic and crying somewhere above and she reached down under the bed to try and help him but just as her hand was about to touch his face she disappeared, as did the pain. Then nothing, a perfect darkness with no beginning or end.

Joe turned around and shook his head, “for fuck’s sake” he muttered. He calmly placed the phone receiver on the bar, picked up his jacket and left without looking back. Once outside he paused for a moment and closed his eyes in acceptance. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and smoked one while he walked.

Two hours later Joe was arrested at his home. He spent ten years in jail. There was no CCTV and witnesses were too scared to say what had really happened. Even though the McElroys were no longer anything to worry about, the reputation of Big and Little Macca preceded them. One of Little Macca’s brothers, Bob, was a soft-spoken gardener and the other one, Stanley Sr, Stanley’s father, was a fat useless drunk who was ashamed of his surname and spent most of his time in his armchair, crying into his weak lager. He blamed his drunken uselessness on his father and that’s all he would have talked about had anyone dared listen. Stanley Sr’s son Stanley, at one time, could easily have followed in the notorious McElroy footsteps, but was scared straight after witnessing his mean uncle’s death in the Queen’s Legs. He would never know how much that day truly changed his fate. In another reality, Joe was never there that day and Stanley would meet his end in a similar fashion many years later. Feared and hated like his uncle Little Macca, his own children would continue the cycle. Luckily for the Stanley of this reality, the universe had a different plan for him. He packed up his things and moved out of Church Town with his dog, never to be seen again. It is said he got married to a rich Swedish woman twice his age, had several children and became a professional kayaker.

As for Larry, well, these days Larry is a reclusive painter. I know he still lives somewhere in Church Town but personally I have never seen him. A friend of mine is friends with Larry’s daughter and she made me aware of his work. Strange, abstract stuff, weird figures, morphing into bursts of colourful explosions. One day I planned to ask that friend to ask her friend if she would be so kind as to ask her father what it would cost to commission a painting for me to use as cover art.

June II.

I woke up later that evening. June must have crept into bed beside me at some point and was now naked, rubbing herself up against me. I forgot where I was and it took me a few seconds to realise what was going on. “Oh shit,” I think I said. I could feel her warm body and reached out beneath the duvet to grab her.

The next day we woke up early, around 9am. It was Friday, the day of my gig. I asked June if I could borrow her laptop as I needed to do some emailing and whatnot. She switched it on for me and left the room to make coffee. Scrolling through my inbox I saw an email from the drunken book publisher guy. He found my story “interesting” and apologised for not getting back to me sooner, something to do with working on a different book or something. He asked if I had anything else to send him. I emailed back telling him of course I did! Even though I didn’t, I told him I would send him some other bits in the next few days.

I scrolled through more emails until I found one from the promoter for that night’s show. I speed-read the chain of back-and-forth negotiations until I found his phone number and rang it with my beloved Nokia. He picked up after one ring.

“Hello?”

“Whoa,” the speed with which he had answered his phone took me by surprise. “Sapnin, is this Evo?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Leonard Swanson.”

“Ohh, how’s it going mate! I thought I recognised the voice, everything OK mate?” Evo responded.

I explained how everything was very OK considering, and that I was already in London and that I would need him to transfer my fee to my bank so my bank doesn’t go into the minus due to a train fine. I also asked if he could kindly do it right that second. He seemed cool and understood and found my story of the ticket fella with the elongated “oooo”’s funny.

“No problem Leonard mate. Oh, by the way, is that your real name?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Ha, cool, alright mate, well let me know if you need anything else and I’ll see you at 6pm for soundcheck if you want to do one.”

I said OK and hung up.

June returned with coffee and a laminated menu for a local café. Over the phone, she ordered poached eggs, spinach and brown toast, and I asked for fried eggs and bacon on white toast. We drank our coffee and threw on some clothes, then took a walk down the street to pick up our order from the café. We ate it on a bench by the side of a canal somewhere and talked about nothing.

After a while, for no reason, I found myself overcome with a feeling of dread. I became overwhelmingly worried but I didn’t know what it was I was worried about. My brain came to the only logical conclusion: I was dying! Uh oh! Suddenly I leapt to my feet. “Fuck, I have to go!” I declared and shot off down the canal, leaving nothing but my outline behind. Up some wobbling metal stairs and into a busy road I went. Somehow I made it through the oncoming traffic and stopped myself face-planting into a brick wall on the other side with my outstretched palms. Car horns screeched and several drivers screamed obscenities at me. I waved to say sorry before switching to a slightly less dangerous power walk and off I went along the side of the road, muttering to myself. “Fuck, I’m dying.”

My belly started to hurt and I decided drowning it in alcohol would be the only logical thing to do. I walked until I found a cash machine. I thought if I was quick enough I could intercept the money for the show before the evil bloodsucking train corporation stole it all. I slotted my bank card into it, punched in my pin and clicked display balance. £0.56. It was too late. I punched the screen and cursed as I often did in times of anguish, and happiness for that matter.

“Ah ha! Yes! Hahaha! Fuck you!” I laughed smugly to myself, as passers-by glanced sideways at me. I was so smug because it had suddenly dawned on me that that stupid jobsworth ticket man said I would have to pay everything I was getting on Friday and my balance had been exactly £0.00 for well over a week! Well what do you know! I still had 56p you gimps! Haha! I laughed myself into a defeated silence, I may have beat the man but 56p wasn’t enough to drown my aching insides in liquor. At least I had forgotten about dying.

Void of liquor but with a morsel of dignity somehow still intact, I reached into my pocket for my phone to discover it was dead. “Shit, June!” I remembered, sprinting back up the road and dodging my way back through the oncoming traffic, enduring more obscenities, only this time returning them, punctuated with middle fingers. Twirling down the metal steps I hit the ground hard, breaking all personal speed records, possibly even the sound barrier.

Eventually I reached a bench I thought resembled the one June and I had been sitting on. It was empty, of course. I scoured the terrain for evidence and found none. I had no idea where I was and even less of an idea as to where I was supposed to be performing. Somewhere beginning with a C, or D? A Joe-like calmness set in. Accepting there wasn’t much I could do, I took a seat on the bench. “Oh well,” I said. An old lady sitting on the edge of the bench was watching me in confusion. She wondered if I was mentally disturbed or mentally disabled or both. “Hi,” I said, in a weird posh voice I had never used prior to that moment. She gathered up her things and left immediately, maybe faster than my own personal records. I spat on the floor in front of me and sat back, looking up at the clouds slowly huddling together in the bright sky.

After what might have been an hour or a few minutes, I unsuccessfully attempted to retrace my steps back to June’s house, winding along never-ending roads. I asked a woman with a pram for the time, she said something to her baby and unfolded a small metal scooter she was carrying on her back like a sword. Once the little scooter wheels touched the pavement she shot off down the hill, pushing the pram one-handed. My attention turned to a man standing in the door of an off license. “Got the time ma…” Before I could finish the word “mate” the man leapt backwards and pulled down the shutter in one swift motion. “OK then,” I said to myself, feeling confused and hard done by.

I even tried to ask a patrolling policeman who sidestepped around me and off into the distance with his hands behind his back, whistling. “Fuck London!” I said and my stern declaration was instantly met with an anonymous and sneaky smack to the face. Stumbling sideways I head-butted a Chinese restaurant as I fell. Peering up from the floor I saw two lads running off. One of them looked back and shouted “Cunt!” Maybe next time I’ll say fuck London in my head instead, I said in my head, practicing for next time. Pushing myself up into a sitting position with my elbows, I sat against the window of the restaurant.

The cut from my head had reopened and I was bleeding quite impressively now. I futilely wiped the stream of blood with my hand, then gave up and sat there for a little while. Suddenly something banged on the window behind me. Leaning forwards, I looked back, and a small angry Chinese woman was screaming at me with a broom in her hand, motioning for me to leave. I struggled back to my feet and, once oriented, gave her the middle finger and left. Peering over my shoulder, she was standing outside the restaurant shaking the broom at me. She was shouting a bunch of words in Chinese, ending with the English word for “Cunt!”

People risked their lives to cross the busy road to avoid me, I was contagious and advertising it. After the first few leapt into the road, cars began screeching to a halt to let them cross. Drivers caught a glimpse of me and shook their heads in disappointment. Trying to ignore the world outside my head, I concentrated on my feet until I reached a quieter street.

I stopped to sit on a wall and gather my thoughts in front of a terraced townhouse. This quiet gathering of thoughts was cut short when I spotted a blurry-faced green creature approaching. They appeared to have emerged from one of the houses opposite and were walking right at me. I looked around, left and right, in case I was missing something. It got closer. This one appeared to be female, heavy-set and short.

She lingered in front of me, breathing and stuff. I noticed she didn’t seem to smell like the others. She carried a fragrance reminiscent of a brand-new car but in the early Nineties, sort of like the upholstery of a reasonably priced Ford mixed with one of those pine air-fresheners that hung from their rear-view mirrors. In her hands she was carrying a bottle of water and a cloth. She lifted the cloth up then handed it to me. “OK,” I said, accepting her gift, “Thanks.”

She made a circular motion over her blurry head with her manicured, wart-filled green hand. She pointed at the cloth and made the same circular motion again as I gormlessly watched her red fingernails going round and round.

“Ohh!” The blood! I wiped my face and head and checked the cloth, which quickly turned from white to deep red. She nodded and passed me the bottle of water, “Thanks,” I said. I used it to wash my face, and although the day was a hot and humid one, I was careful not to wet my clothes too much due to a wise distrust of the weather. It could randomly turn cold at any minute and I’d be forced to skate through the ice-lined streets with blood-stained, wet clothes. The blurry creature shrugged and turned away.

“Wait,” I said, “sorry, do you have the time please?” She rolled up her coat sleeve, revealing a thin gold watch and began to respond.

“It’s… It’s…” she slurped and struggled.

“Wait, it’s cool,” I said, jumping down from the wall. As I got close enough to see the face of the watch she raised her wrist and twisted it towards me.

“7pm!” I said, shocked.

She shrugged again and waddled back into the house opposite. As the door was closing, I shouted one last “Thanks!”, drank the last of the water and left, eventually finding myself in the middle of a different busy street.

Passing a furniture shop with a mirror in the window, I stopped to examine myself. My white T-shirt was a mess as I was already aware, but my face, minus the swollen lip and slightly bruised eye wasn’t so bad. I brushed my hair back with my hands, pleasantly surprised by my appearance, and continued on aimlessly.

I passed a tacky tourist shop, full of Union Jack paraphernalia and cheap paper masks bearing the Queen’s face and other random London-born people of interest. I swiped a pair of black plastic wayfarer-style sunglasses from a rotating display stand. I stopped at a pedestrian crossing, put on the glasses and crossed the road when the green man appeared. My pace became slower. Why was I in such a rush to go nowhere? I thought.

The sky became dark. I was hungry and sitting on a bridge over a canal, unsure if it was the same canal as before. A jolly man in a high-vis suit sweeping the street with a big wooden brush lifted his head with a smile. “Hello my friend, good evening, yes?” he said in broken English.

“Hello mate,” I said back, “yea, I guess, how about you?”

“Ah yes, very good, very good,” he replied, sweeping away at the dust on the pavement.

“Eh, mate,” I said, stopping to run my tongue along the cuts inside my swollen lip.

“Yes mate, can I help?” said the man with the brush, now standing still, awaiting my response.

“Is there more than one canal in London?” I finally asked.

“Ah yes mate, yes, many canal.”

“And where is this?”

“This?” he asked.

“Like, here, where are we in London?”

“Yes, London, we are London,” he answered, nodding.

“Nah I mean, whereabouts in London?”

“OK, we are in Camden.”

“Camden?” I said then paused, “Okayyy, thanks mate.”

“Okayyy, thanks mate,” he repeated. I laughed, he laughed.

“Have a good night,” I said and once again continued along the road to nowhere.

“Camden?” I repeated to myself. I walked down the street and turned a corner, ahead of me I could see a crowd of people gathered outside some sort of small club, they appeared to be smoking weed and drinking. They generally looked to be of a similar ilk to the people in attendance of the last show I performed at. It couldn’t be? Had I stumbled my way into the exact corner of nowhere I was meant to be? Of course I had, my friends. I approached the haphazard queue of degenerates waiting to enter. Shades on, scruffy green jacket hanging off my shoulders over my blood-stained white T-shirt, I walked to the front. A big bouncer put his hand on my chest without looking at me and he calmly told a fussing couple to stop pushing.

He turned his attention to me, “Can I help you mate?” He asked with a thick London accent.

“Err, yeah, I’m performing here tonight, I think,” I responded to his amusement.

“You think?” he said, “fuckin’ el mate you look like you’ve been through it!”

Another bouncer appeared and joined in. “Fuckin’ el mate, you really do, you alright?”

They both laughed. I was getting sick of people laughing.

“Yeah, I’m sound, yeah, nice one, err.”

The first bouncer left his colleague to take over while he pushed the crowd back. “Move back please, take a step back,” he said.

“Name mate, what’s your name?”

Someone from inside the venue shouted my name, “Leonard Swanson!, yes mate!”

“So, Leonard Swanson, I take it?” said the bouncer.

“Yes mate,” I responded.

“Go in, make sure you get a band alright?”

“Yeah, thanks mate,” I said, walking into the venue.

“Red or blue?” I heard one of the bouncers ask and realised they was talking to me.

“Oh, red, red” I answered and entered the venue.

A woman sitting in a glass box in the lobby put a little plastic band around my wrist. She put it on way too tight and I pulled at it like a naughty dog and headed towards the music. At the doors to the main floor I was intercepted by the annoyingly unsad DJ Sadsack.

“Eh! Leonard Swanson aye man!” he said. “Up here pal!” He held out his fist for me to punch and darted off up some stairs to the right. I flashed my wristband at the bouncer standing at the bottom and followed slowly behind. All that walking had finally taken its toll.

In the green room Sadsack handed me a bottle of rum and said “Cheers” while he held out a can of beer. I touched the bottle of rum against his can and took a generous swig and sank into the wide, beaten-up sofa. A few other people loitered around the room but I was too tired to speak to anyone. I sank deeper into the sofa, taking consistent swigs of rum. Sadsack tried to talk to me but prompted by my half-hearted responses quickly gave up. “So aye man, I’ll be right back alright.” Oscar nodded at me and followed him out, I nodded back way too late for him to even see but it’s the thought that counts. A few minutes later the room had emptied, leaving just the bottle of rum and I. I ate some Doritos and a packet of Haribo and sat back as the green room faded to black.

A flash of white light consumed me. I found myself looking out of that now familiar grand window into the greenery. I could have sworn I could hear my song “GENPHARM” playing faintly in the background. This time the owner of the eyes looked to their right, revealing a large mahogany desk. Behind us, a door creaked open and a woman’s voice spoke. “Rich, are you ready for dinner?”

“Leonard!” DJ Sadsack shouted from five feet away at the open door of the green room, “there’s some real beauty outside claiming she knows you aye man, called June, you know her? You want me to grab her dude?”

June! I forgot about June, how could I? “Yeah, err…”

“Alright man, I’ll go grab her now aye, I’ll get her a band and that,” said the ever-heroic effortlessly happy DJ Sadsack.

My sudden high-speed departure flashed through my mind. Some of the information of the day had been sanitised and I was unable to recall the words beneath the black lines but a healthy dose of embarrassment filled my body nonetheless.

Rum rolled down my throat like water. The door flew open, “Alright mate, I’m Evo, just wanted to say thanks for…” he stopped and looked at me, “What the fuck happened to you man, you OK?” He said pointing down at the abstract pattern of blood on my T-shirt.

“Fashion,” I answered, only half there. I was now anxious that I would have to explain my actions to June.

Evo laughed at my answer and catering to my unwillingness to move, leaned over and shook my hand. He handed me a little bag of white powder and told me something about another bottle of rum in the fridge. “Thanks man,” I said. He left the room and in walked Sadsack, followed by June, who was laughing about something with Oscar. I sat there, shades covering my eyes, quietly taking swigs from the bottle of rum. June sat down next to me, gave me a hug and kissed me on the face with her arms still around me. “You OK Len?” She whispered while DJ Sadsack and Oscar talked amongst themselves, laughing hysterically at who knows what.

“Yeah,” I said and I leant forward and threw the bag of powder at DJ Sadsack and Oscar. “Have that.”

“Oh nice one man!” said Sadsack.

My sudden departure was never brought up. I think she understood that sometimes that sort of thing just happens, sometimes a man just needs to sprint off mid-conversation with no explanation. Another couple of swigs and I started to feel sick so I offered her the bottle, which she gladly accepted and took a swig of her own. I smiled, she made a baby face at me, touched my swollen lip with her finger and kissed it. “Who was it? I will kill them for you,” she whispered in a silly voice. I laughed anxiously at her and felt good enough to take the bottle back.

Rum rapidly disappearing into our guts, midnight vastly approaching. Evo’s assistant, a small blonde girl named Sandy with a Brummie accent, appeared in the green room and informed DJ Sadsack he needed to set up, then she told me to be on stage no later than quarter past midnight. I nodded and thanked her. She told me it was nice to meet me and that she loves June, I smiled and thanked her again, “thank you” I said and everyone smiled and thanked each other and laughed and I didn’t mind.

At that point I was so drunk I can only remember shoving my way through the crowd, rolling onto the stage and lying there for what seemed like two forevers. I dozed off right there on the stage. DJ Sadsack had already taken his position and had the place going wild. I remember a flash of Oscar’s big smiley face looking down at me as he picked me up off the stage floor. Someone handed me a microphone and then I blacked out for forty-five minutes.

I remember stumbling my way off the side of the stage and June leaping on me. She appeared to have ascended into some new realm of being; her pupils were like shiny pennies and in my memory she was glowing with a literal purple hue. “How are you doing that?” I enquired, sincerely. She put one of whatever she had consumed onto my tongue and I swallowed it without thinking, instantly regretting and then forgetting what I had just done. The club was loud but I felt like someone had their hands over my ears. June led me through the crowd, people grabbed me, screaming in appreciation. I took photographs with people and floated around the bar while strangers bought June and I shots that tasted like fire.

The next thing I remember is flashes of June, half-naked, straddling me in some sort of alleyway. Then in a taxi, then in another alleyway. Then I woke up face down in the middle of a field in broad daylight. Once upright I brushed the dirt off my tracksuit bottoms and touched my face. My sunglasses were still in place, blood-stained T-shirt right where I left it, but no jacket. The cold made me hug myself. It wasn’t freezing but it wasn’t the sort of temperature you’d be happy to wake up in, with no jacket.

At the bottom of the field was a border of tall trees I instantly recognised from my hallucinations. However, my view until then had been exclusively through the grand window via someone else’s eyes. I turned to discover what I assumed was the window, from the outside, perhaps forty yards away. There was an arched timber door to its right, fit for a castle expecting a siege, only at its side were several windows that could be easily breached, rendering the mighty door a pointless exhibit of wealth. A clock tower with its glistening silver spire protruded egotistically from the building’s core, overlooking the land, letting all who set eyes upon it know what time it was.

I slowly walked closer and closer to the window, aware I was an easy target for any opportunistic, amateur archer hiding behind the crenelation. Maybe fifteen yards away and still alive, I was close enough to make out the silhouette of a figure through the glass causing me to stop in my tracks, assuming they had spotted me. In a half crouch, ready to turn and sprint, expecting the hounds to be released any time soon, I froze. The condensation of my morning breath made me feel even more exposed, so I tried to breathe it back in.

At the absence of hounds, I continued on towards the window. A few more steps and I could clearly see into the room; a blurry-faced green creature holding a mug. Slowly, I kept on toward it, my hands by my sides, careful not to pose a threat. Another blurry-faced figure appeared in the room, it raised its big green hand and swung for the back of the other one’s head. It connected so cleanly that I felt it. Literally. It threw me forward, stumbling face-first to assume my waking position in the grass.

I rolled over to face the sky, rubbing the back of my head. And it was suddenly warm and June was standing over me smiling. My jacket was hanging loosely over her shoulders; judging by the grass stains on the legs of her tight blue jeans, she too had slept face down on the ground. I forced half a smile and propped myself up with my elbows. The grand mansion had been replaced with a small, brick, shed-like building. There were still a reasonable amount of trees but any amateur geologist would conclude we were somewhere else. “Where are we?” I asked June.

“I was hoping you knew to be honest,” she responded, giggling without a care.

I dropped to my back, sunglasses still hanging on. “Do you have a ciggy?” I asked, patting myself down.

“No,” she replied, “sorry.” She lay down next to me on the grass. “Good show,” she said.

I watched a plane fly some distance above — it appeared to stop still mid-air, directly above us. I pulled the sunglasses down the bridge of my nose with one finger and let my eyes adjust. By the time they refocused, the plane was gone. I turned to June lying next to me. “You see that?”

“See what?” she answered.

I shrugged and closed my eyes, no longer concerned with where we were or how we got there. June put her head on my chest. I fell back to sleep.

Suddenly I was awoken by a panicked cry. June had her phone pressed to her ear, hysterical. “I have to go, I have to go,” she frantically announced, pacing back and forth.

“Whoa, what’s up, are you OK?” I asked, startled.

“It’s my sister,” she said, through tears, barely getting her words out, “she’s been in an accident, I have to go.”

We rushed across the field, which was now filling up with decent, everyday people, and we dodged them, navigating our way through the tall trees to a busy road where we flagged down a black cab. We didn’t say much on the hour-long journey to her house, June just sobbed quietly. I was unsure what to say so thought it best I didn’t force it and say something stupid. When we got there, one of her housemates greeted us, seemingly already aware of the news. “So sorry June, I’ll drive you to the station, OK?” the housemate said and gave June a hug.

In her room I helped her find her phone charger and pack a couple of things, although I was probably just getting in the way. I retrieved my bag and, after unjamming the zip, changed out of my blood-stained clothing. June turned to look at me, started sobbing some more and hugged me. I hugged her back and said I was sorry. I followed her down the stairs and outside where her housemate was waiting with the engine running. June climbed into the car.

“See you, I hope your sister is OK.”

Her housemate leaned over June from the driver side. “Do you want to be dropped off somewhere on the way or I can drop you off somewhere after I’ve dropped June off?”

“Na it’s cool, I’ve got to go and do something,” I lied.

They sped off up the street in the chugging little red Mondeo. I hoped June would be OK and lumbered into the day.

Nowhere.

I had nowhere to actually go in London and even if I did, I had no money to get there and my phone was about to die. Why I spontaneously decided to put myself in that position is anybody’s guess, but there I was, slugging my holdall on my back like a man that missed the statement for the mission he was on. My throat and mouth were so dry I was convinced if I didn’t lap up a whole pail of water soon I would collapse in a cloud of dust and keel over.

I managed to lose myself amongst the bustling crowd of shoppers in a small Tesco Express that opted for corner mirrors instead of CCTV. Silly fools! I shoved butties into my bag, cured meat into my inside jacket pocket, bottles of water up my sleeve, chocolate biscuits down my trousers. I stuffed at least four samosas into my trouser pockets, a couple of cakes into my jacket pockets and God knows what else, where else. As if by instinct I even stole a carton of my favourite microwaveable slop. I waddled out of the shop, arms and legs stiff like a man in an 1800s atmospheric diving suit.

At a painstakingly slow speed I pivoted my way around the corner like a clumsy robot and emptied my tracksuit bottoms so I could kneel down and investigate the rest of the loot. I disposed of the microwaveable slop and unscrewed the bottle of water with my teeth while tearing open the cured meat.

A leashed dog trotted by at eye level. I growled and turned my head with half a butty hanging from my teeth and water dribbling down my chin. I wiped my face and checked to see if the dog was gone and crammed cured meat and biscuits into my face. Coughing and spluttering as I washed it all down with water, re-energising like a computer game character.

Squeezing the leftovers into my bag, I walked and walked some more. Day made way for night, as it often does on this planet. Sometime later I got lost and found myself at a big brightly lit train station that was still open despite there being no trains running. The time on the big orange and black screen above read 01:01. A few workers were still dotted about the station in their orange jackets, nodding as they made eye contact with each other. Thankfully they ignored me as I dragged my legs in the direction of a glass waiting room on the far side of the station. The white metal bench inside would be my bed for the night. Annoyingly they had sectioned off the bench with metal armrests, stopping me from stretching out, so I would be forced to sleep upright. “If those green blurry bastards can do it, so can I!” I exclaimed to myself.

The glass door closed slowly behind me as I entered and took a seat. One of the lights in the corner opposite began to flicker, further setting the scene as I planted the back of my head against the cold white wall. Nice and uncomfortable, as it should be.

The increasingly loud snores coming from a man that wasn’t there when I fell asleep woke me up. He was lying on his side in a ball on the hard floor across the room. I contemplated kicking him so he’d shut up but decided against it.

My stretching was cut short due to severe cramping in several body parts. I untied my bag from my legs and relaxed my body into its regular shape. Forcing my way to my feet, I left the glass room in search of a toilet. The time was 05:05 and the station was still relatively empty. A few workers dilly-dallied about — some pushed trolleys stacked with butties, some dragged trolleys stacked with butties. Some just carried the butties the old-fashioned way — with their hands. Stepping over fallen butties, cursing the panivorous souls of the anonymous commuters, I almost wiped out on a splattering of egg mayo on the floor.

I arrived at the entrance to the toilets, alive and fairly unscathed. The toilets were demanding money but I was unwilling to part with even 20p of what little I had left so I pulled the turnstile slightly toward me and slipped through the gap. A lot is expected of us in this life, but being expected to pay our way in society was a step too far for me at that point. Things, at least for me, should have been free, I felt.

The toilets were empty except for the biggest blurry-faced green creature I had ever seen. He was mopping the floor facing away from me and he had an old cassette Walkman clipped to the back pocket of his jeans. He was whistling Vivaldi’s “Spring” out loud.

In the toilet cubicle I found a much-needed moment of solace; the hum of the lights, the whistling of Vivaldi, some distant machine droning. Drifting. I was once again at that grand window. The back of my head began to throb. I involuntarily spun around to see another green creature waving their finger at me as they took what I assumed was a second swing but missed, giving up and vacating the room, leaving the wooden door to slam behind them. For the first time I was afforded a new angle, previously withheld from my view. The wood-panelled walls were decorated with framed abstract art. If I didn’t know any better I’d say Larry McElroy was the artist.

And back to the usual broadcasting, the window view. A human figure was lying face-down in the grass. A soft cushiony hand began rubbing the back of my throbbing head and just like that I was back in the toilet cubicle, rubbing my head. The hallucinations were getting weirder but they were still pretty mundane and tiresome.

The instinctive scrunching up of my eyes and surrounding facial skin, topped off with some aggressive twitching, helped speed up my reality readjustment. With some semblance of sanity saved, I put the toilet seat down and pulled out a small black mp3 player, notepad and pen from the side pocket of my holdall.

Half an hour of scribbling later, to the rhythm of the beat blasting in my earphone, I read the barely legible handwriting out loud under my breath. I would have stayed there forever, working it all out, had it not been a toilet. Surely they would eventually come looking for me and forcibly eject me from the premises, so I thought it best I leave then, of my own accord, with some quiet dignity. I kicked the flush button with the bottom of my Air Max, slung my bag over my shoulder and opened the cubicle door.

“What the fuck!” I fell backwards landing on the toilet, banging my head on the wall behind me. The creature with the mop was standing directly in the doorway, towering over me. “What the fuck man?” I said and he crouched toward me, and with a giant hand engulfing my whole head, he placed me back on my feet like I was a G.I. Joe figure. Although it was hard to truly tell, this move didn’t seem to hold any aggression. I decided to assume it was an apology and accept it. Bag strap adjusted, jacket fixed, I ducked under him and slipped out of the cubicle. Two rows of sinks ran parallel to each other down the middle of the room. I went around to the other side so I could wash my hands and splash water on my face with the creature in front of me, just in case. He started to speak, or try to “I… I… I… was… I was…”

“You was?” I offered some encouragement.

“I was…” I was almost certain he had said.

“OK mate, you was…?”

“There,” he finally spat out.

Eyes trained on his blurry face, I hit the tap over and over to keep it running and punched the soap dispenser until it broke.

“You were where?” I finally asked.

“Shit,” he said.

“It’s OK man, just say it, you were where?”

“Shit,” he forced out again.

“Alright then.” I dried my hands on my jacket and backed out of the toilets slowly, facing into the room. He dropped his mop, which hit the floor like a percussive wood block, the room providing just the right amount of natural reverb. Perfect, I thought. He ripped open his shirt and with both hands he twisted and pulled out the slimy cork from his disgusting belly mouth. The cork created a popping sound as it exited, like when you put your finger in your cheek and flick but amplified. A Jet d’Eau of slime shot out and splattered over the shiny clean floor in front of him.

He began mopping it up and I relaxed my eyes so they unfocused enough to spare me of any further gory details in high definition. Finally, I was learning.

“I was there!” he said, this time with a lot more clarity. “Don’t step in shit Leonard! And if you do, remember where it was so you don’t step in it again!” he advised with a booming northern accent I couldn’t quite place, laughing like a gurgling mad monster.

I knew what he meant but didn’t understand. I edged backwards until I felt my bag hit the turnstile. Without turning, I pulled it toward me and slipped through backwards.

“Leonard, Leonard! Watch out for the shit!” He shouted after me, full of enthusiasm, stopping me in my tracks. I checked the floor below, expecting I would be required to extravagantly pirouette over a pile of faeces, I was disappointed to see nothing but shiny, recently mopped floor.

A couple of hours passed, still a little bit disappointed that I hadn’t been afforded a reason to show off my acrobatic skills, I let out a long sigh and dropped my bag at my feet. I sifted through the remains of the stolen goods. My stomach kicked off at me but my collection of ill-gotten Tesco delights provided little inspiration. Resting against a wall outside the station, I threw my legs over my bag and held my head in my hands with my elbows digging into my knees.

I lifted my head to find the good commuters I had previously cursed had taken pity on my soul and blessed me with some of their unwanted change. Face in a frown, I smiled in my mind while I counted £4 and a few pennies.

I bought a sausage roll from somewhere and ate it somewhere else, maybe on a bench, possibly reading a paper I found on a wall. I probably checked the sports pages while the sun beamed down on me. Once I had finished with the paper if I did have one, I imagine I threw it up high in the air and danced off into the distance as the pages separated behind me like oversized confetti.

Into London I went, married to the madness, a back-alley tourist. Taking in all the sights: a homeless man hugging a scruffy dog, telling it a war story, a scruffy dog barking at a homeless man, probably its equivalent of a war story; a woman screaming at a bus driver, a bus driver screaming at a woman; a group of kids smashing a glass bottle outside a pub and scarpering off, a man chasing the kids, kids chasing a man, the police jumping out of a car and chasing everyone. Everyone scarpering. More homeless men and women. I walked and walked some more. The day was hot. The tarmac was bubbling. The heatwaves were rising from the roads like hell wanted to trade places. “Let it,” I thought.

I turned a corner and went along yet another grey path, this time sandwiched between a busy market and a brick rail bridge, each of its arches fenced off and dark. Cutting between two stalls, I got lost in the crowd. My bag bounced off the heads of stray children and the backs of casually perusing adults, I apologised under my breath and offered upturned palms to show no harm was intended.

Groups of young friends laughed and talked amongst themselves, roving families pointed at things and stopped to inspect said things up close. Their curious sons and daughters picked up old military trinkets and looked at World War II helmets. “Dad, this one’s got a bullet hole in it!” an excitable child yelled. Their dad looked all about, fussing quietly, embarrassed. Some stallholders watched and smiled and spoke to passers-by, everyone a potential customer. Some stallholders sat reading newspapers, some listened to their small portable radios. Looking up and turning down the volume only when being propositioned with a price.

“Fifteen,” a grumpy-looking stallholder frowned. He had seen it all. Shaded beneath a beige flat cap, his face wore a thousand stresses.

“Err,” the beta father hesitated, looking at his wife as she nudged him in an attempt to boost his depleted confidence. He looked back at the stallholder and stuttered, “I’ll… I’ll err, give you ten?” he said unconvincingly, glancing at his wife for reassurance.

“Fifteen is the price,” the stallholder scoffed, pressing the radio back to his ear.

I left them to it, wading through the tide of people, stopping to take a quick look through the old records filed in red plastic boxes. Each box with a different genre, Jazz, Roots / Folk, Reggae, Dancehall, Hip-Hop, Classical, Blues, Dance, Funk. The old Jamaican stallholder sat on a tall stool with his knees up, speaking to another man in Patois. The bracelets around the stallholder’s wrist jingled as he pushed his friend’s shoulder and grabbed his arm, breaking out into animated bursts of laughter. Every few sentences their jovial exchange would halt as they took it in turns to greet various passers-by. Stopping to nod, wave and shout. They knew everybody and everybody knew them.

I passed a stall selling cheap metal jewellery, green and blue and red signets and enamel eyes and earrings made of bronze. Brightly coloured fabrics hung at the back. Wind chimes and shiny metallic objects were on display at the front, dangling and swaying in the gentle breeze. The burning incense made me sneeze and move on.

Old books and clothing and cameras and binoculars and electronics. A lot of people, looking and touching and not buying. Snippets of conversation in a vast assortment of languages.

Several civilians were taken out as I held on to the strap of my holdall, ducking and diving through the bustling crowd until the rush of the market was behind me. Frisking my torso and legs, to my surprise I produced a packet of cigarettes. “Get in!” I exclaimed, tearing the box open to discover just one single solitary cigarette eagerly waiting to be burned. “Oh well,” one ciggy was better than a whole packet of ciggies being lit, one by one, half-smoked and stubbed out into my eyes! I thought and whole-heartedly agreed with myself.

I asked a man for a lighter, he ignored me. I asked another man for a lighter, ignored. I asked a woman, she said sorry. I said it’s OK. I asked a homeless woman if she had a lighter, she handed me one. I lit my ciggy and handed it back. She asked me if I had a ciggy, I said sorry. She said it’s OK. I disappeared out of her sight as I imagined she looked on inspired with a new lease of life. Off down the side of a typical busy big city road I went. The traffic seemed like it might have been a thousand miles long or maybe it never ended and I could have followed it to old age had I been compelled.

Due to a passing conversation I discovered the day was Sunday. This meant nothing to me most of the time but I was glad to be in the know for once. Vaguely feeling a part of something like a kid left at home alone on a Saturday night watching a popular live TV show, suddenly conscious and aware they were one of millions sharing that moment. Imagining the lives of the other viewers, are they imagining the kid’s life as well? Can they picture the old floral pattern carpet and the wooden shelves? Did they see him spill his Pepsi on the couch cushion and flip it over to hide the evidence from his angry stepfather? Who cares? The kid defiantly shrugged it all off and bit into a Mars bar and gulped the rest of his Pepsi down even though it gave him a bellyache.

Eventually I was depleted of strength, crumpling into a black metal bench in a quiet little park filled with white flowery trees surrounded by tall, pale buildings. I peeled my bag off my back and rummaged through the leftover food. A lonely cloud formed a fist and gave me the finger while I stuffed my face with half-melted biscuits and squashed, day-old samosas. I blinked the sky clear and waved the heavens away. Shaking my head at the disrespect I punched my bag into a pillow, closed my eyes and yawned myself unconscious.

I was shook awake by the park warden. “You can’t sleep here mate,” he told me. I looked up at him through one eye. My bones cracked and creaked as I left.

My single-eyed worldview led me to a waist-high wall on which I would spend the rest of the night, upright, in front of a drab office building.

I came to. “Shit,” I said, remembering my bag. I had forgotten to tie it to me but luckily no one had run away with my life. I put a hoodie on beneath my jacket; it felt much colder than the day before. I rubbed my arms and stretched.

The sky was bright and the streets were filling up. Busses blocked the roads, drivers poked their heads out of their cars and shouted, beeping their horns. Men and women in suits rushed around with briefcases and shiny shoes. Construction workers loitered in front of building sites, holding newspapers and drinking tea from Styrofoam cups. Everybody smoked cigarettes.

I walked until I found a Jobcentre. A man sitting outside against the window asked me if I had something, I said sorry and walked through the open door. The security guard listened intently as I explained why I was there, trying my best not to veer off on too many tangents. “So, a new claim, wait over there.” He said pointing at a blue couch.

My thumbs became strained from the extensive twiddling. Eventually an advisor appeared at a desk and summoned me. After persevering with my disjointed, barely coherent story, she told me I couldn’t sign on as I didn’t have an address and that I should consider going to a hostel so I can use that as my address and the hostel will cost me around £15-20 a night. I told her I had no money, she told me she was sorry and added that I needed to phone whatever the right number I needed to phone was in order to start a new claim now anyway. Essentially rendering our exchange, as riveting as it may have been, pointless.

Confused, I lumbered to my feet. Maybe she was testing me. Things had changed. When I last signed on, one could just mosey on into a Jobcentre and skip out with a bag full of money to burn. Maybe it’s some new protocol? Test the lazy bastards, see how bad they really want it! I turned to leave, wishing I was skipping and stopped, doubling back to the advisor, “Where is the nearest hostel?” I asked. She opened her mouth, ready to reel off a list of information I would have instantly forgotten. My tired, gormless expression stopped her in her tracks. Closing her mouth, she looked at the computer screen and pressed a few buttons and tapped her wedding ring on the desk. Her mouth reopened, this time words came out of it. “Wait right there,” she said.

I suddenly felt paranoid and I became nervous and started to sweat. Convinced everybody in the Jobcentre was watching me. Standing there with all of my worldly possessions at my feet, making quiet sounds with my mouth against my will. My temperature must have risen to at least enough to fry an egg on my forehead, which I didn’t dare touch in case it burned my fingers.

It was getting too much; I had to tense my whole body and force myself to yawn in order to feel like I had taken a satisfactory breath. I had to concentrate to stop myself sprinting out of the door and into the road. My sides and scalp became itchy, I picked at a scab on my crown and accidentally flicked it on to the helpful advisor’s desk. I prayed there were no witnesses and if there were, I prayed for a higher power to wipe their memories.

Finally, the advisor approached from the far side of the room, probably only a few years older than I was, protective and kind but stern. I felt as though I could tell all of this simply by the way she walked across the room, too busy to return her fellow Jobcentre employees’ smiles. She was all business, helping the lazy down-and-out was not her passion but her calling. Her thick curls of coarse hair pulled tightly back into buns, she adjusted her glasses and sat down at the desk.

In front of her she placed a warm sheet of paper containing a list of hostels. Picking up a pen from her desk, she touched the tip of her tongue with the ballpoint then marked a line next to the hostel she advised me to check first. “It’s just down the road,” she said.

“OK, thanks,” my diffident tone of voice prompted her to sketch out some rough directions on the same piece of paper, She really did try, pointing this way and that way, asking me if I was with her. “Uh huh, yea, mhmm,” I said, followed by “thanks.” Momentarily breaking character, she raised an eyebrow above her frameless glasses and smiled before returning to her signature poker-faced, all-business-all-thetime expression.

Shooing me away she shouted out the next “Job Seeker’s” name like a secondary school teacher reading the register: “Gregory Something!” She wished me good luck. I lugged my bag over my shoulder and left, nodding at the serious security guard on my way out.

Apparently, the hostel that the nice but stern Jobcentre advisor advised me to seek out was a simple five-minute trek involving just one single left turn. However, hours later, I found myself taking a right turn. The long, white, terraced row of commercial properties were nice enough, but none of them were hostels.

Up ahead, a small crowd had formed on the corner. I joined them to watch a pigeon eating its dead friend. We nodded amongst each other, fascinated and impressed by the cannibal bird. I broke from the crowd, and stopped at the entrance of a park, this time to watch a man and a woman perform some sort of Pagan folk ritual. The man strummed an acoustic guitar and winked and smiled with perfect teeth, intermittently backing the woman’s vocals. The woman swirled her long curly hair around and held onto her crown of flowers to stop it blowing away. She sang at an uncomfortably high pitch, somehow smiling the whole time. Some of the people that had gathered had been forced into clapping along. A few even dropped some of their hard-earned dole money into an open guitar case.

The song ended in a painstakingly drawn out decrescendo and they thanked the small crowd. Suddenly they locked onto me with their possessed glassy eyes as though the upstanding thing to do would be to part with what little I had as repentance for my bitter inner judgements. I shook my head and left.

I brushed shoulders with the same man fifty times. I saw the dead pigeon again and again, bearing witness to the varying stages of its consumption at the beak of its feathered so-called friend. By that point it was only logical to conclude I had been subconsciously circumnavigating the area, oblivious to any and all wayfinding signs. If only I had enough crumbs at the bottom of my bag, I could have left a trail.

Ruminating, I stroked my chin and crossed my arms. “Hmm,” I said as the cannibal pigeon took one last bite before flying into a tree to digest its meal. I stared at the row of ominous, anonymous white buildings, making sure that I was definitely at the same cannibalistic crime scene. When I was absolutely certain, I jabbed the air below me in disappointment. Thenceforth, I decided it would be in my best interest to snatch a leaf out of Ralph’s book and boycott circles, or at least walking around in them. A light slap of the face and a few whispered words of encouragement with myself later, I, at long last, started to make bold mental notes of new landmarks I had yet to discover.

A Hostel is a Hostel.

And before long, utilising my new and improved navigation skills, I found myself at the doors of a hostel. It took a few moments to realise that it was not the hostel I was in search of and even fewer to realise it wasn’t even on the list. However, a hostel is a hostel, so I pushed through the double doors and strode inside like an outlaw.

Taken aback by the damp old carpet smell, I hesitated before approaching the front desk. The murmuring guests in the shadows of the communal space to the right hammered away at PC keyboards with their hardened hostel fingertips. I stole sideways glances at their beady red-eyed silhouettes in the dark and slapped my open palm against the shiny stainless steel service bell.

A man and a woman appeared from a trapdoor behind the desk. The woman, with her flowing red hair, red framed glasses, red nail polish, red shellsuit, red everything, disappeared up some stairs. A bit excessive, I thought, but each to their own. I watched as she clip-clopped away in her red heels, wondering if she was a guest or employee. Face un-scrunched, I turned to the man behind the desk. He had steadied himself and was now standing directly in front of me with a long, closed-lip smile, ready to help me figure it all out.

Flashing a gold tooth as he opened his mouth, “How can I help you mate?” he asked, in a theatrical cockney accent. The top four buttons of his navy shirt were purposely left unbuttoned to show off the thick gold chain dangling around his neck.

“Err, how much is a bed mate?”

He stopped smiling, “£12 mate.”

“Nice watch,” I said, pointing my eyes at his gold Rolex.

“This old thing,” he said rotating his wrist out in front of him. I dug deep into my pockets, remembering I was broke. Playing it off like I easily had £12, I dug even deeper. All I could produce was lint.

“Ah man,” burning up and nervous again, I felt as though my entire body was coated in a giant film of sweat. Some inoffensive piano music played quietly somewhere. Police sirens zoomed past outside, dogs barked. I tried to concentrate on my breathing and relax. Dropping my bag, it hit the floor with a thud and I rummaged through it. Fully aware there was nothing of any universal value inside.

The double doors swung open and slammed shut. I ignored who or whatever entered as I repacked my bag. I stood up; the receptionist touched his slicked-back brown hair to check it was still in place and then turned his attention to the woman that had just entered.

“How can I help you love?” he asked. She hesitated, looking at me to see if I was OK with her jumping the queue. I smiled and motioned towards the receptionist with my hand.

She was dressed like an eccentric 80s children’s presenter: yellow baseball cap and baggy pant suit with a T-shirt and shell-toe trainers.

“Do you have any private rooms available?” she asked with a French accent, taking off the baseball cap and holding it between her thighs while she pulled out a purse from the bum-bag around her waist. Her steel, carry-on suitcase was covered in stickers from all over the world: an Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, some other towers I didn’t recognise, a Sphynx, a surfboard with Aloha written on it, Mt Fuji, a Las Vegas sign, a Danish flag, etc.

The receptionist, obscured by the counter, fiddled around on a computer and said “Hmm,” over and over. Finally, he popped his head up, “We have one double room left love, twenty-four quid if you want the whole room?”

“Two nights, if that’s OK?” she said, and the man said “Yes”. She went into her bum-bag, pulled out three crisp £20 notes and slapped them into his hand. While she was distracted, fixing the strap of her baseball cap to the handle of her suitcase, the receptionist took it upon himself to pocket the change.

Holding up a keychain with two keys on it, the receptionist looked at her intently. “Right, this key is for the room door,” he said, showing her which key he meant exactly, “and this one is for the locker in the room.”

He dropped the keys into her hands, which were held out like a hungry beggar.

“That’s room 16 then, yeah?”

He waited for her to nod. “Up the stairs, first left, second right, second left, straight down the hall, right to the very end and that’s you on the right love, OK?”

“Oui, yes,” she said, zipping the bum-bag up and shuffling off with her suitcase in tow.

Elated, the receptionist flashed his eyebrows at me and nodded sideways at the French woman. I nodded in mock agreement. Her suitcase bounced off each step behind her and he turned to watch her struggle. Once out of earshot he let out a gasp of air as though he had been holding his breath until she left.

“Blimey mate, she was a bit of alright wasn’t she ay?” he said laughing. “Ay?” he said again.

I did my best to join in, doing my finest impression of a laugh. “Haha, yes,” I said, even though I didn’t agree or care.

I lazily picked up my bag from the ground in defeat when suddenly he held out another keychain. “This one is for the room, this one is for the locker yeah?” he explained, demonstrating which key was which, even going as far as to do a twisting motion with each key in case I was unsure.

“OK,” I concentrated, going along with it.

“Room 14, it is alright?” he said.

“Room 14,” I repeated, suspiciously.

“That’s up the stairs, first left, second right, second left, straight down the hall, right to the very end and that’s you on the left mate, OK?”

I took the keys. “Thanks,” I said, and waited while he poked through the mess behind the counter, murmuring like he had something to add.

“There it is,” he said, pinning a name tag to his shirt pocket reading “Mike Smith.” He reached out to fist bump me.

“Thanks… Mike,” I said, glancing down at the name tag, meekly touching my fist to his.

“Len…?” he responded, tilting his head in three directions as he did, eyes squinted as though he was trying to recall the name I had not given him.

“Yeah, well, Leonard but Len is fine,” I said, confused but not wanting to make too much of a scene. Maybe I just look like a Leonard.

“Let me know if you need anything then Len, yeah?” he said, fist-bumping me a second time.

“Of course,” I said, playing along, and “will do mate, nice one,” then I pulled the long strap of my bag over my head and disappeared up the stairs to find room 14.

I had no clue as to whether cockney Mike was feeling charitable or just got so distracted by the small pokey-nosed French woman, he thought I had paid for the bed. Either way I felt confident in my delusion again.

Door number 14 creaked open, the room was empty. There were four bunkbeds squeezed inside, running parallel to each other with just enough space down the middle to do a cartwheel through the window. Relieved to be alone, I shoved my bag beneath the bottom bunk furthest from the door and lay down on top.

The next day, the other beds were still empty. Excited at the sight of my fully charged Nokia, I tore it out of the wall and turned it on. The little digital clock display informed me it was midday. Almost fully recharged myself, I yanked a small towel from the bottom of my bag along with a change of clothes and set off to find a shower. In the hallway I walked past the little French woman who wished me a good afternoon before continuing with her heated yet hushed French phone conversation. I looked back and watched her disappear into the room opposite mine.

Each of the grim, windowless shower rooms were dimly lit with single, buzzing yellow lightbulbs that flickered to life upon entering. I imagined they kept the rooms dark in a vain attempt to obscure the year-round gallery of limescale, dirt and rust. I poked my head into each of the rooms and settled on the one I deemed the least rancid.

Locking the door behind me, I studied my face in the cracked, toothpaste-stained mirror, unshaven and sullen, eyes sunken and dark. I dismissed myself and brushed my teeth with water. The shower seemed to spit every which way but downwards, but I had experienced worse.

Despite my appearance, I felt at least 99% ready to venture off into the day and drain the Jobcentre and country for everything they were worth. I knew I could get myself to 100% if only I had some toothpaste. Lifting my hand out to twist the door handle for room 14, a lightbulb turned on over my head; unlike those gloomy shower room bulbs, this one was bright and powerful. I wondered what it could mean and if somebody else were here could they see it. Then I remembered it’s just what happens when people have ideas. I turned to knock on room 16, the French woman was shouting things in French, opened the door without looking at me and turned back into the room. She continued her phone conversation at the window.

I held the door open with my foot, awaiting her acknowledgement. She continued on ranting in French, throwing her arms around, swapping her phone from ear to ear. Eventually she turned to face me, pausing mid-conversation. She said one last thing in French then hung up, confused by my presence.

“Sorry, I just wanted to ask you…”

“Yes, yes, come in,” she cut me off, rushing over and ushering me inside, peeking out into the hallway before closing the door behind me. She manoeuvred around me and stood as far away from me as possible. “Yes?” she asked.

She noticed me glancing at the collection of colourful baseball caps neatly laid out, side by side, on one of the two beds and a look of horror splashed across her face as she reached up to pat herself on her dainty little head with two hands. “Mon dieu!” she said, and then apologised for some reason and quickly put on one of the caps, an orange one with “mon dieu!” written across the front in white embroidery. Patting my own not so dainty head I tried to remember what I was doing in her room. “Toothpaste!” I suddenly blurted out, startling the little French woman. “That was it,” I said, “do you have any? I could really do with brushing my teeth properly and I haven’t got any toothpaste.”

For a few long seconds, she stood there, thinking about my question. “Yes, toothpaste, oui!” she said, producing a small transparent toiletry bag from the bum-bag around her waist. She held it up in front of her and gave it a shake, studying the contents before smiling and handing me the whole thing. I gave it a shake of my own and studied it further, once satisfied I nodded in approval, took out the toothpaste and handed the bag back to her. Standing at opposite sides of the room, her at the window, me at the door, we looked at each other, both wishing I would leave now.

“OK, thanks?” I said and left.

“Oh yes,” she answered, rushing over to open the door and politely push me out. This time, to brush my teeth, I opted for the sink precariously crammed into the corner of room 14. I looked at myself in the small mirror above the sink, and smiled with sparkling, slightly crooked teeth.

Happy with the result, I dragged my holdall out from under the bed and shoved it into locker number one. The awkward, ill-thought-out placement of the lockers, squashed between the sink and room door, preventing it from fully opening, made me feel at home.

Leaping down the stairs, I floated into the reception area, feeling light but powerful now I had finally shed my belongings. It must have been the red woman’s turn to play the role of receptionist as she dilly-dallied about behind the front desk. Or maybe she was doing something of great importance, I will never know. Either way, upon seeing me, she stopped whatever it was that she was doing and followed me to the door with her eyes.

Reaching the Jobcentre in record time, I nodded at the serious security guard and told him I needed to use the phones for as long as it would take to make a new claim. He pointed me in the right direction and told me to press 6. I made myself as comfortable as I could, cracked my fingers in front of me and picked up the phone.

Half an hour of Vivaldi’s “Spring” later, a quiet, uncertain man answered. I started my blag, expertly reeling off each chapter. With the man now thoroughly invested in my stories I shook a fist at my side in celebration as he asked me for my address. “Yes, my address is blah blah; the address of the hostel, whatever, yea yea,” mission successful. I hung up and punched the speed dial number for crisis loans. Another half an hour of Vivaldi later a spritely voice answered. They sounded like a very happy person; I played up to it, making jokes as we went through the motions. “Yes, I have just started a new claim but I won’t receive any money until next week and I’m penniless,” I told them, oh how we laughed. Ten minutes later, my new friend Gerald at the Jobcentre call centre was laughing and apologising for my current situation, assuring me things would get better.

“Leonard, I really hate to ask this but it is procedure and I have to do it because the sneaky bastards listen into our conversations, so forgive me…” he paused to clear his throat. “OK, so, Leonard Swanson, will you die if you don’t get this crisis loan?” he asked, regretfully.

“Of course I will, Gerald!” I exclaimed.

Gerald agreed and said he would be more than happy to grant me the loan of £80 and he demanded I take care. I thanked him using my sincere voice and hung up.

The serious security guard led me to the room allocated for collecting crisis loan cheques. He held the door open for me and I trod across the hard-wearing, rough, grey carpet and took a seat until I heard my name.

“Leonard Swanson,” a muffled voice finally called.

A short, evil-looking old man sat slouched behind a Perspex screen, grimacing as I approached. I slid my passport through the opening and waited while he inspected it. He held it up to the light, peering over it to see if I was who I was claiming to be and sighed in disappointment as he slid it back. He slid a form under the screen with no explanation. No need for one, I thought, does this poor old fool not know who I am? I signed the form and slid it back to him, glancing around the room at a young woman shushing a crying baby cradled in her arms. The other crisis loan winners successively shook their heads, releasing mumbles of annoyance under their putrid breaths. Personally, I was never really bothered by a crying baby human. I wouldn’t say I was a fan either, but I never found them any less annoying than the non-baby humans that breathe amongst us, and at least the crying baby kind don’t tell me their opinions when I haven’t asked.

My liberal train of thought was interrupted by the grumpy old grimacing man knocking on the screen that protected him from desperate doleites. Pointing down at the cheque he must have slid to me while I was thinking about how good of a person I was, unenthused, he called out the next name: “Sandra Something.” The room was glum and I tucked the cheque into my sock for extra safe-keeping and left in a hurry. The woman with the baby bumped into me. “Watch where you’re fucking going dickhead!” she snapped.

I froze, flabbergasted. “Wow,” I said quietly, after all those nice thoughts I had.

She rocked her baby and shushed it some more, turning her attention to the old man behind the counter. “Fucking cheer up mate,” she obnoxiously demanded.

I cashed the cheque at the post office round the corner, exchanging one bit of paper for more bits of paper. Now I had to survive until my dole came through roughly one week later when I would initiate phase two of the blag. First and foremost, I had to fill my belly with food it probably didn’t all the way agree with, so I headed back in the direction of the hostel, stopping at a little café on the way. I ate a full English breakfast with extra eggs instead of black pudding and drank some black coffee with too many sugars.

I thought about the album I was supposed to be working on, imagining once it was finished I’d sell ten thousand CD-Rs that I had burnt myself for maximum profit. My scruffy unshaven face on the front of prestigious music magazines no one cared about anymore. I would have enough money to rent a small flat in London without having to work in a factory or implement a complex long-con on the Jobcentre. I could see myself touring the album up and down the country and maybe even venturing out to perform in obscure towns of several European countries and maybe even the United States. After selling many more CD-Rs on my long successful tour, I would move into the then supposedly dying vinyl game, revitalising an industry. Upon selling too much for me to even account for, I would employ a bunch of generic suited humans or blurry-faced green folk to do mathematics while I disappeared deep into the sticks to smoke cigarettes, drink spirits and ride quad-bikes on my own land. And just as the glorious mud was splashing up onto my visor, I was pulled from the quad-bike and thrown high into the air landing in that wood-panelled room. Once again I was looking out of that same grand window into that same field and I was bored of it. I felt as though I was sighing, even though the body I was occupying did not sigh with me. Out in the field, I could see a girl that made me think of June, she was standing over a body lying face-down in the grass. They flickered in and out of my vision like weakly transmitted holograms before fading away.

I could hear someone calling my name in the distance, then suddenly it felt like my soul had been snatched up and dropped back into the body of Leonard Swanson. For a few seconds I questioned if it was even my body.

“Leonard?” I looked up to see Mike. He wasn’t wearing his name tag but I knew it was him because he still had on the same blue shirt with the gold chain on display and well, it was him.

“You alright there Len, you looked a bit err, spaced out then mate,” he said laughing, looking over at the woman behind the counter for encouragement, nodding sideways toward me. “Ay?” he said to the woman.

She joined in and laughed along. “Oh leave him alone you Mike!” she said jokingly.

Uncomfortable and somewhat abashed by Mike’s familiarity, I responded with a coy “Yeah, I’m alright,” looking down at my empty plate.

“Alright then mate, I’ll see you later yeah?” he said before turning back to the woman, thanking her for the coffee. “See you later Rita, yeah?” he said.

“Yeah, see you Mike,” she giggled.

I waited for Mike to leave, paid Rita and left.

A Brief History with Mike.

With a few days left until my dole money came through, I aimlessly wandered through the streets, rehearsing my lines for the next phase of my Jobcentre scam, never straying too far from the hostel. A couple of hours later, the script was memorised and ready for any curveballs thrown my way. I swung the double doors of the hostel open and stepped in, hoping to sneak past the reception desk, only to be caught by a dubious-looking Mike.

“Len,” he whispered. I pretended not to hear but he leant forward over the counter before I reached the stairs. “Psst, Len, Len,” he whispered again, louder.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there, sapnin’?” I reluctantly responded.

Leaning further over the counter he looked left and right to make sure the coast was clear of potential eavesdroppers.

“Er mate, help me with something will you?” he said secretively.

“What is it?” I responded, wary of becoming too friendly with a man that insisted on leaving the top four buttons of his shirt undone in less than ten degrees Celsius on a Tuesday. Plus I feared he would realise he had not charged me.

He took one last look around, making sure nobody other than me was paying attention. “Follow me,” he said, and stepped backwards until the trapdoor was between his feet. He reached down and pulled it open with both hands. “Come on,” he whispered, looking up at me, sounding more urgent like I might give the game away if I didn’t comply immediately.

“Err, OK,” I shrugged, and stepped behind the front desk. He held the trapdoor open and I went down first. Stepping into the unknown while the only way out is in the hands of a man you barely know is not something one should make a habit of, but there we were. Mike checked the coast was clear and followed me in, carefully closing the trapdoor above him. Each of the wooden steps creaked louder than the last as I descended closer to the uneven concrete floor below.

Eventually I reached the bottom. The basement was as dimly lit as the shower rooms, but from what I could make out, in my experience, seemed to be fairly typical for a premises of its kind. A few boxes here and there, general bits of old junk, etc., nothing out of the ordinary.

Against the exposed brick wall across the room stood an antique bookcase which, despite being devoid of books and enveloped in thick mats of dust and cobwebs, still looked valuable. I imagined, if restored to its original glory, it would have been a great addition to the room with the grand window.

Mike stepped down onto the cold ground, walked around me and over to the bookcase. “Give us a hand will you Len,” he said and slowly heaved the bookcase away from the wall.

I joined in half-heartedly, using no strength whatsoever, allowing Mike to do all the work. Finally, he seemed satisfied with the amount of space between the bookcase and wall. I stepped back to take a look. Hidden behind the bookcase was a big steel door and lying on the floor in front of the door, a big bunch of keys. Mike picked them up and began unlocking the array of padlocks of varying shapes and sizes one by one. Often having to try several keys per lock before picking the right one.

He lay the last padlock down on the floor. “That should do it,” he said, then pushed the heavy door open with a clang and a boom. The room behind it lit up, photographs of blurry-faced creatures and not so blurry-faced human ones filled the fading hospital-blue walls. A pile of laptops, bits of paper and more photographs were scattered across a steel desk.

“Who are you, man? What is this place?” I asked, for the first time concerned, one foot in and one foot out with a hand against the open door.

“Pull the bookcase over the door will you Len mate?” he said, not registering my question.

I looked around the room again and hesitated but curiosity won.

“Argh, alright then fuck it,” I complied.

I tried to pull the bookcase but didn’t get very far.

“It’s too heavy, man,” I moaned, prompting Mike to do it instead. Once the bookcase was in place, he closed the metal door; the scraping of metal on concrete went through me, making me shudder. Scanning the mosaic of photographs on the walls, I stopped at a picture of myself standing on stage frowning into a microphone. Snatching the photograph from the wall, leaving half the Blu Tack behind in its place, I turned to Mike.

“This is a good picture like, but why is it here?”

“Well mate, that’s why I got you down here isn’t it?” Mike responded. “You’ve got a passenger… in here mate,” he said, tapping his head with his index finger, “being used as what they call a vessel you are.”

I shook my head with my hands up, exasperated.

“They got you when you worked in that GENPHARM factory up north mate,” he informed me, then looked at me, smiling with his mouth closed, awaiting a response I was too dumbfounded to give.

“Well mate,” he continued with a shrug, straightening his posture and turning on his heel like a soldier to face the wall from which I snatched the photograph, “a quick history lesson is in order.” He cracked his neck with his hand and cleared his throat, “I guess it started with those blurry-faced green bastards” he said, pointing at a picture of one of them on the wall, “Although I wouldn’t pin all the blame on them! We don’t know exactly when they first arrived, and we haven’t got the foggiest where the fuck from either, so don’t ask!” he joked. “We don’t even know how or when the first few of them got here but we suspect it was definitely a long, long time ago and by means we would never be able to comprehend anyway.”

I tilted my head like a dumb dog trying to understand.

“You still with me?” he asked. I definitely wasn’t but nodded anyway. It was obvious I was lost but he was raring to power on with or without me, I shrugged and motioned for him to continue. “Go ‘ed then” I tutted.

“At first there were only a few of ’em, almost exclusively mingling with the elite, wooing ’em with their cloaking technology and other advancements. Trading knowledge and weird beeping machines for positions of power and wealth. By the Eighties, more and more of ’em arrived, now there are tons of ’em! But like any sentient being with half their wits about ’em, they inevitably gave in to the allure of alcohol and other such delights, just like the rest of us!” Mike laughed. “Ay,” he said, prompting me to fake a laugh.

“And yeah, there’s still a couple of ’em at the top of the pyramid of course but for the most part they’re down here at the bottom with you and me,” he said, pointing at me then turning his finger to himself. “You know, scrubbing up the shit and that!” he added.

“Factory workers, train crews, toilet attendants and whatever… the fucking fellas selling bloody hot nuts by the river!” He stopped again; the silence made me feel as though I had to add something this time.

“Err, hot nuts? Never been a fan,” is the best I could come up with.

Ignoring my input, Mike went on. “Yes, they hide themselves from us but don’t we hide ourselves from each other anyway?” he asked, now with a tone of empathy in his voice. “I mean, I once knew a man. A human man, Nathan, nicest fella,” he paused, in quiet reflection, “mates for years we were. One day yeah, we were having a lovely little lock in, just a few of us, my old local, a little bit of karaoke and that. All of a sudden, just as Nathan was belting out the second chorus of “Hotel California,” the old bill came bursting through the door, splinters of wood flying everywhere. At first we thought, bit excessive for a lock in? But they ignored all of us mate, headed straight over to Nathan they did, tackled him to the ground, whacked him in handcuffs! Turns out he had drowned his wife and kids years before, somehow got away with it, well, until then that is.” His voice turned sombre as he looked down at his boots and shook his head. “None of us could believe it mate, not Nathan? We would say, surely not?” He lifted his head, “Well in the end he admitted the whole thing mate, told them exactly what happened, every intimate gory detail, stuff only the killer would know.” He shook his head once again, replacing the sombre tone for an angrier one. “Oh, and also, turns out his name wasn’t even fucking Nathan!” he threw his hands up either side of his shoulders, expressing his disbelief. “Anthony it was, fucking Anthony?!”

Unsure of what I was supposed to do with this story, I awkwardly shrugged, said “No way…” and “That’s proper mad… man.” The room got quiet again.

“The point is,” Mike said, “those blurry cunts, for the most part, aren’t even the real threat here. Who cares if they hide their true appearance? They look like shit anyway! They’ll tell you that themselves if you find an honest one. And of course, they may have given birth to the foundations of the technology that PEEPHOLE CORP would go on to alter and use to turn poor unsuspecting sods, no offence, into fucking vessels, but that’s not what those blurry fucks intended it to be used for. That was all the work of us greedy fucking sick bastard humans! We’ll figure out a way to monetize anything,” explained Mike, becoming more and more animated as he ventured deeper down the rabbit hole.

“Your passenger’s contract expired a while back mate, but he’s still tapping into your brain, which could only mean one thing, he has bought you outright, the annexation process has commenced. We suspect the software is glitching and that’s why you’ve been having those hallucinatory experiences. Luckily it’s a lengthy process even when it’s not glitching, so there’s still time,” he said, now edging closer to put his hand on my shoulder. “And with time is hope my friend.”

I dropped my shoulder and stepped back; Mike’s hand fell to his side. “Hold on a minute… bought me? Who owned me to sell me?” I asked, puzzled.

“You’ve actually been sold three times now mate!” said Mike. “When you signed the contract at that Job Agency, you, like everybody else, neglected the fine print, or any of the print for that matter I assume. By signing your name on that dotted line, you were actually granting the government permission to sell you to the Agency. The Agency then leased you to GENPHARM. Once you were picked by a potential passenger you were chipped and sold to PEEPHOLE CORP who rented you out as a vessel for peepholing, as they call it.” Mike stopped. “You following?” I nodded. “Unfortunately for you mate, your passenger opted to buy and initiate the annexation package,” said Mike.

He explained how not many actually go through with the annexation process of course, as the vessels are almost exclusively working-class, everyday people, some barely with a pot to piss in, while the passengers are exclusively stinking-rich members of the elite. For the most part they just got off on hopping in and out of a poor person’s brain as they pleased, seeing what it was like, experiencing hardship with the ability to opt out when it got too much.

“Where is this chip?” I asked Mike, “can’t we just cut it out?”

“Unfortunately not, Len, it’s lodged deep into the brain somewhere.”

“How did they chip me, surely I’d remember?” I asked.

“That’s the thing mate, you’d have just thought a fly flew up your nose, or a bit of dust or somethin’, probably brushed it off as nothing, maybe had a few headaches the following days, they’re sneaky fuckers,” explained Mike.

Looking back, I probably should have darted straight out of the door right then, bought a rifle and hunted down the Bestard family like foxes, but I just kept staring at the wall of photographs. Dotted about, I caught the odd picture of some evil mega-wealthy green creature, but for the most part it was just evil wealthy humans. Below them, photographs of their lowly vessels, all of them current or ex-GENPHARM factory employees.

I asked Mike one hundred and one questions while he sat at the metal desk clicking away at one of the laptops. Leaning the ins and outs of “peepholing,” the name they gave to this sickeningly invasive pastime for perverted wealthy interlopers. The “passenger” has zero control over the host vessel while peepholing, but some have reported being able to tap into their host’s sense of touch and, on rare occasions, feeling their host’s extreme pain or pleasure. For the most part, however, the passenger is limited only to peering through the eyes of their unwitting host, seeing what they’re unwittingly allowing them to see. At the end of the contract, if the passenger wants to continue peepholing, they may, but they must choose a different vessel. Or, they can opt to go through with the perverse “annexation” process, an irreversible procedure once complete, in which the passenger parts with their own body and an unfathomable sum of money in order to take over their host vessel entirely, assuming all control.

Studying the photographs as I walked around the room, I expected I would possibly recognise some of the passengers’ faces, for the rich tended to be popular in this world, even if they were merely born that way, but I didn’t expect to recognise any of the people being used as vessels.

Then, tucked away in the top corner of the wall, an old man with a full thick head of brilliant Dulux-white hair caught my eye. “Robert!” I said aloud. Above his smiling face was the photograph of his hijacker, a man of similar age and build, with similar white hair. Only rather than wearing a white lab coat and standing in front of a wall bearing the GENPHARM logo, celebrating his twentieth year as a line-picker, his hijacker was standing in front of a collection of classic cars in an expensive suit, celebrating his latest vehicular purchase, smiling widely.

His name was Solomon McKinney, the disgraced founder of a global retail giant. I wondered why he didn’t opt for a younger vessel. Maybe he didn’t have time to find one, maybe Robert was all PEEPHOLE CORP had at that time and McKinney was just desperate to escape the humiliation of his perverted crimes.

“Did you know Robert, then? I know you worked in the same factory but wasn’t sure if you crossed paths like that,” said Mike.

“Yeah, knew him well… used to work with him,” I said sadly, looking up at his photograph.

“Well, there’s a kind of poetic conclusion to the lives of Mr. McKinney and Robert. You see, that fucking evil pervert McKinney rushed into the annexation process after just six months, mustn’t have done any research or nothing cos what he didn’t know was Robert had cancer! He’d been hiding it from his own family even. Probably didn’t want anyone causing a fuss and worrying. The cancer eventually found its way into his brain, his wife found out he was sick and put his odd behaviour down to that, passed away a few weeks after McKinney took over his body,” Mike said. “And it gets better, the stupid fuck must have deposited millions into a bank account in Robert’s name before the process was complete. Of course, he didn’t change Robert’s will, so his family inherited the lot.” Mike laughed sombrely.

“Ha, damn, RIP. Robert was alright, man,” I said, botching my attempt at making the sign of the cross. “Well, who’s this passenger of mine then?” I asked.

“Rich Bestard VIII,” said Mike.

“Rich Bestard VIII?”

“Rich Bestard VIII,” Mike echoed. “And seeing as his old man runs the GENPHARM empire, he got you for mates’ rates, somewhere in the region of thirty-three and a half mill, pocket change for that Rich Bestard.”

Forehead tightly creased, slowly nodding, I felt oddly pleased with the £33.5 million price tag, especially seeing as that was considered mates’ rates. “Not bad,” I mused, “how much would I have been worth had it not been mates’ rates?” I wondered aloud.

“Young lad like yourself living a, well, let’s just say intriguing life in the mind of the right client, probably around a hundred mill plus mate.”

Decent, I thought, with a smug grin. “But why did Rich Bestard VII’s son choose me? Surely they could choose anyone they wanted?”

“Well, the little Rich Bestard is a big Leonard Swanson fan, Leonard Swanson,” Mike responded, laughing slightly and stopping, uncertain as to whether I would take offence, “and a big wannabe rapper himself, not very good as you’d expect.” I was glad to hear this and laughed in my head. On the outside of my head, I looked at the photograph of myself and stuck it back to the wall. Mike followed the photo to its place, below the photograph of Rich Bestard VIII standing next to his father, Rich Bestard VII.

“He wished he could be you and now he can unless you can stop him mate,” said Mike.

Above the photograph of the Bestards, I noticed a picture of a familiar-looking building, a grand, old mansion with a clock tower. “Wait, I know this place,” I said, pointing at the picture, “I’ve been there! At least, sort of, in my hallucination thingies.”

Mike turned to the metal desk, tossing bits of paper to the side, digging through endless photographs. “Aha! There you are,” he said, producing a smaller photograph of the same building. He handed it to me, “Turn it over” he said. On the other side was an address. I’m no Einstein, but I assumed it was the address of the building in the photograph.

“Mike, how do we know this little prick isn’t in my head right now?” I asked, tapping my palm with the photograph.

“We can’t know for sure Len, but I think your hallucinations happen either when he logs in or logs out mate.”

Over Mike’s shoulder, I noticed a photograph of the French woman from room 16 on the desk in front of him, possibly ten years younger. I reached over his shoulder and picked it up for a closer look. “Ay, this is that French woman innit?” I asked Mike.

“Uh huh,” he replied, missing as he tried to snatch it back.

On the desk was torn-out page of a magazine. On it, surrounded by text, was the picture of an old man who I also recognised.

“Alain Anglade… no way,” I proclaimed. Alain Anglade, the controversial, quintessential, eccentric, possibly pure evil billionaire. A few years back I was deep into Anglade conspiracies, none of them as wacky as what he was really up to. “Wait, Mike… Alain Anglade? Did he? Is he?”

“The French woman?” Mike finished my question for me. “Yes,” he answered himself, looking away in embarrassment

Alain Anglade, a man once blamed for secretly running the world, a man that became so rich and powerful that governments around the globe tiptoed in his presence, bending to his every will. His family, and people that claimed to know him, were constantly trying to convince the general public that he was in fact not only a lovely, caring man, but a colossal philanthropist that gave away billions by the end of his life. They claimed he died a meagre millionaire! He just didn’t make a big fuss about it. “Yeah right!” conspiracy theorists would say.

Critics claimed his penchant for brightly coloured baseball caps, often worn with suits and trainers, was merely an act to appear “relatable.” Though I had my doubts about that particular claim as I can’t imagine exactly who would be relating, except maybe the odd kooky trainspotter. In his latter years, his body began to deteriorate rapidly, though his mind remained intact.

The French woman from room 16, at least the body of the French woman from room 16, before Alain Anglade assumed control over it, was in fact a Danish woman called Heidi Sondergaard, a former employee at a GENPHARM factory somewhere in the northern region of Denmark. She had no known family and those who knew her best didn’t know her at all. Her neighbours, however, did report noticing some strange behaviour the last time they saw her. Heidi, a quiet, shy, plain person, suddenly dressed in pantsuits with colourful caps and trainers and began speaking broken Danish with a French accent.

Her neighbours couldn’t recall ever seeing her leave for the last time, but some months later the police entered her home with her landlord. Heidi, or Alain in Heidi’s body, was of course long gone by then. A police officer found a note atop the dining room table, handwritten in French. The note proclaimed Heidi was in love with a wealthy French man with whom she ran away with to “sail the seven seas and dine on shrimp and lobster,” before going on to emphasise with underlined bold writing that, whoever reads the note should “not come looking for her” as she “doesn’t want to be found.”

Eventually someone else moved into her former home and that was that, she was forgotten about like Pete or Gary or Garry.

“Mental, init mate?” said Mike.

Alain had tried out many vessels over his life, and towards the end, shortly after he fell sick, discovered Heidi. His body grew weaker and weaker and eventually he became wheelchair-bound, seeking comfort inside Heidi’s head for hours at a time; the crippled passenger of an able-bodied vessel. It is uncertain if he had always wanted to be a woman and decided to use this opportunity to make the transition, or whether it was just something he grew to enjoy. Poor Heidi, of course, had no clue of her passenger’s presence.

The day he became wheelchair-bound he decided, in secret, that he would very much like to assume full control over Heidi’s body. Biding his time, waiting until the last minute, making sure not to make the same mistake as McKinney, he had a new passport and bank account set up for his new life as “Maria Flon,” the alias he created for his new self inside Heidi Sondergaard’s former body.

Alain shipped the package containing his new identity and bank card and completed the annexation process the day before it arrived at her address.

“What happens to the consciousness of the person once they’ve been hijacked though?” I asked Mike.

“We don’t really know mate, one theory is they’re just gone, wiped out, the other is they become a passenger in their own mind, watching through the eyes of what was once their body. As sad as it is, I hope it’s the first theory.” We both agreed and shuddered.

Life Comes First.

“Argh man! I haven’t got time for all of this Mike, I need to initiate phase two of my Jobcentre scam and finish my album,” I announced, standing at the reception desk while Mike rummaged through the clutter trying to locate his name tag.

“Well mate, if you want to finish that album, you’re going to need to sort this out and quick!” he responded in a loud whisper, pinning the name tag to his shirt pocket. I nodded and left.

Round the corner of the hostel, I punched my pin into a cash machine. I was delighted to finally receive my first dole payment — a life-changing sum of £82.05. I still had £40 in cash left from last week’s crisis loan which meant I had a grand total of £122.05, enough to start my ascension.

With the knowledge that horrible little Rich Bestard bastard could be inside my head right then and could assume control at any moment, I burst into the Jobcentre at full speed, nodding at the serious security guard and heading straight for the phones. Half an hour of Vivaldi later a voice finally answered and I got to work.

“Yes, I withdrew all of my money from the cash machine and jumped on a bus in search of a job and… and when I stepped off the bus, I quickly realised I no longer had the money! I chased the bus down the road but it was useless, couldn’t catch it, fast as fuck when they want to be them busses!” I explained. “I am now back to square one and will surely die if I don’t get some money today,” I said, making my voice crack a little to show my desperation.

The voice on the phone said something.

“Yes,” I said back.

They informed me that when I was last on the dole, I had the exact same issue.

“Err…” I responded. I thought I had been caught. Forced to think on my feet, or backside in that particular case, I blurted out, “Yes, you are right actually, that did happen a couple of years back, I remember it well, the day was a sunny one, the pavements were sweating, the heat waves rising from the street like hell was…”

The voice cut me off to let me know it was winter when it last happened.

“Ah yes, it was, you’re right, I remember it well, the day was a cold one? Yes, the pavement, slippery with ice, err, either way those busses are robbing cunts and have been for a long time.”

The phone went quiet.

“Hello?” I said.

I heard a long sigh — they too were fed up with everyone.

The voice began to speak.

“Yes, mhmm” I answered, “Leonard, yes, L-e-o-n… yes that’s right, yes, Swanson.”

Thirty seconds of silence later they spoke.

“OK, OK, thank you!” I answered, trying not to sound too excited. I slammed the phone down and laughed victoriously.

And back to the crisis loan area I marched to the same man sitting behind the Perspex screen. My name was called a few moments later, same questions, same ID, sign here, here’s a cheque, done. A lot more efficient this time around, I thought, they’re really starting to step things up. Back to the post office to cash my latest cheque and, just like that, another £82.05.

“£204.10 in total,” I said to myself, still not enough but we’re heading in the right direction.

I topped my phone up with £5 credit and headed back to the hostel. I became one of the beady-eyed patrons in the shadows of the communal space, joining in with the sacred ceremonial hammering of PC keyboards.

Avoiding any agent-controlled properties, I scoured the independent landlord corner of the internet, clicking on flats, bedsits, studios, whatever I could find that wasn’t shared accommodation. I made a list of potential future homes on a piece of paper, intermittently slurping on a can of Cherry Coke, doing my best to concentrate while loud guests loitered in the open air communal space at the back, smoking European cigarettes.

I sat on the top bunk in the far corner of room 14, legs dangling, watching the cars drive by while I made my way down the list. With three viewings for the next day secured I jumped to the floor full of optimism.

The first two viewings were studio apartments with communal bathrooms; one of them was too small even for a bed but I still would have taken it had nothing else come through. The other studio apartment wasn’t much better but had a big bay window overlooking a busy street. At the very least I could open it and sit there flicking ash on all who dare traipse below.

I arrived at the third property, which was about a mile walk from the second one. Running slightly late, I pre-warned the landlord, blaming my fictional job. In the car park of a brown, five-storey building divided into several flats, I was greeted by a sweet old lady in a cardigan. She told me her name was Fatma, Fatma Takakura, down the line I would learn she was a Turkish woman that married a Japanese property developer in London in the Sixties. Her husband had passed away sometime in the Nineties, leaving several properties in her capable hands. The building had no lift but Fatma scaled the stairs with little effort as I panted away behind her, all the way up to the fourth floor.

She walked in and stood in the middle of the room pointing in various directions. The room was bigger than the last two, and partly furnished with a double bed, a small TV cabinet minus TV, a desk pushed against a wall and a small wardrobe. In the corner was a small kitchenette area with an old mini-oven and an even older microwave. To the side of the kitchenette was a door that led to the tiny en suite bathroom with a shower and a toilet somehow squeezed inside.

“So it’s £700 a month,” she told me, an utter rip-off in any other part of the country but that’s London and that’s just how it was and is. Admittedly, I had never spent £700 on any one thing before but was confident I could force the government to cover it.

I pulled my phone out and nodded, acting as though I was making a note of Fatma’s long list of important details I probably needed to know. What I was really doing was writing down some rhymes I had just thought of:

Had a job but I quit,

That blag a flat with no money shit

Don’t worry I’ll just get the Government to cover it

I smiled at my genius and looked up at Fatma, who had stopped talking. Hoping she wasn’t waiting for an answer to a question I had missed, I smiled and looked around the room. “I’ll take it,” I said.

“Oh great, great,” she responded happily, her voice soft and sweet like an err soft sweet? I smiled again at my genius.

Informing her I would pay the £150 holding fee at once, we exchanged numbers and she was delighted to have sorted a tenant for the flat.

In order to definitively secure the flat though, I would need to acquire one month’s rent and an equal amount for the deposit, minus the £150 I had already given her for the holding fee. If there was one thing I was good at, it was hustling together just enough money to prevent me from devolving into a desperate child chimney sweep from the early 1800s.

Stopping at an off license on my way back to the hostel I picked up a couple of strong celebratory Polish beers I couldn’t pronounce and opened one of them while staring out of the filthy window of room 14. In the blink of an eye I was transported back to the grand window. This time the body I now understood belonged to Rich Bestard VIII was holding a piece of paper in its hands and appeared to be writing something. Its green, wart-ridden hand lifted the paper to its eyes: “had a job but I quit, that blag a flat with no money shit, don’t worry I’ll just get the Government to cover it.” This green bastard was biting my lyrics! I was furious but could do nothing about it while I was stuck in his head.

My eyes shot open revealing a sideways view of the plug sockets beneath one of the bunk beds. T-shirt soaked in beer, I sat up on the floor and pulled it over my head, squirming as the collar brushed my latest head wound. “Not again,” I said to myself, discovering a fresh new cut. Poking it with a finger, I looked down to discover a small puddle of blood where my head had hit the floor. I must have fallen off the top bunk and knocked myself out. “Bestard!!” I growled through gritted teeth, hoping he was in my head to hear it.

The Saga of Rich Bestard VIII, Chapter 1.

The following morning I managed to bunk a train to Oxford drama-free and jumped into the back seat of a taxi outside the station, startling the driver reading his morning newspaper. I leant forward, shoving the photograph of Rich Bestard’s grand manor into his face. “Take me there please mate,” I instructed, flipping it over to the address scribbled on the back.

“No problem mate,” the driver responded, glancing at me through the rear view. He folded the newspaper, threw it onto the passenger seat, then pulled out of the station. We drove past a couple of hotels and a row of tall townhouses. We went over a small bridge and down a straight two-lane road, turning off onto an A road. Twenty minutes later we turned off onto a different A road, speeding past a golf club into a vast nature reserve.

I closed my eyes in case Rich was in my head and kept them shut for the duration of the journey. Below my cheap stolen sunglasses my eyes squinted open as we pulled up to a massive gated entrance. I paid the driver and thanked him.

The taxi turned and sped off behind me. I thought about my next move. The huge wooden gate had been painted black and was encased in a brick arch. On top of it were spikes. The outside of the gate was smooth and flat making it impossible to scale so I walked into the trees to the side. Behind the trees was a big wall, the top of which was covered in barbed wire and anti-vandal paint. Racking my brain, I walked back across the closed entrance to the stand-alone video intercom. Below the little camera was a silver button and I pushed it in and held it there for thirty seconds, creating a long continuous buzz. I imagined the sound echoing loudly all through the mansion. Gangs of Bestard’s yes men bumping into each other in a panicked frenzy. “The great Leonard Swanson is here, he has come for revenge!”

No one answered. I sat down on the step next to the intercom and hoped Rich would log in to my head soon so he could see where I was and open the stupid gate. Or maybe he already had. Maybe he had already figured out what I was going to do days before. Or maybe I got lucky and he missed that chapter. Maybe he just logged in this morning and saw me en route. Either way, I wasn’t leaving until I had done whatever it was I was there to do.

Navigating the perimeter wall, I stopped at a tree with a branch I believed might extend far enough over the wall. The wall and tree were close enough for me to chimney up between the two. So, with one hand and foot against the wall and the other hand and foot against the tree trunk, I pushed and pulled my way up. At the top, I grabbed a hold of the branch above with both hands and adjusted myself so that my back was against the tree and both my feet were on the top of the wall.

I walked my hands along the branch until I was standing upright and I caught my breath and fixed my sunglasses. I shook off the vertigo and composed myself. Through the overhanging branches, I could see the immaculately built, fifteenth-century mansion in all its flickering glory.

I turned toward the tree and clambered over the branch. On my front, I pushed myself backwards until I was three metres or so clear of the wall. The branch started to bend under my weight but there was no going back. I heard a cracking sound and reached out to grab handfuls of leaves and smaller branches. It was too late. I hurtled towards the ground below. A man less experienced in falling may have had their life flash before them and accepted their fate, I on the other hand hit the ground feet first, expertly breaking my fall with a perfectly executed forward roll.

If someone were to be watching, I imagine they would have believed I was a professional right until ungracefully stumbling down the gentle slope and into the wall. Once composed, I noticed a security camera hidden amongst the trees, facing away from me. The security system wasn’t great but it was a damn sight better than GENPHARM’s, I thought.

Suddenly aware I might actually be running out of time, I felt a sudden sense of urgency and marched out of the shadows of the trees. And just as I was picking up the pace it happened again, I felt my body collapsing mid-stride. “Fuck’s sake.” I blinked and I was in that room, Rich Bestard VIII’s eyes were trained on the exact spot where my collapsed body should have been but it wasn’t there. At least I knew I wasn’t seeing through his eyes in real-time. And it was reasonable to guess these glitches actually happening due to him logging out of my head. It would make no sense for him to continue peering through my eyes if every time he logged in they were closed and I was eating dirt. At that point, I assumed he was aware I was there. I just hoped he had only just found out and had no time to prepare.

I felt myself return to my body, up close and personal with the freshly mown grass. “Fucking hell, man!” I moaned, sick of being in that position. My march continued.

Finally I reached the outside of the window I had looked out of so many times. Inside I could see Rich, his blurry green face blurrier than ever as he fumbled about in a flurry. He turned and spotted me through the window. We were now standing in front of each other, either side of the glass. Rich, frozen in fear, me, animated and angry. “Open the window you little nob ’ed!” I demanded, pointing and slapping the glass.

He just stood there looking at me, clueless as to what to do next. “Fucking open it!” I demanded again. “Look, I’m not mad,” I said angrily, “I just want to…” I paused for breath, “… talk to you mate,” I said, managing to sound calmer.

Finally he found some semblance of courage and attempted to speak. I could just about make out the word “please”. He held his hands out with his palms up, pleading.

“Yeah, it’s fine, just open the fucking window!” I started calmly but snapped again.

Rich stood there like an idiot, red tartan pyjama trousers with a black hoodie, trembling. He shook his blurry head, unlocked and slid the window up and open. As soon as there was enough space I launched myself through it head-first, reaching out to grab him but missing as he lazily stepped to the side. My sunglasses flew off into the room. Once again I found myself face-down, this time on a faded Persian rug.

“I… I’m… Sor… Sor…” he stuttered.

“Just pop the cork and talk to me properly, I know you’re one of them,” I said, gesticulating with both hands glaring up from the floor.

He said nothing.

“Can’t you hear me man?” I said. “Just pop the fucking cork and speak to me.” I picked myself up, losing balance slightly as I put weight on my right leg, causing me to rest my hand on the desk.

Rich lifted his hoodie over his head, dropped it on the floor and pushed it out of the way with a hairy green foot. I threw my hand over my eyes at the sight of his dark yellow toenails, taking quick peeks to make sure he didn’t try anything. He lifted his black Wu-Tang Clan T-shirt to his chest and tugged at the cork lodged in the giant slimy mouth of his belly. I hid behind my hand again.

“Argh man,” I said as the cork popped out.

“I’m sorry Leonard!” he said, in a very clear, well-spoken voice.

“You’re sorry?!” I said, exasperated. “Sorry that you paid someone to hitch a ride in my head and then take over my body? What’s wrong with you man, you sick fuck!” The framed paintings on the wall caught my eye. As I had earlier suspected, the work of Larry McElroy.

“Aw what the fuck man!” I said, pointing at one of the paintings and shaking my head in disbelief.

In my peripheral I saw one of his feet edge toward me and instinctively launched myself at him, shoulder barging him into the wall next to the window. His heavy-set frame slammed into the wood-panelling, causing two of the Larry McElroy paintings, framed in glass, to drop to the floor and shatter as he cowered on one hand. “Please, don’t!” he said, holding his free hand out to protect his blurry face.

“Where is it?” I said.

“Where is what?” he answered, dropping his hand.

“The machine? I don’t know, whatever you sick fucks use to hitch a ride in other people’s heads!” I realised then that I had no idea how it actually worked. Was it some sort of headgear? A beeping device attached to the temple? Some abstract alien telepathic technology? I started rummaging through the drawers of the desk, pulling out all sorts of hoarder junk, throwing notepads, family photos, magazines, old mobile phones, empty baggies, etc. I filled the floor with its contents.

“Wait, wait,” he pleaded, “it’s in my pocket.”

“Don’t fucking move!” I shouted, leaping over the desk to where he was slumped against the wall. I patted him down and pulled out a small contraption from his pocket, instantly dropping it in disgust. “What the fuck is that?” I said in horror.

A small, thin device, the size of a betting shop pen with a tiny bright flashing white light on one end. It was not metallic as I had expected it to be. Oddly, it appeared and felt like organic matter, slightly squidgy and slimy to the touch like a sea creature.

I stomped down on it as hard as I could, feeling it squish beneath my trainer, only for it to regain shape when I lifted my foot away. I rolled it across the rug with the sole of my shoe, away from Rich. I used a page torn from one of the notepads to pick it up. Studying it up close, at varying angles, I had never seen anything like it. “How do you make it work?” I asked.

“Just beneath its flesh, on the opposite side to the little flashing light, is a button.” His voice was shaky and I was glad.

“Yeah, then what?” I said and frowned at him.

“Once you’ve located the button, you just push it in until you feel it crunch. Then, in the case of a human user, lodge it deep into the nostril of your choice. In the case of a blurry green bastard such as I, it is to be shoved into the ex-0-stromia.”

“What the fuck’s an ex-0-stromada?”

My curiosity had a calming effect on my blurry-faced hijacker and he slowly stood and righted himself.

“Ex-0-stromia… it’s a… well it’s a sort of cat-like rhinarium, at least aesthetically, only with a single, nostril-esque passage, leading to our second brain. It is located atop our equivalent to the human calvaria,” he said.

“What? How many brains do you have?”

“Just the two,” he answered.

I couldn’t withhold my laughter. “Why are you still an idiot then?” I said and slapped my thigh in amusement.

One of the many questions I had swirling around my single brain suddenly bulldozed its way to the top of my list of curiosities and out of my mouth, “Why can I see you lot for what you are really and err, really, what you are yet and…” I caught a glimpse of his belly making me fumble my words, “… urgh, I mean, for what you really are and yet your faces still appear blurry?”

Rich took a deep gulp of air through his belly mouth. “I thought you knew? Didn’t Mi…” he stopped himself and froze thinking he had already said too much.

“Knew what?” I asked.

“Our faces are blurry even to us, we are implanted with a device from birth, obscuring our faces not only from ourselves but each other too,” he slowed down his speech, sounding sad, “for we are so ugly, even we don’t want to see us,” he told me.

“OK, I get it, but what was you going to say? You thought I knew, why did you think I knew?”

He hesitated. “I, I just thought, I err, I just thought seeing as you knew about us…” His two brains were working at full capacity trying to come up with a fake answer I would be satisfied with and I knew it. I would have pried further had I not glanced down at the device I was holding. I squeezed it tightly and held it out in front of me.

“And I assume even if I did manage to break this…” I stopped, unsure what to call it, “… thing.”

“It’s called a vibris,” Rich informed me, which in turn caused me to accidentally catch another glimpse of his belly mouth, this time making me wretch violently. Somehow withstanding the urge to vomit up my stomach lining, I composed myself and backtracked to finish my question.

“If I managed to break this… vibris? You can obviously just buy another one init?”

“Only if I convinced my father to pay the £15 million fee again,” Rich said with a timid laugh. I couldn’t tell whether it came from his belly mouth or somewhere behind the blur. There were too many questions.

“Err, hold on a minute,” I said, shaking my head clear, trying to cover one topic at a time. “£15 million? Don’t you mean £33.5 million?” I asked.

“£33.5 million? No, as you’re well aware, my father is the CEO of GENPHARM, so the guys at PEEPHOLE did give us a discount, but it was never £33.5 million,” he assured me.

I was unsure whether to trust him, maybe he was in my head when Mike originally told me my real worth and upon witnessing by elation was trying to get in my head the old-fashioned way.

“You sure?” I pushed.

“Yes, I am sure,” he answered.

“Fucking Mike!” I shook my head. “Damn, so how much would I have been if there were no mates’ rates then?” I asked.

“Around the £20 million mark,” Rich said.

“Fucking hell.” I was disappointed but still not entirely convinced he was telling the truth. “Are you fucking with me man?” I pressed.

“No, I’m telling you the truth. That’s still a lot of money, not as much as the top-end vessels, but a lot for an untested model,” he said, convincingly.

“Damn,” I went from feeling like an indispensable European Champions League-winning top-three superstar to the star signing of a mid-table Premier League team.

And I was suddenly hit with a gentle stroke of genius, and as though a hundred 20,000-watt lightbulbs lit up over my head at once, blinding me with my own brilliance, I put my spontaneous plan into action.

“Well, I’m keeping this whatchamacallit,” I said, shoving the device into my pocket.

“Vibris,” Rich said.

“What?” I frowned. “Well anyway, let’s come to an agreement so you don’t go begging daddy to buy another one,” I conspired, touching the tips of my fingers together.

“Well that’s unli…” said Rich Jr.

“Just hear me out,” I butted in. “How about yeah…” pausing for dramatic effect, “how about I sell you a verse?” I said, all the while looking away from him so as not to catch another sickening glimpse of his vomit-inducing belly mouth.

“Really?” Rich Jr said with such an innocent tone I actually almost pitied him. “You’d really do that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered sternly, and began doing maths half under my breath, half in my head while counting on my fingers. Rent is 700, “plus” deposit of “equal amount” equals 1400, “minus the” 150 holding fee equals… “£1250!” I belted out.

“OK!” answered an elated Rich Bestard VIII, without hesitation.

“Plus travel!” I added.

“OK.” He held his palms out again to make sure I was calm and cool with him moving across the room. I nodded to let him know I would not attack as he waddled over to his bed and pulled out a shoebox from under it. He opened it and counted out £1250 in £50 notes. I leapt over and snatched the money out of his hand and recounted it. I shoved it into my pocket, held my hand out and clicked my fingers.

“Come on,” I said. He looked confused.

“Oh!” he said, “Sorry, how much was travel?” “Errm,” I paused to think, “£60?”

“I only have £50 notes,” he responded.

“£50 then,” I said.

He pulled out another £50 note and I snatched that out of his hand too. He closed the box and pushed it back under his bed. What a sucker, I didn’t even pay for the train! I laughed in my head and cracked a wry smile.

The Saga of Rich Bestard VIII, Chapter 2.

Cobwebs hung proudly from every corner of the room. The wooden beams looked weakened, possibly rotting in several places. Between the beams, the plaster was spotty with mould and the paint was peeling like sunburnt skin. The thick layer of dust lining the skirting boards even made me squirm and shake my head in disgust. “These people are savages!” I thought. I guess that’s what they mean when they say filthy rich? Or maybe it was just Rich’s room? Punishment for trying to be a rapper? I wanted to gloat but that bumbling bodysnatching bastard seemed content in the grime, wilfully ignorant to the disrepair, fixated on his glowing computer screen and the sounds tumbling out of his hi-fi speakers.

The room looked like it was intended to be an office. Maybe his father had had enough of him, like the Jobcentre advisors had me. Only due to the Bestard’s unfathomable privilege, rather than Rich Jr being banished to pick things up and put them down in one of the GENPHARM factories, he was stashed away at the farthest corner of their family mansion. That decision was probably reached while his father was in the presence of one of his human girlfriends, who were probably the same age as Rich Jr. He probably had his girlfriend supervise while a couple of struggling particularly old members of staff dragged an even older bed into his least favourite office where he would demand Rich Jr remained as long as he was living under his roof. “If you want to lay about all day and do nothing with your life, do it here in my old, least favourite office, boy, far away from our esteemed guests and friends!” he probably would have said. And Rich Jr would long for more, a poor wealthy boy staring off into the field of dreams. Visiting the outside world via my head.

I parked myself at the mahogany desk as he began flicking through beats he had made. And from the first kick drum, he was visibly anxious, even with a blurry face. And it was immediately obvious as to why. His beats were rip-offs of my beats, he had even sampled some of the same sources, chopping the same sections of the same pieces of music and composing them in the same fashion. Some of the beats he played were copies of stuff I thought no one had heard yet. He was remaking beats I had yet to release! I expressed my disapproval with an audible exhalation through my nose. He panicked, fidgeting, fumbling over his fat hands. I kept my composure, for some things in life were even bigger than Big Leonard and I had to work hard to remind myself of that. I was there for the money.

Fingering the cash in my pocket, I sealed my lips tighter, concentrating so my face didn’t slide into a frown. One hundred beats later, sucking my teeth at increasing volumes, patience wearing thin, I finally interrupted. “Stop,” I said, “that one.”

“Are you sure?” his voice went up in pitch, which I translated as “don’t choose that one choose this other one I’m about to play you, again”. “What about this one?” he said, and played a beat he had played several times before. Clunky, slow and bassy, clearly influenced by the days he spent in my head but not a direct rip-off of any one beat in particular. It is entirely possible that it was based on a beat of mine he had heard but missed the making of. I very rarely made notes of the stuff I sampled, so an amateur like Rich wouldn’t have had a chance. He was obviously keen on me picking that particular beat though, so to save time I rolled my eyes and gave in.

“OK that one then, whatever, man,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he squeaked again, this time in an even higher octave, cocking his blurry face to the side. My lack of words said enough. He turned back to the screen.

I knelt down to pick up a notepad. Rich jumped up and snatched it out of my hand.

“Wait, I’ll get you a fresh one man, don’t worry!” he said looking down at the notepad and rifling through the pages. I could see the pad was filled with lyrics. He was obviously too embarrassed for a real rapper like me to read them. He threw the pad onto his computer desk and handed me a fresh one along with a pen.

Sitting in the leather chair, hunched over the desk, beat looping over and over, I punched the buttons of my phone with my thumbs, scrolling through lyrics and notes saved into my text drafts, underwhelmed by my findings. I was hoping to have enough to quickly throw something together and leave as I was tired and lacking inspiration. Out of sheer desperation I sparked up conversation with Rich.

“So, err, what’s your rap name then, what do you call yourself ?” I asked in an aloof manner, tapping frustratedly at the desk.

“Err,” he halted, his hand momentarily joining the blur of his face as he itched it. I shrugged and nodded with raised eyebrows to urge him on.

“V3,” he finally piped up, quietly clearing his throat and turning away from me again, I imagine expecting my immediate disapproval.

Instead, I caught him off guard. “V3?” I murmured, staring off to the side pensively, “Ohh!” I realised, “I get it!” I got it. “Cool, well, mine’s Leonard Swanson,” I said sarcastically, to V3’s feeble amusement.

“Why, err, why did you err, choose that name?” he asked, but he was in my head long enough to know it was my real name and long enough to know I was at least smart enough to know he knew that. Unimpressed, I said nothing. “I mean, I know it’s your real name,” he went on, “but, I mean, how come you chose to use your real name?”

“Err,” I paused and shrugged, “I just didn’t want to be stuck with a stupid rap name, man.” Like V3, I thought, and I think he probably knew.

The heavy wooden bedroom door opened with a quiet knock, a curly peroxide woman emerged, flashing a quick smile at me before turning her attention to Rich.

“Richie, do you and your little friend want some snacks?” she asked condescendingly with rising inflections. I shot her a quizzical look. Little friend? I thought. Was she trying to insult me? She looked roughly around the same age as me, maybe a couple of years older, but regardless, did she not know who I was? Her adopted man son here sure did, what type of stepmother was she? Poor Rich.

“Are you hungry Leonard?” Rich turned the volume down and asked.

My eyes were still trained on the woman, now a foot into the room holding the door open with her knee, still smiling with wide, plum-red lips and laser blue eyes. She lifted her foot to unfold the strap on her high heeled shoe. “Pizza?” she suggested, finger still in the strap.

“Pizza?” Rich asked me.

“Nah,” I said, “what else have you got?” Her heel clicked down on the stone floor at the edge of the rug. She shot me her own quizzical look while fixing her dress and flicking her hair. I lowered my sunglasses, peering over them at her.

“Well, what would you like?” she asked, possibly offended by my rejection of pizza.

“Well, what have you got?” I asked, mimicking her tone.

“Well, whatever you want,” she responded. Same tone, slightly more exaggerated.

“Lobster…” I threw out, “lobster and chips but… but like, proper chips, chippy chips…” I paused and stroked my unshaven chin, then continued before she had a chance to intervene. “With steamed veg, you know like carrots and that.” I needed a good balanced meal but I was a culinary amateur and that was the best I could come up with. “And some beer please,” I added, “and do you have any weed?”

“Oh,” she responded, glancing nervously toward Rich while playing with her curls, “I’ll see what I can do, Richie, Richie, that OK for you?” she said, stepping backwards out of the door and vanishing before he could respond.

“Who the fuck’s that?” I asked excitedly.

“Oh, that’s just Cindy, my father’s latest girlfriend,” he said, unbothered and shrugging her off.

“Get the fuck out, really? How old is she?”

“Twenty-four or five, maybe six, I don’t know.”

“Can she see you?”

“Of course she can, she just asked if we wanted snacks,” he turned to his computer.

“Nah, you know what I mean, can she really see you? Like how I can?”

“No.”

“Well what the fuck do you look like to her then?” I asked, laughing, though genuinely curious.

“Like a young James Dean,” he responded. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic but either way it amused me and I thumped the desk and snorted.

“And I guess your auld fella looks like what James Dean would have looked like had he made it to middle age then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Rich responded in a serious tone.

This time I didn’t laugh as I no longer felt Rich was being sarcastic, plus it may have explained his father’s success with women.

He turned the volume up. I turned to the notepad and tried to think of something to write on it.

“Went from Greggs to steamed veg with lobster and chippy chips,” I muttered and nodded in approval. I said the line over and over, racking my brain, trying to think of the next line, maybe something ending with “Cindy’s lips”.

Went from Greggs to steamed veg with lobster and

chippy chips

Something about Cindy’s lips

All the action must have got to me. I was woken up by Cindy. “Wakey, wakey,” she said, ushering the waiting staff into the room. They rolled in a squeaking trolley draped in a white cloth and left it next to me. On top of the trolley was a big glass bottle of beer sat next to a stemmed pint glass and two large plates, each with their own antique silver plate cloche.

The waiting staff were dismissed with a finger. Cindy locked her eyes onto mine, swaying slightly, touching her hair. I was unsure if she was flirting or if she had poisoned the food and was trying not to give it away. I glanced at Rich, his back was still turned to the room. I shrugged and reached over to the trolley. Cindy slapped my hand before it reached one of the cloches and began lifting them one by one herself. She put them on the shelf of the trolley beneath the white cloth. The first one revealed the lobster, still steaming. “I’ve never had lobster before,” I declared, feeling sorry for the creature dead on the plate. Cindy gasped in disbelief. The second cloche revealed a plate of chippy chips, still in paper; the third, a healthy pile of steamed veg; and the fourth, fat buds of glistening green weed complete with rolling materials, including a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

Cindy pushed my phone and the notepad away to create some space, then placed the napkin-wrapped cutlery and warm white plates in front of me. She looked across to make sure Rich was still submerged in his computer before turning to me with her laser-eyed gaze. I leaned away from her to create some distance, disturbed as she smiled and edged closer. She was closer enough for me to smell her breath which smelt like she had stolen a few chips and it made me hungrier.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the lobster but soldiered through it, believing at the very least it would make a good lyric. Cindy lingered in the room, looming over me as I backed gulps of beer and shovelled chips into my face, grunting and slobbering. At some point, I submitted, wiping the mess from my face with the napkin, throwing it onto the plates and melting into the chair. Behind me, Cindy let off a deafening whistle. The waiting staff came tumbling in, bumping shoulders to clear the mess. They left, pushing the trolley down the hallway. Cindy cleared her throat. “Well…” she said and stopped.

Too full to acknowledge her, I sat with my hands on my belly, breathing heavily. She slowly backed out of the room and gently clopped away like a sneaky horse.

The Saga of Rich Bestard VIII, Chapter 3.

They say the body is a temple, but mine was more like a studio flat converted into an art exhibition for the gentrifying morbidly curious elite. On display, nothing but ring rust and stubble. Look but do not touch, for your own sake.

Despite my best efforts to obscure my shortcomings with sturdy cotton and polyester blends, the rust was all too prevalent. Side-eyeing Rich, I lit the spliff I had subconsciously rolled while pondering my struggle. My craft and I had spent too much time apart, I had forgotten how to rhyme.

I took a long toke to jog my memory — the type of toke ordinarily associated with a man who has nothing to do in the foreseeable future and probably hasn’t done much in what he can recall of the future past. In a failed attempt to hold in my cough, I thumped myself lightly on the chest. My cough turned into a teary-eyed, scarlet-faced splutter as I glanced at Rich, still sitting with his back to the room, tapping at his computer keyboard and flailing his arms around off beat. I composed myself and took another, less dramatic toke.

Puffing away, periodically glancing at Rich, hoping he was too wrapped up in his verse to ask for the spliff. How would he even smoke it anyway? I thought. With his belly mouth? Surely that can’t work? Where are their lungs? Do they even…

“Can I have a pull?” He derailed my train of thought “If there’s any left,” he coyly added, blurry face turning over his shoulder.

“Err, yeah,” I responded, taking a splurge of baby drags as I escorted the last quarter of the spliff across the room, passing it on and stepping back to watch.

“Are you OK Leonard?” Rich asked, tapping the ash into a mug.

“Uh huh, and call me Len,” I said, doing an impression of a friendly man.

“Oh, OK, Len…” he responded, slowly raising the spliff into the blur of his face, looking at me.

“Whoa!” That answers some of my questions but not all. “Do you have another mouth under there or something then?”

“No,” he answered, and blew the smooth out of his belly mouth. “I don’t,” he added, his words slightly muffled by his T-shirt but not enough that his speech was unclear.

“Wait, are you smoking it with your…”

“Yes,” Rich butted in.

“That’s disgusting,” I grimaced, “no offence.”

He held out the very end of the spliff, to which I instinctively stretched a finger and thumb out to receive before pulling away, slapping my own hand, disappointed in myself. “Nah, you kill it mate,” I said. “So, err, what have you got?” I asked, motioning towards the words on the computer screen.

“Oh, I haven’t finished yet,” he said, minimising the word document, “still working it out.”

And somewhat predictably, the day made way for night. The beat had been looping for hours while I smoked up all the weed and drank all the beer. My verse was barely halfway there and my brain started to pulsate inside my skull. I asked Rich to turn it off for a bit and he gladly obliged.

At the point the sounds coming out of the speakers no longer make sense, one must clutch to reality and press stop immediately. When you have been listening to the same eight-bar loop of music nonstop for that long, it can be dangerous. Maybe we should have slowly decreased the volume to zero over a twenty-odd minute period to safely wean ourselves off but it was too late. My ears felt tense, a rhythmic pulsing, as though my blood was pumping in sync with the rhythm of the beat that was no longer playing. The loud cracking of the expanding wooden beams above me made me jump several times consecutively. One time I even put my hands up over my head as though the whole thing was going to collapse on me.

A long, booming silence later, I prompted Rich to play it again; we were back in the loop. The room was warm, my eyelids progressively got heavier and heavier until they met in the middle. I thought about June, only she was disguised as Cindy and she was chain-smoking thin, colourful-tipped cigarettes, wearing an open white lab coat with bright pink underwear on display. We were in a white room with no windows or doors and she disappeared into thin air. I looked around and she reappeared from nowhere rolling a TV on squeaking wheels. Rich’s father, Rich Bestard VII, was on the screen, only rather than green and blurry he resembled roughly what I imagined a middle-aged James Dean would have looked like had he still been alive. June disguised as Cindy was standing to the side between the TV and me, holding up a cue card with my name written on it, and he was reading it out loud over and over.

The beat stopped playing and my eyes shot open. Stunned by the quiet, the scene slowly came into focus: the grand window, the framed McElroy paintings, the once fine Persian rug now looking worse for wear. The heavy, antique mahogany desk in front of me smelt of fresh polish, which hit the back of my throat. Maybe Cindy sent in the cleaning staff to sanitise the area around me while I slept. Rich was sitting on his bed, stretching out sags of green flesh on his forearms, getting ready to sleep.

“Wait, you don’t sleep standing up?” I was shocked, “I thought the bed was just for show.”

“Oh, you’re awake,” he either ignored my question or was too wrapped up in the horrible sags of flesh and skin to hear me. “Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said, “let me show you to your room.”

My guard was down, Rich seemed relatively normal and fairly laid back; he made it all too easy to forget he was he was a sadistic, sociopathic, body-snatching son of a Bestard. How long had he been peeking through my eyes? I dreaded to imagine what he had borne witness to. Whatever it was, he liked it so much that he made the decision to leave his own life behind and assume control of mine. Who knows, maybe he would have done a better job with it? With all of those thoughts sloshing around in my head, I rose in sync with him. “I’ll stay right here,” I pulled myself together and snapped, “in this room, just get me a bunch of duvets or something, I’m not going anywhere mate.”

He knew why, so I spared us an audible explanation.

“Sorry,” he whimpered, edging past me and out of his room. I sat back down at the desk and yawned.

He returned, dragging a rolled-up futon mattress, a duvet and a pillow. Snatching the bedding off him, I took over, and lay it all out near the desk. Fully clothed, I lay down with the vibris in my pocket. I dragged my hood up over my head and eyes and pulled the drawstrings, tying them in a loop.

“Do you mind if I watch a movie?” said Rich quietly.

“Nah, do whatever, man, it’s your room.” I rolled to my left side so the vibris was squashed between my leg and floor with my back to Rich’s bed, quietly listening to the movie I recognised as They Live.

In the morning, I woke up to muffled conversation coming from somewhere down the hallway, followed by footsteps. I loosened my hood and listened as they got closer. Suddenly the door flung open and I leapt to my feet ready for tired combat. I pulled my hood back to discover Cindy, jogging on the spot with ankle weights, in tight gym clothes, her large plastic boobs held firmly in place, though that may not have been entirely credited to the clothing. And she was holding the door open, jogging at varying speeds. “Would you like breakfast?” she asked. I turned to Rich but he was gone.

“Where’s he gone?” I waved a limp arm into the room.

“Well someone woke up on the wrong side of the…” Cindy said pausing to look down at my feet, “floor,” she finished.

“What?”

“What?”

“Where is Rich?” I asked again.

“Don’t worry he’s probably just gone to the toilet or maybe he’s having a rare wash,” she answered in all seriousness. She didn’t seem to share my concern for her potential contemporary stepson’s whereabouts. Suddenly I remembered the vibris. I dug my hand into my pocket, it was still there.

“Phew,” I said aloud.

“Well?” Cindy said, popping chewing gum in her mouth.

“Well what?” I responded bluntly.

“Well… do you want any breakfast?” Everything with her seemed like a test. She would pout and lift her eyebrows at me and smile without actually smiling, even while jogging on the spot.

“Where is Rich’s auld fella?” I asked, forcing her expression into one much easier to read.

“Away…” she said, annoyed by my question, “on business.”

“OK, well, yeah anyway,” I responded, “breakfast.” I squinted and thought about it. “Yeah, go on then.”

She checked her watch, still jogging, staring at me until I looked away. Her pouting, invisible smile reappeared. “Sure, continental OK?”

I shrugged and nodded with no idea what she meant by “continental”. She jogged away backwards and the door slammed shut.

I shook my head, sat down at the desk with my back to the door and read the start of my verse. “Something, something Cindy’s lips? Went from Greggs to steamed veg and lobster with chippy chips,” I muttered, repeating it several times under my breath.

Sometimes when stuck in such situations the only thing to do is reel off random nonsensical gibberish and just hope you stumble upon some semblance of sense. I hated writing this way, feeling as though I was trying too hard. “Frivolous, gibberish, limitless, filter tips, Cindy’s lips, Cindy’s tits? Cindy’s hips? Cindy… Rich? Scissorkick, vintage… err…” But I had to do something. I began clicking my fingers. “Fuck it!” I shut my eyes, palming my face frustratedly.

“From Church Town to a manor in the sticks, Greggs to steamed veg and lobster with chippy chips, from scavving filter tips to mingling with the rich,” I rapped to myself and shrugged. “Good enough, fuck it,” I said dismissively, and scribbled it down before I forgot. I read it over a few times in my head before repeating it out loud. “From Church Town to a castle in the sticks, Greggs to steamed veg and lobster with chippy chips, from scavving filter tips to mingling with the rich.” I paused before adding “coming soon to Rich’s bitch Cindy’s lips” and slapped my leg laughing at myself. I tried again. “From Church Town to a manor, err, castle? Castle in the sticks?” I paused, tapping my tooth with the pen lid. “Manor or castle? Castle or manor?” I whispered. “But I still munch me lobster with chippy chips, from scavving filter tips to mingling with the rich, something something something and Cindy’s tits,” and the moment I said tits, Cindy came bursting in. She had changed her clothes and was now wearing a white denim onesie with her cleavage bursting out. She hooked the door to the wall and the waiting staff wheeled the trolley in.

My eyes lit up at the sight: baskets filled with croissants and bread, plates of cheese, tiny pots of jam, Tupperware tubs of cereal, jugs of milk and orange juice, hardboiled eggs and fruit and more bread. I began reaching for things while the trolley was still in motion. The staff bowed and shuffled off. I tried to thank them with a croissant in my teeth. “Enjoy,” said Cindy, pushing her boobs together, “and I’ll see you later,” she added, playfully poking me on the shoulder. I frowned as she backed out of the room and strutted off down the hallway like a model on a catwalk.

Covered in croissant crumbs, I gulped the orange juice straight from the glass jug and threw slices of apple into my mouth.

The Saga of Rich Bestard VIII, Chapter 4.

With nothing left but crumbs and egg shells, Rich re-emerged. “Oh, ha ha, good morning,” he said, as nervous as ever. He unhooked the door from the wall and returned to his computer.

“Play the beat,” I said. I rapped my first four bars out loud, the volume of my delivery rising as I went:

From Church Town to a castle in the sticks

From scavving filter tips to mingling with the rich

But I still eat lobster with chippy chips

And one day me cheques’ll stop bouncing like Cindy’s tits

I stared daggers at Rich as I rose to a magnificent crescendo ending on “Cindy’s tits,” inwardly feeling pleased with myself. He faked a laugh and said nothing.

Finally, the inspiration that I needed! And the rest of the words fell onto the page with relative ease. The fact I had never actually written a cheque in my life meant nothing, the point was made either way. Plus I was still fascinated by Cindy’s perfect plastic boobs and their ability to remain still even when she was jogging on the spot:

From Church Town to a castle in the sticks

From scavving filter tips to mingling with the rich

But I still eat lobster with chippy chips

And one day me cheques’ll stop bouncing like Cindy’s tits

Shiny silver cloche with glistenin’ buds under it

Fuck a job, yeah I had one of those once but I quit

This is that blag a city flat with no money shit

Don’t worry I’ll just get the Government to cover it

My only demand now? Trolley me brekky in

Before I get too blitzed and volley your next of kin

Yeah, you can try and walk in my shoes

But it’s beer and cheap vodka over fortified booze

The length of the verse was not previously agreed upon so I decided to stop at twelve bars, four short of the unwritten universal rule of rap verse standard. Page torn from the notepad, I rose to my feet and rolled the squeaky trolley out of the way.

“OK, record me,” I demanded, walking toward Rich who was still sitting on his bed staring at the computer screen. He minimised the word document he was writing in, scared in case I could see his lyrics. “You finished?” I asked.

“No, no, nearly, almost,” he answered.

“Cool, well, record this shit anyway.”

The mic was already set up, I adjusted the height of the stand and put the headphones on. “Turn me up,” I said, doing an upwards motion with my hand, “yo, yo, up, up, yo, up, yeah, yeah, that’s sound yeah, OK, let’s go.”

With the added weight from all the rust I had been carrying around, it took fifteen minutes to shake enough of it off in order to reach the end without stopping. Tweaking the rhythm of the odd line as I went, I eventually nailed it six or seven takes later. “Let me hear the last two,” I said, intently listening to every breath and inflection on every word, finger pointing in the air, twisting and twirling to each syllable like a crazed conductor. Memorising all the unique characteristics of the two takes and comparing them in my head. To the laymen, and Rich, the differences were unnoticeable but to I, the great Leonard Swanson, ring rust or no ring rust, they were as clear as day. “OK, the second to last one is the one,” I declared, tearing off the headphones, casting a threatening shadow over my would-be body-snatcher, “play it out loud!”

I nodded my head, reacting to my own lyrics, impressed. “Yeah, uh huh,” “pfft! Yes,” and “perfect.” I didn’t particularly like the verse but I was trying to sell it and get the hell out of there.

“Do you want to do any doubles?” Rich asked.

“Errm, a few, yeah, maybe just a few,” I said, lifting the headphones from the floor. “Go ’ed, record.”

I doubled up on the rhymes every few bars, calmer than I had delivered the verse. “OK, now let me record some adlibs,” I said. Rich took the track back to the start, I made a bunch of strange noises and sound effects to sort of match the lyrics, acting out sword fights and exploding grenades as I did.

“OK, sound!” I said, almost cheerfully, taking the headphones off in a slightly more respectable manner. “Make sure the doubles are quite low and pan the adlibs or something,” I instructed Rich, who nodded his blurry head.

Sometime in the late afternoon, my verse followed by two minutes of instrumental looped around and around as Rich mumbled under his guttural breath. I gazed out of that grand window into the field. A shiver made its way up my spine and into my shoulders as I thought about my former line-picking colleagues at the GENPHARM factory. I imagined I was back in the canteen, sipping free coffee from a plastic cup. Standing in the corner of the smoking shelter, coughing as I stubbed my cigarette out on the grill atop the metal wall-mounted ashtray, strolling through the corridors and hallways, staring at the pictures of Rich’s green blurry-faced ancestors.

“OK, I’m off,” I announced. “Tell Cindy… err, tell her… Thanks,” I added with a shrug, then pushed Rich’s bedroom window open and fell through it head-first into the field.

“Wait, I’ll have someone give you a lift,” Rich pleaded, leaning out of the window behind me.

“Fuck off!” I shouted back, jogging into the distance towards the wall.

“Well, thanks for the verse man! It was… it was dope, man!” He shouted.

Once I reached the wall, I realised I couldn’t climb it from that side so I found my way to the huge wooden gate. The camera was pointing down at me, “Open sesame!” I shouted at it, impatiently, pointing at the gate. “Come on!”

That side of the gate had criss crossing wooden beams I could use to climb up. Halfway up it let off a short mechanical buzz and slowly opened. Clutching tightly to the back, I waited until it stopped moving and jumped down. A shiny old, black Rolls-Royce drove in, Rich’s evil, blurry faced father sat in the back, screaming into a phone, animated and angry. “Dickheads,” I said to myself and walked out, unnoticed, hands in my pockets.

One More Night in the Hostel.

The hostel doors slammed behind me. The red woman was attending to reception duties, which in her case meant following guests past the desk and up the stairs with her eyes and saying nothing.

Room 14 was unlocked, I nudged it open to discover three new roommates. Their blurred conversation ceased. I was not only shocked to see them but disappointed. After everything he had taught me, I had naively assumed Mike had my back.

The baby-faced one was sat on the top bunk with his bare, tanned feet dangling. He was short and had a small thin moustache that made him look like a mini pervert. He turned and lowered himself to the ground, kicking his legs to locate the bottom bunk. I watched as he struggled to the floor. It served him right for climbing to such dangerous heights, I thought.

“Err, hello, nice err, to meet you,” he said in broken English. And he held out a tiny hand in front of him and I shook it with two fingers and a thumb. He smiled at me and it was blinding. His teeth were so bright I was forced to shade my eyes with the back of a hand. Pointing at the young woman sitting on the bottom bunk opposite to mine he said, “This Katya.”

Katya said “hello” and she showed me her teeth, and they were equally as blinding. Her feet were also bare and tanned. More tanned than the mini one. I smiled with my mouth closed and nodded with my hands by my sides, waiting for the introductions to end.

“And this, this my brother Samuel,” the miniature man said, twirling a tiny hand toward Samuel, quietly standing in the corner. He was looking down at his phone and biting at his pinky nail. Through the corner of an eye he looked at me and nodded without turning. He continued prodding at his phone, and chose a different nail to gnaw on. “And I, I am Jesús,” he said with a sweeping hand he threw up in the air and caught at his heart.

“Jesús?” I said and my eyebrows raised themselves like I didn’t want them. “I am…” and I was forced to repeat my name several times at varying tempos, “No, Leonard, Len…” never mind, “Len, just call me Len, nice to meet you”.

“This your bed, Len?” said Jesús, pointing at my bed, still unmade as I had left it.

“I guess so, yeah,” I said, and sat on it.

Jesús and Katya tried to convince me to accompany them to some sort of depraved London club, I declined and made up several reasons as to why but they kept on pushing. “Please, please!” Begged Katya, “It will be great!” Exclaimed Jesús and they jumped up and down and bounced around in a circle. Samuel was impartial and accepting of my excuses, “Leave him, he don’t want to go stupid club.” He said and shook his head. My attempts to explain how close I was to literally losing myself fell on deaf ears.

“Green blur?” one of them said.

And when I nodded they all said, “Ar yes!”

Then they all got changed in the room, seemingly unconcerned with having an audience. Who the hell were they? Maybe they were in some sort of cult? I remember thinking, or maybe they were just weird nudist hippies?

One of them said something in what I believed to be Spanish and they all broke out in a fit of laughter and jumped up and down and hugged, flesh on flesh. Katya’s small strip of pubic hair was probably the only body hair between them all. Just above the strip of hair was a tattoo of a little human figure with a spiral over their head. My eyes left her body as she glanced down and I disappeared into my hood and shuffled up against the wall so I was obscured from their view.

At some point I took a peek into the room. They were all in fancy dress and playfully inspecting eachother’s costumes. The two men were cowboys, they made finger guns and pulled them from their pockets going “bang, bang!” Katya was wearing a baggy cow onesie with eyes and ears on top of the hood and a mouth that hung down over her face so that she had to cock her head back to see. Samuel threw a lasso over her head and tightened it around her torso and she said “moo”. My insides tightened as I cringed. I stretched out and moaned a little, feigning sleep. Reminding them of my presence. Hoping to also jog their memories of the polite thing one should do when awake in the presence of a precious, sleeping soul. They took the hint; Katya shushed the boys. They huddled around each other, whispering and giggling quietly.

They left but I kept the sleeping act up until I was absolutely sure. In my head, I counted up to a number I believed translated, roughly, to the amount of time it would take two cowboys and a cow to navigate their way out of the hostel and up the street.

I pulled out the vibris from my pocket, unwrapped it and held it out in front of me in the crumpled up paper. It looked as though it had started to decompose and I lifted it to my nose and the faint smell of rotting flesh made me recoil. I dropped it to the floor and tried stamping on it again, this time it burst under my trainer like a grub. Somehow the little white light was still flashing. I grabbed a pen from my bag and crouched down, poking and pulling the squashed carcass apart. Down the middle was a little metallic spine with the button on one end and the flashing light on the other, using the paper to hold the carcass in place, I dragged it out of its fleshy shell and away from the mess with the pen. I put the plug in the plughole then picked it up with the paper and threw it under running the tap. I washed the guts off it and placed it on the back of the sink and gave my reflection a look of disbelief.

“Shit!” I said, suddenly remembering my life lacked the ability to sort itself out without me. I dried my hands on my trousers and sent a text to Fatma informing her I had the rest of the money and was ready to move in asap. Several laps to the window and back later, she responded. The property was ready, she said, and I could move in tomorrow, I told her I’d see her then and thanked her.

Then I returned my attention to the vibris. Hands on hips, I looked down at the miniature crime scene, wondering what to do next. Out of ideas, I kicked it under the lockers and wiped the green and yellow splatter away with the paper then kicked that under the lockers too. I looked over to the sink and to my astonishment, the spine had grown new flesh.

“You’ve got to be fucking joking me?” I asked myself in the mirror. Exasperated, I gave up, tore out a fresh page from my notepad, re-wrapped it and shoved it into the pocket of my bag and slammed my locker.

The next day I discovered myself fully-clothed lying on top of the covers. Jesús, Samuel and Katya were all asleep, Katya still in the cow onesie. I crept over to my locker, pulled out my bag and crept out of the room.

I approached the red woman, who was still behind the front desk on reception duties.

“Is Mike about?” I asked.

“Mike?” she said in an Eastern European accent.

“Yeah, Mike?” I reiterated.

“No Mike here darling.”

Baffled by her response, I asked her if she was sure about that. I saw her with him when I first arrived, I explained. She shrugged and told me I mistaken, “You mistaken,” she said and looked at the computer screen. “Hmm, your card not on system, I must have forgot to take.” She clicked a mouse and worked out some complex mathematic equation under her breath.

“£156,” she said.

“What do you mean? £156? Where’s Mike?” I pleaded.

“£156 for room, who is Mike? You keep speaking of Mike?” she was annoyed and I was lost. “No Mike here.”

Sucking my teeth, I looked down at the ground, fuck it, I thought. “Sorry,” I said and ran out of the hostel. Once I got half way down the street I realised I was without my bag. “Fuck!” I ran back and walked in casually, smiling. “Just joking,” I said and laughed, and she dropped the phone from her ear and held it against her chest.

“You pay?” she said. “I am talking the police.” She put the phone back to her mouth, “One moment, he back, I think he pay, he telling shitty joke,” I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and went into my pocket, biding myself some time, acting like I was going to pay.

“One sec,” I said. Then, a deep breath through my nose, I pulled out a middle finger and off I went again, speeding through the doors.

“Mike will sort it!” I shouted. My mission was clear and Mike’s possible double-crossing was not going to get in the way of it being completed successfully. I needed every penny to pay Fatma! That was my justification for not paying. The middle finger may have been uncalled for, but sometimes things are worth doing just for the story.

Fatma was standing in the car park of the flats waiting, smiling welcomingly. Out of breath, I let my bag hit the floor in front of us and gasped with my hands on knees.

“Sorry,” I paused, wiping the sweat from my brow. Her smile slowly faded for a look of regret. “Sorry Fatma,” I continued, “I err, my car broke down, and err, yeah,” I stopped, leaving it at that. Her smile came back and she waved off my excuse, telling me not to apologise.

Squatting, I unzipped the side pocket of my bag and raised my hand up to her holding the £1250. “Cash OK?” I said, forcing the money into her hands before she could say no.

“I mean, it’s not ideal,” she hesitated, counting the money.

“I err, my bank card, err, got stolen, I, yeah.”

The regret returned to her face, “I can pay tomorrow? Like, into the bank if you want? Once I have sorted out my err, my bank card? And err, my car?” I said, swaying like a nervous child.

“No, no, there’ll be no need for that, it’s OK,” she said. “Anything else you need Leonard?”

“No, that’s OK, just going to get an early one!” I shook her hand and waved as she walked around the corner. I waited until she was out of sight then darted into the building and up the stairs as fast as I could. It felt good to slam my own door behind me and collapse onto my own bed. Face burrowed into the mattress, muffled villainous laughter.

Housing.

The final phase of the blag was fairly straightforward. I took my copy of the tenancy agreement to the local town hall to apply for housing benefit, spoon-feeding the staff a half-thought-out sob story, which was gently eaten out of my bony hands.

My imaginary uncle had a job waiting for me you see, I told them. I had worked nonstop! Blood, sweat and tears and more blood, mostly blood! Look, here’s the scars, I said, displaying the healing wounds on my head like a primary school teacher reading to children, turning the book to show them the illustrations. I saved and saved, I even sold my belongings in order to secure accommodation here in your lovely city of London, paid my deposit and first month and everything! Now I am flat broke! Forced to embarrassingly and degradingly sign on at your local Jobcentre Plus. All because that rotten uncle promised me a real-life job that I would do regularly in exchange for money. Instead, he did a runner with the money I sent him! It was supposed to be for the license, appropriate apparel and equipment I needed in order to work on his site. I wasn’t the only fool to fall victim to that charlatan and his scamming ways, no, there were many! There’s even talk of a support group being set up, to share our feelings and maybe find some peace as we are all so distraught. They have no idea that my own flesh and blood is to blame! I hid my eyes in my hands. I was so embarrassed, I told them through my fingers. They reassured me and felt angry with me and on my behalf. It wasn’t my fault, they said and patted me on my shoulders. Anyway, as you may have guessed, by the time I realised I had been duped it was way too late. Why?! My own uncle?! I asked the heavens, shaking a fist at the ceiling, face displaying all the right expressions and emotions. That conniving so-and-so! Excuse me, I apologised. I was showered with more understanding and sympathy. Inundated with kind words and reassurance. Someone offered me a Kleenex, I took it and dabbed at my dry eyes. God forgive him, I said, catering to the religious members of my audience. I singled out a woman with a gold cross dangling around her leathery neck. She took it in her hand and grasped it tightly and shook her head as our eyes met. The desperate, virginal men used this time to console the weeping women, fighting back tears of their own. And they called me buddy and matey and the older men affectionately called me son.

Housing benefits well and truly secured, with a fake hyper-realistic look of sadness painted on my face, I walked to the door to a standing ovation. The slow clap in rhythm with my steps, rising in volume as I walked. Other sad members of the community down on their own luck even rose to their tired sore feet, touching me on my arms and shoulders, letting me know things will one day get better. I thanked them all, and gave them a hopeful smile. “No Lenny, thank you!” one particularly inspired on-looker announced, passion pouring out of him as he clapped louder and louder and looked around at other members of the crowd encouraging them to do the same. Glancing back into the room, I wiped away invisible tears, “Thank you, thank you all, thank you to the staff, the lovely woman who allowed me to tell her my story. Thank you to the cleaner who stopped to listen and shake his head at my bastard uncle and share a snippet of his own, albeit lesser sorrowful story. Thank you to David, Francis, Sheila, thank you all, Michelle, Michael, Francois, Telford, Carla, you’re too kind. Most of all though, I thank you, the people of wherever the fuck we are, thank you from the bottom of someone else’s heart, goodbye!” The door slammed behind me and I sauntered away towards the next chapter of my life.

Trusting Tamara.

After thirteen months on the dole, I still hadn’t finished my album. I found myself straying towards the familiar wonders of drinking strong lager and smoking copious amounts of weed. My creative output had essentially slowed to a halt. However, an amateur sleuth, inexperienced in the world of Leonard Swanson, may have persuaded themselves otherwise. Spying on me as I sat there, umming and ahhing at my overheating, second-hand laptop, jumping between the same handful of songs, back and forth, obsessing over the finest subtle details. Working day and night, tweaking songs over and over only to then undo whatever unnoticeable changes I had made. Thankfully the sleuth, an amateur in the world of music production, would not realise I was going around in circles. To them, I was a tireless passionate bedroom producer, a round the clock go-getter, a virtuoso. They would be thoroughly duped into genuinely believing I was actually busy. So convinced of my hard work, the constant plume of smoke billowing from my silhouette would be sanitised from the final investigative report, as the judgement of a more, by-the-law juror may have been sullied by mentions of illicit substances and thus may have found themselves blinded by their own silly prejudices. Maybe even the doleite bit of the story would be left out and I would only ever be referred to as “musician.” To some that would be saying the same thing, but maybe a jury of simpletons would assume it meant something else, and at the very least I would be thought of as “self-sufficient.”

In reality, these ungraceful mental gymnastics were all for the sake of the scraggly and indisposed man in the mirror. The gaunt, pale-faced, reanimated remains of the former late great Leonard Swanson. This silly act, a last-ditch attempt in convincing myself I was not willingly caught in the clammy grip of procrastination. Of course, this was all in futility, as even I was unconvinced. Once the lights were out and I lay in bed, as red-eyed and unfocused as I was, I was still just about capable of seeing through my own bullshit. If I were cursed in being naive and optimistic, maybe such an ability would have been deciphered as a glimmer of hope; there was still a part of me in there somewhere keeping it real with myself.

“Hmm,” I said.

My new friend Tamara agreed. “I know what you mean.”

“Aye man,” Sadsack offered, lifting his head to nod in agreement. “Aye man,” he repeated, quieter.

A gargle of out-of-date ale later, I rose gloriously, slamming my foot down onto the coffee table between us all. “Fucked! It’s all fucked!” I announced, one hand on my raised knee. And we all seemed to be seeing eye to eye. “Tamara!” I shouted, looking off through the window, down the street.

“Yeah?” Tamara responded, holding back her laughter.

“This is my living room, in my flat, and that’s my weed,” I said, pointing at the sparkling phthalocyanine green buds dancing around inside the glass jar in front of her. My face sunk into a serious business-like expression. “You know what to do,” I said, through gritted, crooked teeth. Tamara laughed, Sadsack woke up and joined in.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” I snapped at him, my question made everybody laugh even harder. I laughed too, “ha ha haaa!!” I screamed. My freckle-faced, tracksuit-clad new best pal Tamara found most things I did and said amusing. She was a quiet person who excelled in the art of rolling spliffs for us, and laughing at me. Other skills included drinking beer and never seeming to get drunk and sleeping on my couch, or bed if I fell asleep on the couch. Sometimes we would both sleep on the couch, or bed, but less often.

Tamara and I first met outside the Jobcentre a few weeks after I skilfully secured my housing benefit. I caught her stealing glances at me as I anxiously sucked at a cigarette by the side of the building while the triggered security guard shouted over at me, “You can’t smoke here, you can’t smoke here!”

“What?” I shouted back, hand cupped over an ear like Hulk Hogan riling up the crowd.

“You can’t smoke…” He wobbled his neck and face in surrender as he waddled over. I took the last pull and flicked the filter away as he got too close for me to act like I couldn’t hear his breathy whining. “You can’t…” he said, gasping for air, eyes following the cigarette butt to the grass verge between us and the busy road behind me, “… smoke here,” he finished, sighing, hands on hips.

“Smoke here?” I said, feigning confusion. “I was smoking here?”

“No, no, I, I.”

“Sorry, mate, I’ve got to go and sign on, I’ll speak to you in a bit,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder with a smile, leaving him to stutter to himself.

Tamara was hovering at the main entrance, doing something on her smartphone. We exchanged smiles as I passed. I held the door open and waited for the overweight security guard to catch up. “Thanks,” he said bitterly. I glanced at Tamara, who shook her head in amusement. I shrugged and wandered inside to sign on.

We crossed paths every couple of weeks as it seemed our signing-on times were within a few minutes of each other. After the third or fourth time, she asked me for a lighter. I fumbled around in my jacket, frowning, unable to find one even though I had just lit and smoked a cigarette. “Sorry,” I shrugged with my palms up.

She laughed, “It’s in your inside pocket,” she said.

Her knowledge was correct. She took the lighter from my outstretched hand and thanked me.

And it turned out she lived in the building opposite mine with her old, fat, lazy father and young, skinny, energetic little brother. She had a big brother too, but he was in prison. He was a petty criminal who specialised in getting caught and had been in and out since a teen. She was afraid of moving out of her family flat as her dad was “sad” and “needed help.” Without irony I would tell her he needed to get his act together and she would laugh and I would realise why and join in.

Her hair was rustic in colour and alive even though she had attempted to tame it with clips and bobbles. Her small, delicate-looking ears were permanently decorated with gold and silver hoops and studs. We shared the same birthdate, minus a couple of years, and like me she was most comfortable in a tracksuit. She exuded a quiet confidence and, even though she occasionally put herself down, was very beautiful, albeit in what popular culture would have you believe was an “unconventional way.” For at a certain angle, one of her eyes appeared slightly smaller than the other, and her upper face was a surfeit of light asymmetrical freckles. These quirks in her features made her all the more interesting to look at.

I told her her eye was probably more noticeable to her, as it was on her face, and also, I would tell her it was cool and that I wish I had one. She would laugh and throw things at me but I actually meant it. Now and then I would study her face, thinking how cool it would be if I had a weird eye too, like RZA or Slick Rick. Maybe then I would have had a reason to wear a cool patch decorated with shiny diamonds.

The volume of Tamara’s voice was permanently stuck on library settings. The type of volume I would play my music at at 3am, after the sixth or seventh time my downstairs neighbour had banged on the ceiling with a broom. She wasn’t a huge fan of rap but found my music interesting. Maybe she was just being polite because I let her smoke weed in my living room all day but for some reason, I trusted her muted opinions. At least at first…

My bed was uncomfortable unless I lay within the indentation on one side of the mattress at a specific angle. In my sleep, my body must have wriggled halfway up the canyon, submitting as it became hopelessly snagged on a protruding spring.

I jolted upright, instantly enveloped in a terrifying cloud of paranoia. My eyes strained to adjust. I fought against rubbing away my spring induced back pain. My lips absorbed the brackish beads of sweat that broke off from the source and rolled down my face. I took silent, shallow breaths, moving only my eyes, side to side and all around.

Except for the rattling train somewhere in the distance, the streets were serenely quiet. My ears pulsated, my senses heightened and my chest tightened. I could hear something in the untenanted flat next door. A gentle brushing against a wall? A faint, filtered beeping? A dull dash of moonlight broke in from behind a dark cloud, highlighting the front door which I noticed was ajar.

Tamara had left while I was sleeping, and, it appeared, forgot what the prime use of a front door was.

The serenity of the world outside was momentarily interrupted by a single chugging car struggling up the hill between my building and the one in which Tamara apparently lived.

I waited for the racket to cease, concentrating intently, separating the familiar twinging pipes and creaking upholstery from the alien sounds now being debuted while I held my breath.

I heard what I believed to be the door of the empty flat next door, clicking shut. I tensed to the point that my head might have exploded under different circumstances. In the dark, I could just about make out Tamara’s abandoned size five trainers on the floor and I lifted a finger to my mouth to stop myself asking the empty room for input. And then, the gap in the door began to slowly widen. Tamara tiptoed in, ever so quietly closing the door behind her. She hadn’t noticed me there, propped up on my elbows watching her in the dark. I slowly lay back down, disguising the squeak of the mattress with a sleeping sigh.

She froze momentarily before creeping out of the shadows to the couch, which of a night, sat permanently awash in the gloom of the orange streetlight thanks to the incompetent curtains unable to do their only job. Her navigation systems failed her as she stepped on an upturned plug. “Argh!!” she screamed out. I jolted upright again, “What’s up? What’s going on?” I said, doing an OK impression of a confused man who had just been woken up by a screaming girl.

“Argh, I stepped on a stupid plug,” she gasped, and took a sharp ingressive breath through clenched teeth. “Ouch.” She hobbled over to the couch and sat down, laughing quietly in pain, rubbing frantically at her foot. “Sorry Len, I just went to the toilet, didn’t want to wake you up.” She rubbed at it some more. “Obviously it didn’t work out!” she added, and I laughed a singular “ha.”

And it was that moment I first became suspicious of Tamara. Had she secretly acquired a key for next door in order to use the toilet? Even to my faltering mind I found this doubtful.

Initially I had never thought anything of the fact that I had never met or even seen her dad or little brother. I had never had a reason to meet them and had never wanted to. For the most part, I felt too stoned and drunk to make small talk with regular people, so if anything, I was grateful to never be burdened with such responsibilities. But on many an occasion I walked back with her from the Jobcentre and abandoned her at the corner of her building. And not that I was ever looking but I couldn’t recall ever having witnessed her going inside. On top of that fact, a wise man would assume, bearing in mind the hours I had amassed staring through that filthy window, I would have accidentally witnessed her entering or exiting the building at least once.

With no substantial evidence that she was who she said she was, suspended in the night, mind racing with itself, I became increasingly distrustful of her. Several thoughts sped off along several different routes racing to reach the same final destination first. Instead, unable to break in time, they crashed into a heap of destruction at a distant hellish junction. She was either a dimension hopping murderer or an assassin on the Bestard payroll, I hadn’t decided yet.

I lay awake until beams of daylight fought their way through the pointless, sheer fabric curtains. Tamara was up at the crack of dawn, quietly lounging around on the couch, waiting for me to signal my triumphant return to reality so she could put the kettle on and make coffee. It wasn’t to be. I played possum for as long as possible, head half under the duvet, waiting for her to lose patience and leave. Time plodded by as slowly as it could. Eventually my mind drifted from Tamara and into the dimension of sleep. When I woke up again, she had gone. I jumped up and dressed myself. After more confused, paranoid cogitation, I had worked myself up into a frenzy, thoroughly convincing myself that Tamara was a double agent, sent by PEEPHOLE to retrieve their property, dead or alive. I felt it was a true and honest shame because I had really convinced myself that I had finished that chapter of my life.

In the broom-cupboard-sized bathroom I forcefully brushed at my bleeding gums and scorned myself with a brutal haranguing, toothpaste and blood splattering into the sink and onto the tiles and mirror. I rinsed my mouth, turned the tap off and stared through myself. If only Tracy could see me now! I thought, that hapless useless bastard! “Blaow! Pow!” I acted out an imaginary scene in which I fought off ten Tracys with a clipboard. Ducking under pathetic swings and jabs, sweeping their brittle leg bones, diving through the air, heads flying everywhere.

And by chance, that same day, I received a welcome text from my offensively happy friend, DJ Sadsack. Seeing his name reminded me of a more glory-filled time, performing in tiny venues, walls precipitating with a cocktail of sweat. He informed me of his whereabouts, which was, at the time of him constructing his text, somewhere far away. Towards the end of the message was a “but”. Later on that same day, the city of London would be blessed with his overtly chirpy presence. Another text came through before I finished reading the first, asking if I would be about to “chill and make some beats man.” Ordinarily I would have been unsure if I was available to do either of those things, but I texted back “yes” before a second thought found its way out of my surprisingly busy mind. Within seconds my old Nokia phone eagerly vibrated in my hand, “cool man, see u later then man,” it read.

Fearful for my life, I was glad somebody else could potentially be there to witness my assassination and maybe even fill in the blanks in the last chapter of my story. In my prime line-picking days, Tamara’s potential treachery wouldn’t have invoked such fear; more indifference, shoved to the back of a dusty shelf, barely worth a tingle of the spine. “Whatever laa,” I would have said. But right then, I was a shadow of my former self — the result of the en suite bedsit I had bound myself to, picking the shackles only for fleeting visits to the corner shop or to sign on.

I once thrived on that particular brand of reclusive madness, but there was now a twist of something new and unknown. Maybe the normals were right with their judging and disappointment of those that fall out of line. At some point, one of them may or may not have attempted to preach the dangers of excess at me. My memory was hazy, but if I was correct, maybe they were on to something, I thought. Either way, I continued drowning myself in alcohol, smoking out whatever sanity I had left.

Our laughter at the expense of Sadsack ceased. It was now a couple of days into his visit as I stood there with my foot planted atop the coffee table, rushing Tamara to roll the spliff quicker. “Come on Tamara!” I shouted. Sadsack fought to keep his eyes open, simulating laughter, inwardly wishing he was somewhere comfortable.

I tried not to notice the look of concern lurking beneath his fading happy face. I dragged my foot down from the coffee table and slammed it into the floor, stretching and barking.

We smoked the next spliff. Tamara gently pushed herself up from the couch. “I will be back soon,” she whispered with an innocent smile. I said “OK” and saw her to the door, a few feet away from where we were standing. I said “bye” with my head poking out and watched as she floated down the first set of stairs. She looked back and smiled again and I closed the door, forgetting to smile back. Under my breath I wondered if that minor slip up would raise suspicion. Had I given myself away? Does she know I’m onto her? The door slammed, Sadsack jolted back into the room. I rushed over to the window and waited for Tamara to emerge. I waited and waited.

Sadsack yawned behind me. “Ay man, what happened to June man?” he asked.

“What?” I looked back.

“June man, you know, your song June, at the end you say something like ‘she drove off and probably got hotter,’” he mimicked my voice and acted out the line with rap hands. “Was the song actually about the month of June man or?”

“Yes,” I said, perturbed, brushing off his question.

And the day seemed unsure of itself, stuck between daylight and darkness. Standing there, forehead pressed against the window pane, Tamara had still not appeared and there was only one way out of the building.

“You OK man?” Sadsack worried, lighting another spliff, I nodded my head in response and turned to the room grimacing. I couldn’t burden the poor happy fool with such treachery, so I left him to drown in his lazy ignorant bliss. I took the spliff off his hands and offered him a beer I didn’t have as I had given Tamara my last one earlier that day. The air became thick. I opened the window wide and switched on the cheap fan, which noisily dashed pieces of itself into the room. I paced up and down in its dusty breeze, plastic shrapnel bouncing off me.

The Last Tamara.

The next day Sadsack sadly had to leave the wonderfully polluted city of London. I half-heartedly begged him to stay, but he declined and for the first time the friendly sparkle in his eye had been replaced with fear, and if I overthought it, possibly a smidgen of disgust. “You sure you can’t stay to err, make some beats laa?” I asked, looking all around, expecting bad things to happen. He chuckled nervously and edged out the door. “Aye, err, take care of yourself man!” he declared and off he went, leaping down the stairs several steps at a time. Head poking out into the hallway, I listened as the door slammed five storeys down.

Rushing across the room to the window, I watched him shuffle off down the street, across the road and into the park where I lost him to the trees and families feigning happiness in the dirt.

Armed with a can of Lynx Java and a Union Jack lighter, I set up base at my front door where I remained late into the night. Tamara hadn’t left the building, that was for certain, and I feared for the worst. Whether or not she was secretly renting next door was up in the air, but I imagined she definitely was, plotting with her dark army, a detective movie investigation board hammered into the wall, using a laser pointer to emphasise her whispered instructions. Maybe the sound of her hammering the investigation board to the wall was what I had heard a couple of nights before? At that point I believed myself.

I also believed there was a chance that she was pressing her ear to a glass, eavesdropping on my thoughts, which I couldn’t be sure had remained entirely in my head. I didn’t want her and her foot soldiers having any type of advantage, so I poured out the cigarette butts, spliff roaches and dregs from the only glass I could find and pressed it to the wall in response. With my ear squashed against the bottom of the glass, I held my breath and listened.

She was in there, that much was obvious now, I had decided. I could hear her footsteps, they had to be hers, I know them footsteps. What was she doing? I heard next door’s door opening and then closing quietly. I stepped back, the glass slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor. “Fuck!” I blurted out, throwing my hand up to cover my mouth, but it was too late. I had given the game away. Not only that but my only glass had now been turned into shards and slivers, and tiny particles I would forever catch shimmering in the corner of my eye. “Focus!” I told myself and tiptoed around the glass and into the room. No matter how softly I placed my feet down, the floorboards conspired against me, squeaking to let my potential assassin know I was on the move.

A gentle knock at the door stopped me in my tracks. Standing at the foot of my bed, Lynx and lighter still in my hands, I yawned as loudly as I could. Hoping my tired, oblivious man act would lull her and her dark army into a false sense of security. A man without a clue poses no threat, especially one that just woke up, a fuzzy-headed dreamer. “Who’s that?” I said lazily, as I traipsed cautiously towards the door, remembering to step over the glass.

Through the peephole I could see Tamara, she appeared to be alone and was smiling and waving convincingly. Her stupid treacherous and lovely freckled face could easily trick a less solid man. I pulled my bulging eyeball from the peephole and hesitated before finally opening the door. Lynx and lighter held out ready for action, I leapt back, leaving the door to open the rest of the way on its own. Tamara stepped in and made funny eyes at me as she giggled, turning to close the door. She stepped over the glass and headed straight for the couch where she hummed under her breath and began rolling a spliff. I turned my head over my shoulder and watched her with a suspicious squint. Her oblivious humming continued.

“Do you have a lighter?” she finally asked, shaking the perfectly rolled spliff by its twisted pony tail.

“Err…”

“It’s in your hand,” she laughed.

“I’ll light it,” I finally said. I took the spliff then stepped back to safety and lit it, took a drag and coughed.

“Are you OK?” Tamara asked.

“Yeah, yeah? Why?” I said, unconvincingly.

“You just seem… weird?”

“What were you doing next door?” I blurted out, ungracefully. Fuck it, might as well get it over with, I thought.

“I…” she paused, stunned by my question.

Ha! A thousand thoughts criss-crossed through her mind. She wanted to lie but knew I was too far gone and wouldn’t believe her. Instead, she took a slow breath looking down at her knees.

“Well, I rent the flat next door,” she said sombrely.

“What? Why didn’t you just tell me? And I’m the one that seems weird? That’s proper weird.”

“I mean, technically I don’t,” she sighed. I waited for more. “In my reality, I… I rent it, next door to you as well! Well, the ‘you’ in my reality at least. In this same building too… but… but there are quite a few things that are…” she glanced at my eyes and looked away, “different?” she said, as though she wanted me to answer.

“Different?” I repeated. “Different how?”

“Well, in my reality, my dad lives across the street just like in this one, but I don’t have a little brother.”

“Oh?”

“Or a big brother for that matter. I’m an only child actually. My mum died when I was very young, my dad raised me, similar to this reality only… my dad, he’s not so similar, like, personality-wise. In my reality he’s a much nicer man. In this one he’s short-tempered and drunk.”

“Shit, I wish I thought of that,” I spat, throwing Tamara off her rhythm.

She looked up at me again with a tender confusion. “Thought of what?” she asked.

“How like, at each point of the line there could be subtle or, like in your case, pretty major differences,” I explained, intrigued by this new plot idea I was sure was a popular trope in its genre that I had embarrassingly forgotten to utilise.

“What? How do you know about…”.

“Points on the line? The thingy-doodah, the sections, something to do with the ten times table because the universe is an idiot, blah blah,” I took over. “Yeah, I know about all of that stuff.”

She looked down at her feet, puzzled by my knowledge. Was there nothing I didn’t know?

“So are you the last Tamara?” I asked her, standing upright, head cocked back like a figure of authority.

She paused and considered her words before answering. “Not exactly,” she said, taking a thoughtful breath of air. “I, I wasn’t supposed to be but I just couldn’t do it.”

I knew what she meant. “Didn’t want to disappear into thin air nah? I don’t blame you like,” I shrugged.

She wiped away the tears forming in the corners of her eyes and shook her head.

“So, er, what happened to the Tamara from this reality?” I wondered, feeling slightly more at ease, willing to consider the possibility that she may not actually be an assassin sent to kill me on behalf of those Bestard bastards.

Tamara was from a different point on the line. She jumped here with Tamara Number Thirty-something and was edging closer to her end. Although if you asked a different Tamara, they might have attempted to convince you it was not really the end, as they will live on through all the other Tamaras. But whatever, those Tamaras were irrelevant now, this Tamara just didn’t want to go through with it.

She let her line-hopping companion jump into the square-shaped black hole first before stepping back and coldly resting her hand on the shoulder of this reality’s Tamara to comfort her. “I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered, giving her a gentle nudge. She of course didn’t keep her word. The black hole vanished after a couple of minutes and she put a regular sim card into the thingy-doodah and used it as a phone. The one thing that definitely did remain the same was our signing-on times.

“So,” I cocked my head, crossed my arms and held my chin, “what was I like in your original reality? Am I as good a rapper as I am in this one and that?”

Tamara laughed quietly at my question. “Yea,” she said, “you are, you’re pretty much exactly the same to be honest.”

That was good, I thought. Leonard Swanson is a strong character.

I edged closer to her, “Well I’m sorry you like… killed yourself… or selves, err… but yeah, I mean, I’m just glad you weren’t sent by PEEPHOLE, that’s what I thought,” I said with an exaggerated sigh of relief.

“PEEPHOLE?” she enquired.

I stopped to study her face, to check for subtle clues, was this was a genuine clueless response and not just an act by a really good undercover agent? My mind made itself up for me, I decided she really was as clueless as she looked and I told her everything: the blurry-faced green bastards, my brief foray into the world of GENPHARM and subsequent discovery of what they were really up to, concluding with my paid Rich VIII aka V3 collaboration in order to rent the flat we were in.

“V3?!” she suddenly piped up, “Wow.”

“Wow?” I asked, tone dipping an octave, unsure whether offence was to be taken.

“Well you never got to collaborate with V3 in my former reality!” she said smiling, impressed.

“Hold on, what? You know V3? You do know he’s the spoilt-rich little blurry-faced green fucker that tried to steal my identity right?”

“Oh, so there’s still some things that are the same,” and there was no longer a tear in sight, at least not a sad one. My outburst was humorous to her and it frustrated me.

“This happened in your reality too?”

“Well, my former reality’s Leonard used to go mad if I played any of V3’s music, ‘fuck that guy, he bit my whole style,’” she said, mimicking my voice and throwing her arms around.

Her impression was terrible and I tutted loudly. “Bit my fucking style? Well, I’ve never heard him rap like, but he stole my beats man! I mean, he literally stole them, same samples and everything! The guy was living in my head for… well, for God knows how long… but… yeah, I mean, he was fully about to take over my body, like full control, leaving his own useless wart-ridden shell behind!” I said, remembering I had very nearly lost myself.

Back to Church.

One day I woke up and Tamara had gone. I creeped out and knocked next door but someone that definitely wasn’t her answered. I played it off as though I had knocked to welcome them to the building and they looked at me through their empty stranger’s eyes and told me they’d been there for a while but thanked me anyway. Deflated, I took a single side step to my flat and went inside. “Tamara,” I whispered under my breath. I felt sad that she had disappeared and hoped it wasn’t literally into thin air. Maybe that’s what happens to all of us eventually?

I managed to drag myself to the odd show with DJ Sadsack and at some point a small record label was stupid enough to release some of my old songs on vinyl. As far as I know the majority of the fine wax discs are still in boxes in some cold storage unit somewhere collecting dust. The company definitely did disappear into thin air before I got paid in full. Attempts to hunt down and kill those responsible were in vain as I gave up hope before I even left my flat to find them.

Time was mostly spent deep in a sort of surface-level meditation I had invented. A spliff would be rolled and puffed on, a can drunk — the usual. If there was an effect I had desired, it surely wouldn’t have been to intermittently draw a blank, mid-thought, causing me to constantly have to wade through the darkness, re-filling the blank canvas of my mind with colourful illustrative works of fiction. Themes ranged from the creation of my future classic rap album to the release of my future classic rap album. But outside my head I had failed to make any major progress.

Eventually, London had decided it would attempt to force me into a job for the privilege of living in it. So, before the inevitable, I packed up my things and headed for the hills. Back to Church Town I went, where I played the same trick I had pulled on the capital. Only this time, rather than use a hostel for my address, I used my mum’s house, where I was allowed to stay on a very temporary basis, providing I chipped in half of my dole towards rent and the odd egg and chips.

At some point I received another email from the drunk publisher. He told me my story was good but he ended on a “but,” after which read something along the lines of “perhaps you could write something more personal? Something about your music career maybe?” I feel like he wrote “music career” in quotation marks but perhaps that is just my insecurities getting the better of me, and to check would require more energy than I am willing to exude at this moment. I guess I can come back and edit this part at a later date but I probably won’t do that either. Anyway, he seemed besotted with the idea of my music career being the subject of my first foray into real writing, firmly believing this was something the people would be interested in.

I don’t know who “the people” he was referring to were and I don’t care what they are interested in. But I do admit, it was at that point I decided to write everything you have just read. If I can’t make this album, I can at least write about making it!

The only way I could see to prevent this potential greatest book of all time from suffering the same fate as my album was to simply write the words “fuck it” and leave it at that. The problem is, these words I am writing now mean that the plan has failed. I could delete them all but it wouldn’t seem right; there are too many loose ends that need to be left untied while I move on blindly into the mysteries that lie ahead.

It is now the day after I wrote about my failure to end the book. The reason I decided to keep going is because sometime between then and writing this, I received a voicemail from Big John. He was a free man again and, via some sort of tiny feathered beast, had heard I was back in Church Town. He told me he had a friend looking for a housemate over in Liverpool. It was more a friend of a friend but a friend of a friend of Big John’s is a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. I got in touch with this distant acquaintance and agreed to take the room right there over the phone.

And I know I should probably end the book here in case something bad happens preventing me from finishing it but I hate goodbyes.

Jay.

The bus pulled into the stop I was to alight at. “Nice one,” I said to the bus driver as I hopped onto the pavement. The day was bright and the air was thick with pollen. Opposite the bus stop was the address I had written down on the piece of paper in my hand. I waited for a break in the traffic and ran across with my trusty holdall bouncing up and down on my back.

32 Stanley Road — a black door sandwiched between an old bookshop that opened once in a blue moon and an abandoned salon. On my tip-toes I rang the bell looking through the half-moon window into the enclosed staircase. “Come on, come on,” I hit the bell again and again. The door at the top of the stairs flung open and a body came tumbling down.

“Come in!” said Jay enthusiastically, hugging me like an old friend.

“OK,” I said as he patted me on the back, turning to lead me up the stairs.

“Close the door, make sure it’s shut properly,” he shouted. I glanced back idly. He held the door open at the top and I stepped in.

“Nice one laa,” I thanked him and looked up and down the hallway.

He locked the door with the key already in the keyhole.

“Don’t move this key from this door, OK?” he said with a sudden seriousness.

I told him I understood and awaited further instruction.

“Right then, OK, so!” he said, his previous enthusiasm returning. “Kitchen down there, bathroom there, my room there, empty room there, and your room, up there,” he said, pointing in various directions, ending on another set of stairs, which led from the first floor to my new room. Jay decided not to burden me with choice and I decided to go with it. “It’s a loft conversion, you can basically make as much noise as you want up there, no neighbours on either side,” he said and we both nodded. His accent sounded old, like how I imagined Scousers in the 60’s spoke. Like one of The Beetles slowing down their speech to make it easier for their American interviewer to understand them.

He was older than me by a few years, a tall fella with a round face that seemed constantly flustered, with curls of black hair that hung down from beneath his tight beanie hat like tangled black vines.

Jay stepped into his bedroom, which was directly in front of the door at the top of the ground floor staircase. Why Jay chose a single mattress on the floor of the smallest room in the flat was beyond my realm of understanding, especially seeing as right next door to his room was a much larger room with a king-size bed in it.

“Come in,” he said and I followed him in and stood next to his open door, clutching my bag, waiting for Jay to finish. In the room, aside from the single mattress, was a plastic foldable chair doubling as a bedside table, on top of which was a retrostyle alarm clock. A solitary, fading old photograph was stuck to the wall above his mattress with a thumbtack. I assumed the person in the photograph was his mum, although I never asked and he never said.

Jay’s face drooped a little as he pulled off his hat and he knelt down and folded it neatly on top of his pillow and smiled to himself. Then he picked up the alarm clock and sat down on the chair in its place. “Take a seat,” he said. I looked around the room, unsure as to where. There was nothing else in the room except the built-in wardrobes opposite. I opted for the edge of the mattress, as close to the open door as I could sit, holdall still hauled over my back.

Jay placed the alarm clock in his lap and sat with his hands clasped together and leant forward, looking at me directly in the eyes like a sociopath. I looked away. I don’t do well with eye contact and I am certain those that bask in it are psychopathic. He let me know that he had heard my stuff and thought I was a decent rapper but I needed a DJ and that he was a DJ but he didn’t want to be my DJ because he thought DJs were dickheads. “Yeah,” I agreed, even though I had no opinions on the matter. I let him continue on with his rant and thought it best I didn’t mention the talented but obnoxiously unsad DJ Sadsack.

I quickly discovered Jay’s knack for switching topics mid-conversation, as halfway through name-dropping a local DJ he despised, he rose to his feet, declaring the next topic. “Football,” he said. His serious demeanour waned. “See the game?” he asked, to which I replied, “Yeah.” But that was as deep as he delved into the topic of football and he sat back down, re-clasped his hands and asked me if I had any issues better left unsaid.

“Er,” I muttered, unsure of how to respond.

“Hmm,” he said, looking at the alarm clock in his lap. “Right, I’m going to bed anyway,

I’m up early.” He took off his long black trench coat and hung it up in his wardrobe and turned to draw the single red and white curtain that looked like it would have been more suited in a 1950s kitchen. “Cool,” I said and I left him to it.

It was still some time in the afternoon, no sort of time for a man to be sleeping, I thought. I came to discover, although he appeared as though he was not all there, that Jay was deceptively quick, and not just in wit. His pace appeared lazy and lumbered to the eye, a deception spoiled the first time I was forced to keep up with him, taking two or three strides for his every one. He owned one large blue puffer jacket and three outfits, all of which were identical. Ill-fitting blue jeans and plain black T-shirts; his awkward frame made his clothes look both too big and too small.

On first impression, I didn’t envy his ability to make me feel sane, and felt as though that could become a problem. At first though, I was relieved to have somewhere I could potentially start making music again. I remember feeling particularly optimistic as I reached the top of the stairs to my new, doorless room. Fuck it, maybe I would even quit giving up on the making of the greatest rap album of all time, I naively pondered.

The room, which was bigger than my entire flat in London, contained a king-size mattress which lay in the middle of the floor with no bedding and shoved under the sloping wall at an angle was a dining table with a single wooden chair tucked under it.

On the opposite side of the room was a large window with no curtains. Out of it I could see a busy main road with replica bus stops either side. Over the road stood an old church next door to a garage. There were several burly men with their heads tucked into car engines, shouting over their own banging tools and the sound of pop music blaring out of a very loud yet very small radio. I could hear their indistinct, muffled chatter over the music, even with the window closed.

That night I lay on the mattress using a couple of hoodies as a pillow and a coat as a cover. The evening was warm and eventually I swapped the coat for air.

On my little unbranded mp3 player, my own beats looped around and around all night, providing the slow plodding original soundtrack to my forgotten dreams. And in the morning I tugged my earphones out of my skull and listened to the birds fighting to be heard over the sound of the busses that pulled into the bus stops. I imagined the people outside on their way to work and it made me shudder and I put my earphones back in and turned the volume up to drown it all out.

Jay was kind enough to give me a few weeks to figure out my money situation. He told me the previous tenant had covered the first month’s rent and won’t be asking for it back any time soon. The deposit was also covered for the same reason. That’s all I ever knew of the situation; I knew there was a reason but Jay never delved deeper than “because they were bellends” and I chose not to pursue it any further than that. For whatever happened, was none of my business.

Temporary Puppet.

I made a few minor adjustments to the trick that I used in London and put it into action in Liverpool. Before long I had transferred my Jobseekers claim and secured housing benefits, this time with the added bonus of a back payment. With my first rent paid up I used the back payment money on essentials, such as a computer, an old second-hand turntable and a DJ mixer.

I purchased the turntable from a pawn shop, imagining the previous owner as I slugged their former prized possession back to my new flat. Some poor lost soul who had given up on their dreams and skipped town in embarrassment. The very least they wanted was respect as a small time Liverpool hip-hop DJ. But instead all they received was a pelting of mockery and scorn at the hands of real DJs like Jay. Real DJs that were too real to even engage in the practice of their craft.

Turntable under my arm, the plug bouncing up the stairs behind me, I burst into the flat to discover Jay standing outside of his bedroom. The back of his head was pressed against his bedroom door. His eyes were fixed on the jaundiced skirting board running along the bottom of the wall opposite, quietly furious with some invisible irritant. I waved my spare hand in front of him but got nothing.

“You got a mixer for that?” He suddenly asked as I was halfway up the stairs to my room.

“No,” I answered.

“Sound,” he said and left.

I placed the turntable on the crooked dining table and sat down on my mattress. Taking a small swig of cheap vodka from a quarter-litre glass bottle, I grimaced in disgust. I took a furious pull on a cigarette and studied its brown, speckled filter between my finger and thumb as I exhaled. And I suddenly felt as though the cigarette was killing me in real time. I mean, anybody that smokes is at least acutely aware of this apparent fact, but there is a certain wilful ignorance a smoker develops, if they were not born with it. For whatever reason, in that moment, my protective shield of conscious delusion had disappeared.

Suddenly the room got hotter, my skin felt as though it was burning. I pulled at my loose T-shirt, which felt tight around the collar, like it was choking me. I jumped to my feet and tore it off. Words I can’t recall rushed out of my mouth and dissipated into the ether. I ran to the window and opened it. I wanted to climb out onto the sloping roof and launch myself into the trees but I was too shaky and weak to pull myself up.

Cold sweat dripped from my armpits and trickled down my sides. Overcome with the sudden urge to flee, I turned and ran down the stairs from my room to the first floor. In the hallway I stopped and the walls were pulsating so I continued, running down the ground floor stairs skipping three or four steps at a time, throwing my hands out in front of me to stop myself at the bottom. The road was busy with fast-moving traffic, my vision spiralled into a blur and I had to concentrate to refocus them. My eyeballs felt too big for my skull and my mind felt crowded. I couldn’t tell whether the noise that suddenly engulfed me was coming from inside or outside my head. Either way, I slapped my hands over my ears and retreated, making my way back up the stairs.

I took refuge in the relative safety of my room, slumped on the rough beige carpet against the unpainted MDF half wall at the top of the staircase. Which is where I remained for a few solitary hours, hidden from any flying threats that may have passed the window and peered in. You can never be too careful when it comes to the unknown, and I was taking no chances.

My heart rate had returned to its usual 79bpm, but each beat punched against my chest as though it had a point to prove, like if I expected it to slave away, pumping all that blood around, it was going to make sure I felt it.

At some point the orange hue of the street light bled in through the window. The leafy branches swaying in the sickeningly gentle breeze of the night cast flickering shadows across the sloping wall over my head.

I watched as abstract patterns jumped all about, legs stretched out in front of me, stuck in looping fluctuations of panic and calm. Once I had managed to force a successful yawn, a warm wave of serenity washed over me, only for it to recede and leave me in the cold. My fists thumped against my thighs heteronomously, as though the panic looming over me had assumed control, pulling up and down on my marionette cross. If I was unable to gulp up that next satisfactory bubble of air when I did, I would have surely suffocated in that atmosphere.

Or at least that is what I believed at the time. Many years later I would learn that I was having an extreme panic attack for reasons I still don’t understand. But at that moment, I had zero knowledge of such a thing, which was probably for the best. Had I known what a panic attack was, I believe my reaction would have been to combat it with reckless abandon. I would have thought it made me weak and felt the need to immediately prove myself, flinging my body into harm’s way in a spontaneous, uneducated attempt to convince my nonexistent audience I was not, as Big Macca would have put it, a fucking pussy!

I hadn’t heard the door open, so I was unaware of Jay’s triumphant return until he bumped into the wall at the bottom of the stairs to my bedroom. “Argh, fuck,” he grumbled in the dark. “You up there Lee-oh-Nard?” For whatever reason, Jay had broken my name down into three syllables: Lee-oh-Nard. To this day I don’t know if he was joking or that’s just how he read my name but I never corrected him. No one else ever corrected him either, at least not in my presence.

I sprung to life in the darkness. “Yeah,” I answered. Jay flicked the light on and made his way up. My legs began to fill with blood until they were operational, clicking like a radiator heating up as I rose to my feet.

Once he cleaned the top step he took it upon himself to switch on the light.

“Alright mate,” he said, in his slow drawl. Sometimes it sounded like Jay was speaking entirely through his nose and you’d be forgiven for thinking he was stupid. His voice alone was a polarising characteristic, it would either frustrate you into madness or instantly calm you, for me it was the latter.

He did not possess a soothing aura by any stretch of the imagination, far from it. I was very aware of his frustratingly slow way of speaking. I often found myself disappearing into my own head when he spoke at any great length. But he was so fucking mental it made me feel somewhat normal, which in turn would calm me. Sometimes, in his presence, I felt almost too normal even, like I had a lot more in common with the average square than I had ever previously been willing to admit.

He walked over to me and shoved a Pioneer DJM-800 mixer into my chest. “Here,” he said.

I looked down at it. “Whoa,” I gasped, impressed with the fine piece of equipment.

“£50,” he declared and held his upturned palm out in front of me.

“Err, shit, well, I’d have to go to the cash machine like, I’ll go tomorrow.”

“No problem,” he responded.

And then he took the mixer back and walked off down the stairs with it, whistling to himself. I was somewhat confused by his reaction and at first I thought he was joking. Then I realised he wasn’t.

“I’ll defo take it man,” I reassured him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said without looking back, “no problem mate, just get me the money tomorrow, good night.”

“Err, yeah sound laa,” I muttered from the top of the stairs, “What the fuck.”

Jay had many quirks and strange habits and that was one of them — owing him money was a mistake those that knew him best did not make. He required every penny back. Even if he chucked you 50p, he must receive it back and it had to be the second he asked. If you didn’t, he would simply remain in your presence and not say anything until you found 50p. Unfortunately for me, there was no couch in the flat to forage in, so when I found myself in debt to him for no more than 50p, he stood over me in silence while I sat at the table in my room, quietly writing.

In his head, the mixer had to remain with him until the transaction was complete. “It just stops any unnecessary problems,” he once explained without prompting. It’s just the way Jay was and probably still is, I imagine.

The next day I took a walk to the nearest cash machine, which was in a petrol station — a five-minute walk in a straight line. For some reason, walking in straight lines felt a lot easier in Liverpool than it did in London. I withdrew £80: £50 for Jay, £20 for a bag of weed and £10 for skins and food. I had plenty of tobacco as I had quit smoking cigarettes the day before and was stubborn enough to stick to it.

I returned to hand Jay the £50 in exchange for the DJ mixer. The afternoon had only just begun and he was already drunk, tipping a bottle of vodka into his mouth. Wide-eyed and leary. “Yeah!” he slowly shouted at me as I slapped two twenties and a tenner into his sweaty palm. It was hard to tell if he was angry or happy or angry because he was happy. Before he changed his mind, I retreated to my room with the DJ mixer.

Just as I plugged it in, the doorbell rang, “Shit! The weed man,” I said to myself and ran down to answer the door. I invited him in and we loitered in the hallway outside Jay’s bedroom, discussing all manner of stereotypical stoner malarkey.

Whether they were of a more bohemian persuasion or just everyday tracksuit-clad scallies; the good thing about weed dealers in those days was, they were willing to entertain any and all theories of conspiracy, no matter how far-fetched. They often believed in several vastly conflicting conspiracy theories simultaneously.

With that knowledge, I used the time to discuss the blurry-faced green bastards at length. He seemed to believe me and appeared to have some vague knowledge of what I was talking about. “I know yeah lad,” he said and intermittently butted in to add things like “That’s fucked up lad!” and “Corporations are so fucked lad!”, etc.

When it was his turn to fill me on his latest conspiratorial learnings, he dove right into the deep end head first and without taking a breath, declared how it was now known, without a shadow of a doubt, that cannabis can cure death!

“No way?” I said.

“It’s a fact lad, they’ve been doing it for centuries in secret!” And somehow he concluded his fact based tale of cannabinoid based resurrection with “And that’s why we shouldn’t pay taxes lad!”

“Oh yeah,” I agreed.

And he answered a phone call from his next impatient customer. “Where are you?” I could hear the desperate voice on the phone enquire. “Five minutes lad,” the weed man lied. Then he left.

An eerie silence had fallen upon Jay’s quarters. I contemplated taking a peek inside but you could never be sure as to how he would react to anything. I pressed my ear up against his door and could hear his quiet, struggling snores.

Jay was an avid drinker and sleeper. He could sleep through a drunken brawl that he started, just lie down right there in the middle of the melee and get a solid eight in. I left him to it and went upstairs to finish setting up the mixer and ponder immortality.

Album Finished?

At some point, I felt as though the greatest album this side of almost sane was actually almost finished. The rough tracklist was scribbled out across several post-it notes stuck to the side of the dining table. I even made some cover art with the help of Jay and his cousin’s digital camera. A blurry picture of me standing at the back of a double-decker bus, holding a Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-Track I owned and had barely ever used. I would stare at the cover on the computer screen and make mental notes while listening through the album, smoking badly-rolled spliffs.

The biggest hurdle at that point was my fluctuating opinion of the music. My self-criticism and its harshness depended entirely on how stoned I was. At the start of the day I was optimistic and nodding my head enthusiastically. By the evening I was picking it apart and re-recording verses so they sounded less or more energetic, depending on the song. This cyclical prison I had built for myself sparked a never-ending debate in my head. Which opinion was my real opinion? Very stoned, or mildly stoned? A simple thinker may be inclined to believe the latter would be closer to the real self, but I was unconvinced. The only way to truly know would be to remain stone-sober for an extended period of time and then see how I felt about it. Of course, I, like you, am aware of the ludicrous nature of such a naive thought.

Eventually the very stoned and mildly stoned versions of myself would be forced into some sort of unspoken compromise. I turned away from the computer, “finished!”

Finally! Seventeen tracks, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered by yours truly. The words mixed and mastered are used very loosely, of course, but when comparing the tracks with other people’s stuff, I decided it wasn’t the absolute worst I’d heard. “Fuck it, it had its own charm!” I told my mildly stoned self, who actually disagreed but couldn’t deny the fact that there was no other way. We couldn’t leave this up to someone else to mix, they would ruin it even further! Also, we had no money to bring such fantasies to life anyway. The best thing to do then was to let the project simmer, sit on it for a while and come back to it a couple of weeks or so later. So I turned the computer off for the first time in weeks and let my mind wander elsewhere.

A night or so later, I returned from the off licence dangling a loaf of bread and drinking a can of lager. I ate toast and skimmed through a week-old copy of the Daily Mirror. My quiet reading was suddenly cut short by a loud cry with a chaser of bangs and crashes. “What the fuck,” I mumbled as I rose nonchalantly from the dining table. Approaching the top of the stairs, I could hear Jay laughing like a crazed Nicolas Cage character in a movie only I seemed to be a fan of. “No! No!” he shouted between laughs. Another loud bang, boom, crash, the sound of smashing glass. I crept down the stairs and peered through Jay’s door, which was hanging off its hinges.

“Whoa, what are you doing man?” I shouted in through the gap.

“No!” he replied. “Nooo!!” he screeched again and laughed with red eyes.

“No what?” I asked him.

“Nooo!!” he screamed again, spit bubbling from his tightly pursed lips, gritting his teeth, blood dripping from somewhere under his beanie. Without warning, he flung himself into the built-in wardrobe, sending what remained of it tumbling down on top of him. He rose from the rubble with his head cocked back, holding an empty vodka bottle upside down over his mouth, slapping the bottom of it like a bottle of ketchup. “No!” His desperate roar morphed into a manic cackle as he proceeded to club himself over the head with the bottle. Unlike the movies, the bottle did not smash, however it did appear to momentarily incapacitate him. His face turned blank, he began swaying then fell, landing face-first onto piles of protruding pieces of chipboard and wood.

His bedroom door fell into his room as I pushed it. What little Jay had was now in pieces and strewn across his tiny room. Bemused, I looked around at the aftermath.

“Err, you alright mate?” I asked, still looking around the room at the damage.

Somehow he managed to find his feet. He wiped the blood from his eyes and rubbed it into his T-shirt. “Yes!” he answered angrily.

He pushed past me and stumbled toward the kitchen, leaving a gallery of smudged claret handprints on the walls of the hallway. I tailed him from a safe distance, excited to see what he did next. With the kitchen window pushed open and resting on his shoulders, he dropped backwards like a scuba diver, landing with a heavy thud onto the flat roof below. A series of strange and painful noises left his body as he made his way to the edge of the roof. “Yeah, be careful there mate,” I tried to warn him but he lost his balance and tumbled forwards. “Ooh,” I said and sucked air between my teeth. I could hear him land on top of the wheelie bins in the alleyway. Unfortunately for Jay, they had not been conveniently loaded with bin bags full of pillows and even if they had, the lids were closed anyway. I couldn’t see over the edge from inside the kitchen but the pain was audible enough for me to imagine the rest.

Except for a dog barking somewhere in the distance, and the ambience of the road on the opposite side of the building, it fell quiet. “Jay? You OK mate?” I shouted, holding back laughter.

“Yes! Yeesss!” he finally shouted back. The alleyway gate scraped across the stone floor as he pulled it open and I could see him as he emerged on the other side. I watched in disbelief as he took surprisingly steady strides down the road and out of sight.

“Well, fucking hell!” I think I said, admiring his durability.

With the entertainment over, I stared out of my bedroom window and drank beer and smoked weed and vice versa. I imagined my eyes appeared vagrant as I soberly watched the clouds scatter and reform. Sometime later I heard Jay return but left him to clean up his mess, hammering away into the night.

The next day I ventured down to ask him what drugs or demons were to be held accountable for… for whatever that was, but he was nowhere to be seen. His door had been replaced with the one from the spare room, his wardrobe was now open-plan and the chair/bedside table had either been put back together with expert craftsmanship or had somehow managed to survive unscathed. Surprisingly, the room was pretty much OK, except the mattress was now without bedding, exposing what I suspected to be a large blood stain. Judging by the greying colour of the stain, it wasn’t fresh enough to be from the previous night’s show. If it was blood, it was more than likely evidence of a previous mental breakdown. “Hmm,” I stroked at my chin like a murder detective, “Yes.”

The orange street lights filled my room as I sat in the glow of the inaudible TV. Eyes fixed in deep concentration, exhaling smoke rings of varying quality, attempting to poke a finger in and out of the hoops without breaking them.

Suddenly I could hear a girl’s voice, my head twisted sharply, causing my neck to pull. “Argh!” I cried. “Lee-oh-Nard!” shouted Jay. “You up there?” he asked, then began speaking incoherently to the owner of the girl’s voice who giggled at whatever he said.

“Yea!” I shouted back, coughing and rubbing at my neck as I stumbled to turn on the light. “What’s happenin’?”

“Not much lad, you decent? Can we come up?” Jay responded.

“Yeah man, err, yeah,” I said, shuffling around the room in a feeble attempt to present myself as respectable. The girl giggled some more as they walked up.

“Lee-oh-Nard, Lee-argh, Lee-argh, Lee-oh-Nard,” he said, “right, I’ll leave youse to it then.” And he slapped his hands together and rubbed them as he disappeared back down the stairs to his room.

“Err,” I said, my bloodshot eyes squinting hopelessly as I struggled to find any words worth saying.

“It’s Leia by the way, like Princess Leia, not ‘Lee-Argh’,” the giggling girl said with a soft, scouse accent.

“Oh, err, yeah, my names Leonard, or Len or whatever, not ‘Lee-oh-Nard’,” I explained, unable to maintain eye contact with the pretty, painted face in front of me for longer than a fleeting second.

“Are you going west?” she said and her giggling was making me even more anxious. I tried to act like everything was completely normal.

“Err, no, yeah, nah, why?” I managed to force out, over-thinking my every movement.

“You’re acting like you weren’t expecting me or something? Am I not as pretty as my photo?” she answered and asked while taking a seat on the mattress in front of me. I wasn’t ready for a question to be fired back at me and became obsessed with what my hands were doing. Suddenly I felt like an uninvited guest in my own luxury studio/bedroom, like maybe I should have asked her for permission to sit down or something.

“Err,” I tried to smoke the spliff in my hand, which had gone out, then fumbled for a lighter.

“Looking for this?” she said, holding my lighter up.

“Yes, err, yeah,” I said, correcting my abrupt yes to a more formal yeah, so she knew everything was fine.

I lit the spliff and took a brave if not irresponsible drag, glancing down at the girl.

“Sit down,” she said, patting the mattress next to her. I robotically complied, parking myself next to her. “You going to give me a pull?”

“Yeah, err, go ’ed,” I said, passing her the spliff.

She exhaled and looked at me. “So?” she said and shrugged and waited. I tried to muster up some semblance of rational thought but the confusion made me slack-jawed and stupid. Either English was no longer my first language or I had been tagged into the life of a different Leonard Swanson. Maybe they thought my hands were capable enough to handle such a scenario, but they forgot to equip me with the memories required to understand who she was and what she was doing there in Leonard’s room. I pondered, ignoring my reality. “God, am I too fat or something? I look the same as I do in me photo, don’t I?” She finally stopped giggling.

“What?” I said, even though I heard her. By “what” I meant please elaborate, who are you and what are you doing here, etc., but I just couldn’t decide on the right combination of words. In hindsight, to answer her question, no she wasn’t fat, slightly chubby maybe, with large breasts that looked even larger due to her short stature, but I wouldn’t say fat, or maybe she was, I don’t know. Who made me the gatekeeper of body-types? Suddenly the last of my brain power kicked in.

“No, wait, hold on, what photo? What are you on about?” I asked her, standing up as the blood rushed to my legs. Early-onset dementia? What even is early-onset dementia? I panicked, had I forgotten what that was too? Or did I ever know? Why don’t I know anything? The thoughts bounced around my otherwise empty skull.

“Eh? The photo Jay showed you, the photo of me? The one you seen, you told him to tell me I was fit?”

“Oh, err?” I shook my head. I felt as though my brain had shrunk. It must be dementia, maybe I am a lot older than I realised? All that reality-hopping had taken its toll. I always knew it would happen, I just hadn’t expected it so soon.

“What? Oh my God! Jay!” she shouted as she struggled to her feet, flustered and fanning her face with her freshly manicured hands. “Jay! You fuckin’ tit!” she screamed down the stairs.

“Err,” I said.

“Soooo embarrassing, oh my God laa, I can’t believe this!”

“Hold on” I said, stopping her in her tracks. She looked at me, waiting for me to save the day and tell her I was just messing, but instead I had nothing else to add and she left, never to be seen again.

Everything in my room rattled as the front door slammed. Suddenly I thought I should have just played along. “Damn,” I sighed. And the improved picture of Leia in my mind was suddenly a hundred times more attractive to me than she was in real life and I regretted not settling down with her right there and then and making several non-blurry-faced babies.

“Oh well,” I muttered and took a seat on the mattress. Across the room I noticed my trusty holdall. It was open and although my room was a mess, with the exception of lighters of course, I knew where everything was. My holdall had been moved, barely but enough for me to be sure.

I went through it, pulling out items of clothing and holding them up in front of me. “Ha!” I said as I found a hoodie I hadn’t seen since my days in London. I tossed it into the corner and continued, an old bank card, a notepad, some pens, a phone charger, etc. Wait, I thought, the vibris! I tipped the bag out and while sifting through my neglected belongings, I remembered putting it in the front pocket. Only the scrunched-up paper it was wrapped in remained. I decided there and then it must be dementia, it had to be.

I developed a taste for Pro-Plus, washing them down with cheap energy drinks, deep inside the bumpy arse-end of the night. It gave me a slight shaky edge I felt was necessary to go on living. Food was consumed only when I had enough money to make it appear on my doorstep in the hands of a stranger. Apart from that, I felt as though I was flying high for a moment back then. Swooping through the street confidently as I went back and forth to the Jobcentre, playing along with all the talk of jobs and so on. The frequenting of the occasional club assisted by Big John, his girlfriend and her interestingly dressed university friends became an almost biweekly occurrence. Eventually under the wing of Big John, I began to sell extortionate bags of low quality weed to wealthy students to make some extra cash, which I spent mostly on extortionate bags of high quality weed to smoke.

When it came to being a dealer of terrible weed, I didn’t have the fiery spirit and ambition of some of Big John’s other underlings, but I definitely, almost always delivered — providing it was not before 6pm and you were patient.

After a while I got to know a few students who ran a monthly hip-hop night in a small basement club. I started to perform, mostly for free, supporting groups I had never heard of, performing songs no one had ever heard. A couple of the songs became relatively popular in this small basement scene. “Play that song,” they would scream from the bleachers. And I would turn to the DJ and without further ado we would play that song.

Of course, in between weed deliveries, club ventures and Jobcentre outings, I had abandoned the idea of my album being finished. My new life experiences resulted in me feeling as though I had to re-write and remix everything.

Disaster was always going to strike though and I knew it. I felt its lingering presence in the catacombs of my mind. It was always there, somewhere in the shadows, waiting to pounce and force my brain into sending hasty signals to my clumsy hands as I juggled plastic bottles of rustic, caffeinated poison. And sure enough, the perfect moment had arrived. The computer had started to overheat at regular intervals, forcing me to turn it off to allow it to cool down.

One stormy night, at the experienced advice of Jay, I laid the PC tower atop the carpet on its side. The plan was to open it up and hoover the giant clusters of dust that would surely be there, causing its heat exhaustion. To my surprise, it was relatively dust-free. “Hmm,” I loomed over the open machine. Time to take a break, I thought, and swiped up one of the two lidless litre bottles of cheap poison on the dining table beside me. The first bottle I took a sip from was warm so I grimaced and reached out for the second bottle, which was slightly cooler. I took a large swig, savouring the face-screwing, battery-like taste as I held both bottles to my chest to think some more. I swallowed the metallic liquid, or attempted to, when just like that, disaster struck. Down the wrong hole it went, I spluttered and spat as an unwanted command shot from my brain to my arms, demanding the left hand let go of the bottle at once. Everything went in slow motion, I reached out to bat it away, forgetting I had hold of a second bottle. “Fuuuuccckk!!” I screamed, accidentally hitting both bottles mid-air with a four-hit combo, sending them splashing and crashing directly into the innards of the computer. I stumbled and tripped, cracking the side of the hard drive with a foot, slamming down onto the motherboard. “Argh!” I bellowed out as I hopped back, flipping the computer into an upright position with my heel like a skateboard. The hard drive and a few other loose bits and pieces flew out across the room. I rubbed at the bottom of my injured foot and hopped up and down, swearing.

I tried connecting the hard drive to a friend’s computer to no avail.

I took it to a local computer repair shop. The confident and sole member of staff claimed to be some sort of virtuoso in the field of third hand computer maintenance. A month passed. The self-proclaimed expert handed it back to me with an exasperated apology I didn’t want to accept. “I thought you was some sort of genius?” I sighed disappointedly. “Can you try again?” My pathetic pleading was met with nothing but his glassy eyes and a sorrowful shake of his head.

I sent it off to a friend of a friend of Jay’s cousin, the real leading man in all things PC. Same again. “The hard drive’s fucked!” He told Jay to tell me. Eventually it was returned to me in a plastic coffin with a sticker that read “Lee-oh-Nard.” I still have the hard drive to this day and every now and then I plug it in just in case but it never works.

And the album was gone. For the following weeks, I moped around, ate Pro-Plus and fell asleep on busses into town. Eventually my equipment found itself decorating the windows of several pawn shops. Sometimes I would walk past one of them, see something that once belonged to me and fake a smile to myself as I walked to the bus stop en route to my new job.

I don’t recall how I was conned into another job but there we were. I sat in a chair and answered a phone for several hours each day, taking people’s card information and typing it into a computer. The floor managers were younger than me and told me to “Keep up the good work.” I smiled while I fantasised about cutting their throats in an alleyway. I refused to get to know any of my fellow call centre comrades. On my breaks, between the loud yellow and turquoise walls of the canteen, I hunched in the corner, kept my eyes low and drank black coffee in silence. If someone sat too close, I left to stand outside in the transparent, plastic smoking shelter. If the shelter was occupied I would continue around the corner, head to the shop down the road to buy something I didn’t want, or just squat against a brick wall, overlooking the quiet rows of terraced housing.

The crazed laughter and banging from Jay’s room provided my nightly lullaby. Every night the same thing. Screams of “No!”, bursts of depraved laughter, crashes, smashes, scrapes, hammering, drilling. Every morning I would walk past his locked door and could hear his enthusiastic snores and snorts. I don’t remember when he fit a lock to his door and I didn’t know why or care, but I was glad it at least remained on its hinges and I could go on blissfully ignoring his manic bouts of home improvement.

One day, slumped on the floor of my room, eating a Pot Noodle, staring blankly at the TV, Jay came rushing up the stairs. “Oh, you’re in,” he announced suspiciously, eyes flicking around the room. I nodded, slurping up a fork full of noodles. “Well, OK,” he said, and stopped for a moment to compose himself. He stepped over me and placed a small plastic bottle on the table with a note. “Well, I got you a present and wrote you a note because I didn’t know you was in, I was just going to leave it here.”

“I’m always in at this time,” I responded.

“I know,” said Jay as he stepped over me and left.

I finished my Pot Noodle and sat for a while, occasionally glancing over at the small plastic bottle on the table until a tiny morsel of curiosity prompted me to begrudgingly inspect it closer.

I picked up the note and read it out loud to myself: “I noticed you’ve been acting like a little bitch lately (no offence), if you want to stop acting like a little bitch (no offence), drink this.” I picked the bottle up to inspect it. It looked like a de-labelled mini orange juice bottle. I unscrewed the lid and held the top of it to my nose. It smelt like alcohol, maybe vodka, with a faint whiff of oranges. I looked back down at the note, at the bottom of the page in bold writing it read: “1 X 25ML SHOT ONLY!!” I didn’t have any means by which to measure such a shot, so I drank half the bottle. It tasted like cheap vodka with a metallic twinge. I screwed my face up and sat back down on the mattress.

I felt relatively content, a slight buzz began to develop in my chest. After a while, a warm wave slowly started to fill my pores. I shivered slightly as an ice-cold droplet of sweat trickled down my armpit to my hip. I felt as though I could visualise it as it rolled down my skin and imagined it reeling off a bunch of incoherent gibberish as it went. I laughed slightly then threw my hand over my mouth to stop myself as I glanced into each dark corner of the room in a panic. Suddenly the banging lullaby burst into my room and hit me in the face. I lunged forward and rolled upright on the balls of my feet.

Two hands appeared around my throat, I screamed out in panic, until I realised they belonged to me and I was just making sure my head was still attached but forgot. The banging stopped; I breathed a sigh of relief as the flat fell into an eerie silence.

At the top of my bedroom stairs, I shielded my eyes from the bright burst of light. I blinked my way to the bottom step where I discovered Jay holding the door open at the top of the ground floor staircase. He was poking his head around the corner laughing.

“Ay, come and see this laa, come and see,” he screamed, pointing down the stairs towards the outside world. I was apprehensive but too curious not to entertain his wishes. He grabbed me by the shoulder, pointing down the stairs. “Look, fucking look! Ha ha haaa,” he screamed like a man possessed. I joined in with the laughter. It was hilarious, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t understand it at all but it was one of the funniest things I had ever witnessed. The two-man chorus of laughter sounded as though it formed one phasing soundwave, which made the scene all the more hilarious. What a discovery! I wondered if Einstein knew? Jay stopped laughing and left. His bedroom door slammed, suddenly the banging returned. “No!” he shouted. I looked back down the stairs, it had all gone, I felt sorry for Einstein. “Einstein, Einstein, ha ha,” I said.

The banging and crashing was all the more impressive from where I was standing, directly outside Jay’s door. It sounded like someone swinging a giant metallic mallet around in a scrapyard. I reached out to push the door open but stopped myself. “No, no, no,” I muttered. I started to stretch as though I was getting ready for a serious game of Sunday league football. Jay burst out of his door laughing while I was holding my left foot at my back, balancing against the wall. The hallway became awash in red light escaping from his open door and I dropped my leg and joined in with the laughter. “Ha ha!” I forced my laugh out as loud as I could so as to not raise any suspicion.

Jay vanished into the kitchen to juggle pots and pans and what not. While he was distracted, I took a peek inside of his room and, my friends, I couldn’t believe my watery, untrustworthy eyes. “So this is what you’ve been up to you sly fucker,” I whispered with the wryest of smiles. “You sly fucker!” I reiterated. “You sly, sly fucker!” I really had to hammer it home because it truly was a sight.

In his room, encircled in a waist-high rusty fence, suspended on rustic, heavy-duty chains fit for mooring a cruise ship, gleamed a pair of shiny, reflective, metallic angel wings. In front of them, nailed into the floor, stood a steel lectern stand with jumbled up, debossed text carved into the panel. What a brilliant scene it was! The powerful headlamp sitting on the chair in front of the wings sent fragments of red light shooting off into all twenty-something corners of the room and the fragments ricocheted and spilled out into the hallway. The mattress was stood against a wall and strewn across the floor in its place were random tools of varying shapes and sizes, nuts and bolts, oily rope and rags, metal canisters full of alcohol. Before my eyes a glass orb appeared, in it I could see into the kitchen in real time, Jay was pouring himself a tall glass of illuminated orange juice. I didn’t have much time. The orb imploded into a tiny plume of dust and smoke as I reached out to touch it. I turned my attention to the wings and yanked at them. The chains clanged against the fence. I shushed myself with a finger over my lips. “How do you work?” I asked quietly, looking up at the wings. Suddenly the nonsensical text carved into the lectern deciphered itself for me, revealing a step-by-step guide. I absorbed the information and my nose bled. I pushed a red button hanging from the ceiling on a wire, the fence disappeared into the floor. I turned to face the wall and edged slowly backwards until I felt the cold metallic wings touching my back. A crippling pain shot down my spine as two blunt spears poked through my chest. “Arghh!” My screams echoed into eternity and bright glowing green blood poured out of my mouth and disappeared as it rolled off my chin. The spears came to life and wrapped all around me, melding together with my body, the chains loosened and detached themselves from the wings which somehow began to shrink, folding up into little compartments in my back.

“Jay,” I remembered, and sprinted out of his room and upstairs to mine. I dived under the duvet and watched as blocks of primary colours bashed against each other, broke apart and reformed in the darkness.

It felt as though the entire world suddenly fell into a brilliant silence. The rivers stopped moving, the fish stopped swimming, their tiny fishy eye muscles the only part of them afforded any movement. A car that had skidded through the crash barrier of a bridge and was hurtling towards the river below became suspended in mid-air, the driver, accepting of their fate, still, except for their eyes, quietly waited for their downward trajectory into darkness to commence.

I blacked out and came to in the bathroom, staring into the cabinet mirror at a face that definitely didn’t belong to me, even though it was the face people would ordinarily recognise as mine. I held up my hands, but the man in the mirror didn’t comply.

“Whoa.”

I jumped side to side, nothing. I opened the cabinet, no hidden wires, cameras or machinery, just a big pile of pills I didn’t know had occupied that space behind the mirror until then. I picked up each bottle and box, confused and intrigued: Tofanil? Alzain? Suddenly I remembered the mirror and slammed the cabinet shut, jumping back, expecting a fight.

“Still there?” I said. The man in the mirror did not respond. “What in the clown make-up-wearing Jesus is going on?!” Suddenly the face in the mirror cracked a wry smile, which in turn formed a crack in the mirror itself.

I dipped my head sideways to catch him off-guard, but he remained still. I slapped myself in the face, he was unmoved. “Ouch.” I began sweating and noticed I had on large shoes with red tips, oversized, patchwork trousers and a dicky bow which began spinning around as I pulled my shirt and looked down at it. I wiped what I thought was sweat from my face to find my fingertips covered in white and blue paint, I looked in the mirror to check but the non-responsive face was still in the way.

“Move man!”

I wiped my face some more, more white, more blue. I wiped my lips, red… “Hold on, does Jesus have something to do with this? Wait, am I Jesus?” I leaned into the mirror when suddenly a voice boomed through the room.

“If you want my advice… you’ve hit a whole new low if you want my advice. Take it or leave it or take it then leave it somewhere else, it’s your illusion of choice. If I’ve learnt anything it’s that I can’t honestly tell you if I’ve learnt anything. I know the basics: basic forms of communication, I can basically walk, where to is mostly decided upon arrival. The good thing about not knowing where you’re going is you always get there. If I had to describe myself in two words, I wouldn’t.”

I recognised the voice as my own, but those words had not come from my mouth. It appeared the voice didn’t belong to the man in the mirror either, or if it did, he was a really impressive ventriloquist, which he very well could have been for all I knew. Unsure as to where the origins of the voice lay, I addressed the ceiling, the walls, the bath, the toilet, the mirror.

“Wow, OK, now see… It’s tricky because now I do want your advice,” I said glancing over my shoulder at the closed door behind me. “But I’ve got a feeling you’re just going to be a dick about it… but yeah, anyway, so… see all that shit you just said in my voice, erm, can I use it? Make lyrics out of it and that? Or even just use it in this book I’m trying to write? I mean, is that biting? I dunno… like… if this is all in my head then it’s mine innit? Is this even all in my head? Is it your head?”

Awkward silence.

“OK, OK, what about just that last bit about… ahh fuck, I can’t remember what you said now, can you repeat that bit? Just the last bit? The bit about… you know… being asked to describe yourself or whatever?… Fuck.” I clicked my fingers next to my brain like it would encourage it to do its duty of remembering stuff that had only just happened.

I decided never to return to that call centre. Now that I think about it, it feels like a dream someone else told me about. I can’t remember a single person who worked there, not one name or face.

After some commotion, wild accusations and excuses, I managed to sign on again. Which made me feel a lot better, but the uncertainty and feeling of dread still lived on somewhere in the background, forever ready to consume me. I no longer thought about trying to recreate the album I had lost to the perils of heavily advertised energy-boosting products. I decided to try and write about it instead. And if I could finish it, submit it as some sort of “book” to the drunk publisher, hoping he would still be trapped in the fun-filled, sometimes deadly grip of alcoholism and, upon receiving it, would be intoxicated enough to publish it.

The only thing I was certain of is that I needed to leave that place immediately. But I had forgotten how to run away; it had been nearly three years. I needed a final push over the hill.

And one fine day Jay walked up the stairs, looked me square in the face and sincerely asked me if I was OK. That is all it took. I realised that, if such a bat-shit crazy, deceivingly fast train-wreck of a man was asking me if I was OK, something had to change, and it had to change right there and then.

“Erm, and yeah, if you ever need anyone to talk to…” he butted in my thoughts.

I cringed inside but thanked him. “Thanks Jay, nice one, you know what, that was the awakening I needed!” Thank all the Gods! And just like that, I snapped out of it. “I’m sound actually.”

And suddenly a loud creaking and stretching filled the room and its source was somewhere deep within my body. A sickening pain filled my every cell, knocking me down to one knee. The noise sounded like a hundred old haunted mansion doors slowly creaking open at the same time. “Arrggh!!” I screamed out, recoiling in pain. Jay looked on, nodding and smiling proudly. The pain swirled around and became concentrated in my back and shoulder blades and would have been unbearable for mere mortals. I hunched over further, left hand flat on the floor, fingers spread wide. Right hand balled up into a fist and raised above my lowered head. I clenched my teeth in preparation of the next phase of my evolution. The edges of the room spat out flames, burning away the carpet beneath me, leaving black marks up the walls. The skin on my back burst open either side of my bony spine, sending unwanted pieces of useless flesh flying across the room, splattering against the walls and sliding down to what was left of the burnt carpet.

I grew by six feet. Jay shielded his eyes from the burst of light. “I knew it! Go on lad!” he exclaimed. I punched a hole through the ceiling with a wrecking-ball-sized fist and roared so powerfully that all of the glass within a five-mile radius shattered. Sirens rang out all over the city, every car alarm, burglar alarm, smoke alarm and alarm clock went off simultaneously. I laughed even louder than I had roared, peering down into the room, “Nice one Jay laa!” my voice boomed down, knocking his beanie off. I stood upright, pushing my head and shoulders through the hole in the roof, my metallic wings began to flap, I punched the hole bigger as I broke through and flew off towards the moon.

“Shit, my phone!” I slapped myself on the forehead and performed an advanced aerobatic u-turn manoeuvre, chipping off more of the roof as I came crashing down headfirst into the pulverised, half-empty room. I shrunk myself to the size of a regular human or even a green blurry-faced fella. “Forgot my phone,” I said with a shrug as I crouched down to sift through the debris to find it, “There it is!” I said, holding it up and dusting it off. “In a bit Jay.”

“Yeah, in a bit Leonard.”

Down the stairs and outside into the cold night I went.

REPEATER BOOKS

is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that wish to enter history and assert control over its currents, gathering together scattered and isolated voices with those who have already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. Our desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed where messianic abstraction and quiescent co-option have stalled: abstention is not an option: we are alive and we don’t agree