White Muslim

I’m looking down at the pavement, thinking about the permanence of the crap that gets left there. Persistent. A pile of vomit takes days to wash away, longer if it doesn’t rain much. On your way out to the villages, dead badgers on the side of the road. Moles. I saw a mole by the canal. It was there for several days. You think of the natural processes of decay. Ants carrying bits away, birds coming to pick up dead flesh. But then there’s a dummy in the gutter for weeks on end. No-one’s going to pick it up, I suppose. A tray of chips. Dog dirt. Piles of it by a lamp-post. That bit’s been there ages. It’s sort of sculpted by the rain, smooth, with run-offs and curves. It’ll be washed way eventually. Or maybe Ben from next door will come out. He’ll use a couple of plastic bags and move the thing. Pop it in his wheely bin one Friday morning. That’s that then.
I saw a blackbird get run over. It’s the sort of thing you almost never see. Just in front of the Spar near my house. Birds are always swooping out in front of cars. They’re so fast – it’s as if they fly under the car, into that dark space between the two front wheels. When you’re driving, you go quiet, angle your good ear down to make sure you didn’t kill it. No thud, quick check in the mirrors, no – it’s okay. This one didn’t make it. The car was one of those big things. The driver a long way up, away from the road. The thing played out in slo-mo for me as I walked up to get some chocolate. The wheel caught the bird’s wing. I saw a split-second of terror in the bird’s eyes. This time the he’d lost the game. When I was at school we called it chicken. Someone threw your school-bag into the dual carriage way and you had to run across and rescue it. Other people used to cut themselves. Now you’d call that self-harm, a cutting-club. The wheel drove along his wing, pulling him into the road. The twin black surfaces of tyre and tarmac looked like a deadly mangle, a black milling machine. For a moment it was cartoon-like. Your body is infinitely malleable; if you get squished, it’s like a balloon getting the air squeezed out and in fact you re-inflate automatically. So the bird gets pulled in to that impossibly narrow space. Watching it I can feel the role of friction in the accident. The grating feel of the black road-top. I think of the smell of driven-on tyres, the warm stickiness that helps them to adhere to the road. The bird has no chance. Air gets squeezed out, but also blood, bits of intestine. I hear the crack of tiny hollow bones. The bird does not make any vocalisations. No-one else has noticed. I go into the Spar and but my chocolate. On my way out I notice the flattened creature. It’s like a relief map of a “Blackbird Island” in a pirate story. I step over the oozing shape and go home. Watch what happens. Count the number of cars that run the thing over now it’s stuck to the road. The first few must wonder what’s happening as the irregularity in the surface is transmitted to their wrists through the judder of the steering wheel. In the night it rains, washing away part of the bird remains. The sun comes up and dries out what’s left. The tyres roll on, flattening the corpse out like a macabre ginger-bread bird in a hellish automated kitchen of death.
While shaving, I decide to go up for another look. Take the razor and shave the skin. Why do I associate hair with dirt? The hair that passes from inside the body, where everything is controlled – my processes in command – to outside. Vulnerable to all kinds of attack. The hair like a fire-fighter’s pole down which the swat teams of viruses and germs gleefully slide. Shave it off. This is a cleansing. I don’t normally come up to the shop in the morning, for some reason I decide that I need a paper this morning. When I walk up to the Spar, I look closely at the thing no-one else seems to notice. The beak is still clearly discernable: a yellow triangle amidst the silhouette of death. And it becomes my own meditation on death. A memento mori. Remember to die. As if we might forget to do that! The only action we are guaranteed to perform. A pet cat. A badger pulled to the side of the road by a concerned pedestrian (we are almost all both drivers and pedestrians, although we react in extremely partisan ways - when on foot we curse motorists who do not indicate, when driving we vilify walkers who don’t look both ways), who perhaps makes a mental note to call the council, but almost certainly doesn’t bother. A vole on a country lane.
I was staying with a friend once and we heard a sound behind her chimney. It was a trapped bird. Her mum told me this story: how they’d once had to have the fireplace ripped out when a bird got trapped there before. She wanted me to try to get the bird out. My friend was getting freaked out, thinking about the bird, stuck in the dark and in distress. There was a square hole round the back of the fireplace. I listened; I heard the scrabbling sound of a terrified bird. I imagined the sharp beak, the scratching claws. I didn’t want to put my hand in to that avian panic room. But two women were watching, depending on me: the man of the house was out. I reached in. I felt about. It was over in seconds. To the trapped creature my pink sausages must have been an ideal target, but she kept still. As I felt around gingerly, she was noting that a huge hand had come in and therefore there was room for a small bird to get out. I felt something. Feathers. I grabbed it; expecting the stab of a beak. I pulled out something strangely hard, and threw it onto the rug in front of the fire with the disgust of having to touch dead things. At the moment I extracted the mummified bird, the live one flew out past me, saw its way clear though open windows and was free. The dried up dead shell must have been blocking her in. Nice.

Dream #4
I am on the underground. I’m standing up. I can feel the clatter and sway of the carriage. I am holding a green plastic bulb attached to the ceiling with one of those thick, flexible things that look like oversize versions of the anti-vandal cables you find in phone-boxes. It fits neatly into my hand and for a moment my heart swells with a feeling of positivity for good design. I give myself to the rhythm. A wave is propagated down through the wire and into my arm. I enjoy the contrast between the intense sensation of my mass (must hold on tight or I’ll fall onto someone) and the relaxed way I give in to the sway of motion. I stay loose and the wave carries down through my body until it’s earthed by the carriage floor. I feel like that dancing when a row of people mime the progress of the music through their bodies like a bank of human oscilloscopes tracking a sine-curve.
Poem on the underground. Something by B. Brecht “Bad Time for Poetry”. I don’t read it. Newspapers. The backs of people’s heads, their bags. Wave motion. The underground can rock you to sleep. Now I am on a beach. Walk towards the surf. Look at that massive hole, it must be six-feet deep, the bottom is dark. When I was a child, my dad used to build a boat. A straight edge for the stern, a sweep round to the point of the bows. Within the outline of the vessel we built deep wells for our feet, left raised parts for the benches. We imagined we were rowing. As the sea came in and the water invaded the dinghy, we played at getting into difficulties, getting rescued. There’s something competitive about everything. My children’s sand boat is better than your stupid castle. Grown men bringing gardening-sized spades onto the beach: so many ways to prove you’re a man. At the sea’s edge, people have formed into rows, standing further and further into the waves. Ankle, calf, thigh, waist deep. Ahead of them, moving through the rows, are people on body-boards. They glide down, threatening to bash our ankles, then they’re off again, jumping over and through the waves. Sunlight scintillates off the sea’s bright surfaces. I bring my attention to my feet: the suck of the tide, excavating hollows around my feet, unsettling me. I give in to it a bit, sway in the surf, like a drunk man on an underground train. But I don’t want to fall so I pick my feet up and place them in a more stable place (which also will shortly be undermined). Wet-suits, sun-suits, bikinis, trunks, people with trousers rolled-up, fully clothed people. It’s as if they didn’t know they were coming here and have just had to get soaked, wearing t-shirts and tracky bottoms. Lots of men with big guts hanging – the sea makes us shameless. The aquatic ape theory. We are all looking out at something. Not the horizon, the shallow curve out of which the waves roll. Our focus is nearer, where the waves pitch up and break. The middle ground between deep sea and the edge where small children jump or flee the sliding sheets of foam-edged water that the tidal motor is driving across the sand. We watch for the rhythm. The inexorable movement of the tide, the thrill of the occasional big wave and the shock when we allow ourselves to be caught off guard. None of us have noticed, but we are moving inland quite fast, following the two steps forward, one step back creep of the waves up the shallow incline of shore. I hear a shout pitched a little more shrill than the usual cries of excitement. The beach-grave has been flooded. A few heads turn. One or two realise there are children trapped in there. A man is on the scene first – the dad? The sides are caving in and it’s hard to find somewhere to stand where you’re close enough to help without speeding up the collapse of the pit. If there was a helicopter here, perhaps they could drop a line down? But there’s no helicopter and the hole is already filling with water and sand. It’s so deep, such an impressive construction. The man lies down, keeping his weight as far from the quick-sand centre as possible. He reaches in, his elbow at a funny angle, muscles in his sun-burnt back bunched tight. He’s fishing, the hand circles and plunges deeper. He’s got one. He pulls out a girl, she looks about five years old. He flips her out and she lies on the beach like a suffocating fish. It’s the opposite, he’s plucked her up into a friendly environment. Now lifeguards are here, wrapping her up and moving her away. The man’s frantic now, digging like a dog, risking getting sucked into the maelstrom. “My son’s in there!” he shouts. At some cosmic distance there’s irony here; he digs and the sand flows back immediately. This precise mix of sea-water makes it unmanageable. It won’t stick, it flows and creates a thick, viscous sludge. The boy’s trapped in a wet cement, a deadly slurry. Wait. Look! One of the life-guards has got him. The man’s body twists with effort, the sun-block stripes on his nose and forehead thrown into sharp relief by the purple straining of his face. He’s lying at a weird angle, trying to pull his catch out of the pit. His colleague grabs his legs and he reaches in deeper with both hands now. Some of the onlookers comment that he must be trying to clear an airway. Like the father he finds that every attempt to clear out obstruction just seems to accelerate a new stream of suspended sand-grains which flow like water and stick like mud. It’s hopeless. We can send people into space, but get trapped in a six-foot pit on a beach against a rising tide and it’s over. The lifeguard’s face has to serve us all as a kind of medical instrument, a replacement for TV and comment. We watch him grimace and imagine the child’s hand clutching. We see panic and imagine the grasp slipping. We see despair and imagine the boy’s fingers limp in the hole. Some of us step back from the scene. We wanted to see a rescue. Somehow the body is pulled out. They try to resuscitate. No good. There’s a point in every scene like this at which the attempt to bring back to life stops being heroic and becomes pathetic. How do they do it in films? Is it the music? In films there’s always one doctor who can’t let go. His colleagues stop the procedure. They adopt a certain tone. They euphemise: “He’s gone.” The mum’s hugging her daughter. The dad’s bereft. He’s stuck, trapped by a thought that’s echoed in the minds of every person here who walked past that hole: he shouldn’t have let them dig so deep. That’s gonna be tough to deal with. Bet their marriage doesn’t last. Death of a child does that.
Back on the underground. That was a dream within a dream. We are in the tube. Piccadilly line. MP3 players and mobile phones texting. No eye-contact. Posters up about abandoned luggage. No different to how it was in the IRA days. Foreigners. They feel the cold in England. Even on a warm day they might be wearing a coat. I carry a rucksack. It contains some lunch, a book, a notebook. The doors open at Earl’s Court. There’s an alert. The police are fanning out across the platform. Uniform officers cradling their guns. Who comes up with those strange ways of holding a weapon? A smaller group of 4 plain-clothes guys. One makes a circle with his index finger, holds up four digits, makes a fist, pulls it down fast: this operation will be signed for the hard of hearing. In your nightmares, you see the suicide bomber open his coat, revealing the belts of explosive. In the films, it’s always a stand-off. The finger on the switch – it’s a dead man’s hand device – shoot me and the thing blows up anyway. No good shooting me in the head, even. People on the platform are uneasy. Some stand stock still. Don’t want to be on tonight’s news. Some are videoing on their phones – just in case it is about to kick off. Want to have some evidence to send into the TV news. Others carry on with their business. Get on to trains, read newspapers. This is ordinary. A man comes into our train. Coat, backpack. He’s white. White muslim? The next suicide bomber should be a white muslim. Imagine the faux-horror of the news media. Has a beard. He’s about 40. He’s okay. Simultaneously one of the plain-clothes guys gets something on his radio. He’s looking around now and spots another man coming into our train. This one’s younger. No rucksack although he looks pretty bulky under an XXXL hoody. He’s got a stereo in. The police yell at him to stop. He ignores it. Can’t hear them. They rush towards us, towards me. He hears something, perhaps “doors closing”. He picks up his pace to get on board though the closing doors. He’s in the train.
The four are in too. One officer circles his whole body without warning, pinning his arms to his sides. He brings his man down. Another plain-clothes guy has his weapon drawn and shoots the man twice in the head. One bullet enters the guy’s eye. A neat burnt circle that starts to well with blood as we look on in horror. More mobile phones are recording the moment. The obscene wound like a cigarette burn to the face. Look at this: the open wound of a killer culture. The panels advertise holidays. People are screaming. The man with the beard stares. Shock stuns the passengers into silence. Some are already sending the footage to sky news. Are terrorists somehow the “less-dead”? Is this man a terrorist. He’s very quiet. I expected a rant, some last words.
“It’s me, you idiots,” I’m shouting. “You shot the wrong man.” I detonate the bomb. I am not a white muslim. This is a private jihad. Hope you got some good shots on your camera phones. It doesn’t matter now who the police shot.

Wacky

The play barn provides pleasant piped pop music, instant coffee (with squirty cream and a sprinkle of cocoa if you prefer) and no-added sugar fruit shoots. The equipment is bright plastic-coated padding on a shell of scaffolding. It’s like a monkey-house. The wild animals are inside while we watch from outside the mesh. We’re entranced because they look so almost-human. Some parents are hyper-vigilant, others are no where to be seen. They’ve gone through into the pub.
In the larger of the play areas, there’s an upper level in which you walk across some walkways (rope bridges). It’s precarious, most children take a while to be able to do it. One of the delights of the place is watching a Mum or Dad go in after their child. Oversized, like a fairy-tale giant appearing in my poky terrace house, I like to watch their large bodies twisting though the obstacles. On the walkway today one boy has taken hold of another and is administering a ferocious beating. Both boys are solidly built. The aggressor has his face painted. He’s Dracula. His hairline has been extended with a point on his forehead --- a count Dracula widow’s peak. At the corner of his black lips there are painted on fangs. His face is unnaturally white. There’s glint in his eye and he seems to suit the role – although there’s nothing of the vampire’s seductive charm here. He’s thumping the blond boy. He’s stood still. He attempts to fight back, but he can’t match the aggression of the Count. He pulls away, but those walkways are tricky and the vampire has him fast by the shirt (long-sleeved so you don’t burn your elbows on the slides).
“Leave my friend alone!” shouts an earnest little girl. Parents start to notice.
You are not supposed to bring glasses in to the play barn. It says so quite clearly around the pub. They will give you a plastic glass, if you ask. Do you ever just think: why do I keep it all in? Yes, I know violence is wrong. But this is a violent world, sometimes. Why do I think I am any better than anyone else? In my lazy, liberal and lager-impaired mind there’s a suspicion that actually most arguments are won through decisive action. Often through violence. One child is bashing another. His parents, no doubt, have taught him not to fight. Perhaps that it’s okay to hit in self-defence. That advice looks useless in this situation.
“Leave my child alone!” a mother yells through the nylon mesh. Too difficult to get in there quickly. She want this to stop now. But another mother is belatedly registering what’s happened. She has, of course, been supervising her undead offspring at all times. Although the area is monitored by trained staff. Now she calls to him. Moments earlier she was bouncing a girl on her knee. There seems to be something wrong with her. I’d already noticed this woman. She can’t help looking like that, I know. But her eyes look entirely vacant. And she was bouncing the girl bizarrely – the child’s shirt was almost coming off because of the vigour and abandon of the mother’s movements. Through it all she seemed to be looking out into space. Or is it a challenge to the other parents?
“Mine says to me: ‘Talk to the hand.’ I tell her she’ll get a slap. I’ve stopped in the middle of Tesco, I have. And given her a slap. People looking at me, I say I’ll give you my address if you want to report me. Old people are the worst. I said to one last week, there – you have her!”

Man with closely shaved head, sips lager from a plastic pint glass. Stella. He’s got faun coloured workboots on, not laced up. Tracky bottoms. His eyebrows look too close to his hairline. The collar of his football shirt is sticking up.
“Yeah, we’ve had to stop going. They keep dropping out. I might give Stubbsy a call. He said he was interested. Gary used to bring two, but one of them dropped out. It isn’t worth the bother. I’ve booked the pitch, then they drop out. Dale can’t make it, his missus won’t let him out. Not worth it, is it?”
On the next table there’s a woman with beige trousers down to her lower calf. She’s wearing flip-flops with black canvas straps. She’s eating her daughter’s sweets out of a plastic bag. Looks like woolies pick ‘n mix.
There’s a man with a white shirt tucked in to jeans. Double denim. A brown steel-buckled belt. He has a neat square of moustache. He’s bald and the top of his head is a shiny protuberance – like those ramming dinosaurs. He has the look of an accountant. Name of Steve. Bought his wife and kids out for Sunday lunch.
The next man I see wears a Fred Perry t-shirt. His hair is cropped. The edge of a necklace is visible at his neckline. Bling bling.
Another of the team walk past. She’s thin. Her badge tells me her name is Zoe. She’s not wearing much make-up. Just eye-liner and some foundation to cover her bad skin. A red spot is brewing up beneath her right nostril. She’s got those large incisors that make a mouth look strangely square – always about to break into a grin.
Table fat. Her calves are large and have the look of poultry. Very white, with pin-points of black where the shaved hair is growing back. She likes her food. I’d like to feel those calves. She’s pretty. Pink decorated canvas shoes. Look sort of Chinese. Steve weaves past on his way to the bar. There’s a magnetic repulsion as his arm come close to my ear. This only operates over short distances. You wouldn’t notice it if you saw him across a room. There’s a field around him I can’t bear to enter. Repellent, and no-one knows.
I go and buy a coffee. She talks too much. It isn’t my fault she’s so ugly. Her black t-shirt has the look of something chosen so that it won’t show dirt. She has her upper lip pierced. Anneka. Her hair back in a small pony-tail; it’s one of those messy “unsymmetrical” cuts and she can’t be bothered with it in the day-time. The lengths are blonde to within three inches of her scalp. I go back to my seat with my coffee. Anneka follows me then continues to the back of the room. She chucks a few balls back into the ball pool, collects some empty coffee cups.
The challenge is to walk up a plastic slide in socks. “This is what you have to do,” explains my daughter. “I need to go quicker than faster.” Get your hands on the side – there’s a raised ridge – sweat helps them stick. Now move the feet up against gravity, despite the lack of friction. The motion is like a cat kneading its bed with slow urgency. Or try walking straight up the middle. A girl in peach trousers is doing it this way, putting her hands down each time her feet start to slide. She’s like Sisyphus – she’s both man and stone ball. At a certain point she drops to her knees and slides back – it’s not within her control. The sound of damp palms squealing down plastic. “I can do it, James, I did it.” Combo technique. One hand round the side of the ridge, one to the floor in front.
I begin to notice the children whose parents aren’t in here. From time to time they call out and no-one’s head turns. Their dads are in the pub. God knows where their mums are. There’s a guy over there who doesn’t look right. Did he come in with a child? Would Zoe and Anneka have noticed. I begin a discreet surveillance. He sips lager from a plastic pint-pot. He’s reading the Daily Mail, but he can’t find anything to hold his attention. He flicks through a few pages and then closes the paper. He folds it in half and stretches his legs out. He takes a slow deliberate slurp of beer, as if aware that he is being watched. I look away. My daughter is sitting on the slope between two sections of the play area having an involved conversation with a large vinyl-coated duck. When I look back the man has gone. I try to remember what he looks like, but it’s impossible. Should tell Zoe, or Anneka.
“Daddy, can I have a fruit shoot?”
“Yes, okay. Which flavour would you like?”
“Orange.”
“Right.”
Someone has taken my table by the time Stephanie is sorted with a drink. I stroll towards the back of the room, where a birthday-child throne is looking abandoned in the grotty bit people avoid. I remind Steph she can’t take the drink in, although of course she knows that. At some level I am guilty. Shouldn’t I be taking her to a museum, or teaching her something? But this is what she wanted to do. In three hours I’ll have to take her back home to her Mum. My weekend is almost over. Heartbreaking.
From my left I hear a shout – someone is in distress. I look across to where there is an arrangement of huge cylindrical blocks. You use them to get up into the second level. I can’t see anyone where the voice is coming from.
“Steph, just go in there and see who’s calling.” She hesitates, waving the drink bottle. I take it from her and put it on the floor. Steph ducks through the vinyl-edged archway into the rear of the play area. She pushes the dangling punch-bag-like danglers and looks over to me. I mouth: “Go on,” using a hand signal like a swat-team cop – two quick jabs with my index finger. Now she’s behind the cylinders and I can’t really see what’s happening. I scan round to see if anyone has noticed my covert op. Then she’s running back, smashing into my knees with complete abandon.
“Daddy …”
I wait. It sometimes takes her a minute to articulate things.
“Daddy … a boy is stuck. He said I had to get someone straight now.”
“Right.”
I look around again, but no-one is checking for this boy. It’s a bit like when you see money on the ground. I want to help the kid and I’m secretly sure that this whole episode reflects well on my skills as a parent. But I’ve got to check – is the owner aware that they have put their valuable possession in jeopardy? I’m also paranoid. This one time I picked up a tenner at work, on the car-park. Hardly anyone was in yet and no-one was parked nearby. I pocketed it. But then I was suddenly aware of the CCTV that we had installed. Was this some kind of test? Leave money on the deck and record staff responses. How many would hand it in to reception? Still – must try not to be paranoid.
So, I go in and speak to the kid. He’s snivelling; his face is red and damp with tears. There’s a space created by the way these cylinders are arranged. He must have slipped or climbed down into one of the gaps. Perhaps it was a gag – he was hiding like a trap-door spider, waiting for passing prey. But then he realised he didn’t have the upper-body strength to pull himself out. He’s inarticulate so, after another moment’s hesitation (is it okay to touch this kid I don’t know?) I reach into the hole and scoop him out. He runs off immediately, in search of his parent or just some other scrape to get into? I don’t know.
A scream. At first you ignore this stuff in here: it’s a play area – kids scream. But this dry has the richer tones and power of an adult woman. And she’s not stopping. I look across to the main ball-pit. She’s holding something that she’s clearly just retrieved from the balls. For a moment, the things I’d really not want to step on in there come to mind. A nappy. Also, for some reason, I always worry that rats might get in there – fancy stepping on a dead rat! The thing she is holding up is a shirt. Automatically I scan round for a topless child. No. No-one has lost a shirt. But then I realise why she’s screaming. The thing’s covered with blood.
After that my eyes are glued to her. She throws the shirt down and scoops up her son, who’s also looking for his sock. Luckily he hasn’t found anything yet. Her face hardens into something like control and she tells the children to get out fast, there’s a mess in the ball-pool. Then she’s striding up to Zoe.
“Something’s wrong. I found a shirt covered in blood. You’ll have to …”
But Zoe is already on her way in, having seen the whole thing.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll see to it.”
There’s blood everywhere. She tries to pull the boy out, sticky balls rolling slowly across her clothes, printing a crazy pattern of blood trails. His throat is cut in a jagged tear. He’s limp in her arms. A dead weight. I turn to help and then look down at Steph. She’s wide-eyed, trying to spit out a question. I turn away from the disaster and scoop Steph up, taking her to the other end of the warehouse. It’s chaos. I drop my ticket on the counter and stalk out. Yes the police will want to question me, but not now. I’ve got to get Steph back to her Mum by 8.

Trinitite/Kryptonite

“What’s that?” Mark looks at Dan’s monitor. His friend is looking at a picture of some green rock.
“Trinitite.”
“What?”
“The heat from the first atomic bomb fused the desert sand. They called this stuff Trinitite. The books describe it as being jade-like. Actually it looks a bit mucky, bubbly like the middle of a mint aero.”
“It looks like Kryptonite.”
“Yeah. This stuff would have been dangerous to anyone, not just Clark Kent.”
“When did they think up Kryptonite?”
“Good question, Superman was first published in 1938. I don’t know when Kryptonite entered the frame.”
Mark does a quick search. “This site says 1943, in the radio series. Weird. Like a prediction.”
“Makes you wonder: life imitating art?”
“Except they’d been making artificial elements since about 1941. Fermi building his chain-reacting piles in squash courts and gymnasia. Transmuting Uranium 238 into Plutonium. Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia. Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.” Mark always excited by pioneers.
“Trinitite isn’t a new element – just a kind of atomic glaze.”
“Yeah, it looks the part though.”
“Plus you find it in the blast-crater of an atomic bomb.”
“It’s all about metamorphosis. We can make new elements. It’s alchemy.”
“Killer bomb-metal. Deadly radioactive rocks.”
“That’s the point. Science is power and danger.”
“Astronauts transformed into the Fantastic Four by cosmic rays, 1961.”
“Bruce Banner transmuted into The Hulk by Gamma radiation, 1962.” This is a conversation in which the web is the third participant.
“As if the human could be modified in the crucible of nuclear fission in the same way that atoms are. A new being with interesting properties. Change, powers. We created Plutonium, thermonuclear physics will make us supermen.”
“Like the cosmic-ray theory of genetic mutation. The mechanism that powers evolution.”
“It makes me think about the military personnel exposed to radiation in the pacific. Those 1950’s pictures of them watching the tests through bits of coloured glass. None of them developed special powers. As if the comics are processing anxieties about it. Yes, it’s dangerous to be exposed to our new bombs, but our magic rays will make us invincible.”
“The comic book plays out the big ideas on the scientist’s own body.”
“Yeah in films they always have to experiment on themselves.”
“It’s the only site at which to work out the promise and curse of science – the only thing we really own.”
“But in the real world they usually do it to soldiers.”

Top Trumps

Mark shuffled the cards. They were sitting on red plastic chairs, Dan opposite him across the width of a school table
‘No, he’s not a spree killer. He’s a mass murderer.’
‘What?’
‘In physics, you said Lawrence was a spree killer, but all his victims were killed on the same day. He’s a mass murderer, technically.’
Mark dealt the cards, sharing the whole pack out. He paused to look across to the open door-way. A sixth-former was walking past. She was very thin with dyed black hair. Her back-dimples were clearly defined. She had a ring through her lower lip and a t-shirt which read “Boys lie, poke ‘em in the eye”. As soon as she’d passed, both boys picked up their piles.
‘We can still do him a card, right?’
‘Of course.’
They’d tried to buy serial killer trading cards on e-bay: very expensive. Anyway, it was far more fun to make your own.
“He needs a nick-name.”
What excited them at first was the names: The Green River Killer; Citizen X; The Night Stalker; The Co-ed Killer; Bible John; Charlie Chop-off; The Yorkshire Ripper; The Son of Sam; The Killer Clown; The Zebra Killers; The Monster Butler; The Moors Murderers; The Black Doodler; The Railway Killer; The Southside Slayer; The Die Song (their favourite).
“History Man.”
“The Hammer Horror.”
“Youngest player first: your go, Dan.”
“Victims: 48.”
“Impressive. Who is that – Green River?”
“Yeah, Gary Ridgway.”
“Victims: 38. You get Bundy!”
“Cool.”
Each card was classic top-trumps style. The killer’s eyes stared out from a photo taken from the internet or some true-crime encyclopaedia. Above that were the nick-name and real name of the character. Richard Chase: “The Vampire Killer”. Albert DeSalvo: “The Boston Strangler”. DeSalvo was a classic – he had three names: a.k.a. “The Measuring Man”, a.k.a “The Green Man”. Only lethal as the strangler. Some cards only bore the police/press name: Jack the Ripper; Jack The Stripper; The Zodiac Killer. Never caught, so freeing the theory-makers: serial killer burn-out all they way to Jack as incarnation of ultimate evil. Some of the names they came up with themselves - Aileen Wuornos: “The Weaponised Lesbian”. The cards had a short description of the killers’ careers: the MO; Herbert Mullin inspecting intestines for signs of pollution; Gacy’s clown acts - Pogo and Patches; Bundy’s escapes; when they were executed (if applicable). Serial murder ironies: Edmund Kemper and Peter Woodcock – let loose to kill again; “The Gay Slayer”, Colin Ireland, learning how to be a serial killer from a book.
“We should make some cards for fictional killers,” said Dan.
“Yeah. That would be fun.”
“Harder to get the facts.”
“Have to watch the films again. Hannibal Lecter; Buffalo Bill.”
“Yeah. The fictional ones are even worse than reality: Patrick Bateman; Henry; The Gemini Killer in The Exorcist.”
“Yeh – possessed by the devil. Does that count as a legal defence?”
“More female killers in the fictional sphere.”
“Which is stupid.”
“When you’ve done them we could put the imagined ones up against the real thing.”
“Combine the packs for a mega game of homicidal top-trumps. Like with the Buffy and Angel sets.”
“Okay. I’ll make a start.”
“It’s still your go.”
“Intelligence: 10.”
“Intelligence: 2.”
“I had Shipman.”
“Yeah, you got The Stockwell Strangler: Kenneth Erskine, mental age 11.”
Categories included time on the loose, number of victims, books and films inspired; then the obligatory top-trumps out-of-ten ratings: intelligence; ferocity; insanity. The last three mainly made up by the card-designers. Mary Ann Cotton’s twenty-year career beats Jack the Ripper’s 10 weeks. No-one can touch Shipman on victims. Jeffrey Dahmer trumps Gerald Stano on books. Mullin takes Wuornos on insanity. The Gainsville Ripper aces Yang Xinhai on ferocity. The bell goes and it’s time for lessons. Mark sweeps up the cards and they re-arrange the chairs, get their books out, waiting for the teacher and their class-mates.

reader’s block

Words fail me. I am suffering from reader’s block. I have just finished The Atrocity Exhibition. I have been reading it for ten days. I have looked up a series of words in the dictionary: hypogeum; nystagmus; blastosphere; caisson. I have notes on the way he uses the word “mimetisized”. I have copied out certain sentences I particularly admire. I am intending to find out more about the artists he mentions, especially Bellmer. I want to visit the reservoirs near Staines.
It’s over. No it’s not you, it’s me. You haven’t done anything, you haven’t changed. I’m finished. I’m finishing you. She’s finished me. Like a holiday romance, the thing had it’s own limit built in. With a book that’s only 184 pages long, you know it’s only going to be a short affair. It’s been exciting. You’ve been the first thing I thought about every day for ten days. You went everywhere with me.
I don’t know. I didn’t really understand him. He was difficult. All that stuff about his wife. We did have a lot in common. The Kennedy thing, atomic weapons, The Manic Street Preachers, David Cronenberg films. I liked being with him. It made me feel important. The sex was only okay.
I’ve felt sick all day; bereft. I can’t be alone. Sometimes I think it would be good for me. Just my own thoughts, my own sentences, my own vocabulary. Impossible. I don’t know what to read next. More Ballard? I’ve reserved Super-Cannes at the library. A yellow postcard will arrive when it comes. Someone in Macclesfield is enjoying it at the moment. I have got other Ballard in the house: Empire of the Sun; Low Flying Aircraft. But I’ve never managed to start them before and now I’m faced with it, nothing’s changed.
Evening comes. I pick up several books. I think about reading some big non-fiction things. I should read some Virginia Woolf someone’s lent me. But I hate to read something I feel I ought to read. I start reading a true-crime book, but I only get as far as the preface (again). How many times do I read these prefaces? I think about digging out some old books from the cupboard under the stairs. In a drawer upstairs I’ve stashed some WW2 escape books that I found in the loft. I want to read that book about the Elephant Man. So many biographies I want to read. Somehow I can’t bear to read another novel straight away. The last three books I read have been novels. I need to read something no-one else I know would read. I’ve got a lot to prove. I’ve got lists. Lists of books I’ve read. Books I plan to read. Books I want to buy. Why do I keep buying books in charity shops? I can buy a book in seconds but it may take me ten days to read it. Why does some trashy thing in the library attract my attention? Why is it difficult to connect with a book that’s been in the house for a while? I haven’t read it yet, what’s changed? What’s changed? Why should I read it now? Am I just in the right mood? I settle on a book on physics I’ve had for years. I start to take notes: “who is the experimenter?”; lexane; the subvisible; “[A]nything can happen once”; “There are maps for every occasion”. Yes. This is me.
I have to tell you that reading for me is delicious interfacing. The dance of alternating yielding and regaining control. The semi-automatic space-ship docking sequences in sci-fi epics. The almost-resisted insertion of the heroin syringe. Direct jacking into the web: Existenz; Neuromancer. It’s a dance in which I give myself helplessly to the slam and shake of the prose pulse. Then claw back consciousness to enjoy a verbal echo, or scribe a line in my notebook. At some point I fall into the book. Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb seizes me instantly. Reading has me shivering across that border of total loss of self while a semi-autonomous cortical zone picks up clues on what to read next.

You have the right

drop down tiny apocalypse
flop down on me someday
none can name the hour
of your coming or of our
erratic lovemaking
subject to sudden coldsnaps
victim of postal mishaps
and leaves perhaps on railway tracks
unintentionally snowfallen kindly
guardian angel I will greet you
and entreat you to abuse
your right to dance
seize the night
surprised by the moonlight’s size
I can forget the colour of my eyes
but not your beauty though it lies
beyond my range of sight
eavesdropping on our silent conversation
someone sighs I think you’re lying
I think you’ll die of lies
you wear a hat that blinds them to you
but threads that seem to bind me
couple me in music tie me to you
we laugh aloud they never will discover
we do not make love to sound but to each other

Superb Physics

Lawrence’s calutrons, gaseous dif-
fusion, made America a fusion
factory. The piles push out the slugs.

Kistiakowsky cradling high explosive
in his lap. Shaping explosive lenses
with a dentist’s drill.

Symmetrical waves of force squeeze the sphere
plated with nickel and gold; the neutrons
go crazy. The thing bursts.

What’s leashed in me loves that mad unleashing.
The double flash, blasts of heat and hot air.
The bomb was technically sweet, superb
physics. Oppie called that test “Trinity”.

Up with the Spring

If we dismantle can the wild revive
around us? Cows paddle in this canal
clogged with no cargo now. Foxes crisscross
this ex-train track: rail-less nettle-lined trail,
soot-black from decades of coal-dust and grit.
Muddy trail where mares trot, dogs walk, I run.
Wild riverbank garlic; corianderscent. The weir fizzes the air with freshness.

The Entropy

I’m weak and limited.
To keep sap rising in one weed
I’d drain myself white and dead -
I am prepared to bleed.

I believe in Jesus.
I want to believe.
I want to want to.

Is my love stronger than entropy?
Is love stronger than this decay?

Everything falls apart.
I try to love it back upright
with every beat of my heart.Is this enough or not quite?

A Mystery

The man's random hands gripped the gull. Its heart
Scrabbled at solidifying air;
Wanted, at least, to fly into its death.

Trees have been infected by Mandelbrot.
Unshakeable - with boughs no sins could bow -
That God-like tree now sheds its mystery.

Work consumes the flesh our bodies make from bread.
Everything is transubstantiation.
And every bit of food and drink, He said,
Will be His flesh if we remember Him.

The air thickens around me.
Forgive me for breaking the silence.
My desire is what I do not deserve.
My heart is a bird held in that man’s hand.

Talking with Angels

"If you could sense the longing of the weight for light -
If you could grasp the yearning of the light for weight -
Then you would taste ecstasy."
Talking With Angels

"It is not necessary to believe
The believable," Angels said.
Yoked together, something breathed through us.
Rain veils the house, the house fills with voices.
Sweat and dust on my fingers - cells decay
And fall. With every motion of the breath
The mind reshapes itself. I feel like death
Living with this past dying inside me.
We dance in search of perfect condition,
Bearing witness to the spine-charging thrill
Of every dawn. Overuse makes flesh sulk,
The nerves nag as we explore the present.
Guarded by neither Nazis nor Angels,
Have we come to want to leave the planet?

The Enemy of Art

i
His skin was coarse and porous from fatigue.
His new poem was perfect, machine-like.
And he saw all his old notebooks empty,
As if the ink had been sucked out of them.

So simple, it was like a play on words.
He turned his hand to fiction, sculpture, paint.
No-one understood why their books went blank,
Or why their art objects disappeared.

Music and dance were challenging for him,
But diligently he destroyed it all.
Of course there was an out-cry; but he worked
With homeless people, visited his friends.

No-one suspected him, and finally
People found better uses for their lives.


ii
‘We found some notes he left about his work:
“This machine destroys art” – the most famous.
He predicted it might turn on artists,
And maybe that explains the suicides …

His art freed us from creativity –
The paradox is now a commonplace.’
The tourists standing in his workshop feel
A delicious sense of his importance.

Recalling artists who were put to death,
They hope that history will not touch them.
Some still yearn to symbolise their unique
Broken hearts – though that’s now impossible.

They leave to visit the simple headstones
Marking places where works of art once stood.

war on terror

Mark is just a mark on blank space. Mark is warlike, martian. He’s a book-mark. He notices and notes things. He is a plain or marked card that marks your place. I am a book (already read) that wants to kill you. He’s a joke in a football game when each team has a player with his name: “Mark, mark Mark!” I made him up (or: he created himself). He’s the non-existent “Mark, king of Scotland” in Macbeth. But now I want to let Mark speak for himself.

I was watching the TV with my Dad. The latest episode in the “War on Terror” was on. Or maybe it was a repeat. One of the presidents said it was a crusade. One of the terrorists said it was a jihad. America is a devil; al-Qaeda is a demon.
“We are all terrorists.”
“Eh, what’s that Mark?”
“We’re all terrorists – we’re all terrified of each other, or of ‘the others’.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“You should be. I am here to replace you.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s why people have children isn’t it? To keep the numbers up – to replace themselves. That’s why people are always panicking about the Asians, the Catholics, the Muslims – they are replacing themselves better than “us” – whoever “we” are. But anyway you’ve done your bit – replaced yourself with me – I’ll fill your space up when you die. No-one else can barge in there. Shame you and Mum didn’t manage a girl as well.”
“No, that’s not it. We wanted children because ... well it’s a natural result of our love for each other. And we wanted you – to make us complete as a family.”
“Yes. Okay. But it’s also about conquest. Like Bush on the TV. Let’s spread the American Way of Life across the globe. Those people are stopping the American way from reproducing itself in their country, and they are infecting the rest of the world, endangering his children. That’s how he sees it. Or maybe he really does think of it as a crusade. Perhaps he believes his own spin. Let’s convert them by force. Love our flag or we’ll kill you. Like the other crusaders – it’s okay to kill the infidel as he’ll go to hell anyway; and if you can get the conversion instead – well RESULT!”
“You’ve got to give them some credit. I mean if you really believe that people will go to hell if they don’t get a chance to hear about Christ.”
“You don’t buy that.”
“No – it was wrong. But this is different – they’re threatening our lives!”
“So do traffic accidents, alcohol, bad diet, smoking, the shit way most countries neglect their people’s rights. But we don’t challenge those kinds of threats very aggressively. No - this one suits us because it gives us a chance to demonise someone and to strengthen our belief in ourselves. But who are we kidding. We made the demon, we are the demons. I’m a real terrorist. I hate America. I declare war on the U.S.A. Bring it on, Bush!”
“Steady on!”
“It’s all a load of crap. Our history teacher today was on about it – these medieval knights who thought that they were Christ’s soldiers miles Christi. Christ didn’t want bloody soldiers! It’s the Jedi knights syndrome again.”
“What do you do when faced by evil.”
“I’m not faced by evil, except when I look in the mirror. We are all evil. You can’t shove it out, put it into someone else and then kill it. Apart from anything else, as soon as you kill it you become evil yourself, even if you’d managed to get the stuff out of you in the first place. We’re all responsible, we’re all evil. Perhaps we just have to face that. Yes, I am alive because some Iraqi child is dead. I’m here because you have to die. You can’t put yourself above it. You can’t be a Jedi - we’re all nasty, selfish – dancing on the corpses of our fellow humans.”
“Mark ...”
“Okay, I know ‘steady on, old chap’ – I’m just, I s’pose, letting off some steam.”
“Have you had a rough day at school ...?”
“No – actually it was mint. These Buddhists came in to talk about Milarepa. He did all this sorcery to get revenge on his evil uncle. Funny thing was, when he decided to give it all up and start practising the Dharma, his teacher kept catching him out – he’d ask him to kill some bandits who were hassling the monk or something and he’d do it. Then Marpa – that was his teacher, his lama, this translator guy - would tell him that he wouldn’t teach him anything until he could undo all the bad he’d done with his magic. Told him he didn’t deserve to learn anything when he acted like that, that anyone else would just have killed him for doing something so nasty. It seemed to take him ages to learn that – but it’s so obvious – you can’t pretend to be good and do stuff like that. But maybe you can’t stop doing those things. So we should just not pretend to be good and be done with it.”

Walk Home

His mother encouraged him to catch the bus home. But on fine Autumn afternoons he enjoyed the long walk. As soon as he was out of school and into the park he felt different. More intelligent, more attractive, more powerful, more ruthless. Held in place by his warm fleece hat were a pair of headphones through which he drank in the nourishment of noise. This music (converted into MP3 from the CD) was more real than school. It put him in touch, on a deeper level, with similar people. Strong people with clear idea and a taste for the extremes.
The band was called Kinesis. The sleeve notes were full of quotes from a man called Ivan Illich – calling into question all sorts of systems, including school. The music was fierce and tight. The singer raged about infringements of liberty over bass-lines that fused the solidity of masonry with a shark’s fluidity of movement. The drumming was both punctuation and demonstration, making the lyrics irrefutable. Within all this, guitar lines flowed like the free movement of thought. Creativity forcing unmapped courses through the three-dimensional complexity of the brain. Pulling preconceptions apart and working things through anew from basic axioms – freedom, integrity, self-expression, compassion.
There were always beggars in the park. One – an old man with a charming air, saluted him and although no sound could penetrate the cocoon that Kinesis has woven around he head, Jason could easily lip-read the familiar refrain:
“Could you spare us a bit of change, lad?”
Jason fumbled in his pocket and stuck a £1 coin that would have been bus-fare into the man’s hand.
“God bless you, sir!”
My compassion is manifested through an intense hatred towards many of my fellow-humans. If the sight of this man’s suffering could move me to tears, it could also spur me to destroy those who cause such suffering, myself for being unable to prevent it, or him for allowing it to continue. When faced with our shortcomings and weaknesses, might it not be better that we all be destroyed. Perhaps another Noah – some saint or the solitary sane man – would rescue enough life to recreate – no, to begin again on higher principles.
Jason was striding out now, taking huge gulps of the sharp evening air which tasted faintly of bonfires. He came down off the park and cut though Woodhouse. A lot of students lived round here. He watched them – shaven headed or decked with multicolour dreadlocks. As he walked past the Primrose he saw a girl whose face sparkled with surgical steel. He smiled without conscious intention. She gave him a withering look that suggested his clothes, the uniform, marked him out as a class-enemy, someone to be hated, or (worse) pitied.

*

At the end of Buslingthorpe Lane, Jason turned left – up towards Chapel Allerton where he lived. Walking up though Scot Hall Road always gave him a little tremor of fear. He quite enjoyed it. He knew his uniform marked him out as well off. Most of the families who lived along here were not. He lengthened his stride as he ascended the hill, watching a guided bus shudder up its concrete trench on his right. He turned and looked down at Leeds on his left. It was a great view.
On the fields by the police station he could see some kids from the Scot Halls, playing some weird version of golf. Jason always found this amusing – that they chose to play such a middle-class game. But they only ever had one club and they just bashed the ball around with no apparent purpose. Jason crossed the road, bringing him nearer to the golfers. They had noticed him, and briefly he imagined them taking the golf clubs to him, battering him with them. However, there was not much chance of that with the huge cop-shop so near by.
Jason avoided eye-contact and carried on walking.

*

Despite walking home, Jason still got there before his mother has returned from work. He went in and put the kettle on. He was hungry so he got some crisps and munched them loudly. He made himself a strong black coffee and went upstairs to his room.

worms

Congleton in July means one thing more than anything else for small children. The paddling pool. A blue-painted shallow circle of concrete. Every summer since she could remember, Sarah had taken the girls there. The first couple of times just taking Simone, then struggling with Theresa as a baby while the older girl balanced precariously on the metal hub at the centre of the pool.
Something that she’d always done alone anyway. That was how parenting was. Some stuff seems to belong to one parent. The children pick up on the different styles. How you’ll order a day, the way you’ll play. Geoff used to bundle a child up in his arms and roll her over and over, suspended in mid air. It looked precarious, as if the daughter would slip from his hands. He was never holding on with both hands, one arm supported the child while the other worked the rotation. Squeals of delight; “he rolls her like a poly,” he’d say. All of Geoff’s play seemed to go together with a strange and private naming. Another game: Geoff, ridiculous, crawling up and down the living room making a big cavity under his torso. Simone would crawl under him as he named this game “tummy tunnel, tummy tunnel”. When Simone was too big for this, Theresa took over the game. Something else he used to say “must press on” – a quote from some old film or something. Code for – let’s stop phaffing about and get on with it.
She packed the bag with towels, dry clothes, food, juice, everything she might need. The girls were in the back yard, already in the sand-pit; it was a scorchingly hot day. They’d need more sunblock soon.
Simone and Theresa trotted along to the pool. It was already busy. Many small children. Some with parents guiding them through their first encounter with the rather chilly pleasure of the pool’s water, the jets that arced in from a pipe running round the perimeter. The places where a break in the pipe meant you could wade in without being sprayed. Others were dashing around madly, their parents sunbathing oblivious on the grass banks, or (more likely) not even here. Some sibling “in charge” but actually not really doing much.
A teenager rides into the park on a bike, leaning over crazily to open the gate’s bolt, but (of course) not able to close it behind him. He cycles down the slope and bumps into the water. The wheels skid on the bottom of the pool. Wet, slippery with sun-block that dripped off those small bodies vulnerable to light as well as irresponsible cyclists. She sees herself moving from the bench. A child, much younger than her own reaching for a ball, oblivious to the cyclist wobbling, trying to right himself. Who else is looking after this toddler? She scoops the child up, he’s wearing blue trunks and has beautiful red hair. He’s starting to look quite red – his fair complexion catching the sun too quickly. Sarah’s holding him as the cyclist crashes down at her feet, his stunt misfired. She says nothing. A bothered-looking teenaged girl rushes up,
“Thanks ... er, I was just in the loo. Is he okay? George? I’ve told you to look out for the big boys. Thanks, lady.”
Sarah looks up to the portaloos, as if seeking to verify the girl’s excuse.
“That’s okay. I hope I didn’t scare him. George, is it? Lovely name. I just thought that youth was going to knock him over.”
“Thanks.”
Sarah paused. The water was cool around her toes. She checked for her girls. They were engrossed in some bizarre version of tennis that seemed to involve keeping a ball out of the water, but of course each time it was wetted, the next hit sent spiralling tails of water everywhere. Much excitement and screeching.
Sarah looked down into the water. There, she saw some pale shapes. Impossible to identify, they looked like some kind of noodle. She bent down to investigate. The thing she picked up was a worm. Dead. The colour and life leached out of it. Sarah dropped it quickly. She did not cry out. No reason to scare the children. But as she walked out from the place where she rescued George she could not help noticing the tens of worms that lay, dead and washed out, at every conceivable distance from the pool’s circumference. Try not to give the worms too much credit for feeling. They are simple organisms, not blessed with much ability to plan, hope, persevere in adversity. It was just stupidity that lead them to keep moving forwards, once they had found themselves in this lightly chlorinated water, where there was nothing to eat. But she couldn’t help thinking of this as a nightly ritual. The lost worms finding themselves in the pool, incapable of imagining that this was not just another rain puddle they could crawl through. This wetness would not dry up soon, nor would it yield to dry ground, welcoming soil. Instead they were in a featureless, blue-painted, limitless space. And how ever far the worm managed to crawl, none would find a way out. All would die.
Sarah wept on her bench, fairly unobtrusively. After a certain amount of time she got out some snacks. By some radar which hadn’t picked up her distress, but which was infallible in the case of food, Simone and Theresa came running with that high-stepping action one adopts when aiming for speed through water. Not long after they went home.

Unputdownable

When you begin reading a book, you create a new universe in which that book’s contents are taking place. Starting a new book is always a bit of a wrench. You have to give up a bit of your being to allow that world to come into existence. But it’s worth it (most of us feel that), you get more being back than you put in, if it’s a good book; after all the writer gave hugely of his/her being to create it (you’d think).
This explains things. The pull of a book you’re reading. Especially near the end. You can’t bear to leave that other world unresolved, in tension. You want to give that world the wholeness it deserves by finishing it. Here the metaphysicians of reading differ. Some believe the separate world ceases to exist. It has been completed and returns to the uncreated state from which your energy wrenched it. But surely something so perfect and whole cannot just disappear? It must persist. Freed from the reader’s mind as soon as she moves on to the next book, it moves on in space and time, completely free.
There’s a downside (bound to be, always). Books you don’t finish – they’re limbos. I know this, this isn’t theory – I’ve seen them. Worlds in which characters are endlessly stranded. History books in which events never play out, cannot be made sense of. Those popular science texts in which theories are never induced from the array of evidence. Most poignant are the autobiographies. Impotent copies of their own authors, unable to progress to a point at which they can say yes, it was worth it; whatever happened got me here. Who is to blame? The reader for abandoning them there? Yes, of course. The writer for not having the skill to coerce closure? Equally, yes.
Each world is individual to its reader. Just imagine all those teenage part-readings of Lord of the Rings. Childishly imagined characters (not Tolkein’s fault – just the immaturity of the reader) stranded at The Prancing Pony because the poor child lacked the stamina to continue. There’s hope for them, of course. You come back to the book. Older, wiser – the characters now bear the wisdom of your suffering also. Suddenly, Bilbo’s disappearing act seems more understandable. And as you move through the book your first childish thrill about the magic ring, now shadowed by experience, recolours everything several shades darker. You like Gollum. The novel is finished. Quiescence, peace.
But not everyone is so compassionate. Many cast unfinished books aside, never dreaming of the torment they cause.
I am the cure. Well, not a cure as much as a punishment. Vengeance even. Let me tell you a bit about myself.

The book is dark in colour. On the back cover there’s no blurb. Just one word in quotation marks – “unputdownable”. You can’t see from here where this quotation is from. Watching someone reading it you might toy with some of the following scenarios. One: the reviewer, herself an eminent novelist, unsparingly giving due credit to a rival writer, despite personal animosity. Two: totally out of context – the reviewer actually wrote “no one could say this book was unputdownable” before enumerating a formidable catalogue of errors in research, grammatical infelicities and just plain poor story-telling. Three: a stupid hack who hasn’t even read the thing – paying back a pal in the trade for a particularly fine lunch.
Still, you’re curious. It’s infuriating to not know what it is. So gratifying to see someone reading something one has read oneself. Or perhaps to get a tip on something new and hot – “saw a guy reading this on the train, never heard of it, bought it, read it, absolutely fantastic”. Another possibility (if you like) the superior feeling of watching some imbecile devouring a book you consider “trash”.
Lucky for you he didn’t drop it on the train. But like it says, it’s unputdownable.

He found it in a book-sale. Summer fair, country churchyard. Trestle tables, paperbacks in irresistible profusion. He looked below the tables at more full boxes. A moment of fury – what if there was something in one of those he really wanted? Why aren’t all the books out at once? Why should these ones wait to fill the spaces vacated by the sold? Senseless. He picked the book up and handed it over. The old dear demanded 50p and put it in a nondescript paper bag. His wife muttered something like: “Haven’t you got enough on the go?” She was ignored. He put the book in the back of the car. He hadn’t actually read a line of it yet. But it intrigued him.
The following morning he walked to the station, as normal. Well, not quite. Don’t think he’s walked along reading a book since he was a teenager. He got on to his train, reading, reading. What’s it about? Please don’t disturb, I’m reading.
He lost his job a few days later. The guy isn’t doing any work – every time you come to speak to him he’s reading. He’s reading all through lunch. He’s silent or monosyllabic.
His wife left him shortly after that.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just let me finish this paragraph.” He doesn’t come to bed. When he does come up, he lies face down, the book on his pillow. He reads, his head nods, he wakes up like that.
“I’m going away for a couple of days, George. Call me when you finish your book.” He doesn’t notice the acid in her voice. He reads on the toilet, always did that anyway. He doesn’t wash – can’t get the book wet. You can read in the bath, but actually washing and drying yourself is impossible. He eats things you can eat with one hand, and prepare without actually putting the book down. He takes his contact lenses out with the book between his knees. He does a surprising number of things with the book tucked under his arm. He realises he doesn’t really need his lenses in anyway. He’s very dirty. He needs some air. He seems to be reading the same page over and over. He’s beginning to experience that strange feeling you can get near the end of a book you love. You actually don’t want to finish it because then you will no longer be living there; breathing the same air as those characters. He’s walking. He walks out under the wheels of a car. He dies quite soon after that. You comfort the driver. Not your fault. I saw it all. He walked straight out in front of you. Didn’t look, head in a book I think! How thoughtless! Lucky it was only him killed. He’s dirty. Look at his clothes! A weirdo. So selfish – you’ll carry this with you always now. Not your fault though. Car damaged much? Where’s that book? I’ll chuck it in the bin. Better not though, in case the police, y’know, need it for evidence.

school visit

There were these posters up in school. Visit by local Buddhists. It was in a series of talks run by one of the R.E. department. Mainly just Christian groups. Mark was surprised they hadn’t had a Jedi in. They say more people put Jedi for religion on their census forms than anything else.
Dan and Mark had been in the same classes throughout school, although Mark had been more distant since he started the “programme”. They used to hang around together, making up stories about the teachers. They’d be there, under the stairs in a dark corner of the science block, dreaming up these elaborate sagas. Mr. Douglas was our History teacher in year 9. Dan had a strange link with him; he could often finish sentences Douglas had started. He used to whisper long streams of interpretation to Mark, who would listen in wonder as Douglas repeated what he had said. One day he was having trouble with a video-recorder. He asked us if anyone had a screwdriver. We thought he was joking, but by some fluke Dan had brought a small blue-handled one to school that day – just right for the job. Inspired by the weirdness of all this, Mark and Dan invented “The Mythos”. Douglas was actually Japanese and unbelievably old. When he was a boy tending the oxen by the winding river a couple of miles from his parents’ farm, he had seen a cloud of dust descend upon his home. Bandits. When he returned everything that could not be carried away was dead or burned. Douglas wandered for days, the trauma almost destroying his childish mind. The one day he stumbled into a clearing before a cave, high in the mountains above his parents’ small-holding. Here an ancient-looking man sat motionless. Douglas was taken in and the man taught him secret martial arts and magic. In time he killed every one of the bandits who had attacked his family. Embittered by his experience, he moved to the west, educated himself, had plastic-surgery to appear like a middle-aged Caucasian history teacher. He had modified the air-conditioning system into a boy-mining apparatus. They would be spared so long as we remained his faithful servants.
Anyway, Mark saw Dan going into the library, clearly bent on attending the thing.
“Hey, Dan.”
“Greetings, human scum.”
“Are you going to this thing?”
“No. I was planning to eviscerate myself this lunchtime and the damn librarians have double-booked the room.”
“Well, I thought it looked interesting – real live Buddhists …”
“Precisely. Also the title intrigued me – ‘Milarepa, a Buddhist saint,’ sounds rather cool.”
“Huh? I didn’t know they had saints.”
“Well, now we’ll find out.”

Richard and Ananda were getting their material ready and watched the empty library become slightly less empty. There were a few interested-looking ones. A couple who’d clearly been told it would help them to get a better grade at GCSE or A – level. Richard felt a bit uncomfortable, but also excited. He started to think about how this would probably be the first contact for some of these people with the Dharma. Here they were going to get the chance to inspire and illuminate.
The teacher made a few pleasant words of introduction and mentioned their names. When she said “Ananda”, a boy’s hand shot up:
“Are you a Buddha?”
Richard cringed inwardly. But Ananda seemed unruffled –
“Not yet.”
Ananda outlined the main stages of the saint’s life. The magic with which he had killed thirty-five people. The hailstorms he’d summoned to destroy the crops of his enemies. Then his decision to follow the Dharma. His teacher, Marpa, has made him suffer lengthy ordeals, building towers and then tearing them down, until his back was raw and infected – all to cancel the bad karma he’d accumulated through his sorcery. Then the pay off – he meditates loads and gains enlightenment – occasionally using his magic powers to defeat the priests of the local nature religion or to impress an audience during a teaching session. What was very cool was the way he meditated up in caves in the mountains, turning green because he ate only nettles, surviving in the cold with very little to wear because he’d mastered the ability to warm his body with “tummo” some kind of inner warmth that yogis can produce.
Richard went next. He showed a few slides and talked about some things that he particularly liked about Milarepa – stuff that made him relevant to westerners. He was quite iconoclastic, telling people they should meditate four times a day instead of making “figurines” – not all Buddhism is about prostrating to nice statues. He had his eye on what you might call “spiritual materialism” that holier than thou attitude people take. He said get rid of everything you call Buddhism but actually use to impress people and which therefore attaches you even more to the worldly life. Through his life, Milarepa’s relationship with his “evil” aunt caused him difficulties – getting him into the magic in the first place. Milarepa learnt to be thankful for his aunt – after all she’d also lead him onto the path of the Dharma – if he hadn’t needed to atone for his crimes, perhaps he would never have achieved so much. And Milarepa had a sense of humour; when thieves came in the night, he said: just try to find anything in the night, I can’t find anything in broad daylight. Even more hilarious, he told his followers on his death-bed that there was gold buried in his cave, but actually it was a note that said: if anyone says Milarepa possessed any gold, fill his mouth with shit! This was what he loved about Buddhism, the richness, the humour, the symbolism. Things that entered the heart, like Milarepa’s advice to wear the Dakini’s deep breath like a cloak. People found all kinds of ways into Buddhism; there’s a story that one man became enlightened just by seeing the smile on the face of an image of the Buddha. Were there any questions?
Mark had seen something that interested him in the images of Milarepa. Often he was depicted sat on a strange thin white cushion.
“Yes – what’s the question?”
“What is he sitting on?”
“Oh – it’s a moon mat. Many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are shown sitting on them.”
That was Mark’s way in. His connection to the teaching. The moon mat was “the smooth”.

After the session Richard kept thinking about something Milarepa had said: “I don’t need to read books; everything that appears to my mind is a Dharma book. All things confirm the truth of Buddha’s teachings and increase my spiritual experience.” He thought about it a lot. It chimed deeply with his own anxieties about books. He was beginning to realise that his love of reading and learning was a kind of attachment. He was actually very proud of the amount of books he had read, of his academic knowledge, his knowledge of the Dharma. But none of this would help him towards enlightenment, only his actions would.

Repetition

Do it again. That’s how we learn how to do things. It’s how we become ourselves. Patterns of behaviour, thought, emotion. But there’s a philosophical dilemma in there somewhere. Can we really repeat something. I read a book about it by Kierkegaard once. Now I can’t remember what it said. But I can’t bear to read it again. Life’s too short. Too many other books, too many other books by Kierkegaard, clamour for my attention. It would be a crime to re-read Repetition.
To pull this apart for a moment - I’m listening to Patti Smith’s Horses. I must have heard it a thousand times. I’ll never grow tired of it. But I can’t bring myself to re-read a book. I rarely watch a film more than a couple of times. Even though I’ve got videos of films I loved and intend to watch again, I never bother.
Is it about time? It takes a long time to read a book. Time is expensive.
Is it because you can’t write, cook, have sex, talk to someone etc while reading a book. So there’s some pressure – don’t waste that time reading a book twice.
It takes me a few listens to get into a record. I don’t get bored of the good ones. Same goes for poems. Probably the same would be true of books. But they are our enemies, they are stealing our time. They forbid us to read in a way that would be truly satisfying, instead they are all trying to fill us with an insecurity – there are so many books out there that you will never read. Books that would change your life, make you laugh, make you cry, make you cool, make you sophisticated.
I’m going to try to resist. Those books, they are destroying us.

Prodigy

I must be a prodigy of some sort. There must be something I can do better than any one else, or maybe just something no one else is capable of. I’ve always been drawn to skill. I’m fascinated by watching someone who has mastered something. I suppose we all feel it – if only there was one thing we did supremely well then the rest of our life would be simple. That central skill would bring everything into focus. It would be the sun pulling the wayward planets of our mundane existence into rational orbit. And it would seem so easy. People would gasp as we performed our master-work, played out that perfect part of our lives. Everything else would follow from that automatically – security, happiness, self-esteem.
But those things are so difficult, I mean anything that could actually transform us and free us takes so much work. You can’t just decide to be a great musician or painter. You can’t even guarantee you’ll be an average one. You could put so much work into something just to find it all fell apart and you’d wasted that time.
Or then again what if that thing you put at the centre of your life began to eat away at you? What if it became a poison, destroying you instead of making you happy? Easy to recoil, just to stay as you are. Mediocre. Unspecial. Useless.
No, I’m bringing myself down here. I’m ruining it for myself again. We are in control after all. I tell you what I love: manifestos. They really get me going. Something so cool about writing some short treatise explaining just how wrong everyone else is and then just sitting back and waiting for the world to freak out. Marx and Engels, Valerie Solonas, the Unabomber! And they didn’t just leave it there. No way. Putting your manifesto into fully terrifying action, that’s the key to it all. And perhaps that’s a way round my whole expertise hang-up. Just manifesto-up some easy thing, make it so notorious, and then bang! You’ve got their attention at last.
Flipside to this. A parallel, an inverse of it. Something like that. I suppose I’ve always dreamed of a technique, or a technology, or just a thing that would sort it all out. You know how people get – one month it’s Yo-yos. Every kid has got one and they are playing with them all the time. As if that is the only thing necessary to make one happy. Just the action of moving the thing up and down string. Okay, you learn tricks too, but basically the pleasure is simply in the thing going down and up. No need to impress anyone with something like that. You are totally focused on that one simple activity. That could be a way of life. If something simple could be that satisfying, permanently. Because that’s the catch with all that stuff. Given a month or so and no-one’s interested. The yo-yos are in a cupboard somewhere, untouched.

pencillead

There’s no need to explain. There’s no need to explain yourself. It’s rude to ask. You see a one-armed man – it’s rude to ask how he lost it. Don’t ask me why I’m like this. Talking it over will not grow a new arm. Let us proceed with the matter in hand. I feel on edge. Electric. When you are walking beneath power cables in mist, your hair stands on end; you hear the buzzing and become the humming charge.
The device is as follows. An empty jam jar with black card inside. The black card seems to absorb heat, attract and focus it. Use a magnifying glass on it and the tightly-focused point goes red. It smokes and will soon burst into flames. In the jar you place a wasp. The whole thing is like a joke. Some people automatically swat a wasp. I always trap them in a glass. It’s easy – put the glass over the wasp when it lands on a window. Slide a sheet of paper between glass and window. Then release it. Alternatively, the glass is a jam jar into which the wasp is sealed. It’s already furious. Wasps are like an incarnation of rage; bees won’t sting. They’ll die if they sting you (is that true?) Wasps will though. My dad’s allergic to the sting. One got him on holiday once. His arm swelled up and got infected. It was nasty. He was holed up in the caravan for days. I remember trooping down to the TV lounge to watch “The Invisible Man”.
Well, I’ll give you something to be angry about. I’ll give you something to cry about. Direct the beam of light. The jar is a smoky hell already. The card sits in its tarry blood from my first experiment. I play the golden-orange spot of heat over the card. I am a Martian with a heat-ray. I stop to put the record on. Richard Burton begins the narration – “No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century ...”
The wasp is not dying. The jar is just a suffering magnifier. Just turning up the heat, the rage, the burning. The house is on fire. It’s a lesson. It’s a kindness to hurt people. It shows them their mortality, their vulnerability. It’s a wake-up call. Bite them, they bleed.
It’s happening now. This is how I describe it to myself: “in my mind the smooth swaps itself with the corrupted.”
It’s a vision of reality. The smooth is like the surface of blancmange. It’s a vision. But it’s more solid. Like some kind of smooth-textured stuff. The corrupted is the same thing but scored across and over and over with dirt, scratches, decay, damage. It’s an hallucination. They swap. On a heartbeat, every second, at the end of the time it takes to think one thought, every breath. I can’t tell. It’s a mirror. I can’t stay calm enough to tell. It’s my suffering magnifier. My bedroom door is locked. I can’t bear to watch them swap themselves. The house is on fire. I don’t want to see them flip back and forth. My senses are on fire. It’s a kindness to hurt myself.

take a pencil and ram the palm down onto the point that is what i did a brief shock to reset the system the house of the senses is on fire the door is locked the smooth can stay smooth featureless pure uncorrupted there will be pain but it will not damage the smoothness the lead in the palm will not seek out head or heart not like the sliver of mirror ice was it but the lead is still there today i look at it now as i recall it

Wasp out of jar, un-harmed. Do wasps suffer trauma? Dad got a ladder to the window. I did not explain why I’m like this.

Murder Manifesto

­ People get so excited about children who kill children. I find it rather pathetic. Most of them do it by accident, playing with their parents' guns, power-tools and so on. Very few of them show any real vision. There's nothing cool about blowing birthday-party guests apart with a shotgun, only to be knocked over by the recoil of a weapon you can't handle and then reduced to tears by the inability to comprehend what you have done.
­ Of course one has to admire school slayings. There's something quite satisfying about a child taking a gun into the class-room. One minute the teacher is telling you to sit down, stop talking, get books out - the next he's shut up because he's staring down the barrel of Redneck Senior's 9mm automatic pistol. And there endeth the lesson.
­ Of course, in Britain its harder to get hold of firearms. Anyway, teachers are too easy. No, in order to really make your mark as a child killer you must kill an adult in public. Anything else is a cop out. Even if we could get hold of guns, they would be out in my book. If we want to be taken seriously we've got to show physical strength. Shooting and stabbing are for the weak. A true killer kills with bare hands. Strangulation shows you mean business.
­ Some people may not understand why anyone should want to kill. I find that attitude rather puzzling - we all accept that people must die in order for us to live as we choose. If we didn't want people to die in car accidents the answer would be simple - don't drive. Sick of people starving in Africa - share things. When you think about it, someone is dying every minute to keep things the way we want them. We all accept that, just as we accept that it may be we who die in the next aeroplane crash - the expense and inconvenience of making things safer just aren't worth it. I think it's great hypocrisy to make a fuss about killing people. In fact I think you are not really free unless you embrace this fact of life, preferably by killing someone. My Mum and Dad are always on about this kind of thing. Typical vegetarians! They say you shouldn't eat meat unless you are prepared to kill and prepare the beast yourself. They're right, but too short-sighted to see the natural consequence of their logic. Vegetarianism means nothing. If they sat on the pavement, not moving at all and depending on people to give them food and water (but never asking - that would be exerting force); now that might be compassionate eating.
­ Life is the only thing we really have. Even it is only on temporary loan. In order to continue enjoying the benefits of this loan you need only accept that others must die. Some larger spirits feel destined to live life more fully. They rejoice to be thought of as free individuals. I consider myself free to do whatever I want. I act in the full knowledge of what the dangers and penalties may be, but I scorn to live as a slave. If I must live on the corpses of my fellow beings, I want to experience the mingled horror and exultation of extinguishing a human life with my bare hands.

lo fi

­What’s this music?
Some lo-fi stuff.
There’s no tune. There’s no words. Noise.
It’s sound.

The cd player reproduces tape-noise and the sound of a diamond scratching a groove in vinyl. The sounds speed up and slow down. There is ever-changing pattern. Now the cd skips. Is this an extension of the philosophy? Presenting us with the side-effects of obsolete technology in digital clarity, then rendering the cd unreadable.

The rabbit was pure black. It will do him good to have a pet. It’s good for a child to have something living to take responsibility for. He’ll have to be gentle and patient with the timid creature. It’ll be his job to clean it out regularly. And when it dies - well he’s got to learn about death one day.
The black rabbit was named Nibbler. The boy was named Mark. The rabbit was called Nibbler because he nibbled. The boy was named Mark because he noticed and noted. The Latin for a mark was nota. He found this out later.
The rabbit’s whiskers were fine and delicate. He sniffed and felt at things. He approached the large being cautiously. He felt the warmth and the quick pulse of life with the fine whiskers. The boy was still. He knelt on the grass in the sunshine. The black rabbit moved forwards on the bright green grass. He sniffed and pulled back. He felt safest when not moving at all. The boy and the rabbit were sitting on the bright grass in warm sunshine. They were surrounded by wire mesh unrolled into a large circle. There was a new hutch behind the garage, next to the water-butt and the large roller. The roller was two large cylinders of heavy iron on an axle with a heavy handle. It was for flattening the lawn. You pushed or pulled it along and when you turned round to do another strip the two cylinders rotated in opposite directions. That was how it turned.
Nibbler moved closer to the boy because he could see something orange in the pink hand. It smelled good. He stretched his nose up against the carrot. The rabbit was long, it was stretching out ready to pull back to stillness and safety. When nothing else happened he pulled his back legs up and sat close to the boy. He nibbled the carrot. The boy glanced through the hexagonal shapes in the wire. He looked at Nibbler.
He was called Mark because he was warlike. Mars was the Roman god of war.

Nibbler became ill. He could not live with the other rabbit. He moved house to the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden. Mark and his parents and his sister looked after Nibbler in the greenhouse but one day the foolish rabbit fell off something and broke his leg. The vet put him to sleep. Then Nibbler was just a thing. He would never wake up again so they put him in a box and buried that in the garden, near the greenhouse. The boy realised that rabbits died and became things, shockingly cold and unmoving.
He knew he should not have put Nibbler in the greenhouse when he was ill. It was not the right place for a rabbit. His mother might have said something like why do things like this always happen to our family?

There were other animals. Sometimes rabbits that are getting old become a bit wild. We can take them to a wood where lots of rabbits live. They will be happier there. We’ll set them free there.
Nibbler was his responsibility and he had put it in a dangerous place, where he broke his leg. Once he knelt on a baby gerbil, killing it. That wasn’t as bad because they were the babies of his sister’s gerbil. There were a lot of them. His own gerbils lived for a long time and then they died. They put the limp things into boxes and buried them.

Footglass

It’s early. Pre-dawn. Before pulling on his trainers he trims his nails, feet and hands. He sniffs at the ends of his fingers. A strange smell – old, decaying. Nails are dead tissue. He washes his hands thoroughly. Time to feed life and energy into the system. He’s running before he’s out of the house it seems. Down this side of the gorge then up through the woods to Oakwood. No longer training. This is an expression of who he is. He is simply being. Full of energy and power. The world is his. He criss-crosses through the steep paths up the bank. He’s aroused by this. He drops beside a tree and relieves himself of that particular tension. Then continues.
Up through the desirable housing estate and out onto the open grassland. He removes his trainers and leaves them by a tree. Running barefoot toughens the feet and puts you in touch with the earth. There’s something empowering about it. The lack of support to the ankles. The riskiness of leaving your trainers somewhere. But there’s no one on these playing fields. Here in Oakwood, it’s safe.
Mark’s finishing his running now. He’s slowing to a walk. The long walk home is a cool-down, part of the session. He stops, stretches. His foot is wounded. Must have trodden on something. Something in the grass has cut him. He didn’t feel it at the time – the feet doing their work so well a little nick couldn’t interrupt the flow. The sensory impact of footfalls on grass masking this incision. But as he puts his shoes on and walks home, the foot begins to hurt.
Down through the woods again. He needs to poo. It’s urgent in a way that can often happen when he runs – as if he’s sped up his metabolism by running, used up that ration of fuel and is now ready to expel the waste. He finds a small clearing beneath the shade of a bush. A leaf takes care of the wiping part.
After showering, Mark looks again at the foot. It’s too painful to be just a cut. Must be something in it. He takes a pin, sterilises it in flame and proceeds to probe the wound. There are so many feelings here. The reluctance to hurt oneself. Probing the raw flesh – nothing there. The tough outer layer that you can tug at without pain. And there – a raw grating feeling. It’s almost as if he hears it. He feels it with the foot and with the thumb and finger through the pin. A foreign body in his body. Now to tease, to pry and to dig it out. Every pressure to the piece (of glass, is it?) brings pain as the sharp edges cut through fibres. He’s squeezing the wound with one hand so that it gaps open, gapes open to reveal the alien thing. But the shard of glass is invisible, a red fleck unseen within the red wound. He digs and teases and pulls the flake of glass out. Tiny. He searches the wound again. This time the pin finds nothing that is not him.
Now Mark cleans the wound. Pleased with his keyhole surgery. The foot is sore from all the manipulation. But now it will heal.
Mark is sterilising a Stanley-knife blade now. Taken from his father’s toolbox. Plenty of spare blades always. He’s cutting into the palm of his right hand. There where a slug of pencil graphite still lodges. This is not so easy. This thing has had time to become part of him. It’s not lying in a cut, it’s bedded in to tissue. But he cuts deep. Much blood. The pin levers the lead out. And there’s another raw wound; and a sense of health and wholeness.
Why does he feel this way? He records some thoughts:

Why am I like this? I am not real. Why am I gouging away at this old wound? My parents made me, somehow. I need to dig this out of the hurt. I am something put in there. I am artificial. I have always known this. Nothing bad has ever happened, but this always already made me incapable of being - a human - being. I know it’s true. I’ve seen a seam. A ragged line along the base of my penis. I seem to have a ragged seam at my root. A scar at the base of the middle of myself. That is where they inserted “me” into this shell. A self pulled off a shelf. That’s why I am selfish. Shell/fish. I am a changeling. I am an alien. I am the other. I’m not myself today. I’m not feeling myself at the moment. I am an android. That’s why I don’t love them and that’s why they don’t love me.

Dreamtime

Get nothing from medical staff (not relatives). Take computers to lab. Don’t talk. Don’t try anything out. Not feeling anything yet. Walk out of the building. Ugly-beautiful bare concrete courtyard. At lunchtime, people come here to eat. The open space. Some plants. Are those supposed to be sculptures? She’s gone. But we preserved something. What does that mean?
They walked through the university buildings, out past the park. They were heading blindly for The Royal Park pub. Wordlessly. They walked down the hill, dodged minicabs and went in.
“Pint of stella okay?”
“Yeah.”
Philippa bought the drinks. They could find nothing to say. There was nowhere to sit down. Richard noticed a band was playing in the cellar. The two of them moved to the staircase and descended.
The cellar was a bare room. An oblong of concrete you paid three quid to get in. At one end a small stage with an even smaller cleared area in front. A few tables and chairs. A small bar at the back. They’d come down while one band was clearing stuff away. The PA system was blatting the room with a darkly dubbed-up sonic assault. Talk now doubly impossible. Richard bought more strong lager. They stood and watched musicians set up for the next gig. A shaven-headed man with a red guitar. Bass, drums, another shaved head bounced up when they were ready and took the mic. The recorded dub died and the bassist set up his own pattern. Already some of the band’s regular fans were dancing. The music was infectious. The dancers moved their hips following the lead of the fluid bass. The red guitar sounds shimmered over everything. Richard found himself swaying to the sound. The bastard son of punk and ska raised by a doped-up dub uncle. Another number. In the small space the music was aggressive and yet enveloping. Intimate. Join us, step into this energy, let this move you. It was as if the bass frequencies were moving his chest, inflating his lungs. The drum-beats teaching his feet new steps. Guitar lines suggesting when to pause, add a new element. The words were singing him as he connected with a chorus on only the second listen.
Philippa and Richard danced through the hour-long set. They drank and danced. Difficult at first to meet each other’s eyes. Danger – seeing that shared knowledge reflected back. But this room changed things. The chilly cellar atmosphere. First they felt the sweat on their bodies, cold in the cold air. But as the room warmed up and people started moving everything heated up. They were forced closer when new dancers joined the floor. And where else could they look?
Back up the hill after closing time. The wet fabric of their clothes again cold in the night air. A long time now since they had spoken, but now (how?) they were holding hands. Richard’s flat was at the top of the hill, overlooking the park. It seemed now that they could not speak. A pact of silence had been entered into. Richard opened his door and led Philippa in.
He turned the lights on, she turned them off. The bedroom. The curtains still open, starlight and streetlights illuminating the room. They closed the curtains and undressed each other.

Driving. Driving rain. Driving the car in the driving rain. Low visibility, no visibility. In the headlights, a shape. It came from somewhere, but without warning. And in any case his arms could not move. Made of stone. Petrified he got out of the car. Look. The dented bumper, the skid-marks on the road. Rain falling in fog. A spot of blood on the tarmac. He watched himself put fingers to the stain and smell. Across the carriageway there was a path into woodland. Like an automaton, he crossed the road and entered the wood. In here it was miraculously dry. The ground was coated in pine-needles. The man followed the trail of blood. Slowly at first, then with urgency. Somewhere in here was the thing he hurt. And the next thing was to find her. She lay in a clearing. The moonlight shone down on a woman who bared her stomach. There, a jagged wound wept blood-drops.
He knelt. He began to apologise. Wordlessly she moved his face to hers and kissed him. Then she gripped him more tightly and moved his head again until his mouth touched the wound. He kissed her there. Part vampire, part lover. The wound heals.

Disco. Frantic motion. A woman locks eyes with him. Syncs her motion to his. No subtlety here. A straight-forward invitation. In her room later, he admits he’s never actually ... Confession for confession she tells him it’s her time. They lock together. A slow grind. She somehow twines his legs and takes charge of the rhythm. She’s on top of him now and they move like on over-wound watch, just about to stop with one final judder. At the crucial moment he feels her answer his ejaculation with her own. Bathing him with the rich magick of her body’s rhythm. She’s still buzzing with it and he moves down her. Much later she takes him to the bathroom and they wash. He’s proud and aghast at his beard of blood and the dyeing of his genitals. The woman is so beautiful.

And now he’s back in a real moment. In a little-used part of the grounds. A boarded-up house behind a lake. Look into it and you’ll see that strange green growth that takes over shallow, still water. He’s about 13. Every year they come here. Some sort of party. Food on trestle-tables. Adults some way away. Talking about work, their children. He’s playing with a girl his age. Every year they’ve played here. She is beautiful. Her eyes are so clear. She’s lithe. They run freely. Still play childish games that they know they are too old for. Play with the other children. Amuse them, look after them. While the adults look at the food, the wine-bottles. How their lives measure up against their colleagues’.
What was the game? Hide and seek, or some version of “it”? The body seems to move so loosely, dodging each other. Changes of direction, slides. Jumping. Touching each other. The excitement of the hunt. A rhythm – now the hunter, now hunted again. We’re older, controlling the game. It should be her turn now, she’s too fast for the others to catch. She’s too graceful to be caught. She moves as quickly as thought. Seems weightless. And yet there’s something about her body. The glow, as if you can taste the excitement flowing through her. A kind of static in her eyes. It stops him in his tracks. He can’t look away, he’s embarrassed to look.
The moment that stayed with him forever. Dodging around the same tree at the same time they collide. And in that collision some intuition of all the desperate need for her body his body could ever feel. He never saw her again. Her name was Philippa too.

It’s actually lovely actually once you try it you’re hooked. The honeymoon killers’ death-row conjugal visit. Oh, sweetheart! They wanted the lethal injections to be administered while they screwed. Oh, lover! As if. I’m dying. Couldn’t ask the victims’ parents to observe that, now could we?

preface

Ridiculous that you should trust me. It's mad for me to suggest that there is something wrong with books. This must be a joke. The health warning: fiction can seriously damage your reality. More bluntly: READING KILLS.
Me too. I'm not just warning you against other books. That would be a writer's trick. "Read my books, no-one else's." And while pretending to hand down the truth, the writer piles up possessions. It's main aim being to give itself the leisure to read and write more books.
Let's forget about that mythic beast. I am an autochthon. I want to prod you into life. (I is dead. Who will tell the story?)
Ersatz anyplace. Travellers more concerned with their page-by-page journey through a book than their centimetre by centimetre progress through space. It feels safer to give up the thought process to a block of text. To complete the secure feeling, add headphones and turn the volume up.
A teenage boy sits on the tube. His legs are hooked protectively over a capacious schoolbag. One part of his mind refines his familiarity with The Velvet Underground's "White Light White Heat". His eyes feed him with a stream of symbols known as Bleak House by Charles Dickens. If he looks up, he does so without moving his head so as to avoid giving any fellow-traveller an excuse to lock eyes with him. Some days when he looks up he has gone past his stop.
Familiar picture, if we allow some liberty with the casting, and the choice of volume.
Somewhere else she is driving a car. Sunlight pouring off the car-in-front's wing-mirror creates a golden beam and a golden spot on tarmac. These cars moving relative to this road. This road moving relative to this star. Suddenly the conditions that made this happen cease.
A walker stops. I went to the hills to lose the plot, to break free from stories. But the chattering grouse told me the Strid had claimed many lives. (Let's get lost). On a coffee jag coax lichen onto your flesh, moss-eye. The snow goes down and rots our bones where they erode the land. Coffee jaguar we are out of your reach. Olfactory oil factory poo solution pollution the bottomless pit the no-ass hikers. In Doxy Pool ... no stories please, even the cycle of seasons is too plotty. Eyes grey as sky, blue as frozen stone - erase the hillside. Coffee cats take lives, skulls lie around. Lookout. True grit stone. Attack the land and rock. Perish here, the caffeine felines will prosper. I shall water this patch of ice and leave a scraping of skin. Cracked, I cracked cackles ice. Yearning for the less than human. The lichen living on rock and air is freer than I, translating myself into soil.
I would like to make myself unreadable. That would be one way of achieving my ends. Instead I will make myself into an anti-narrator. The kind of person who cannot tell a joke well. Someone from whom you instinctively turn away when he begins to relate an anecdote. Someone at once too serious and too flippant. All the stories have been told. Your addiction to them is killing you. I am merely the detox program.