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?