Monday Story: The Great Tide (2012)

This particular tale was commissioned for SFX Magazine’s Fantasy: The Ultimate Celebration Special Edition. Fantasy rarely satisfies me, especially the “high” version of it, although really my first love was fantasy and not SF. One thing that always plucks me out of these imagined worlds is how clean and fair they are. (Either that, or it’s grim visits grimtown with added torture, but that’s for another post).  I wonder, who grows the food, where does the sewage go, and where are all the dogs? This story draws on that, harking back to an earlier era of fantasy when things weren’t quite so rosy.

“The Great Tide” is set in a secondary world that I’ve been working on for some time. If you’ve read my other, tongue-in-cheek fantasy stories available at the Robot Trading Company, this is different. You may see more of this world. Watch this space.

The Great Tide

The canyon lip curled over the gleaners’ shelf , layered stone petals that shrugged the rain and sun’s glare off and hid the children from the disapproval of Moracs-Gravo. The shelf was open on the side of the canyon, perishing cold in winter to be sure, but tonight their fire kept the chill of autumn away well enough

The gleaner children sat around the fire on a stone floor polished by their feet. Travnic, their gang boss, sat on a keg. It was a worthless gleaning, its hoops corroded right through in places, staves rotten. For all that it made an adequate seat for the old man. The fire burned blue from the salt in the wood. The smoke it gave was briny, redolent of distant waves.

The evening was two hours past sundown. The day’s gleaning had been unrewarding. Another gang boss, a gang boss who was not Travnic, might have punished the children for their poor pickings. Markovitski, the boss of bosses, had already had cause to threaten Travnic. Another boss would have handed his fear on to his gang with a belt and hard words. Not Travnic. He’d looked at the pile of salvage, he’d sighed and he’d scratched at his bald scalp, and he’d said what he always said: “Tomorrow will be a better day.”

As was his custom, he was telling the children a story.

“In a time not so long ago, there lived a farmer,” he said.

“What’s a farmer?” said Lavina.

“Shut up Lavina,” said Rusinka.

“You shut up, Rusinka.”

“A farmer,” said Travnic, “is a man who makes his way in life by growing food, out in the country.”

“They sell it here, to the city,” said Morunik. He was approaching adulthood, and had the surliness that the change from boy to man inflicts. “Where do you think it comes from?”

A spirited argument erupted. Travnic watched his charges bicker with amusement.

“Quiet!” said Tuvacs, the eldest. “Or you’ll all be off to bed now, get it?”

They quietened at Tuvac’s rebuke.

“Now, are you going to let me tell this story or not?” said Travnic.

“Tell!” they said.

“Good.” He continued. “This farmer had a herd of fine dairy cows. He and his wife lived in a glade in a forest and by his house he had a little dairy. He drove his cows to the dairy every morning, and he and his wife milked them, and then he drove them to a different part of the glade so they might enjoy fresh grass. In winter they went into the barn under his house. His wife and he would churn butter and make cheese, and every secondweek…”

Tuvacs had heard the story many times. Travnic’s eyes were as bright as always, but the face they looked out from was more haggard by the day. Just this year, Tuvacs thought, he has aged a great deal.

Travnic told how the farmer’s wife had died, how the farmer had become mad enough with grief to hear the singing of the Wild Tyn in the forest, and how he’d tricked one of the magical creatures into taking the shape of a vixen. The Tyn had been forced to serve him and grant his wishes, until, as is the way such stories, the Tyn had tricked the farmer in its turn.

“…and the farmer toiled and toiled. His herd was never dry of milk, no matter how much he milked, and the Tyn laughed behind her whiskers at him. He could not leave his cows, for they would sicken and die, and so he could not churn his butter or make his cheese or go to market. The milk went bad, he poured it away and carried on milking, for he cared for his animals very much.

“On the eighth day, the Tyn approached him, her tail swishing.

“‘Are you happy master?’ she said slyly.

“The farmer looked at the Tyn. He was tired and he missed his wife and he knew he had been a fool. His eyes were clear of grief for the first time since his wife had died, and he knew what he had to do.

“‘Thank you,’ he said, and the Tyn knew he was not thanking her for the great amount of milk she had magicked up. ‘But now I wish it would all stop,’ he said.

“The Tyn licked her lips nervously, for she was bound to grant his wish, and yet the Tyn Y Dvar do not know how their own magic will turn out, not entirely. ‘Your wish is granted,’ she said.

“The farmer lay down, and then he died.

“Now, the Tyn at first was happy, but then a terrible shame came upon her, for she had broken the Tyn’s gravest law and taken a life, and she knew in her heart that the farmer had been grief struck, and not a bad man, and that made it all the worse. ‘Master! Master!’ it cried. The Tyn Y Dvar leapt around the farmer’s corpse like a mad thing. ‘Master!’”

Travnic was good at the voices, thought Tuvacs. He smiled and rested his head on the rock at his back, and remembered when he was very young.

“The grief of the Tyn addled its mind, and it ran into the forest without changing shape. It was stuck forever as a vixen. And so it screams in horror at what it had done, whenever the moon is out, like tonight.” Travnic sniffed. The moon was behind him as if he had timed it, white and round between the piers of the Mrostovyn bridge, the dark bulk of the Twin behind it. “And that’s why foxes scream at night.”

“There was only one Tyn,” said Lavina doubtfully. “All foxes scream.”

“The others copied it,” Tuvacs said. He patted his little sister’s head. She scowled at him and shrugged his hand away.

“That’s right,” said Travnic. “That’s right.”

“What’s it mean?” asked Mirta.

Travnic shrugged.

Mirta persisted. “All stories mean something.”

“This, and that,” said Travnic. “You have to figure it out for yourself.” He slapped his knees and pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. His left leg was lame. There was a scar down his the thigh there, a gift from an Ocerzerkiyan sabre. He had shown Tuvacs once. “Enough for tonight. We’ve a Great Tide gleaning tomorrow. Off to bed with you.”

The children made noises of disappointment. Drassna and Dravina ran ahead to their pallets, grabbing each other and giggling. The others trudged. It had been a long day, and no one could match the twin’s energy.

Tuvacs looked over his shoulder at his master as he shepherded Lavina towards bed. Travnic stood wheezing gently, hands on the lower part of his back, elbows like sharp wings in the fire’s uncertain glow.

It was then Tuvacs realised he was worried about Travnic.

Tuvacs tucked Lavina in quickly, jamming their blanket under the wooden pallet where they slept.

“Where are you going?” she said. Her eyes reflected the lights of the city, the fire, the moon, the Twin, the stars. Her eyes were huge. He could see a pout form. She didn’t like to be left alone.

“I’ll be back before you go to sleep.”

His sister rolled over. “That’s not fair. I’m cold.”

Tuvacs waited for her to say more, but she did not. He went back to the fire.

If Travnic had noticed Tuvacs’ concern, it did not show. He looked over the canyon to the Moracs side of Moracs-Gravo. The buildings were high there, and graceful. Their shelf was on the Gravo side, the poorer side. It seemed to Tuvacs that Moracs would not tolerate so humble personages as the gleaners, not even at the filthy roots of its cliffs.

“We all know what we’re to do,” said Tuvacs. “I’ll make sure it goes smoothly. We’ll get a good gleaning, I promise.”

“So I don’t have to come down there, Tuvico? Even for such a gleaning?  I suppose I should thank you.” Travnic whistled through his teeth and rubbed his back. “My knees hurt, my back hurts, my war wounds hurt, my eyes are dull, my hands…” he held them up and looked at them. “When I was a boy, there was no one better than me on all the gleaning gangs. You know that? I could dance up and down these cliffs. I was always the first to spot the glimmer of a coin in the mud. And then I was a soldier. Now?” He snorted, half despairing, half amused. “Let me tell you something boy, something true. You never think you’re going to get old.” Travnic looked at the boy, the boy who was as good as his son. He was mildly surprised, as he was every time he realised Tuvacs’ face was level with his own. “You’re nearly a man Tuvico,” he said. “You are a good boy.” He reached out a hand to ruffle Tuvacs’ hair. He hesitated, and did not. He grasped his shoulder instead.

“What’s going to happen to us?” said Tuvacs abruptly.

Travnic’s face became hard, the brittle kind of hard that hides worry. “I don’t know Tuvico, I don’t know.”

*****

Tuvacs was up while it was still dark. Before he roused the girls to make breakfast, Travnic would put him through his paces. “I can’t teach you much boy,” he’d said to Tuvacs years ago. “Nothing but gleaning and swordplay. Best you know how to handle yourself.” And so Tuvacs had had his fencing lessons every day since.

“Keep your guard up boy,” Travnic said. He sat on his keg, his lame leg stretched out in front of him, a pot of small beer in his hand. “Cover your centre, cover! Oh for the eight’s sake.” Travnic put his beer aside on a little shelf in the rock, and pulled himself onto his feet. He moved stiffly over to where Tuvacs was working with his gleaned half-sword. He grabbed the boy’s arm and adjusted its position. Then that grin came onto his face, and he fetched his own old weapon, muffled in rag. He and Tuvacs mock-duelled. Travnic’s leg meant he could not move from the spot, but his command of the blade was such that Tuvacs struggled to land a blow. The blades hit one another with dull rings. Travnic and Tuvacs made little noise, so as not to disturb the others, but they breathed hard, and Tuvacs made little grunts of frustration as his attacks were turned aside.

“You’re getting better,” said Travnic.

Tuvacs was too occupied to reply.

Travnic began to cough, dry barks at first, but soon his chest was heaving. He fought for breath. His guard dropped, and Tuvacs came to help him. Travnic rested his free hand on Tuvacs’ shoulder and bent double.

Travnic heaved and gasped. Each cough sent a spasm down his damaged leg that showed on his face as a sharp grimace. Finally, the coughing eased.

“Are you all right?” asked Tuvacs. And then, somehow, he was on his back with Travnic’s sword at his neck.

Travnic’s off hand grasped his bad leg. To sweep Tuvacs legs out from under him had cost him. “Never let your guard down,” he wheezed.

“That’s not fair, Travnic,” said Tuvacs, and put his hands forward in surrender.

“Who said life was, Tuvico?” Travnic wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. They both pretended they could not see the blood. “Who said it was?”

*****

The others grumbled at being turfed out of their beds before daybreak, but they could not afford to waste daylight on a Great Tide day. The eldest three girls fed them black bread, a tiny portion of salt fish, and a cup of ale close to turning sour.

As they ate, Kostarno came to see Travnic. They spoke away from the children, right at the edge of the shelf. Tuvacs strained his ears and stole glances over to where they spoke. Travnic was one of life’s natural wheel-greasers. Even Markovitski liked Travnic sufficiently to send his enforcer down rather than making Travnic struggle up to see him, and Kostamo was Markovitski’s least unpleasant enforcer.. But business was business, and Kostamo looked sterner than usual.

Travnic raised his hands. Kostamo pointed a finger and said something that made the old man’s smile fade. Tuvacs could not hear it over the chatter of the others. He would not say what it was as he herded the children out to work.

The sky was heavy with high and barren cloud. There was no one about. A few people unwilling or unable to pay the upper bridge tolls had come down the stairs to use the pontoons, which were currently sat in the mud. They were annoyed at crossing the reeking ooze of the canyon floor, and they pushed past the children rudely as they made their way up or down the rickety stairs.

Above, the double city crowded the lips of the canyon. The three ancient Maceriyan bridges crossed the half-mile gap, carrying roads in their cradles of magic-spun metal and stone. The noise above was muted, the rumble of the soil carts and the occasional bark of the dogs that pulled them. Much of the city slept. The purple-dark globe of the Twin glowering menacingly over it all, the moon entrapped in its circle.

Down at the bottom of the canyon it was still dark. Tuvacs set the others to their tasks. The twins were on lookout for fresh drops. The younger three were put to work as spotters, clambering along the side of the canyon. Morunik and Kuhalc were to work as haulers, dragging the heavy stuff out of the muck. Tuvacs , Mirta and Culita were to do light gleaning. That way he could work and keep an eye on the whole gang.

“Everyone ready?” he shouted. The individual calls of the children echoed off the stone, the whistled trade-tongue of the gleaners. “Double call for uptime!” he said. Travnics had paid the tidemaster for a reading of the charts, the money had come out of his own pocket. Travnic lived in fear of losing them to the waters. Tuvacs despaired of his kindness sometimes, but if he were going to pay for an accurate reckoning, said Tuvacs to Travnic, they might as well work until the last moment.

Tuvacs and the girls stepped down into the muck. There had been no tide for a fortnight, so it was at least firm underfoot. On the other side of that particular coin, there was garbage everywhere, the stench of shit and blood and rotting flesh was overpowering. Salt flies buzzed in choking columns. Tuvacs hated them, the way they crawled into his mouth and eyes.

The canyon was Moracs-Gravo’s cesspool. Soil carts worked all day to drag the city’s waste to the edge and tip it in. Servants and poorer citizens would toss all manner of rubbish over the lip. By city writ, more waste was deposited prior to a Great Tide. In three day’s time, when the great tide receded, the canyon would be swept clean. Until then, it remained a dismal miasma.

Tuvacs pulled his scarf up over his nose. Most days he was inured to the stink; not today.

Anything that might fetch a few pennies, they gathered. Most of the city’s refuse was reused before it got down here, taken away to whichever industry needed it. But things were lost, things were thrown away by mistake, or were in too small a quantity to be worth the bother to others. The gleaners were the last filter in a system adept at making use of everything, they would collect every rusty nail, every stick suitable for firewood, every chop bone and oyster shell.

The twins whistled out, warning of drops. Tuvacs moved away from the edge of the canyon and mess rained down from above. His sister called a find, a terse flurry of notes for shells, good for the mortar makers.

Tuvacs ambled along, eyes intent on the mud. He held his breath as he skirted past a slick of exhausted pure; tanner’s refuse. It was the worst kind of filth. He was so intent on avoiding it that he nearly missed the dead man.

He saw the boot first. He’d been a gleaner long enough to know it still had a foot in it. The man was half hidden behind a boulder. His body was a contortion of broken bones, his fine clothes crusted with blood.

Tuvacs looked around him before he went to the man. The gang never worked more than three hundred paces apart. Kuhalc and Morunik were hauling at a beam. Lavina, Rusalka and Tomar were looking over a tangled pile of debris together. He could not see anyone else. There were other gleaners, of course, but they were a long way away. Good, he’d get first look.

The man had been armed. His scabbard was broken under his twisted thigh, empty. There was a dagger on the opposite hip, and this Tuvacs unhooked, scabbard and all, and tucked into his shirt. He patted the corpse, looking for a purse. It was still there.

There were seven thalers in there. His heart hammered. He put it away. He checked himself to make sure his gains were hidden, and then he whistled for help to strip the man.

*****

Bells rang throughout Moracs-Gravo, and the gleaners watched as the tide came in.

It was a wall of water, black and alien, an invader from the distant sea, pulled up abruptly by the combined strength of the Twin and the Moon. There was little to announce it, a swift trickle of moisture, and then it came around the bend in the canyon, a black hill, its glossy surface already choked with debris. It reached the pontoon bridges grounded in the mud, and they rose at its command, groaning as the Great Tide forced them up their anchor ropes.

The wave passed by, and that was that. Water filled the canyon to ten yards below their shelf as if it had always been there. The pontoon bridges floated on it. The gleaner children gasped and cooed at it, rarely did the tide come so fast or so high. Music sounded from around the city. A priest to the Absent Ones began a speech from the centre of the Lubinchac bridge, but his voice was as lost as his gods were, drowned in the roar of humanity emanating from the city.

The festival began.

Travnic and Tuvacs stood apart from the others.

“You are sure no one saw you?” asked Travnic. He hefted the purse in his hand. “If you were seen, gods, they’ll hang you for robbery.”

Tuvacs shook his head. “Not even the gang. I took it before they saw. I didn’t want any trouble over it.”

“You are a good lad, Tuvito. Anyone else might have taken it for themselves.”

“I am not anyone else,” he said. He did not mention the fine dagger or the thaler he’d kept for himself.

“How did he die?”

“A sword thrust to the heart, quick and clean.”

“A duel?”

Tuvacs shrugged. “Maybe. They did not rob him. What will you do? The money will keep Markovitski off your back for a long while.”

Travnic smiled. “No. He may believe you found one coin one day, and maybe even a second the next, but if I put a fresh quarter thaler into the gleaning every day, then he’ll know I’m holding out on him. I have to give it all over at once, or not at all.” He looked out at the canyon. “I’m on my last chance, Tuvito, you know that. One good find like this won’t stop him from taking my license. It’s going to happen soon.”

Tuvacs said nothing. For Travnic, it was enough that he was there.

“You could have kept the money. You should have,” said Travnic.

A procession strode over the nearest bridge, a squadrons of dismounted uhlans at the fore. They were resplendent in their uniforms, flashes of colour that defied the greyness of the day. Two wheeled cages containing an example pair of the Uhlan’s drakkars were pulled behind by dogs. The reptiles were battle mounts, too dangerous to ride in the city.

Travnic looked at the boy.

“I’ve got an idea. Come on.”

*****

The master at arms looked down the full length of his nose at them. His breastplate shone as glorious counterpoint to the contempt on his face.

“You cannot possibly apply.”

“All can apply. It is the day of the Great Tide,” said Travnic.

“Then you almost certainly do not have the fee,” said the master at arms.

“We do,” said Travnic, and deposited two silver thalers  upon the desk.

The master at arms sighed. He had run out of objections.

“Very well,” he said. “Name.”

“Alovo Tuvacs,” said Tuvacs.

“You cannot possible win,” said the master at arms as he wrote Tuvacs’ name. “You would be best spending your stolen money elsewhere.”

“I would not count on that, sir,” said Travnic.

They were given a wooden round with a painted number upon it, and directed through into the training yard of the barracks.

The barrack’s yard was austere. A cloister ran the length of one wall, wooden dummies and weapons racked under it. A large desk had been placed on the training ground’s sand. It was ornately carved and hung with scarlet cloth. An officer sat behind it, two troopers in full uniform either side of him.

“Why bring me here?” asked Tuvacs.

“It’s a way out boy. The better regiments are only open to the likes of us on Great Tide days. The money, the tide, it’s fate, see?”

“What about my sister? Lavina can’t join the army? Travnic, I can’t abandon her.”

“Even on a recruit’s wage you’ll have enough to see her right. Your contract will be bought out by the army, you can buy hers later. Get her to apprentice, or train for service, you’ll have enough to afford that.”

“And the others? What about them?”

Travnic looked away. “I can’t help you all,” he said guiltily.

Tuvacs stopped himself from pressing the point. He knew it was true. If he doubted it, why was he here?

They were called out in pairs, and set to sparring. There were poor boys there and rich, but even the poorest looked askance at ragged Tuvacs and Travnic.

Travnic ignored their disapproval. He tutted and made withering comments as the others fought. Twice he shouted in annoyance. The second time he was told to keep his counsel to himself by the master at arms.

Tuvacs watched them fight in silence, and then it was his turn.

“Forty-four, Alovo Tuvacs to fight twenty-seven, Priyep Donatz Kustarowic,” called the master at arms.

A priyep, thought Tuvacs. Marvellous.

Travnic grabbed both his shoulders and whispered in his ear. “Random draw my old arse! They’ve given you an aristo, Tuvito. He’ll have been training most of his life, they’ll think you’re sure to lose.” He was excited. “But he hasn’t been training with me. These boys are all honour and drill, surprise him.”

He slapped Tuvacs so hard on the back he staggered out of line onto the sand.

The Priyep was in consultation with a man Tuvacs guessed was some kind of instructor. He was a little older than Tuvacs, muscled from good food and hard training. His clothes were worth more than Tuvacs had earned in his entire life.

“Come on then boy!” called the priyep. “Let’s see what gutter scum like you can do.”

“I’m a gleaner,” growled Tuvacs.

A training sword was pressed into his hand. The Priyep had his own, a wooden sword as richly mounted as a king’s blade.

The priyep prowled the sand. Tuvacs took up his stance as he’d learned it from Travnic. He felt ungainly. For the first time, he felt out of place.

The priyep darted forward fast. His wooden blade flashed toward Tuvacs’ head. Without thinking, Tuvacs deflected it, and returned his sword to the position of the fourth guard. His arm was jolted by the impact. He was gripping the hilt too hard. He loosened his hold and bent low on his knees. The priyep laughed.

The priyep attacked several times, testing Tuvacs’ skills. Tuvacs parried them as simply as possible, not wanting to give anything away. A couple of times they fell into a flurry of actions as the priyep redoubled his attacks after the initial parry. Then he started to feint, to slide his blade under Tuvacs own. Tuvacs’ sword was ready in position when the real attack came in.

The priyep was fighting duelling-style, suited to rapiers. Tuvacs was used to Travnic’s war-style, for heavier weapons that favoured edge-blows. To his mind, his was the better suited to the training swords.

The priyep was predictable. He always went for the right. For all his confidence, his attacks varied but little. A low line attack, high sweep to the sixth position, counter parry to the eighth, redouble of the thrust. He kept his distance well, but that was the limit of his ability.

Tuvacs waited until the priyep was panting. A wiser man would have backed off a little, but the priyep’s arrogance had become anger, and it was burning his stamina fast.

The priyep came in. Tuvacs parried the first two blows, and then he switched feet, stepping his right behind his left and rotating his body out of the way, chest high. The priyep’s thrust carried him straight past the gleaner. Tuvacs brought his wooden blade down hard on the other boy’s wrist. The priyep yelped and dropped his sword. Tuvacs ducked low and swept his leg around, knocking the overextended priyep to the ground. He stood over the aristocrat and put his blade to his throat.

“Yield,” he said.

The priyep’s face was a mixture of outrage and pain. He gripped his wrist.

“Yield.”

The priyep hesitated. He swallowed. “I yield.”

Tuvacs tossed his sword away and walked back to Travnic. A murmur of surprise went around the waiting boys and men. They looked at him differently now. What made it special for him, however, was the look of pride on Travnic’s face.

At the end of the day, all those victorious in their bouts were invited to join the regiment.

All except Tuvacs.

*****

That night, Travnic took Tuvacs to a tavern and they got drunk. Many times Tuvacs heard “Dishonourable victory? No such thing!”, accompanied by a long stream of expletives.

As they walked back to the canyon edge through Garo’s festivities, Travnic became introspective.

“I grew up a gleaner, Tuvacs. I thought I’d escaped when I joined the army. At the worst I’d die, but so what? All I wanted was enough for a nice little farm, or a good death, but when I was injured, that all went out of the window. There were few jobs that would accept a lame soldier. I knew nothing but swordplay and gleaning, so I returned whence I’d come, but not abashed! No!” He shouted this loudly at a pair of passers-by, startling them. “I’m proud of what I’ve done. So it didn’t work out quite the way I wanted.” He coughed, not so badly as in the morning. The alcohol made it easier. “But you? Whore-fucking aristocrats! Damn them if they can’t see a good thing in front of them. I…” He stopped and leaned against a wall, sliding down it some way. “I have tried for you son, I have, but there is nothing more to do. I’ll be gone soon. The other masters are not like me. There are some who are kind, but many are not. Don’t let yourself get trapped here.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying. Don’t be like the fox.”

“What fox?” Tuvacs’ head was muzzy with the beer.

“The fox in the story. You know what it means, right?”

Tuvacs shook his head. Travnic groaned.

*****

In the morning, Tuvacs woke his sister very early. He told the others to go to sleep, that they had errands to run for Travnic. He retrieved the dagger and thaler from where he’d hidden it.

He made Lavina wait, and woke Travnic.

“We are going,” said Tuvacs.

Travnic nodded. “It is for the best. Go far, before you are missed. Try for Karsa, the world is changing, and it is beginning there.” He sat and looked at Tuvacs and a mix of emotions played across his face.

“I know what the story means,” said Tuvacs.

“What?”

Now it was his turn to smile. “The fox, remember, or were you too drunk?”

“I remember, Tuvico. I mean, what does it mean?”

“We are like the Tyn, we cannot help but love those that enslave us.”

“And love itself is a kind of slavery. The farmer did it all because he loved his wife, and it made him blind.”

Tuvacs nodded. “Goodbye, father,” the first and final time he had called Travnic so.

He left quickly. It was better for them both that way.

Monday Story: She Said

This is one of my earliest surviving short stories. I have always wanted to be a writer, but I can pinpoint two phases that set me on the path to being one – when I became serious about it in 2000, and when I became really serious about it in 2005.

This story dates from that second, super-serious time, when I decided that as well as trying to write novels, I should also write short stories alongside them. I thought they’d prove a valuable training ground, which is pretty much what everyone says, and they’re right, mostly because you can actually finish a short story in something less than a lifetime, and if it sucks, it’s not too disheartening. “She Said” is an early effort and fairly clunky because of it, so I hope you’ll forgive it its inadequacies.

The story itself was inspired by the Outer Hebrides, particularly the Isle of Lewis where I spent several booze-soaked holidays in the 2000s , fishing and pissing about in boats.

You can buy more of my short fiction at the Robot Trading Company.

She Said

“Let’s go,” he had said one day. “We have to, now. Please. You know we’ll be safe there.”

She had dreaded the moment, knowing what it meant. He’d always wanted to go away from their jobs, their friends, their families; away from civilisation, away from all she knew and loved. He’d bought the cottage years ago. He’d always dreamed of living there, but had never done it, because of her. But now it was his turn. He had an excuse, a real reason to go, and she had no choice but to follow; she was scared.

They sold everything, and left. Far, far north they went, as far away as it was possible to get before the land ran out for good and the cold ocean went on forever. Twelve hours by car, three by boat, another hour again by car. To the isles that fan out from the mainland, far from the sun, far from the warmth; far from everything. Their house was miles from town, high above a sea loch whose steep sides sheered through heather and grey stone to plunge nearly vertically into the cold and ravenous sea.

He was happy there. He loved the solitude, the quiet. He loved the mist rising from the water in the morning, he loved fishing for his own food from his own boat. He enjoyed not working in an office, loved the feel of the open air on his face, no matter what the weather. He enjoyed wresting enough hay from the ground to feed their herd of animals over the first long winter. He loved the never-ending days of summer, the clear skies at night, the changing face of the sea.

She hated the bleakness of the land, the nudity of the earth, the surly, mealy-mouthed locals who were watching their way of life be usurped through the amber tint of a whisky bottle. She hated their prying, their hypocrisy, their lassitude. She hated the frequent rain, the constant wind, the way the temperature rarely broke into double figures. She hated what it did to her body. She hated the silence, the biting insects, the endless nights of winter. She hated the ugly clothes she had to wear and the way they were never dry. She missed the noise. She missed her freedom.

“This is the way to live,” he’d say, his smile broad and satisfied as they ate. She’d rarely respond for fear he’d see the lie. She never had the appetite for the fish before her. Soon she stopped replying altogether, he was blind to her suffering.

But still she stayed. She never went back to the city. She knew he was right. The crackling picture on the television brought the news of slow defeat. The broadcasts were optimistic, but he could see the patterns, and so could she, she didn’t need him to point them out anymore. Things were coming undone.

Two years passed, years that brought summers of baking heat and winters of endless rain to the south, though the lives of her friends went on as normal despite the little hardships which multiplied, unchecked, like cockroaches. It was not to last.

In the spring of the third year, in Africa, the bird sickness finally took hold, thwarting the measures that had contained it for a decade. Quickly, it blossomed from a seed to a deadly harvest, laying low millions already ravaged by AIDS and TB. And the disease changed, the bodies of the dying incubators for a hundred subtle new strains. One was unstoppable. The healthy began to die. All who were infected died. A state of emergency was declared. Troops panicked, thousands were killed. The UN descended upon the continent. For a time the sickness was contained once more, but not by vaccination or screening. Ruthlessness became the norm. Villages filled up with the dead, towns became ghost-towns, cities became villages.

Travel was circumscribed. Trade faltered, the world economy wavered. Fuel became unaffordable. War broke out in the middle-east, a surgical strike that became inflamed to engulf a region. Half a continent was under arms. America’s empire grew unwillingly, blood being traded like for like with oil.

The weather worsened. Famine exacerbated the sickness. The sea was rising, coastal communities were torn and scattered by storms whose uncommon ferocity became commonplace. New Orleans was inundated, never to rise again. Hong Kong was swamped, Shanghai began to sink. The monsoons failed in India.

Life became harder on the islands, they began to grow much of their own food, where it would grow; they had no money to buy the goods in the shops. The winds grew stronger, the seasons more erratic. Still he came in from the fields and sea so happy, proven, secure. He began to work together with others, some new like them, fleeing before the crisis; many others who were returning. The withered stumps of ancient family trees flowered again as families from the mainland crammed into the long, grey houses of neglected relatives. She had friends now, of a kind, but she could not engage with their flinty pragmatism, their grim joy.

The economy of the world reeled. Martial law was declared in China, flocks of birds were gassed, whole cities razed at the first sign of the sickness, the gun became the only arbiter of any argument, and all arguments concerned infection. In Russia, impoverished citizens fell by the score. Europe braced itself, Asia suffered. Africa died.

A wave of millennial madness washed the island; on Sundays, the churches were full.

It had come at last, the ’flu, crossing the English Channel eighteen months after she had followed him to the islands; just as the scientists had predicted it eventually would, just as the politicians had said it wouldn’t. It spread from the east, breaking in waves of death over the few barriers the governments of Europe could muster. New and potent vaccinations were hastily concocted, only to fail within weeks as the virus changed again and again. Sometimes it was quicker than at others, sometimes slower, but almost always fatal. Society began to break down. A third of the world’s people had perished. Isolation was the only real defence.

The trips to the supermarket in town stopped altogether, there was little point, its shelves were empty. If they went anywhere, they went by boat under sail and oar. The electricity supply became intermittent, to finally cease a few weeks after the television went off air. Elsewhere, anarchy reigned.

“We’re stockpiling refrigerators at the school, we’ll use that as a food distribution centre, there’s enough energy for that,” he explained happily. “In a few years we’ll be able to rig up more wind turbines. We’ll just have to make do with oil lamps until then.” It was his latest project, power. He was active in the islands’ ruling council.

All their food now had to be torn from the infertile earth or the fickle waves of the sea. Sometimes they went hungry, but not often. The ancient ways of the islanders had almost gone, but not quite. Old techniques were recalled, old ways re-mastered. It was a hard life, but they were alive. Only the ugly scenes at the docksides and on the waves as refugees were turned away marred their triumphs. Sometimes they were not turned away, though they did not set foot on the shore.

But it worked, that and the culling of birds. The sickness did not come.

“I was right, love. I was right, and we are safe,” he said to her, holding her tight in the cold night. “When this is over, we can make a new world, love, a purer world. A better one.”

He slept soundly, his warm arms clasped tightly about her. She lay there, eyes open, unblinking, listening to the wind howl in from the sea to screech unimpeded over the hard stone and sodden peat of the island. The ancient zinc roof rattled. Sleep did not come, it never did.

She awoke early after a few hours of snatched, grey rest. It was late summer, she knew, though she herself had stopped counting the days long ago, for the room was full of light, the island’s harsh light that pressed down mercilessly through the flat sky for twenty hours of every day. She looked at her husband’s face: bearded now, craggy, all softness burnt from it by the wind and sun. The city worker he had once been was long gone. His cracked hands curled a little, and he smiled as he slept. He looked like a stranger to her. A dull pain passed through her heart.

She rose quietly and went outside. The sun was coming up, low in the east, breaking over the cloddish mountains of the island’s interior. Below pink clouds the sun’s rays coloured the newly ordered fields a subtle copper, and the long, pale grasses of the moors danced like light reflected off gold. The sun struck off the loch, turning the surface of the water into a sheet of hammered silver. Sometimes, like this, she almost found it beautiful.

She squinted against the sun. Upon the mirrored water was a dark shape; a boat. It was coming in to land. Slowly, she picked her way down the steep hillside and then onto the road, walking along crumbling tarmac towards the loch’s small and awkward harbour.

By the time she arrived, the boat was hard to the concrete jetty, built years before for long-gone fish farms. It towered incongruously over the stone piers beside it, their construction identical, only their various states of disrepair hinting that some were centuries older than the others.

The boat was large, almost a ship. How the crew had got the fuel to bring it here she could only guess. Hollow-eyed men cast desperate glances about as they tied up. They knew that they would be driven off if seen. They shook with exhaustion as they spoke to her. They had come from The Netherlands, they said, their voices thick with foreign sounds and unspoken fear. Much of the country wasn’t there anymore. A week-long gale had battered the coast, a storm surge had flooded old lakes and inland seas; a second had followed within months. There were not enough healthy people to rebuild the dykes, all were dead, or fled, to perish elsewhere.

She looked at their faces, pale with stress, dark with stubble. They were too weak and haggard to be a threat, though they would be judged one. They pleaded with her, begging. They could make a life here, contribute. They had skills the islands could use. This one here, an engineer, another, him, a fisherman. Just feed them, if only a little, and they would be strong and productive.

She should raise the alarm, she replied. She should have them chased away, they were afflicted with more than tiredness. She could see that, others would see that. One of the Dutchmen began to cough violently, barking almost, his mouth biting at the air for breath. A concerned man held him up; it could have been his brother, they all could have been his brothers. Dirt and desperation had made them all the same.

It fell silent, but for the lapping of the water and the wind in the heather. A small wave broke over the foundation stones of a new pier. It was difficult work, it had been washed away once by a ferocious squall, but the men were confident it would be done by the winter. They laughed about it.

A cloud passed over the sun. Cold shivered up her spine, it was threatening rain again. She would have to work quickly today; and the next. The work was never done. She looked at her hands, they were filthy, her nails cracked. They had been elegant once.

Somewhere out in the loch, a seal splashed.

She thought of the man she’d seen hanged a week ago, for stealing a sack of oats.

It was almost beautiful there.

“Come in,” she said. “Come in.”

Monday Story: Outside

Good Mondays, all! Come in, come in.

I’ve made a pledge to myself to get my blog updated on a far more regular basis, so I’m going to try and place something on the site every weekday. Normally that will be some interesting scrap from my journalistic history, but every so often, always on a Monday, I’ve decided to post short stories until I run out of them, and then I might write some more. As I go along, I’ll also be adding them to the  “short story” section of the “fiction” menu up the top there also, so they are easy to find. If you like them, there are some more by me for sale at the Robot Trading Company, for your ebook of choice.

First is “Outside”, a horror tale.  Originally written for our short story group in 2009, “Outside” was eventually rewritten and published in the late, great Colin Harvey’s Wessex-themed anthology Dark Spires in 2010. I very much enjoyed our back and forth email conversation that shepherded this story to its current form, and I was very shocked to hear of his early death in 2011.

Dark Spires is still available from Wizard’s Tower publications as an ebook, for £2.99.

Outside

A man sits in a dark room. He is wearing a heavy coat and two sweaters and fingerless gloves. His hair is lank. His beard is into its second week of growth. His clothes are dirty. The slow whir of a ballpoint pen across paper is the only sound in the room. A bottle of whisky stands, half empty and open, close to hand, its glass is smeared and greasy. The occasional bang from outside or a scrape across the roof makes him look up once or twice. His breath plumes a little quicker in the candlelight, but he does not reach for his gun. Instead, he waits then continues to write, stopping from time to time to rub the biro between his palms, or to blow upon his naked fingertips. Otherwise he is absorbed in his task. This is what he has to say:

“This is hard for me. But I have to do something. Sitting around in the dark, it makes being alone worse. I’ve been here ten days now since it happened. I don’t know what to call it. There’s a lot I don’t know. I doubt anyone will ever read this, but it might help me get things straight if I get it down. If you’re out there, if there’s anyone left after this, perhaps it will help you. If not, it will help me, talking to myself is better than talking to no one at all.

“This is my day. The first thing I do, every day, is to check the seals: the doors, the windows, the chimney, round the soil pipe leading from the toilet in Maisie‘s bathroom into the outside. I found a gap there a week ago. One of the hagfish was trying to get in. I spotted it wriggling about on the floor, but I was lucky. It had not got all the way through. I was able to beat it to death with the shotgun butt. Saving ammunition – that and I did not want a hole in the bathroom floor. I still have standards.” He swigs directly from the bottle, bares his teeth at the burn.

“I think I get ahead of myself. I am not used to writing in longhand. I forget the basics of my trade. Important detail first, then the who, the what, the where. I might redraft this, I might not. I only have two pens, and precious little paper, and I will not find more. I do not want to go outside.

“First: me. I am, or was Joe Stevens. I was a journalist, nothing fancy – the Swinhill Examiner, a local paper, one of the last of a dying breed. In fact, nearly dead. Two months before all this happened it cut its staff and went from daily to weekly; if you know the business, you know what that means. Not enough ads for carpets and second hand caravans to make it pay. Not enough readers interested in school quizzes and bakers making novelty biscuits. We were the last in Wiltshire, but the internet got us in the end, just like it got everyone else, the way the computers got the printers and the layout men before. One man doing ten men’s jobs. Too much, too much.” He stops, he is digressing. He must be concise.

“Secondly, the hagfish are not hagfish. I pray to God they are gone from your world, whoever you might be, as quickly as they came into mine.

“Dead whales. They fall into the ocean and lie there in the deep blackness, slowly rotting, whalefall they call it, fed on by things that never see the light. Hagfish are the most revolting of all; long slimy bodies, rudimentary eyes.

“These things, the things that are eating the world, they look like hagfish so I call them that. Except for the fins… not fins, too primitive.” He pauses to think, waiting for a word. “Cilia, I think, that is the name, near the front, though they do not use these to move, at least, not in the air. Perhaps in their native environment? They are horrible, horrible creatures. They make me shudder to look at them. That one I saw in the bathroom, it must have found a crack in the mortar outside. Maybe the plumber had been a cowboy,” a scratch, a scribble, his sentence is destroyed, unfair, he thinks, unfair. At least he was working. At least he wasn’t on the scrounge. “They only need a tiny hole. The sun and rain on cement will eventually give you that. They have no bones, not any that I have seen, and can flatten themselves out. The ridiculous thing is, tape stops them, it does not have to be strong, it is unfeasibly flimsy, if you think about it.

“I do not like to think about it.

“I plugged the gap with paper and glue and tape after I killed it.

“I can hear them now, wriggling all over the building. I have blocked out the windows with cardboard. I do not think they are aware that I am here, and I want it to remain that way. I cannot abide to look at their black bodies pressing on the glass, the teeth-ringed holes they have for mouths working against the window fittings.

“Most of the windows here are uPVC, with rubber seals, plastic yellow with age. Ten years, that’s how long they last. You’ll get a century from wood. Nothing lasts these days, nothing. If you lock off the vent at the top of the window there are no gaps for them to get in. This place has a flat roof. Nowhere for them to creep between the slates or up under the eaves. It is sealed with tar. It is insane how many holes there are in most houses. Just boxes to hide the dirt we squat on. I know that now.

“It is not a house. Here, where I am now. It is a flat over a shop, strictly three flats over three shops. Maisie, Beryl and Enid I call them, names of aunts, long dead. I’ve knocked holes through into the other two. The flats, I mean, not the shops. I will try and be clear. You would not know I had worked on a paper for all my life before it happened. But my nerves are shot, I am tired and cold and alone and I have not slept for four days. For all I know I am the last man alive. Forgive me.

“I will tell you about the shop. I planned this for a while, from the moment I first saw the hagfish. That’s when I started thinking about it. These places have been empty for months, condemned to make way for the new development, a new development on top of a new development that swept away the town I knew. Nothing lasts, concrete boxes stained with rain and piss. It was brick before, part of the railway workers’ village, torn down on a whim after Beeching did for the railways.  Lonely, empty, vandalised. Only kids came up here before the end, to destroy. They are almost as bad as the hagfish, they deserve each other. You could dig out my reports in the library. I have been writing about it for years, before ASBOs and victimhood for hooligans; when there was work, when there were houses, it wasn’t so bad. It would have only got worse, if it weren’t for them. It makes me so mad, but it really is quite boring. I defy you to read through a whole article without feeling your eyelids droop. Imagine how I felt, then, sitting in council chambers either too hot or too cold, listening to pompous old men waste their breath. Droning on, debating nothing, rubber stamping. But still I wrote about them, for twenty years I did.” He stops, and stares at the paper for a long time. When he starts again, he writes more slowly, his anger filling the pages with mechanical efficiency.

“I thought I would cover Beirut or Africa, but the big break never came. My whole professional life was factory closures, shopping developments, planning meetings, on piss all pay. I wanted to bring the news to the people. I should have done something else. For all that, now I have lived through these interesting times,” he smiles at this employment of his small stock of knowledge. “I am not sure I would have wanted to report on such a story as the end of the world.” He laughs again. It seems ludicrous to him. He bites it back.

“All the buildings round here are empty, and where there are few people, there are fewer of the hagfish. The flat roofs helped me choose, they’re safe, they can’t get in, but the end shop was the deciding factor. It was a food shop, one of those little places, a Happy Shopper type affair, but less grand, if you can believe it. They left all the fridges behind, big things. I snuck in a generator, a quiet one so the hagfish would not notice, and filled them, all while the things came in greater numbers. Until, last week, there were so many, I brought Tara and Michelle here. I had to trick them, they were blind, they insisted to the end that they could not see them. But now…”

He stops, and closes his eyes, and rubs at them, tears threaten. He abandons the sentence, turns a page, and starts again.

“I could live here for a very long time, and never need to go outside. I do not want to go outside. I have broken a hole into the shop from the end flat. I do not go down there often. Not unless I need supplies.

“The other two, a Post Office and a launderette, I go in rarely, then only to make sure the seals are good.

“I have lost my train of thought again. uPVC – all of it except the door at the bottom of the stairs, to the outside, which is wooden. I am almost sure they cannot get round that, but I am taking no chances. All it takes is tape. Michelle did not believe me, neither did Tara, she always agrees with her mother. But it works, none got in, not…”

Another pause. Another page.

“Gaps under the eaves, the airbricks – that took a while to work out, I had to watch the hagfish for three weeks. I think most people would not have taken these things into account, but I did. Builders and surveyors and DIY enthusiasts might know this. Maybe they are alive too. Good luck to them.

“My secret: I saw the things first, three months ago; one or two, drifting through the air, wriggling as if they were swimming in it. Not long after they turned on the Atacama particle accelerator. Maybe that has something to do with it? Sub-atomic particles, gluons and quarks, spinning out so fast. Maybe this shrapnel made a hole between here and where they come from? They can squeeze in through the smallest of holes. Maybe it’s sunspots, or global warming, or a fucking supernova blasting holes in space and time,” he stops. He won’t let his fingers run the pen over the words. They try. He wins, this time. He breathes hard, shuddering, at war with himself. He thinks about a drink. He takes one. “I don’t know. There is a lot I don’t know.” He underlines ‘don’t’.

“What I do know was there was the smell in the air, dry and dusty, a cast to the light, like the green before a storm, only this was different, a bruised purple like old blood. That was after my job went, the day the suits told us, before I saw them, I thought nothing of that light, that smell, until I did. When they came, I thought: Ribbons drifting in the sky. Then I saw what they really were. Like hagfish in the water, tying knots in themselves, tumbling to the ground. I watched them drift toward houses, toward offices. I saw them squirm across the walls then slip inside. They can squeeze in through the smallest of holes.” He realizes he is repeating himself. He re-reads, but does not scratch anything out. “I am sorry. I am tired.

“I did not say anything. No-one else seemed to notice. I did not want them to think me mad. I was a coward, and now it is too late.”

There are sounds, then, outside. Slapping, like rubber soles on concrete. The creatures, he is sure, against the building. Thumping on glass; then something breaking. The man, Joe, lays his pen down. He has another pull of the whisky. He takes up the shotgun leaning against the table. He goes from room to room in Maisie, checking the windows. He climbs through the holes he has smashed through plasterboard and brittle concrete blocks into Beryl and Enid either side. He curses quietly as he bashes his head on the ragged gap to Enid. Each room he enters he finds clear, but this works against him, for each room eliminated increases the chances that the next has been compromised. His hands are sweating by the time he gets to the room where Michelle and Tara lie. It doesn’t feel right to go in, feels like he is trespassing. He does not like what is inside. He does not like to think about it.

There is a lock on the door. He regrets that.

A memory chases itself across his mind when he touches the key: his wife Michelle shouting, her fingers plucking at tape, her hands on the window handle. The gun. A circle of ruin.

He has to be sure. He squeezes his eyes shut before turning the doorknob. There is nothing there, the windows are as he left them, plywood taped over broken panes. He ignores the shapes under the duvet and walks out. The cold keeps the smell to a minimum.

He goes out of Enid’s front door, down the communal stairway, to check the street entrance. Then from room to room in every flat again to check the seals, running his finger round the tape and pressing it down hard. He does this four times, wipes his fingers upon his coat, up, down, up, down, then does it four more times again. He swears as he does so, cursing his hands, they refuse to obey his commands.

Reluctantly he heads to the living room in Beryl. He unpicks the duct tape pinning a square of carpet over the hole he has cut through the floor. He snatches up a torch and shines a weak circle of light into the store below. It picks out no movement. He sits back and sucks in a long breath. He will have to go downstairs. He does not like to think about downstairs. It takes a while for him to be ready.

Later, it might be night, he does not know, he writes again.

“It is the noise. That is what I cannot stand. The endless rustling, I can hear them against the roof, the scrape of their fixed teeth against the tarpaper. But it is not the worst. Today I had to go downstairs. Today I had to go into Michelle and Tara’s room.” He writes over ‘worst’, over and over in the same spot, boring a hole through the paper. It is hard for him to stop. He manages, eventually.

“Today, I had to go downstairs. There were noises outside, then a bang, I had to see. I do not like it.  There is no way to block out the big window. I tried carpet, but it is too heavy and the tape will not hold it. There is nothing between me and them but a sheet of glass. They press against it, writhing like worms. They are so thick it is hard to tell if it is night or day, or if there is still a difference. Seeing them makes the noise worse. It gets into your head and makes your skin crawl. They had damaged the window, there was a spider web of cracks. I do not know how they did it. They are so weak tape stops them!” He underlines tape repeatedly.  “I think they suspect someone is in here. I was careful, I do not think they saw me. Their sight is poor, and they cannot smell me through the glass. But they have a new trick. Through the window, I could hear people, swearing, high-pitched and laughing like boys, then shouting as I began my repairs, then many, many voices, jumbled up into one.” He does not write that Tara’s scream underpinned it all. Thinking of it brings the noise back. He slaps at his temple with the heel of his hand until it goes away. After a time, he writes again. “They did not trick me, and it soon stopped. It cannot be people. Nothing could live out there, nothing but them. They have learned to use our voices. I had better be more vigilant.

“Thankfully, the glass had held. I patched it up with tape, lots of tape, and left quickly. I am not sure it is safe to go back in there. I got all the food I could. The generator is nearly out of petrol in any case. Tonight I will have a little feast. Better be careful I do not gas myself; I blocked the chimney; nowhere for the carbon monoxide to go as I cook. I am not a fool.”

The days pass, he writes little more. His frozen food, cooked on a small camping stove, takes a while to dwindle in the cold, but it goes. All he has left are his cans – canned soup, canned fish, canned fruit. When he eats, he eats them cold. When he does not eat, he drinks. He does not eat often. Every so often he checks the carpet over Enid’s hole leading into the shop. He does not lift it, unsure if the window will have held, unsure if they have got in. He moves slowly, but hurries past the room where Michelle and Tara lie. He keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the carpet. He hates the pattern. He hates the carpets in all three flats. They are all different, but all the same. Old lady carpets of blocky acanthus. Each flat has a spot where an electric fire has discoloured the artificial fibres a sorry yellow. They are flats that in happy times smelt of Sara Lee and pink wafers and grandchildren and shopworn joy, but always underneath it was the stench of piss and lavender and loneliness. He can smell it now.

He rouses himself when he thinks this. He has a theory.

“The door and widows have become numbing to the touch, ice has started to form in the corners of the glass. Whether that is the hagfish or what has happened to the world I do not know. I do not know much, do I? But I do know this: These things are attracted by emotion. I became sure of it the day I saw four wriggling round a crying woman. They looped over one another, like they were fighting. They sniffed around her, over her hair, up her skirt. Disgusting. Then one fixed itself to her face and hung there, pulsing. She did not seem to notice, did not even look like she felt it at all, even as it sucked the life out of her. But I could clearly see her eyes sink, her flesh wither, and she did not know,” he underlines this repeatedly, again wearing the paper thin. “She was a corpse, but she kept on going, brown and creaking, for twenty yards, as if nothing had happened. I could not stop watching, I had to keep looking. I could not do anything. Such power they have, to kill and move the dead! Then she collapsed, only then did others notice she was not breathing.

“There was the man that was angry. Flabby. He had seven on him. His trousers fell off with his fat, and he still he walked. The creatures drifted away. The paramedic said heart attack. He could not see the brown husk they left behind, he could not see what had truly happened. How do they stop people seeing what I see?

“The window, dirty. I counted forty there or so. There was a bear in the window. A child’s room? God knows what they wanted there. I do not like to think about it.

“Perhaps I made a mistake. These are sad flats, death flats. I think the creatures can smell it, that is why they cluster round the windows. Idiot, Joe, fucking idiot.

“Staying warm is getting hard. I had to stuff up the chimneys. They are all gas flues, anyway, and there is no gas now. I did think about ripping one of the fires out and lighting some of the furniture that was left behind. The hagfish do not like fire, but I would have to keep it going all the time, and I would soon run out of wood to burn, and then I would be in danger. So I wear more clothes. There are blankets in the room where Michelle and Tara are, but I do not go in there. I do not like to. My hands are so cold it is hard to grip the pen, and I stink. I would kill for a hot shower, I would. I mean it. I would use my gun.

“It is funny. Look at me, complaining. But maybe my life would have been like this often if I had have got that job in ‘88. My big chance, but I blew it. Too sharp, too pushy. I wanted it once, the adventure. That is what they all say, bringing the news to the people, seeing new places, but I think we can all be honest now,” he laughs at the irony of his statement, “and say that what they really want is the acclaim. All you fucking budding John Simpsons and Orla Guerrins. You just want someone to notice you and kiss your arse, you do not give a fuck about the news. I did. I did. Well, let me tell you, perhaps this will penetrate your thick skulls, blast the celebrity lust from your minds: for most it is going to be £9,000 a year reporting on retarded groundskeepers having a new mower bought for them by the rotary club. For twenty years, and then they fire you and your wife will despise you. How could they do that? Seven days of news. Twenty years of work. All gone, like the engine shops  I remember when you could leave your door unlocked, when the smell of hot oil and steam and unwashed men made ripe with proper labour hung in the air. All gone, all the industry and the hope and the happiness, swept up and thrown out with the rubbish, internet and crummy shopping arcades in its place, selling cheap shit to fat morons hooked on bad TV. Bread and circuses! How could you? They always think they know best, men with fancy degrees and big ideas. Tear down the streets, throw up some flats, shut the factories then fuck off to your Georgian mansions while the rest of us burst with burger fat and despair.” He stops, lest he break his pen. He waits until his fingers unclench themselves.

“My dad, he lived and worked and laughed and died here. What’s there now, where I sat at his knee? A fucking roundabout on a roundabout on a roundabout, a Next squats on our old allotment. And then my job went too, cut along with six days worth of news. Go look for fame, I hope you fucking enjoy it.”

He is angry. His theory begins to dog him. He thinks of how he feels. He does not feel good. He feels guilt. He worries they will smell it. He worries they will guess he is inside. He stops writing, and sleeps.

Later.

“Things have become worse. The voices come more often. They are out there now. They call me to come out. They pretend to be my friends, they pretend to be police, they pretend they want to help me. They are my mother and my father and my poor dear Tara. That nearly had me. I was going to go outside, but I lifted a corner of card and there was nothing out there but them, black on the window. There are more of them now, and they move the faster. They know I am in here. They are excited. I tried to hide, but they have found me. They will not trick me. I will not go outside. I will die in here, but they will not get me.

“Yesterday was Christmas. I set up a few decorations, lit more candles. I tried to sing but it sounded intrusive, wrong, so I stopped. I said a prayer instead, for Michelle and Tara. It would have been Tara’s tenth Christmas. She was looking forward to it so much. I love you. I am sorry.”

“Merry Christmas,” he writes, then writes no more.

The voices call and call again. He screws up his eyes, underneath the babble of voices known and unknown projected by the hagfish, underneath the rising-falling-rising of Tara’s scream, someone shouts, voice amplified. They tell him it will be all right, they tell him to come outside.

He sits, shaking, unsure of what to do. He drains a third-bottle of whisky in three mouthfuls, sets it down amid the other empties cluttering the desk. It was always a problem for him, the drink. Too many long lunches, too many late nights.

The voice comes again, beseeching him.

He makes a decision, picks up his gun, and leaves the room. He goes out of the flat, out of its front door, and down the stairs. The stairwell is dark, the windows, thin glass in steel frames thick with paint, are blocked with tape. Tape on tape on tape. Try as he might, he cannot wipe away the memory of the things outside, no matter what he lays over the glass. He looks at the windows. Like the town, like the developers, like time, he thinks, they can’t wipe away entirely what was there before. The shells of the engine sheds still stand. The street names are the same, will always be the same. There will always be traces. It comforts him, briefly, it comforts him.

He reaches the door. He runs his hand down it, just the once. Today, his hands are his own.

Outside, the door muffled voices cry. He can barely understand them. The other voices have become a roar. The hagfish are agitated. He strains to hear. The new voices call for him to come out, slowly, to leave his gun behind.

Outside, there is a banging on the door.

He reaches out for the handle, his other arm moving without volition, taking the gun away from him to the speckled composite floor.

He stops. It is what they want. Them. Without the gun, without the door, he will be defenceless, nothing to keep their rings of hooked teeth from rasping the flesh from his bones, sucking him dry.

There is a hissing noise, something cracks into the window, it breaks the glass but cannot penetrate the tape.

The tape always stops them.

He steps back, shaking his head, feet tapping one on the other: heel to toe, heel to toe, four times. Four times is the magic number.

The door vibrates to the impact of something against it. Again. The planks he has nailed over it judder. Tape springs free round the edges, letting in small draughts.

They are trying to get in.

He raises the gun, sets the stock to his shoulder, points it at the door.

Outside, they are waiting for him.

Outside, they say, come outside.

He does not want to go outside.