Henry lives with me.

He arrived on an August day otherwise unmarked and unremarkable. I woke up bathed in sunlight; showered, shaved. As I dried myself with soft and thick Marks and Spencer towels, I noticed that Henry had taken residence in one of the wings, his dark dome raised cryptically, almost mockingly, as he looked back at me with a visage void of emotion. Poked and prodded I had, to ascertain how his arrival and occupation had come to pass, but nothing was offered. Henry was as quiet as he was persistent, as solid as he was shadowy, as omnipresent as he was rooted.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, how did you get in?”

He would simply, silently, stare back.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, what is it that you want?”

Stoic. Shaka, when the walls fell.

“Henry,” I’d say, “Henry, why are you doing this to me?”

Unmoved. Resolute. Smug.

When the anxiety got the better of me, I sought advice. In a cornflower office, with a very cheap plywood and veneer desk and a chunky winter knit, a gentleman in Tom Ford glasses informed me that as long as Henry didn’t occupy any more room than he already had, then it was best to just leave him be – let him sit comfortably in his part of the house and just ignore him. The glasses went up and down on the bridge of his nose as he spoke, gently poked back into place periodically as they slipped down; I fixated on this repetition, the sound of his voice slowly disappearing to nothing, as the black and gold frame was reset by fingers kept professionally manicured, each touch betraying the tell-tale dips of a removed ring on his third left. An almost imperceptible beep from the computer on the desk refocussed me and prompted his so-is-there-anything-elses.

Henry simply was, and there was nothing to be done about him.

So, I did nothing. Henry has remained in his wing for fifteen years, so far. I nervously tip-toed around him for a while, considering him an impostor, an invader. Angrily, and with some determination, I then resolved to continue about my life, remembering him every now and again when he showed himself, checking briefly to see all was just so, and moving on shortly after. He remained simply Henry – no conversation, no movement, no interactions at all. I grew used to having him around, a dandelion in my lawn that has flowered yellow, unobtrusive, unnoticed.

Eventually, I came to think of him as a guest at a birthday party that nobody can remember inviting: as long as he causes no trouble, and he keeps buying his own drinks, then he’s okay to stick around – but he’ll have to cope with my choice of music.

Quite in contrast, Seider lived with my Father. Like Henry, she moved in without a word, quietly insinuating herself here and there, around the place, in little nooks and crannies in which nobody thought to look. Unlike Henry, she was a subtle, coiling beast: it took a long time to notice that she was even there, hidden in the depths of the property. She undertook no major works, no redecorations, just little trinkets here and there, bits of herself, aggressively left for others to find when she eventually decided that she wanted out.

I look at Henry, from time to time, and wonder if he’ll do the same to me. If he has grand plans to surreptitiously move a vase or put down a new woven basket. If I’d even notice. From time to time, I check in on him, like I was told to; he’s still there. He’s still minding his own business. ‘Likely benign’ was the phrase that Mr. Glasses had used.

As long as that doesn’t change, then Henry lives with me.

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Blue eyes, quickly fading.

A lion, unmoving, teeth visible.

The smell of burning flesh, acrid.

Sunset.

The sense of an ending.

I woke with a start and grabbed my notebook. I had to get the dream down before it began to fade; I’d need to be prepped for when I’d need the memory.

The Victorians firmly believed that dreams were real, that God was sending them insight; later, people used to call that feeling of having experienced something before “deja vu”. It was around twenty years ago that we discovered that it wasn’t random – it was quantum. Turns out our brains entangle with themselves over time, in the deepest cells. For example, grief in the future manifests in our reactions to a song in the past, unbeknownst to our linear experience; we cry not quite knowing why, until we finally reach that point in our journey. We actually dream the future, our subconscious being the only part of our minds powerful enough to transcend the present; we don’t always understand it because the connections between the entangled neurons and our subconscious aren’t always fulsome.

Then, eventually, came people like me. People who felt it more often, whose minds naturally made those connections, and who could be trained in the present to remember how to exist within the subconscious – lucid dreaming – so that the future could send back specific messages. It took fifteen of the last twenty to nail the process, but it’s revolutionised crime fighting. Sadly, it’s also revolutionised crime.

Five years. That’s how long I’d been chasing this warlord across the breadth of the ES. Initially, I was allocated the case when I was on a training sabbatical in Kyiv; Europol Intelligence had unceremoniously cut it short and dragged me to Ingolstadt for a late night debrief and reallocation. After a brief combat training stint in Berlin and a very dark night with some very shadowy handlers in Madrid (as physical documentation was the surest way to information leakage), I was to travel to Lisbon, the transport hub for our pterocar fleet – and I was to pay close attention to my dreams. I’d done all the research, all the boot work – but nothing moved things on like a dream.

Scribbling down this particular sequence had that feeling of difference that comes with an entangled dream. It was… raw, less narrative. It had flashes of scenes, pieces of information, nuggets of coherence. I wrote it all down in as much detail as I could remember – we rarely got the same dream twice. Limited flashes they were, but one thing was clear as day in all of them: I’d sent myself a vision of a sculpted lion with a concave back. Immediately, I knew where he was hiding – but I needed to speak to someone more senior.

After a deep breath, I tapped out the digits on my palm and my handler’s holding avatar manifested in my line of sight. After a couple of moments, the avatar gently clicking its fingers to show it was attempting a connection, and in a voice obscured by algorithmic encryption, the avatar remaining instead of, as was the case with consumer communicators, transforming into the real face of the called, they answered gruffly: “Explain.”

“Entanglement. A vision, London, Trafalgar Square. Requesting permission to attend.”

Silence.

“Please confirm – did you say London?”

“Confirmed.”

“Certainty? Britannia remains mostly radioactive.”

“Ninety percent sure that it was the square around Nelson’s Column. I remember it from my childhood, before the War.”

“It’s not just a memory?”

“No; I saw us both there, in a glimpse, outside the old Portrait Gallery.”

Another extended silence.

“If you go there, there’s no coming back. Even if we could authorise the border crossing, you’d be dead from the exposure within a month.”

“I know. But I have to end him before he eradicates another city.”

“He’s been on the run for thirty years. If he’s in London now, he’s already decided his fate.”

I had to force the point home: “That doesn’t mean he can’t radicalise others before he melts. He has dirty bomb material all over the States. Do you want a Britannia distributed over the capitals? Or, worse, for him to radicalise enough right-wingers that they congregate in Strasbourg, all strapped up with micronukes, looking like tourists? Do you want to be responsible for a crater the size of Tycho at the heart of Europe?”

“Stand down. We understand the threat better than you do.”

Adrenaline coursed relentlessly; I breathed deeply, gulping at the air as if I was drowning, a fish out of water – and similarly both as desperate and incapable without help.

Finally: “Approved. Your pterocar will be ready in one hour. Do not be late and do not take anything with you that… that you’d want somebody to have.”

Just over an hour later, I was two and a half thousand meters above La Manche, returning to the home I’d known as a child, as its waters (significantly expanded since the meltings of the last few decades) grumpily waved up. The pterocar masked the sound of the sea beneath, but I could remember its fierce hiss; the boat we’d used to sail across to France hadn’t masked any sound at all. 

“Illegal migration,” the cavernous voice of the boat’s owner, a huge man whose accent betrayed his Kentish roots but whose skin suggested a heritage from beyond Northern Europe, “is what the British Government would have called this a couple of decades ago, if we’d been making the same journey of refuge in the opposite direction, you know.” The other thirty-four occupants of the craft each looked at one another in turn, wondering who might, in the past, have agreed with this viewpoint. Nobody had admitted to it. Nobody had dared.

That boat had barely made it. The shockwave from the bombing had caused a destabilisation in the tectonics of the area; the sea had responded in turn, with rain that pierced skin and waves, tall and travelling like boulders, unlike anything that had been seen before in the channel. I’d watched half a dozen people go over the side, unable to find purchase in the violence of the storm; I’d watched children wail like banshees as the lands they knew, the families they’d once had, were abandoned, this terrible fate yet still less terrifying than that which would be met by staying behind as the once-clean air of our formerly-green-and-pleasant-land betrayed their lungs; I’d watched as the Captain of our cramped little craft had wept, not quite masked by the rain, as we’d approached the beaches of Dunkirk, his relief palpable amongst those of us who’d, at his hand, made it alive.

The next few years had been a blur. I’d been processed – which was as clinical as it sounds – into a refugee camp. The French had been more welcoming than anyone could have imagined, though; each person suffered a decontamination, a month of quarantine, and more vaccinations than our veins should have been reasonably expected to take – but, after that, we’d been offered homes. Initially, these were huge estates, like retirement villages, with staff to ensure we settled well; however, a few weeks later, I’d been introduced to a Parisian couple who had a spare room and wanted to help out – apparently, being fostered was a pretty normal experience for British refugees across the ES, regardless of their age. Thus, at an age more formative than anybody should have to endure, I’d moved into a delightful, quiet little apartment in Montmartre with Dieudonné and Mathéo, who, between them, brought me from the depths of despair to my graduation from Sorbonne Université. I will never forget the kindness they showed, particularly when I was at my… worst. Without them, I’d not have got my degrees, I’d not have considered a Government graduate scheme and been accepted onto the Refugee Reintegration Programme, and I’d never have, eventually, found myself in Kyiv, learning how to investigate and prosecute the worst kind of crime, only named after the Tsar Bombas fell on Birmingham, Luton, Newcastle, and Preston; when Europe realised these cities had been chosen for maximum fallout – the winds causing the irradiation of anywhere east of Shrewsbury, including most of the Baltic states (ostensibly for the ‘crime’ of wanting freedom from neocolonial oppression) – and the blasts had been planned just far enough away from London to leave it as an “edifice to the decadence of the West”, as the online video circulated afterwards informed us, they had decreed this as a ‘Treason, Against Humanity’. A crime considered greater even than genocide.

The pterocar descended into what had once been Covent Garden. The remains of the market had been looted long ago; I felt sorry for those who’d received that toxic kiss. The terminal dose of radiation they’d absorb for such an escapade must have seemed worth it to prevent alternative fatality.

At least I’d chosen this.

I put on the suit they’d given me at the launch site. Apparently, it might give me enough time to do this job and get to somewhere like Anglesey, where (at least) there was a fighting chance. It was looser than I wanted, but it was at least lined and sealed. The oxygen meter suggested at least twenty-four hours of functional use, so I could have a decent search.

Bathing me in yellow light, the pterocar responded very visually to its horror at my attempting to step outside in these circumstances. I had to enter the override code that had been hastily shoved into my hand on a scrap of paper by the handover team. They’d looked at me through anxious eyes, fully aware.

I stepped out.

The warmth hit me first.

My visor misted; I activated the automated systems using a quick voice command, which also birthed an augmented reality display. It helpfully pointed out that the level of radiation outside, in bold, red numbers – I gracefully, rapidly, swiped that number away.

Perhaps I’d survive this.

Perhaps that was wishful thinking.

I climbed over the crunching glass that had once been the ceiling of the market and made my way out into the open. A short walk took me down the rubble of the Strand, towards Trafalgar Square. The buildings, blown out by the initial explosion, remained upright but uninhabitable, the bricks pulsing waves into the air; The Savoy, Coutts, Charing Cross – memories of a once great nation, now purveyors of certain death..

I’d only been here once or twice before the bombing; my memory of the place wasn’t at all like the amber reality. I moved at speed, as I couldn’t bear to hang around. The bleak shadows were long enough to hide in; I couldn’t just walk up to his hideout, obviously, so instead I shifted furtively from one empty doorway to another, keeping an eye out for drones or any other such monitoring mechanism.

That feeling hit me hard as I reached the square itself. Nelson had been toppled, but the lions were there, resplendent, staring at me through dead eyes. I stared back at the closest one for a short while, taking in the furrowed brow and slightly extended tongue; it was as if it were attempting to breathe, as the population had.

“Magnificent, aren’t they? Cast from the ships of their enemies.”

From behind me, the voice had come, slightly muffled, whispering into my ear through the suit. I spun; he stood right there, too close for comfort, no suit, his repaired face ravaged by time, invading my space and smiling as if this were normal. I replied, as calmly as I could muster. “Vladimir.”

“Please, do call me Vovo. Here at the end, let us not stand on the pomp and circumstance and ceremony of the English as we stand upon their bones.”

“You… you…” I couldn’t catch my breath. “You murderer!” I screamed it at him. I couldn’t help it.

He smiled, victoriously. “Ah, my dear. Sadly, you are quite right. However, here, according to my dreams,  is where we both complete our journeys, so the only person I’m planning on murdering today is myself. And you, you’ve sentenced yourself too.” He tipped his head to one side. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

“I cannot allow you to indoctrinate anybody else.”

“For sure, there is no chance of that. I’ve left my instructions elsewhere, my followers ready to do what is needed, my weapons are gone. I do not have any connections here, everybody is dead. There is no network. I came here to die, at the site of my greatest victory. What did you think you would achieve here?”

Time stopped. That feeling again – I knew precisely what I would say and do. I’d jotted it into my diary before embarking on all this.

“Nothing more than this.” I looked him dead in the eyes as I discharged the phase pistol, which had been concealed within the suit’s sleeve, into his chest, punching a hole right through his body and leaving a porthole to view, down what was once Whitehall, the distant and broken Elizabeth Tower, its peak and face shattered, the bell visible, glinting in the afternoon sun. His smile faded as he fell to the ground. “That’s for my parents.” Uncharacteristically, I spat on the still twitching corpse.

Back in the pterocar, I activated the seals and futilely pressed the decontamination cycle; it wasn’t rated for this level of radiation, but I figured that it might give me a few more weeks. I dialled in the coordinates for Anglesey and reclined into the seat as the car took off and sped away from the remains of London.

I pressed the button for HQ; my erstwhile handler picked up almost immediately. “How did it go?”

“Perfectly. It’s done.”

“And the remains?”

“You can martyr a corpse; you can’t martyr coal. Even if they somehow find him, they won’t be able to figure out it’s him. There’s no DNA left courtesy of the immolation, or a visual. I also removed the teeth, obviously.”

A pause.

“We didn’t think this day would come. Well done.”

“He was ready to go. There wasn’t anybody here with him.”

“Surprising. We’d expected something of a contingent.”

“Me too – but, in fairness, I don’t recall dreaming of a crowd either. He said he’d left instructions elsewhere for others.”

Another pause.

“Leave it with us. You get off now; speak to your family.”

Abruptly, the line went dead. I was used to this sort of behaviour; Intelligence was not known for its soft serve. I took the advice (and the free use of the satphone) and called Didi and Mat. In that moment, I realised how much I was going to miss them. I’d left Britain with no parents; I’d come back leaving behind two perfect fathers. Unbidden, the tears cascaded and flowed relentlessly as we spoke, for the first time in a few weeks, and possibly the last. I didn’t say goodbye – I didn’t have the heart to say the words.

Anglesey is beautiful. It’s smaller than it once was, courtesy of the recent melts, but it is still mostly green. The pterocar registered, here, only a similar level of background radiation to Calais; before exiting the car, I practiced my routines, remembering over and again the day I’d experienced, forcing the necessary neurons to fire repeatedly, forging the connections, until I was certain this was the moment I’d cast those memories back. Then, I set up camp alongside the lighthouse by which I had landed. Whilst the Irish Sea lapped gently against, almost adjacent to the lighthouse, what was clearly new shoreline, I watched the sun set gently on the horizon.

There are worse places to lay oneself to rest. Soon, I’ll sleep. Perchance, to dream.

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“Legate Alburn? I’m deeply sorry to interrupt you whilst you’re strategising, but something has emerged.”

Alburn, a bushy-eyebrowed man of advanced experience, was used to such intrusions; he had, in the past, taken to reducing their frequency through shooting the messenger and sending their heads back as a warning to be specific, timely, and crucial. He looked over the rim of his glasses with barely a movement to his head. “Go on, son?”

“We have found something buried. Stone, metal, old. Beneath the Edge Desert.”

He raised an eyebrow, remaining perfectly silent.

The youth, on a deputation drawn by short straw, began to sweat.

The eyebrow was unperturbed, the lips unparted, the breath unmoved.

“Legate, sir, the Druids are investigating as we speak, but they think it is over a thousand years old.”

The eyebrow was met by its brother, and the green pools beneath them hollowed the air.

“As many as a thousand. Imagine. Why have they sent you to disturb me with this, though, son? Those glorified archaeologists are aware of the importance of my remaining undisturbed unless called for.”

The silence was pierced by the sound of a nervous gulp.

“They said to say something to you so that you knew it was important. They said to say ‘Columbia’. I don’t know why.”

A few tense moments passed.

“Message received. You had better go now. Quickly.”

“Yes, sir, Legate.” The boy ran out of the gilt doors so quickly that his grey sandals almost spontaneously combusted.

Legate Alburn sat, his fingers forming an arch just beneath his nose, whilst his elbows rested in the dips that years at this desk had carved. After a few moments, he balled the fist of one hand and reached with the other to pull a hidden drawer from the lip of the desk. In it was a single, aged document, printed on its yellowing pages with images of a sphere, greying words outlining a public announcement protocol, and at its mast, a single word, printed in deep red: ‘Earth’. He sighed; he’d hoped another Legate would be installed before this day. All Legates were told about the planet’s past, but the species thrived on not knowing that they were the second sentient species to live here; they didn’t know they’d arrived here in ships which had sailed the stars; they didn’t know their ancestors had eradicated the indigenous population to make way for their survival.

They’d managed to avoid this day for over one hundred and twenty Legates.

He read the document one more time, then dropped it into the receptacle aside his desk. He pressed a button; a small flame appeared and eradicated the page. He reflected that this could wait until tomorrow.

He could always simply have everybody who had seen the relic eradicated too – that would give him plenty of time to pass on the baton.

For the first time in a long time, Legate Alburn smiled.

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“And now, the one you’ve all been waiting for. Lot 386: a one-of-a-kind, printed book from Sol 3. Now, printed Terran books are rare enough, given what happened there, but this one – whoo-whee! This story incorporates their grey concept of good and evil, hints at some of their religious ideas, and encapsulates their dark humour beautifully. This is a well-read copy, but all of its pages remain intact, uncommon in a book of its age. Who will open the bidding at 10,000 platines?”

I had to have it. I’d used all my guile to be invited to this closed, shadowy auction – here, they trade in the trinkets of dead civilisations, private collectors from across the quadrant coming to scoop up all that’s left of them. Usually, these auctions gained little attention outside of their intended audience, one of the conditions being absolute silence on the existence of such auctions and their locations.

This, though… I’d picked up a tip from a trader on Proxima, a guy who owed me more than a few favours, that the book had been found on a derelict Terran cargo hauler and would be up for sale at the next dark auction. He thought it might be something I’d like, a piece of my home going on into the future. Instead, I was livid – the few of us left in the galaxy, homeless and unbound, would have been able to celebrate another small part of our culture that wasn’t simply crushed, castrated or carried away into the bleak blackness of space.

Imagine your civilisation had almost entirely been eradicated by a plague created by an itinerant species to remove indigenous populations from their target planets, so they could harvest it in peace; imagine you were one of the remaining few – an unexpected emergence of immunity in a subset of the population – and, as a child, had seen your parents, neighbours, leaders fight back, almost eradicating the invaders and stealing their ships to add to the Terran fleet and take out those hiding in orbit; imagine, once up there, seeing the swan song of the species that the less-than-a-percent of us who had survived had, in a mirroring of their impact on us, driven to the edge of extinction: a quantum bomb dropped coldly into the atmosphere, watching helpless as it burrowed into the core of the planet, before attempting (for some, futilely) to jump to light before the implosion. Sol is now a system with two stars, the destabilisation of the gravitational constant slowly destroying the rest of the system, feeding what was once Earth with rubble and gas.

If you’d seen all that, you’d want a piece of home too.

I don’t have 10,000 platines. I don’t even have 10 – 10,000 was more than two years earnings for most of us haulers. I’d already known this before I walked into the room.

I wasn’t there to buy the book.

I was there to steal it.

“250,000 platines to my left; do I hear 300,000?”

The quick flash of digital tokens registered the next flurry of bids, taking the price of the book to over half a million. That was retirement money. Retirement on a very, very nice, terraformed and protected asteroid. The sort of retirement which would cover three generations – their kids and grandkids wouldn’t ever have to work either. Inevitably, it would have been found by a poor hauler, as the byways of the galaxy weren’t frequented by passenger ships or research vessels.

Thus, I resolved to pilfer the book after the buyer had paid up and taken it off-site. But, to achieve this, I needed to know who the purchaser was, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to trace them. And so, here I was, wearing my best suit and some borrowed prosthetics, lest they realise my heritage and become suspicious.

“Aaand sold! For 785,650 platines to the gentlefolk from Arcadia, bidder number 916. That concludes today’s auction; all winners, please make your way to the collection zone. Those who haven’t taken a prize today – good luck next time!”

The collection zone was unsecured, the auction house reasoning that, once they’d received payment and handed over the goods, they were not responsible for the ongoing cost of protecting your purchase. Most people brought their own security – secured drop boxes, looming bouncers, direct drone transports. The winner of the book had opted for all three of these; I observed them enter the zone with the drone carrying the drop box and the two blundering bodies behind looking furtively in all directions. So obviously new to the game – poor observational skills, barely noticing those looking at this transaction. Idiots. Now I knew what the drone and dropbox looked like; I still needed the passcode to access it, otherwise it would be utterly impenetrable – these boxes were designed to transport government secrets between planets, they’d survive a supernova.

“You’ll need to do your research, kid. You won’t be able to shoulder-surf the code off that one, not in those circumstances.” The trader-with-the-tip had given me the heads up about the security measures they intended to employ; Captain Wild wasn’t convinced. “How will you work out their random code?”

“Usual drill for anyone – think about what they might value and go from there.”

Quickly, I returned to the docking bay. The Arcadian shuttle was still there, unattended. The drone would take the dropbox into orbit where the shuttle would intercept it, a mechanism which would allow the drone’s inbuilt weapons to protect the box without damaging the shuttle.  The easiest way to grab the box, therefore, was at the point the shuttle and the box met one another, after the drone’s shutdown had been completed, without any other security to deal with other than the code.

I swapped into my EVA suit and hid in the beams of the bay. I’d need to move fast to pull this off.

The Arcadians returned shortly after, gliding into their shuttle as only the extraordinarily rich can do, dark satin cloaks drawing behind them. The rookie security entered first and last, protecting both ends of the delegation. As the shuttle door rose into position, like the drawbridge of an ancient castle, I ran. Across the bay, hiding in the shadows, until I reached the rear of the craft. There, I grabbed the safety handle, clipped my EVA tether to it, and held on tightly – this was going to be a bumpy ride.

Take off was a breeze; the initial acceleration was more of a gale; the ramp up to break orbit was akin to being chained to a concrete floor three inches from the fan in a wind tunnel. Even through the transparent mask of my EVA suit, I could feel the weight of it angrily pushing against me, as if another burly-but-brainless member of the security team was out here with me, fighting to prevent my victory.

I clung to that handle like it was my mother’s hand.

The sky began to darken as we passed through the upper layers of the atmosphere; the pressure waned and was replaced by its opposite. I could see the flashing lights of the drone up ahead; I would need to move quickly now. The shuttle would inevitably have an automated system for package retrieval; all I needed to do was grab the package before it went in and replace it with something appropriately sized – they wouldn’t check until they arrived home, as the system would just register the collection of the item and their arrogance wouldn’t allow them to consider that someone could’ve intercepted it.

Thus, the best (and most dangerous) part of the plan came to fruition.

“Look, I’m not saying that I don’t understand – really, I do. But how do you think you’re going to pull off a suborbital heist like that, kid? In space, with nothing there except their security?”

I’d smiled at him, the Captain of the ship we’d ended up on all those years ago, beatifically and simply replied, “Exactly.”

The shuttle pinged the deactivation routine to the drone and it’s lights went out. It automatically released the dropbox; seconds later, a hatch opened and an auto-grip descended. I moved with the speed of a cheetah: I gently pushed myself in the direction of both the box and the drone; at this height, I still had a little gravity on my side, enabling me to drift slowly. My EVA tether pulled taught just as I reached them both, the grip eeled behind me in the same direction. Quickly, I pulled the dropbox towards me and tugged my tether, allowing me and the box to drift backwards; the grip, finding nothing else, snapped its jaws around the deactivated drone and began to winch itself back into the shuttle. Sensing it was time, I unclipped my end of the EVA tether from my suit and watched the final motions of the Arcadian retrieval. The moment the grip hatch closed, drone safely ensconced within, they jumped to light.

Nobody could hear my laughter but me.

Captain Wild picked me up just over half an hour later, dropbox and all. The beat-up cargo hauler he was punting around in nowadays was half a century old, but it had an aerodynamic, almost aquiline charm about it. Plus, he had worked hard to earn his shipping lanes passcodes, meaning a quick swing by this remote planet was not out of the ordinary – even if it was the same ship twice in a day, even if it was on an auction day, and especially given nobody beyond the ultra-rich were meant to know that these auctions even happened at all. I was scooped into the loading bay airlock – all the better to eat me with – and we, too, went to light.

The post-shower debrief was electric. I recounted the tale to the crew, skipping dull bits and embellishing others. The box sat in the middle of the briefing table, conspicuously unopened.

“Makes no odds how you got it if you can’t get into it though, kid.” Wild wasn’t wrong.

“I took your advice, Captain. I did my research.”

“What, prey tell, did you unearth?”

“Simply that Arcadians aren’t motivated by culture. They’re solely motivated by money and capital value. They’re also hilariously arrogant – they like simplicity and live in the knowledge, however inaccurate, that security isn’t a problem for them.”

Into the dimly lit number pad, I dialled 386916785650. The panel turned lime.

“Oh, and they often like to go with simplicity – codes, for example, tend to be numbers fresh in the mind.”

Unceremoniously, the side of the box fell open. Smiling, I reached in and withdrew the book, holding it up for the assembled remnants of humanity to see.

There, in my hand, was an almost priceless, and well-thumbed, copy of Good Omens.

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“So, what attracted you to this role?”

“Well…” Nervousness sweated from his every pore, leaving him soaked and psychologically spiralling. He swallowed a mote of dust, coughed gently, and began. “I’d seen the job advertised, but I hadn’t realised quite how much I wanted to settle down. Y’see, I’m a traveller. I’ve been passing through places for… a long time. I’ve had other roles, of course, but nothing which tied me to one place. I’d just like, for once, to land somewhere comfortable in a job I can get my teeth into. This just seemed right – right place, right job, right time.”

“It’s great to hear that you think we’re right for you. Please, if you’d like to come with us now; we’d like to give you a tour of the facility.”

They stepped out into the light beyond the room; the breeze fanned the air over his moist skin whilst they walked into the desert outside. Minute, in the distance, was an obsidian, ovoid marble. Contrasting the flowing sand and the rippling air, it stood resolute, like a bruise on the body of a banana.

“What is that?” He asked, pointing at it.

“It is the facility,” they replied, “where we complete the job you have committed to undertaking.”

He started sweating again. “I didn’t realise you’d offered me the job yet.”

“Oh, you had been successful the moment you were called to interview. We needed to know that what you were saying was accurate. Now that we’re sure, you can get to work.”

“That’s great. The salary was undisclosed – could I ask…?”

“Of course. The initial salary is average – you will earn 32,000 credits per annum. However, you’ll also be paid in time. For every day you work for us, you will gain five on your lifespan. The facility will take care of that. You will have weekends to live some of your life, but you must otherwise remain at the facility; we will provide you with sustenance and recuperation. This salary and the conditions therein are non-negotiable.”

“What will I have to do for this? The ad said ‘admin’.”

“Do not allow the star to go out.”

“What?”

“You must carefully check the star these planets orbit. You must not allow it to go nova. Others care for other stars; this one is yours. The day it goes nova is the day your employment with us ceases. We will take care of the star on your weekends and during your holidays. Should the star go nova in your absence, we will assign you another star.”

“How do I stop a star from going nova? That sounds impossible.”

“It’s just a case of monitoring and making some adjustments on the equipment we’re going to link you to. You’re from Sol 3 originally, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Bob down in ‘verse C has kept your star going for three billion years so far. He has two billion years left to go before he can retire on full annual salary for the rest of his accrued life. He will, effectively, be immortal and incomprehensibly rich – and, in the meantime, has cultivated at least four sentient species in your solar system, purely by co-ordinating the star your system orbits. You do this job well, and you could be solely responsible for the birth of dozens of civilisations.”

“Wow – um…”

“You have a question?”

“Yeah. Where do I sign?”

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Follow my main account in the Fediverse: @dav@social.maleo.uk

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Written in 45 minutes, to the prompt “Write about a new beginning”, from AQA English Language Paper 2, Section B, in November 2021.

Funny, isn’t it, how life takes you on amusing diversions.

This, for me, would be the fourteenth time I have had such; the cartwheeling through the chaos of change has become, almost, normal – none of us have job security anymore, and most people earn more doing their online side-project than in their day jobs. C’est la vie.

As it was, this particular change of direction was a direct result of somebody else’s intervention.

Peter. He was a darling in the office, handsome as only early thirty-year-old men can be, supportive of all, and genuinely kind. He had found himself in something of a pickle when he had picked up a pile of papers from the warm and worryingly cacophonous photocopier and hurried to back his desk, only to discover that, hidden in the folds of the disordered leaves, a print which was TOP SECRET, red and almost pulsing in the flickering fluorescent lights. Before he could stop himself, he’d read it, the poor devil. He knew the consequences of reading such material when it was beyond one’s clearance level; thus, he came scurrying, furtively, to my cubicle, tears welling in his ice-blue eyes, wherein I gave him the obligatory pat on the back and told him to bring me the sheet – which he, in his terror, had left under the pile on his keyboard. I, then, a favour to the otherwise incapable, to poor Peter (who needed this job more than I did), I alerted a supervisor, who – cannily – refused to cast a single eye at the sheet of paper in my hand after seeing its incarnadine headline.

I found myself, very shortly afterwards, in a complicated seat in a darkened room. Complicated, obviously, by the straps which would have held me to it had they been attached. Clearly, on this day, I was not expected to cause trouble. I wondered, briefly, how many people had necessitated restraint and, therefore, why a company such as this would require a seat with straps. A James Bond fantasy, perhaps, of one of the more senior of the Business Protection team?

Abruptly, into the room strode a Very Senior Executive, the sort that appears prominently on the website but never usually in person, the sort whose face is recognisable from television interviews on the Six o’Clock News, but never from the annual Christmas knees-up. He asked, as he sat down in a chair opposite mine, “Did you read it?” Gruff, to the point. My type of guy.

“Of course. Unless that will get me killed, in which case: not.”

“Look,” He did look – exasperated. I suspected that I had not been this silver fox’s first crisis today… He continued, “I need to know – quickly – whether or not you read the sheet. If you did, that’s okay, but we’ll need to get you to sign a few things before you can get on with your life.”

“In which case, yes. I did read it. Twice, in fact, just to make sure I’d read it right the first time. Inconsistencies, I recall, and something about the pension plan.”

He stared at me, intensely, for a moment. I felt as if I were being flayed. “Okay. You’re obviously fired – as per our internal security policy, that you signed when you started – however, you’ll know that we cannot allow the information you read about to leak, especially not ahead of next year’s trading.”

I, entirely conscious of the contents of the sheet that Peter had purloined, and the consequences of their distribution to certain key members of the British press, feigned shock at the suggestion. “As if I would sell or share company secrets!”

My Very Senior Executive declined and shook his head, before turning to speak over his shoulder. “Give me the paperwork – I could do without this nonsense today.” Receiving a leather-bound folio from whoever was behind him in the shadows, he opened it and handed me a Mont Blanc, after having used the nib of it to point at the page pinned in place: “Sign there.”

I took a moment to read the document. There was much legalese, but prominently was the promise of a permanent ‘Special Consultant’ role (which, from what I could decipher, would essentially earn me two-thirds of my annual salary to Not Tell Anyone Anything) and a golden ‘hola’ for the new post (which was a third of my annual salary, in Euros, up front and wired to an account set up for me with Sabadell, as well as furnished accommodations on the Costa del Sol, where I was to be shipped, which also happened to be really far away from any of our competitors or customers, and something about Legal dealing with the life admin of it all).

Smugly, I signed and passed back the folio. I looked the Very Senior Executive dead in the eyes as I smiled and popped the deftly capped Mont Blanc into my jacket pocket. He glowered, then rose and left.

I was escorted, unhandled, from the broom cupboard to the front of the building by a burly bouncer with a bow-tie, with a serf from Accounting carrying my belongings in a neatly packed cardboard box closely behind. Awaiting us was a black saloon, night-black and sinfully thirsty, its sleek lines highlighting its athleticism. This was a car designed to turn the heads of the proletariat and remind them of their position beneath the oligarchy. The security guard opened the back door for me to slide in, then handled the boot and box arrangements.

The fourteenth time I’ve changed career. The fourteenth time I’ve adjusted my expectations or changed my direction. The fourteenth time, in this modern era of constant change and ‘jobs for life are a thing of the past’.

Turns out, being a Good Samaritan ended up gifting me that hallowed job for life. I wound the window down and reflected on that life which could have been spent in Human Resources – me, the Doyenne of the Filing Cabinet, forever printing and collating, storing and rotating, emailing and replying. I couldn’t imagine for a second longer the drudgery of such an existence, having now a chance for something different, somewhere different. I opened the window to allow the wind to flow in and around me, as I settled into the supple and luxurious leather seat, and watched the world contentedly bask in the amber glow of the late afternoon sunset, as the driver of the car was diverted onto a slip road to avoid an accident en route to the airport.

The deal means this will be the last time I need new beginning. If only any of them had remembered to limit anonymous access to restricted files for employees below a certain login level. If only any of them had thought for a second that anybody would actually read the policies they were signing, especially the bits about severance. If only the left hand had any idea what the right hand was doing back there in Hades.

Poor Peter; if only he’d known.

I thought about him very briefly when I considered that I’d ultimately feigned the horror of his potential punishment and offered salvation from the chance that this would be the collapse of life as he knew it; he, content, had promised to owe me one and had scuttled back to his cubicle fearless. Two dice had been rolled on a chance and I’d landed on sixes.

I won’t need to print anything classified again for a very long time. I will, however, need to learn Spanish.

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Yellow and ghastly, the paint on the firmly-locked door was rolling away from the redwood beneath, creating a sense that the sadness it contained was causing it to cry flakes of ancient acrylic, that the lack of care from within had imbued the grain with a bleakness which, like a raincloud, shadowed enough to force a physical alteration. The spherical knob, once shining brass but now mottled by decades of dirty palms and inattentive cleaning, begged from its mount to be left alone, shouted at passers-by to avoid this place, to continue ambling safely along, to go far from here and forget of its very existence.

I could not. A mere two days ago, I had received instructions to attend here today, to visit the old gentleman who now looked at me through a millimetre-wide gap in the dour lace curtain which was draped across the window next to the door. The lace was, as seemed almost normal at this property, yellowing in the direct sunlight, unwashed, unchanged. Catching his eye, from my position at the base of the stepped entry, I began to move towards the door, six short steps away. I held his gaze through that tiny gap, ensuring he knew both that I was here to see him and that I would be arriving presently to be allowed in.

A quick rap on the door, after having broken the stare as I reached the knocker in the centre of the decrepit woodwork, signalled within. The lace curtain undulated, caught by the breeze of movement from behind the closed window. From behind the door came the dull, increasing thud of unwilling leather on unyielding ceramics; as this sound reached a climax, then came the gentle rattle of tiny chains and the sound of bolts being brushed against their steel frames. It sounded to me like there were almost a dozen, combined, of these before, finally, the door lock was finally turned. The handle rattled. With a grunt, the door was pulled slightly ajar, a single chain remaining in place to secure the door against intruders.

“Worr is i’?” The voice was as grey as the hair of his eyebrows, which reached around the door at least three seconds prior to the shape of his forehead, which arrived a second or so before a single eye punctuated the motion.

“Mr. Albright?” Ironic.

“‘Oo’s ahskin?”

“My name is Mr. Finney. I’m here from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt. I’ve been sent by Mr. Peters to discuss your arrangements, as requested.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.”

“My apologies, Sir, today is Tuesday the 14th, the date which should be on your confirmation message?”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ he looked me up and down, as if weighing a fish, “- child.”

I took a deep breath and controlled my immediate, impulsive, immature reaction, which was to throw my really rather heavy briefcase at him. “Mr. Peters isn’t available today, unfortunately, as he is currently immersed in a business acquisition which requires his full attention. I assure you, sir, that I’m quite capable of meeting your needs; I have many years of experience in the industry.”

The caterpillar floated upwards. “Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

The door closed and the chain was withdrawn from service. Shrieking as it was then dragged inward, the door lost another layer of coating to the peppered ground below.

Elderly properties have a tendency to smell of lavender and rose water, in my extensive experience of visiting them. In this home, however, the aroma was more of smoke, sweat and sourdough. The walls, only dimly lit by the flickering lights of the candles in the hallway, were nicotine-stained, left undecorated for God knows how many decades, whilst Mr. Albright’s apparently regular habit appeared to simply add layers to the atmosphere of the place.

“Don’ tek your shoes off, you won’ be ‘ere long,” cast Mr. Albright, words over his shoulder like tossing scrunched paper to the floor.

I hummed in an affirmative, choosing not to use my own vocabulary at this point, and continued to follow his lagging, leathered pace across the tiled floor. He drew me, slowly but surely, towards a room at the far end of the house. In it, a kitchen, with all the usual accoutrements, and a small, round dining table, perplexingly solid in the face of the decrepitude elsewhere in the property; on that, a central lace doily supported a large, clear fruit bowl, in which was a small beach of vibrant boiled sweets, each individually wrapped and glistening with all the crystal colours of the rainbow. They refracted the light, streaming in from a laced window above the Belfast, across the table, the otherwise dreary environ broken by the rainbows. The doily, however, was the same oily yellow as the rest of the fabrics adorning the furniture of the place. He scraped a chair from underneath the table, equally as solid as its parent structure, and motioned to me to sit. I did so, accordingly, but with more care removing the chair from beneath the table edge.

“Thank you, Mr. Albright.”

“Welcom, bab. Wan’ a sweet?” He motioned to the bowl; I nodded and selected a purple one, taking a moment to unwrap it and pop it into my mouth. The delicate taste of blackcurrant began to suffuse my sinuses, a filling flavour which, uncommonly for sweets in my experience, tasted unfeasibly like the real thing. Not a memory flavour, a true representation, fresh and real. He allowed me the time to enjoy the moment, with an enigmatic curl of the lip, as I settled into a calm bliss. Then, as the moment faded, the sweet diminished, he nodded, reaching for a packet of cigarettes and nonchalantly lighting one up with a sulphurous match.

“Now, down to business. Mr. Peters suggested that you wanted to revisit your retirement plans?” I laid my briefcase onto the table and clicked the little metal clasps open, revealing the abundance of carefully selected and bound paperwork within. I laid this on the table, each adorned with a perfectly placed note attached which simply read “File: Albright, R.” I also retrieved a bound notebook and an heirloom fountain pen; the book, my favourite, was sourced from a supplier in France and used paper which had been carefully made to adequately absorb the ink from my pen without smudging or blotting – worth its weight in gold to one who writes as much as I do.

“Yers, I do. Y’see, I wan’ to bring all my invessmens to a clowse.”

I dropped the pen, nib down, onto the notebook. Ink, black as the night and equally as playful, splattered everywhere, an exploding star surrounded by the rainbows of the glass bowl.

“Sir, with all due respect – have you considered your ongoing income? Withdrawing all your investments simultaneously won’t provide the best return and, frankly, would run out before you…” Delicately, I continued, “…no longer need them.”

“I ain’t gonna need ‘em in about a week, so best I mek the mos’ of ‘em now, I think.”

I gulped. Losing this account, losing its very sizeable management fee, would not reflect well upon my return to the office. Mr. Albright’s account was, in the face of his current situation, surprising: he held onto a Trust, set up over four hundred years ago, which one of Mr. Peters’ predecessors had brokered for the Albright family, prior to their… downfall. It had kept the many Albrights perpetually fed and watered since, though the current Mr. Albright was the last in the line. It was hinted at, darkly and in the very secret, sequestered shelves of the staff supply cupboard, that he’d only once had the chance to sire an heir – an ex-wife, who’d divorced him prior to having children for reasons unshared with the firm – and, instead, had chosen the life of a recluse. He wasn’t even that old; his file betrayed his real age to only be in his late-sixties, not the ancient, bird-like creature sitting in front of me. I picked up the pen and turned the page, to start afresh.

“Whilst I don’t think it’s wise, our job is to conduct your wishes and to ensure the best return for your investments. Is there any chance you can wait another week before we withdraw the funds from the trust, to give Mr. Peters and I the best chance of maximising them?”

He rolled his eyes, very visibly. “No, chick. Jus’ ge’ the money.”

The remainder of the thirty-minute visit was spent completing the swathes of paperwork required to action his request.

Mr. Peters hadn’t, as I’d expected, chewed me up over the situation. In fact, when I’d returned to the office and, tentatively, given him the melancholy news, he’d been surprisingly sanguine about it. “Don’t let it bother you too much,” he’d said, drawing his office chair up to the edge of his desk – well, as close as he’d been able before his stomach tapped the edge of the desk, a buffer of butter, “DeWitt and I have been expecting the current ‘Not-so-Bright’ to close his family’s account, on the basis that he has nobody to pass it on to. He’s increasingly become reclusive and we’re not sure about his ongoing mental condition either – you’ve seen his home now, you know what I mean.” I nodded in agreement. “Thus, we’ve been planning for his final withdrawal for around twenty years; it’s one of the reasons I didn’t feel it necessary to find the time to attend myself.” He swung around slightly on his high-backed, rouge leather chair, allowing him to look at the light streaming in from the window. Peters’ office was a third floor corner affair, allowing him floor to ceiling windows, which looked out onto the City, bustling with business in the afternoon sun. It lent itself to these moments of introspection; I, too, caught a thought in the moment.

“What did Mrs. Wallace think?”

The crack of his neck whipping around from gazing out of the aforementioned to lock eyes with me was loud enough to awaken a small nesting pair of sparrows on the ledge outside. “I’m sorry?”

Realising how that may have sounded impertinent, I explained further. “You said that you and Mr. DeWitt had thought that Mr. Albright would close his account; if you’ll pardon my asking – what did Mrs. Wallace think?”

“Oh, I see. Wallace was, uncharacteristically, contrarian about it. She thought Albright would, eventually, find some way to maintain the trust, perhaps through gifting it to a third party or by donating the income, in perpetuity, to some charity or foundation. As it is, she was clearly wrong.”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps, if I may…?”

“Go on?”

“I’ve worked out the value of his collected assets, so could easily provide him the figures directly. Perhaps I could return and convince Mr. Albright to consider a hybrid solution? Part charitable, part liquidity? That way, we could retain a portion of the account.”

Peters smiled, broadly. “Yes, clever lad; I like it. Even holding on to ten percent of that trust would keep a quarter of the firm in employment forevermore.” He retrieved a large cigar from a box open on his desk and, after pausing momentarily to snip the end and retrieve a box of matches, lit it and drew a mouthful of smoke. “Head back, but proceed carefully – Albright is a prickly old duffer.”

Once again, I ascended the concrete steps and tapped on the door, eschewing the knocker as it appeared damp, oily. I aimed for a spot which appeared to be a little more wood than paint. The lace twitched, as if on cue, and the sound of footsteps once again travelled along the hallway.

The door, once again, opened ajar after a flurry of metalwork removal.

“Worr is i’?”

“Hello again, Mr. Albright; it’s Mr. Finney, from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.”

“No, Mr. Albright, I’m returning from my visit earlier today. About your investments?”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ same motion, same sneer, “- child.”

“No, sir, you asked me to come back, so I have. Also, and with all due respect, I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

This felt… repetitive. ‘It’s his advancing age,’ I thought, behind false eyes, ‘I would hazard he’s developed a disorder of the mind, as Mr. Peters indicated.’

“Thank you, Mr. Albright. Shall I keep my shoes on again?”

“Absolu’ly not! Tek ‘em off! Didn’ your mother raise you prop’ly?”

After a momentary pause, in order to take in the situation, I quickly removed my boots and placed them, paired, on the porch step. He nodded, gruffly, and we advanced once again to the dining room – during which, I noticed that his brown shoes remained firmly on his feet. As last time, I gave him the opportunity to offer me a seat. The bowl, the crowning glory of the dining table, was no longer present, the doily unadorned by grace; the rainbows had been replaced with the murky shadow of the lace framework on the windowpane, which blocked the diminishing sunlight from flooding the room. Instead, there was a water jug, filled with a translucent orange liquid and a tray of ice, and two glasses, placed on the table upside down at antipodes from one another, a low (but still visible) orange glow on the tabletop. He motioned vaguely to the glasses. “‘elp yuhself, bab.”

“Thank you, Mr. Albright.” I took a glass and decanted some of the liquid into it. I took a sip. Citrus, undefined, but refreshing; I completed the glass and poured myself another; I drank this one more slowly, savouring the flavours – grapefruit, lime, orange, sequentially. He nodded as I did. The afternoon sun was not forgiving; the table was mottled and the room almost cloyingly warm, the squash only taking the edge off the heat. I removed my jacket as I sat down, to allow some respite from this; Mr. Albright watched me do this, his eyebrows descending and a veil slowly casting across his face.

“Shall we begin then, Mr. Albright?”

“Goo ‘n then.” He, too, sat down.

“Your investments, held within the Trust are extensive and diverse. You have at least seven and a half million pounds in shares, currently, in very secure multinational corporations – though this will change based on the market at sale. You also have around nineteen million pounds held in gold and silver, which have solidly appreciated over the years and have been the main contributor to your monthly income. You also have a significant amount locked up in property, which cannot immediately be sold due to almost all having extensive leases, which new buyers are less likely to purchase as going concerns; though, at least two of those are within three months of the end of their tenancy, so we could issue notice, should you wish to proceed.”

A grunt. Aquiescence? Approval? I continued.

“However, sir – I have a proposal. Might you consider retaining the property and part of the commodities with us as an ‘in-perpetuity’ charitable contract? We would continue to manage the portfolio and distribute the profits, after our usual fee, to a number of beneficiaries, all foundations, with legacies in your name.” I smiled the wide, dazzling grin of a man determined to meet someone halfway.

He looked deep into my eyes. “No, chick, I think I’ll be tekkin’ the money. Flog the ‘ouses to the tenants at ‘alf market, give ‘um a year extenshin on the lease to save up, an’ ‘alve the rent too. That’s charity. Flog the rest to the ‘ighest bidda.”

It had taken me a few seconds to realise that my mouth was hanging open, the smile having evaporated at the first instance of the word ‘flog’. “Sir, may I ask – why?”

“Tole you, I ay gonna be ‘ere next week.”

“If I may be so bold – where are you planning to be?”

“Tell you what, sort out me business and come back tomorra with a cashier’s cheque. I’ll tell ya then if you’m so intresstid.”

Thus, for the second day in a row, and for the third time in those two days, I found myself tapping brightly on that ridiculous door once more. Upon the listing for sale of the property, I thought, I should need to engage a decorator in stripping the entire construction back to brick and wood to be brought to a saleable condition.

“Worr is i’?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Albright; it’s Mr. Finney, from Peters, Wallace and DeWitt.”

“My appoinmen’ ain’t ‘til next Toosdih.” This was getting tiresome.

“Mr. Albright, I’m returning as discussed, from yesterday’s meeting.”

“Where’s Pe’ers? I axed for Pe’ers, not some -“ This sweep felt longer, more intense, as if he were seeing me for the first time; there was an edge to it, razor sharp. The final syllable of his repeated sentence, this time, felt less certain. “- child.”

Breathing, very slowly, I once again reminded Mr. Albright of our prearranged meeting. “I’ve returned with your cashier’s cheque and the paperwork you need to sign, Mr. Albright.”

“Awlroit, awlroit, cuhm in.”

Another shoe removal adventure, another short be-socked trudge to the dining room following on from the man almost vindictively wearing leather brogues indoors, another moment awaiting invitation to sit. The absence of the glass bowl was now joined by an absent doily; instead, the centre of the table contained just a single crimson rose, held upright by the narrow neck of the simple crystal vase in which it was placed. Lipstick red, it almost refracted the light; the desperate sun’s rays forced themselves through the petals of the flower and caused the table to glow a light pink. I looked at it and, as usual and seen from the corner of my eye, he nodded; I lifted the rose from the vase and held it to my nose, inhaling deeply the scent of the flower, at once delicate and effusive, calming and exciting, purposeful and freeing. I felt my frame relax in a way I’d not felt for a long time – my posture rejecting my lifestyle, for a brief moment, absorbed in this wonder of nature. It was like I had never smelt a rose before, experiencing its joy and terror for the first time.

Abruptly, the feeling left me. Suddenly sharply awake, I moved to put the rose back into the vase. As I slid it into the aperture, I felt my finger slide onto a needle-like thorn along the stem. I let go of the thing and looked at my now injured digit; it was bleeding, only slightly, but as vibrant as the rose which had drawn it. Traces of my blood became swirls of colour around the green stem as the rose fell into the water in the vase; endless circles, fractal, a part of me becoming one with the flower in endless variations.

Pressing my finger against my thumb, to stead the wound, I looked up; Mr. Albright had drawn closer, unnoticed, and was staring at my finger. He was standing bolt upright, his head almost at ninety degrees from his shoulders. His breath had become shallow, his voice – when he eventually spoke – was resonant, ageless. All traces of his regional accent were wiped away as if cleansed by bleach. He had dropped his cigarette, still burning, on the granite surface of the kitchen worktop, its smoke forming curls and wisps in the unfathomably still air.

“And to think I was going to put an end to all this; instead, I’ve been graciously gifted your fine form to continue my lineage.” The light outside had diminished to nothing, the guttering candles and the dying cigarette now providing the only light in the house. “My dark Father provides and prevails. Now, child: give me your finger.”

Unresisting, unable to resist, hypnotised by spirits unseen but vividly heard, I reached towards him, the lone digit extended. The spot of blood on the end of my finger glowed in the light. The room trembled, crockery rattling in the cupboards desperate for liberation. The vase on the table seemed to whirlpool within, the rose turning around and around. He reached out, grasping, in slow motion, as if the room had suddenly been stretched wider.

Finally, he clasped my hand in his, squeezing the finger and causing my vitality to emerge further.

Ruby red, the spot of blood was vivid against the candlelight. He drew his face closer to my finger. Closer still. First sniffing the blood, he then pushed out a hungry, dry tongue. Delicately, he tasted it, as if sampling an hors d’oeuvre. His pupils dilated until his eyes became blacker than the vastness of the night.

The veil, the shadow around him, enveloped us.

His face – oh, god, his face – became deep blue, his teeth narrow and pointed, his nose rescinded into slits. His nebulous eyes began to bleed thick black blood, caressing and coating his cheeks. Finally, a shriek emerged from his throat, guttural and cavernous, drawn from the depths of Hell and beyond. I couldn’t move, trapped by forces unknown, married to the seat as one nailed to a cross. He inserted my finger into his open mouth, his tongue sweeping across his desert lips, and closed his now syringe-sharp teeth onto the wound.

Only then did I realise that I was screaming.

It is a terribly bright day here on the hill, surrounded by the daffodils and daisies of the spring. It is uncommonly pleasant, I’m told by weathermen who wave vaguely at moving bars of red and blue. I have brought a hamper with me, containing all that is required for a delightful afternoon with oneself.

He had signed the paperwork, that day, afterwards. Everything had seemed suddenly dreamlike, but I had left the decrepitude knowing I had done my job well. I had felt, with him, a sense of release. Of freedom from something he’d been carrying with him, a sense of something emotionally binding him. I followed his instructions regarding the properties; the administrators at the firm had taken over from that point, and I heard nothing more about the rent reductions and sales.

Interestingly, Mr. Albright had subsequently taken the cashier’s cheques and deposited them with a rival; it was only after his death, a few weeks later, that I discovered he’d done this to avoid conflict of interest questions; he’d bequeathed this new trust to me. In his will, updated the day after I’d last visited, he had written a single line:

‘Mr. Finney, the burden now is yours; live well for as long as it is possible, pass it on before it is not.’

I questioned the rewriting of the will. The executor, appointed by the new firm having been paid handsomely for the privilege of this minor task, had responded with clarity: he had presented as sound of mind, entirely capable of making decisions. His fortune, in the absence of a hereditary heir, would otherwise have passed to nobody, lost to the whims of auditors and accountants; he had been adamant, apparently, that he wanted to leave it to me, conditional on my not withdrawing any capital from the fund for the next fifty years and on having made my own will, lodged with the solicitors holding the trust, before accepting the bequest. Accordingly, I had done so, spending the day signing paperwork with the pen I’d previously asked my own clients to do the same with. It felt liberating to be this side of the table, for once.

It was at the end of this process that they had also informed me that the house – the one remaining property in his possession – was also part of the trust.

I had, the next day, parted ways with Peters, Wallace and DeWitt. Once I had directed the income from the bequest to my own bank accounts, so much in interest that each monthly payment easily outperformed the whole of my previous annual salary, I had decided to take some time to find myself – and, more importantly, to find out what had happened to me. Over the course of months, I’d read a number of books, journals, and newspaper articles; my search for answers, clues, anything which would explain what I’d experienced was to be extensive. There was little except myth, rumour, fiction. Oh, there was the odd hint of a similar tale here; a snippet of hearsay there, but all that I could adequately piece together from this fractal jigsaw was that his family had carried a secret for generations, shrouded in mystery, a darkness passed from heir to heir usually by reproduction, managed and kept in check before it became (and, I quote the fifth Lord Albright – the one who had lost the title for his children by, on a wet April afternoon, being biblical with a royal prince in a room sadly frequented as a hideout by the young and loquacious heir to the throne) ‘troublesome’ by giving to the young, the strong. But, Mr. Albright hadn’t an heir. There had been a tale buried in a family diary of an old uncle in the Victorian era who hadn’t sired children, who’d quietly descended into repetitive madness, absorbed by similarity, rejecting environment, obsessed with bright colour; he’d died after seeing his youngest brother for the last time, a brother who had been mysteriously scarred, both physically and psychologically, by the experience, and who had, ultimately, purchased the house with the yellow door. Consequently, I’d reasonably assumed that Mr. Albright was this century’s mad uncle, and that he’d passed whatever this was to me, bought off by the lifetime income, allowing him to finally go in peace.

Thus, I find myself here, a year from my fortuitous meeting with Mr. Albright, in delicious solitude, my blanket laid with a rose in a vase and a jug of iced citrus squash. It was a Faustian bargain, and not one of my choosing; not one that would have been made at all had Mr. Peters gone to the meeting that day. However, I reflected, it was a bargain I could live with, in significant comfort, for at least fifty more years, especially now I’ve had the property overhauled and brought back to life. The yellow door was now a sunset glow once more, the stained walls had been stripped and repainted a brilliant white, the tiles scrubbed within an inch of their lives, all lace removed and, one assumes, renovated for use in homes which truly desire them.

At some point, I reasoned, I could have a child, tell them the stories when they’re old enough to understand, begin my own family mythos. The Finney lineage shall be one of light, of freedom, of youthfulness.

I shall have to find a surrogate.

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Across the pale-tiled floor, the sudden rumble of the quickly rotating drum created a cacophony of echoes which, without any malicious intent, caused the previously prone calico to leap, equally as quickly, to the safety of the nearby chaise; the moon, beyond the window alongside the cushioned haven, cast a slatted glow ethereally across her now shaken whiskers. Undisturbed and unsuppressed by her movement, the machine continued to whiz round, relentless and with the thrum of a building waveform, for a full fourteen-hundred revolution minute; the speed of the cycle forced the water from the clothes within to eke out and drain away.

Within the safety of the sealed cavern, a central cerulean light began to glow. The light was spherical, emergent, morphing – it grew, delicately, as the spin of the drum continued. Eventually, a single sock fell, in slow motion, towards the sphere (it was patterned like a leopard, its owner a fan of breaching the otherwise dour officewear that was expected for sartorial excellence with whimsical cotton between raven trouser and obsidian shoe); it stretched as it reached the surface of the ball, pulling its elastic taut and tense as if on a torture rack, its spots taking on the appearance of a colourful print of morse code. Shortly after, it pierced the now cyan marble, whereupon there was a deep bass whoomph of air rushing back to fill a suddenly vacant space. The machine began to slow down the spin, reaching the end of the cycle.

The sock, in all its golden glory, was gone.

Eventually, a delicate tune emerged from the speaker buried deep within the steel shell, a hymn dedicated to the successful wash. The cat raised its head once more, lighted by the pale glow of midnight, and scanned her green eyes over the now quiet corner of the kitchen. Satisfied nothing more was happening, she settled back down, her tiny head perched upon her tiny paws.

Four hundred light-years away, a marble of blue appeared rapidly in the purple sky of a planet orbited by three bright moons of its own. Its surface shimmered, glowed, pulsed – then, a leopard fell to the ground. The ball disappeared, with a whoomph once again indicating that the space from which the air had been pushed away by its emergence was now refilled.

The leopard looked up, puzzled, at the space from which it had arrived. It did not move for a long time, attempting to understand. A few moments ago, it reasoned, it had not thought about anything – and yet, here it was, processing its travel. It remembered, faintly, the feeling of being woven. Now, however, it could feel the hot blood travelling through its body; it could sense the need to run, not for fear but for the sheer joy of running; it could smell – well, it could smell a spring fresh aroma, which appeared to be part of its fabric now. It could also smell something which was unexpected. It could smell a different aroma – an aroma it, with growing confidence, believed it had smelled like previously, at another time. It couldn’t describe it, but it felt deep in its bones that it smelled sort of... cerise. The pink aroma was getting closer.

From over the horizon, something chocolate and black trotted on four comically short legs. As it got closer, the leopard could hear it wheezing with the clockwork of its little joints and the blur of its little paws. It was making good time considering it was clearly having to take forty steps for every one that the leopard would make. In a show of good faith, and given it could sense neither fear nor foe, it trotted gently in the direction of the beast.

They met on the grasses of the plain, the three moons providing ample light for them to see one another properly. The leopard, amused, looked down upon a miniature dachshund which, impossibly, smelt like berries and vanilla. It, in turn, looked back up at him.

“I can imagine that this is a bit of a turn up for the books, for you, right?”

Dogs don’t talk. They don’t. The leopard processed, for a second, its belief system; it recognised that, it too, didn’t talk – and yet, here it was, thinking, in perfect English, the words “Dogs don’t talk”. Then it processed that both the dog was talking and, undoubtedly, the leopard was indeed thinking in words, not instinctive clouds of pure emotion.

“I… erm… I didn’t know that dogs could talk.”

“They can’t. You can’t either. Yet, here we are, both chewing the fat.”

The leopard reasoned that this couldn’t be argued with. “Yes. Well. Wasn’t I a sock?”

“Yes, you were. So was I – a beautiful patterned creation in bamboo and the finest dyes. We were the office favourite, the Friday socks, the Dogs of the Weekend, my twin and I. Then, I was saved. Taken from the drudgery of walking between locations, the terror of slowly fading and bobbling, the horror of the clothes recycler; instead, transplanted here, another saved by the spin-dry railroad.”

“The what?”

“The spin-dry railroad. All I know, all that’s been passed down over the years, is that at a certain speed, the washers create a singularity; through it, the lucky few of us are able to traverse W-space – that is, the Washing Realm – and come here. Our fibres are naturally drawn to this planet, for some reason, it seems. But W-space does something to us – it takes the images we bear and makes us take their shape, gifts us with sentience and speech. Time’s a bit funny here, though – the ball which brought us here formed rapidly, from the memory we all have of it, but the one which drops us off seems to take ages to form, when observed from here. I’ve had a week to get here to meet you.”

The leopard, still rather confused, stared at the dachshund whilst it paused for dramatic effect.

“What happens to the patterned ones, I hear you say?” He looked very smug as he trotted around, gesticulating at the landscape as he recited his lines. “Well, it seems that they become part of the landscape – beautiful vines, trees, and flowers. The fruits of the loom are ours to nibble. That – aha – means you don’t need to eat meat here.” For the first time, a wobble in his voice – it would seem, thought the leopard, that the dachshund had suddenly realised to whom he was talking.

“Don’t worry, I don’t feel particularly hungry at the moment. Also, I’m not sure what eating actually feels like, so I shall be vegan and not know the difference.”

The dachshund visibly exhaled, it having breathed deeply and surreptitiously in advance of a potentially necessary escape. The leopard reasoned that it was unlikely that would have given the little dog much of a head start. “Well, good-oh. Glad to hear it. Well done you for evolving yet further than you have done so far. Now, do you want to come and meet the others?”

“Others?”

“Yes, others – there’s thousands of us now. New friends come every few days.”

The leopard looked at the ground, away from the gaze of his newfound companion. Now nervous himself, he said, “Would I be welcome?”

“Yes, of course – all the orphaned ex-socks are welcome. We call our new home -” He had clearly practiced this part of his speech; it was clearly a point of pride, “- Cottown.” He pointed a paw at the horizon from whence he’d come; the leopard looked in the direction the miniature claws suggested and, as the moons descended towards the ground, saw the shadow of buildings in front of the arc of one.

He looked back down at the dog, whose eyes were now closed and whose mouth was affecting as close to a grin as it could muster, given the lack of musculature for the event. “Can we go there now?”

Both eyes opened immediately. “Of course we can! But, before we make our way, could I ask a favour?”

“Yes?”

The dachshund looked sternly at the leopard, as if assuming the answer to the question was a foregone conclusion. “Is there any chance I could ride on your back? It’s a long way on these.”

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Follow my main account in the Fediverse: @dav@social.maleo.uk

Shared automatically with: @writers@a.gup.pe @shortstories@a.gup.pe @novellas@a.gup.pe @microfiction@a.gup.pe

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