David Hadley's Blog, page 193

In Her Wardrobe

Well… to be honest, I felt like a bit of a dick. I mean, it wasn't just the indignity of it, although, quite obviously, that was bad enough. It was more that it was such a cliché of comedy, of sit-coms and cartoons and jokes.

I mean I could – maybe – have coped with the nudity part of it. I may not be a sex god or anything like that, but for a bloke my age living in this 21st century of cheap food, idle living and excess, I'm not in too bad a shape, so, yes, I could have coped with the fact of my nudity… maybe. Perhaps by adopting some sort of dignified stance, I could have used the fact of my nudity as a source of strength rather than weakness like some ancient warrior…. Yes, I'm sure I could have made that work. On the other hand, caught cowering in her wardrobe whilst naked, I'm not sure I could make anything of that. Cowering is not a good start. However, with the amount of clothes in an average woman's wardrobe, there is not much you can do, but cower… that is if you can squeeze in there in the first place.

I could hear him, walking about, their voices as they chatted about this and that. I could detect, even muffled by all the dresses around my head, a certain nervousness in Helen's responses, but her husband - Steve, she called him once or twice, which I assume meant that was his name - didn't seem to be paying that much attention to her. He was one of those blokes, the ones that only listen to what others say only so they know when the others shut up so they can go back to saying what they wanted to say, usually about what is wrong with the world and how they, and they alone, know how to fix it.

Cowering there, getting a pain in the back of my thighs, listening to Steve going on and on - and Helen's decreasing contributions to his monologue - I understood why I'd become her alternative to him, and even why I had ended up naked in her wardrobe.

The Last Goodbye

Often, dreams of her train, and the way it took her out of his life while he stood on the station platform watching her leave, haunted him. Sometimes, in those dreams, he would jump on the train as it left the station determined to make her get off, come home with him, or to go on the journey with her, not letting her out of his sight.

William would wake the next morning, after the dream had left him with a sad headache and a messed-up bed, knowing this was reality and knowing that she had never come back, knowing that morning on the station platform was the last time he had ever seen her.

Donna was supposed to be going back to visit her parents for a couple of weeks. A surprise visit before her new job started at the start of the next month.

Donna and William had talked of getting married, and as far as he knew they were happy and in love. He had no reason to worry about her and his only concern as he turned away after the train had disappeared around the corner was how he was going to manage for the next couple of weeks without her.

Those two weeks had now turned into fifteen years.

When he phoned her parents a few days after she left, wondering why she hadn't called him, he found that she had never arrived there. They'd had no idea she was coming to visit them and were wondering themselves why she had not phoned recently. Donna's parents had wondered if, and then assumed, Donna and William had decided to go away somewhere together for a break before the start of Donna's new job.

Later, the police discovered that Donna got off the train a few stops after boarding it and then… nothing. It seemed she'd disappeared from the face of the Earth after calmly walking out of the zone covered by that station's security cameras, and never seen again.

Beyond Land's End

Sometimes, on the evening train going home from his working life, he'd sit watching the world going by outside the train while wondering what would happen if he didn't get off at his usual stop.

Where would he go? What would become of him? Would the rest of his life, his wife, his children, his boss, his parents and siblings – would they all miss him, wonder where he had gone?

Once he passed the stage of wondering if the world around him would notice his absence, he wondered where he would go if he ever decided not to get off at his normal stop. He wondered if he would just get off at the next stop after his usual one, or would he go on as far as the end of the line… and if so, then what?

He remembered a dream he once had as a child, one of those dreams that seems to stick with us throughout our lives. He worked out he must have been young, perhaps pre-school age when he had this particular dream.

Obviously, at some point during his day, some grown-up or other must have mentioned Land's End in some adult conversation he'd overheard, and he could – even now – forty years later, remember the visions that conjured up in his sleeping young mind.

He could remember a tropical beach at sunset, palm trees silhouetted against a deep red setting-sun sky: because to his child's logic mind, Land's End, the end of the land, would be far, far away and you'd only ever get there at the end of a day, no matter how long it took to travel there.

In the dream, there was a Land Rover too, that he was sitting in, watching the sun set over a sea that seemed to go on forever. After all, if the land ended at Land's End, then the rest must be sea, sea for miles and miles and miles. He was not sure if, when he had the dream, he knew the world was round. He did not know. All he could remember was the dream and the amazing fact that it had stuck with him all this time. He smiled at his reflection in the train window as the familiar landscape passed him by and daydreamed about, one day, going to that place where all land ended and the infinite sea began.

Monday Poem: The Landscapes of Dreaming

The Landscapes of Dreaming

Your hands clutched tight as you slept
keeping tight hold of all your dreams.
Nothing escaped those watchful eyes
behind closed lids as they chased
across all the landscapes of your dreaming,

searching for the morning that lay hidden
beyond the curtains of that small room
where I waited for you to awake
and take me with you on your journey
through another new waking day.

How Worlds are Created

There are those who think they know how worlds like this come into being. They think they understand how to take this airy nothing and twist it into shape so that the mountains grow out of the flat lands and they think they know those motions of the wrist that can fill this valley with those trees and snake that river through them.

They think they can take a fingertip and trace it in the air and that she will grow out of the movements that sketch her body in the empty air.

They think they know, they think they understand.

They are the ones who think they can just click their fingers and she will snap her eyes open and then follow everywhere they want her to go. They think she will acquiesce, that all they have to do is paint this roadway across the landscape and she will walk down it, towards the life they have built for her in that far city that sits on the horizon like something emerging from the mists of possibility.

They think all this, while I sit here with a smile on my face knowing that as soon as they look away, she will come back here to me, whispering those secrets she only wants me to hear.

The Anti-Fruit and Vegetable Discrimination Squad

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Well, anyway, I presume you have remembered the rhubarb this time? I mean, after all the trouble we had just the other week, when the local government anti-fruit and vegetable discrimination squad raided the house claiming that certain anti-rhubarb activities had been witnessed in the area.

Of course, it should be a matter of great concern to all of us that there are some, even in our own communities, who are not indulging in a wide and diverse amount of fruit underneath their custard. After all, we live in a multi-fruit world and no-one would like to see wanton cruelty to plums, or even pineapples, let alone the loganberry riots that disfigured many decades of the last century. We have move on from those dark days and now even certain vegetables – as well as most fruits – are seen in the vegetable racks and fruit dishes from all strata of society, including Brussels sprouts, of course.

There was, back in those earlier times, especially in the post-war period some suspicion of exotic fruit and vegetables. It was – after all – supposed to be a land fit for heroes, and one in which even the most humble working-class woman would be able to get her fill of Cox's Orange Pippins, and even the lowliest manual worker would have his plums assessed by a professional fruiter on the NHS.

Surely, no-one would want to go back to those days when a women with a nice pear would be harassed on the public thoroughfare and a tomato was regarded as the work of the devil.

Feeding the Birds

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What does it matter? The words scattered out there, strewn on the barren cold ground like breadcrumbs thrown to the birds. What happens to them then is up to fate, happenstance, chance. Maybe a whole flock of winter hungry birds will descend upon them, gorge themselves to satiation on them, leaving nothing behind as they struggle back into the air on their eternal quest for some new word scraps to gorge themselves on.

Perhaps, though, the words will remain there, perhaps too many reading birds have already eaten their fill for the day, perhaps the words themselves look so unappetising spread across the page as they are: looking carelessly scattered, thrown down in haste. Perhaps the birds are more discerning; perhaps they get batter than this poor quality mass-produced white loaf elsewhere. Perhaps there is someone else a few web pages, a few books away, who bakes their own word-bread with loving tender care and scatters only the finest, freshest home-made crumbs out to the birds.

Maybe the birds are tired of breadcrumbs; other gardens have nuts, bacon rinds, fat and all those other things you could tempt the birds into your garden with….

That is, if only you had the time and patience for it all: day after day, week after week down the years until it seems you have no words left and so the birds fly away, forever.

Thursday Poem: A Small Blue Box

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A Small Blue Box

A small blue box of reasons why
she holds closed in both hands
and carries it to all the places
where she lives her own life.

Up high on a shelf almost out of reach
she places it carefully hidden
so it cannot be seen by those
who stumble into her life

And then are gone, leaving her
with the crumpled sheets
and half-remembered memories
of a living body that held her

But not too close and only for a while
and left her bed growing cold
before the day's fingers
had even crept under her curtains.

She knows it is not much of a life,
which is why she keeps that box safe
hidden from all those prying eyes
that would open it and see
just how empty her life really is.

Wednesday Story: A Safe Place

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With all the fuss – and, yes, the excitement – of winning the lottery I hadn't had the time to think about what I called, in my mind, The Project for a long time, but when the estate agent opened the door to the wine cellar and flicked on the lights I thought: this is it. This is the ideal place for The Project!

I think the estate agent must have picked up on something, maybe in my expression, or the way my body language changed. I did, as always, try to keep control of myself, but I saw her stiffen and glance across at the doorway behind me as though she was calculating an escape route.

I tried a relaxed, easy smile. I've read that a gentle touch – on the arm or some similar neutral place – can be reassuring at such times, but I just didn't have the nerve to touch her. She would just have to settle for the smile. I tried to think of something reassuring to say, but small talk is one of my blind spots (blind spot? Shouldn't that be dumb spot?).

She did try to relax, when she saw my smile. Now, though, there was a guarded tension to her. I could see that she was uncomfortable alone with me in that cold cellar.

'I… er…. This is nice,' I said. I tried to sound enthusiastic. 'I'm, getting to be a bit of a wine buff these days. This could be just the thing for me.' I tried smiling again as I ran my hand over the dusty cobwebbed wine racks, nodding approvingly. It seemed to work. She relaxed a little more, although, I noticed her doing that thing where women cross their arms under their breasts when they are cold or nervous. I smiled brightly and rubbed my hands together. 'A bit chilly in here though… a bit gloomy. Shall we…?' I waved towards the doorway and saw the smile in relief that she let slip from under her professionalism.

I followed her out of the cellar. She was blonde, a bit short, under five and a half feet, but she was slim with a nice arse. I'm not usually very good at judging ages, but she seemed in her mid-to-late twenties and wore no wedding ring, although that doesn't mean much these days.

I was tempted… very tempted to start then and there with her, but only for a while. I knew she would have told people back at her office where she as going, who with and so forth. Anyway, it didn't feel quite right. Later, after we'd parted, I studied the business card she'd given me, trying to decide whether to add her to the list: start up a dossier on her, or not. Definitively a possible, I decided, in the end.

She was only a possible, because – strangely enough – they are much harder to spot when you are closer to them for some reason. In a crowd, in a busy place and from a distance I can spot them easily enough. When I'm close, though, or alone with someone who I think might be one, then it gets much harder. Maybe it is because they have a chance to concentrate on me, as it were, pick up on the signals I give out unconsciously and adapt themselves to give less away. That's my great theory about them anyway: that when they are in groups or crowds or when they think they are unobserved they are much more likely to give themselves away.

Guarded... that's it…. When they are alone with you, they are much more guarded. They are much more adept at camouflaging themselves when they have only one of us to fool. It is as though the mask can slip, or that it is easier to see around the edges of the mask... the disguise... the camouflage... when they are not concentrating on keeping their true selves hidden from view. It is a bit like going backstage or round the back of the film set and seeing that it is all artifice and illusion, nothing more.

Of course, winning the lottery changed everything in my life.

It took a couple of years for the fuss to die down. I even had to move a couple of times when someone found out, or remembered, my name or face from the papers. Many times, I cursed myself for allowing the lottery company to talk me into going public when I won, just so they could get some publicity for themselves. At the time though, in those first few hectic days and weeks, I suppose, too caught up in the excitement to notice, I just went along with it all.

Eventually, though, fed up with all the attention, I found this rambling farmhouse up for sale, a fair way from the edge of a small quiet village. It had already been done up, modernized, so I didn't have to call in builders, decorators and so on, so, I thought, it would give me a chance to get back to a normal quiet life.

After the estate agent and I had gone our separate ways, with me promising to think about the farmhouse, even though I'd already made up my mind that it was the ideal place for me, I thought back to those tell-tale gestures she'd made and I decided that she would go on my list. In fact, I would open a new folder for her, I decided. After all, I reasoned, I would probably be seeing much more of her in the forthcoming months, and – if my instinct was right (as it usually was) - then I was sure I would need a folder for her.

Anyway, eventually, after all the usual rigmarole with solicitors, estate agents, surveyors and so on... and on... and on… seemingly as though it could go on endlessly forever, the house was mine. I'd seen the estate agent – finding out her name, or the human name she went by, was Leanne Woolf – a few times over the course of the sale process. That surname of hers made me smile, reminding me of that film I'd seen once with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, or at least I think it was them, just bickering all the way through, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf it was called, if I remember correctly. I couldn't remember much about the film, or even why it was called that, but several times when I spoke to this Leanne, I had to stop myself from calling her Virginia. Not that it would have been that apt. The ones like her are never virgins, never virginal. Although, Woolf seemed an apt enough name for her.

She always acted guarded around me; I think she may have suspected something: suspected that I knew she was one of them. I made sure, though, that I never gave anything away, never gave her any cause to regard me with anything other than the usual mild suspicion of a woman around a socially awkward man like me. Of course, it would be better if they never suspected me at all, but perhaps they can smell the knowledge of what they really are on the rest of us, those of us that are aware of them, making them aware that they are in danger.

Once the house was mine, getting the cellar kitted out next was a priority. I didn't want the Woolf woman slipping away, out of my grasp if she became suspicious of me, or became aware of my plans for her.

For the cellar, I needed the table, the restraints, the instruments and all the technology necessary for me to perform my work on them. Of course, I had to do the kitting-out myself, as well as source the necessary equipment from those sorts of places that would not recognise or remember me, or be suspicious about why I needed such equipment.

Buying the gun turned out to be the easiest part of it, when I expected it to be the hardest, most awkward and involved. I just worked my way through a set of intermediaries until I met a hooded man in a pub car park at midnight. I handed him the envelope of money, he counted it and handed me the gun wrapped up in a roll of cloth inside an ordinary supermarket plastic bag. I tried to give the impression I knew what I was doing, checking the gun when he handed it over, but I really didn't have much idea about what I needed to look for.

Eventually, after what seemed like a long time, I had the cellar finished. I'd even put in a thick heavy wooden door across the entranceway at the foot of the cellar steps. It would not have looked out of place in some medieval dungeon. This wasn't that strange, the creatures were more common back in those days and many of those castle dungeons had been built for more than just human prisoners.

After getting the cellar prepared, I had to get some kind of vehicle. Initially, I thought about a van of some kind, but then changed my mind and picked a 4x4, but one with darkened windows at the back. Such vehicles were quite common around where I was now living anyway, the remoteness and the rural nature of the area making a vehicle like that a necessity, especially in the winter.

When out and about away from the house, I tried to achieve the right balance of personality, whereby the locals would accept me quickly and without much suspicion. I think I managed to do it quite well. I was friendly whenever I met one of them, but always managing to keep a slight distance, a privacy they could easily see and respect. I think they accepted me, more or less, eventually. Although, even though I remained – of course – always an outsider to the older residents, things have changed to a certain extent these days. There is a lot more movement; people change homes and jobs much more often, so a new face is not such an event as it once was. People too, these days, are much more insular, less likely to want to get too involved with others, even in a small village. Maybe the two phenomena are related, I don't know.

It was spring, though, before I was ready to move on with the Leanne Woolf project. As I'd prepared it, I had decided that, yes, she, Leanne Woolf, would be the first one in my new cellar. It seemed somehow fitting that she who had first shown it to me would be the one christening it, as it were.

Obviously, I needed some plan for capturing her. The danger was, of course, that she would recognise me, know me and be suspicious of me if she caught sight of me hanging around too often for coincidence. If things went wrong, then she would be able to identify me, if not to the authorities, then to the others of her kind. Therefore, I was working – at least initially – on the idea of some dark place, some lonely corner, late at night.

However, when I began following Leanne I realised what a cautious person she was, never alone on dark nights in lonely places. She had a boyfriend of course, a married man, who she saw whenever they could arrange it, otherwise she seemed happy enough staying in alone. Her flat had too much security too for me to attempt anything there: security cameras, entry systems and so on. Then I realised that this disadvantage of her being able to recognise me could turn to my advantage: if I worked it correctly.

*

My car, the new 4x4 stood broken-down at the side of the road. Its bonnet was up and its hazard lights flashing bright in the darkness. I was standing there, helpless, frustrated that my phone seemed unable to get anything like a usable signal, when I flagged down the car driving along the same quiet, narrow country road.

'I... I wonder if you could help me?' I gestured towards my car, hoping it all seemed self-explanatory. 'Oh, Miss Woolf is that you?' I pretended to sigh in relief as she nodded.

She smiled her uncertainty fading as she recognised me and relaxed, relieved that I was no stranger to her, out on this deserted road in the dark and chill of the early spring evening.

We exchanged a few pleasantries and then I explained about the car breaking down, despite being brand new. Then I told her how I couldn't get a usable signal on my mobile to call for assistance.

Of course, I'd chosen the spot well beforehand. A place that was lonely, isolated and deserted, with poor mobile phone signal reception.

She tried her phone, and, when it couldn't get a signal from inside her car, she did what we all do – more or less without thinking – and immediately got out of the car and started walking around holding her mobile at various angles and positions, seeking that elusive signal.

'I think I've got a signal!' she held the phone up in the air, gesturing me towards her with her free hand.

It took only a moment, the injection into the vein in the neck, which I know is their most vulnerable spot. I didn't even need to use the gun. In fact, I forgot I had it until I felt the weight of it in my coat pocket as I tried to manoeuvre Leanne into the back of my car.

After securing her in my 4x4, I drove her car down a nearby side-road and into a disused railway tunnel, smashing it up enough to seem as though joy riders had stolen it, then dumped it after hitting the tunnel wall at some speed.

Back at the house, I put the unused gun away in a drawer in the cellar before going back to the car and lifting Leanne's unconscious body from the back seat.

It was a bit of a struggle getting her unconscious body down into the cellar, leaving me with a stiff shoulder and a pain in my right arm, but eventually I had her lying face-up on the table. It was frustrating too, getting her out of her clothes before she recovered consciousness. It seemed that no matter which item of clothing I took off her, some part of it always seem to get stuck under her inert body, so by the time I was tightening the wrists and ankle straps she was beginning to stir, making odd little mutterings and moans as her eyes flickered and her muscles twitched.

The first thing she saw when she came around was me, looking down at her. She tried to rise from the table struggled and screamed for a while until I took her by the shoulders and managed to quieten her.

'Look around, Leanne,' I said, trying to sound quiet, calm and confident. 'Do you recognise this place?'

She shook her head and I could see the panic rising in her eyes again.

'It's the cellar of the house you sold to me. So, you know how pointless it is to shout and scream... or to struggle for that matter. Even if you could escape – which you can't – it will take you ages to reach safety and I'll recapture you long before you get near anywhere else. So stop struggling and try to relax.' I tried to sound more confident than I felt. As I'd fastened the restraints around her wrists and ankles, I'd realised how poor they were, made from cheap, thin, shoddy leather for people to use in kinky sex games. I just hoped they would be strong enough to hold her, although I was beginning to doubt it.

She quietened, but then lifted her head and looked down at her own body, as much as she could see, and realised she was naked. I could see the panic in her eyes once more.

'I said, "relax".' I touched her cheek. 'You see I know what you really are, so there is no point pretending any longer. I know you are not human.'

'Wha...?'

She was good: I'll admit that. I suppose they train – either themselves or each other – to seem always as human as everyone else they are likely to meet. Sometimes it is difficult to be sure of them, even for those of us who have learnt the telltale signs.

'I know,' I said. 'I know all about you... you people… your kind. I've been watching those like you for a long time. You are not my first.' I took a step back and took a long slow look at the length of her body.

'What... what on earth are you talking about?' There was a touch of panic in her voice still, but I could see that she was attempting to appear reasonable. 'Look... let me go and I promise I won't tell anyone…. I won't go to the police, or anything. Just please... please let me go!' she started to sob and thrash about on the table, but the restraints, poor quality as they were, held her tight. She screamed a few times too as she struggled. I just stepped back, sat down on my stool in front of the laboratory equipment and waited until she was – relatively – calm once again. I was trying not to let my worries about the restraints show on my face. After all, they can read us humans so well after all this time. Any sign of doubt, fear or uncertainty and they pounce….

'I know...,' I said. 'Leanne, look at me....'

She turned her head. I could see the tears in her eyes. She was good; usually they can't do tears without practice.

'I know you won't go to the police,' I said softly, 'because you know as well as I do that with the police, or anyone like them, there would be too many questions that you would not like to answer. You know as well as I do that the police, the government… well, all those that your kind haven't completely infiltrated, are already very suspicious, already aware of the activities of your kind.'

'M... my kind? What the fuck are you on about?' she yelled, straining against the restraints. I saw one give a little, but tried not to let the panic show.

Quickly, to stop her struggling against the restraints I got up from the stool and strode over to her. With one hand, I lifted her head up, cradling it in my palm, while with my other I pointed to various places on her body.

'Back in earlier centuries they used to call such things Witches' Marks. Of course, those of us who know what you and your kind really are know what they actually signify. We know how to use them to prove what you really are.' I let my fingers slowly wander over her body, watching her eyes watching my fingers and noticing each place where she flinched, her eyes flickered or she twitched nervously. Those would be the places where I could find my way in through this human body she wore, past her disguise, to the real creature that lay beneath it all.

'You are mad.' she sneered. 'I'm a perfectly normal human being, not some monster.... What, do you think I'm a vampire, a werewolf, an alien or what?'

I turned to face her, turning her head, with my hand that still cradled it, so that I could look deep into her eyes. 'All of those and none,' I said. I was silent for a moment, searching those dark eyes of hers for a way in, a way through. 'You are not scared of me... of this.' I nodded towards her restraints. 'That's another sign.'

She turned her head away.

'You will find... you want... everything as a sign,' she said, turning her head back to face me. 'No matter what I say or do, it will be an admission of guilt in your eyes. You want... need me... to become some weird creature to justify to yourself that what you really want to do to me is not... not some depraved fantasy... or weird perversion of yours. You want to be the good guy saving the world while you do whatever it is you want to do to me... b... bef... before you kill me.'

'Kill you?' I said. I must admit her – relative – calmness disconcerted me. I began to get the idea, the thought, that there was something going on here that lay beyond the situation we were in, some other deeper level. I had the feeling that she was trying to push me in one particular direction.

Struck by these sudden doubts, I left the cellar, ran up to into the house, looking out through every window I came to at the almost sheer darkness outside, hoping to catch sight of something - I don't know what – lurking out there in the dark and the shadows. I opened the front door and stepped out. It was the usual non-silent silence of the countryside with rustles and slitherings from the undergrowth, with animal cries both near and far as something caught something else, and one of them died. It was reassuring in away, hearing all those sounds and feeling the presence of normality all around the isolated house. I knew – or thought I knew – that there would be none of that normality if there were any of them nearby.

Still, though, I locked and bolted the front and rear doors and made sure I locked all the windows and shuttered them tight, all the while cursing myself for forgetting to bring the gun upstairs with me. Those creatures have been on this Earth a long, long time – some say even back before mankind – so they must be as natural by now as any other hunter or predator out there creeping and crawling through the darkness searching for prey.

I knew something was wrong even before I reached the bottom of the cellar steps. As soon as I turned the corner from the steps and looked, through the gap beyond the heavy wooden door I'd foolishly left half-open, across at the operating table, I could see that she'd gone. The restraints – the best I could find – had not been strong enough after all. Either that or I'd got the dosage of the tranquillisers wrong, which is still – even after all this time – still somewhat of a hit and miss affair because the creatures are so different from humans under the superficiality of the disguise. Whichever it was, I'd failed.

I had been half-prepared for her to escape, but in my haste to get upstairs and check the surroundings I'd left the gun over in the drawer of the workbench on the opposite side of the cellar.

If I'd given myself more time to prepare, I could have improved the lighting down there, as well as buy much better restraints. As it was, there were too many shadows and hiding places. I cautiously made my way into the cellar trying to get to the drawer and the gun. I kept my back pressed up against the wall as I moved sideways towards the adjacent wall I began to wonder if she was still down there at all. I knew she could have sneaked back up behind me and got out while I was busy locking the windows and doors upstairs. She could be up there now, opening a door and calling out to those others of her kind lurking in the darkness to come to her rescue.

I shivered. I'd seen what happened when they found one of us who knew about them, people I'd known, people who had once been my friends and, in one particular case, someone I'd loved, reduced to something akin to what an abattoir washes off the floor at the end of a busy working day. I felt myself shiver as I crept along the wall, searching in vain for something to use as a weapon. If she was still down there I knew I would not have the time to get to the gun.

I was scared. I was terrified beyond anything I'd ever known before in all the years I'd fought against the creatures. I now knew then that this house, what I'd thought of as a safe place was nothing of the sort.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was no more than a minute or two, I got to the workbench without Leanne, or the true creature she really was, leaping out of the shadows of the cellar and ripping me apart. Her clothes were still on the top of the workbench. I smiled grimly at the delicate lacy underwear I'd eventually managed to struggle off her drugged body what seemed now like a lifetime ago. The delicate see-through underwear was the antithesis of the creature's true nature, but they tended to like that kind of thing, it amused them. I suppose after the centuries of pretending to be human, being the opposite of themselves, made them appreciate other ironies, oppositions and juxtapositions.

I had a sudden sense of delaying things with my musings, of giving in to what I now realised was almost inevitable. My safe place had become my prison, my condemned man's cell. I was the prisoner now and that what claimed to be Leanne was free and would soon be in control.

I took the gun from the drawer and checked it was fully loaded and pocketed the spare clips and loose ammunition. An automatic pistol would be next to useless if there was more than one of them. It was not that good against only one, unless you could get a split-second lucky shot in. However, the weight of the gun, the confident slick engineering of it, the oily smell of it and the hefty solidity of it gave me some sliver of reassurance as I made my way back across the cellar towards the heavy door at the bottom of the steps leading back up to the house.

I was pretty confident that the Leanne beast had gone, run away back to her kind. I thought maybe I could escape from the cellar as well and be the one that ran out across the fields, across the meadows and through the dense woods. I had taunted Leanne with the isolation of this place and now it was taunting me.

As I made my way back, across the cellar, I heard movement up above, scratchings and scrapings on the fashionably bare polished floorboards above my head. There was more than one of them up there, there had to be. It was not just Leanne up there; there was far too much noise for that, she must have opened the door and let them all in. They had been out there, waiting, after all.

Then I realised what had happened. I had blithely walked into a trap. They must have known about me from before, from our previous confrontations and battles. The publicity from my lottery win must have brought me to their attention, somehow. Maybe one of them recognised me in the publicity for the lottery win. Perhaps one who had escaped from my clutches in the past had warned the others.

They had set me up. Leanne had been the bait in their trap and I had fallen for it.

I ran for the cellar stairs through the heavy wooden door, cursing my stupidity, for thinking that I could have so easily outwitted one of them. They have not survived this centuries-long war against the human race by being stupid, I told myself as I cautiously made my way up the cellar steps.

I stopped halfway up; I could see the tall, elongated, shadows of the creatures up there, in the rooms above me, dancing around in their pre-killing frenzy. They would wait for me to come out and then they would pounce, all of them from all angles all at once, not giving me a chance to fight. I would die up there. Within moments I would be no more than a bloody mess staining the floor of what I'd thought was a safe place.

I began to wonder if it had been they who had chosen this place, after all, not me. Perhaps this isolated farmhouse was as much a part of the trap as Leanne was.

I took a couple more steps then stopped. My slim chance of escape was gone, lost.

Leanne stood, naked and strong, at the top of the cellar steps looking down at me. A smile of victory lit up her face. I could see the hunger of the creature in her eyes. She would be the one to have the honour of the killing blow. She would be the one who would rip my life from me. I knew their codes, their beliefs. I knew all about their killing rituals and that no-one ever escaped or survived.

I raised the gun feeling its lethal weight, holding it in both hands and aiming between her eyes. She just stood there, waiting, taunting me. I knew I was not close enough for a bullet to do much damage to one like her... but I fired anyway, knowing even as my finger squeezed the trigger that these creatures were faster than bullets.

She seemed to shimmer and shift off to one side as the bullet smacked hard into the wall where her head had been only a few seconds before.

I turned and ran back down the steps, slamming the heavy cellar door behind me and jammed it shut with a short beam I'd had left over from constructing the pulley system I'd installed for moving the bodies of the creatures I'd hoped to take down there.

I looked around the cellar in desperation, realising that I was the trapped one now. I was their prisoner now. Whether they came for me straight away or just waited, the end would be the same. Suddenly, I remembered, or thought I remembered, some sort of quote about there being no safer place than the tomb and realised that this cellar would be my tomb, one way or another.

What started out as safe places for me to discover just who, or what, these creatures, these women really were had turned into no safe place for me. I could hear them now, out beyond the cellar door. I didn't know how long that door would last, but when it was gone, then I would be gone too.

I checked the gun in my hand once again. No matter how many bullets I had, no matter how well I aimed, no matter how fast I could shoot, no matter how quickly I could reload, they would make sure that there would be at least one of them left after the last bullet had gone to make sure I would never interfere in their plans again.

I looked down at the gun as I heard the scratching at the barred door, heard the rough sibilance of their true voices as they schemed and plotted behind that thick wooden door. They could in a matter of minutes, rather than hours, rip apart even something that thick and sturdy in their eagerness to get at me.

Then, suddenly, up above me, a floorboard creaked, cracked and ripped as it was torn up. A brief flash of light from the room up above illuminated the gap, suddenly replaced by the dark shadow of a head peering into my refuge. I fired into the blackness of that face, hearing a snarl and the sudden thick plop of blood dripping through the opening. There were snarls and roars from up above and more of the floorboards ripped up. I emptied two clips into the open space above me, but it did nothing to quieten the frantic noises.

I reloaded the pistol with quick, nervously fumbling fingers.

Seconds later, Leanne dropped through the gap. She was still human, still naked, but with a dripping red line across the side of her scalp where one of my shots had obviously caught her.

I raised the gun, pointed it at her. Then I changed my mind, feeling the cold metal against my head and my finger trembling on the trigger. I need to use my other shaking hand to help hold the suddenly too-heavy pistol steady against my head. I had seen what happened to those they fed upon, I'd seen the woman I'd loved ripped and shredded, devoid of that essence of the human that these creatures feed upon to survive, to breed and to grow and I knew I could not let them do that to me.

She knew they had already won and so she smiled as she began to slough off the human form, there, in front of my eyes.

My finger tightened as I screwed up my eyes against what I knew was going to come....

As the tears found their way out of my tightly closed eyes, I swallowed hard, cursed my stupidity and the creatures, then squeezed the trig....

High-rise

[image error]

[….]

After the rehearsal, they adjourned to The Pit. Stan went off with Cathy and did whatever it was he did when he was running the place.

Matt seemed quiet and thoughtful, again.

'What's the matter?' Spike asked him.

'I'm just wondering what my parents will say when I tell them what I'm going to do.'

'They can't stop you though, can they?' Jenny said. 'We are all over eighteen, our own bosses.'

'It's not that simple though,' Matt said. 'It was bad enough when I said I didn't want to go to university.'

'I know what you mean,' Spike said earnestly as she reached for Jenny's hand. 'There seems to be this plan, this blueprint: school, university, good job, mortgage, wife, kids, retirement, grandchildren… death. Step out of that and… well, they just don't understand why I… why anyone, would want to. Any deviation from the accepted plan and it all spells disaster. The end of the world as they know it.'

'I can understand it, though,' Johnny said. Everyone turned to look at him. 'When you think of all the stuff our parents and their parents and so on, had to go through: wars, depressions, unemployment, no NHS and all that… I suppose a stable – even boring - life seemed like perfection to them.' Johnny shrugged and hid his face behind his glass, taking a long drink.

Everyone was silent again for a while. Jenny was the first to speak. 'So, do you agree with Matt's parents then, Johnny?'

'No.' Johnny said. 'I think that you ought to grab at - with both hands - any chance that comes your way. I'd rather regret doing something; take the risk of seeing it all go tits up, than to regret not doing something because I let the chance slip by me. But I can understand their cautious attitude, in a way - that's all. But, it's a middle-class way of looking at things, and I'm working-class. The working-class way is to grab it now, with both hands, before they notice and take it away.'

By the time The Pit closed, they were all pretty-well pissed. They staggered out into the dark night, heading for home. Pete, Matt and Johnny saw Jenny and Spike to their door, offered several helpful suggestions as to how the girls should spend the rest of the night, and then headed on up the road.

At the top of the hill were three blocks of flats, standing together like some giant's henge on the brow of the hill.

'Hang on,' Johnny said. 'We - my family - used to live in the middle one. Come on, I want to show you something.'

Matt and Pete were cautious, knowing they were out of place. But Johnny strolled in as if he owned the whole block. The lift to the top floor was slow and rickety.

Pete was more than relieved when the lift finally got up there and shuddered to a halt. He had regular nightmares about lifts that failed and trapped him.

Johnny led the others around the corner and up a small flight of steps to a locked door. Pete felt a shiver of relief run through him as he turned to go, but Johnny grinned and held up a key.

The wind was cold and strong. All Pete could see were stars and the low darker shadow of a high wall. He felt relieved to see the wall; his knees were already a bit shaky from the realisation that they were nineteen stories from the cold hard ground. Pete had always been terrified of heights. His reticence about leaving safety of the doorway meant the others were across the other side of the roof by the time he had gathered the courage to follow them.

'Oh shit! Shit! Shit!' Pete could not take another step. There was a sort of window in the wall. It was a long narrow strip of toughened glass, as tall as the five-and-a-half foot high wall. He could see the bright lights of the town far below distorted through the pebbled glass. He froze, unable to take another step closer to that window. He looked around. 'Fuck! Fuck! Fucking Fuck!'

Johnny was kneeling on top of the wall, pulling Matt up beside him. Matt scrambled up the wall and they stood together side by side on top of the wall, looking down. A moment later, they were both pissing over the edge.

Pete stepped back into the doorway and lit a cigarette, expecting - at any moment - to hear the screams as Matt and Johnny fell to their deaths. A short while later they were back inside, laughing and joking together.

Johnny looked into Pete's eyes. 'You should have come with us. There is nothing like the feeling that you are pissing on the entire fuckin' world.'

Pete shrugged, trying to appear casual. 'I didn't need one. Maybe next time,' he said and headed off towards the lifts.

'No, this way,' Johnny said. 'It's party time!'

'Wha…?' Pete shrugged, stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete floor, then followed Johnny and Matt.

For some reason he didn't quite understand, Pete didn't find the stairs as terrifying as the roof, or as scary as the lift. Despite the possibility of being able to look down and see the banisters curling down and down and down - like some graphic representation of vertigo - on one side, he felt no real fear. On the other side - the wall side - there were a couple of small windows on each landing, but Pete found he could get past these without feeling a need to glance out and terrify himself.

Johnny was pausing at each landing and opening the stair door, listening intently. They had to go down about half a dozen or so floors before Johnny found what he wanted. Even Pete could feel the throbbing music, from a flight of stairs above, when Johnny opened the door to that floor.

'Party time! Come on.' Johnny led the other two down the corridor towards the party. He stepped over an unconscious form slumped in the hallway, picked up the empty sherry bottle next to it, and banged on the door.

As the door opened, Johnny quickly herded Matt and Pete in, waving the sherry bottle in his other hand. 'Jim invited us,' he said to the bloke who was holding the door open. The bloke nodded vaguely as the three disappeared into the crowd.

'But it's bloody packed in there,' Pete said uncertainly. The other two ignored him and pushed their way in. Pete sighed and followed them.

They had to weave their way slowly - and delicately - through the crowd. Pete was not that keen on parties at the best of times, but this was rapidly approaching the party of his nightmares. After glancing away, at a semi-naked woman dancing on a table, he lost sight of Matt and Johnny in the crowd.

'Shit!' He turned and headed back towards the door.

There was a sudden unintelligible shout and the sound of breaking glass. The crowd between the door and Pete surged backwards, thrusting him through a door into a darkened room. He could hear the shouts of 'Fight!' over the music outside the room, then a couple of women screaming.

He stepped back further into the darkened room. He heard sounds behind him. Pete turned and saw several moving shapes silhouetted in the darkness. Despite his relative inexperience, he could still recognise the sounds of people fucking. But whether it was an orgy or a gang-bang, Pete couldn't tell in the darkness. He eased himself out of the room as slowly and as quietly as he could.

There was a smear of blood up the wall by the door. Next to it, a sobbing woman knelt on the floor trying to wipe blood off her hands with a blood-sodden handkerchief. Another drunken woman, who had not yet realised that her cigarette was slowly burning a hole in the shoulder of the distressed woman's dress, knelt next to her muttering slurred platitudes into her ear. For a moment, Pete almost stopped to tell them about the slowly rising smoke. But, after another glance at the blood-smeared wall, he changed his mind.

By the door into the main party room, some malodorous bloke with long hair and a shaggy unkempt beard tried to tell Pete something, grabbing his shoulder and rambling incoherently into his ear. Pete could feel the heat of sour breath on the side of his head as he nodded profoundly, clapped the man on the back, and then headed for the door.

Out in the corridor Pete thought about the stairs, but decided the lift might be - marginally - faster. He pressed the button and stood with his head pressed against the cool metal of the lift doors. Several minutes later, he heard a slow groaning rattle and through the tiny window, he could just make out the dark shadow of the lift's arrival.

The doors creaked open slowly. The snogging couple inside the lift disentangled themselves from each other before readjusting their clothing and stepping out of the lift. Pete squeezed past them and managed to thump the button that kept the wheezing doors open long enough for him to get into the lift.

'Er… excuse me?' Pete smiled nervously as the teenage boy and girl both stared at him.

'What?' The boy's hands were already curling into fists.

Pete ignored him and faced the girl. 'Are those yours?' He pointed to the discarded knickers on the floor of the lift.

'Oh, yeah,' she said without looking at him. She snatched them from the floor and shoved them into her pocket. 'Ta.'

'No problem.' Pete beamed at the boy and girl as the doors began to close.

'Pete! Hang on! For fuck's sake - hold the lift!' Johnny and Matt were racing down the narrow corridor. A bottle exploded against the wall above them, showering them both with glass. Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw the teenage couple quickly disappearing around the opposite corner of the corridor.

'Press the fuckin' button - quick!' Johnny said, falling through the door and pulling Matt in with him.

Pete jabbed frantically at the button. He could see a gang of men heading down the corridor, some carrying broken bottles, others with an ominous flash of metal in their hands.

The arthritically slow doors shuddered to a close seconds before the mob got to the lift. It shuddered again and slowly began to descend. Pete could hear the thumping as the gang took out their frustrations on the outside lift doors. The sound faded away as the lift descended and - presumably - the gang gave up and wandered back to the party.

Matt and Johnny sat on the floor of the lift, trying to get their breath back. They looked up at each other and laughed.

'Stupid cunt,' Johnny said to Matt.

'What happened?' Pete said, already half suspecting the answer.

'A girl,' Matt said. 'I was just talking to her, and this… this… fucking lunatic… just….'

'I saw it coming,' Johnny said. 'I just managed to grab him in time. Luckily, you still had the lift there. I wouldn't have fancied legging it down all them stairs with that mob after us.'

'It's just bloody ridiculous,' Matt said. 'We were only talking, about Woolworth's as it happened. That girl works there, and my sister had a Saturday job there for a while. It was just one of those coincidences that come up at parties. I couldn't believe that man - the way he reacted! All the time we were running down that corridor - it seemed bloody endless, like in a nightmare - I kept saying to myself: This can't be happening! This can't be happening!'

The lift stopped and they cautiously stepped out into the ground floor. Johnny checked around, but there was no sign of anyone from the party.

'I think it would be a good idea to call it a night,' Matt said. 'I suddenly sobered up back up there, and now all I want to do is go home.'

The other two sombrely nodded their agreement. There was a moment of awkward silence before they split up to go their separate ways.

The next day Matt left the band.

[….]

[Extract from Dance on Fire]