Bikini Beach Bloodbath

Jack Ashley and Joe “Show No” Mersey were speeding down the coast in a black top down Jeep, three days into a two week lam from work and any shred of responsibility. They were best friends, approaching their mid-forties and clinging to what looks they still possessed.

Joe turned the radio up full volume and sang with the oldies station: “Motorin’/ What’s your price for flight?” They were celebrating his most recent divorce, his third. Jack only had one under his belt. Between them they had three kids to accompany the four ex-wives. This trip was to relive former glory, to briefly recapture a moment of their youth they missed. They planned to party like they did in their twenties, if age allowed it, following less traveled paths and touring whatever dive bar along the highway drew their interest.

The trip, so far, had found tequila shots and a topless billiards contest in a little town called Casla. Jack got a hangover, Joe got a t-shirt proclaiming him a FREELANCE GYNECOLOGIST. In San Guerre del Bendita they met a “biker chick” named Lola Monroe whose claim to fame was blowing JFK before he shipped out to WWII. Seeing Joe’s t-shirt, she hit him up for a pro bono exam. Bets were made whether he would or would not. Whiskey fortified him as Lola removed her dentures and led him to a back room with a drippy smile. Afterward, when questioned, Joe would only say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” as Jack counted his money.

By the fifth day, Jack and Joe arrived at their ultimate destination: Baniki Bay, a small beach town that learned early to get tourist dollars by advertising themselves as Bikini Beach.

Baniki thrived on out-of-towners and their expendable cash. It was brimming with mom-and-pop shops, restaurants and the odd chain business. There were boat and jet ski rentals for fun in the summer sun, deep sea fishing, and any number of artisans crowding the streets and beaches to sell their crafts. The laws were lax on Bikini Beach, clothing optional, if at all, with ragers and keggers going all night during the height of the tourist season. Local law enforcement didn’t have a drunk tank, they had the beach. Everything was good as long as nobody was severely injured.

The bendable laws are what brought Tri-State Chemical to Bikini Beach, or Baniki Island more accurately. The island sat just offshore, far enough away from prying eyes but close enough for an easy commute. Tri-State donated generously to the town, which got it through the off season, and town officials ignored improperly disposed industrial waste. Tri-State took residence of the island from Longview Prison for the Criminally Insane. Lethal treatments of questionable legality, and body dumping, closed Longview once federal and state authorities learned of its practices. But none of those things were listed in the Chamber of Commerce’s brochures and they were expunged Bikini Beach’s history.

***

When Jack and Joe made it to Bikini Beach, Baniki Island was a dot of silhouette on the horizon thanks to the setting sun. Music blared from various venues while a band was strumming at one end of the beach near the cliffs. People were dancing and jamming, raising drinks to the tunes.

Jack parked the Jeep in the lot of Bikini Motor Inn, which set right on the beach. “Doesn’t look like anything has changed,” he said. Cars inched along the boulevard, throngs of people going from one good time to another. There was laughter, chatter, and a pervasive vibe of happiness and freedom— a groovy kind of spirit.

Joe scanned up and down the lane. “I wonder if that tattoo place is still here?”

“I count four just looking,” Jack said.

“No, don’t you remember? Agony and Ecstasy Tattoo and Body Piercing.”

“Oh, yeah. You were too afraid to go inside.”

“So were you,” Joe said.

Jack grimaced. “I’m not big on the agony part.”

They checked in, they got their room keys, 9 and 10, adjoining. They unpacked and refreshed to discard road grime. For dinner they sought the Gator Tail Seafood Shack, a place they had enjoyed years prior. They were happy to see it still a staple of the local cuisine, and that the waitresses still wore short-shorts and cut-off t-shirts.

After a feast of gator tails and coconut shrimp, the guys hit up Skeeter’s Bar for a couple of Coronas and an unflattering turn on the dance floor for Joe. It was there they met Janet and Ronnie, cousins and divorcées fresh from their thirties, on their way back to Baja from a family funeral with a couple of days to kill.

“So what do you do?” Janet asked Jack.

“Does it really matter?”

“No,” she said. “We’re not using our real names,” which sent her and Ronnie into rolls of laughter.

Joe said, “I wish we’d thought of that.”

Most personal talk ended there for the foursome, other than Joe’s last IRS audit. They talked in generalities, adult topics that would bore the predominantly younger crowd: paying bills, fine wine, expensive meals, cell phone overage charges, great works of literature, guilty pleasure movies, dream vacations in exotic locales, Joe’s next IRS audit. They cracked wise about the “poor, dumb kids” and pointed out which ones would be burned by their vacation hook-ups.

Once a couple of rounds had come and gone, the newly formed group made their way to the gathering on the beach. The band was playing fifties and sixties pop songs and the accents of the waves yawning on shore added a dose of heart to the performance. Jack and Janet slow danced to a slithery instrumental of “Sleep Walk” while Joe and Ronnie were half buried in the sand in each other’s arms. That’s when the earthquake hit.

***

As far as earthquakes go, this one was a sneeze. It didn’t register on the locals’ Richter scale. Shelves rattled, pictures fell, some nerves frayed. People clung to each other as police, paramedics, and firefighters arrived. Aftershocks were nonexistent. No buildings crumbled and neither did the earth open wide to swallow the town. No one was seriously injured and mass hysteria was avoided. Not even the rocks of the cliffs were disturbed. Within an hour and a half it was business as usual.

Under the water it was different.

The mass graves of barrels that Tri-State Chemical had discreetly dropped under the placid waters of Bikini Beach were disturbed. A large number of those barrels were cheaply made and improperly, even incompetently, sealed. They shifted beneath the waves and foam. Caps popped, sides split. Chemicals leaked and mingled, and while a slick surfaced, some compounds settled on the seafloor where other things rested long buried.

Those things woke. Those things stretched limbs, flexed fingers and jaws.

Those things gave up their dark burial sites and inched their way through the water to the morning rays that were breaking over Bikini Beach.

***

Jack woke up and checked his phone. A little after eight, no messages, no calls, battery at half life. Janet was asleep beside him, her long brunette hair fanning over the white slip of the pillow. The sheet covered her naked body and he admired the roundness of her hips. Next door, he heard an irritated Ronnie cussing at Joe’s snoring.

He got up and slipped on his underwear to fetch a Pepsi from the mini fridge. He peeked out the curtain of the patio doors as he drank. People were already sunning on the beach and swimming. Gulls darted a cloudless sky as the sun was gearing up for a scorcher.

Janet woke. Sitting up to stretch, the sheet fell below the full volume of her breasts. Her large dark nipples were hard in the air conditioned coolness. Jack’s dick twitched in matted pubes at the sight of her.

“Please tell me you have coffee,” she said.

“No,” he said, adjusting his beginning stiffness. “Joe’s the coffee drinker.”

A loud snore like a landslide came from the closed adjoining door. It was followed by Ronnie, “For shit’s sake…”

“I’ll pass,” Janet said.

Jack put his drink on the nightstand. He laid beside her, on top of the covers. Hands behind his head, ankles crossed, the head of his cock poked through the fly of his tented boxers.

Janet snuggled partially atop him. Her breasts were cool when they touched him. She spread her leg over him, nudging her knee against his erection. She teased her nipple with a long pink fingernail. “I can pass on the coffee, for now,” she said, biting Jack’s nipple hard enough to make him wince.

He kissed her, feeling kind of silly for smiling so big. Janet threw her head back as Jack kissed her neck and traced his teeth down her throat. When she guided his hand between her legs, he found her fevered and wet. Before he could probe too deeply, she pulled his hand to her face and smeared his moist fingers across her mouth.

Jack crawled out of his shorts and forced her flat. He partedd her legs with his own. She gnawed at his chest as he traced his cock along the folds of her pussy. A small yelp escaped her lips when he slapped it against her clit.

Janet pulled his head down to hers. Her breath in his ear wrung his spine.

Her heat intensified as he patiently entered her inch by inch. The ache in his balls threatened to explode inside her as his thrusting became feral. Her nails raked his back as she tried to suppress her moans and screams. But she did scream as she clenched his pounding cock, her cries filling Jack’s ears and shaking his bones while her body trembled and shook beneath him.

Jack yelled as he came inside her with a stabbing fury. He kept going, slick and slippery between her legs, plunging as deep as he could, urged on by every tense twitch of Janet’s writhing body, by each moan and prayerful breath.

His hips slowed even though her body still gripped him tight. Utterly spent, he licked the sweat from between her breasts before rolling off her.

Janet dipped her fingers from where their juices mingled and closed her legs around her hand. “I’m throbbing…”

“I’m dying…” he replied.

She eyed his erection still at full salute. She grabbed it and yanked it like a gearshift, and he jerked from the sensitivity and laughed. She licked him from his asshole to the head of his dick. She rolled his balls in her mouth, lapping up anything that tasted like sweat and cum.

With a fistful of hair he guided her down his dick. Her throat was as scorching as her gash. The clouds of desire thinned in his head and he wondered how she could still be screaming and choking on him at the same time. He let go her hair and she came up for air, teary eyes and a big grin dangling a thick cord of spit.

“What’s wrong?” Janet asked, following him as he abruptly left the bed.

“You hear that?” he asked, pushing the curtains apart.

She did. Screams. Bloodcurdling screams. Pleas for help.

Jack stared out at the unfolding commotion on the beach.

“What in the actual fuck?”

***

When Roger Banks, the mayor of Baniki Bay, answered his cell phone, he listened intently to the harried explanation being blurted into his ear. His response was an irritated, “Not again…”

When Chief of Police Lacretia Sullivan received her reports from the beach, she simply asked, “How many this time?”

When Mayor Banks spoke with Chief Sullivan, she didn’t mince words.

“We’re fucked. I’m en route, but there’s no containing this one, Roger. We’re being butt fucked with a live chainsaw on this one. It’s all up in our asses. Pictures, videos. I’m sure this shit’s gonna be plastered on the web. Some little fuckhead is probably live streaming on some bullshit something right now.”

“Sweet Italian Jesus,” Banks said.

Sullivan disconnected the call. She never could stomach a grown man crying.

***

Jack pulled on his jeans and a pair of shoes. From a duffel bag in the closet, he removed the gun case in which rested his Glock 22.

“What is all this?” Janet asked, standing at the window naked and glistening.

Jack chambered a round and released the safety. “I don’t know.” He had an urge to kiss her neck, to bite her ass or smack it, but there’d be time for all that later. At least he hoped.

He pounded on the connecting door. “We got a situation,” he said through it.

“You got a fucking gun?” Janet asked.

“Cop.”

“You looked like one…”

The door opened. Ronnie was mostly dressed, but her hair was disheveled with bags under her eyes. Joe, in tighty-whities and a FREELANCE GYNECOLOGIST shirt, already had his Glock locked and loaded. “What’s up?” he said.

“Not sure,” Jack replied. “Lock the doors,” he told Janet and Ronnie, before charging outside.

***

Five things had crawled from the waters. The early beach-goers had assumed junk and seaweed had washed ashore. Then the things stood on two legs, like men, and walked, like drunks, toward the sun addicts. The things reached with arms. Grabbing a burly jock who wore a too form-fitting speedo, one of the things bit into his neck with a chomping mouth. The other four things lunged for stunned sunbathers, and those that couldn’t grab a meal dined with the creatures who were more successful.

When Jack and Joe came running onto the beach, the things had taken down three victims. Joe tried stopping a busty girl that was running by with a tit flopped out of her bikini. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

“Terrorists!” she shrieked, not tarrying as she ran straight by.

“Did you see that titty?” Joe asked Jack.

“Couldn’t miss it,” Jack replied, continuing toward the chaos.

Friends of the burly jock beat at the creature eating him. Another of the soggy monsters fell on them. They thought they had that thing beat down until it rose and plunged a hand through one of their tight, tanned stomachs.

Joe fired two rounds into a creature presently munching on a woman, face deep in her guts. The bullets hit the back of its head and it lay motionless, buried in a mound of intestines.

Jack aimed for the heads of the other two eating the jocks. One bullet hit a jock in the chest as he tried to dodge grabbing hands. He fell screaming, staring up at the rotted maw as it closed over his face. Jack’s next shots finished both the creature and the doomed jock.

“Fucking zombies…” Joe said, scratching his balls.

Jack swiveled his neck until it popped. Meanwhile, the water had spit two more creatures out onto the beach in search of a flesh buffet.

“Who’d have thought, after almost thirty years,” he said, “this shit would happen to us, here, again?”

“Wasn’t in my crystal ball,” Joe replied, raising his gun to pop the head of one the waterlogged bastards. “I ain’t giving this place a third chance though, that’s for sure!”

“To old times then,” Jack said with a smirk.

Guns raised in unison, together they closed in on their targets.

Superhero With a Bad Back

I take another hit because I can’t throw no more punches. I mean, I haven’t officially retired or anything, but I will never again be called back into action. Of this much I am certain.

Once a week, some ungrateful civic servant comes and checks on me. She asks some questions and ticks some boxes. When she leaves I pick off the gum she sticks under the coffee table, put it in a plastic baggie and place it in the fridge. I don’t know what I plan to do with the evidence, confront her maybe?

Someday…

Anyway, I can’t fly like I used to anymore, but sometimes hookers will sleep with me for free if I promise I will take them up for a cruise. I tell them to get on my back and then I jump off the bed, then we float about a foot or so off the floor. In all honesty, the jumping (and I guess the sex) has taken its toll on me.

When they discover that I am impotent all round, they leave all pissed off, unfulfilled by a man once again.

Most of the week is spent on the couch or in bed on some relaxants or, when I’m in the mood, some prescription weed. No one hassles me about it, enough of my neighbours are old enough to remember what I did for the city, but the kids are becoming a concern.

They’ll be starting to outnumber this generation soon.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and die (if I can) before I’m completely out of my stash.

I look out from my sixth floor window. Should I just go ahead and jump?

It seems I don’t have that much of a choice, as none of mankind’s weapons have ever worked against me. In the old days, falling would be nothing, but I’m old now, so who knows..?

I’m relaxed about it, y’know? I’ll let gravity do its thing and maybe we’ll meet in mutual agreement.

The window opens, I exit and hover.

Scales & Fur

The window was cracked; spirals dancing like a spider’s web singing. That’s when I knew. I reached for the door, found it standing open a hair’s breadth. The darkness radiating from inside was heavy, hot, the rank breath from something waiting, something awful just biding its time.

With the toes of my scuffed boots I pushed the door in. It swung on creaking hinges and met something that impeded its progress about halfway open. I squinted into the darkness.

“Can’t see shit,” I said.

I swear I could almost feel the room breath, a sucking in of anticipation, an electricity bordering on painful.

I put one foot in front of the other with careful hesitancy but it still felt every bit the mistake it was.

“Hello,” I called.

I could hear the trembles in my voice and gritted my teeth.

“Anybody home?”

I knew there was but there was no answer.

Four steps inside the door, I stopped, held myself erect, muscles singing in rigidity, waiting for my eyes to adjust. A slithering gripped the room. I felt like the walls were twisting, gripping a little closer in the space around me.

I debated the merits of calling out that I wasn’t the police, that I was with the Homeless Youth Outreach Program but saw junkie teenage sneers and snickers and bit my tongue.

I could make out the dim shapes of things around me: a couch against the wall furthest away, a coffee table near it, a television sitting directly on the floor to my left. There was a gaping, rectangular hole to my right signifying a door to another room.

“Hey,” I called.

I made my voice as sharp and as cutting as I could, hoping to startle whoever (or whatever) into making a noise and revealing themselves.

Nothing.

I walked over to the couch and, with shaking hands and tingling fingers, reached down to pat the cushions to make sure nothing was lying in wait there.

God did I wish I had a flashlight or a cellphone or a lighter but the only flashlight I owned sat in the junk drawer of my little place in Ferndale, the city was too broke to supply cellphones and I quit smoking three years ago.

The cushions were stale, dusty coated and my fingers came away somewhat sticky but not in a wet way. I wiped them on my pants and made my way to the door, where a darker darkness yawned out.

That’s when I remembered the door. It hadn’t opened all the way.

Stupid. Stupid to forget something as glaringly obvious, right?

I spun on my heels and that’s when it happened. Happened as quick as they say it happens. Everything changed.

Blinding light, flashes and stars and noise, erupted from all around me. The room tightened its grip to a choking. I saw nothing save the light.

“Welcome,” it said.

I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t see. My ears felt plugged with barbed cotton. Panic sunk in like a searing knife.

I flung my arms wildly, connected with nothing, but kept swinging.

“Help,” I tried to scream. “God, help me.”

No sound escaped my lips.

My head began to spin and the light flickered like fading afternoon sunlight on rippling water.

I’m going to pass out, I realized.

I did but I caught a fleeting glance of the room before the lights went out. The walls were scaled, red and coiling. The floor was not carpeted. It was fur-covered. I saw it growing in lurid detail as I fell.

***

Time is a strange thing. It comes in leaps and bounds. It sticks with clumpy, sap-like tenacity, refusing to budge. It does what it does.

I don’t know how long I was out. When I woke the first thing I realized was that I couldn’t see. All was dark again. The next thing I realized was that I was bound, completely engulfed in fur. Little bristles of hair lined my body as snug as any coat I’d ever worn.

My breath was hot and close against my face bringing sweat to my pores and tears to my eyes. I could breath though.

“Wha–”

Motion enwrapped me. The fur moved all around me. I had to close my eyes as the hair poked and stabbed in its coiling. Whatever it was, it moved from right to left, slowly unfurling itself.

I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see. My body shook and I couldn’t stop it.

Why? Why did I have to choose this house? Of all the abandoned, derelict houses on the block–shit, in Detroit, for that matter–I had to go and choosethisone.

I steeled myself as best I could and slapped my eyes open.

Darkness.

I blinked and blinked and blinked but everything remained dark. I kept my eyes open and waited.

Slowly, painfully slowly, time as globbed sap, my eyes adjusted and I saw that I was in the same room. I was on the floor. I could make out the couch against the wall, the coffee table near it and the television to my left.

Move, I told myself. Get up. Move.

I jerked my hands into fists, feeling the hairy carpet under my arms. I wiggled my toes inside my boots and found them working too. I sucked in my gut and threw myself forward, the first sit-up I’d done since elementary school.

“Ok,” I said, huffing for breath. “Ok.”

I looked around. The front door, the one I’d come in through, was nowhere to be seen.

Must be shut, I thought. Shit.

I looked for its outline behind me but could see nothing. I got to my feet, stopping with my hands on my knees as the room swayed with my light-headedness, then made my way to where the front door of the house should’ve been.

It wasn’t there.

Nothing but a wall. I ran my sweating hands along it, searching for doortrim, a knob, the eery pane of glass I saw from the outside, a crack, something. My hands found nothing. Just the smooth but somehow lumpy-in-exact-patterns wall.

Red scales flashed in my mind.

I jerked my hands away and nearly tripped over my feet stepping backwards.

Window. There must be a window. You can leave through a window.

I forced myself to step back to the wall and place my hands back on it. I traced the largest loops my arms would allow, praying with each inch that my fingers found glass. I didn’t care if I lost a hunk of my finger in the process. I just wanted out.

I followed the wall towards the corner, taking half-steps as my hands searched. I was nearly to the corner, which I could just make out in the murk, when a sharp bark of pain leapt up from my right shin. I stumbled over something and hit the ground, barely stopping my face from smashing into the weird, furry carpet with my right arm.

I kicked my feet wildly and they struck something. It felt insubstantial, flimsy even. I sat still, waiting for my chest to quit heaving and squinting into the darkness at whatever it was that I’d kicked.

The television.

I saw the outline of it finally and laughed a little. It was a nervous thing, that laughter. It wasn’t forced but I could hear the tremble in it and knew it wouldn’t take much more to push me over the breaking point.

“Just the television,” I said, pulling myself up to all-fours. I crawled over to the television and ran my fingers along the top. It was smooth and cold.

There must cable cords in the thing, I thought. If there’s no goddamn window in this fucked up house, I’ll just pull the damn wall out where the cable comes in.

I moved to the backside of the tv, still on my hands and knees, and started feeling up the wall. My hands found nothing but the oddly lumpy surface.

“The fuck?”

I turned back to the tv and moved my fumbling hands along the backside of it. It was completely smooth. Not a port or cord to be found.

Time, bounding back to motion, reared its head. The television flashed into life. Light flooded the room on the other side of the tv. The couch and coffee table blossomed into view. I saw the wall behind to, indeed, be red and lined with scales. The carpet was unlike any carpet I had ever seen in my life. It was a dingy, off-white fur that shimmered and bristled in places like a cat’s arching back.

I felt paralyzed. I was behind the tv. I felt no cord, not even a power cord, but the television was on and beaming. I forced myself to crawl around and see what it was showing.

The brightness was nearly too much. My eyes narrowed into slits and it took a few moments to adjust to the light.

“What the–”

The screen was a negative image of the house from the outside. The night sky was alive with a matte light and the house was lined in shadows and darkness. It looked ghostly, pale but shimmering.

My mouth hung open and I felt my breath quickening.

I watched as the shape of a portly man came into the lower left-hand side of the screen. He lifted one leg over the rickety fence, struggled for balance awkwardly, then swung the other leg up and over. The man readjusted his pants, picked a wedgie from his ass, then started up the overgrown yard towards the looming house.

“Oh god,” I whispered.

I watched the man pause before mounting the steps to the porch.

The television screen began a slow but steady zooming in at this point. The portly man looked around the porch, walked to both sides searching for a window but finding none, returned to the door and hesitated.

The screen was a closeup of the back of the man’s head now, standing at exactly the same level as the man.

“Oh jesus.”

The man reached for the knob but stopped short. His shoulders hunched and I watched as a shiver ran up the length of his spine. The man felt somebody behind him. The man swung around and I stared in open-mouthed horror at my own wide-eyed, sweating face in negative on the television screen.

I flung myself away from the television. I scrambled backwards and bashed against the coffee table.

“What?” I sputtered. “What is happening?”

I struggled against the coffee table but it backed against the couch and moved no further.

My eyes on the television screen scanned right and left but saw nothing. Did not see whatever it was that was filming me directly in front of me like the eyes of some invisible monster. I watched as I turned around and noticed the cracked window on the door. I watched as I noticed that the door was open. I watched as I opened the door with my foot.

Don’t go in, my mind screamed.

But I was already inside.

“What is happening?”

I felt the ground under me move. It jostled me, just a little at first, then with a power that cowered me. It lifted me up and sat me on the couch. I did not resist. I curled myself in closer, brought my knees to my chest.

The television was just light now. I was nowhere to be seen. The house wasn’t in view either. The screen vibrated with a light that danced like a candle in a gentle breeze.

It was captivating. I couldn’t look away even though it felt like the room was circling me, closing in.

I’m not sure when I noticed it, it must’ve been happening for a while, growing in intensity, slowly, until it was damn near deafening: a hissing, like a gigantic teakettle stuck at just the moment before it howls. A shaking like the kettle’s top bubbling on scalding water, everywhere and, for the moment, unseen.

It gave me the distraction to pull my eyes from the television set.

I sucked in breath and found no exclamation profound enough to utter. The room was teeming with movement. Hundreds, thousands probably, of strands of the wall, red and scaly, were slithering, coiling, just a few feet away. The room was wrapping itself around me with a strength of such finality there was nothing to do but let go.

***

I could’ve been anything. That’s what I like to believe. I say it, well I guess I don’t say anything anymore, I have no real voice, in disgust and regret. I could’ve been safe somewhere in an airconditioned, cubicled office, crunching numbers for a chain of dry cleaners. I could’ve been working the door at one of the scuzzy clubs in Greektown. Shit, I could’ve spent a lifetime passing out Gatorade to the Pistons.

But no, I had to be the do-gooder. I had to be the guy who thought he could make a difference. Shit. I like to think a lot about the Homeless Youth Outreach Program now. Was it even really a thing? When they came flyering up Wayne State, I thought they were about the greatest thing I could imagine. College educated helpers swooping down from their rising place in the social stratum to help the kids on the streets, the kids sleeping behind the tagged dumpsters downtown, the kids sleeping in the hundreds of empty shells of businesses and factories, the kids sleeping in the thousands of derelict, abandoned houses sprawled for miles and miles. I wonder how many houses sat silently laughing like this one, waiting, biding its time, hungry.

The turnover rate was astounding. They had to tell me. I took it with a grain of salt. I was young, eager, knew I wouldn’t burn out because I was going to make it happen. I was going to be a constant for these kids in a world of inconsistency.

Shit.

This house. That’s all there is now. Me, the coffee table, the couch, the fur, the walls and the television. Red scales and fur and light. There is no time, time in globs or time as a whip. I am the bug in amber. I am in a place, seconds like centuries with teeth, without end.

I thought there’d be heaven or, a remote possibility, hell but there’s nothing. I’m not sure if it’s the house, taking whatever essence, call it core or soul or being, and holding it over my head, trapping me here, or if there just isn’t anything else. My thoughts twist around these ideas like the “walls” of this place, shifting in a circle never ending, grinding to what seems like a stop only to shift, as if for comfort, then to pick up right where it left off. Round and round and round it goes.

It doesn’t speak to me. It doesn’t even really acknowledge that I’m here. It keeps me, forgotten, unattended, neglected, like a nest egg, some dragon’s fortune that it has no use for but won’t give up.

I know it’s terrible but I hope somebody from the Blight Commision makes their way here. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it’ll trade me out for someone new, someone alive. There’s nobody else here but me so it’s not hoarding.

I just sit and watch the television hoping for flickers of life and a shot of somebody that isn’t me coming up the overgrown yard to the door with the spider-webbed window.

And From the Heads of Babes

Dr. Emanuel Kokoschka had long since been denounced as a crackpot and a quack but the controversy surrounding reports of his latest research was quite unlike anything I’d ever seen in all my years of scientific journalism. He welcomed me at the iron shutters of his latest clinic (in reality an industrial unit on the outskirts of Tipton) and ushered me into his office. We walked past lines of iron shelving that ran the length of the warehouse, cardboard boxes containing babies and toddlers of various ages, some of them crying, some babbling incoherently.

His office was bare apart from a plastic garden chair, an aluminum desk, a large throne-like chair of leather and polished gold, and a tatty Sunday Sport calendar from 1992, perhaps leftover from his “clinic’s” previous occupants. He bid me sit on the plastic chair as he eased himself into his throne.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “My work into the development of human consciousness has been most enlightening, raising questions about the most fundamental aspects of the nature of human awareness.”

He sat back in his throne, clearly relishing this opportunity to explain his work in detail. “For you see, awareness is simply the ability to attend selectively among a range of perceived stimuli and then combine and hold these attended items in a short-term memory store. By placing babies in sensory deprivation tanks directly from birth, I found that prodding them with pointy sticks elicited a reaction that clearly demonstrated an awareness that pointy sticks were bad and so something to be avoided.”

I stopped scribbling in my notebook, shocked.

“So awareness can therefore be found in solitary animals and is not an aspect of social intelligence. I had proven that non-conscious babies may be aware of their surroundings. However, awareness of inner body states is surely unique to conscious beasts.”

He sat forward and leaned on his desk. “So I attempted to determine how this awareness of the inner body state would be affected by manipulating the outer environment. One group I kept in their sensory deprivation tanks, another group were subjected to overwhelming external stimuli – constant flashing lights, Skrillex at 120 decibels and the like – while another had their subjective awareness distorted through round the clock administration of LSD. Four years later and the results are overwhelmingly conclusive. Idiots. Absolute idiots, the lot of them!”

He beamed at me, obviously proud of what he considered his ground-breaking research. “But then, there is the question of the nature of language in human consciousness. Freud argued that for an idea to become conscious it needs to be attached to language and language learning involves learning associations between objects and words. I tested this hypothesis by placing the little tykes in a controlled environment and then showing them objects before repeating random words. So I would show them a banana and say, “Dongle,” or give them a doll and say, “Binoculars,” for example.”

The door swung open and a young boy of around four years of age, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and only an old bin liner around his loins, scampered in and rushed to Kokoschka. He looked up imploringly as he tugged at Kokoschka’s stained, white coat. “Kipper jam shot fizz tea!”

“Yes, yes. Be quiet now.” He paused. “They are annoying, aren’t they?” Kokoschka patted the child on the head. “And while they did indeed show a certain level of consciousness, I was faced with the issue of human language acquisition itself. In a social milieu a child wants to communicate social information and tries to talk because it is so useful in the social environment. It is this drive that elevated humans, who are indeed fully conscious, from apes, who demonstrate only awareness. So by placing these children together in a room, I observed how being with the other children affected their development of language.”

I sat in stunned silence but Kokoschka, now fully enthused in being able to describe his research to someone else continued. “And absolute gibberish it was; complete cacophony. But still, that brings me to the latest stage of my research, which is undoubtedly the most exciting.”

I was so stunned by his catalogue of atrocities that I could barely croak out a response.

“For you see, it is probable that consciousness is crucially dependent upon neural circuits located in dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex – the upper-outer lobes of the front of the dominant, language-containing, hemisphere – for this is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. So my current research involves opening up their little noggins and applying powerful electrical current to the various parts of their exposed brains.”

The frightened child continued to tug at his coat. “Fob win nostril courgette,” it whined before starting to wail.

“So…” I gasped. “What… what have you discovered?”

“Well, very strong findings! Very strong! Groundbreaking! They don’t like it. They don’t like it all. Do you, poppet?”

The child continued to cry, as rain started to pelt against the corrugated iron roof.

I Awoke With My Face in the Dirt

I awoke with my face in the dirt, aching beneath a pile of dead fish, tin cans and candy wrappers.

I struggled up into sitting position and wiped the grunge off my face. It was cold by the shore that night, and the fog covered everything in sight. I could just barely make out some dead hedges in the hazy darkness behind me, but I could only see about ten meters or so down the misty beach. The waves came in black, glistening like oil in the moonlight.

The moon was a shy one that night, only occasionally peeking out from behind the clouds. Illuminated by this meagre light, I espied a murder of crows feasting on what appeared to be a pile of dead fish near the water’s edge.

I had no recollection of how I had gotten there, where I had come from, or even who I was.

Standing up, I decided to check myself over for identification, finding nothing in the pockets of my ripped, soiled shorts. My only other article of clothing was a running shoe about two sizes too large, and, judging from the pain in my foot, there was evidently something else inside it.

Kicking off the shoe and shaking it out, I was surprised to see two gold coins fall out onto the ground before me. They appeared to be quite old and worn with no discernible markings.

Still covered in fish guts and assorted other beach debris, half naked and freezing with no recollection of anything, I attempted to assess my situation. My only assets being a pair of torn shorts, an ill-fitting shoe, and a couple of strange gold coins, I concluded that I should probably get on the move.

I was sore as hell as I made my way down the shore, stumbling off to god knew where.

Passing the crows from before, I made a grisly discovery – what they were feasting on was not dead fish at all, but rather the remains of something human, judging by its bones. I quickly lurched on by, relieved that at least it hadn’t been me.

It was then I caught a glimpse of something in the distance, a shrouded figure I thought, but at this point I couldn’t trust anything, least of all my senses. The one thing I was sure of was that I’d prefer not to meet the same fate as my unlucky friend I’d passed along the way.

Eventually I came upon the cloaked man. There he stood beside his boat, a single long oar laid across its gunnel. I couldn’t see his face beneath his dark hood.

As I approached, he stretched out a long, skeletal hand as if to receive something. I assumed he didn’t want my shoe or my shorts, and so I gave him the coins instead, watching as they melted into the night.

I don’t recall much after that.

Murderers I Have Known

The first time I see Lucius Lamont he is wearing a nylon stalking mask and a pair of greasy jeans. There is a snail-trail of fresh semen down his right leg. At best, he looks like Tailgunner centrefold material on a particularly bad month. At worst, he looks like the kind of guy who advertises his services at the back of the magazine, and ends up handcuffing you to a radiator and stealing your wallet. Hell, what do I know? I only buy it for the fucking articles…

My claw hammer craters his nylon-sheathed skull as he opens the door, and I bundle him into the dingy hallway, away from the prying eyes of the other sheltered accommodation shit-bags. The sagging floorboards feel as soft as shit beneath my boots. I kick him down the dank passage and he moans like a fat hooker, curling into a foetal ball on the exposed wood.

I don’t see the switchblade until it is wedged between my ribs, turning my sweaty t-shirt the colour of cheap lipstick. He laughs, but through the mangled bone and fabric it sounds like someone wanking into a verruca sock. Me? I don’t have too much to fucking laugh about…

***

Four days earlier.

The sky above the Dirty Lemon was the colour of diseased lungs. Fat clouds swirled above the pub, and the bronchial sky erupted as I pushed through the double-doors – bullets of rain thudding into the wheelchair ramp behind me.

Remy Cornish was sat adjacent to the cigarette machine, perched awkwardly on his mid-range mobility scooter. He chose the meeting place – the only pub in Paignton with a ramp – but it was no hardship on my part – I was coming here anyway…

I ordered a pint of Kronenbourg from Spacey Tracey and sat down opposite Remy. A thick, pissy stench hung in the air above him, and even the pub’s cigarette fug couldn’t mask it. Presumably showering has been a problem since Franco Moretti took his fucking kneecaps…

He made half-hearted speech-marks in the air with his sausage-like fingers as he told me that his “niece” Claudette was missing. Wanted me to find her. He passed me a photograph. It was a typical small-town glamour shot: badly lit and barely legal. She was a toothy brunette with small, uneven breasts. She didn’t so much have blowjob lips as gob-job gums. I felt my cock twitch, took Remy’s money and finished my pint. In that order.

***

I didn’t find Remy’s “niece” – the harbour master did. Wedged behind a dumpster that was overflowing with fish guts. The Herald Express nicknamed the killer ‘The Cartographer’, because he carefully wrapped each one of his victims’ bodies in old maps. Claudette was the fourth victim. She even looked pretty in the autopsy photo. No tattoos. No piercings. No life in her dead eyes. She had been wrapped in a map of Paignton; her spine was very slightly curved – just like Hyde Road.

I tried to give Remy his money back, but he decided to renegotiate our contract instead. Find the motherfucker responsible and deliver him to his portakabin up at Paignton Yards. His bloodshot eyes were so red-raw that they look like flesh-wounds. I nodded and slipped the money back into my jacket pocket. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

***

The lead landed right in my lap, just like a cracked-out lap-dancer…

I met David Cummings outside Foxy Booze. He was wearing a denim jacket with a sheepskin collar. He had the word ‘Mum’ tattooed across his throat. It looked new. And infected.

He chuckled when he saw me.

“I heard you died.”

“You look disappointed.”

He laughed even louder.

He smoked two high-tar cigarettes in quick succession as he spilled the beans. Said he was in the cop-shop being processed for affray – he had been caught on CCTV beating a man with the metal bar from a dumbbell – when he heard the story.

While he was in the holding tank a guy named Lucius Lamont was cut loose due to a lack of evidence. The desk sergeants – Benson and Hedges – had been drinking brandy, and blabbed to Cummings that the skinny prick re-lacing his shoes in the police station lobby was the fucking Cartographer.

***

When I rip off his nylon mask, I see that Lucius has grey hair shaved to stubble and a few pubic-looking beard hairs along his crooked jaw. He is skinny like a stray dog, and it is hard to believe that a man so frail could be responsible for those strangled, mangled bodies.

He glares at me through his left eye – his crumpled right eye socket is already matted with dark, drying blood. He grins nastily, as I probe the knife-wound in my gut.

“You’re so full of doubt I can fucking smell it,” he lisps.

I shrug. The only thing I can smell is the wet stink of shit and blood.

“Is there another girl in the house?”

He shrugs.

“If you move I will kill you, you know that, don’t you?”

He shrugs again.

“I’m not afraid. Death is something that happens to other people.”

I trudge out of the room, checking the rest of the house as quickly as possible. Inside the third room I try is a teenage girl. She has been handcuffed to the rusty iron headboard. A stack of mouldy looking ordinance survey maps have been stacked neatly on the bedside table beside her.

She screams silently when she sees me, eyes pleading. Her left eye-socket has been broken and a single bloody tear slides down her badly bruised cheek.

I place my blood-soaked hammer on the floor and hold my hands up, trying to make myself look as unthreatening as possible.

I rip the parcel tape off her mouth, and remove the stained Y-fronts that have been wedged inside her mouth.

“Wh-wh-who are you?”

I consider answering, but grunt instead. Then I turn sharply and stomp back towards the lounge.

Lamont has replaced the nylon mask, but removed his filthy jeans. He is slumped against the wall, trying to masturbate with bloody fingers.

I weigh the gore-streaked hammer in my left hand, holding my pulsing guts in with my right. I swap hands and the hammer feels blood-slick against my palm.

I raise it high above my head, hoping that I don’t kill him – mainly because Remy will want his fucking money back…

He looks up at me expectantly, but doesn’t bother to stop playing with himself.

Crunch.

Fuck it.

Death is something that happens to other people…

Proper Kicks

I’m lying down, watching my prick wilting, fingerwalking my hand down to scratch at my pubes. She’s on her back, legs pulled up, facing the headboard. Eyes at half-mast, but she always looks like that, a bored teenager in an adult’s body. Clicking away on her phone, me still breathing hard. The only sounds in the world.

She puts her phone down and wrestles herself up on her elbows. Her eyes find the ashtray on the bedside table, and she groans and leans forward to grab it. While she’s sparking a good-sized roach, I swing my feet over the side towards the other table where my shit is. There’s maybe sixty milligrams of Percocet ground up on a torn magazine cover, and five more tens still to go. She passes the joint and blows a cloud of smoke that surrounds my head. I take in a lungful and hold while I break out two lines with an old credit card.

It’s a proper kick, what an old friend from school called a Perc shotty—take a hit of weed and do a bump. I’m lightheaded from holding my breath, and now the pill hits my brain along with the bud. I fall back into her lap, smashed and grinning like a spastic. She smacks my forehead and gives herself a kick.

“Silly little boy.”

Her eyes always tear up when she snorts shit. I first noticed it watching her do a bump with black eyeliner on. For some reason it got me all hot and bothered. Maybe next time I’ll give her the makeup and put a choke chain on her. God knows she’d get into it.

I love watching her smoke. One eye closed like a wink, sucking it down so slow and rolling it around in her mouth, digesting it, drooling it out. The same way she sucks cock. My eyes wander to the tattoo on the meat of her thigh, an Oriental dragon crawling up towards her prize. I’m sure she doesn’t know shit about Oriental mystical whoosits. Silly bitch. I love her.

Christ, I could live in this lap. It’s something you see a lot in the city—scrawnyass man with a fat girl. It’s that cushion, that tender loving care you can only feel when you’re pressed up against all that warm flesh, and when you fuck you can watch her whole body ripple, see that small patch of zits bounce around on her funhouse ass. I think it’s some misplaced maternal shit. Gimme something to squeeze up against on a cold day. A good solid ride.

“We should get a bounce house.”

She coughs and sticks the joint between my lips. “What?”

“Yeeeaaaaah,” I say, stretching the word out with my smoke. “One a those big inflatable bitches that kids jump around in.”

She lights two cigarettes and gives me one and I drag deep, arching my back to open my lungs.

“Why a bounce house?”

“Think about it.” I draw a picture in the air. “Fuckin’ in one a those things.” I giggle. I’ve always hated the sound of my laughter, too high pitched like a kid’s. And I can never control a laugh.

“Shit,” she says, “we could get one an’ charge people to fuck in it.”

“You’re a genius, babe. I’m picturing it now—evening with the sun going down, us stepping out into the twilight, fishbowling and fucking in a bounce house. Then we put up a sign on the sidewalk, Open For Business. Ten bucks a throw, two-for-one Fridays and Saturdays. Group discounts. Maybe even make enough to hire some poor kid to clean up the spunk in between customers.”

“You’re a motherfuckin visionary,” she says.

“What can I say?”

“Shit.” She slaps my shoulder. “I saw one a those, on that street by the Big Y.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, some kid’s party I guess.”

“Is it still there?”

Her eyes go distant for a moment, computing. When she’s stoned like this, you can look in her eyes and see the machinery at work.

“I think I saw it this morning. So yeah, could be.”

I’m picturing it now.

I take the magazine and divvy up the lines. She might be the host, but it’s my shit and I’m doing the cutting. The powder burns my sinuses and I snort it back and run a finger under my nostril. A blob of mucus comes away thick with medicine, and before I can move she’s got her mouth on my digit, milking up every grain. Later, I think I’ll put some on my dick.

When she’s got her line up and away towards her brain, I slide off the bed and find my clothes.

“What’s up,” she says. I’m pulling my boxers on and grabbing a stained undershirt.

“Get your clothes on, babe.”

Her eyes are so pretty, squinty and red but bright, too. There’s still some real, untarnished beauty in there. Like, I wanna fuck her eyes.

“We goin’ somewhere?”

“Let’s go get us a bounce house.”

 

Overheard in the Coffeehouses of Sucky Parallel Universes

Do you think there’s any chance I don’t have to be your maid of honor? Turns out they found someone in need of a kidney near me, and I’m a match. I either have to go to the hospital by Friday and let them take a kidney, or make some equivalent monetary contribution. So if I didn’t have to pay for my dress for your wedding—o-of course we’re best friends! Don’t cry! Forget I said anything. Who needs two kidneys, really?

***

I just got the message! As of five minutes ago, I’m a crypto-billionaire. After lunch I’m gonna march right in there and tell my boss to—oh wait, new message. I’m broke! They’re gonna foreclose on my house by the end of the week if I can’t—oh! Wait! I’m rich again. Nope, broke. Hang on! Oh. This time? No. Yes!

***

So you’ll come to my housewarming?

Don’t talk so loudly about your new place! I assume it’s bigger than the last?

A little, but—you don’t think they’ll detect the spare square feet and assign someone to live with me?

They might, so let me quickly tell you how I got away with it for a while. I put vases all over the floor to trick the pressure sensors, then declared myself a hoarder. Better to lie to a therapist every month than have to take in a homeless person. But then my virtual assistant snitched on me, and now I live with Joe.

***

Since when was skin a human right anyway?

I know! I for one am proud that we’re constantly exposed to extreme levels of radiation.

Now we finally live in a nation in which we can see beyond our superficial differences.

For sure! I can’t tell who’s what.

Everyone just looks sticky.

***

Citizen! I see you’re not wearing your Church of the Latter-Day Action Heroes badge. You must be a tourist, otherwise you’d know that we control this district. May I see your papers? You’re from here but haven’t accepted our lord Schwarzenegger as your personal savior? Then we require an immediate donation!

***

Hi, I got the message this morning that I’m on trial. I was just wondering if you could tell me what for? Yes, I’ll hold… You’ll tell me if I pay you five hundred dollars?! I was hoping I’d have money left over to buy a celebrity avatar for court! How will I get the jury to like me now? You might as well just lock me up already!

***

After they installed the new defense systems at my complex, they changed the kaiju attack alert from burgundy all the way down to chartreuse.

You must be thrilled!

Not really. They’re jacking up the rent as a result, so now I can’t afford to live there anymore.

***

Did you read that new novel by—

Of course I didn’t.

I was just joking. No one did.

I take it The AI That Consumes All Literature told you it now offers its brain injection subscription plan to ninety nine percent of the population? That’s what I learned when they last injected me.

It’s awesome. Now we can get back to what book clubs were always about: getting tipsy and bitching about the people who didn’t show up.

***

You like my tunic? It’s genuine goatsilk.

That’s what my alimony is going towards? Supporting genetically engineered goats that produce spider silk?

There’s more than one way to produce goatsilk, you know.

Please tell me Mikey got his braces and Holly’s still attending violin lessons.

Of course! This was a gift from Bill.

There’s a “Bill”?

You’d like him. He’s an urban farmer. He has his very own herd of goatspiders.

***

So the last man on earth sits in his chair, right?

I think I know this one!

Then I broke down his door to tell him about my updated privacy policy.

I didn’t see that coming.

Well, neither did he.

No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA!

They sauntered into Marrotti’s Coffee Shop like they were going to protest a free speech rally. Each one dressed in black from head to toe. They both had identical pink triangle tattoos on their left hands to prove a point:

Individuality Is Dead.

Martha was taken aback by the all black staff.

“This is like, so racist! How dare they only hire black people? They aren’t their fucking slaves. I like, seriously despise this country!”

“Yeah, this is bullshit!” replied Oswald. “I’m feeling really triggered right now! I may have to go burn an American flag!”

“Calm down,” replied Martha. “I’ll fix this. It’s our rights as repressed citizens!”

Martha pushed an elderly, white woman out her way, stormed up to the front of the line and said, “Excuse me, my fellow indentured servant. Do you have a “Safe Space” for my friend? America is getting the best of him again. He needs assistance!”

The black barista gave her a solemn gaze for three seconds, until his iPhone went off. After, he reached into his pocket, to check his Twitter notifications.

“Like, what the fuck?” said Martha. Can’t you see my friend is dying over here?”

Oswald was shaking like an innocent member of Antifa, who was tasered by a cop over all the left reasons. You could hear the sound of his teeth chattering.

An Asian couple slowly rose from their seats to exit the establishment, leaving a half empty pot of tea behind.

They’ve seen enough already to last a lifetime.

Martha vehemently clapped her hands three times to get the baristas attention, as she said,

“I’m a paying customer with my dad’s credit card! Like, I hope you’re not expecting a tip after this!”

The barista laughed out loud as he put away his iPhone. “Welcome to Marrotti’s Coffee Shop,” he said. “Can I take your order?”

“Yes,” replied Martha. “I’ll take two skim milk lattes and a God damn safe space for my friend!”

At this point, Oswald was foaming at the mouth.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I don’t know what a safe space is.” He typed away on the cash register. “Your total is $4.20.”

Martha, in a fit of rage, screamed at the barista, “I’m not a ma’am, I’m a fucking pronoun! Like, are you really serious? And you gave me an anti-Semitic total on top of it! You people make me sick!”

The black baristas demeanor changed instantaneously after the “you people” remark.

“Yo, what the fuck you mean, you people? Bitch, are you challenging my black privilege? I will go Black Lives Matters on yo white ass right now, ‘aight!”

Martha, accustomed to male brutality from all the public protests she attends, stood her ground by saying, “I’m a fucking pronoun, you indentured servant! And this is fucking fascist! Don’t you dare think for a minute that my dumpster diving  friends and I won’t storm this racist establishment! The right to protest is ours only!”

“Fuck you, and your daddy’s credit card!” The barista pointed to the door saying, “Get the fuck out, whitey!”

A loud thump distracted them from quarreling like two morons strung out on fluoridated water. Martha turned around to see Oswald lying on the floor in the fetal position.

“You did this!” screamed Martha. “You and your fascist ways did this! That’s it! You’ve forced my index finger! I’m calling George Soros!”

The barista, along with his two other black coworkers, jumped over the counter in an attempt to physically remove Martha from the premises. She was throwing around punches like a man with a thick dick.

The baristas cautiously surrounded her until the time was precise and BAM! A flurry of punches came her way, knocking her off her feet. They grabbed her and Oswald by the legs, dragging them outside to the street. Martha, in and out of consciousness, was murmuring, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!”

Heaven Must be Missing an Angel

She was crying. She was sitting on folds of cardboard on the street, crying. She was sitting on the corner just down from St Pancras Station, on folds of cardboard, crying. Writhing from side to side, as though in physical pain, sobbing softly. I watch her. People stream by taking no notice, talking into mobiles, talking to each other, dragging their wheeled cases. Human suffering here on the street, and we’re too caught up in living even to glance. Another derelict on another corner. Another casualty. I toss a two-pound coin that dances and spins on the pavement.

I walk a little further to the British Library courtyard. Sit on the perimeter wall and consider her. Deep in thought for long moments. People drift up and down the wide Library steps. People pore over laptops, talking to America. Pigeons scrat and fuss around flakes of dropped ‘Greggs’ sausage rolls.

Eventually I retrace my steps. Past the busker and the ‘Big Issue’ seller. Uber cabs and tourist coaches shush past. And she’s still there.

I crouch down beside her. ‘Are you alright?’ Which is a dumb question, because she’s obviously not alright.

She wipes tears and almost smiles. Slightly pretty behind the straggly black hair. Big wide eyes as deep as black holes. Mid-to-late twenties, no more. Her brown coat pulled in close around a faded floral-print dress.

‘Hungry?’

No-one even glances as I lead her into the burger bar, and guide her to the corner alcove. She dumps her pack on the floor. I get two cappuccinos. Her hands, tipped by grimy fingernails, lace tight around the glass as though intent on drawing its warmth into her. She wolfs the burger as I watch.

‘Virgil, Virgil Caine is my name’ I say. ‘What’s your name?’

She says what sounds like ‘Anna’, thickly accented, around chewing mouthfuls. Eastern European. She smiles again, warily, through her hair. I try a few more questions, but she either doesn’t understand, or pretends she doesn’t understand. Her words could be Romanian or Polish. I don’t know enough Polish to tell for sure. Could I believe her anyway? If she could tell me her tale, can I believe anything? The way she was writhing on the street betrays substance dependency. But then, sleeping rough needs numbing solace. It’s so easy. She could weave me sympathy-stories of people-trafficking, an escape from sexual slavery, and I’d be none the wiser. They have ways of tapping into your good nature, until you can never be certain of anything.

I ask her where her parents are. I ask where she comes from. I ask if there’s anywhere she can go… if she has family or friends. She shrugs and says nothing. After all, isn’t the street the place you go to forget how to find yourself? But when she does speak, a brief phrase, then a little more, I understand none of it.

She settles back into the seat, wiping her fingers on the folded branded paper napkin. I can see the tracks of her tears down the side of her snub nose. There’s a sprinkling of freckles. Has she suffered abuse? There are small healing scabs beneath her right eye, and across the bridge of her nose. Or is it an eczema-type infection, due to poor diet? Soft electro-jazz swirls around us from some unseen device. On other tables, people gorge carelessly, so much thoughtless food indulgence. Such obscene gluttony amid casual wealth, while others sleep on the streets. It’s grotesque, illogical, it makes no sense. She raids the plastic cup for packets of sugar, white and brown, and stuffs them deep into her pockets. Glances across at me as though sharing a conspiracy. I wonder what she has in her bag. A change of underwear? A book? Tampons?

When I start up to leave, she makes to follow. As though we are now a unit. The problem of spontaneous generosity is that it implies obligation. A follow-through that’s difficult to tactfully discourage. Should I just give her money? And if so, how much? What will be an acceptable amount, without appearing either tight-fisted, or an easy touch? Or will that simply leave a guilty backwash, as though she’ll think of it as conscience money? She follows me to the bus-stop, I swipe my card for her fare and she sits opposite me on the coach all the way to Tooting High Street. Once there, I help her down onto the pavement. There’s a cool breeze. There’s always a cool breeze here. Even the light is flat and hard.

At times I feel a strange detachment from all this. As though I’m watching it from outside, from some place immeasurably remote, beyond time and space. Untouched by the squalid tragedy of it all.

We walk in the direction of Amen Corner, but turn off into the narrow streets where green wheelie-bins sit in predatory formation. Along Oriental Terrace there’s garbage crushed into the paving cracks and graffiti on the walls. I’m old enough to remember when things were different. When people had pride, and took care. I unlatch the door and she follows me inside, dumping her bag in a pile beside the sofa. She looks around in a vaguely disapproving way, as though she expected more. A bigger TV perhaps, or a Sky-box?

I make my excuses, go into the kitchen and check the kettle. I allow the tap to run. Then fill the water-filter. While it purifies the impurities from the water, I rummage through the drawers beside the sink, where I keep tea-towels, dusters, candles, scourer-pads, matchboxes and coils of washing line.

Anna barely struggles as I loop the cord around her neck and apply pressure. She just gives a resigned moan. As though she understands and accepts what I offer. We should never live our lives imprisoned by fear, we should reach out and embrace its potential. Her body bucks and writhes, as they all do. But eventually quietens. Into a perfect stillness. I carry her upstairs. A weightless thing. I undress her reverently. The soiled clothes will be laundered and ironed. She’s painfully thin and undernourished, with small undeveloped breasts. I run the water in the bath, monitoring its warmth with my hand – not too hot or too cold, running perfumed gel into a layer of foam. Lower her into the water, and sponge her clean, ritually cleansing away the street-grime, using moist cotton-wool to tease away the small abrasions around her nose, shampooing and rinsing her straggly hair, brushing it and combing it into shape.

I towel her dry with a big fluffy white towel, clothe her in one of the long white nightdresses that I keep in the wardrobe, just in case, and lay her out on the bed. Then use cosmetics to make up her face in subtle shades, nothing too vulgar. Her nails had been broken and grimy, I varnish them into respectability. The same with her neat toenails. I stand back with a catch in my throat. She looks beautiful. She deserved better, someone to care enough to free her. But where no-one else cared, I’ve rescued her from dirt and pain, cruelty and terror.

I sit in the chair beside the bed, watching her. Later, I’ll inter her safely in the garden, where the world can longer hurt her.

Alongside the others.