Nitrospective E-Book

Andrew Hook

• Herausgeber: Dog Horn Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 337

Beschreibung

Japanese school children grow giant frogs, a superhero grapples with her secret identity, onions foretell global disasters and an undercover agent is ambivalent as to which side he works for and why. Relationships form and crumble with the slightest of nudges. World catastrophe is imminent; alien invasion blase. These twenty slipstream stories from acclaimed author Andrew Hook examine identity and our fragile existence, skid skewed realities and scratch the surface of our world, revealing another-not altogether dissimilar-layer beneath. Nitrospective is Andrew Hook's fourth collection of short fiction.

Leseprobe

Nitrospective

Stroies by Andrew Hook

Nitrospective

Published by Dog Horn Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Andrew Hook

For Sophie:

My Felix, my new world order, my Severine, my cowgirl

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following editors for previously accepting and publishing some of these stories. Their support is gratefully appreciated. Allen Ashley, Adam Bradley, Pete Crowther, Trevor Denyer, Des Lewis, Terry Martin, Ian Millsted, Mike Philbin, Steve Soucy, Michael Stewart, Sheryl Tempchin, Neil Thomas and Ian Whates.

Thanks also to Adam Lowe at Dog Horn Publishing and artist Dean Harkness.

Contents

Nitrospective

Outer Spaces

Follow Me

The Onion Code

The Cruekus Effect

Bigger Than the Beetles

Pansy Blade Cassandra Moko

Deadtime

Ennui

Lauren is Unreal

PhotoTherapy©

Red or White

Up

Shipping Tomorrow Backwards

The Glass Football

Jump

The Strangeness in Me

Love is the Drug

Chasing Waterfalls

Caravan of Souls

Snap Shot

Nitrospective

She resembles a hare caught in traffic. Beautiful, skittish, terrified, authentic: simultaneously. She’s lying on my bed.

Beyond the window is the ocean. If I look out to the horizon that’s all I can see.

The line between sky and sea is pretence.

The time for action is past. I have aged. The time for reflection has come.

Faith is on her front. Her naked back bears scars, only some of which are inflicted by me. To add to them is easier than creating marks on unblemished skin. I told her I loved her.

It was the truth. Vérité. Vert. Green.

How simple it is to make links from one word to the other. From one ideal to the other.

Even now I don’t know who she is really working for.

*

My orders were to bring her to Southwold for a holiday. The way Gregory said holiday made me shiver, although I kept it inside.

We have information, he said. But didn’t reveal it. Because of this, I never knew if I was fighting for the right cause.

But of course, is it possible to fight against a concept rather than an enemy?

Sometimes I wonder why I’m here.

There are some who regard the planes flying into the World Trade Centre as the catalyst. When I saw it, I thought it was performance art.

Thirty years later I am in my mid-fifties. Faith hadn’t been born.

If I question my own methods, then I question her ideals even more.

Nothing she has told me makes any sense.

I leave her on the bed and take a walk. What was once a beautified semi-tourist town has become a barricade. Everywhere we are hiding behind barricades, against threats which we can no longer see. Everyone has an enemy, everyone is the enemy.

Seagulls glitter the air. The sky is blue. The light here is fantastic. Magnificently wide and pale. Under a topless sky I sit by the cannons and look out to sea. I’m not worried about Faith. She can’t escape when she’s tied.

The first time I saw her she was handing out pamphlets. Not political treatise, no one did that anymore; it would be tantamount to handing out pieces of paper containing the words kill me. Hers were for the new hairdressers in town. People still liked to look good. Her mousy-brown hair framed her face, long at the back, short at the front. When her lips were slightly parted, as they usually were, I could see four of her white teeth. Her blue eyes, accentuated by thick black mascara, were an invitation. I accepted it. She could have been anyone, but I wanted to make her someone.

I wished I could light a cigarette.

The first time I was tortured I immediately told everything I knew. I was respected for that, and enlisted for the other side. When I was captured and subsequently tortured I told everything again. Even now I have no understanding why anyone would keep the truth inside them and accept pain. Let it out, release it. What does any of it matter anyway?

On the bench I wondered whether Faith was holding anything back or whether she genuinely had nothing to tell. I was a calm torturer. I told her my truths and waited for hers. It gave me no pleasure to see her cry. It was like telling someone you loved that you no longer loved them. Which is why I told her I loved her as I marked her supple skin.

Nowhere there is danger. Everywhere there is danger. It all depends on what you believe, and I believe in nothing.

*

Everyone talks about ethnic minorities but no one talks of ethnic majorities.

In 2007 I committed my only political act. On a wall less than two-hundred yards from the American Embassy in London I graffitied a Chad. Familiar half-face, hands, peeping over a wall. Always peeping, semi-hiding. War On Terror. WOT NO TERROR. War on terror no terror.

Even as I drew it I was being drawn into it.

I chose allegiances on a whim.

Because really none of it made any difference.

It might well be determined that Faith and I are on the same side. Although we won’t always have been on the same side and we wouldn’t always remain on the same side.

Gregory called me a chameleon. He knew my past which is why he could trust me. You can’t trust anyone with ideals. They only do stupid things.

Faith carries a photo of herself in her purse. A full head shot. Maybe she keeps it to retain her identity, to remind herself of how she looked when she takes it out at the point of her death. Outside of her face, the only discernible image is a round ceiling light over her right shoulder. For a while it bothered me that I would never know where that photograph was taken.

Or who took it.

Love does funny things.

I left the bench and continued into town. If I pay attention I remember that the burnt-out husk of a building was once a second-hand bookstore. Pieces of paper aflame would have twirled skywards like reverse sycamores or jigsaw phoenixes. Everything else is much the same. I enter the grocers and buy an apple but even that is a political act.

The apple, of course, is green.

Never give power to someone who doesn’t know what they want to do it with.

Never give power to anyone with ideals.

Those without ideals never want power.

I am a pawn.

*

There’s a phone box on the corner. Unlike in 2001 when mobile phones were sounding amongst the rubble, calling to the dead, no-one carries one any longer. No one wants themselves to be available at any time. Sometimes, listening to a telephone ring in an empty room is solace.

I dialled Gregory’s number and waited.

“Anything?”

“Not yet. Are you sure?”

“Can anyone be sure?”

I shrugged. Even though he couldn’t see it, Gregory must have known.

“I don’t know anything anymore.”

“You never did. That’s why I like you. You’re a black screen which refreshes itself every single day. You know it, and you embrace it.”

I nodded. “I am essentially passive.”

“That’s why people like me need you.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Just continue.”

Gregory’s voice was always cool and calm. But underneath I knew that a bear was roaring.

I bought cigarettes for the home, some fruit juice, a couple of microwaveable meals for dinner, a box of matches, an old postcard faded by the sun, a newspaper.

By the time I had walked one hundred yards I had discarded the newspaper.

To my right, as I passed the green outside the pub, a house exploded.

*

“You don’t mind that I’m older?”

She shook her head. It was 2029, two years ago.

I touched her breast through her sweater. Even though she wore a bra I could feel the nub of her nipple.

“Have you heard about the New World Order,” she said.

“I’ve always heard of it. It comes around and around and around and has been around since St George killed his first dragon.”

She smiled. “But if you look at the proof.”

I showed her the proof. NWO. OWN. WON. NOW.

It was only a matter of semantics.

I traced my fingers from her shoulder, along her neck, up to her right ear.

“Language can only be a lie because we expect language to offer explanations. But there are no explanations. There is only what we see.”

She took hold of my hand and placed my index finger into her mouth.

“Sometimes there is no need for language.”

She said it clumsily. Little girl clumsily. Maybe it was the naiveté which appealed to me. Maybe it was because she was a blank canvas. But more likely it was because I hadn’t had anyone for a long time.

Afterwards: “Are you an idealist?”

I shook my head. “An ideal is like perfection. It doesn’t exist. All that you can do is fight for it, and all some people want to do is fight.”

“Surely you have to fight for what you believe in?”

“And if you believe in nothing?”

Whilst the question hung there I entered her again.

*

I ducked as bricks and tiles flew my way as though on invisible strings, threw myself to the ground as a white picket fence almost speared me. Its tips dug into the grass around me, enclosed me.

There was the usual screaming.

The gulls overhead flew and kept their distance for maybe a minute. Then returned as though looking for the pickings. How easily restoration becomes.

A neighbour emerged from her property. Began shouting about the Arabs, the French, the Germans, the Greens, the Terrorists, the Maoists, the English, the Christians, the Muslims. She shouted about everyone other than herself, but she was just as guilty as the rest of them.

I stood up. Thought of taking out my gun and decided against it. Instead I brushed grass off my trousers, watched as community services arrived and put out the small fire, giving instructions on making the building safe. It appeared that the family hadn’t been at home.

In the big scheme of things, for me, that made a difference.

My purchases were in a brown recyclable bag which miraculously hadn’t been torn as I threw myself to the ground. Clutching it to my chest, I made my way back to our holiday home.

By the time I reached the cannons, another house had exploded. Then another, probably. I heard it but no longer looked. If it seemed random and pointless then so did the rest of life. But even then you could just stand there and enjoy it.

There are no puppets. We all have free will.

Some of us choose to be freer than others.

Freedom from choice is what we want, but freedom of choice is what we’ve got.

Everything is internal.

I walked across the dunes. Even though I wore trousers I could feel the stiff grass whipping my legs. Bending down I pulled up a clump for later, shaking off the sand that clung to it wet at the base.

Rabbit droppings punctuated the landscape. Only man strives for ideals.

When Barack Obama was elected all the wrong people had hope. I thought it was audacious. Within days biographies were one very shelf.

Now even those books don’t exist. Expressing an opinion is tantamount to treason.

I ran my tongue around my teeth. One of my gums was bleeding. I couldn’t be sure if it was disease or resulted from the blast.

Three hundred yards from the property I reached into my pocket and held the keys. It’s always important to be ready. To cross a road diagonally is the fastest angle to get to where you want to go.

The key was stiff in the lock from the rust caused by sea air. I had washed my hair every day that we had stayed. Our relationship had become brittle too. Not simply because of the torture, but because I wanted it to be over so I could hold her again.

Faith was as I had left her. I saw an eyelid flicker as I closed the door. She was pretending to sleep. In my absence she had bent her foot back and tried to drag a sheet over her body, but she must have been too weak as her back and buttocks were still exposed.

I sat down on the bed beside her. Ran a finger from the base of her neck to the bottom of her spine.

I had to look away. Tears had filled my eyes. She hadn’t shuddered.

Was this what it was all about? Desensitisation? I had maintained my ambivalence because I refused to get involved, saw it as the route to remaining human. Only an idealist could fight the demands of their own body.

I coughed and blood from my mouth speckled her back.

Getting up, I went into the bathroom, poked around with my tongue. Flecks patterned the ceramic when I spat. I filled a glass tumbler with water and rinsed and spat and rinsed until all that I spat was clear.

Through the tiny bathroom window which I always kept open I could hear another explosion.

Back in the bedroom I lay the dune grass on the floor beside the bed. Now it wasn’t tethered to the earth it seemed flat, devoid of strength. I probably wouldn’t use it unless we made up and she wanted tickling.

“C’mon.”

The word fell out of my mouth unbidden. Faith opened one eye.

“Let’s just end all this right now. Tell me what you know.”

She tried to turn, but her hands which were bound at the wrist and bound to the bedstead wouldn’t allow such a movement.

Her eyes were wet.

I knew that she loved me.

I knew that she had more to tell.

*

Her lips had been full. Particularly the bottom lip. I liked to bite it when I kissed her. I liked her to bite it when she looked at me. Now it was cracked. I stood again, collected the tumbler from the bathroom and filled it with water from the kitchen tap. Holding her head I raised it for her to drink without coughing.

The water restored her voice.

“Bastard!”

I shrugged. I knew it was easy to have no allegiance to any one party or political group or even to any one country, but it was harder to have no allegiance to any one person.

“I’ve told you. Just tell me what I need to hear and then we can get on with our lives.”

“I thought we were getting on with our lives.” Her breath came in short bursts. Heartache.

“It doesn’t even have to be your truth.”

“We’ve been through all this.”

“Don’t be an idealist.”

“Why? I can see where it got you.”

I lit a cigarette.

I could feel her tense, just at that moment. And until that moment I had no intention of putting it on her skin.

When I did, the pain seemed to enter me more than her. I looked around for my medicine.

The nitroglycerin in my angina spray held the same properties that might be found in dynamite. The residue it left on my skin and clothing was sometimes enough to set off bomb- sniffing machines.

I inhaled. The balance of my life was restored.

Faith’s skin smelt of charcoal. A sulphurous odour remained in the room from those parts of her hair I had burned. J.D. Salinger, who helped liberate concentration camps in World War II, told his daughter, ‘You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely. No matter how long you live.’ Thankfully I had never experienced it on such a large scale.

“Just tell me what I want to know.”

Her blue eyes turned to look at me but she didn’t allow me the pleasure of knowing that she saw me.

“What good would it do?”

“The torture would stop.”

“For me.”

I shrugged. “Yes. For you.”

When she sighed I could tell that it hurt her.

“You just don’t get it do you?”

She was right, I didn’t.

“Make it up. Everything becomes truth eventually.”

She tried to sleep but I couldn’t let her. She should have taken her chance whilst I was shopping.

We all should have taken the chance whilst we were shopping.

For some of us, all we ever did was shop.

Outer Spaces

Real life is what happens when you look away.

What do I remember? She’s on all fours, a loose white t-shirt covering her upper body. Her head bent forwards, downwards in supplication. Her skin is pale, milky white, soft. Long black socks hug her legs up to her knees. The rest of her is exposed, inviting and waiting.

She’s on the bed in a hotel room on the outskirts of my hometown. It’s early evening and the sun is fading as fast as my memories. I get the fringes of another life somewhere but can’t place it. I live in the moment and the moment is here.

Leaning forwards I run an extended forefinger along the back of her t-shirt, down her spine as far as it will go. She gasps. A shiver runs through her in the opposite direction. Her breathing quickens. I cup my palm around her mons and heat sinks into my skin. I insert a finger inside her, and like connecting a bulb to a socket, lights go on in my head, replay our encounter as I play with her.

*

I didn’t have to go home that evening, at least not for a while. My daughter was with her mother and my wife was with hers, settling into familial roles like matryoshka dolls. A decidedly feminine concept. After work I’d joined Darryn and Simon in the pub. They’d been suggesting it for weeks, making jokes about being tied to apron strings. Truth was, I’d done the tying myself and wasn’t going to make excuses for it. But I went with them because I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it.

They drank lager; I drank bitter. They talked about football; my mind wandered to netball. A crowd of giggling girls all wearing pink Stetsons and name tags barged into the bar and then out again, caught within a badly organised hen night. One of them looked over. I looked away. When I lifted my head up, Darryn and Simon were gone and my drink was still full.

Something shook the bar. Glasses rattled. Floorboard slats raised then fell. Staff became as attentive as meerkats.

Then it stopped.

And when I looked again, she was there. As though she’d turned sideways and slipped through a crack.

“Buy me a drink?”

She was younger. Was she too young? Was she so young that I shouldn’t get her that drink, legally or morally? She knocked back a vodka so cleanly its taste must have been as clear as its colour, its smell. Her arm lay against the oak wood of the bar, skin the shade of balsa. Her fingers moved back- and forwards, not tapping but caressing a rhythm. Those fingers slipped into mine as we left the pub; gripped onto mine as I barged my way inside her; clung onto mine in a post-coital embrace.

*

Routine bled her out of me.

Wake up. Get breakfast. Drop my daughter at school. Go to work. Go home. Eat. Watch TV. Go to bed.

*

We always shopped in ASDA on a Sunday. My wife bustling through the store, reading labels in close-up, eyes out for a bargain. Gripping the trolley I thought of those fingers. Imagined another life where Sunday mornings were nothing but bed. My daughter ran ahead, picked up some Coco-Pops and was told to put them back. Detritus of past lives clung to me in memory, actuality. She turned and smiled at me, and despite the pressing reality that childhood was forever slipping away there was still an innocence that pained me.

The store was heaving, filled with people that I wished I never had to meet. Forever searching for bargains we banged our trolley down aisles cramped with bodies.

Would she shop here?

I looked for her in the crowd. Wondered what would happen if I saw her. Wondered what would happen if she saw me. My wife’s hand touched the small of my back, gently eased me along. Innocence.

For two nights spread across two weeks I had made excuses. Drinking with Simon and Darryn in the pub. If it was questioned then it wasn’t verbal. Each time I downed two pints in silence, sitting on a stool with my back to the bar looking at the doorway.

I made love to my wife disconsolately, with a dissociation that seemed to arouse her. I wondered what was going through her head. Through both of their heads. I wondered what was going through mine.

When I did happen to see her it was as though she had never been away. She linked her arm through mine as we walked over the river, using a pedestrian bridge that I couldn’t remember seeing before. Booking us into the hotel we took our clothes off slowly, eyes fixed on eyes rather than bodies, trapped in each other’s gaze.

She murmured as I touched her, fingers tracing a path around her curves, lips millimetres away as our tongues reached for a kiss. When she smiled, something turned inside me, the intimation that there was more here than I’d allowed. My lips moved down her body, over her navel, further.

When she came I saw a glass of water edging across the bedside table. The LED display on the radio alarm clock blinked off.

*

We never made arrangements but sometimes she would be there and sometimes she wouldn’t. Reality unfurled when I was with her; strips of myself peeled away: identity, responsibility, memory. Sometimes there were overlaps, however distinct and separate I tried to keep things. A kiss. A touch. A word. We didn’t use names. Too dangerous. She knew my situation. I was less sure about hers.

When I collected my daughter from school I saw her everywhere. In the faces of young mums, teachers, pedestrians. Always waiting for that nod, touch, notification of her presence. Always ready. When my daughter linked her hand in mine I almost pulled away. Too small, always growing.

I wondered what we do when we make choices. Do we create other selves? Switch the points on the railway track and ghost along other lines? At some point do we converge? Are phantoms the remnants of identity that can’t make their way back?

My head split in two. Double life. One time an evening pulled into a weekend yet when I returned there was no intimation that I had ever been away. I wasn’t sure if I was caught up in the moment or if magic were at play. In my garage workshop something had been completed in my absence. I pushed it to the back of my mind, into the outer spaces of my consciousness. Forgetting anomalies came easy to me then.

But after a while it started to blur.

*

We knew it wasn’t just sex, but neither of us had the courage to voice it. At the crossover life melded together. I love you. I would see her in the supermarket as a transparent being, her hand in mine as my wife’s hand in mine. Co-existing simultaneously, one superimposed over the other. Double exposure. I imagined living with her, how it would be, and as I did so she did. Her clothes hungin the wardrobe alongside my wife’s; she lounged on the sofa within my wife; when I fucked her I never knew exactly where she was yet I knew exactly where she was. Little tremors ran though me, moments of truth. She took me to the fringes of imagination where perfection exists, but where it only exists. I knew it was her. And I knew why.

Routine bled her into me.

Wake up. Get breakfast. Drop my daughter at school. Go to work. Go home. Eat. Watch TV. Go to bed.

Each conscious thought, she was with me. Each moment to share, she was with me.

I looked at my face in the mirror and tried to catch myself out. I twisted sharply to one side, expecting for a slivered moment to see a surprised face static like a visual echo, but either I wasn’t quick enough or it was too quick. My edges were sharp, features the same. Yet within me I knew there were two people. Two lives lived as one. Chameleon traces dependant on who I was touching.

If it was invasion of the body snatchers then she hadn’t just snatched my body, but taken my soul and mind.

*

My partners developed a symbiotic relationship: two dissimilar organisms living together in close union. It was impossible to tell if they were aware of each other—although if there was knowledge it would be one way.

I gave up trying to understand it and just embraced it. I looked for reports on the TV, on the Internet, to see whether this had happened before. I was filling up with life. My perceptions became heightened. Leaves on the trees had sharper edges, their colours more distinct. Voices were clearer, people seemed happier. Everything was snug, fitted together, as though the universe had resolved its differences and harmony had taken hold.

Objects moved around the house of their own accord. Some would be in two places at once. It became that it wasn’t simply her and she that overlapped. Two worlds were created like bubbles merging and separating. I was the only constant.

My daughter said she had three mums. I didn’t dare question her.

I still couldn’t catch myself out in the mirror.

At some point, I knew, the illusion would burst. I would float away in the remaining bubble to a destination unknown.

And so I did.

Follow Me

Claire picked up her mark on the corner of Meredith and Silent Avenue. Without looking twice she crossed the road and entered the shopping mall. Glitzy window displays reflected her skinny frame, and she was almost lost within a sculpture of melted plastic tubing. It made her smile, but she was careful to keep focussed on the job. She wasn’t paid to show anything other than bland emotion.

She rode the escalator twice. Nipping into HMV she could sense his eyes boring into the small of her back as she thumbed through some retro punk. She wondered what he looked like close- up, not having had time to examine him properly before the pickup. Not that it mattered. It was pin money, that was all. A little something to put towards the deposit on a new flat.

Leaving the shopping mall she felt her heart quicken. The route was down to her; she could take it anyway she wanted within the designated period, but she found it difficult to stay in the mall for much longer than twenty minutes. The faceless interior and equally unanimated people depressed her. She knew the risks, but unless they had been hushed up the agency’s records were exemplary when it came to choosing their clients. To her knowledge, no one had ever been attacked.

Taking a left down Bagel Street she paused to stroke a calico cat warming itself on a brick wall in the sunshine. The cat’s spine rose beneath her fingers, immersed within incredibly soft fur. She could feel the ridges under her touch, affirmation of a living being. If she listened hard enough she could almost hear his breathing against the background of soundtrack purr.

Traversing the High Street, dodging cars, she waited on the other side of the road for him to catch up. Feeling hungry she slipped into a Baker’s Oven and bought a cream puff. Pausing at the door she heard his voice asking for a hot sausage roll, and she had to immerse her mouth in the cream to stifle a small laugh. Sitting on a round bench that surrounded a tree she ate the puff with her fingers, icing sugar dusting her prints. In the corner of her eye she saw him leaning against the side of the baker’s. He’d done this before; she was sure of that. His eye contact was as tentative as hers. Their glances rarely met.

She checked her watch and found there were ten minutes to go. Getting up she threw her paper bag towards a cylindrical green bin, where it bounced against the lip before falling in. Walking down London Street she turned at the corner and slipped into another department store. She felt comfortable there. It was independent and contained less of the rubbish that she associated with the mall. His time ran out when she ascended the escalator, and upon reaching the toy section at the top she noticed he’d stopped following.

Crossing over to the elevator she hit the button for ground floor and left the building. Another fifty quid in her pocket. By the end of the week she should have enough for the deposit.

Claire checked her watch. There was just time to make it across the city for her rehearsal. Weaving in and out of vehicles she crossed the car park and made a dash for a yellow bus filling up with passengers. Slipping some coins into the driver’s hand she pulled her ticket from the dispenser and sat down by the window.

It always took a few minutes to shake off the feeling of being followed, and she wondered how long it would take to develop a sense of paranoia. Not that she intended to keep in the job for ever. The band just needed a break, that was all. For the right person to see them at the right time, get a record deal, hit single, album, tour. That kind of thing.

She leant back in her seat, slipped the tiny headphones from her MP3 player into her ear. Drums beat around her mind as the world whipped past the window.

*

“You’re late.”

“Fuck I am not.”

Claire pulled her bass out from the cupboard. Black paint peeled from its surface revealing orange underneath. She’d have to give it another coat sometime soon. Greg was fixing up one of the microphones, strumming his lead guitar with his other hand. Flannel kept tapping the cymbals, his foot permanently on the pedal of the bass drum. She didn’t recognise the song, maybe he was trying something new.

Greg had shrugged at her denial, then ignored her. Twat.

She’d be happier if he was out of the band, but he was the first guitarist she’d met that wanted to play his instrument differently from everyone else. And that was exactly what she wanted from this band. A group that was prepared to be different, without associating difference as being the same as everyone else who strived to be different. He liked her songs too, saw something in them. And once she’d fought off his advances she couldn’t deny that he put his heart and soul into playing them. Still, as a personality he sucked.

She pushed the jack into her bass and plugged herself into the amplifier. A tremor went up her arm but she ignored it. She began to pick out the strings, let the rhythm of the instrument take over. It hung low on her body, below her hip. She hated those bass players who tucked it up high, played with their arms in an L-shape. It did the instrument a disservice, somehow.

Flannel stopped playing and gave her a nod. “Any news?”

“Nothing yet. Still watching the post.”

“How long has it been?”

Claire wondered if he was just making conversation. He must have known it was a couple of weeks since they’d sent off the demo. All of them held out hope, although the death of John Peel had certainly interfered with their plans.

“Thirteen days, you know that.”

“Hey,” Greg said. “Sounds like a great title for a song. ‘Thirteen Days’.”

“Sounds like a cliché to me.”

“Have it your way,” he muttered. Claire was sure that under his thoughts, if not under his breath, he had made some derisory comment.

“Look. Let’s get playing shall we? We’ve only got this space for an hour.”

The band shuffled into mode. When Greg hit the opening chords of ‘Shall We Go There’ the atmosphere in the room changed, became electrically charged. After the count of three, Flannel hit in with the drums, creating a cacophony of sound that Claire gradually began to weave her bass inside. Her vocals were half-shouted, half-sung over the top of the noise. She could hardly hear herself, but she knew it was good. She could tell from the playing of the others.

They played the same song another four times, then switched to ‘Penny Black’. Claire screamed philately will get you nowhere over and over towards the end of the song. She watched Greg thrash his guitar as she did so, then abruptly change stance as his playing segued into the melodic outro that marked the end of the song. Flannel slowed his drumming down to a heartbeat. When the final chords faded they all knew they’d played it better than the demo.

“What next?”

“‘Danger Man’?”

They ripped into it but Claire missed her cue at the start of the second verse, and Greg stopped playing whilst Flannel beat the same note repeatedly until the stares died down and they went into it again. Something was missing from the song, Claire knew that. ‘Penny Black’ was their standout, but ‘Danger Man’ was single material and they just couldn’t get it right. She thought they’d had it right on the demo, but after the blistering performance of the earlier song she could no longer be sure. They finished the session with a couple more songs. Then left it at that.

Packing their stuff away Claire noticed her arms were exceptionally pale under the stage lights. Thin bluish veins ran vertically away from her palms. The corporeality of her body suddenly repulsed her, and she forced herself to look away. The others hadn’t noticed, and she realised that Greg and Flannel were deep in discussion. When they saw her watching them they pulled away from each other, like schoolboys caught dissecting an insect.

“What is it?”

Flannel looked from her to Greg and back again.

“We were just wondering if you’d thought any more about changing the name of the band.”

“We’ve had that discussion.” She could detect a faint hint of desperation in her voice. “We agreed.”

Greg stepped forward. “You agreed.” He paused. Held his breath then let it out again. “Look, the songs are great, but Ultraviolent just doesn’t do it for us. We need something a little more universal.”

Claire looked at Flannel. “You agree with that?”

She saw it in his eyes before he looked away. He didn’t, but he was going along with Greg.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to discuss it right now. We’ve sent the demo off, we’ve got to wait to hear back. If you want to discuss changing names then why don’t you change yours, Greg?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s hardly punk is it? Greg fucking Blackstock.”

“Well Claire Plastic is a bit pseudo-retro, isn’t it? Maybe I should become Danny Day-Glo or something. Jesus.”

Flannel stepped between them. “Come on, break it up. Are we going down the pub or what?”

“Not tonight.” Claire continued packing away. “Next rehearsal is Thursday, right? We can do something then. I need to be alone this evening.”

“You’ve got a date then,” Greg muttered under his breath.

Claire pretended not to hear, but as she left the rehearsal space his voice echoed behind her: “You need me.”

*

Her flat was too small. Too dismal. It might have suited the angst rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, but even in the summer it was freezing and she never felt at home there. In winter it was bitter. True it was self- contained, there was no sharing of the communal kitchen that Flannel had to put up with in his digs. But in some way it also emphasised her loneliness.

She sighed and plugged in her computer. She wasn’t sure whether bickering fuelled the band or destroyed it. Whether their internal anger assisted in combusting them on stage, metaphorically speaking. Whatever. She knew she didn’t have sufficient talent to make it solo. Yet.

Her thin woollen cardigan failed to lower the goose bumps on her arms. Spring had yet to melt into summer, and the evenings remained too cool for her. As she typed her password into FollowMe.co.uk she could feel eddies of cold weaving in and out of her fingers. They felt brittle, devoid of substance. Abused.

Her account had already been credited with that day’s earnings, and she double checked that it had gone into PayPal before transferring the total balance to her bank. A new message indicated that she had another client booked in for tomorrow, early afternoon. His face was the only information she had about him. Short, wiry hair, with the whisperings of a moustache. The image was black and white but she could tell his eyes were blue. There was a coldness about him too.

Mid-thirties? Probably. He was certainly older than her. She always got reassurance from that. It was the young that occasionally unnerved her, although she’d yet to refuse an assignment.

She logged out and checked her other emails. Then logged onto the band’s website and updated her blog. On the outside, the pretence that something was happening made her believe the band was heading somewhere. But she dreaded those demos coming back in the mail.

She went into the kitchen and chucked a pre-cooked meal into the microwave. If she used the oven then at least she could warm her hands against it, but she was too hungry to wait longer than was necessary. When the machine beeped in readiness she removed the contents and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the television. Channel hopping left little to the imagination.

By ten o’clock she was in bed. Her thin body curled tight for warmth. Surely it couldn’t be as cold as this? Sigur Rós were on her CD player. Maybe they contributed to the cold.

She fell asleep convinced she was being watched.

*

She wasn’t late, but he was already waiting for her on the corner of Meredith and Silent Avenue when she arrived. Crossing the road she entered the shopping mall. The weather had clouded over during her journey, and she valued the warmth of the mall over the possible rain-swept streets. He followed about twenty steps or so behind her. She was convinced that his shoes were squeaking although the concentration it took to hear the noise might have been sufficient to create the illusion in her mind.

She rode the escalator and entered HMV. Something was playing over the sound system that she neither recognised nor liked. Walking to the end of the alphabet she flicked through some U2 CDs. She wasn’t a fan, but she imagined Ultraviolent alphabetical in the racks next to them. What was wrong with Greg? There was nothing exclusive in that name as far as she was concerned. It attracted just the kind of audience that she was looking for.

For a moment she forgot her mark, and then glanced up to find him watching her from the other side of the rack. He’d be in the Ms, by her estimation. Not that he was looking for any music. His gaze remained fixed to hers until she found herself looking away.

Weird.

There was something about him that she found distasteful. Normally they liked to keep some distance, fulfil a fantasy. But his look indicated something extra at work. A desire for contact, but that certainly wasn’t in her contract. When she looked up again, he was gone.

She glanced around the store, a little frantically. If she’d lost him that could mean a complaint and she wouldn’t get paid. She needed that flat. A little warmth. Then she saw him again, standing by the exit. As she watched he raised his right arm to scratch just below his eye. The movement seemed robotic. Not quite right. There was something mechanical about the whole process.