By Petros Cowley

The third in a sequence of very important stories for the edification of all mankind.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

• Oh, fuck off.
• Strange thing for a door to say.
• What?
• I said str- Oh, nothing. Y’alright in there, John?
• Not anymore. What do you want now?
• You know what I want. The same thing I wanted yesterday.
• I told you, five minutes. Now you get lost again and leave me be.
• Five minutes! And how long ago did you last tell me that, then? What are you even doing in there, anyway?
• I think it’s fairly obvious what I might be doing in here.
• No, of course. What I meant was, what are you watching? I heard voices.
• Hhh. If you must know, it’s a performance of Hamlet. I’m having a break.
• A break! Hamlet!
• Well I wanted to watch Hamlet. So I’ve taken a break.
• And how long might this break last?
• There’s about two hours left, it says here.
• Time is indeed out of wherever the fuck it was. And why exactly do you need to stay in there to watch Hamlet? Can’t your break come out here and spend itself perhaps on the sofa? Resume your business in there later, why not… like everyone else does.
• Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Now for the love of god, will you get yourself away.
• I can’t wait until next year.
• I can’t wait until you fuck off.

            Pete turned and returned upstairs, depositing himself recumbently onto an invertebrate. The flabby thing, with a slow release of bagpiping wind, sank sadly under Pete’s weight; sank sadly until he felt his hip pressing down into the ground. It felt like a bog-ground. The wooden frame within the leather had somehow decomposed over the years. Much of what was in this flat was decomposed. Every room had the feel of a basement, despite the flat being on the first and second floors of its building.

            He reached forward and took up the remote from the floor, from the centre of a dark patch in the carpet, the dark patch that had been extending there its borders for the last three months. Nobody had thought to question what it was, or why it was growing, what its intentions were. One day it had there appeared, and so it had been there left to be, that being its place, the dark patch, in the carpet. Yes.

            The television came on, but the daylight, having avoided the world outside, deeming that world too grey and too dull, the daylight decided to instead enter Pete’s flat and seek for itself refuge right in the middle of the screen. He tried to move his head aside. But where he could get a clear view of what was playing the bog-thing beneath him lacked the support and his head would sink within. Red, he emerged himself and huffled over to the window. He pulled the cord for the blinds. He flew back against the counter. The cord went with him, torn from the headrail. He spiralled down onto the floor with the washing up he’d knocked from the counter, four metal pans, one glass, and a sixth thing; a great eruption of noise! The glass thudded against his head, bounced away and smashed across the floor.

• Balls!

            Pete extricated himself from the rubble and kicked the glass away into the long, dark hole where a skirting board might have once been; a dried leaf of lettuce was reaching out. When he was done he gave a booting to a cupboard door for good measure, a crashing within, then with a moment’s squint at whatever that sixth thing might possibly have been, turned and returned to the invertebrate, abandoning the sixth thing and the pans where they lay on the floor.

            But there was a noise. A car alarm? An alarm for something, shrieking away outside in the street. He turned up the volume to eighty-two. Now what was he watching? His pocket hummed. Someone was calling. He took it out. Who was it? It was John.

• John? Calling with an update, are we?
• Can you bloody keep it down up there?
• Oh! So it’s important to be considerate to your flatmates now, is it? And not do things like… Days, has it been, John? Am I right in saying three days, now?

            The phone beeped. John had hung up. Pete turned the volume up to one hundred and sank smugly back into the bog-thing. At last. Now what was he watching? Not much. He’d forgotten to take the blinds down. Purple, he emerged himself again and huffled again over to the window. Just about he managed to reach the blinds, straining his length, and gave a meaningful tug. Off they came in his hands, the blinds, and back he flew with them. This time he held his balance and remained upright, frowning at the blinds in his hands. He looked out of the window, spread his frown across the town. Some teenagers were crossing the street far below, laughing amongst themselves for all to hear. Pete dropped the blinds. He moved to where John was watching Hamlet below. He stomped thrice on the floor. When at last he returned his attention to the television he saw that the daylight had moved away of its own purpose, revealing the wonderfully exciting programme then playing: Nightmare Upholsterers, Manchester. Descending back into the bog-thing, he pressed for the next channel and what a wonderful piece of entertainment was playing there, too! It was the news!

…The policy has proved controversial, and opinions are widely split in Rishi Sunak’s conservative government. Some say the bill violates international law, whilst others say it hasn’t gone far enough. This morning, the prime minister was trying to gather support for his new bill and Britain’s climate minister has even come back from a summit abroad for the vote tomorrow. For more on this, here’s our political correspondent, Emily Dorris. And a warning, the following does contain flash photography.

            Footage of number ten. Someone left the door open and a group of people are wandering in from the street.

            It was still dark when conservative mp’s arrived this morning at downing street. The prime minister was trying to persuade them over breakfast to support his latest attempt at getting his new policy through.

            Suddenly it’s daytime and those people are leaving again with some bags.

            They were tight-lipped on their way out about whether or not they’d been convinced. Some had been open about their concerns.

            A man’s face appears in a floating orb and it begins to speak.

            We are all of one mind on this. We want the government to succeed in getting their new policy through. We all want this legislation to be, the uhh, right tool to deliver what we want, and while I’m genuinely grateful to the government to make sure that this is a tough enough piece of legislation, I want to be open about my concerns; it is still partial and incomplete.

            The orb dissipates and now there is shown all sorts of footage of different politicians walking around in all sorts of different places.

            Pete had fallen asleep.

            When he awoke it had already fallen dark and the television displayed a timer. Three. Two. One. It turned itself off. Pete flowed out of the bog thing and wandered downstairs. On his way to his room he went to see what was going on with John.

            Knock! Knock! Knock!

• John, you in there? There was no response. Pete tried the handle, but the door was locked. I know you’re in there, John.
• Get lost!
• You can’t just stay in there!
• Fuck off!
• Do you think you might come out of there tonight?
• Five minutes. I mean it this time. Five minutes. Come back then.
• Alright then. I’ll set a timer. Five minutes.

Pete walked away and went down a couple of steps onto the landing, where a window that couldn’t be shut looked out upon a wall. There was electric light coming from somewhere, and it settled amongst the piles of lint atop the tumble dryer. The tumble dryer watched him with its big yawning mouth. He sank to the carpet. He pulled at its fibres like blades of grass. His phone beeped. The five minutes were gone.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

• Well, that’s time.
• Fuck off.
• Wow! What a surprise! I really don’t understand you. There can’t- Well, there can’t be any left, can there? … John!
• It doesn’t end. You know this. Everyday there’s more. They are legion.
• That’s no reason to give all of your time to it, though. Is it? There was another pause; John could be heard sighing through the door. How was Hamlet?
• The same as it ever was. The same as it’s been for hundreds of years. John yawned. Now can you just leave me be?

            Pete went to his room, tutting. After a while he re-emerged and turned on the light in the landing, turning and returning upstairs to the kitchen. It was time for dinner.

            He took one of the pans from the floor and filled it with water, put it on the boil. Sinking down into the bog-thing as the water stewed, he turned on the television and when his hip met the floor, a repeat showing of At the House of Commons.

            …and that’s the legal fallacy at the heart of this. The cold hard reality of the law is that this does not change the facts that the supreme court have identified. It’s time the British people woke up to what the government is doing! This is a mess! It’s more money being wasted, it’s more time being wasted. We need to speak up for the values that, post war, we stood for in the world. This legislation won’t do anything. It won’t even stop the Tory party tearing itself apart. Britain deserves better, and with this side of the house, it’ll get it.

            Next of all some Tory back bencher is allowed to speak.

            Thank you very much indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me start by saying how much I support the objections of the bill, and yet I pay tribute to the government for the, uhh, very significant improvements to the status quo that the bill represents. Now, there are of course some practical issues which have been well rehearsed on this side of the house, uhh, with its operations and, uhh, what really matters is that it will work. And I recognise the progress that the government has made to improve the system, but I think, as my right honourable friend has said, we have significant concerns about the system getting gummed up with legal claims that are still allowable. Mr Deputy Speaker, these practical problems, which I think are real and need to be addressed, derive from a fundamental point of principle.

            The heat was beginning to pluck at the water at the other end of the room.

            And let me say quickly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I’m not calling for anything really at this stage, although, I think we can, uhh, in response to, uhh, the honourable member who just spoke saying that we’d be departing from ancient British tradition. But in fact, we’d be returning to it. But, if the courts do say otherwise, then we begin, uhh, a process of conversation, uhh, about that.

            And next of all a lady from the Green party is going to speak.

            Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. What an irony, and what a shameful indictment of ministers and our government. This insulting and dangerous legislation attacks our democratic structures, and, our human rights! Yes, it attacks our human rights! In doing so, it both demeans and disrespects the role that the UK has played in helping to shape the world, including its contribution to the drafting and early ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights in the aftermath of the horrors of World War Two. On its very cover, this shameful bill has a statement that this government cannot seriously say it can comply with!

            Two cars honked outside in conversation. UNGGGGGGG! UNGGGGGGG!

            This bill is constitutionally exceptional and provocative! Mr deputy speaker, this ugly bill also attacks interim measures of vital…

            The water clopped and plopped, hissed as it slopped onto the heated stone stove.

            And to try and justify this cynical and sinister attack on the highest court in the UK, the pm has started saying, well, parliament is sovereign. It feels bizarre to have to say it, but that this parliament believes something to be true, does not mean that we’ll vote for it. It simply isn’t so! Mr Deputy Speaker, I will be voting against this bill tonight.

            A bunch of Tories start booing as if they’re surprised.

            The bill before us is a doomed and Draconian attempt to reassert the pm’s fragile claim to a non-existent authority.

            Pete rose and turned and returned back over to the stove. He seized a clump of spaghetti in his fists and snapped the lot of it in two so that it would all fit inside the pan at once.

• Now, what else is on TV?

…

            The following morning was beige for a bit, but then it was just grey. John hadn’t left; when passing the door Pete had heard snoring from within, so he’d set off out into the world outside, disencumbering himself for a while from the existence in that squalid den. It was Sunday, as it always is at the end of every week, and the fact was written into the expressions of every pedestrian scudding by, scudding as they always scudded at the end of every week. It – that horrid despondence on all the wrinkled faces, the slowness of the cars, the pathetic wind – the pathetic wind, again – it was Sunday. The shabby wares wasted flabbily in the window frames. Shopkeepers looked out in doom as the glum humdrum wafted in and out, and in and out, and in and out of the shopfronts. A mother dragged her child across the stone. The child wept but didn’t scream. It began to rain.

• Sorry.
• Sorry.

            The river beneath the bridge stretched wearily out of the balustrade into cascading dark green nonsense. The passage of silver scum atop the water’s surface washed around a bend into the barbed and twisted dark green arsehole impenetrable. A can of Heineken floated through the scum towards the arsehole.

• Sorry.
• Sorry.

The park. Pete entered the park. And it too was Sunday. The scene appeared the fart of a ghost of whatever might be sublime in nature, a scene like those woven into the soiled green fabrics of the armchairs in the homes of the recently old. The-the-the-thither was a duck, but duck didn’t quack. The nostrils of the lake spurted sad imitations of the towering tree between them, the tower sprouting from the sky’s tarry veins. A crow blasphemed in heaven. Hand in hand we dance in circles, As children in our garden. So said the stone by the side of the path. Someone was coming. He looked up. They emerged from the trees. A leg, and then an arm, and then a body, and then her head, her hair, white, rising up behind her like a question mark, slopping back down. Pathetic wind…

• Sorry.
• Sorry.

            The door aside the closed cafe. He went in. Five minutes later he came back out again. Either way he looked the path went into the trees. Someone was coming. Someone was running towards him down the path. He heard the quick knocking of their footsteps, and then saw their legs come out from the trees, their torso, and arms, his face, her, no, his, black hair flopping in the pathetic Sunday wind. He laughed at Pete as he fled past him, ejected a hand and tapped across his shoulder.

• Oi! he called, speeding away.
• Oi! Pete called back.

Pete set off after him, pumping his legs down upon the gravel. His head began to thump, bump, the lumping crowns of the trees to tremble and pulsate either side of the path as they shot by in pairs. Like a nightmare, however fast Pete ran, the man would run faster, faster away. Blinded in a glitter, his wooden lungs long-creaking, Pete keeled over upon a bench. The bristled moss in the wood, wet, licked at his clutch. His fingertips thumped upon the green-licking tongues. They lapped up the glitter; the glitter gloomed; the armchair scene re-congealed. A golden plaque: ‘In loving memory of Pat “Fatso” Ronny – a really large figure in the community.’

            He looked up, stood up, gazed out along the path. The man was waiting by the gate. Pete could find a smile – at that distance, maybe one hundred meters, an expression without a face.

• Oi! Pete called again. The man waved back.
• Hello! called the man.
• Wait for me! Wait! My breath!

            The man beckoned Pete with an arm and darted out through the gate at the end of the park, in the darkness of an oak. With a cough, Pete forced himself to run. The tree-crowns throbbed, pulsed, dangerously contracting as they shot by in pairs.

         He tumbled out into the street. Up and down the hill the cars waved past in crests of silver spume. The man was waiting on other side, at the entrance to the forest, leaning with one arm against a sinusoidal trunk. With his other he waved. He smiled. The traffic abated. Pete darted across, the man away into the forest ahead. The forest swallowed the noise of the town without. The lolling treetops shushed and the running footsteps cracked down at the twigs. Weaving through the tight tunnel of trunks, leaping over wet wells of mud, spilling out on a current of wind Pete emerged from a cloud of brown leaves back out onto the pavement. Half-green hills heaving up behind him, the man was waiting again at the other side.

• Where are we going? called Pete as he waited for two cars to pass. The man laughed and pointed behind himself, up to the hills. The cars cleared and the man darted out into the fields. Pete set off after him.

         Reality rupturing with light, lungs longer croaking, Pete fell to the soil. The light fell, perspired upon every blade. He raised his eyes. Mud-sweat varnished the slope. The sky was not. And there he was, the man, crawling up to the summit through the grass. Pete raised himself up onto his elbows and crawled after him.

         The man was waiting up there at the base of a large wooden pole with a basket on top ten or so meters in the air, where a sun was not, within the basket bits of rubbish that history had lobbed in long ago: bottles and planks and cans. Over the precipice upheaved treetops between which the town faded into view: steeple tops and blocks of flats and cranes, two. A blue tit spurted up from beneath that edge and landed on the grass beside the man. He loomed down and tried to grab it, but it vanished. He swung back against the pole and sank down onto his arse.

• Steep hill.
• Not the steepest.

         Pete laughed once. The man laughed once. Pete laughed twice more. The man, thrice. The pair of them laughed noisily. They continued laughing as Pete sat down before the man, before the view of the town.

• Look! called Pete.
• What?
• Look! Look over there!

         The man swivelled around with his knuckles in the dirt and looked at the region Pete was directing him to.

• What is it?
• It’s the bishops. There! They’re out for their walks.

         The pointed white sails of little boats were meandering between the trees, their river and hulls engulfed beneath the hill’s precipice; like mitres.

         The man laughed once. Pete next. They laughed for forty seconds watching the bishops’ mitres pointlessly wobble about.

• Ah, I can’t stop laughing, said Pete at last.
• No, me neither.

         And the two men burst into another minute of uncontrollable laughter. Silence came again.

• Where do we go next? the man asked Pete.
• I don’t know. I was following you.
• Oh. I see. The bishops had disappeared at last. The men looked out upon nothing, really. Why don’t we go down there?
• Down there? What’s down there?
• The bishops, hiding. Both men laughed, but couldn’t manage to for quite so long this time.
• Ok. Let’s go and find them.

         And so down the men waddled at no small speed; the slope was indeed very steep, and any deceleration would mean certain toppling over. They were waddling at such momentum that they continued on after the ground had levelled for at least fifteen meters, crashing side by side into a playground fence. The bipartite beasts grimaced through the bars at them, impaled upon springs. The children were not.

• That way. They’ll be hiding in the forest.

         And off the men went along the path, the treetops crowding over them, a fog gathering ahead. Another empty playground appeared behind the trees: web-like lattice-sheafs of rope piling up about a metal pole, a cavernous grey plastic contraption with monkey bars, a spinning metal drum. The men continued along into the fog, exchanging terse and sparse remarks, giggling that grew then vanished into long and hungry silences. A third empty playground emerged from the fog in another grove behind the trees: jumbling jets of wood and metal sloping up to a summit, ropes hanging down with bright orange caps, faces smirking on the tailed flanks of blue bouncing chairs. Dull red height restriction barriers came next from the fog, two and a half meters over the path which became a road immediately beyond the barrier. Pete leapt up and grabbed hold of the bar, swung back and forth not very much, then not at all. The man leapt up too and exchanged a smile with Pete as they hung there.

         Pete re-established his grip, lurching up and down. The bar growled at him. The man did the same, and the bar growled again. Pete again twice. The man, thrice. Both of them together for a number of seconds, bobbing up and down from the growling bar. They were running out of breath. They couldn’t laugh any more. Pete’s wrists and biceps were shredding apart under the tension, shooting pains, pains crystallising, shattering all over his body. The stars in the fog were shining. His fingers slipped. He dropped.

         Knock! Knock! Knock!

• Go away.
• No. Not yet. How are you doing in there, John?
• Fine. Now go away, please.
• But don’t you get lonely in there?
• I’ve enough to occupy myself with in here to not need worry about such things.

         There was a pause. Twice a click. John turned the light off and back on again.

• Why did you do that?
• Wanted to. Why does it matter?
• Well exactly. Why does it matter? That’s what I’m asking you.
• Please go away.
• What play are you gonna watch today, then?
• Go away.
• Never heard of that one. How about No Exit by Sartre?
• Fuck off.
• Oh come on, John. Lighten up a little, will you? John flicked the lights on and off two or three more times.
• That’s what I’m trying to do. And John laughed. Pete began to laugh, too, but this made John stop laughing, which made Pete stop laughing. John continued in a grave tone. Now go on and get lost. Leave me alone.

         Off Pete went. He turned and returned upstairs, to the bog-thing, and sank down through it to the floor. The click of the light flicking on and off downstairs came sporadically to Pete’s ears. He reached down for the remote and saw the dark patch. It had grown. He turned the television on. The news. There was more news. There was even more news to be told.