By Petros Cowley

Be no less excited than last time! Even more! Hurray! Here comes another of my supremely important stories for the spiritual and bodily edification of all mankind! For now, most unfortunately, it is not yet at its completion, but until that evitable moment, it shall be added to at a certain rate.

Part One.

Kiefer Booth, twenty-eight, electrician, walked. He then stopped walking, and he knocked on a door, whilst somewhere else, there was a dog. This door, of all the doors on its street, was certainly the most mysterious – it was rather upside down. The windows of the house it was to open into were all filled up with bricks – this was odd, too. Eager footsteps hurried within, and a pair of boots appeared in the fanlight.

‘Are you going to say hello?’ asked the boots, the door now open, as a curious figure organised itself upon their platforming. Indeed, Kiefer Booth had been trying too long to discern the meaning of this entity without bidding it the proper hello.

‘Yes’, said Kiefer Booth. ‘Sorry’, said Kiefer Booth. ‘Hello’, said Kiefer Booth.

‘Hmm…’ said the boxer shorts, ‘so you are the electrician. So please excuse my hairy legs, I couldn’t find my trousers.’

‘Yes, I am’, replied Kiefer Booth, equipping his speech with a laugh. ‘And of course, I will excuse your hairy legs. There are hairier things after all.’

The man, who could now be made out to be some sort of grey-haired quinquagenarian, gestured Kiefer indoors, inappropriately pleased about something known only to himself. In Kiefer went, with his big bag of tools. But Kiefer stopped someway into the hall, turning back to the man.

‘But what do you mean – you couldn’t find your trousers? You’re wearing boots.’

The man widened his eyes and wrung his beard.

‘Well’, he said to the electrician, ‘suppose I hadn’t found my boots. Would that have been any reason to do away with my trousers?’

Kiefer Booth stared at the man for a minute. Then he asked what exactly he was here to do.

‘Follow me’, said the man, and went ahead into the house, Kiefer following. After the first turn, it became evident how a man living in this home could come to lose his trousers; far more mysterious than the upended front door was the labyrinthine inside. There were no windows. And there were no doors, allowing a general odour of incense to trail freely between the nostrils wandering through the concrete passages. The furniture in these passages was placed arbitrarily, brought into relief by an alternation of mosaic lamps and television screens. Someway through, Kiefer asked if there was a toilet anywhere.

‘Yes’, replied the man, pointing to his right. ‘Just down that hall you’ll find the useful toilet’. Indeed, as Kiefer came to find, the toilet awaited him right in the middle of the hall, three sticks of incense burning from a bowl upon its tank. He turned to the man in astonishment, who had his back turned and was tapping his foot with impatience at the mouth of this corridor.

‘Is this really where you have your toilet’?

The man didn’t say anything. He turned around, widening his eyes again, pointed at the toilet, and turned back, redoubling his foot-tapping with an even greater impatience.

‘Oh well’, said Kiefer, dropping his tools and producing another from his trousers. It had been a long walk, and Kiefer was a man who knew well of the salubrities of plentiful water intake, so the urination began splendidly, with a clear and forceful stream. And so it remained, until, ahead of the toilet, a furious body drew across the far end of the corridor. Kiefer made to shriek. He didn’t, but his wit’s end had escaped him, and the concrete darkened all around the toilet. The furious body disappeared as abruptly as it had come.

‘What is going on!’ Kiefer shouted back over his shoulder.

‘I see you’ve encountered the minotaur’, giggled the man at his end of the hall.

‘What?’

‘That was Therese.’

‘Your wife?’

‘No. Therese.’

Kiefer, though his mouth remained open, had no more to say, and finished what he was doing with a look of disgusted confusion. He placed down tissues over his mess, retook his tool-bag, and returned to the man.

‘Right, so what am I here to do then?’ he asked efficiently.

‘Follow me’.

After a couple of turns, the pair of them entered a passage crammed with a bathtub and just ahead of it another toilet, a television playing on mute above both upon the wall. Kiefer was no more disturbed than he already was when, coming to a halt before this obstruction, the man carried on towards it, and went so far as to seat himself within the empty tub.

‘Here is the useful bathtub. And here I am within it. Get in here with me’, said the man. Kiefer did not move.

‘I think I’d better leave.’ He said that, but still, Kiefer did not move.

‘No, come on. Get in here with me’.

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see.’

Kiefer, tilting his head, stared at the man, until he could no longer maintain his expression.

‘If you tell me why, then I’ll get in’, Kiefer said, too tired to be appalled any longer.

‘I can’t say, just get in.’

A few more exchanges of this sort went back and forth until Kiefer had been convinced. ‘Only if I can sit behind you’, was his condition, which was met with a curious reply of, ‘okay, I’ll be captain.’

Both ensconced, one behind the other, the man produced a remote for the television from somewhere and, the pair of them in silence, he had play a video of the open ocean rolling by to the accompaniment of some manner of sea shanty.

‘ARRRR!’ bellowed the man, animating himself wildly all of a sudden. ‘The landlubbin’ navy be upon us!’ Whatever his reservations, Kiefer was too tightly packed behind the trouserless captain to remove himself from the tub, and so he had to endure in a silence of his own far more intense than the ferocity of the shanties and the captain’s raging invective against the British navy. This ferocity broke off suddenly. The captain fell silent, scrambling to his feet to recover the remote. Only once the man was stood did Kiefer see that Therese was stood at the end of the hall frowning at them. The man turned off the television and the hall fell dark and silent about the dim image of Therese. With a tut, she passed along out of sight. The television was turned back on but muted, the news being put on, and in its light Kiefer now saw the man stood over him to be blushing over the top of his dense beard.

‘Come on,’ said the man making back for the end of the hall they’d entered by. ‘Are you going to stop sitting down or what?’

Kiefer, who had spread himself out in the tub, at last stood up, took his tools, and walked towards the man. He followed him out of the hall, but when the man turned right, Kiefer bolted left, making for an escape. Suffice to say, he was soon found at some dead end hyperventilating in a squat.

‘What do you want! What do you want!’ Kiefer cried, sensing the man’s approach.

‘Whatever you want’, replied the man. ‘If you want to leave, I can show you out, but this really is a simple job I’m asking you to do, and for the terror I’ve evidently caused you, I’ll pay double what we said.’ This offer seemed to tranquillise the electrician somewhat. ‘But I’ll let you calm down first. Would you like something to eat?’

‘No! No!’ snapped Kiefer, staggering upright. ‘No! Just take me to whatever it is you want me to do! No more piracy! No more of whatever that was! No more.’

‘Of course, I was being too familiar. I do apologise. Please, this way.’ Kiefer followed, though maintaining a distance and a skittish surveillance of his surroundings. ‘Kiefer, you said your name was over the phone, correct?’

‘Yes, yes. Kiefer. Yes.’

‘You can call me the captain.’

‘No! That’s not your name! That’s it! I’m leaving! I said no more!’

Kiefer turned, but the man panicked and seized Kiefer, spun him back. In the geometric glow of the green mosaic lamp, the man’s face, so present, twitched with a hungry desperation, petrifying Kiefer in its breath’s humidity.

‘Please!’ he shouted all abruptly. ‘Please, I’m sorry! Call me by my real name, then. Christopher. I’m Christopher. Whatever you want. I’ll pay you triple! Yes! I’ll pay you triple! Stay! Please!’

Kiefer broke free, wiped the spit from his face, and stumbled back, out of the green light, into the gloom, fell into the cushioned embrace of some vagrant armchair. Collected, he spoke.

‘Triple, you say?’

‘Yes’, replied the green, trouserless figure stood before him with its beard. ‘Triple. Anything you want.’

‘Fine. Okay. Show me the way.’

The man eased with a stuttering exhale, and Kiefer stood, following the man out of that passage. They continued in silence through the labyrinth, the man peering back nervously over his shoulder at Kiefer every few seconds as they went. They passed by the passage with the bathtub.

‘And, uhh,’ stammered Kiefer as they passed, ‘no more games, okay.’

‘Everything you wish’, replied the man, with another cautious look behind.

‘No. No more being vague, either. Promise me. No more games.’

The man looked back once more, though this time with the hint of a smile.

‘As I said’, went the man, ‘everything you wish.’

Kiefer halted beneath another mosaic lamp, the red of wrath cutting sharp polygons under his cheekbones.

‘No!’ he snapped. ‘I want you to say: I promise that there will be no more-‘ but he was cut off. Therese had entered the passage. From within a scramble of mousy brown hair, this small woman eyed him with a far from small measure of malevolence as she squeezed her way past. She disappeared once more at his other end. When he turned back to look at the man, Christopher, Kiefer caught him dropping a grin. ‘Who is that woman!’ Kiefer demanded, the mosaic lamp having turned slightly, colouring Kiefer now amber.

‘Therese’, mumbled the man, green turning amber, averting his gaze to the floor.

‘Who is she? Not your wife. Okay. Your girlfriend, then?’

‘No. Therese’, the man mumbled once more, suppressing himself.

‘I’m being serious!’ stammered Kiefer, amber turning green. ‘Promise me! No more!’

The man’s eyes flicked back up again, a reddening twinkle reflecting from his pupils.

‘Or what?’ The beard parted around a smile. ‘Go on. Or what?’

‘If I’m to stay,’ Kiefer declared, trying very much to look angry, ‘you pay me five times what we agreed!’

The crimson man erupted with sound like the first morning of spring, stretching out his arms, and pressing his hands against the concrete at his either side.

‘That’s more like it! Haha! That’s more like it! Good man! Cunning man! Hahaha! I’ll pay you ten times what we agreed! Money is not an issue. No, no. There is plenty of money about.’ The man dropped his arms and widened his eyes at Kiefer. ‘Now follow me!’

Stunned, Kiefer, green, amber, red once more, followed silently. For all his revulsion at having been caught in another game, for so much money he now couldn’t refuse to play. They came towards the final twist of the labyrinth, where a residue of natural light quivered with each bark of a dog outside. There was a dog somewhere. The man led Kiefer out into the garden.

This garden they had just entered, this too was in its own way strange – it was perfectly anodyne: beneath the sun of a spring afternoon, a lawn was gathered in by trees and shrubs in whose bowels dwelt those insects and birds one below the other as nothing but the chitters filling the spaces between the barks. The dog next door must have been very angry about something: even the snapping of the chain holding it back from the object of its rage was loud enough to constitute a nuisance on its own. Kiefer didn’t ask, wanting simply to be done with this ridiculous character whose home-of-sorts he had strayed into. To do his work and leave with a gorgeous lump of cash – that was all. You may think him naive for believing the man on this point – but for Christopher to have transformed his home in such a manner, there indeed must have been plenty of money about, as Christopher himself had put it.

‘So,’ began Christopher, ‘this is why I need you.’

He bent over – the slackness of his boxers allowing for various things to escape them in this action – and raised a panel from the floor of the small patio they were on, beneath which panel was a control board of sorts.

‘What is it?’ asked the electrician, drawing aside to hide himself from the man’s hoary brood. ‘What does it do?’ Both had to raise their voices to be heard over the racket from beyond the fence.

‘I’ll show you.’ Christopher pressed one of the buttons and stood back up at last. The pair of them waited a few moments, staring at the ground.

‘Well… Nothings happening’, Kiefer said, looking up at Christopher.

‘And why do you suppose you have been called here, Kiefer?’

‘Right. Great. Okay, but what is it meant to do, then?’

Christopher explained that it was supposed to open a trapdoor of sorts, that one of the stones of the patio was supposed to slide away to allow entry into a ‘exceedingly well-hidden grotto’, as he called it. This did not raise any suspicions, somehow. He was hoping the fault lay only with the control panel so that no extensive work had to be done. That was the gist of the matter, at least. He told Kiefer he’d be indoors if he needed him and left the electrician to work, confirming just how much was to be paid as he went. A tickling sum.

Alone, Kiefer dropped his tool-bag and approached the fence to see what that dog was getting so very enraged by. The creature was chained to a tree, thrashing and flailing in its bind – all of the tree’s leaves appeared to have been shaken off by the activity of the dog. Just out of the dog’s reach was a catatonic old man, deposited back there in a deck chair. The one sign that this man was not dead was the slow, vertical motions of his chest. Here and there on his roughly shaven head, rings of blistering flesh draped around their respective voids – these were the eyes, those nostrils, that one the mouth, and the one over there entirely mysterious. The scene was to some extent disgusting. Back Kiefer returned to the control panel on the patio floor and got about inspecting the thing.

It was a very complicated piece of machinery, this control panel, and the things beneath it even more so. A quite esoteric amassment of many little things, and many layers of this. It required Kiefer’s full, frowning attention – he would grow used to the barking, metronomic, though the strange and inexplicable sounds issuing from Christopher’s labyrinth every so often did throw him off whenever they drifted to his attention, then vanishing the instant they had successfully distracted him like mischievous insects pestering a man trying to sleep. About half an hour had passed when Kiefer heard a new noise – the back door opening over the fence. He rose to his feet and crept over to peer through a small break. No, the man had not stood up. Rather, a woman had come out of the house with something in her hand. The dog wasn’t deterred in the slightest by her arrival, and continued barking in just the same way as she walked past, approaching the old man. This woman bore a striking resemblance to Therese. And this for the very good reason that she was Therese. What was she doing over there? As it appeared to the eyeball in the fence, she was dropping tablets into one of the old man’s head-holes, perhaps his ear, after which she watered him. It didn’t take her long, and with that she returned indoors. During all this, the old man had not changed posture at all, nor did he even so much as regard her, his eye-holes still fixed upon the sky. Kiefer drew back from the fence.

‘Are you wondering?’

Kiefer gasped. Christopher, his green eyes wide, was stood before him when he turned around.

‘Sorry. You scared me. Yes. I am wondering. Who is that man, and why is Therese over there now?’

Christopher narrowed his eyes and fluffed up his beard. Christopher was wearing his trousers, and he had found them, too.

‘Well, Therese is the twin sister of that man, but he her twin brother. And that twin brother is still my neighbour, though he’s far less irritating now than he used to be.’

‘Why was Therese here, then?’

‘I don’t know. We don’t talk. I have heard her voice, but never seen her talk. Well, it can’t have been the dog, eh! I suppose she holds a bit of a grudge towards me.’

This explanation making matters no less perplexing, Kiefer decided to ask about the old man instead.

‘He has been there in that chair for fifteen years now, and he was a terrible man to have living beside you before he sat down. I’m not sure how exactly we came to hate each other, but it was definitely someone’s fault. He was a pestilence before he sat down fifteen years ago. The slightest noise I made would be followed by a loud knock on the door. He would complain about everything. I started ignoring him, and he started calling the police, and the police started ignoring him, so he started making noise of his own. He would wake up at the crack of dawn and knock on the walls to wake me. I hated that man so much. And so did everyone else on the street. The family who used to live at-‘ Kiefer interrupted.

‘So what happened to him?’

‘He was frightened.’

‘What?’

‘Something frightened him so much that he, as you could say, left his own body.’

‘What frightened him?’

‘I will tell you the story. Perhaps you will be entertained and forgive me for telling it.’ Christopher here, once again, flared his eyes and wrung his beard, though flapped his ears this time, too. ‘I wasn’t always like this, you know. I was once an accountant, and this house looked just like all the others on this street, and when I was a baby, I did not have a beard, and I wasn’t even one foot tall, and knew not a single word of any language, let alone Portuguese.’

‘?’

‘One day, as was his habit, John – John is the name of the body in the chair next door – was out complaining about this and that. I was on my way back from the supermarket, and spotted him a few doors from his own, knocking lots at number sixty, knocking with his hand. I approached with slowness to hear what he was complaining about. Eventually, the old man, Jerome, who lived there then, opened the door, and John began whining about how the grandchildren of this Jerome had kicked a football over his back wall when they were playing in the carpark back there. I didn’t know this Jerome very well – he was from Jamaica, about seventy, widowed, and his grandchildren would often visit him – that was all I really knew of him. So it was out of hate for John rather than any friendship with Jerome then that I went over and delivered John a number of rude words. He turned bright red, for my words had been very rude, indeed. Me and Jerome watched him gesticulate home, threatening to call the police on us. John disappeared, and I and Jerome turned to each other and he said thank you, and encouraged me to eat food. I wasn’t hungry, but I agreed to some tea. Anyway, to keep things brief, this old Jerome fellow turned out to be a great source of entertainment. I would go and visit him at least weekly to listen to the insoluble things that would find their ways out of his mouth. Most of it was rubbish. For example, his theory that homing pigeons were a joke historians had come up with that nobody had ever thought to question. Yes, most of the time he had some theory. The only thing you knew he was going to mention were the ideas of his favourite philosopher, as he pronounced the name, Kyearkyegyard. His other great love was Depeche Mode.‘

‘What? That synth-pop band?’

‘Yes. It must be true, too arbitrary to be false, and I promised not to upset you. He would always have Depeche mode playing when I visited. He was a really fascinating individual. All of the pictures in his house – he had swapped them after his wife’s death – were randomly selected from the internet, something I didn’t notice at all for the first few visits. Maybe on the third or fourth, I noticed Gaddafi on the mantelpiece, and finally looked about with closeness at the other pictures. In one corner of the room was a cabinet filled with photographs of smiling Chinese men.’

‘Why?’

‘He would refuse to elaborate, and giggle quietly to himself about it. Only that he did this after his wife died, that’s all he would say. As the excuse goes, people have their own ways of coping. He found the arbitrary amusing, just like a child, just unlike an adult. I understand not to. Now, I do. But back then, I did not at all.’

‘Right, okay, sure, so how did this lead to what we see now next door, and why isn’t that bloody dog taken inside?’

‘I’ll tell you now about my final visit to Jerome’s house. I dropped in after work one day. It had been a characteristically dreadful day at the firm, and I wanted some entertainment, so I thought I’d pop round to see Jerome. After a while, he came to the door, and the first thing I noticed was that he hadn’t any music playing. He lead me into the front room and brought in some biscuits from the kitchen for us to enjoy. We were sitting and enjoying our biscuits, enjoying and sitting with our biscuits. But he seemed gloomier than usual. He didn’t mention Kyearkyegyard once. In fact, he barely spoke at all. I wondered if I had offended him somehow. The silence was endurable until we’d eaten all the biscuits. We couldn’t enjoy anymore, either. He got up to get more enjoyment, but I told him I didn’t want any, so he sat back down. We sat in silence some more, under the gaze of the Libyan colonel, some more silence, as I thought desperately of things to ask him. I’d never noticed how old Jerome was until then. When he was waving his arms around and raving about whatever rubbish, you didn’t notice his age. I thought of something to say at last. Kyearkyegyard talked a lot about Christianity, but I didn’t recall Jerome ever saying whether he himself had been religious or not, so I asked him about that.

‘”There’s no point now”, he told me. I asked him what he meant. He stood up and hobbled out of the room. Then he came back, insulted my intelligence in Patois, and gestured for me to follow him. I did, giggling about whatever he had just called me. He lead me upstairs, along a corridor, and stopped before a white door. “Stop laughing”, he told me. “This is very serious”, he told me. “You want to know why I cannot be religious?” he asked me. “You will see what I have done.” He told me to go inside and look at what was in there. He remained outside, shielding his eyes even though there was no way for him to see inside the room from where he was standing. Inside the room, the small room, with no wallpaper, with no carpet, was a machine.’

Part Two – About twelve years earlier – as summarised by Christopher to the electrician.

The thing was about thigh high, barely visible against the curious grey lights huddled between the curtains ahead. It had far too many lightbulbs to be a lawnmower, far too many lights, and its handle was attached not to it, but to the platform it rested upon. He surrounded it, squinting blindly, and came to its rear.

‘What is it?’ asked Christopher.

‘It is yours’, muttered Jerome, unseen, still outside on the landing.

‘But what am I supposed to do with it?’

Jerome laughed. There was no joy in his laugh. Jerome walked away, took a blanket from a cabinet outside one of the other doors, and returned to place it outside the room Christopher was in. Jerome’s shadow went away again. Jerome locked himself in his very own bedroom.

The following day, at about noon or so, Christopher’s brother, Martin, had his very own telephone in his hands. Someone is coming with me, he texted his brother. Who, Christopher texted back. He won’t tell me, responded Martin, but he’s coming with me.

This exchange called for suspicion, but Christopher did not stop grilling the sausages. The weather had been kind enough to agree to a barbecue and there had yet been no nuisance from John that morning. A lapse of all thought had darkened the sausages, and planted a spy onto the fence. There was a second batch to be done, so Christopher didn’t mind taking these first ones off before his brother arrived with his follower. The noise did away with the robin, and there came a knock upon the door.

Standing on the doorstep were two men with very different faces, and a little behind them stood a hedge. The one nearest was Christopher’s brother, Martin. Between Martin and the hedge, a bewildered looking old man in clothes: a suit blazer, tracksuit bottoms, and sandals. Martin, giggling, pushed his way in past Christopher; the old man entered too.

‘Who is this you’ve thought to bring into my home, then?’ asked Christopher, summoning back his brother.

‘I don’t know. He just began to follow me when I was on my way here, so I thought it would be funny to see if he’d follow me into your house. And look! So he has! And it’s really very funny.’

Christopher didn’t know what to think of this and shut the door, leading his brother and entourage through into the garden to acquaint themselves with his sausages. His brother was always playing tricks on him. He was used to this sort of thing from him. He just hoped that nothing too serious was to come of this latest trick. What if the old man went about destroying things? What if this old man had very large hands and could destroy things easily? But these were difficult thoughts to tend to. The sausages were much simpler things to tend to. He went to the sausages, and ignored the old man, and by proxy his brother, too – there was a reluctance in Christopher’s very few words. Had his parents not had his brother, then his brother would not have been there.

‘I hear Thomas is doing well with his studying’, remarked Martin sooner or later. Thomas was their younger cousin, some sort of child genius, at that time preparing to take twenty A-Levels.

‘Oh’, replied Christopher, turning the sausages. The sun in his eyes, he turned himself, too, to ask something about their cousin. But, before he found Martin, he found an inconceivably hairy chest. The old man was irradiating himself shirtlessly in his chair; the blazer was gone. Christopher didn’t speak. Christopher turned back to the sausages.

‘I didn’t even know there was an A-Level in photography.’ Martin was going to add more, but sausage fat splashed down onto the coals and silenced him with a sputtering hiss. ‘This beer is a bit crap, eh,’ he added after a while. Christopher didn’t respond. ‘Don’t you think so, Mr Gentleman?’ Mr Gentleman didn’t seem to have registered this, either. ‘I would suppose you think otherwise, then, Mr Gentleman’. Mr Gentleman had long since finished his beer, and the can lay defiled in a nearby flowerbed. ‘Why did you decide to get this awful stuff, Chris?’

Christopher muttered a bit louder this time.

‘Well maybe you should have brought your own.’

Martin sighed and rose from his seat, approached his brother’s side.

‘Who’s taken your bollocks this morning? What are you in such a huff about?’

Christopher tutted, trying not to look up, succeeding until the breeze turned against him. He emerged from the smoke and faced his brother.

‘It’s that old man. It’s a strange way I feel.’

‘He’s just a bit shy. I’m sure he’ll grow to be more affectionate soon enough.’

‘No not that old man, for God’s sake. The old man Jerome, from up the road. The one who…’

‘Oh, right. But you hardly knew him, you said.’

‘I know. I’d only-‘

‘Mr Gentleman!’ Martin interrupted his brother, turning to the other side of the garden. ‘Mr Gentleman, you pirate! That was my drink!’ Indeed, Martin’s beer had been concluded by Mr Gentleman, Martin having been alerted to this betrayal by the sounds of the can being crumpled and tossed into the flowerbed. ‘Sorry,’ Martin continued, turning back to his brother with a smirk. ‘An interesting guest you’ve back there. Anyway, you were saying.’

‘Yes, I was saying. And I’d say a lot more if it wasn’t for…’ Christopher turned his head towards the interesting guest, though snatched it back bright red when met by a horrible pair of eyes.

‘See! What affection in those eyes of his.’

Hesitantly, Christopher went on.

‘I didn’t tell you about my last visit there. The day before he was found. He wasn’t very talkative. He gave me something. Then he locked himself in his bedroom.’

‘What? What did he give you?’

Christopher slowly looked aside to get a look at Mr Gentleman’s hands, though didn’t quite manage, turning quickly back.

‘I’ll just show you. You mind those sausages a minute.’

On his way indoors, Christopher did manage to get a look at Mr Gentleman’s hands. They were no bigger or smaller than they ought to have been, and Christopher’s mind was put at relative ease.

Some time after Mr Gentleman had begun to snore, Christopher emerged again from the house wheeling along his machine. His brother turned. When he saw it, his face hardened into a question mark.

‘It’s mine’, stated Christopher.

Martin gestured away his brother.

‘No, no. Uhh. You probably shouldn’t bring it so near the sausages. Come on, take that thing back inside, we can look at it in there.’

A little taken aback, Christopher obliged, and swivelled around, making a return, though stopping abreast of the snoring Mr Gentleman as he detected the giggling of children to his left. Two little faces were peering through the fence – the pink fruits of John Totter’s loins with all their crooked little teeth. Christopher smiled at them, but they darted away. The quick pattering of their steps was replaced by a series of weighty stomps, and when Christopher’s eyes had risen to the top of the fence, Mr Gentleman belched.

John Totter had been persuaded by his wife to return indoors, and by that time, Mr Gentleman had left too. They all had heard the front door slam.

‘What a lovely man’, Martin remarked.

Christopher sighed, and slid his hands behind his head, as though to dive into it.

‘”I could hear you talking all the way from the front garden!” You should have told the portly bastard to shut the door, then, and never come back.’

Christopher ran his shoe through the grass.

‘The sausages!’ Martin exclaimed. ‘Now the sausages are burnt!’ He rushed towards the grill. ‘He’s not really going to call the police, is he?’

‘Probably. I doubt they’ll come, though.’

‘Not many wolves around here. Just Mr Gentleman, and even he’s gone now.’

As they salvaged what they could of the sausages, they spoke more freely – now that Mr Gentleman had departed, that was. After Martin had lamented this great loss to their company somewhat, Christopher began to speak of the other recent irritations of John Totter, which Martin seemed to revel in the hearing of after the tone in which John Totter had just addressed him. All that could have been salvaged of the sausages had been, the remainder mostly left to burn – one charred oblong was buried in the soil by Martin in the hopes of a ‘burgeoning sausage tree’ sprouting – and with that the two brothers went inside to gather plates and whatnot. Inside, they encountered the machine again, though Martin insisted they discuss it once they were eating, and so they exchanged various other trivial details of their lives instead. It was towards the end of preparing their plates to return outside with when they realised the true extent of Mr Gentleman’s piracy: on his way out, during the distraction, he had raided the fridge, plundering all the alcohol. A crate of beer, six bottles of wine, and two bottles of rum had altogether vanished. Indeed, Christopher was less annoyed than baffled as to how Mr Gentleman could have transported so much on his person, especially without the blazer which remained abandoned in the garden. In any case, Christopher’s salary didn’t leave him suffering, so he hurried out to the shops, this allowing him to escape the smug laughter of his brother, too. ‘It is really funny! I told you it was!’ he had been saying; things of that sort.

On his journey to the shops, Christopher encountered a very small, centrifugally distributed woman.

But stranger visions had arranged themselves for Christopher upon his return – those which he perceived from the mouth of an alleyway halfway up his street.

Some several dozen minutes of more anxious waiting than sausage eating later, there came a knock on the door. Considering what had just occurred at this address, opening the door was perhaps worth at least some preliminary consideration, but Christopher made immediately towards the knock.

Standing on the doorstep was one man with a very bothered face, and a little behind him the machine, covered in its blanket. The man was Martin.

‘What a load of stupid rubbish!’ exclaimed Martin, shuffling his way in past Christopher. ‘And you can bring that ridiculous thing in yourself. I don’t want it bringing me any more trouble!’

Christopher obliged, and brought in his machine from its adventures in the police van.

‘No!’ directed Martin. ‘Put it in there, were it can’t get to me!’

Christopher turned, and wheeled his machine into the front room, coming back out and heading back into the kitchen, where his brother was pacing in circles. Christopher didn’t even have to say anything; immediately, Martin began trumpeting away, and the significance of his trumpeting was that of the following, or thereabouts:

The police did arrive – it seemed that John had been true to his threats, in this one general sense at least. The police had been unusually trusting of him. This sudden trust, it turned out to have been produced by a slight exaggeration on John’s part. The police, dressed not in clothes but in their very wardrobes, came banging and barging into Christopher’s home, shouting here and there about some sort of bomb threat and breaking things. Martin had been sat in the garden and quite placidly eating a sausage when the lot of them entered, and he watched them approach like the future – he sat there watching with an idle curiosity as they crashed their ways towards him through the house, rearranging large sums of the furniture, until they had already seized him, cuffed his hands, and without regard to the wellbeing of his sausage. ‘A bomb threat?’ Martin said. ‘I should bloody hope not!’ Naturally, the invading wardrobes were not quite amused. Then these wardrobes, and with the grace of wardrobes, booted him along until he was brought before the machine. ‘How do you defuse it?’ roared one of them onto Martin’s head, so that his hairs all parted around a single point of white. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ Martin exclaimed, though not quite with the tone he had wanted, rather desperately. ‘That’s no bomb! That’s just a, uhh… There’s nothing at all untoward about the thing, silly. Perfectly safe… Uhh…’ The police had been witless enough to deposit Martin within boot’s reach of the machine’s various buttons and levers, or at least at a best guess what were these. ‘Look!’ Martin stammered, visibly distressed, and before he could be seized, sent his foot against one of the machine’s dull or glistening protuberances, shifting it someway, and when all had reopened their eyes and uncoiled their frightened bodies, it did seem to them that nothing had occurred, and Martin even opened his mouth in the shape of a laugh, when a noise of the most ridiculous sort was heard emanating from next door. Officers were sent over to inspect, and although Martin never quite found out the particularities of what had happened over there, it was clear, and had been even to Christopher, who had also seen the ambulance, that whatever it was had been a terrible accident produced by itself upon John. So, with this discovery, Martin and the machine were arrested for their treacherous crimes, strapped securely into various police vans, and hurried away along the roads, irritating several drivers by their right of way, and many others with their sirens. ‘Would they turn that bloody siren down!’ one man grunted. ‘That’s a very loud siren!’ went another. ‘There’s no need at all for anything to be so loud.’ But the blaring procession came to a stop far, far too soon – leading up to the stop, Martin had been able to hear, coming from the cockpit of the van he was trapped in, what seemed to have been an argument over the phone, and this argument then continued during this stop, amplifying until Martin could discern the subject of its ferocity. Whichever higher authority at the police station the officers had sought to report their activities to was calling them all manner of morons and demanding they release both Martin and the machine, reminding them of the epoch. Eventually, the officers capitulated, but showing no goodwill to the victims of their haste, to neither the machine nor to Martin, they refused to drive them back to the place of their abduction, drove away, and stranded that unfortunate couple some five minutes’ walk from Christopher’s house. On their way, they encountered a very short woman, one with a treacherous demeanour and an incredible width. What an ugly, threatening woman she was!

No doubt, the brothers agreed, that John had been at the cusp of executing some horrible scheme, when it backfired, and caused him the effect of an adventure in the ambulance.

‘Here’s to his brutal death!’ declared Christopher, handing his brother one of the beers he had purchased. Martin took the beer and they wacked their cans together.

‘You know’, Martin said, having abstracted a first sip from his can, his air softening, and his tone lightening, ‘I saw a very fat little woman on the walk back.’

‘I too saw a very fat little woman on my way to the shops’, Christopher replied.

‘Perhaps the same. I can’t suppose she was very fond of me. Very terrible looking woman.’

‘I didn’t dare to look her in her face. What was she wearing?’

‘Who knows? Several tyres and the rings of Saturn, the bloody girth of her.’

‘Was she carrying any shopping?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Hmm.’

After a pause, Christopher began to ask:

‘So you say you kicked one of the handles, and then-‘

‘Pah! So you think this machine that this old Jeremy, Germaine, Jerome had, without any source of power, is able to send John to the hospital? Don’t be so stupid!’

‘What? No, of course not. I was just trying to get the story straight. You say you kicked one of the handles and then a noise of “the most ridiculous kind” was heard next door, and John was taken off in an ambulance?’

‘Yes, yes, something like that. And the fat little woman no doubt too played her part in all this.’

‘And did you try pressing any of the button-things again, to see if the same happened?’

‘Ha! Why would I?’

‘It seems exactly the sort of thing you would do. Come on, John’s in the hospital, let’s see what happens… Come on!’

Martin looked around for some support. There was no support for the looking at. Hesitantly, Martin followed his brother into the front room, and at once through the threshold of the doorway, flourished into a totally inappropriate, unexpected confidence.

‘Well then! Let us see what incredible things this machine can do!’ He was bounding towards the machine, preparing a kick far mightier than needed. His brother stopped him when he was drawing abreast.

‘No. I’ve had an idea. Or…’

‘What?’ Martin asked. He appeared clammy now , droplets populating his brow.

‘No, its not an idea, its just…’

‘What!’

Christopher grinned.

‘You know, Martin. I was thinking about the machine while you were gone, and, well, uhh, about the sort of things Jerome would want me to use it for, the sort of ways Jerome had and…’

‘Hurry up.’

‘It’s a bit philosophical, really. But I say we shouldn’t touch the machine.’

‘Pah!’ Martin laughed in several directions and at several volumes, too, dipping his hands in and out of his pockets. ‘Don’t tell me you think it does anything!’

‘No, of course not. But, as long as we don’t touch it, then for all we know it does do something. And even better, there are people, those police officers, who think it does do things. The silly, mysterious object with unknown and baffling purposes. Isn’t that the sort of thing Jerome would have wanted. Isn’t that sort of… what he wanted to be?’

‘Tss!’ hissed Martin, turning his back and wandering off to the kitchen. ‘I think you need a break from that bloody job of yours. Misery makes one sentimental about even silly, mysterious objects of unknown and baffling purposes.’ By the time Martin was done talking, he had taken his body almost entirely into the kitchen, but for the lower half of his left leg, which itself had had to speak those last few words from the doorway. ‘Unknown and baffling purposes’, spake the tenebrous L-shape, effervescing at its boundaries with the daylight it bled, a garden behind. And many things were effervescing, and at all sorts of boundaries, in regions expected and unexpected, between many bannisters and things, at times early and then, later than that, late, as late as those times where this island strays beyond the perimeters of its sun’s golden pen, out into that dark beyond of moon’s and lightbulbs, where different things effervesce, and there are many lightbulbs, just as before, all over the place, but now they come to life, at night. Millions, billions of lightbulbs erupt from inordinate ceilings and walls and tables, laying their siege upon the shadows, banishing them outside into the night. But only for those few hours between evening and bedtime, bedtime, when all the humans decide that they’ve had just about enough at last of all those fucking lights.

Martin, twenty seven, domestic inhabitant, stood, in that place before a mantelpiece in acts of object permutation. The vase was exchanged for the ceramic dog, but the dog knocked the postcard off into flight. It wouldn’t have been so terrible to let it fall upon the carpet, but Martin caught it anyway, with one hand, and replaced it between the exchanged dog and vase, then rotated his own flowers. He had, by no means deliberately, creased the edge of the postcard. It’s not to be thought, he didn’t think. Could it be? That in the decades of yore this fireplace crackled and shone with blazing stumps beneath this place of mantelled dog’s and vases? Yes, he knew full well it must have. But he could never be sure. The hole in its gate and under its arch could not be lit by fantasy.

He turned to the window. The one ochreous lamp behind him spread him black and twisted over the furls of the beige but floral curtains, the parting through his head. An orange, reptile eye. He drew himself towards, but as he neared, it sealed upon him, but once he had come right up to it, it reopened onto the street outside.

‘It’s no good. It’s no good.’ he repeated several times. He sat on the sofa. ‘It’s no good.’ He stood up. He took the remote and turned on the television. Adverts. He turned it off. He lay on the floor. ‘It’s no good.’ He rolled onto his front. ‘No good.’ He rolled again, and again, until he was pressed into the base of the sofa, straining with all his body to pass through, but he would slip and had there not been a carpeting to his floor would surely have sustained a number of menacing bruises. ‘Good! Good!’ he growled through wrestling teeth, as he crushed his body into the floor. ‘Good! Good!’ until a tear was forced from his eye.

‘Paper.’

He tried to stand. He was weak. He raised his arms over the seat of the sofa and dragged himself up until he was on his knees, but drained now, his face fell between the cushions, his knees dragged back until his legs were at extension, and his pelvis thrust down at the beneath of the sofa. And the leather would screech as his skin yanked in fits along its grain.

He stood up, raced out of the room. The room was empty. Again it was not. He stood on the table, squatted on the table.

‘Something stupid.’ He wrote. ‘Something terrible and confusing. No questions. Questions give answers. If I had questions. No questions. Must go straight for answers. I must go. I must not seek, but find it. It’s out there. I must go to it. I cannot ask what tells. I am asked.’

Shoes. Jacket. He left into the night.