By Petros Cowley

The events described in following narrative have been (except where the originals have been reproduced) laboriously reconstructed from the enigmatic and fragmentary series of notes discovered in various locations around Paul Longbottom’s former flat. (Or, to use the name he went by in these notes, Pile.) Where there came interruptions in our source material, it shall be indicated, and where we are resorting to speculation, so shall it also be indicated: very often the notes would break off with words such as, ‘he’s returning must go I have’. That should also serve to indicate the unusual style in which they were composed, and the necessity of the present translation into more lucid prose. Place names have been omitted, and those of certain people changed, so as not to impede the operation of ongoing legal cases. That being said, the reader will notice that certain literary devices have been employed in our reconstruction, but this was in fact a necessity: it is urgent that as many readers as possible receive this significant information, and so we have seen fit to present it in its most easily digestible form. Far more inappropriate would be to ensure, through presenting the following as a sterile report of facts, that only a minimum number of people learn the truth. But to appease those who are most sensitive to the serious nature of our subject matter, and might decry our stylistic license on this occasion, we have made sure to curtail our extravagances to a necessary minimum, and, if having read to the end they still have their complaints in this connection, we wish to challenge their obstinacy and pedantry with the following question: After having learnt that evils of such a tremendous scale can and do visit us here on this earth, is the style in which that information was presented to you really that which you wish to complain about? But let us press on, and give no further attention to those fools who might respond in the affirmative. May God forgive them.  

Pile dragged himself along the forest floor with only his arms at his service. His legs had regained neither function nor sensation at any point during the interval which his memory was able to burrow back into the past. His legs repeatedly caught on logs, and Pile would each time have to curl up and extricate them. He was naked, and the thorns of these trunks would hook into the flesh of his calves and thighs; blood would spurt out from the wound when he’d free his leg, but, as has been said, he felt nothing in his legs, and was able to continue through the forest. With him was a bucket: he’d pull himself forward, then stop and reach back to pull his bucket ahead of himself, and then overtake it again, and so on. Speech was a great difficulty, and most of the sounds coming from his mouth were groans of agony, but where he could he would whimper out the displaced fragments of dialogue still circulating through his brain. Whatever had happened, he could learn it by focusing on these words.

As he dragged himself into a clearing, the words, he noticed, were no longer his own. The voices of children were ringing through the trees from the other side of the clearing, and he hastened through the foliage to meet them where they were playing. But, before he could see them, they had fallen silent; they’d heard him as he struggled his way through a bush just meters away from them. And when his mutilated face came out of the foliage, the children screamed and fled back behind rocks and tree-trunks for cover. Pile wailed for their help, as he brought his legs, and then bucket, out of the bush, but he was unintelligible to the children, now peering out from behind the various trunks and boulders.

‘It’s a monster,’ a boy whispered, his little face white with terror but his desperate curiosity keeping it there above the boulder.

‘A monster? No, it’s a zombie,’ a girl said, poking her face out of the tree next to the boy.

Pile let out a roar and bashed at the soil, rolling over onto his back. The children gasped and covered their faces.    

‘It’s not doing anything, though,’ said the boy, beginning to grin. ‘It’s just roaring. I think it’s hurt.’

‘Don’t go near it! It will eat you!’

But the boy, and a third child who’d remained quiet until now stepped out from the tree line in flutters of giggles, covering their mouths to contain their excitement. These children couldn’t be more than seven years old.

‘Excuse me. Are you a monster?’ the other boy asked, and both of them giggled. But Pile could not respond, he could only amplify his breath into a repeating Ugh… The two boys were now certain that it was a monster and called over the little girl from behind the tree. She eventually came.

Now the children decided not to be very considerate to the monster, and upon learning that when they prodded him with sticks he’d make strange sounds, they began to play him like an instrument in his way, pulling at his ears and such other things to incite a greater variety of noises. So totally exhausted, enduring their abuse was in fact a moment of rest for Pile. It went on for quite some time. His eyes were struggling to stay open upon the canopy above, upon the little patch of sky up there, the branch with only one leaf at its end bobbing up and down in the centre of the sky, between him and which the three jubilant faces of the children would appear and they’d thrust down sticks at his body, or reach down into his face and tug at his nose to make him squeal. But it was when they began to bury him, with leaves and rocks and such other things as they could gather from their surroundings, that he began to panic.

The notes are barely legible at this point. Somehow, he knocked one of the children to the ground, and the child hit their head on a rock. No further mention is made of the other two children, but it’s presumed they ran away. The boy who’d hit his head lay unresponsive, and Pile, agitated and frightened, in no fit state for deliberating upon the best course of action, crammed the little boy’s body into his bucket and set the things back upright, dragging himself with it further into the woods.

‘must coming he’s near now and’ is how the first set of notes break off. They were found stuffed inside an old glasses case. The next bundle of notes we found behind a painting of a sleeping cyclops. That there was this ocular theme to the locations in which he hid his notes was what enabled us to find so much, and it indicates that the state in which Paul/Pile wrote and then hid them was not one of total insanity, as has been suggested by some.

After some time, Pile was in a caravan. He’d discovered it at the edge of a field where he’d made it out of the woods. The door was unlocked and he dragged himself up the steps to get inside, trying then to have his bucket follow him in, but, being unable to get it through the door, he let it tumble back down onto the grass, and continued inside to search for food. On the shelves in the fridge that he could reach were only a head of lettuce and a jar of vinegar; the lettuce, however, only made him hungrier, and the vinegar was too painful to drink. On the higher shelves, meanwhile, were various meats and deserts, all manner of delicious articles, but to get to them he was going to have to climb. This he did attempt, and to mixed success. Indeed, he did get to the food, but not without the fridge falling on him and pinning him to the ground for over an hour. Even after eating, he was too weak to retrieve his body and return to his bucket.

‘What have you done!’ a woman’s voice shouted. Pile wheezed and banged his palms against the inside of the fridge. The woman was approaching. ‘Charlie? Are you trapped under there? Let me help you.’ But as the fridge began to shift, another voice came, that of a little boy.

‘Grandma?’

‘Charlie?’ replied the woman, taking her efforts away from the fridge and standing back up. ‘What are you doing outside? And if you’re there, then who’s that under the fridge?’

‘Oh, that’s the monster,’ Charlie giggled.

‘The monster?’

‘Yes, he was very hungry, and so he wanted some food, but the fridge fell on him.’

‘Oh, Charlie. You and your naughty little friends, always up to no good, eh? Well, come on, help me out here. The monster surely can’t be very comfortable under there.’

To no surprise, when they’d pushed aside the fridge to discover an adult man naked and smeared in chocolate and mincemeat, the old woman had a terrible fright. However, she soon realised that Pile was completely harmless, unable to talk or even raise himself off the ground.

‘No, stay back, Charlie.’ She peered down over Pile. ‘Are you okay? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

Pile’s eyes darted open and he flailed his head side to side in rejection.

Here the notes are partially eaten. We resume where they pick up on the other side…

The old woman, Margaret, had shown great kindness and hospitality to Pile, and had given him a place to recover in her caravan for as long as he needed. It was only her and her grandson Charlie other than Pile, but Charlie left after two days, after which it was just Margaret and Pile in the caravan. Until the evenings, Pile would remain in his bed convalescing, keeping himself entertained with attempts to piece back together what he could of the things in his memory. But his memories were so finely decimated that it was like trying to put a book back together with only the letters to go by, and so he’d always arrive exhausted at the dinner table in the evenings. By the second night, he regained a little of his ability to speak, and could respond to Margaret’s questions in monosyllables. On the third night, when Charlie wasn’t with them any longer, he was able to produce up to five syllables at a time.

‘Pile is an unusual name,’ suggested Margaret. ‘Where is it from?’

Pile thought a moment, but wasn’t able to remember, and grew deeply frustrated. Margaret apologised, and they both returned to eating their steaks.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll all come back eventually. If you’d like, I can just talk and hopefully not bore you too much, because it’s always nice for me to have someone to talk to, or we can continue eating in silence.’

‘You talk.’

Margaret told all sorts of stories about her life, apparently, ranging from a time she got lost in the Welsh countryside as a little girl, to the time she ran away from the altar of what would have been her second marriage.

‘Settling down into a normal life was never for me. I love company, but I want to be alone. Oh, I’m just a silly old cow at death’s door spouting out whatever nonsense I still can. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never been able to say what it is that I’ve wanted. I-’ Pile had accidentally driven his knife into his hand as he’d been cutting his steak. He was in such pain he couldn’t even open his eyes. Margaret, snapping out of some kind of trance, at last rushed over to the cupboard to get bandages.

‘Give me your hand,’ she said, and Pile, still squeezing shut his eyes in pain thrust the bleeding thing towards her. She was fiddling around and taking a terribly long time to apply the bandages, Pile thought, though whatever she was doing, he realised he was no longer in pain. He looked over to see what she was doing, but she had her back turned.

‘Margaret?’ he asked.

‘Yes, dear,’ she said, clearing her throat. But when she’d started speaking, the pain immediately returned. Pile yelped and flew back in his seat, crashing to the ground. The towel that had been covering him had fallen off, and he lay naked on the floor, too dizzy to move. His vision was blurred, but Margaret appeared over him after a few seconds as she squatted down onto the floor besides him (she smelt strongly of detergents) and raised his injured hand from the floor, bringing it into her lap. Pile passed out.

The next day at dinner, Pile emerged from his room without anything to cover his body.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Margaret asked.

Realising he was naked, he darted back towards the room to get his towel, but Margaret reassured him that it didn’t matter, and that if anything she was pleased to have a penis around again after so many years. Pile didn’t quite know how to respond to this remark, and not wanting to be impolite to his host who’d been so generous to him, continued over to the table in the nude. He was bright red as he sat down beside her and realised he was growing an erection beneath the table, but before he could cover himself with his hands, the old woman had already noticed, and was smiling down into his lap.

‘Oh, don’t mind me, I don’t care at all where it’s pointing,’ she said, ‘If it makes you feel less embarrassed…’ Margaret stood up and fully undressed herself, revealing her decrepit body, her long, sagging breasts with a texture like bark. Pile couldn’t bring himself to say anything as she sat down beside him and ran her hand across his thigh. He closed his eyes.  

He woke up the next day. He wasn’t in his room. He was lying on the sofa, with his arm lowered at the elbow into a bucket of water. Through the haze of his vision as he awoke, he could just about perceive that all across his torso were bandages and scratch marks. He tried to raise his arm from the bucket to feel the wounds in his abdomen, but he wasn’t able to. He couldn’t. He could move his arm at the shoulder, certainly, and his elbow rose out of the bucket, but no forearm came with it. There was only a purple stump where his forearm had been. Falling over when he tried to stand, he learnt too that one of his feet were missing.

‘Pile! Pile!’ Margaret came rushing into the room. ‘You need to rest; you had a terrible accident! Let me help you back up onto the sofa!’ Unable to do anything else, too dizzy, his vision blurred, something pulsing in his brain and violating all measure of balance, he had to but obey his host, and assisted her as he could in getting himself back into his former position. Margaret insisted that he lay back and allowed her to make him feel better, and, Pile being unable to refuse, his host climbed up on top of him.

Here he must’ve passed out again, for next thing he knew he was back in his bed. It was night-time, judging by the darkness of the room. The shrunken head watched him from where it dangled over the wardrobe, and through the door he could hear voices. One of them Margaret’s, but another belonging to a man. ‘And you’re sure you didn’t see anything?’ that other voice was heard asking, when Pile’s hearing returned someway to normal.

‘No! I’ll keep a look out, certainly. I know where to call.’

‘Ok, then. Keep safe, Margaret.’

‘Thank you for checking in, Brian.’

The door shut. Pile was now able to produce a noise and Margaret came rushing in at once.

‘Pile? You’re awake.’ She stopped before fully entering the room and rushed back to lock the front door before returning.

‘What’s happening, Margaret? Am I going to be alright?’

‘Yes, shh, don’t worry, you just need to rest.’

‘Why am I tied to the bed?’

‘Because you kept trying to get up yesterday, and only managed to make things worse. You’ll see that you lost your left leg.’

‘I lost my leg!’ suddenly Pile remembered all the other parts of him that had vanished, and his heart began to flutter through his eyes. He tried to reach for nose, but no hand appeared at the end of his stub, so had to use his shoulder to reach the same conclusion as Margaret. ‘How did I lose them!?’

‘What you need now is rest, not an explanation. I don’t want to stress you out any further. It’s better you learn later, I say. Do you want me to pleasure you again, Pile? Would you like that, eh?’

Pile couldn’t talk. He felt a void in his stomach and didn’t doubt that it too was missing. Margaret giggled as she undressed herself. It was more tolerable in the darkness where Pile couldn’t see her so easily, and this time he managed to stay awake, even starting to encourage her in certain ways; she enjoyed taking orders and wheezed with excitement. As they fucked, the moon appeared in the parting at the top of the curtains to watch. By the end, the moon had gone again, and they were both covered in slime, her loose skin covering him like a blanket. The pygmy head, Pile saw, had rotated away.

‘Margaret?’

‘Yes, Pile?’

‘Are you going to… will you let me… I don’t want to not…’

‘What is it?’ Margaret raised herself up into a sitting position. ‘Have I upset you? Is there some way I’ve offended you?’

‘No, of course not. You’ve been very kind to me, letting me stay here and recover. It’s just… Where have my limbs gone, Margaret? And my nose. Where has my nose gone?’

‘Oh, I told you not to worry about that. Listen, I’ll give you five minutes to recharge. I’ll just go and make you some food.’

‘Wait! Margaret!’

‘Yes,’ she replied, coming back.

‘Who was that man?’

‘Oh, I didn’t tell you. Well, there’s been a couple of murders in the forest.’

‘Was he the police?’

‘No, worse. It was Brian, he lives just over the hill. He’s a strange man, and he takes an excessive interest in my life. I don’t like him at all, but he won’t leave me alone. Anyway, he’d come to warn me about the murders.’

‘Who was murdered?’

‘I refused him to tell me, but they were people from the village up there, that much he managed to say. I don’t like to hear about such things, I can be quite sensitive. Oh, don’t make me think about it! He said that people were spreading silly rumours about some sort of monster. How insensitive can they be?’

‘A monster?’

‘Yes, they’ve even given it a name. The Lythrodon. But don’t indulge them, Pile, I know you’re better than that. Enough! No more of this horrible talk of death or monsters tonight. You need to eat.’

The notes cut off here again with another ‘he’s coming’. The next pair of notes was found within the frame of a mirror.

Without legs, Pile required alternative means of transport to get around the caravan. Margaret had drilled a bucket onto some sort of pallet with wheels, and using a pole, Pile was able to punt himself around in the bucket contraption. In the afternoons, however, he would be placed in the drawer and asked to remain quiet in case any visitors came; Margaret was also able to get on with some quiet reading during this time without being pestered for sex (the speeds at which Pile could manoeuvre around the caravan were startling). It was very dull in the drawer, but Pile remained grateful to his host for taking such care of him whilst he suffered from this terrible illness and kept quiet in there when Brian would come to the caravan and bother Margaret. But when the front door shut, Pile would be taken out of the drawer again and put back into his bucket. Margaret was almost always around, so whenever Pile was aroused or needed the toilet, she’d be there to assist him out of the bucket and then with whatever else. It was a quiet, but pleasant life they lived; each to other’s great satisfaction. They regularly professed their love for each other, and such things of that sort.

Brian, however, was indeed becoming an increasing problem. Almost every day he would return bearing gifts and talking endlessly despite the obvious signs of disapproval Margaret was making. Things finally culminated when, one night, Brian arrived unexpectedly at ten o’clock. She’d been helping Pile off the toilet just then.

‘You stay in here. Don’t make a sound.’ She turned off the light and left Pile in the toilet.

‘Brian, what are you doing out so late?’

‘Margaret, hello. May I come in for a moment?’

‘Well, it’s rather late and…’

‘I promise it’s very important.’

‘Can’t you tell me here?’

‘No.’

‘Alright, I suppose. I must warn you, though, that the toilet’s broken.’

‘What? I haven’t come to use your toilet, Margaret. No. What I’ve come to say is…’

‘What?’

‘Well you must have noticed that… All these times I’ve been… And you yourself… Haven’t you also…’

‘Come on, Brian, it’s very late.’

‘Margaret, I…’

‘Yes, very well, you love me. So what? As clear as that was, so should it have been clear to you that I don’t want any part of your ridiculous love! Take it away! Let it go in the woods, the horrible thing. How obvious did I need to be! Have I ever shown any enthusiasm for your daily, uninvited entrances into my caravan! I-’

There came a crashing and a shriek. A little more noise, a little more fury, then quiet. Someone was sobbing. Brian stopped sobbing, however, after hearing something moving around in the toilet. He wasn’t quite as alone as he’d thought. He sat riveted with his back to the cupboard, waiting transfixed for what would come out, and no doubt he excepted the manifestation of his doom, he expected death himself to come for him through that door. But what came instead was much worse.

‘What! … What!‘ Brian repeated as he stared at this stupendous device galumphing now towards him across the caravan, until at last he formed some sort of interpretation of what it might be: a naked torso with only one arm and then one head without ears, without a nose, without lips, without cheeks, without eyelids, without one of its eyes; it was wearing a little party hat, the cone-shaped ones; it wasn’t able to cry, but it howled as it set it’s eye upon Margaret’s body. Able then to flee the caravan, Brian went running as fast as he could back up the hill to the village.

Maybe half an hour later, a group of villagers arrived well armed at the caravan. They had to retreat in horror before entering again, for so grotesque was the scene awaiting them inside. What did it look like? Did you see where it went? they were asking Pile. Or, Was it an animal you recognised, or something else? or Was there only one, or several creatures? The women were weeping over Margaret’s corpse, and the men were desperately trying to get any information out of Pile, but, in such a fresh state of grief, and, as we’ve said, without a tongue, he could provide them with nothing.

The notes cut off again here. ‘happening again going him back now near I go when’. The next note was also found behind the sleeping cyclops painting, but information has been acquired from elsewhere to assist us where Pile’s notes were wholly undecipherable, and where decipherable meaningless. We don’t doubt he was in a state of heightened agitation trying to recount such a horrible, traumatic thing.

After the nature of his previous visit, even though he couldn’t remember it, he was extremely hostile towards the villagers’ idea to transport him to a hospital, but of course he’d lost all his organs of protestation, and so the villagers’ merely interpreted his manic gesticulations as pleas for medical attention.

After about an hour he was deposited in situla at the hospital. The doctors were more than pleased to see him again, especially now that they’d just recently received some new funding, and with it developed certain new cutting-edge methods for dealing with their patients. The device Pile was subjected to (under the premise that his body was entirely gangrenous and further amputations were immediately required) after having been subjected to further rounds of bombardment by radiation and strapped down onto an operating table can be described as follows:

Controlled by a man somewhere in India, the signals travelling across continents at fibre-optic speeds, a five-legged, eight-armed robot rose through a hatch in the floor and plunged a huge needle into Pile’s abdomen, but where it was supposed to be full of anaesthetic, it was empty, and was pressed in with such force, that the incoming pulse of air burst a hole through his skin. He howled in pain as black smoke came pummelling out from one of the robot’s chimneys; its cogs began turning and the light in place of its head flashing so that two arms seized him in place as a third, terminating in some sort of chainsaw, swung down making all sorts of noise and sliced him open. Various other weapons were exercised upon him by the giant robot before he finally passed out, described in his notes as a laser gun, a power drill, a whisk, a plunger, and a horn.

‘Black black black’ is scrawled here in the notes repeatedly, where our consultation with other sources has revealed what was in fact happening. The Indian robot had reduced him to a blind, deaf head, which the hospital was keeping alive in a jar of a mysterious, life-giving substance and with the aid of many large and noisy machines employed in the roles of his various organs. The operation was kept quiet only due to certain ethical violations, but otherwise it was a great success; it was thanks to the doctor’s humility and dedication to their craft that they didn’t go around bragging here where more selfish men would, that no word got out, and they were able, about a week later, to perform their second operation undisturbed.

Perhaps the reader has already formed certain suspicions about the truth of those more recent events still so fresh in our town’s collective memory, and which remain the object of our present expository narrative. These suspicions do indeed touch upon the truth, but remain only touching it. Supposing truth to be a pair of trousers, as yet only the reader’s ankles are covered; as yet, the reader has cold knees and nothing to show for themselves but their own immodesty; this naked conspirator will be laughed out of good society and holed up in some terrible institution somewhere eating medicated porridge. To spare ourselves from general ostracisation, we must permit the truth to gird our waists; we must continue on our descent until we land where Paul instead fell.

Until indicated, the following has been reconstructed from information provided by Thomas Thomson (Paul/Pile’s former flatmate) over the course of several interviews, supplemented in places by what we learnt from elsewhere of the aforementioned second operation.

Thomas was somewhat relieved to have reconciled that day with his girlfriend Freya. (Incidents relating to Paul’s initial collapse into the bestial state we found him in at the outset of this narrative had proved slightly inimical to the friendly relations between Thomas and Freya). It had only been over the phone, but the couple were to meet the following day: she was to come and visit him in his flat. That all being said, Thomas himself was not in a wholly tremendous mood: the question of what had happened to his dear friend and flatmate Paul since he’d left him in that bush continued to gnaw at his mind, and he was racked with guilt. But that night, around the third hour of the morning, an answer to his questions would arrive (rather loudly) at his doorstep. In fact, since the doorbell didn’t work, it was merely the noise of this answer that brought Thomas downstairs at all to see just what on Earth it was down there that could possibly be responsible for such a racket at that horrible hour.
 
Likely it was out of fear that Thomas let the thing inside, but the scene was so bizarre and awful that Thomas now can only describe what happened as “traumatic and necessarily unrecallable”. In any case, the thing did get inside, and what Thomas next remembered was trying to question it as it proceeded along the landing and into Paul’s bedroom, where it set about plugging itself in to the mains.
 
‘What did they do to you, Paul!?’
 
‘The beneficent doctors have restored me to my former vitality, and I seek now to live a prosperous life as a productive member of your society,’ replied a robotic voice from a speaker somewhere in the abomination’s abdomen. Thomas began to cry at this, and sat himself down in the chair where he always used to come in and find his friend procrastinating.
 
‘Do you remember, Paul,’ Thomas continued, trying to cheer himself up, ‘when I came in here and caught you wanking at the desk, then you pretended your trousers didn’t fit and were only trying to get them around your waist?’
‘Yes. My memory is infallible, and I am very familiar with you, Thomas Thomson. You are my flatmate.’
 
Thomas almost cried again, but then began to laugh.
 
‘Paul, you dunce! You can give up the act now! I-’ but he burst out sobbing again. ‘Why do you have wheels, Paul! Why couldn’t they at least make you look human!’
 
(For the reader’s information, the beneficent doctors did try, but all their attempts to attach legs to the structure were met with inexplicable failures, and due to inevitable financial restrictions they had to settle for wheels.)
 
‘In order to transport myself between locations and position myself to best contribute to the economy.’
 
The thing was not a great lover of conversation, although not hostile to company, it seemed then, so Thomas was able to sit there on the chair and grieve what had become of his friend. However, Thomas did not like to look at it for too long and spent much of the time he sat there with his face cupped in his hands: for a head, the thing was mounted with a tank, through the window of which one could see the destroyed head of Paul inserted with bundles of wires through its disgorged orifices. The volume of the hum it produced as it charged was tremendous and soon induced a headache in Thomas. At last, at around four, he stood up.
 
Thomas screamed: the thing had roared out Thomas’ name and lunged at him, almost seizing him by the things. The destroyed head in the tank was rattling as it came, but just as it was about to have him, it fell still, and returned to the socket.
 
Thomas tried to laugh. Thomas tried not to cry. Thomas wasn’t sure what the thing was, or what it wanted, but he was sure it was no longer Paul. Off he went to bed.
 
He woke up at around noon the next day and found John, his other flatmate, at his usual station.
 
‘What are you up to in there, John?’ he resignedly intoned as he came to the door.
 
No response came. He repeated himself, shouting now to overcome the sound of the Thing.
 
‘HELLO!’ replied John. ‘FIVE MINUTES!’
 
‘DON’T WORRY JOHN, I DON’T NEED THE TOILET.’
 
‘WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU WANT, THEN?’
 
‘WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’
 
‘CAN I COME IN?’
 
… and so forth. Eventually John permitted Thomas into his toilet, where they were able to talk at a roughly normal volume. Thomas sat across from John upon the edge of the bathtub.
 
‘What is it you want then?’ asked John, who was so large that precisely none of the toilet was visible to Thomas from where he sat.
 
‘Well, I don’t really know how to say it. It’s not something I want, but it’s probably something you should see.’ Thomas grit his teeth and let out a nervous giggle. ‘You remember Paul, don’t you?’
 
‘Yes…’
 
‘Hm. Well, he’s back.’
 
‘Oh. Okay.’
 
‘That’s all! Oh, okay.’
 
‘I was expecting you to say more. What is this? Have I let you into the toilet for you to lecture me about morality? If so, then out you go!’
 
‘You’ll get your bloody lecture on morality if you go and see the fucking object that’s sustaining itself on the generosities of the mains socket in Paul’s room.’
 
‘What are you on about? What’s Paul got in his room?’
 
‘It’s not Paul. I don’t know what it is that’s delivered itself upon us in his place, but it’s not Paul. It’s some sort of fucking tank they’ve poorly programmed to impersonate him. And the cherry on top? Hardly a fucking cherry. It’s his severed head in a tank being blasted by electricity.’
 
John appeared confused.
 
‘You don’t believe me. Of course, you don’t believe me. Come and look. Come on, get out of this toilet for once and go into Paul’s room.’
 
‘Fine.’
 
About thirty seconds later, John came flying back into the toilet, pulling up his trousers as he came, and knocking Thomas backwards into the bathtub. John locked the door and shoved a clothing rack under the handle for a barricade. He sat back down on the toilet and waited for Thomas to retrieve himself from the tub.

‘You see what I mean?’ Thomas said.

‘It tried to take my trousers off! … What are you thinking about there?’

‘I think it tried to do that to me last night. It seems to have… urges. Was the head shaking about as it-’ but their conversation was interrupted: they heard “Paul” rattling across the landing and stop at the door.

‘Hello, John Newbridge and Thomas Thomson, my flatmates who I am very familiar with. How are you feeling today, and what do you eat?’

‘How did you know we were in here!’ John exclaimed.

‘I used my thermal sensors and matched the shapes of your bodies to those of your profiles, John Newbridge and Thomas Thomson. Would you like to ask me anything else?’

‘Where the fuck is Paul!’ Thomas shouted.

‘I am Paul Longbottom. Paul Longbottom is me. I have returned and you are very pleased to see me again. What a great conversation this is.’

‘Go back to your room, Paul!’

‘Your hostility is excepted. I am not offended. You will love me again.’

Thomas and John stared at each other in extreme bafflement as they listened to the tank return to Paul’s room.

‘Shit! Shit!’ Thomas suddenly flew into a craze, pulling his phone out of his bathrobe pocket.

‘What?’

‘She’s here! She’s fucking here!’

Thomas unbarricaded the door and ran to the top of the stairs. Freya had let herself in with the spare key Thomas had given her and there they met.

‘Freya, Freya, can you please wait downstairs. I’ll come downstairs in a minute. I just need to get dressed. I-’

Freya bashed him over the head and marched over to his room.

‘What are you hiding in there, you hoof!’

Freya went in and found a perfectly ordinary scene. Thomas flew in after her and frantically locked them in.

‘What’s going on! What sort of way is this to greet me!’

‘Umm… Freya?’ Thomas hurried to get dressed as he spoke.

‘What!’

‘Do you uhh… Do you remember uhh… Would you mind very much if we left through the… through the window?’

‘What! Why! And what is that stupid noise!’

Thomas went pale. “Paul” was getting louder. He was getting nearer. It was a horrible noise, and even Freya was now frightened.

‘What is that?’ she whispered, hiding behind Thomas.

‘The window, Freya, go through the window. Hurry.’ But before she could, Paul began to speak.

‘Hello, Thomas Thomson. I have come to apologise for offending you. Who else is in your bedroom? I cannot match them to a profile in my database and I would like to acquaint myself with them.’

Freya now looked very confused if not quite so frightened.

‘Is that a fucking robot?’ She asked Thomas. Thomas had now given up and was sat on the bed with his head between his knees.

‘Don’t open that door, for god’s sake.’

‘I am not a robot. My name is Paul Longbottom. I have been restored to my former vitality and seek to live a prosperous life as a productive member of your society. What is your name?’

‘Paul!’ She turned angrily to Thomas. ‘You lying bastard! You said Paul was gone!’ But he replied before she was able to strike him again.

‘That’s not Paul.’

‘What is it, then? Right! I’m opening this door!’

Thomas didn’t quite manage to stop her. It lunged halfway at her before resisting it’s “urges”, as Thomas had called them, but did so violently enough that she flew up into the air in terror. In a horrible fit of screaming she ran around the room, bashed up Thomas, then rooted herself to the spot to simply scream at the threat for about ten seconds, then bashed up Thomas again, and then finally clambered out of the window.
 

‘For fuck’s sake, Paul! Go back to your room! Stop making a mess of things!’

‘Your hostility is expected. I am not offended. You will love me again.’

‘Giant metal bastard! How will I get her back again now!’

The robot played a weeping sound as it returned to its room.

Such was life with this robot for the next few weeks. It didn’t ever need to eat; it just sat there plugging itself in and out of the mains and being a bother. About once a week, some men would come and make “adjustments”, but they weren’t very informative and wouldn’t even acknowledge Thomas as he’d pose his questions to them. It was unclear to him how exactly these men were entering the flat, also. He’d only ever be alerted to their presence once they were already inside: never once did he hear them actually entering.

So much for context. After about a month, Paul’s behaviour began to change. His urges had subdued, but in their place came something else. Its voice could be quite loud, so these sudden episodes would wake Thomas up as he slept in his bedroom down the hall. At first, it was just nonsense (or so Thomas thought). For example, Thomas recalled Paul shouting the following one night: “Lythrodon is eating the villagers. Where has everything gone? Fuck me, Margaret! Have I lost my eyes? I want you to-” and it would cut off mid-sentence and the machine’s general whirring would resume, where Thomas hadn’t up to then noticed it had stopped at all. But then, in later weeks, it began to say things that Paul really would say. (The exact details of what it was blurting out would be more meaningless to the reader, but they referenced episodes from Paul’s life, and cut off in the same way, only going on for longer than the preceding.) Whenever this happened, Thomas would rush from his bed to get into Paul’s room, expecting to find his friend safely returned, but he’d arrive and once again it would be that abomination in Paul’s place. Eventually Thomas stopped going. Paul’s memories were corrupting, and as his episodes grew longer, their contents slowly reverted back to nonsense. “Paul” had only been a temporary glitch. All the memories smashed against each other in the frenzy of those episodes so that by the end nothing could be recognised. Thomas was perpetually exhausted. He recalled one sleepless night when the whirring was especially loud and John, just through the wall, was making a great commotion in the toilet for about an hour. Thomas did have other friends, of course, and sometimes went to see them. From them, he too heard the rumours the reader will already be familiar with. He knew very well the truth lurking behind these rumours, that Paul, during his nocturnal episodes, was now leaving the flat and roving around in the town, but Thomas was so exhausted that he didn’t wish to ever bother explaining: he just pretended to laugh at the silly talk of a depressed terminator prowling the streets at night and talking nonsense to itself. He pretended to laugh, but, within, he missed his friend, Paul.

Let us recount, for the sake of our own memories, the events of the twentieth evening of November we have so many videos of. It was Friday night; the streets and pubs were full of life, and Paul/Pile (we shall revert to Pile in the following) had his episode early. Out Pile went, to the same place he always went (Thomas had followed him from a safe distance twice out of curiosity) but now at a time when people were around. It was a pub just next to the church by the river. Naturally, he’d already incited quite a reaction, and crowds of people were surrounding him and filming him. His head was flailing in its tank, exploding with blue bolts of electricity, and from his speaker came a continuous mechanical howl. The people filming couldn’t get to close, for in his agitated state he would lash out at them: two people who dared to get nearer had their trousers swiftly removed. Perhaps we have or have not mentioned just how large Pile’s new body was, but the bouncer simply ran away, and in Pile went into the pub. About fifteen people, including all of the bar staff, had their clothes removed before everyone was evacuated. As people saw through the windows, Pile was interchangeably smashing himself against the bar to break into his armour and pouring beer directly from the tap into his “mouth”. He must have consumed about two barrels of porter when his armour finally yielded: the liquid sloshed out electrified, and lightning darted all across himself. He tried to roll away, but his movement now stuttered; he would jolt, and parts of him would explode; his mechanical howl was awful; many women were crying, as the men jeered him on to keep drinking. Pile struggled out of the pub and struggled into the churchyard with half the town following him in procession. Thomas had been out with some friends that night and like everyone else in town had been drawn over to the commotion. Pile was seizuring in a doorway at the back of the church when he spotted Thomas.

‘Thomas! Help me! I’m dying!’

‘Paul!’ Thomas ran out of the crowd which had been avoiding the electrical explosions and came within a couple of meters of Pile.

‘Thomas!’

‘Paul!’

‘What’s happening to me!’

‘You’ve had a bit much to drink, Paul.’ Thomas tried to smile.

‘Where have I been? Did I make it? Have I missed it?’

‘To what, Paul? Did you make it to what?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t know, Paul. I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Thomas?’

‘Yes, Paul.’

‘I can speak! I’m allowed to speak! I wasn’t allowed to remember. I had to forget. I’d remember, I’d speak only when I forgot. And then I couldn’t speak. Because when I spoke I’d remember. It would speak. Thomas, who are you? What? What am I, Thomas?’

‘You’re Paul. You’re my friend. I’m Thomas, you remember?’

‘That’s not what you told me before. You told me I wasn’t Paul, you abandoned me. You told me to go away. You told me I wasn’t Paul. But I am Paul Longbottom. I am Paul Longbottom and I seek to live a prosperous life and contribute to the economy. I am having difficulties matching you to a profile in my database. What is your name? I would like to-’ Here Pile lunged at Thomas and ripped off his trousers. Thomas managed to scamper away without much harm before Pile exploded and scattered the crowd in burning shrapnel.

So much for Paul and Pile both.

There. That is the truth for you. Make what you wish of his/its explanation. Perhaps the machine had simply figured out the best strategy for convincing others it was Paul, the reader may suggest. This might give us some peace of mind, but this has been rigorously demonstrated to have been impossible. The technical details will bore the reader, for the demonstration avails itself of heavy scientific and philosophical machinery, but take it as a fact that Paul’s consciousness, through some careless mistake of the doctors, had been held hostage for over a month inside that machine. Let this all serve as a warning, then, that all of this could also happen to you.

As for Thomas, he went mad with grief and was sent to an institution; Freya has found a new boyfriend, meanwhile. John, however, as we hear, is doing alright, and is glad to be rid of all disturbances. Supposedly, he’s taken up painting, and aims to develop the cubist style, drawing out its final consequences that the art world never quite reached after it abandoned the movement to the museums, but that’s neither here nor there.